There’s a great moment in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – the one where the Enterprise travels back in time to San Francisco ca. 1986 to save two whales – where helmsman Sulu is flying above the Bay Area in a helicopter. Surveying the street below him, he smiles and simply says, “San Franciiiiiisco.”
It seems to be sly little in-joke by George Takei, the guy who played Sulu in the original Star Trek series and films. Though it wasn’t until 2005 that Takei officially proclaimed he was gay, announcing in an issue of Frontiers magazine that he’d been in a committed relationship with partner Brad Altman for nearly 20 years, his sexuality was something of an open secret. So when Sulu, a 23rd-century spaceship pilot from an Earth defined by its liberalizing and equality, looks down over one of North America’s centres of liberalism and equality in Star Trek IV, it’s not only kind of funny, it’s sweet: as if the character’s looking back wistfully on how far his future-Earth has come since 1986.
When Takei officially came out, he came out with a vengeance. He’s a prominent spokesperson for the LGBT community, even serving as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign Coming Out Project. In 2008, he and Altman married, the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage licence in West Hollywood. (Walter Koenig, who played Chekov on Star Trek, served as best man.)
As the result of his very public activism, Takei has become something of a pop culture phenomenon, a living meme. He maintains a very active social media presence – so active that he was posting on Facebook while I was taking to him on the phone, leading me to suspect that some plucky intern (or Brad, who serves as his husband’s de facto administrative assistant) was micromanaging the account.
Takei’s in town for Fan Expo this weekend, where he’ll be signing autographs for $45. Beyond the cadre of longtime Trekkers who usually attend these things, Takei’s likely to bring in a whole new stripe of fan, who knows and appreciates George Takei not as “Sulu” but as “George Takei.”
Star Trek is directly responsible for the fan convention culture springing up, so you’ve been in this circuit for a while. But now you’ve cultivated a fan base made up of people who don’t even know you from Star Trek. Do you find that strange at all?
I do have a diverse fan base now, for which I am very grateful. And the longevity of Star Trek – in three years Star Trek will be 50 years old, celebrating its golden anniversary – is all due to the fans. I try to do as many conventions as possible. I think it’s just good manners to say thank you to the fans that made this possible. But my fans are particularly diverse. There’s a new fan base from social media, and different fans from my Howard Stern activities, and from my writings.
You’ve sort of turned into a meme, in a way. And you have a new book coming out about this?
Yes it’s based on my social media adventures and misadventures. It’s called “Oh Myy! (There Goes The Internet).” And that “Oh myy” phrase I’ve been using all my life. But it’s when I did The Howard Stern Show that it became my signature phrase. He does a lot of crazy things on that show, and the only response is “Oh myy.” And he has it on tape. So whether I’m there in person or not, he just presses that tape and my voice comes on saying, “Oh myy.” So I thought, why not use that for the title of my book? And it’s selling like hotcakes now. Proverbial hotcakes.
Are hotcakes still popular anymore, what with gluten-free and everything else?
That’s true. Those of us who are conscious of carbohydrates don’t generally buy many hotcakes these days.
I saw on your Facebook page that you’re releasing an Eau Myy cologne. Is that a joke?
Yes! The French “Eau”! You can smell, so “Oh myyy.”
The scent of Takei, sure. You mentioned your stint on Howard Stern, and how people recognize your voice. I read that when you were running for L.A. city council in the 70s, the local NBC affiliate couldn’t run Star Trek re-reruns because the other candidates said it would violate the FCC’s equal-time laws.
Isn’t that outrageous! The series had been cancelled, but was still running in re-runs. The FCC has this “equal-time” rule, which I don’t consider equal at all. Based on me being on TV mouthing words written by a writer, other people running against me were able to claim equal-time. This poor station ran an episode of Star Trek, and I was on for about 17 minutes, so that station had to give 17 minutes to a dozen candidates, so they could say, “My name is Joe Smith, and I’m running for office and this is my opinion on taxation.” Or “My name is Mary Jones and this is how I feel about education.” They could talk about issues as themselves. My character could have been a drunkard or a wife-beater, a character totally deleterious to any candidacy, but still it was called “equal-time.” And it even applied to Star Trek: The Animated Series! Even if there was a character who just looked like me, though the drawing was much more muscular, that would have to be withdrawn, because of my voice.
But despite all this you still pulled second place?
I did. I did.
Nothing to sneeze at.
No, and I tried to get that FCC ruling changed. But I used the Screen Actors Guild attorney, and it was a very frustrating effort.
Have you always been interested in politics?
Let me take you back to my childhood.
OK.
We were incarcerated during the Second World War, just because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. The same thing happened in your country, Canada. We’re Americans. My mother was from Sacramento. My father was a San Franciscan. I and my siblings were born in Los Angeles. We’re Americans. Yet just because we looked like the people who bombed Pearl Harbour we were rounded up, summarily: with no charges, with no trial. The pillar of our justice system is due process. None of that existed for us. It just evaporated.
We were taken to barbed wire camps in 10 of the most hellish places. My family was taken to the swamps of southeastern Arkansas. Japanese-Canadians were taken from the West Coast and deposited in the bitterly cold wilds of Canada, with flimsy housing. It was a shameful chapter in your country’s history and mine.
Children are amazingly adaptable. I remember the barbed wire fence, the sentry towers and the machine guns pointed at us. They became part of the landscape. We adjusted to it. When the war ended, and I was a teenager reading history and civics books about the ideals of the democracy, I couldn’t quite reconcile that with what I knew of my childhood imprisonment. I spent long nights talking with my father, and it was he that guided me to activism. He said, “Our democracy is a people’s democracy. And it can be as a great as the people can be. But it’s also as fallible as people are.” Our democracy is dependent on good people being actively involved in the process, and holding democracy’s feet to the fire.
