More hate for the Battlestar Galactica finale

[seriousfic]

Colonial society, at least as depicted in-show, has been seen to be fairly liberal (in the classical sense) and egalitarian. There are female leaders and soldiers who are accepted without comment, homosexuality is accepted, prostitution is accepted, there's little racism... basically, I'd say it's slightly better than 21st century America, although that's arguable. Give or take.

Spoiler cut? Spoiler cut.



Which, of course, all gets chucked out the window for 150,000 years of mass graves, gang rape, slavery, corsets, segregation, Jim Crow laws, ethnic cleansing, and all the myriad atrocities we had to go through to get back to the level of pre-Fall Colonial society.

So, is Lee Adama worse than Hitler? Yes. Yes, he is. Thanks again for slavery, Apollo!

Also, if they're going to go in the "we must break the cycle of violence/peace is all you need" direction, at least do it well. And I'm talking about more than the Cylons constantly proving themselves untrustworthy genocidal maniacs with a perchant for rape farms. For a show which seems to be preaching a message of "accept other cultures," Cylon society ends up completely subsumed within Colonial society. Sure, it's nice to say that Hera is the mother of all humanity, but what about the Cylons is still around today? Monotheism? Some chromosomes?

Think about Cylon society for a moment. There's the familial vibe of the different models, all the same person but with different experiences turning them into voting blocs of a representational democracy. There's resurrection. There's the partnership with the Hybrids, Cylon soldiers, and fighters. There's projection and polygamy and glowy spines. Every one of those things, by the show's presentation of events, has to be consumed and normalized so that Cylons and humans can co-exist. It's not enough that Cylons and humans have a treaty and are leaving each other alone. No, one's culture has to utterly subsume the other in this great big homogenized melting pot where everybody lives down on the farm. And, not to put too fine a point on it, with artifical insemination technology having been abandoned, now Cylons and human alike can only survive through good old-fashioned heterosexual breeding. Oops.

I find all this way creepier than "we must delete the Cylons totally if we're ever to have peace." In fact, I would've found a season of Cylons and humans trying to survive as one fleet more interesting than half-assed mystical explanations and fighty-fighty-fighting.

You could even get rid of the Big Bad Cavil and have the dramatic tension coming solely from tensions within the Fleet and elements of both Cylon and Colonial society. Imagine if the mutiny had Lee Adama or some other important faces onboard. Imagine the Cylons backing a candidate for president. Imagine Kara wanting a divorce from Sam and hatred of "interracial" couples and "would you let your daughter date a Leoben?" and every Cylon wanting a vote and Jim Crow attempts to rig the election (because are there twelve Cylons or twelve thousand Cylons who just happen to have the same body?). Imagine Gaius's cult actually having a point!

There are all kinds of directions the story could've taken that, yes, admittedly wouldn't have allowed for a big space battle, but if your end-message is "we have to work past our differences and find peace," then the text CANNOT support a big space battle, as aptly proved by the finale.

Because, really now, out of all the Cylons who CREATED Cavil and who've LIVED with Cavil, none of them thinks to mention "Hey, there's a chance he'll just give us Hera if we offer him resurrection"?

Comments

[mymatedave.livejournal.com]

point.

[jennyo.livejournal.com]

Well, the show is fundamentally anti-democracy and anti-reason. No two ways about it.

I mean, the other thing is that for some reason, Colonial religion was baaaad, but the one god killing billions upon billions of people to create Hera? Great and dandy. Because it wouldn't have taken six weeks with Helo being trapped with Athena on a deserted island.

So all the Cylon God wanted could have been done by stranding the human fleet on an asteroid: Lost. In Space. But instead, genocide followed by a rejection of technology because...God is clearly better than modern medicine. Riiiight.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

I still have trouble mapping the finale onto modern racism. I mean, yes, Lee's "Best of us" bit sounds a lot like White Man's Burden, but he just got off a frakking spaceship. Thinking you're better than the natives might be somewhat justified.

Strangely, no one has a problem with, say, Vulcans coming to Earth and giving humans space travel. Maybe it's because we rarely get to see it from the point of view of the Benevolent Aliens.

Screw it. I'm just going to pretend the finale ended right after they showed that shot of Earth.

[shadowwriter01.livejournal.com]

Why should anybody understand Cavil? It is not as if he had been ever given a valid reason to kidnap Hera in the first place.

Honestly, the entire fourth season is garbage. Characters doing things that made no sense, that lead to other things that made no sense either.

There are two earths, both somehow have the 12 zodiak star signs?
Kara is suspected of being a cylon spy and put in charge of a ship one episode later?
Athena murdered the leader of the rebel cylons, held military information back, again, let her entire memory fall into the hands of the cylons, willingly helped in a attempt to whipe her own species out with bio weapons? And is somehow still accepted and respected by both sides.
And at the same time they hate Boomer for standing around and protesting while Cavil blows base ships up?

Why? Because thins happens for no reason in this show.