Battlestar Galactica (WisCon 31 panel)

164 Battlestar Galactica: The Debate

Reading, Viewing, and Critiquing SF&F•Senate A• Sunday, 2:30-3:45 p.m.

Is the new BSG the most pro-feminist SF show ever, or is it a secret sexist scourge? Opinions differ — markedly. So, let's debate! Instead of a panel, this programming item will consist of one pro-BSG representative, one anti-BSG representative, and one moderator.

M: Lyda Morehouse, Annalee Newitz, Jef a. Smith

Notes, reports, etc.

• jiawen @ WisCon LJ

Transcript

rough transcript notes from Laura Quilter

LM Lyda Morehouse

AN Annalee Newitz

JS Jef a. Smith

[... came in at 245pm, 15 minutes late]

gen discussion on: where is it all going - merger or earth is the future or they are all cylons because it has all happened before?

gen discussion on: is roslin a feminist or is she a fascist

• could compare roslin to admiral cain.
• AN: don't like roslin - because they took her to a safe place for female power figures because she has a religious mania driven by spiritual forces. a very old trope for women in power - a woman can take power as long as she is being controlled by some god. why couldn't she have been hallucinating? or why do we have to bring god into it at all? (mentions Joan of Arc)

general: interesting because are cylons really right or are humans? cylon gods work for cylons and human gods work for humans.

AN - it kind of doesn't matter. you could read it either way. she's using her religion either way.

LM the reason i hate her (laughter) is very much related it's about power-stealing too. for me it's about having god move her - i love Joan of Arc metaphor. for me it's about breast cancer. they made her a saint. as someone who lives with someone with breast cancer issues it's really annoying. it steals her power in a real way - because she is suffering.

AN - yes

LM she can only lead from her bed. and that's where the religion comes from too -the drugs.

AN - she's a passive aggressive leader

LM - she's a teacher - talk about a classic role for a woman.

JS - a middle-aged woman who can have sex which is interesting ... implied that she has sex with adama ... then reveal that she was sleeping with president. was she with him from the beginning? now this seems to be a pattern?

LM - and i guess what does that mean? ... are we supposed to think of roslin as a good character or a bad one - because listen to what she says. in many ways she leads the plot. i tend to think she's a key person whether she's using powers for good or evil or both.

AN - she's in control. i thought that was great in the beginning. she said i'm totally in control and that's it.

JS - cain character. one of the things i love is the grey / nuance. that one of the things is that it has nuance.

LM - it does & it doesn't. one of the things that pegasus does for me is make me realize how much Adama really plays favorites - nepotism. not just in terms of his own family which he does. she is an interesting leader. what's her name?

cain

LM - oh of course.

AL - but cain gets to be a girl. peopel will argue and bitch, "oh but in the bible cain was a guy!" (laughter) ... i think that one of the things you guys or jef are getting at is that it's two people who happen to be in positions of power.

LM - kain brought home issues of survival.

AN - maybe cain is a little bit about militaristic if there were adama & roslin merged (LQ typing: actually IMO cain is what adama would have been like without roslin's moderating & democratizing influence; remember at beginning he wanted to pursue & be all military gung-ho but roslin said hang on sailor we need babies; cain didn't have that)

AN - really liked cain / starbuck relationship - like a mentoring father-son relationship but with two women. (LQ: yes! that is an awesome point) would like to see slash so if i can plant ideas ...

JS - starbuck role of women on galactica. general question. i'm trying to remember and my sense was that the pegasus - there was cain as the admiral but i seem to recall seeing mostly men as the crew on pegasus.

LM - certainly on the command staff

JS - most of the pilots

LM - one black pilot too

JS - i assume they were setting that up as a contrast with galactica too.

LM - oh you think that was on purpose?

JS - well there was so much that was set up as galactica good pegasus bad. so they were trying to set it up that way.

AN - cain is also the patriarch - she's like "go ahead & rape the prisoner".

aud - except then, when she goes thru the list of adama's fuckups she's totally right.

