Post of infinite hate

[bigscary]

So the grand finale of the show is a handful of white guys, mostly old, looking at the "Natives" and joking about breeding with them. And again, when the decision is made to abandon their physical culture, technology, and displace the current inhabitants of ReallyEarthThisTime, it's still a mostly male planning-group. Yes, tell me again how this show is arguably non-racist, non-misogynistic, or non-ageist.

Oh, and as to the interminable denouement? Fuck it. It's a litany of the bad choices everyone made before the apocalypse, and it's not explanatory, just embarrassing -- for the characters, the actors, and the creators.

I'm honestly trying to come up with my usual post-BSG-I-actually-watched attempt-at-comedy post, but nothin' doin'. The thing fucking makes fun of itself, and what little isn't second-to-second self-parody is just so infuriating as film making and politics that I can't seem to bring myself to engage with it in any mode but angry disdain.

As it actually ends, the one ray of hope is that given the hominids we saw, they're SO FAR BEFORE the agricultural revolution that they obviously all die out within a decade or two, century at most, and the non-invading hominids actually get their chance, rather than being replaced by obnoxious space-perverts.

OK ACTUAL ENDING IS AN ANTI-ROBOT MONTAGE!

ANTI-ROBOT MONTAGE!

Comments

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

The internet does.

The first season was actually pretty good to women--I loved Boomer, Athena (on the planet), Dualla (and her flirtations with Billy), and even the pre-Victorian-hysteric Cally, who just joined the military to pay for dental school. But as the show progressed it became like a sycophant at the Altar of Hegemonic Masculinity. All the "strong" women you see have just embraced the disturbing, destructive values of hegemonic masculinity, from trying to suppress/erase emotional responses, grossly out-of-porportion violence, and even RAPE OF WOMEN (Caine). By the end, the only women left were sexy robots. And women are continually punished for their bad choices (Ellen, Cally, Tory, Boomer) while the men consistently get away with it and are even sometimes later validated (Baltar, Tyrol, Tigh).

Honestly, given that, I think it should be just as offensive to men as it is to women. That particular brand of masculinity is something no one should be embracing.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Honestly, given that, I think it should be just as offensive to men as it is to women. That particular brand of masculinity is something no one should be embracing.
I agree, but this is SF fandom. Hyper-masculine fascist militarism appeals strongly to disappointingly large numbers.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Touche. While I can forgive the writers for thinking as such, I just hate that so many fans really buy into it as a post-sexist society.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

I think that a certain set of fans go, "Hey, the women are doing more than Lt. Uhura, what a wonderfully feminist world!" and never look past that. There's also such a significant amount of confusion in SF fandom between the problematics of a fictional world and the problematics of the depiction of that fictional world. I'm not convinced that BSG's setting is anti-feminist, but I'm absolutely sure that BSG is anti-feminist. Many fandom folks seem to think that the former somehow cancels out the latter, when they're rather unrelated.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting take, I like that.

Agreed. I think that a lot of people don't look past "female character with lines" when determining if something is woman-positive. And even if for some reason you don't believe it's anti-feminist, I don't see how *anyone* could argue that it's not anti-feminine.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

One of the most pernicious bits of the fictional world is that all the claims about feminism in the world are claims about pre-genocide Colonial Life; the fleet is obviously less than feminist.

This is a problem because it implies that feminism is some kind of luxury, that works in a post-industrial world, but in extremis, it's back to rigid gender roles, or at least "masculine acts are effective, feminine acts are to be mocked".

[jlc.livejournal.com]

One of the most pernicious bits of the fictional world is that all the claims about feminism in the world are claims about pre-genocide Colonial Life
Absolutely agreed.

the fleet is obviously less than feminist
I'm not sure I agree with this, at least as per the fleet at the outset of the series. The fleet is clearly masculinized, but I'm not recalling clear evidence of the fleet being anti-feminist.

I think the show's biggest problems with the portrayal of women aren't, however, due to some sort of structures within the society that it depicts, but rather in the depiction itself and the characters the writers created.

[avram]

To provide an example, Mad Men portrays a (historical) patriarchal setting, but is critical of it, demonstrating the difficulties women have and asking us to sympathize with them, which gives the show some feminist props.

BSG portrays a fictional setting that's still patriarchal (though dramatically less so than the early 1960s setting of Mad Men), but seems unaware of its patriarchalism, and the writers ask us to pretend that this lesser degree of patriarchy constitutes the absence of patriarchy.

[avram]

Well, I'd say that BSG is feminist from the point of view of first-wave feminism: Women have the vote, and can be found in many positions (including the presidency) that used to be reserved for men.

From the point of view of second-wave feminism, on the other hand, the show looks pretty retrograde. Remember the abortion episode, where the female president is willing to toss away the reproductive freedom of the fleet's women?

I can't really disentangle myself enough from my male and middle-class privilege so as to have an opinion about whether the show is feminist from the perspective of third-wave feminism.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Let me start off by saying that I think the notion that describing something as n-th wave feminism means much is problematic. At best, the waves are little more than pointing out a particular historical context. But most of the time, they're just broad pejorative strokes applied to different evolving views of what feminism is. This gets especially problematic when you start talking about third-wave feminism: can you tell me just what that means, anyway? I've heard people tell me it's radical feminism from the 1980s, or that it's the outgrowth of the riot grrls, or that it's simply postmodern feminism, or that it's simply a response to and criticism of the essentialism of earlier feminist writers.

I think that any reasonable definition of feminism requires that in order for a work to be feminist, it must at the very least present a positive view of independent, empowered, non-masculinized women without relying on stereotypical gender roles or other patriarchical tropes. BSG pretty clearly fails on this test without worrying much about exactly how to slice what bits and pieces of it are and aren't anti-feminist.

[avram]

This gets especially problematic when you start talking about third-wave feminism: can you tell me just what that means, anyway?

No, that's what I was getting at in my last paragraph. I don't even understand what third-wave feminism is supposed to be.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Also, that article made me lose brain cells. It has some good points to make that are entirely unrelated to the issue they think they're talking about. So what that the background universe that the show is set in is supposedly post-feminist? So what that male characters aren't perfect?

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, tell me about it. I totally lost respect for her.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

Gaeta was constantly punished for his choices, and other people's choices as well. Oh wait, he's gay so I guess he doesn't really count as a man ....

RAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE!

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

He's not gay. I'm tired of people throwing that in there. It's not canon. It was in some 2 minute webisode that no one saw. It wasn't on television, it wasn't part of the show, because Ron Moore only cares about hot lesbodian action.