Perhaps because science fiction has historically appealed to men who don't leave home much, the genre has often used alien mores and alien technology to rationalize pornographic depictions of near-naked women. (Think Jabba the Hutt forcing Princess Leia to wear that ridiculous gold bikini in Return of the Jedi.)Sci-Fi movies are, at this point, a billion-dollar enterprise. You don't get that way by appealing strictly to "men who don't leave home much." Moreover, the comment assumes that women somehow fare better in, say, horror movies, in comedy, or in hip-hop movies. Geekdom has its troubles when it comes to rendering women. But all one needs to do is watch a few Spike Lee or Woddy Allen flicks to realize that this isn't about sci-fi at all. Anyway, that's just a personal pet peeve. Sorry for the mini-rant.
The part of the piece I found most convincing is the indictment of the rather casual way rape is deployed in the series:
Even more insidious than the lack of female friendships are the casual threats of rape made throughout the series. In Season 2, a "Cylon interrogator" attempts to violate Sharon, a Cylon pilot and the only East Asian on the show, but her husband Helo intervenes in the nick of time. In this season's "The Oath," Helo fights with a mutineer--"Frak you," he says (that's Battlestar's four-letter-word variant), and the mutineer responds, "Sorry, I'm saving myself for your ... wife." He means it. Rape is a trope on the show: Starbuck finds herself in a bizarre insemination farm on the Cylon-occupied planet Caprica, and Adm. Cain orders some cronies to rape and torture a Cylon in "Razor." Naturally the show doesn't condone rape, but it's discomfiting that the writers drop sexual violence into the script so often without comment. If nothing else, this pervasive threat--directed only at women--negates the idea that Battlestar conjures a gender-blind universe.I found that rape scene with Sharon, particularly disturbing--and not in a good way. I'll be honest--I have yet to put my finger on why. It wasn't because I like the character. Joan, from Mad Men, is one of my favorites. But I thought the rape-scene with her and her husband was troubling in the exact opposite way. I don't know how to explain it except in the following, admittedly creepy, language--it felt necessary and organic, given who the characters were.
On BSG, evil comes so easy. So much of it passes without explanation or context. The rape scene with Sharon left me horrified--but not at what had just happened to this woman. Indeed, I felt almost no sympathy for her. It was like watching a sadistic cartoon, or something. And that made me really angry and ultimately horrified that someone would write a scene like that.
I think so much of this revolves around the fact that, in the past decade, the ceiling for writing and acting on television has been raised. I can't have watched "The Wire," watched "Mad Men," watched "Big Love" and felt as I used to. I simply can't go back. BSG isn't operating in the world that Star Trek: Voyager did. The game is the same, but more fierce. Measured against that backdrop, I think the writing, and acting, on the show is rather lackluster (skipping ahead in time, at the end of season, was incredibly lazy). When narrative isn't done in a particularly inspiring fashion, it seems that the first people to suffer are women, and minorities. It's no mistake that "The Wire" is not only one of the best written shows ever, it is also one of the best depiction of black people ever committed to television.
This will not be a popular thread. I understand that I have just pissed off half my readership. But you guys asked me to watch. You asked me to behold. I could never guarantee that we'd see the same thing.
UPDATE: "Suffer" refers to the quality of the writing, not the actual characters themselves. More aptly put, when the writing is bad, the writing of women and minorities tends to be really bad--or really just stand out.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Did you happen to catch "Dollhouse"? I'm interested to see where it goes.
I feel like rape is a common theme in a lot of genre literature, as well. I started reading a Terry Goodkind series because my husband was into it (fantasy, not sci-fi) and it seemed like every single book had rape scenes in it. It was very disturbing. I felt a little like I was reading soft-core s&m stuff, but justified because the hero was going to come in any second and save the day.
I agree with you--sometimes horrible things fit a story, are organic, and sometimes they are just gratuitous.
I'm a history person. I know people have done horrible things to each other. But some of this literature and shows (I've watched the first couple seasons of BSG) seem to get such joy out of threatening women.
First to suffer?
I don;t know about you, but I think it's pretty apparent in BSG that everybody is suffering in some fashion or another; not just the women or minorities.
The author also skips over pretty much everything else that has to do with women characters. It's easy to make your point when people haven't seen the show and you talk about one specific thing.
What I really need is a job where I can watch BSG as research instead of writing C#.
I'm with TNC on the quality of TV writing these days. The best stuff is through the roof and there is a lot of it to go around. It makes me turn away from less than great almost immediately because there's always something better on the TiVo.
@Lauren
Are you talking about the Sword of Truth series? The sadism and non-consensual sex in the first book bothered me so much that I haven't read any more of them. Not only was it a bizarre choice, it was written really poorly. It's one thing to take on uncomfortable topics. It's another to deal with them in a sloppy fashion.
Far more interesting in my mind is the Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. It takes an amazing writer to make a torturer a sympathetic character.
I can't contribute much to your broader point- the Sharon scene disturbed me in all the "right" ways (I still can't watch that part where she pulls the blanket over herself without feeling sick), but I'm not sure we could convince each other, I'm sure we all saw the same elements, it just clicked for one of us and not the other.
But on THIS point:
"You don't get that way by appealing strictly to "men who don't leave home much.""
I have to agree. For chrissake, is there anything MORE mainstream than SW? Y'know, if it's referenced on "Friends", it's pretty obviously got broader appeal than to guys who don't leave home much.
I mean, I've noticed before that SW has become short-hand for geekiness in most sitcoms, but it only works as such because EVERYONE knows SW.
The US vs. One Book Called Ulysses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Called_Ulysses
"I don;t know about you, but I think it's pretty apparent in BSG that everybody is suffering in some fashion or another; not just the women or minorities."
I think it kind of depends on what we mean by "suffering"- certainly, everyone on the show is about one hour away from airlocking themselves. And with the show being front-loaded with interesting female characters, it would be hard to depict bad situations without making them suffer.
But the "suffering" of Starbuck, Sharon, and Pegasix is a few magnitudes more visceral than, say, the suffering of the Adamas.
I think you need to explicate the difference between 'disturbing in a good way' and 'disturbing in a bad way.'
The latter is one in which you feel that you're supposed to take some pleasure in the depiction of rate, instead of just horror? Or something more subtle.
I'm not all that familiar with these stories, but criticizing the -presence- of 'casual threats of rape' (as opposed to the depiction/aftermath) strikes me as wrong-headed. Unfortunately, sexual violence against women isn't just something that comes easily to -writers-.
In fact, in many contexts, if writers don't raise that as a possibility I think they're not only undermining their craft but also portraying a pretty Pollyannish vision of human conflict.