JS - maybe they're just trying to stir shit up but trying to contrast cain with adama & reverse some gender roles. it's the battlestar galactica the show they're the protagonists - and i like it when they make the galactica maybe not. i remember watching season 1 and being really engaged in these characters & really caring about them & having a moment when i realized that i was cheering for the soldiers the military who are attempting to achieve a sort of fascist (is this a type of hackery)

LM - a military coup

JS - i like fiction that makes me get to where i like things i abhor

LM - the nice thing is they leave room for discussion - what i'm fascinated is there are a lot of conservative bloggers who love the show but for opposite reasons than we do, like, 'see, stealing an election is a good thing!' (laughter) but i read the show the same way but i flipped it because i see it as roslin's downfall. but maybe the message was that even though gaius puts them in the wrong direction it was the will of the people

AN - but what about all those votes that were suppressed.

LM - were voting machines made by the cylons?

JS - Diebold.

several people in audience murmur "Diebold"

AN - yeah i think janna had a diebold logo on her head

aud - i kinda wanted to comment on pegasus thing was b/c one of the things we don't see is what this society was before they were on the run. what were there norms b/c in many ways we've become comforrable thinking that this is how their society runs but - perhaps adama's leadership style isn't in keeping with then norms of that society b/c we get to see it contrasted with someone else. i didn't see that as hackery but finally we got an opppty to see a contrast which we didn't have before. (LQ: ooh good point!)

JS - a number of discussions w/ my friends about this. starting off i made lots of assumptions about their world. a friend of mine pointed out that the bathrooms on battlestar galactica are coed. the assumptions that a military org in cramped space -- is it's obvious good sense to have economical use of space as coed bathrooms, but implications --

AN - sleeping quarters are coed.

JS - yeah they're open no closed space. presence of women in positions of power excellence. fairly diverse cast naturally. very progressive world. their world is showing in some ways the next step of ours the way they've got it right.

AN - but here's the thing - we have a world wthat's multicultural & women occupy some positions of authority but ti's the same old problems w/ fascism & trying to take over military. we have the same exact world.

LM - can we take the men for a minute & then we've gotta talk to starbuck.

... back & forth ...

LM - men's roles haven't changed at all. an episode that really struck me. see i don't remember titles. it's the one in which helo is charge of the downbelow weird place -

JS - the plague of

LM - that one, the sagitarrons. sharon, our cyborg ass-kicking female, is folding clothes and he's sitting back brooding and the baby's crying and i'm thinking, 'dude pick up the baby'. sharon says 'go check on the baby' and we never see him do it.

AN - tyrol & callie have the same thing.

(some apologist trying to figure out a way that maybe he did it because we didn't see sharon bitch him out)

LM - someone who should have a lot of emotional attachment with the kid (after all that effort to get it) really hasn't changed much at all

AN - i want to say something about the men in this show - gaius is sort of the male equivalent of starbuck; starbuck has an aggressive sexuality, has lots of male type characters. gaius is very much the woman in distress. he's controlled sexually by someone stronger than him. and every episode he cries. (laughter) he becomes a prisoner in a pretty little room with puffy things he becomes the plaything of two cylons. he becomes the sexual plaything as he wakes up between two women deana & number 6 - it's not like i'm a stud it's like holy shit what to do.

LM - and we see a lo-o-o-t of gaius. (laughter)

AN - to me it's really interesting that he occupies the role that has been occupied by a lot of women in science fiction narratives.

JS - one quick thing question for you but i can turn it inot question for audience. one of my favorite characters is dead, what about billy, he was supportive to a woman in power.

aud - i don't have a billy thing but ... for all the good things about gender we don't have queer people which pisses me off.

AN we have gender queer but not queer queer

LM but we have oply people (... can't translate ...?)

aud 2 - starbuck's husband ander - he's like her trophy husband. he's like the woman who's staying at home crying while his wife is off crying ... ander becomes more interesting because of the reveal at the end - if they really are what we think they are. and tyrol. ...

aud - cylons

yes -

LM let's talk about starbuck and come back to queerness. speaking of queerness let's talk about starbuck what the hell. can't she be bisexual just for me. (LQ: yes! but not just for you!)

applause

? - apollo starbuck scene knock down scene

aud (rob gates) - i saw it as hot man on man

AN - lots of audience thought she wasn't really a woman but i hated that it was so retrograde. she is a woman and she has sex with guys and butch

...

AN - i like that we have a butch woman who sleeps with men - i like that she doesn't have to be coded as a lesbian and that she doesn't - she could be bisexual that would be fine with me - but she can have sex

aud (cyn) - the whole childhood thing, her damage

LM - one thing i don't like about starbuck is how fucked up she is. i really - the more we know about her neuroses the less we like her and i hate that because i liked that - boys get to be fucked up and we don't have to know what their issues are. they don't have to have had a fucked up childhood. they just can be jocks and have a little bit of a deathwish - and i guess the more fucked up she is the less we like her.

