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

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

Racist? I don't know. I mean, if Tory and Dee were still alive, they'd likely be right there, but they left the scene with characters we knew and I think to throw in a random black guy or something would have been even more insulting, smacking of tokenism. One could argue that Sharon coulda been there, but why would she? This, to me, falls under the category of unfortunate connotations. It was the scene that made sense. Take characters we know, have them scope out the indigenous life -- which at that point were Cro-magnon in Africa -- and note their development. What else were they going to do, pontificate upon their evolutionary potential?

And as for sexist... what show are you watching? Even when Kara is in a dress, she still thwarts like fifty female stereotypes a second. Without losing her vulnerability. The only real girly girl I can think of is Cally, and even she is a mechanical specialist who is willing to kill for her family. Not that I'm a Cally fan, far from it, but I'm just saying.

As for interminable denouement... I'm sorry, I actually liked all the wind-down. I thought it was cool. I was relieved when the Cylon action was done and there was still fifty minutes left. You've got like twenty characters to send off. Better, I think, to give everyone their room to breathe. I mean, I'm a little miffed about Starbuck's unresolved nature. WTF? But Baltar's comment about knowing about farming was a great touch and really drove his arc home. I could ask for a few more answers, but I'm more than happy with what I got.

You're an esteemed fellow geek, Dave, and an astute fan and viewer, but on the matter of the BSG finale, I find I have to respectfully disagree.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

JESUS FUCK, if you're going to use blink, fer goddamsakes, use a cut tag or something. Now I'm gonna have to see this every time I load my friends page.

[negativeq.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the space-perverts will be killed off by the savannah tsetse flies.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

I DO NOT USE BLINK LIGHTLY. BLINK WAS EARNED.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I DIDN'T EARN IT! THE CREATORS DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT YER DAMN PAGE! I DO!

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

The show is racist because the white men, mostly old, are the most reasonable people to have there. Tokenism is not required, but that little shot summed up the makeup of the show.

And as for sexist -- by the lights of the show, Kara is awesome when she is displaying stereotypically masculine virtues. Similarly throughout the show, stereotypically feminine acts and virtues are loci of madness and betrayal, stereotypically masculine acts and virtues are loci of salvation and success. Kara succeeds by being more manly than the men, which is something, but no one is able to succeed by being womanly, or anything other than a big ole manly-man. Tyrol's vengeance-murder of Torie is a good example which I may post about later.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Take my word for it: This isn't something you can argue against. Not because what you're saying is wrong, but it just can't be resolved to anyone's satisfaction either way.

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

Gotta disagree with you there too. Kara's ass-kicking "masculine" traits, though cool and sometimes helpful, are also a large part of her self-destructive cycle. Conversely, some of her gentlest, most "feminine" moments -- the caretaking of that little girl Casey, her unwillingness to abandon Sam in Season 2 or to just let him die in Season 4, and her compassion for Kat as she lay dying -- are some of the best examples of her strength as a person.

As for the racism, again, it's just where the chips fell. There were plenty of non-white characters at the show's start, but many of them, as well as many of white characters, died. And for my money, when you start making all your narrative decisions on what's going to be the most politically inoffensive move, you're fucked dramatically. I have an agenda like anyone else, even when it comes to my writing, and there are certain things I try to avoid, but at the end of the day, if I have to do something shitty to a Black Jewish Lesbian, I sleep soundly, because if that character had been a straight white male, I would have done the exact same thing. Trying to maintain diversity is all well and good and something to strive for wherever possible, but in the end, a writer's obligation is to go where the story and the characters go.

[manwe-iluvendil.livejournal.com]

I agree, but I just can't help me a good, healthy debate, especially with such a worthy opponent. Dave's a very smart guy with an opinion I respect, and we're very like-minded, so whenever we disagree on something, I become far too curious to just walk away.

But so noted.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Totally agreed. Can we have a why-BSG-is-the-worst-excuse-for-a-post-sexist-future-ever discussion soon?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I was sort of alone in the "WTF is with the anti-tech bias here?" while watching. I don't get how the Colonials have any evidence that "going native" is going to stop the cycle of build and decline. It seems to me that that's what they had on Kobol, on the Colonies, on Earth...

Technology is not inherently evil. Isn't that what the "good" Cylons have taught us? If we can accept the 2-6-8s into the new humanity, we can figure out how to use technology responsibly, goddamnit. I don't buy the "everything is different now" ending. Because it's not. It's either moralizing--"Don't be like that!"--or it's miraculously different because Ron Moore has had visions of the past (Thanks, Angels!) and dutifully taught us not to hate on robots. Or something.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I hope that when they shot all technology into the sun they saved some antibiotics...

[avram]

"Where the chips fell"? If character life-and-death really were chosen by a random process, surely we'd expect a few of the non-white characters to have lived to the end, no? Especially if there were "plenty" of them.

Except, as you well, know, the deaths weren't chosen randomly. They were the result of conscious writing decisions. I don't think the writers actually said to themselves "Hey, let's kill off the dark-skinned characters", but on a serial TV show, there are Major Characters with script immunity (meaning they'll survive whatever happens to them; if they do die, it'll turn out to have been a mistake or an evil twin or they'll get resurrected) and Supporting Characters who'll get killed off to indicate how serious the stakes are or give the Major Characters something to emote over.

Somehow, on most TV shows, in most books, on most movies, Major Characters are always white. Battlestar Galactica has turned out to be typical in that regard.

This isn't racist in the burn-a-cross-on-someone's-lawn sense, but it's racist in the sense that it indicates a pattern of race-related thought running through our society, a pattern of which many of us (especially those of us who are white) are unaware, but which contributes to a climate in which non-white people are made to feel like second-class citizens.

[avram]

Here, how to turn off the display of <blink> in Firefox. Do that, and you'll never risk seeing it again.

[avram]

As an old guy, I gotta say, I like having a show where the old guys kick ass.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Ah, good, no more seizures for me!

[avram]

At least they didn't give Adama a girlfriend named Eva.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

As much as I hate it, I must speak in it's defense. It's not the worst. At least it tries. Sadly, the fucking Stargate franchise, which I never got the impression was even trying (though it's certainly trying, har-de-har), is ultimately less reprehensible in its sexism (though not racism, at all).

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, there's not actual evidence that the new robots will not one day rise up, just the pessimist angel making the bet that it won't, for once. Arguably, all they did was delay the technological development required to create robots smart enough to get annoyed that they're robota.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

...to say nothing of the "acceptable risk" that the Centurions will never come back.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

"So the grand finale of the show is a handful of white guys..."

And one Mexican!

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Stargate doesn't try. BSG claims to the high heavens that it's sooo feminist. That's what bothers me.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

I have to thank you very much for posting this and preventing me from posting a much more rage-filled version of the same.

[jlc.livejournal.com]

Honestly, who the hell believes them at this point? I mean, their major claim as far as I could tell was early season 1 where all we had to go on was the fact that women serve important roles... but even that was undermined. I mean, female president has to come up through a pink collar job, right?

[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.