But again, I'm not all that familiar with BSG or the Watchmen or whatever, so I should probably just shut up.
In my humble opinion, it wasn’t the skipping ahead in time that was lazy. I actually thought it was a great device for a season finale. That was my initial impression anyway. Where it got lazy was when they decided against spending more of the following season journeying into that period of lost time. It was in those first few episodes of Season 3 that I really began to lose faith in the show. Instead of pursuing any of the more interesting narrative opportunities on New Caprica, they decided to do an incredibly easy and abbreviated allegory to Iraq. A show more confident with its ability to write beyond its own schtick would have spent a great deal of the season exploring the possibilities away from outer space.
To be fair, that particular scene is a few years old now; it may be new to you, but it largely precedes your examples of better writing and acting. That doesn't change your point much, of course.
@ Aaron:
Frankly, I'm tired of the whole "hot babes kicking ass" dressed up as feminism (yes, yes, I know Whedon was a Women's Studies major). Dollhouse seems very different from Buffy (which I actually found profoundly boring). To me, there seems to be a conflict between the message and the medium in Dollhouse. The message seems to be a meditation on women, control, objectification, and patriarchy. But the medium seems like pure titillation, reveling in and perpetuating that objectification. [It seems that TNC is saying something similar about BSG.] But I'm interested in what you and others have to say about Dollhouse.
On BSG, evil comes so easy.
That's one of the major tropes of the series, though--that in hyper-stressful times, evil becomes not only easy, but, dare I say it, banal. The primary difference between this show and the original series is the lack of hope. I'm about at the point right now where I think the end of the series will involve the fleet just running out of everything and drifting in space waiting for the inevitable end--a bit of the "this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper." What worries me, though, is that the writers are going to come up with some cop-out ending and that it's going to involve religion as the savior of both Cylon and human society.
I'm going to take these in opposite order:
Rape in BSG: To me he is describing a whole lot of variations on the same theme, and somehow missing it: The officers of the Pegasus condone the repeated rape of their cylon prisoner. It's what they do to show that she is powerless. Very textbook "I can't destroy the enemy, so I'll destroy this representative of the enemy." How many Middle Eastern restaurants got threats after 9/11 with exactly the same motivation? The threats to Athena (the Sharon who marries Helo) in S1 and S4 are from the same group of men, against a cylon in prison. It's not recurring in the "we don't know what to do here, so have Adama give a speech" sense; it's recurring in that a segment of humanity will torture, rape, and eventually murder a representative cylon given the chance; when the chance recurs, the men try it again. (I would put the forced pregnancy farm in with the (later seen, but chronologically earlier) horrific experiments trying to learn how to make skin jobs. It's not about humiliating the prisoners in a show of power; in the cylon eyes they're no more "raped" than the petri dish is raped, and it's not worse to be an impregnated female prisoner than to be a dismantled-for-parts prisoner of either gender.)
Science fiction: As a woman who reads sci fi I am fed up to here and beyond with "sci fi is read primarily by teenage males" or "sci fi is read primarily by males who live in their parents' basement" or all the other stereotypes that come down to geeky very young male losers being the only people who watch/read sci fi. Octavia Butler. Lois McMaster Bujold.
All sorts of movies have gratuitous females in bikinis--has the writer never looked at the ads in a motorcycle magazine with bikini clad women draped over the machines in every shot and on the cover? Even stuff aimed at women will feature more female skin than male. (There's a reasonable theory here that women put themselves in the "that's me everyone's staring at" role in a way that men viewing scantily clad men do not.) Sex and the City was not aimed at a male audience, and yet there was plenty of female nudity.
In horror films all the attractive sexually active women are killed right off. (I don't even watch horror and I'm aware of this rule.) In romantic comedies these days a successful woman needs to relax so she can help a young slacker male grow up. I like the drama The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but one does note that the male lead is at most bare-chested, while women drop clothing constantly.
You don't think that SciFi has "historically" appealed to men who don't get out much? I'm a black girl geek , and even I can concede that point. Maybe not the "who don't get out much" part, but I can certainly say that the genre has HISTORICALLY been dominated by a male point of view. It's changing in some small areas, and I agree that it's not just SciFi, but I don't find that too outrageous an assertion. You can still make a lot of money producing art that appeals almost primarily to men and boys.
I don't know anything about BSG, though, so forgive the near thread-jack.
It's hard to respond to this without knowing WHY exactly you, TNC, felt those rape scenes didn't work. You and the Slate excerpt both mention lack of comment/context. Surely you don't mean that the problem is that we never get a lecture explaining that rape is bad? I would have been insulted if the show had NOT assumed we viewers already believe that rape is bad....
Im a little surprised you don't have any words about how the show portrays black people. The Ms. Cleo-esque priestess, the guy from the black market episode (if you have gotten that far) and the black cylon doctor...
so for those of us keeping score at home two bad black guys and one kinda nutty old black lady in space... all reletively small roles... another relatively small role is introduced later and turns out that guy goes a bit bad too (though justifiably so i suppose)
Regarding the Sharon scen in question I had several problems with it...
I didn't necessarily feel sympathetic for the character because she is a robot and at this point in the show one of the bad guys... so im not sure you should feel sympathetic to her
but I did feel icky that guys would want to rape machines... I mean where is the fun in that? Obviously it distresses the machine but how could you possibly enjoy it? its kind of like torture i suppose... bad for everyone involved... except with these pegasus guys there is no guilt only enjoyment and that is bizarre
Like colby, the Sharon scene disturbed me in all the "right" ways. Whereas when I read Mother of Storms I skipped an entire skeevy subplot about rape that came across as "we're saying how terrible it is to look at snuff porn while looking at snuff porn--psych!!" and revolted me.
I also remember not reading a fantasy novel (by a woman, with female major characters) because it opened with a grotesque rape scene, and it just felt cheap and cruel. The rape scene was supposed to elicit sympathy, but I just felt revolted.
Best done rape scene (if there can be such) were the scenes with Mark in Brothers in Arms by Bujold, where you feel the horror of the torture he's enduring without ever feeling either so nauseated you can't read or as though the author thinks you're enjoying this. I'd also point out a scene in the end of Diamond Age by Stephenson in which the heroine is raped, but it's disguised in such careful language that you see how she is using the language to reframe the experience for herself--as something she endured on the way, not as a defining experience to be lingered over. To me, BSG falls the right way on depictions of rape, and most media, sci fi or not, misses. (By the by, Stephenson wrote and I read Diamond Age for meditation on educating young girls, and it was written before his "I'm so successful I don't need an editor to cut down my 1000 page novels" phase.)
