Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Ode to Battlestar Galactica
Remember way back when, when I told you I was going to be writing random odes every so often for the blog? Well at the time, I was hopeful that I could maintain my 2 post a week pace, but since I have been so damn busy, especially these last few months, I just haven’t been able to do so. However a visit to Chicago and a reunification of the holy trinity of your thoughts exactly posters has given my spirit the strength to post again. For I am yet again rededicating myself to live by the mantra: All things serve the blog.
Now all I need are some new ideas. Well since I don’t have any policies in mind to enact, or Red Sox or Patriots to talk about, or the need to campaign for Atheist’s Rights, I am going to start off with an ode to the only television show worth watching today. That’s right, Battlestar Galactica.
Now in Australia, I was successfully able to wean myself off television, although I am sad to say I am regressing having moved back to the U.S. But in the times where I watched no TV, I am proud to say that I really didn’t miss it at all. I was still able to waste plenty of time on useless habits such as surfing the internet. No TV didn’t turn me into a productivity machine, but it did make me realize that many Americans, derive much of their reality from TV programs. Rather than make one’s own life interesting, we can sit around watching made-up people’s lives be interesting for us, and then discuss them as if they are our own. Therein lies the appeal of reality TV: these people could be us! Sure they are thrown into contrived situations, but their worlds are real, not fictional.
Unfortunately, this is severely limiting to the potential of humanity. Too much television, I believe, conditions the brain to be entertained, not challenged or creative. Basically, I finally understand why my parents tried to limit my television to 90 minutes a day, and only on weekends. Which of course, I chafed under as unfair, then rebelled against by watching when they weren’t home. Yet I still felt out of the loop when my contemporaries discussed GI Joe. Why didn’t my parents let me watch more TV?
Of course, the other corollary to my lessons learned in Australia, is that knowing all sorts of popular culture trivia is essentially worthless. Wasted brain wrinkles. Oh well what the hell.
That’s not to say all of television is evil. For occasionally, a show comes along with a world interesting enough, that the program transcends conventional schlock and actually becomes a piece of art, that can teach us more about our selves, as well as entertain the shit out of us, challenge us, and inspire creativity. And Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is one such show.
What makes it so great? Pretty much everything. The battle scenes. The premise. The ensemble cast especially. But there are two factors I want to focus on in particular.
The first is that the show maintains the humanity of its characters, even though they are in outer space in a galaxy far far away, by making each character unique and likable, but flawed. Some are more flawed than others, but every single character on that show has done something I haven’t agreed with, or something that pisses me off. There is no character who acts as the moral center of the show judging other’s actions, nor are past decisions or slights by people against each other forgotten or fixed at the end of a week’s program. The depth of the characters, along with the ensemble cast, allows for complex relationships to develop between multiple characters simultaneously. Unlike The O.C., where we get sick of Ryan and Marissa after a season and a half, the writers from BSG can allow these strands to develop slowly, and some to die off when need be.
The second factor, is the way in which the show challenges me on a metaphysical level. To summarize the show briefly: humans create robotic cylons, they become self-aware, they rebel, we fight them in a war etc. But as the cylons evolve to become more and more human-like the line between human and cylon becomes blurred. What distinguishes the two groups from each other? Humans in BSG often accuse the cylons of being “software.” But is the human brain anything but? The humans in the world of BSG have a complex religion, government, and developed culture. Yet the cylons share an equally strong religious fervor, which, ironically, mirrors that of real world humans (the humans on BSG are polytheists while the cylons are monotheist.) Human government: the principles of democracy, etc. often acts as a weakness, as humanity, reduced to 47,000 individuals, spends more time fighting each other about who is in charge than worrying about preserving what life they have left. The cylons, on the other hand, are united in their cause, whatever it may be.
The show, thus, is about what makes us human. I cannot tell whether the BSG writers think that humans are beings under a divine mandate from God or organized groups of carbon atoms who delude themselves into thinking they are special. It makes me question my own humanity. Rather than trying to understand the differences between cultures, humans need to focus on shared traits of humanity. We don’t need a bunch of invading robots or aliens to do it for us. Of course, another key part of BSG is that, even though humans have been reduced in numbers, they still fight over power, and religion, and principles, and control, and morality. Which is another key feature of the human race, it’s in our nature to destroy and argue over abstractions that won’t matter when we are dead.
