Patrick Stewart is an actor we have loved since childhood, through his roles in the X-Men films and, above all, in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But I find myself thinking that he is also an entirely unique example of an actor of his generation, both on stage and on screen.
No one else has broken down the barriers between "high" art and popular or mass culture quite like he has. He conquered the stage as a Shakespearean actor, while also capturing the hearts of millions of viewers and comic book readers through the roles mentioned above. He mastered the world of the European literary canon, theatre, and so-called "high" art, yet it may ultimately be through his work in popular culture that he will be remembered most. Through roles drawn from genre fiction, science fiction, and the superhero genre, forms of entertainment that many of his fellow actors might have dismissed as trivial or "lowbrow."
The breaking down of boundaries between "high" and popular culture is one of the defining cultural phenomena of our time, something that numerous critics and cultural theorists have pointed out. And Patrick Stewart truly has been, and his remarkable body of work will forever remain, living proof of precisely that.
But the roles he chose to embody also deserve special recognition. If Mad Max (one of my all-time favourite franchises) represents an anarcho-capitalist dystopia, Star Trek is its exact opposite: a utopia whose economic and social system cannot be precisely defined, but which undoubtedly exists beyond capitalism and the insatiable culture of the marketplace.
Star Trek: The Next Generation represents the pinnacle of the franchise, although both the original series and, above all, Deep Space Nine could justifiably claim that title.
Star Trek matters today because it represents the quintessential utopian narrative of our time. We live in an era in which all faith in the very idea of utopia has been lost, an era in which people can no longer even imagine one, not even within the realm of fiction. For some theorists, this is the greatest indication of the crisis we find ourselves in today. And Star Trek constantly invites us to overcome it. To boldly go, paraphrasing the series itself, into strange new worlds. To dare to imagine them. To believe that making them a reality is worth the effort.
By conquering both the literary canon and popular culture, across every dramatic medium, from theatre to cinema and television, Patrick Stewart himself became, much like the title of perhaps the most legendary Star Trek episode, "The Best of Both Worlds."