I interpretated the threat of rape in those espisodes completely differently. To me, it seemed an effort by the writers to establish what the abhorrent portrayal of torture on television as justifiable in certain circumstance for what it was, a terrible lie. Torture in their eyes is a cruel, dehumanizing, savage act. The Pegasus interogators use rape as a tool of interrogation and revenge against their enemies, the cylons.
I think it was an attempt, in the most blunt and obvious form they could think of, to make the point about where torture and revenge fantasies eventually lead. I don't think they meant to trivialize it. I think they intended to make it as real as possible to drive the point home about how horrific an act it is.
It also brought about what to me is Adama's most decent act. He comes to Athena and takes responsibility. It's not his fault really, it's Cain's and her minions. But he recognizes the corrosive effect acts like that have on a military hiearchy and on a society. He cannot countenace it in any way.
That was just my interpreation, your milage may vary.
I don't really see the point in comparing BSG to The Wire. The Wire is all about being as real as possible. BSG is not. It's like comparing Star Wars to Do the Right Thing, or something. But you could compare BSG to other Sci Fi series, and that would be an interesting post. I would recommend that you watch Firefly, which is the best Sci-Fi series ever IMO, but I know you wouldn't like it. I think most likely this is because you are not a big Sci-Fi fan in general. Which is fine.
"but it's discomfiting that the writers drop sexual violence into the script so often without comment."
This statement is blind and crazy, particularly the "without comment" part. In each occurrence, we are supposed to be horrified with it. It's particularly important when it happens to Sharon and Six in Season Two because that's the next step in the development that cylons are more than just machines. It's the point where we are intended to think back at Adama's speech for the very beginning of humanity being worth survival.
I think that feeds back to TNC's comment of the "necessity" of the scene -- for us to actually take sides against this particular group of humans. I think it probably also feeds into his dislike of the show, because of the brutal deathmarch of the series. It's a pretty blunt hammer they're wielding to make their point.
A couple of years back, five U.S. soldiers ended up in prison for raping and murdering a teen Iraqi girl and killing her family. One of the soldiers was from here where I live, so my newspaper ended up covering the incident. We were attacked over covering the story because it made the soldier look bad (ultimately he pleaded guilty and will spend life in prison). Nobody cared about the Iraqi girl. Who cares about some nameless Iraqi family? After he pleaded, none of these folks called us back to tell us we were right to cover the incident. It's been largely forgotten about.
I think the author is confused about incidents of rape in sci-fi with the reality of rape in war and BSG tapping into that reality in their series.
Although it is pretty clear that at least one of their writer/producers has some serious issues with women (the guy behind "The Woman King").
I've also not seen BSG, but have seen other examples in comics and sci-fi which present the threat of physical and sexual violence against women, as well as children, too casually. In doing so, they often seem to make the implicit claim that they're showing some kind of gritty truth about humanity, when they're actually just getting themselves off.
See Frank Miller's work for many examples of this, most especially Sin City.
I need to learn to do quotes.
"You don't think that SciFi has "historically" appealed to men who don't get out much?"
Historically, maybe. But we're talking about a pretty long history here. I'm pretty sure that it still has more appeal to men than women, but it's gone mainstream. SF is big business now, and it wouldn't be that big if it didn't have a larger audience than that.
To the extent that it's true, I think it's self-fulfilling anyway. If the makers of this stuff *think* that that's going to be their main audience, then they're going to make it in a way that they think will appeal to that audience (whether they're right or not.) So they end up with something kind of stupid, that only has a limited appeal especially to women, and they figure that confirms what they thought about the audience in the first place.
I actually don't put BSG in that category, though. I don't think they were trying to appeal mostly to a geeky male audience; they were trying to be deep and meaningful. That first prison rape scene was, I'm pretty sure, meant to be a statement about real-world torture of prisoners.
I can't say too much more about BSG, though. I stopped watching it in .... whatever season it was when they went forward in time. The political allegory got to be way too heavy-handed for me. I mean, I'm all for using SF to make statements about the modern world, but try to have a little subtlety!
Thinking about it, the rape/attempted rape scenes in Mad Men and BSG affected me the same way -- your "disturbed in a not-bad way", way, I suppose. There is a difference in contexts, though.
Sharon isn't a woman, she's a Cylon, just like the Six on Pegasus. Now I consider her a person, as did Helo and Tyrol, which explains my reaction. Think of her as a android, as Admiral Cain and the (other?) rapists do, explain theirs. I am fully in the group that considers their belief to be mistaken, and even if it were valid, their choices are needlessly cruel. I think the point of the episode, though, is to both show the cruelty of the Pegasan command and to show Adama's difficulty in responding, given that in official Galactica/Colonies policy, it isn't necessarily illegal, while Helo and the Chief's was.
I think this episode was the first step in truly humanizing the Cylons, and exposing any audience members left behind (and there were probably many) to their own prejudices. I'm not so sure that that could happen without something of this magnitude. To those of us who considered Sharon a person, of course, this wasn't necessary, but for those who still drew a sharp line between humans and toasters, it was vitally important.
"Sci-Fi movies are, at this point, a billion-dollar enterprise. You don't get that way by appealing strictly to 'men who don't leave home much.'"
Well, not to get all feminist in this space, but actually you can achieve a billion-dollar enterprise by appealing primarily to distinct male interests.
Or, to extend, it's possible to gain women or "under-represented" customers even when the product does not necessarily privilege their interests.
I'm just saying...
@LauraM
You can use the blockquote tag to, well, blockquote.
Like this:
Not just the female audience, btw, but female writers.
Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, heck, there's a list at wikipedia.
One of the earliest SF writers was Mary Shelley, with Frankenstein.
Context, context, context.
Can anyone on here remember when the rape scenes were in BSG in comparison to the Abu Graib stuff? I seem to have the feeling that they were roughly coterminous (although I might be wrong), but that means that watching them now gives you a radically different context.
Rape has been used as a method of torture and barbarity throughout human history. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have it show up here.. Is it awful--yes.. horrid.. AND THAT'S THE POINT! I cannot imagine anyone thinking that the raping of #6 in Razor and Athena, etc etc.. are supposed to be entertaining for us.. but rather to show the horror that lurks inside all humans--but especially within strongly hierarchical organizations that are under stress.. and then go over the edge.
Personally, the one thing that irks me about BSG is this continual talk about "BUT CYLONS ARE MACHINES!" and thus they are super duper different than humans.
HELLO--we are biological machines.. and the "skin-jobs" are pretty much that with a few nifty features (like downloading) that have been brought up in earlier sci-fi literature (thinking about Arthur C. Clark and Rama, I believe...) as possibilities for future human development..
