Oct 08 2006
The Fruits Of Humanities Nutballs
I’m seeing a lot of howling about the season premiere of BSG, and all the howlers are drinking kool-aid. Granted, it’s kool-aid (I suspect) they’ve been trained to drink by English teachers, but it’s kool-aid just the same.
Maybe it’s because I went to high school way back in the Dark Ages, before calculators, when we who were headed for college took two years of Latin and learned to use slide rules, way back when The Tempest was just The Tempest, and not some secret allegory about Masons (or whatever), you know, back before lit people had so run out of anything even vaguely interesting to say that they had to come up with nonsense like deconstructionism and postmodernism.
BSG is BSG. That’s it. Humans are humans. Cylons are Cylons. Period.
Look, folks, you can’t turn something into an allegory just because you want it to be an allegory. I know, your English teachers taught you all this folderol about how you “created meaning in your head,” but sorry, that’s crap, and it always has been. Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, no matter how much you want to see him as Crazy Horse.
And BSG is BSG. Period.
Certainly, BSG takes a lot of ideas out of current events — as well as not so current events. But folks, taking ideas from current events and using them in a plot does not an allegory make.
BSG has never been an allegory for Iraq, the GWOT, or anything else, not in the first season, and not in the second season. Some of you turned it into one in your heads — misinterpreting the show — and now, you’re stomping your feel and whining.
But tell me, kool-aid drinkers, how is it obvious to you that the premiere was an allegory for Iraq, as opposed to, say, Vichy France, or even the early Revolutionary War? What, exactly, makes you think the writers are portraying Iraq — again, as opposed to some other occupation? And if your allegory is consistent — which it is not — how can you suddenly flip humans and Cylons so that now the Cylons supposedly represent the United States? If that’s the case, then why didn’t the Cylons represent the United States last season or the season before?
We have the Cylons torturing and executing humans. We have human suicide bombers. So? Tell me, conservatives who are drinking this kool-aid, if Cylons landed and occupied the United States, would you not consider suicide bombing as an option, if you were as powerless as are the humans on New Caprica?
Sorry, this doesn’t translate into an allegory, or some kind of license for Jihadists. BSG is not an analogy. Humans are humans. Cylons are Cylons. If you want to turn Cylons into Jihadists, I can’t stop you, but you’re ruining the show for yourselves. Cylons are Cylons. A cigar is a cigar.
I swear, you kool-aid drinkers sound like liberals, seeing plots behind every tree. You’re getting perilously close to the “Vince Foster was murdered!” sanity line.
I would contradict Ronald D. Moore and say that BSG is, essentially, a conservative show. Not only, or even primarily, because it is thankfully devoid of any socialist utopianism (what the Trekkies call “the vision”), and not only, or even primarily, because it does not automatically portray the military as evil and power-mad, but because every character on the show is flawed. Every character has a dark side. We see human nature both at its best and its worst, and the characters make choices based on their knowledge of right and wrong.
This is a fundamentally conservative view of humanity.
We don’t have essentially good characters being twisted by evil, external forces. That would make it an essentially liberal show (like, for example, Stargate: Atlantis). There is nothing morally relative about discussing, or arguing about, morals, as you kool-aid drinkers have insisted; moral relativism is when after the discussion (or argument) the characters make no moral choice between the two options, because they decide the options are morally equivalent (that’s why it’s also called moral equivalence). Nor is presenting two sides of a moral argument moral relativism.
The human characters (well, with the exception of Baltar, who I maintain must be a Cylon) all have displayed an intense moral code, even Tigh, who is one of the most flawed human characters on the show. The fact that some of the issues with which they grapple are complex does not make them, or the show, morally relative; in the end, the characters make choices based on their moral code.
That’s an essentially conservative way of seeing human beings. There’s nothing liberal or morally equivalent about it.
What’s interesting — to me, at any rate — is that beginning with “Downloaded,” we started seeing Cylons developing a moral code. We saw it in the conflict between the Cylons about how to deal with the humans on New Caprica during the premiere. We will continue to see it develop in the future.
Sorry, but that isn’t “sympathizing with Jihadists,” or whatever you want to call it. Cylons are starting to become more human, and more moral. What moral code will they eventually develop? How will it fit or conflict with human morals? How will the two interact, once the Cylons as a group have developed morality?
These are the kinds of things that make BSG one of the best shows on television — and one of the most conservative.
So guys, stop drinking the “Iraq allegory” kool-aid. BSG is BSG. Period.
Welcome, NRO readers! While you’re here, feel free to cruise around. Here’s my post on the latest Battleground Poll, and my post on last year’s Battleground Poll, and why the “moderate majority” is a myth. Here are my reflections on my trip to the Flight 93 Memorial. If moonbats on university campuses are your thing (I have to put up with a lot of those), here is the most important issue about the recent Columbia incident. And if you’re interested in the state of education today, here are my education articles.
Enjoy your stay!
4 responses so far
4 Responses to “The Fruits Of Humanities Nutballs”
Lit person here. However, I’m a lit person who thinks deconstructionism, postmodernism, and, well, most literary theory in general is some of the most laughable and putrid fecal matter to hit academia (which is saying a lot!). Most of it is rather unsophisticated posing. But then, I do Japanese literature, so I’m not stuck in the emo-leftist asylum we call an English department. I get to avoid most of the wackiest elements of the lit crit field.
A fundamental part of my work is finding meaning where it is not obvious, so I see value in looking for such elements, but I do see waaaaaay too much of forcing meaning where it doesn’t really exist, the whole “creating meaning in your head” thing that you mention. It’s true that I might have some personal interpretation, or have some idea sparked by something in a story, but that doesn’t mean that the story is an allegory for (fill in the blank). And it certainly doesn’t mean that the creator of the story intended it to be an allegory of (fill in the blank).
I took a number of creative writing courses as an undergraduate. The classes and professors were excellent, and didn’t feed us a bunch of goofiness, but there were some goofy students in the class. We would evaluate and comment on each other’s stories, and it was very helpful to get that input, but sometimes the goofy students would assign spectacularly irrational meanings to the stories of others. One time I wrote a “story” that was purposely random and meaningless–essentially a jumble of nonsense–just to see what they would do with it. The goofy students had a wonderful time telling the class the deep meaning that they derived from my “story.” It was completely meaningless drivel, but they loved it.
The non-goofy students read it correctly, and told me that it seemed to be random and meaningless, essentially a jumble of nonsense. Apparently they knew that, yes, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
On Battlestar Galactica Heroic Cylons Battle Vicio
The heroes are a deeply religious race, called the Cylons, who struggle to bring democratic ideals and Christian values to a planet called New Caprica (Iraq, of course) in the face of an increasingly violent insurgency.
Thank you for writing this. I agree completely. People are obsessed with finding a hidden meaning in every show - can’t they enjoy it for what it is?
[…] I know I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again: Battlestar Galactica is not an allegory, and those who want to view it that way are going to be disappointed (well, have been by the New Caprica episodes), and are cheating themselves by seeing a complex drama through black-and-white glasses. […]