I encourage everyone to run out to Best Buy and purchase the first season of BSG, and find some way to catch up on the first half of the second season before it resumes in January. So say we all.
Now all I need are some new ideas. Well since I don’t have any policies in mind to enact, or Red Sox or Patriots to talk about, or the need to campaign for Atheist’s Rights, I am going to start off with an ode to the only television show worth watching today. That’s right, Battlestar Galactica.
Now in Australia, I was successfully able to wean myself off television, although I am sad to say I am regressing having moved back to the U.S. But in the times where I watched no TV, I am proud to say that I really didn’t miss it at all. I was still able to waste plenty of time on useless habits such as surfing the internet. No TV didn’t turn me into a productivity machine, but it did make me realize that many Americans, derive much of their reality from TV programs. Rather than make one’s own life interesting, we can sit around watching made-up people’s lives be interesting for us, and then discuss them as if they are our own. Therein lies the appeal of reality TV: these people could be us! Sure they are thrown into contrived situations, but their worlds are real, not fictional.
Unfortunately, this is severely limiting to the potential of humanity. Too much television, I believe, conditions the brain to be entertained, not challenged or creative. Basically, I finally understand why my parents tried to limit my television to 90 minutes a day, and only on weekends. Which of course, I chafed under as unfair, then rebelled against by watching when they weren’t home. Yet I still felt out of the loop when my contemporaries discussed GI Joe. Why didn’t my parents let me watch more TV?
Of course, the other corollary to my lessons learned in Australia, is that knowing all sorts of popular culture trivia is essentially worthless. Wasted brain wrinkles. Oh well what the hell.
That’s not to say all of television is evil. For occasionally, a show comes along with a world interesting enough, that the program transcends conventional schlock and actually becomes a piece of art, that can teach us more about our selves, as well as entertain the shit out of us, challenge us, and inspire creativity. And Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is one such show.
What makes it so great? Pretty much everything. The battle scenes. The premise. The ensemble cast especially. But there are two factors I want to focus on in particular.
The first is that the show maintains the humanity of its characters, even though they are in outer space in a galaxy far far away, by making each character unique and likable, but flawed. Some are more flawed than others, but every single character on that show has done something I haven’t agreed with, or something that pisses me off. There is no character who acts as the moral center of the show judging other’s actions, nor are past decisions or slights by people against each other forgotten or fixed at the end of a week’s program. The depth of the characters, along with the ensemble cast, allows for complex relationships to develop between multiple characters simultaneously. Unlike The O.C., where we get sick of Ryan and Marissa after a season and a half, the writers from BSG can allow these strands to develop slowly, and some to die off when need be.
The second factor, is the way in which the show challenges me on a metaphysical level. To summarize the show briefly: humans create robotic cylons, they become self-aware, they rebel, we fight them in a war etc. But as the cylons evolve to become more and more human-like the line between human and cylon becomes blurred. What distinguishes the two groups from each other? Humans in BSG often accuse the cylons of being “software.” But is the human brain anything but? The humans in the world of BSG have a complex religion, government, and developed culture. Yet the cylons share an equally strong religious fervor, which, ironically, mirrors that of real world humans (the humans on BSG are polytheists while the cylons are monotheist.) Human government: the principles of democracy, etc. often acts as a weakness, as humanity, reduced to 47,000 individuals, spends more time fighting each other about who is in charge than worrying about preserving what life they have left. The cylons, on the other hand, are united in their cause, whatever it may be.
The show, thus, is about what makes us human. I cannot tell whether the BSG writers think that humans are beings under a divine mandate from God or organized groups of carbon atoms who delude themselves into thinking they are special. It makes me question my own humanity. Rather than trying to understand the differences between cultures, humans need to focus on shared traits of humanity. We don’t need a bunch of invading robots or aliens to do it for us. Of course, another key part of BSG is that, even though humans have been reduced in numbers, they still fight over power, and religion, and principles, and control, and morality. Which is another key feature of the human race, it’s in our nature to destroy and argue over abstractions that won’t matter when we are dead.
I encourage everyone to run out to Best Buy and purchase the first season of BSG, and find some way to catch up on the first half of the second season before it resumes in January. So say we all.
# posted by Marmaniac @ 2:37 PM 