Why people on the show have such a hard time with this always struck me as odd...
"Science fiction: As a woman who reads sci fi I am fed up to here and beyond with "sci fi is read primarily by teenage males" or "sci fi is read primarily by males who live in their parents' basement" or all the other stereotypes that come down to geeky very young male losers being the only people who watch/read sci fi. Octavia Butler. Lois McMaster Bujold. "
Amen.
Dune was SciFi.
Ursula le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness was SciFi.
I can't speak to Battlestar specifically but boy do I like to talk about science fiction.
You don't think that SciFi has "historically" appealed to men who don't get out much? I'm a black girl geek , and even I can concede that point. Maybe not the "who don't get out much" part, but I can certainly say that the genre has HISTORICALLY been dominated by a male point of view.
There's a reason Will Sh*tterly (he's apparently addicted to Google Alerts, hence the *) felt completely empowered and justified when recently 'outed' a female fan who pissed him off. And it has little or nothing to do with the justifications he cited; it has to do with his feeling that the debate was and is his to control.
There's also a lot of 'conservatism' in science fiction overall-- people tend to say 'everything's going to be just like it is now, only IN THE FUTURE!' Think, for example, of the original Star Trek, with its male captain and one female officer-- in a miniskirt. (This is no criticism of Roddenberry, who was quite progressive for his time; it's just here to note that there's a pattern.) And, like any industry, there's a desire to repeat a 'winning' formula, over and over and over again...
One of my favorite moments in This Film is Not Yet Rated is when Kevin Smith talks about wanting to give every film with a rape in it an (I think) NC-17 rating, because it's something we use too cheaply now, and it shouldn't be.
TNC,
Not pissed off at all, rather interesting that people take such different views on the show.
I don't know if this is your objection or just the slate author's but of course rape is casually deployed in the series. That's because rape is casually deployed in war as a tool of dehumanizing the enemy. Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Abu Gharib. It's part of what happens when we start seeing the enemy as less than human. It's part of the greater argument of the show that in times of war (to borrow your phrase) "evil come so easy."
What evil does, however, is end up hurting the perpetrators. The rapes of Gina are what lead to the Cylons finding New Caprica.
Apex,
"Appealing primarily to distinct male interests" isn't the same as "appealing strictly to men who don't leave home much." The point isn't that sci-fi movies aren't rife with sexism--it's that virtually all movie genres are rife with the same problems. You can't pawn these problems off on geek culture. It goes way beyond that.
Thanks for the help with the quoting. Now, if only I'd kept in mind that you can preview posts, I would have just experimented and figured it out, but somehow I didn't.
I think it was not too long after that. Also there were the memos from the Bush administration about torture. I don't remember the timing exactly, but I do remember thinking when I watched it (first run), that that was obviously the context we were meant to see.
Now, by that time the audience had seen Sharon interacting with Helo in very human ways. I saw her as basically another kind of human by that time, and that's why the rape did disturb me. The men who did it saw her as just a machine, not human at all--just as a real-world torturer of, say, a terror suspect doesn't think of that suspect as a human being like us, but as something separate. But to those who know that person, he's a human.
Anyway, that's what I thought was going on.
"I don't know if this is your objection or just the slate author's but of course rape is casually deployed in the series. That's because rape is casually deployed in war as a tool of dehumanizing the enemy. Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Abu Gharib. It's part of what happens when we start seeing the enemy as less than human. It's part of the greater argument of the show that in times of war (to borrow your phrase) "evil come so easy.""
The point isn't that rape isn't used in war and conflict. It also isn't that it shouldn't be used on television shows. It's when evil comes easy comes easy--much like when good comes easy--it loses its power. When it's everywhere, it's nowhere. It's no longer shocking, jarring or disturbing. It simply nihilistic. But nihilism is just as boring as earnestness.
The theme that people can easily descend into the barbaric is old and unremarkable. It's story that makes it new. It's compelling character, narrative, and dramatization that reinvents.
I'm with Deborah and Scott II on this one. Rape in BSG is used to depict how crazy people would get, erm, do get in war situations where genocide is on the table. Is the systematic rape of women -- any and all "enemy" women not a tried and true war tactic in any of a dozen genocidal or near-genocidal conflicts around the world? In war-time Bosnia or Somalia, in today's Sudan or Congo or Cambodia (which is not even at war, but is experiencing a surge in recreational gang rape) rape is a sadistic fact of a life that has been soaked in violence. It goes on in reality without a big moral banner of literary significance attached to it. I found it entirely believable that rank and file military men who were encouraged to torture prisoners would soon start to engage in vicious, routine sexualized torture (Abu Ghraib, anyone?) and rape. Hello, it happens in real life all the time. Just google rape, war, and any region or year you'd like to pick.
I think that calling BSG sexist or guilty of bad on gender politics for including such depictions is really weird. I think BSG has really diverse and believable depictions of women. Now black characters... that's an entirely different question. The writers seem not to be able to sustain black characters because they simply can't write them for more than an episode or two. I find that this is the case on most shows across all genres. For a myriad of reasons, white writers seem not to be able to/ feel comfortable inhabiting black characters heads. They seem to feel that over time they'd have to address or otherwise do something with the race of the character in order to make it click (which is probably true), but they don't feel comfortable with/interested in doing whatever they'd need to do to make the black characters 3 dimensional. I have a relatively simple solution for that: hire some black writers. That's right, more than one, even. But I suppose that's a discussion for a different thread.
about Dollhouse, I actually think that given a chance, it has the opportunity to be the most interesting Whedon series in terms of exploration of gender, feminism, and things of various other social interest. But I would say that Chloe, from Firefly, is one of the more interesting "ass-kicking" female characters. She is closer to Mal in stature than anyone else on Serenity, and she's probably the most admirable character on the crew. But she lacks the flashy/corny aspects of most other female "asskicking" characters in other series. Just a pretty awsome female character overall.
It's when evil comes easy--much like when good comes easy--it loses its power. When it's everywhere, it's nowhere. It's no longer shocking, jarring or disturbing. It simply nihilistic. But nihilism is just as boring as earnestness.
I think this is a fair point, but it seems to me your changing your tune a bit from the original post. In it, you say that you find the Slate author's charge of insidious sexism convincing because of the scene with Sharon (Athena) nearly being raped in season 2. I think that particular charge is unfair (and would disagree with you about the ubiquitousness of evil at that point, but I regard that as a simple matter of perception upon which reasonable people might disagree). If what your saying is that the writing is bad or lazy, well, you've not been too keen on that the whole way through, which is obviously your prerogative.
