Daystrom Institute

In recent years, I have been surprised to find one part of DS9 that keeps on getting better with age: the Ferengi. As vehicle of social commentary, they go where Trek never went before.

Today, I want to focus on Ferengi society being used as an indictment of what we might call "patriarchal masculinity" (as in, expectations that a patriarchal society has about what masculinity is and how its men should embody it), specifically, by contrasting how Quark and Rom react to their father’s perceived shortcomings.

What do we know about Keldar?

Quark idolizes him as the traditional head of the household. He recalls Keldar’s exasperation and gloom with respect to his wife, Ishka — “Quark, I don’t know what I’m going to do about that female!” Quark acknowledges that Keldar was successful enough in business, but feels that he could have been much more so, if not for Ishka’s troublesome behavior. In short, he recognizes his father’s shortcomings, but blames his mother for them.

Rom, in contrast, sees their father in more mundane terms. Unlike Quark, who left home right away, Rom stayed for years and, as an adult, perceived Keldar’s lack of business acumen. “He couldn’t hold on to latinum if you sewed it into his pants!”

Ishka speaks lovingly of her deceased husband, but does little to hide her belief that he did not have the “lobes” for business. If memory serves, she once privately remarked to Quark that Rom had inherited his father’s lobes, referring to his poor business skills (though I may be recalling that incorrectly).

So, it appears that Keldar was lacking in terms of that which makes someone a “real Ferengi.”

Let’s consider his sons.

Rom follows in his father’s footsteps, trying to be a successful businessman, for many years, with apparently just as little success. It’s only after watching his son join Starfleet and forming the union (at O’Brien’s encouragement) that he changes, seeking his own path outside of Ferengi culture and its expectations.

Rom witnesses his father’s suffering and himself suffers for decades for not living up to Ferengi standards and eventually responds to that suffering by leaving the game altogether (until he comes back to reform it— a story for another time).

Quark, in contrast, witnesses his father’s suffering, and beyond being ashamed of it, does everything he can to avoid it— both by leaving home as quickly as possible, and by cultivating what we might call “hyperferengity” in himself— an unparalleled focus on being a “true Ferengi”, beyond the shadow of anyone’s doubt. He responds to his father’s suffering by doing everything he can to avoid the shortcomings that caused it.

Quark sees an unfair game and responds by obsessing over winning; Rom sees an unfair game and eventually leaves to play something more fair.

Rom’s suffering is obvious in the early seasons of Deep Space Nine. Mocked and despised by a brother who likely sees him as the embodiment of their father’s shame, his own natural talents and interests squelched by a system that has no use for them.

But I think the costs that Quark pays are more subtle. He is presented opportunities for growth— Pel, the union, the post-Zek New Economy— and he either agonizes over accepting them, or dismisses them out of hand. This culminates in his declaration of the bar as the “last outpost of what made Ferenginar great”— a steadfast and unrelenting commitment to an idealized version of the past, with a refusal to engage with the future. (Make Ferenginar great again, anyone?) I might not describe any of this as a “cost,” except that I believe that Quark is doing it all basically as a reaction to his father (or more specifically, his shame for having such a father). He is driven by his own pathos more than anything else. He is not his own man: he is driven by fear— fears that his brother could overcome, but not he.

Now, Ferengi business acumen is often coded as masculinity— “he has the lobes for business”, “you wouldn’t have the lobes to do something so gutsy!”, “he has the tiny lobes of a female!” (not direct quotes, but those are the sentiments). Here, I have coined the term "hyperferengity" in the same vein as "hypermasculinity."

So, take the informal psychoanalysis above, and replace all the references to business acumen with references to masculinity, and we find an allegory for how societal expectations of masculinity can end up hurting everyone— both those who “pass the test” and those who fail— and how the trauma of one generation gets passed down, in manners subtle and gross, on to the next.