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October 23, 2006
Ferdy at the Movies - Battlestar Galactica and the Subtle Social Message
Watching television is always a scary prospect for a conservative, because you know most of the writers and directors who create the content think you're somewhere between stupid and selfish. For this reason, Bruce has always preferred science fiction and fantasy shows. The idea is that appeasement and socialism might actually work in a universe totally different from our own.
A great example of this is the new Battlestar Galactica. The seed of the series is the same as the original 1979 series (the remnants of humanity are fleeing an all-powerful robot army) but it has been retooled for Twenty-First Century sensibilities. Most notably, many of the major characters are now women, and the some of robots look human, wandering among us like real-life terrorists.
At the end of season 2, the humans had set up a permanent colony on a barely-habitable planet called New Caprica, and the robots had invaded in force, enslaving everybody but the people in space, who promptly fled.
It should suprise no one that season 3 begins with a robot occupation force being resisted by human insurgents. The insurgents hide weapons in a temple, use suicide bombers, and do all sorts of other things familiar to anyone who has followed the progress of the Iraq War. The robots use torture to interrogate some prisoners and the keep others in prison without a trial.
This is a common literary trick: reverse the roles so people can sympathize with the other side. It is true that there are similarities between the humans on New Caprica and the Iraqi people, but there are also important differences.
First, the robots use mass execution to punish the insurgents. Saddam Hussein used this same trick, and by all accounts it was wonderfully effective. It doesn't work on the New Capricans, however, and it hasn't been tried by the coalition forces in Iraq, which is why we find ourselves at the current impasse.
But the central problem with the analogy has to do with religion. The stated purpose of the robots on New Caprica is to convert the humans to monotheism. The humans in Battlestar Galactica worship a gentler form of the old Greek Pantheon: Zeus, Hera, Athena, Artemis, and the rest. The robot religion, on the other hand, is a nearly-perfect replica of Judaism, although I'm pretty sure the writers want you to think the robots are metaphors for fundamentalist Christians.
But the religion we are forcing on occupied Iraq is not Christianity, Judaism, or Greek paganism. It's a non-theistic philosophy whose only real principle is that you're not supposed to kill people just because they go to a different church! Philosophically, therefore, we're more like the humans than the robots, but unlike either of the two sides in Battlestar Galactica, we're unwilling to indulge in the sort of unlimited violence required to make our point.
Don't get me wrong: I don't want us to use unrestricted warfare in Iraq. I want people to start embracing this whole idea of not-killing without the ridiculous hypocrisy of having a gun pointed at their heads. I keep hoping that the Western World wil wake up and start talking tough about staying the course and that this will magically take the starch out of the terrorists, because quite frankly I think that's a much better plan than negotiating with homocidal maniacs over how many infidels we should allow them to kill, and I have yet to hear a third option from anybody.
In the meantime, there's a lot of love, loyalty, and fidelity among the characters in Battlestar Galactica, and it is science fiction after all, so Bruce will continue to watch it, and that means I have to put up with these thinly-veiled political messages that go right over his head.
If you, however, want to see a TV show where most of the good guys are Republicans and family triumphs over all, try Wonderfalls. It's definitely not for children, but it is for people who think like me, and I really need that every now and then.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Mon 3:05 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (4) | More Ferdy at the Movies | Tags: Battlestar Galactica liberals science fiction television Wonderfalls
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I found it especially stupid that the writers went on and on about suicide bombing, as if it's so wrong because it's asking the person doing it to die. Instead of the REAL reason it is reviled in the west: because it's used to kill innocent civilians, not military targets. They only used it in the tv show to attack the occupiers and police working with them. They TALKED about bombing a marketplace of civilians but never did.
As usual, the pacifists set up a straw man to knock down, instead of tackling the real issues, and equivocate an enemy force with civilians saying killing either is wrong.
Posted by: PlutosDad ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.conservativecat.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 23, 2006 3:11 PM
I can barely stand Law and Order anymore, especially Criminal Intent, half of thsoe are about the evil US, and the other half about the criminal's bad childhood. (though the one regular (the original) Law and Order last week was good where the "white supremacist" turned out to be an Islamist and the other Muslims only helped him out of fear. I almost didn't watch it expecting more about how everything is the West's fault.
Posted by: PlutosDad at October 23, 2006 3:21 PM
I also think Law and Order has gotten way to liberal, but I like it anyway.
NCIS and The Unit are two of our favorites. I'm also enjoying the new show, "Jericho".
Posted by: Debbie at October 23, 2006 3:40 PM
Posted by: sagerats at October 25, 2006 2:27 AM
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