Nah, depicting rape, in and of itself, isn't wrong--which is why I used the "Mad Men" example. Looking back it, I think the "without comment" notation doesn't hold water. No one wants a lecture on why rape is wrong. And yeah, I do think some of the writing is lazy. But I said that up top.
"I also remember not reading a fantasy novel (by a woman, with female major characters) because it opened with a grotesque rape scene, and it just felt cheap and cruel. The rape scene was supposed to elicit sympathy, but I just felt revolted."
Wouldn't happen to have been by Storm Constantine, would it?
As other commenters have hinted at, in context, these rapes don't have anything to do with sex. The first thing that happens in any military interrogation that's going in the duress/torture direction is sexual humiliation.
Usually this is accomplished by rape of the prisoner, it doesn't matter whether they're male or female. In less extreme cases, the prisoner is stripped and interrogated naked. There are lots of other incredibly disturbing variations, but basically, that's what happens. This isn't about sexism or anything like that.
The writers are just realistically depicting what happens in a hostile torture interrogation. It's not pretty and it's rarely covered in the popular press. But it is what happens. Rape and sexual abuse help to strip away a persons mental defenses. Casino Royale had one of the most realistic torture scenes I'd ever seen in a Hollywood movie because of the simple fact that they stripped Craig naked for it.
O'm going to rebut TNC and the linked article.
Roslin's first assistant, Billy, was a nervous, weak character ultimately killed unceremoniously as a hostage - he was replaced by Tory, a stronger, more capable, more confident, female character.
President Roslin repeatedly refers to Admiral Adama as "weak", and is increasingly the colder, more rational and ruthless of the two leaders - her leadership contrasts strongly to the oftentimes sentimentalism of Adama.
After Tigh is revealed to be a cylon, Adama breaks down completely - Roslin has to be the adult and "make him believe in himself" again.
Every leader of the rebel cylon baseship has been a female (owing partly to the fact that the two female models in the rebellion are more prominent than the third, male model).
Two cylon lines have ended - Daniel/Seven was a victim of Cavil's model-wide genocide; D'Anna/Three was boxed before a single model was revived - a model which chose to end her life on the remains of Earth.
Of the four presidents to have served during the series (Roslin, Baltar, Zarek, and Lee), only Roslin has proved a successful long-term leader (Zarek and Baltar were both disasters, and Lee was Acting President for only one episode).
Male characters have been repeatedly enfeebled, while females generally haven't. Tigh lost an eye, Gaeta lost a leg, Sam was crippled for the second half of season three.
The "special destiny" characters (Hera, Starbuck, Roslin) are all female. (I suppose you could possibly count Baltar in this group, but...).
Starbuck repeatedly saves Sam from certain doom (on Caprica, and later during the rebellion).
There have been fewer male resurrections - because both of the two main traditional-cylon characters (Six and Eight) are female. The male cylons are all minor or recurring characters - not being on-screen as much, there just isn't much plot that would make watching them resurrect important.
The character most mocked for their sexual life is Baltar - a semi-comedic, inept character who only manages to stay alive by listening to a semi-imaginary female robot.
As for strong female characters dying or being cylons - let's run down the dudes. Baltar's pathetic, both Adamas are prone to sentimentalism at times, and are generally perceived to be emotionally "weaker" than their female counterparts (Roslin, Starbuck).
It's true that there is no female analogue for the Adama/Tigh friendship, but that is also the only strong friendship in the show. It's not like we're drowning in male friendships while females are incapable of functioning without men - most of the two-person dynamics on the show are male/female.
Sex and violence are both tropes on the show - it's not surprising that rape emerges from that. I don't think rape is deployed casually - on both occasions when Sharon was threatened with rape, it was jarring and disturbing, which it should have been. The "farm" Starbuck finds herself in on Carpica even more so. And it fits the show - there is war, starvation, repression, hatred - when in human history has rape not found itself among these other atrocities? Given the rape:murder ratio in the real world, BSG is actually doing somewhat "better" as far as sexual-aggravated crimes as a fraction of all violence. Compared to us, the characters of that universe are more interested in murder than rape. When it's used, it's not "without comment" - its uniformly treated as horrifying and atrocious.
Finally, though it's a reductionist and absurdly oversimplified metric, let's just do a count of the main cast in the final episodes:
Human males: Admiral, Lee, Helo
Cylon males: Tigh, Sam, Tyrol, Cavil (minor)
Human females: Roslin, Starbuck (?)
Cylon females: Caprica, Sharon, Ellen, Boomer (minor), Tory (minor)
All I gotta say is thanks for the linkee to the Slave Leia pic. Got me remembering how great it was to see that up on the movie screen at 13 years old. Coming of age moment for many of us I believe.
And to the hack writer who called it "ridiculous" from Slate? DIAF.
@TNC,
While you might find the writing lazy, acting lackluster, apparently more than a few people find the story riveting. That's hard to square with lazy writing and lackluster acting. This is where opinion and fact intersect in ways that are hard to reconcile, at least for me.
@Deva:
On Sudan, I recall reading that for people in camps, the choice was that if the men go out to gather firewood they'll be killed, and if the women do they'll be raped. So the women do it. It becomes a part of life, and not even the worst part.
On black characters: Lord yes. And yet in their future time it would make sense for race to be a non-issue, while planetary origin a la the Irish is huge. And Lost--I'm still pissed that they killed Naomi.
@Tel: The novel was about heart readers choosing the next ruler, if that helps. Interesting concept, but the opening rape put me completely off.
@J: The presidential analogy convinced me. Laura's the only decent one.
Really, Starbuck is an extremely stereotypical male character. Sam's staying true to her through all her shit would horrify people if she were Karl and he Samantha. And Lee is...not feminine but very unmasculine? The complete lack of drive, always waiting for a fabulous new job to come find him and coax him into it. He's a central heroic male figure and yet not at all heroic in most ways. Dualla is much more so. The most stereotypical character is Helo, who flirts with Gary Stuism.
As a general comment, I know studies have found that the depictions of torture in popular entertainment have increased 10fold or more in the last decade. It really bothers me to watch Chuck or Alias with my kids and realize just how commonplace torture has become in all sorts of shows. (BSG was deemed too adult for the little one for thematic content, not torture.) Yet I'm not willing to boycott them. I just wish it were less. And Sean, good point about the torture scene in Royale.
First, thanks for the response.
"You can't pawn these problems off on geek culture. It goes way beyond that."
Agreed, it does go well beyond geek culture. But to the extent that aspects of geek culture are a part of an aforementioned billion-dollar enterprise, I think it's worth taking them to task for the ways that they re-present women on the one hand and at the same time male interests. Periodically at least.
