From Tarzan to Star Trek: race and science fiction

September 1st was the 150^th anniversary of the birth of adventure and science fiction writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, best known for creating the characters of Tarzan and the Martian explorer John Carter. He was one of the most popular authors of the early 20^th century. His books, combined with the movies of Jonny Weissmuller, meant that I spent much of my childhood swinging on a rope attached to a tree in our local park and calling out at the top of my voice to gather all of the lions, tiger and monkeys who populated the forests in the North East of England!

Burroughs sold more than 30 million books in his lifetime, and his work was translated into more than 30 languages. He realised that his Tarzan character could be syndicated through comics, comic strips in newspapers, film, and TV. Tarzan became one of the iconic heroes of the 20^th century, long before Marvel and DC. Burroughs’ science fiction was also widely read and he explored life on Mars, Venus, the Moon and the Earth’s core.

The response from fellow science fiction writers was mixed. Brian Aldiss wrote of Burroughs’ work as “escapist and thought-stifling”, while Ray Bradbury said, “Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world. By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special.”

Yet Tarzan also brought other messages. These messages have been highlighted in critical discussion of the writing by scholars interested in colonialism and popular culture. Tarzan reflected the belief that English white aristocratic males were superior. Biographer John Taliaferro comments that the original, textual Tarzan “is also the son and rightful heir of England’s Lord and Lady Greystoke… and he flies a plane, quotes Latin, and oversees English and African estates.” Burroughs explained, “I selected an infant child of a race strongly marked by hereditary characteristics of the finer and nobler sort, and [ . . . ] threw him into an environment as diametrically opposite that to which he had been born as I might well conceive.”

Here Burroughs was influenced by scientists who argued for the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon male. Nancy Stepan in her book, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960,  explores the belief of a racial chain of progressive development with primitive black races lower on this chain than ‘civilized’ white races. As she points out, this scientific discourse, constructed by white western males, supported the existing hierarchy of race, culture and gender. Taliaferro sees Burroughs as reflecting this part of early twentieth-century American culture: “All of his plots… boil down to survival of the fittest… Burroughs, like so many of his contemporaries, believed in a hierarchy of race and class.”

Burroughs was a complex character, and different scholars see a number of different strands to his engagement. In an unpublished essay ‘I see a new race’, he explored eugenics, believing that humans could be improved through selective breeding. Yet he did oppose the rise of the Nazis and fascism, and in his science fiction he used its otherworldly imaginative space to explore race in a much more subtle way.

The stories of science fiction have more freedom to question the culture of their own author’s setting by the construction of alternative realities. These realities can critique social expectations, boundaries and traditions, and offer new possibilities. In that sense they can be countercultural.

Other science fiction has explicitly subverted racism. In the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry used Star Trek to explore through strange new worlds the cultural context of America. While Captain Kirk was still the adventuring white male hero, on the bridge of the Enterprise was a bold collection of people including aliens with odd ears and even Russians.

In particular, Nichelle Nichols starred as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, one of the few black women in film and television at the time portraying someone who held responsibility on the same level as white men. After the first series, Nichols was thinking of leaving the show. But then she attended a rally of Dr Martin Luther King. Dr King asked to meet her, and told her that Star Trek was one of the few television shows that he and his family made time to watch each week. Confessing to Dr King that she was thinking of leaving, he asked her to continue with Star Trek as she was portraying black women as “intelligent, quality, beautiful people” shaping of the future. She paved the way for so many.