Is this idea of holding democracy’s feet to the fire what motivated you to become so active in the LGBT community in the States?
Absolutely! It’s a civil rights issue. I was involved in the civil rights movement for African-Americans, and to get redress for Japanese-Americans for that unconstitutional incarceration. The equality movement for LGBT people is the same thing: human rights. And human dignity.
Did Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the world in Star Trek appeal to you in this regard? I read that when he created Sulu, he was supposed be some sort of inclusive, pan-Asian construct. I’m not sure how you’d feel about that as a Japanese-American.
Well that was the vision. He said that the starship Enterprise is a metaphor for the starship Earth: each individual contributing their own vantage point, their own talent, coming together to meet a common challenge. Uhura was to represent Africa. Scotty represented Europe. The Captain represented North America. And my character represented Asia.
Gene Rodenberry’s issue with the Asian character was that each surname is nationally specific: Tanaka is Japanese Wong is Chinese Kim is Korean. Twentieth century Asia has a turbulent history of warfare, colonization and revolution. He didn’t want to bring that in. Staring at a map of Asia, he saw, off the coast of the Philippines, a sea called “The Sulu Sea.” And he thought, “Ah! The waters of a sea touch all borders.”
So it doesn’t matter to you that a Korean-American, John Cho, plays Sulu in the J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies?
Well J.J. Abrams actually called me up when he was casting, to talk about that. I first thought, “Ah, he probably wants me for a cameo!” [Laughs] But he asked me what I thought about a non-Japanese-American playing Sulu, and I told him this story about Gene Rodenberry and he went on to cast John Cho in the new, revived version of Star Trek. I think he made a good choice! Before long, I’ll be known as “the old guy who played John Cho’s part.”
Well now, in a way, you’re more well known as George Takei than as Sulu, thanks in no small part, I think, to your political activism. When I see the way you engage with LGBT issues via social media, you do it with seriousness, but there’s also a measure of irreverence that I think people who aren’t actively politicized may respond to. You have a sense of humour about it, without it feeling like a joke, if that makes sense.
Well, yeah. I mean some of these politicians come up with such ridiculously outlandish notions! There was a state senator in Kentucky who wanted to ban the use of the word “gay” by teachers. Of all people! The punishment was a week in jail and some monetary fine. So I said, “Well, if you can’t use the word ‘gay,’ then use my surname ‘Takei.’ It rhymes!” So march in a Takei Pride Parade, or at Christmastime sing, “Don we now our Takei apparel…” So that bill failed. And he was laughed at. He’s now recognized as a buffoon.
In the U.S. and Canada at least, you can deflate a lot of this homophobia by pointing out its inherent buffoonery. Like you can just say it back at them and realize how patently ridiculous it is. What about on the international stage though-
Oh my! We haven’t talked about Russia?
What do you think about that? Obviously Russia’s new law against gay propaganda, or whatever they’re calling it, is ridiculous-
But it’s also dangerous. That homophobic law has essentially given license to the thugs and hooligans to attack anyone who think looks or dresses or is gay. And they beat them up. sometimes so horrifically that they die. I mean, they’re killed! And police look the other way. The police don’t pepper spray the hooligans, they pepper spray the people thought to be gay or lesbian by the hooligans. It’s outrageous what’s going on!
When Russia made the presentation to the IOC, they pledge that they would honour the Olympic Charter: which talks about peace and sportsmanship and nondiscrimination. They breached that! I think the IOC should punish Russia. And the best way to punish them is by taking the Olympic away, with all the economic windfall that comes with it. They should put it where the venues still exist, where you conducted a very successful winter Olympics: in Vancouver. Sochi and Russia does not deserve the money, and most importantly, Putin must not be given that international platform on which to glory.
We need to learn from history. In 1936, the IOC granted the summer Olympics to Berlin. Three years before that, Hitler came to power and he passed an innocuous bill exempting Jewish professors from tenure. That was threatening, but it wasn’t too bad. Then the Olympic stage was offered to him, and that platform raised his stature, improved his reputation among the German people, and we all know where his campaign of horror wound up.
Putin is a KGB guy. He has agenda. This homophobic law did not just happen. They’ve tried to persuade the IOC that gay athletes will be exempted: it’s a law that’s discriminatory on top of being discriminatory. The torture of the LGBT people in Russia will go on during the Olympics. We are putting the athletes and the LGBT supporters in danger by having the winter Olympics in Sochi. It must be taken out of Russia and brought to Vancouver.
Speaking of 1936, a lot of people – including your president, Barack Obama – seem to be forwarding some specious argument that what the LGBT community really needs is a gay Jesse Owens or something. I’m not sure if I buy that. If you’re gay, you shouldn’t need to prove that you’re good at skiing to not be thrown in jail. The idea of gay athletes showing up and owning the podium at Sochi is nice, but it seems a little ass-backwards to me.
Absolutely! They always bring up the Jesse Owens example! What did that do with Hitler’s agenda?
Nothing.
Nothing! It did nothing. For a brief moment it embarrassed Hitler. And Putin is much stronger than the best athletes that we have. It’s absolutely unbelievable that the IOC has not acted on this. They’re going to be meeting in Buenos Aires to elect a new president. This is an opportune time to let the world let its disgust with Russia be known, and put pressure on the IOC to move the Olympics from Sochi, Russia.