(As a music fan, I'm aware too that I could insert "hip hop" and "jazz" for "geek culture" in my above comments as well.)
"While you might find the writing lazy, acting lackluster, apparently more than a few people find the story riveting. That's hard to square with lazy writing and lackluster acting. This is where opinion and fact intersect in ways that are hard to reconcile, at least for me."
Or opinion and opinion. "The Wire" routinely received low ratings, and was snubbed at the Emmys. CSI has endured for years, in all kinds of incarnations. Do we want to argue that The Wire wasn't well written? The latest three Star Wars movies made ogobs of money. Shall we now argue that they were literary masterworks? "The Great Gatsby" was only mildly appreciated in its time. It's now considered one of the quintessential American novels. Do we really want to argue on popularity? Because, seriously, I could go all day. I haven't even started talking about poetry, or indy movies...
@Apex
Point taken.
Just wait until you see Watchmen. One of the sub-plots of the story involves a rape and its consequences, not all of which are clear cut in the morality.
Late to this thread, so this point may have been made already. But the reason why anyone could write such a scene is because it advances the plot. The whole point of the rape scene is to place Helo and the Chief in hot water over having killed the interrogator. This gives the writers an opportunity to move the brinkmanship situation between Adama and Cain while also highlighting the different attitudes toward Cylons held by the Galactica crew and the Pegasus crew.
The issue of minorities on BSG is a strange one, because obviously there are earth influences on the cultures on the show even though these people are not "earthlings."
So what would "black" even mean in this environment? For that matter, since skin pigmentation is a genetic evolution based on environment, did some of the colonies even have blacks? Or maybe even all black? (There are few colonies that I don't think have ever been mentioned on the show at all)
Of course, it's all arbitrary, and the writers can decide whether or not to address such concepts. Clearly they've decided not to, even though there are Greek gods and British accents. So is that a glaring omission or limitation necessitated by the breadth of the story?
J has it down cold.
The most compelling characters on the show are female except for Baltar who is a fool, and Adama who lives because Roslin continues to bet on the future of humanity. The hero of the show continues to be Helo but he is usually being manipulated by someone (the 8s consistently whether his wife or not).
Roslin is the strongest and most likable character in the entire show. She is at her heart a pragmatist: motherly, powerful, heroic, foolish, ideological, compromising, petulant, magnanimous and cold hearted -- but consistent on facilitating and betting on the survival of humanity. Sometimes her personal interests get in the way, but she usually steps up when it counts and makes it happen.
@ J
Dude, if you're going to drop that many spoilers in a post you really should let people know in advance.
So is that a glaring omission or limitation necessitated by the breadth of the story?
It's a glaring omission Scott II. They've had black characters -- perfectly good ones, I might add -- they just can't write them over more than a few episodes. Poor Dualla was one of the worst written characters on the show, with huge leaps in emotional logic that went unexplained or were very poorly explained. Now, the woman who plays her is a good actress, and created a sympathetic character nevertheless, but she was far from well-drawn. Number 4 (Simon) is a black cylon and the guy who plays him is a good actor, they could have found ways to develop his character in ways that could be fruitful for the plot. What if he was a dialogic partner to Cavil, for example. We've no idea why the fours didn't join the rebellion and it might have been fun/productive to explore. I think it's a total cop out to say black characters could not-do not serve the plot.
Now, if the question is "do they have to be written as black" in real world terms I'd say no. They would not, for example, have to share earthly black folks' African Americanisms or deal with their pigmentation in earthly ways. I also wouldn't want a whole planet of black folks (I can already hear the fear of a black planet puns coming) but only because it would be too easy given the distinct cultural and political riffs between planets in the BSG world.
**** Subtle Spoiler Alert ****
Also in direct response to T'Coates issues with the series. I'd say its done its job if it makes you uncomfortably examine your reactions to its subject matter. This is essentially a tale of species and evolution (X-men covers similar subject matter somewhat but its much less comprehensive - cylon skin jobs reproduce in a wholly new way). Also I'd be interested in knowing what other sci-fi / comic book story lines deal with similar issues. Its a fascinating topic to me.
Can an off-shoot of one species co-exist with its ancestors simultaneously? If they were enslaved? Or will things ultimately turn to violence and genocide? Did homo sapiens kill the neanderthals? Did they care about raping them? Did we end them through neglect? Would we ally with them? Would we build a common civilization? Is that how homo sapiens came into being -- as hybrids?
@ J: one slight quibble, I would not consider the eights (Athena/Boomer) minor characters.
"Or opinion and opinion. "The Wire" routinely received low ratings, and was snubbed at the Emmys. CSI has endured for years, in all kinds of incarnations. Do we want to argue that The Wire wasn't well written? The latest three Star Wars movies made ogobs of money. Shall we now argue that they were literary masterworks? "The Great Gatsby" was only mildly appreciated in its time. It's now considered one of the quintessential American novels. Do we really want to argue on popularity? Because, seriously, I could go all day. I haven't even started talking about poetry, or indy movies..."
But who is arguing that Battlestar Galactica is a well-written, well-done show on popularity? The "more than a few people" - including your readers - who believe the show to be good (me included) are not pointing to its ratings for evidence. (They are very low.) Their authority comes from their good judgment. Straw man, TNC, to compare that guy's argument to an argument that CSI is good because 20 million watch it.
ITA about far superior writing and acting on The Wire. And it most certainly included some of the most three dimensional portrayals of Black people (people in general, really) I've seen on television. Definitely outpaces BSG on racial representations.
But within the context of a conversation about characterizations of women, The Wire is certainly no shining example of what BSG's doing wrong. Maybe I'm way too out of touch with what it takes for a woman to survive in the world that The Wire so thoughtfully and accurately represented, but I always had the sense that it expressed a certain disdain for the female characters on the show. That its focus was much more about the men who moved through that world, and that the women kinda had to get in where they fit in. Maybe that too is a part of The Wire's myriad uncomfortable truths. But as a women watching (and I loved to watch The Wire), I always left it wishing I knew more about who these women were (De'Londa Brice, for instance, always intrigued me, but I felt the show's portrayal of her was your garden variety Tyler Perry one note villain).
But I also tend to have series amnesia when it comes to the details I haven't watched in a while, so please feel free to disabuse me of this notion.
@truthontap:
Imaginative answers to your homo sapien v. neanderthal question can be found in the fantastic Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean Auel. And, erm, yes genocide, war, rape, etc. are involved. But so are some wonderful cultural and philosophical questions about ancestory, origin, evolution, culture, equality... you get the picture.