AN - but tigh

LM - but he's an alcoholic & an alcoholic you have to special rules. ...

(confusion, back & forth)

aud (rob gates) - it's the Very Special Episode

AN - whereas starbuck gets the very special episode just because she's a tough girl. her fucked-upness is being tough.

aud - i don't think that's fair she could have been tough either way.

aud (charlie anders) - i hated the episode where she allegedly dies - they painted her into a corner where she comes back either as a cylon or as a spiritual floaty chick.

AN - yeah i don't want her to be a floaty chick and come from a place of peace ... i like her coming from a place of anger

aud - the mom's conditioning was very much male hazing childhood

LM -- ...

AN - yes

aud (rachel in purple) - yes starbuck is very fucked up and so is apollo. not as much but then he's less interesting of a character. so there's lots of airtime given to his dad. ... should say frakked up.

LM anytime anyone says motehrfrakker i laugh

aud (guy) - am i the only one bugged by tendency of show in last year to get away from it being okay for folks to be poly b/c starbuck has gone from this wildly devil may care sleep with anyone to this tension around these two love interests. (LQ: actually she never was that devil-may-care with the sex; she only slept w/ gaius, right? and then felt all guilty about it)

AN - right she has to pick

LM - one of the things that i liked was that she said she wouldn't divorce but she has no problem with cheating

AN - is there any indication that this is poly? (LQ: no -- and everyone was reading into it a little too hopefully if they think there was)

aud - no - and everyone is getting married

AN - and taking their partner's names which is kinda fucked up

aud guy again - there's a lot of sleeping around

AN - there's casual sex (LQ: sad that AN really had to distinguish b/w poly as an accepted social thing and casual sex as a precursor to monogamous het pairbonding, at wiscon! but people really are that full of wishful thinking that they can't distinguish...)

JS - this is the primary reason is that the fact that there are no queers in sex is so fucked up and wrong - if they didn't show relationships at all that might be okay - but to not show any same-sex goings-on anywhere

LM - and the fact that there's still marriage deeply bothers me. ... since the settlement on new caprica there's a lot more family going on whether it's childless married people or people that have children. they're doing a lot more - when i say family i mean traditional family, earth families

aud - we didn't see much society before cylons attacked -so a lot of casual sex etc is kind of a post-apocalyptic - & maybe they were reverting back to type when they settled. (LQ: good point - made more clearly than before)

AN - post-apocalpytic excuse for reverting back to traditional gender roles. even though there are lots of other technologies they could have used. (LQ: good point on post-apocalyptic excuse for reverting; altho, BSG tries to keep approximately same level of technology)

JS - what happened to boxey (LQ: never was intended to be a character, just an homage to BSG, it seemed to me)

brief discussion of boxey

aud - two things. one, back to starbuck. one thing that frustrated me was at the end the little blond kid who may have been hers and what's that cylon's name- might have been their kid and the implication that they had been in the facsimile of apartment for months & months - and yet she goes back and rescues the kid - but that didn't seem right to me. would she have believed that was a real kid?

AN - i kept thinking no starbuck would have killed that kid. too bad b/c it turned out to be a real human, but she would have killed it ... but yeah it made no sense at all that she would have developed mother feelings for that kid.

aud - the other thing i wanted to say was that ... implication that gaeta might have been queer. "i know your secret"

... AN - we know he likes porn

aud - in all the bloopers he's all like " oh gaius"

AN - yeah gaeta needs to get laid

JS - well there's the eurotrash gaeta moment when

AN - that should be a song

JS - that's how i sold my friend on season 2 - he has the cigarette, the tattoo, the bedroom eyes

?? Ron Moore - people are calling ron moore on lots of stuff. some of them he seems to be listening. his argument about queers was that he didn't want there to be a very special episode where someone suddenly discovers they're gay.

?? like that's a problem

AN - why does it even have to be an issue ...

JS - in the makeout room there could have just been in the background

LM - starbuck - suggestion with starbuck & kat; that starbuck wanted to be laid up next to kat

audience (woman from chicago) - problems with romance - i really liked character of Dualla - really annoyed when she got waylaid into relationship with apollo then suddenly was all about jealousy. also character of color - in power - from poor planet sagitarron

panel - she marries up.

aud - we never saw what life was like out of the military in the civilians. ... and religion is clearly more retrogressive than ... it forbids divorce. and starbuck's attitude i won't divorce but i'll cheat - that's not as weird as -- catholics. spencer tracy wouldn't divorce b/c he was catholic but he lived with katherine hepburn for years & somehow in his mind he was doing the right thing.

