"I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love."
-William Shatner
The word extraordinary is often overused, but I think it's really appropriate for Leonard. He was an extraordinarily talented man, but he was also a very decent human being. His talent embraced directing as well as acting and photography. He was a very sensitive man. And we feel his passing very much. He had been ill for a long, long time, and we miss him very much.
- George Takei
I hate this. All these people and pieces of my childhood disappearing one by one. I know it's inevitable, it's the way of things, but every time someone I grew up watching on tv passes away, it just kind of guts me a little more every time. Especially when they're people I was able to introduce my own children to, who then also loved them.
RIP, Mr Nimoy.
Last edited by Minnie; 02-27-2015 at 05:32 PM.
Reason: add picture
The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to Minnie For This Useful Post:
Seemed like an appropriate night to introduce my son (10) to Star Trek. We watched "Space Seed" (original story of Khan) and then the Wrath of Khan. Nimoy put a lot of nuance into what would have been an easy role to play lazily.
I think he also realized how much of a cultural touchstone the Spock character is in our society, and to his credit he rolled with it instead of trying to distance himself from it.
Sad to just learn of this. I copied this from a poster on slashdot:
Of course he did more than play Spock; and in the early post-TOS years he was famously ambivalent about his association with the role. But he did something special with that role. It's easy in the fog of nostalgia to forget that man TOS scripts weren't all that great (although some of them were). The character of Spock might have become just an obscure bit of pop culture trivia; instead Nimoy turned Spock into a character that I feel sure actors in our grandchildren's generation will want to play and make their mark upon.
What Nimoy brought to that role is a dignity and authenticity, possibly rooted in his "alien" experience as the child of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. In less sensitive hands the part might have been a joke, but I think what many of us took away from Nimoy's performance was something that became deeply influential in our world views. Nimoy's Spock taught us that there was something admirable in being different even when that is hard for others to understand; that winning the respect of others is just as rewarding as popularity. The world needs its oddballs and misfits, not to conform, but to be the very best version of themselves they can be. Authenticity is integrity.
It's customary to say things in remembrances like "you will be missed", but that falls short. Leonard Nimoy, you will live on in the lives of all us you have touched.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to blueski For This Useful Post:
Seemed like an appropriate night to introduce my son (10) to Star Trek. We watched "Space Seed" (original story of Khan) and then the Wrath of Khan. Nimoy put a lot of nuance into what would have been an easy role to play lazily.
I think he also realized how much of a cultural touchstone the Spock character is in our society, and to his credit he rolled with it instead of trying to distance himself from it.
.
There was a time where he did try to distance himself from Spock. BThennembraced the role again.
Well, not sure if this makes sense following a few vodkas, but this is the reflection I posted on Facebook:
Quote:
The liminal space between Leonard Nimoy the actor and Mr. Spock the character is reducing me to a fundamental crisis. I weep at the loss of one, and replicate that mourning at the loss of the other. Should I be troubled that one (the character and its connotations) overrules the other (the denotative reality/identity: Leonard Nimoy)?
Mr. Spock's death implicates so much more at a connotative level in modernity, such as the cessation of logical and pragmatic approaches to humanistic interpretations of life. Yet, these ideals should survive the death of a character actor such as Nimoy.
I know and am aware of that, yet it still feels like an aspect of that philosophy has been lost today, The representation is defeated, passing into something that cannot be rationally explained. It's deflating not only as a 'trekkie', but also as a philosopher.
I haven't been confronted with such a philosophical dilemma since the death of George Carlin, which left me so utterly alone in interpreting the absurdity of reality. My want to relate and process the real in respect to pragmatism or an extension of satire seems conquered by the deaths of respected philosophers like Carlin and Spock (Nimoy).
All I can rely on is the idea that my continuity of such values, and the integration of Spock's pragmatic approaches to life, influences my self-identified ideals of reality. In other words, I can internalize and integrate the logical perspective employed by Mr. Spock to sublimate the real-word perspective I must employ to survive. I cannot confront identity and life completely ignorant and dismissive of a rational organization. Rather, Mr. Spock's attitude to life can be embodied through the actor (Nimoy) as a pragmatic or rational confrontation of the irrational, where sense is made of emotional dictates in spite of irrational compulsion.
Ramble as I may, the cessation of Leonard Nimoy (and by extension, the symbolization of Spock in contemporary rationality and society) makes me sad. It feels like a loss beyond the individual which I have tried (in vain, I suppose) to sublimate has occurred; While it seems like we lost an actor, we have in fact lost a symbolization of what it takes to reconcile being human in an increasingly secularized culture.
__________________ "It's a great day for hockey."
-'Badger' Bob Johnson (1931-1991)
"I see as much misery out of them moving to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -Dr. Amos "Doc" Cochran