@TNC,
OK let me be clear. It's fact and opinion. It's a fact many of your readers, thoughtful and insightful, disagree with your opinion. I'm willing to generalize a bit and claim they don't find the acting lackluster or writing lazy simply because they enjoy the show for well-articulated reasons. So, again, it's hard to square that with lazy writing and lackluster acting found in wildly popular shows. (Perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought BSG was not popular ratings-wise so that old school argument doesn't really fly.) In other words, That's why I'm not convinced by some of what you say about the show. But I am open to it. How is the writing lazy?
On BSG, evil comes so easy. So much of it passes without explanation or context.
But isn't that part of the point? Evil does come easy when you're scared, pissed, and dealing with an "other." Evil is just as easy and just as common as good. The central question of the whole damn show is, after all, "Does humanity deserve to survive?"
Purely anecdotally, it seems to me that there are somewhat more female BSG fans then fans of other SF franchises (with the possible exception of Buffy). On gender issues one thing that struck me is the reasonably consistent negative portrayal of character's mothers (though this doesn't carry through to characters who become mothers). There are some noble but flawed fathers (Adm. Adama, Starbuck's father) and some out-and-out sainted fathers (Adm. Adama's father), but out of the three character's mothers that are discussed Roslin's is positively described (though only briefly) while Starbuck's mother and Adama's deceased wife are both abusive. It's a small sample size but it sort of jumped out at me.
@ Amari,
I tend to agree with you that female characters on the Wire were flatter than the male characters, but I'm not sure they were treated with "disdain." I think the writers just didn't know how to make them full-bodied, though I think they made a good-faith effort to try. Keemah's relationship is the only real story about women that I remember, though. What's sad is that on any other show, we would be freaking out about how full-bodied and real they were. It's just that the male characters on The Wire were so much meatier (because the Wire was such a fantastically written show) that the women pale in comparison.
(And if anyone is looking for the meatiest female character in a long while, I nominate Patty Hewes in Damages. Holy shit!)
Here is the exact quote:
"While you might find the writing lazy, acting lackluster, apparently more than a few people find the story riveting. That's hard to square with lazy writing and lackluster acting."
I'm not sure how calling that an argument to popularity is a strawman. It literally argues that a bunch of people find it riveting, so it must not be lazily written or lacklusterly acted. My point is that many people find things riveting that I would argue are lazily written and lacklusterly acted.
It's when evil comes easy comes easy--much like when good comes easy--it loses its power.
This is a moral point, though, and I think an idealistic one that is ultimately not true. Good and evil exist all around us, in every one of us, all the time. They are utterly banal. That's not nihilism. It's life.
My point is that many people find things riveting that I would argue are lazily written and lacklusterly acted.
Supernatural comes to mind.
Ethan Hoddes, the biggest female sci-fi fans I know are actually more into the Stargate franchise; I don't know what that means.
The interesting thing about Dee was that she did see herself as a cultural minority (Sagittarion), but not a racial minority. But the representation of the whole Sagittarion thing was probably the worst part of the entire series to me, and Dee suffered for it. I understand much of the plans they had to explore that issue ended up cut entirely because of everything else they were doing.
I actually sympathize with the cut, because in a show about the complexity of defining what "human" is, having additional concepts within about subcultures becomes just too much to try to keep a plot moving forward. I think they didn't realize this would be the case when they started these storylines, then realized as they grew and Dee (and Kandyse) ended up getting the extremely short end of the stick. I don't think they get much shorter than the stick she got.
As for the Simon, I recall reading that there were appearance conflicts with the actor, which is why he appears so rarely. I guess they don't want to recast, which is odd. He could have been really useful in this final season with his skills.
Oh, and aside to TNC, don't fall for the folks pleading for you to explain why you don't like BSG. It's a trap. I went through this with "Firefly," and you will never give them an answer that will satisfy them. It's a trap.
The Slate article is pretty bad, far, far off-base and lacking in any real context or understanding of the arc of the show, which after all, covers about four years now. The example given of the Callie character and her motivation for her actions is particularly facile and completely misses the point of why she'd become hysterical and take the drastic action she did, as well as why it made perfect sense in the context of abuse she had received from Tyrol.
I get the lack of female friendships critique, though Roslin/Tory was certainly one of those, and the end of it was devastating (and don't forget the Gina/Cain relationship in Razor, and the Cain/Shaw relationship as well). But it's a war series (much more than it's sci-fi) and war is a nasty, predominantly masculine enterprise, which also explains why nasty things like rape happen, especially to female gendered "others" like the cylons.
Switching gears, the popular vs. high art argument doesn't wash b/c BSG isn't especially popular outside of its loyal audience but IS popular with a lot of serious critics and people who also like other acknowledged well-written shows and novels and such. I think at some point you just have to go with the "no accounting for taste" thing and leave it at that. I'm sure The Wire is as brilliant as people tell me (endlessly), but I was/have never been able to get into it, and it's not like I don't have the patience for challenging material. Still, I'm not gonna say that because it didn't hook me the writers don't know how to tell a good story.
It's power as narrative. Not it's power in real life.
"I think at some point you just have to go with the "no accounting for taste" thing and leave it at that."
I'd agree with this, but again, I quote from the original post:
"While you might find the writing lazy, acting lackluster, apparently more than a few people find the story riveting. That's hard to square with lazy writing and lackluster acting. This is where opinion and fact intersect in ways that are hard to reconcile, at least for me."
It's opinion vs. other opinion, as I said above. I referenced other shows just to simply argue that saying x number of people find a show riveting isn't evidence of anything except that fact.
Likewise, my opinion of BSG is exactly that--my opinion, with all the caveats, problems and limitations that come from opinion. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Meh.
Science fiction is how we test drive the paradigms of the future today.
There are a multitude of paradigms, just like the infinite variations of human nature, and the interactions of homo sapiens sapiens with those paradigms.
I haven't seen enough of BSG to be qualified to offer an opinion on this topic, though since I plan to watch it all I can be especially attuned to how women are treated in the show. But this...
Perhaps because science fiction has historically appealed to men who don't leave home much, the genre has often used alien mores and alien technology to rationalize pornographic depictions of near-naked women. (Think Jabba the Hutt forcing Princess Leia to wear that ridiculous gold bikini in Return of the Jedi.)
...really, really gets my goat. That is a really superficial understanding of science fiction, and its gratuitous to Lapidos' point anyway. Science Fiction as depicted on the big screen is nothing at all like the genre of literature that is sci-fi; sci-fi is frequently an excuse for movie execs to have explosions in space, or aliens instead of monsters, or battles with futuristic weapons or powers. And even if the two were comparable, it's not just men that go to these movies.