LM - actually the transition from s2 to s3 almost broke me. but some of the things they did w/ characters really distressed me. some of the characters. like i couldn't believe that starbuck would give up flying for marriage. that never worked for me. she was always the tomboy, the jock, why would she give up the ship. i mean apollo stayed and he seemed much more likely to settle. if i was going to say of the two of them which one loved flying more it's starbuck. ... and starbuck's husband - that always felt like a character assassination for a point and i never knew what the point was - what was the point to put her on the planet except to torture her. (LQ -- good point. especially giving up flying)

AN - just to go back to the question of starbuck acting out a lot of narratives there's the narrative of the guy who loves doing his thing and tries to settle down and then gives up and goes back to his dumb macho thing.

LM yes we see some tormented scenes like where she's trying to get the medicine for pyramid dude. (LQ yes but not enough to make a "trying to settle down" story arc believable for starbuck)

AN - just another of the bad relationship decisions she's making

JS - and to get back to one of the things that broke you one of the only things we've seen of civilian life is the black market episode - and the scary black mob guy

audience - so bad

LM - it made me realize how white they were - b/c there's a scene where apollo is walking and it made me realize how white they are - and apparently all the black people are on one ship and they're where the crime is (laughter)

audience - caprica the show

general -- not going to happen

?? ... cylons - are they the bad guys.

AN - i don't think they're the bad any more.

?? ... big reveal - what does that do - we assume and the assumption i think we're supposed to have is that the four people that show up in the bay are the cylons - four of the final five are - and who knows if it's starbuck and the spooky -

aud (rob gates) - or apollo is just going thru another breakdown

LM - yeah wouldn't it be awesome if it were all just a dream ... if what tyrol says is actually true like omg we're actually cylons - then

?? we haven't really talked about sharon / boomer- and the fact that there may be a second poptart - if that's true then that makes you wonder why they were trying to get those two together or where they trying to, maybe it's an accident ...

JS - yeah it used to be that there was a divide b/w the final five and maybe they were the first five - the divide b/w the two camps

AN - if tigh is in fact a cylon then they've been around a long time ... mayabe it's not so much human versus cylon but poly versus monotheists

aud (rob gates) or maybe not versus at all

AN - yes hybridization - because that's the big lie about colonization that there's us and them because of course there was always hybridization all along - so i think that would be an interesting move.

LM - what intrigued me is that the four who showed up is that they were all members of the resistance on way or another. but what bothered me about that is does that mean humans don't resist against cylons? and the chief's place about our union leader? because that union episode made me cry --

AN - but it goes back to the earliest representations where the evil robot is the union leader ("Metropolis")

LM - but i don't want that - one of the things i like about the story is i want some questions answered about what makes us human, but by making the people that represent human values -- that leaves me with apollo for chrissake (laughter)

AN - maybe the answer is that humans don't have to do with biology

...

AN - why can't the answer to what makes us human is a choice to behave in an ethical manner is

JS - the cylons make that recurring argument - adama's first-episode speech - do human deserve to exist

AN - the show is pushing us toward the answer that the hybrids are the answer. the poptarts are the answer.

LM - i don't know why it matters to me. because they've set it up. ... it's such a science fiction trope that humans are the biggest fuckups in the galaxy and i've been there. but we still occasionally have heroes. and if all my heroes have jumpedship. it still leave me with the feeling that - where do we go from here

aud (rob gates) - but here's a question - the actions of these characters - they were making what they felt they were human decisions. tigh convinced me that he's an awesome character. we're going to go to battlestations because that's what we've always done.

aud (purple rachel) - there were more than 4 people in the resistance

LM - i love that they made us love suicide bombers.

? anyone else pissed off they only did it for 3 months?

LM - i wanted a whole year on new caprica. i wanted to figure out what happened to starbuck. i wanted to understand starbuck see her struggle with 'i'm going to be a family man now' or whatever. ... i like the whole slow characterization thing.

AN - good to get them off the planet ... explosions

LM - it was really subversive; needed that in the US at this point

AN: we have this ongoing trope. i think it's very much a narrative about colonizer and colonized.

...