No doubt science fiction was and is still dominated by men, but you have to be completely ignorant to be unaware of the astounding contributions that women have made to the field, or the way science fiction writers in general (men and women alike) deal with social issues, including the role of women in society. When it comes to how women are treated in fiction, sci-fi authors are, well, light-years ahead of other authors in popular fiction. That's just a plain fact, and Lapidas undermines her larger point by being unaware of that fact.
But it's a war series (much more than it's sci-fi) and war is a nasty, predominantly masculine enterprise
And here's another example of how sci-fi often just repeats the old patterns only in the future! Don't mean to pick on you, Neil, it just stood out.
@Maya
I'm with cd, in that I think the show has the potential to be much deeper work for Whedon. He'll have two troubles, one, like you said, not getting caught up in the "hot babes kicking ass" milieu, and two, not getting too heavy handed with the metaphors. I just thought that it might serve as an interesting juxtaposition with BSG.
Maybe TNC could interview JW, as JW's a fan of BSG. It would be like:
TNC: WTF?!
JW: BSG?
(And an interesting conversation of the quality of modern writing, the role of women in popular fiction, and who's WoW character was more bad ass would ensue.)
Aaron
That Slate piece was garbage. Sci-fi is not for people who sit at home in their underwear because they can't get a date. That's what Jane Austin is for. No, Sci-fi is an extraordinarily diverse field encompassing every other literary genre and reimagining it. Had that Slate writer been anything other than a hack . . . well, they wouldn't have written that piece, would they?
That said, as a follower of BSG from the beginning, I'd say the show keeps getting worse. That rape episode was bad because it was poorly written, not because it was mysoginistic. Further, with all of the violence on that show, all of the naked horrible qualities of the characters; why single out the rape scene? The show's a morale downer on plenty of levels. It's depiction of violence against women is the least of its problems.
Amari, I read a really interesting thing on a Times blog. Forget the name of the writer, but he was watching the Wire with a group of men whom he characterized as New York drug dealers. He asked them, if there had been another season, what group would they like to have seen as the focus? One of them suggested a season focused on the women. He said they held a lot of power, husbanded resources, did a lot of facilitating, and that was a big missing piece of the portrayal of the world in the Wire.
Well-put, TNC.
And as one who was on your ass about finishing the series, let me say this - my only hope was that you would see enough of the series to speak intelligently about it, and write about it from your viewpoint, which I have come to appreciate very much.
As far as I'm concerned, this post shows that you accomplished that mission. You have nothing to apologize to me or anyone else about.
Great post!
First, thanks to TNC for being open to wading into this show and engaging us on it. This was a fun thread.
As much as I like and admire BSG, I tend to think it will ultimately be seen as a transitional piece of TV SciFi. I'm hopeful that we will see other works of TV scifi that build on what BSG has done and improve upon them.
As a female sci fi/fantasy lover, I'm already defensive about genre fiction; how underrated it is and how critics always seem ready to, well, criticize so much without actually having read anything. Xmen and star wars do not count as defining the genre.
It seems that BSG doesn't trust its audience to get it without hammering home every point, nuance and ambiguity are lost, and for me that tends to be vital to great writing. And to trivialize all characters, men and women both. It's a good show, but not a great one.
A great female sci fi author who addresses evolution ideas really well is Julie E Czerneda.
I don't watch BSG, but I have to respond to defenses of the use of rape as device by those who appeal to the "context" in which it occurs narratively:
That doesn't redeem it at all. A depiction can be titillating or exploitative, and then a nice narrative wrapper goes around it to make it "okay." If this isn't at least covertly about male fantasies, then why aren't there any scenes with male rape in BSG? (Reminds me of how all the "brave" science-fiction shows would introduce homosexuality with lesbian scenes and relationships: yeah, big risk taking there.)
Could not disagree with Chet more.
TNC, you watched just enough of Battlestar to apply your initial taste and race/class/gender filters to render a now-indelible FIRST IMPRESSION. We do this all the time when encountering any piece of art and/or storytelling for the first time. That first footprint was always a powerful intoxicant against further exploration of any given work of art, but the Internet culture has reduced our attention spans to where a first impression is the only one that ever occurs - most of us don't tune in any more or any deeper, because so many things we already know we like (or would prefer) are out there instead.
You didn't watch enough of BSG and ignored enough of what you did see to allow that initial impression to never be questioned. I'm not insulting you, and frankly if my first impression had been "ouch" I sure as hell wouldn't have followed the show either. It may not be your kind of writing/show, but it is a kind of writing/show that many sane, intelligent people enjoy.
So, fine: read racial or gender undertones into certain characters that wouldn't at all be backed up by a viewing of the show in total, and as though the entire human (and Cylon for that matter) race isn't roundly hosed by the show's turns of events from the get-go. Misunderstanding the show is as acceptable to and encouraged by me as disliking it. As long as you have a reaction, as a reflexive emotional human being. But don't affect elitist airs of objectivity or make broadsides against wide swaths of a show you admittedly haven't seen most of. It is just "one opinion vs. another," but realize you're saying that from the position of a writer at The Atlantic and making claims that the show is OBJECTIVELY bad. There's a weight given to your sentiments that isn't given to anyone else's here by virtue of a masthead. But that doesn't mean that whatever you dislike is patently awful on-face simply because you don't like it - and what you've been saying about it comes off exactly that way. And I empathize, because I do it all the damn time with my friends about music and new bands.
And at the same time, I can't disagree with your absolutist statements about the Wire because there is not enough hyperbole in the English language to capture it. But as a screenwriter and a fan of storytelling, I consider "Big Love" and "Mad Men" interminable, eventless, hollow bores that exist only to allow production designers and bored critics to go bananas over something - anything. Frankly I immediately question the taste of anyone who lists either of those as a "favorite" show. But I will immediately cop to not having seen the entirety of either, and basing my opinion on first impressions (and my obvious bitter ire at television studio departments and pop culture herd mentalities).
Sorry for the rant, but I can't stop myself from calling out people who are reflexively doing the same annoying things I'm trying to stop myself from doing. I hope you don't take this as just the rantings of a fanboy (although, of course, they are nothing more and nothing less).
Lemmy C: two responses.
First, this isn't first-year Feminist Lit. It's basic cable. Things will happen that make you squirmy. It's called storytelling. Bad, awful, unspeakable things happen to good people. That much is like life. But again, this is not like real life where you are allowed to tell people they shouldn't talk about rape or discuss it occurring. How patronizing it is to be forced to "defend" anything as a literary device - like every time a screenwriter or director has to "defend" an un-PC word. It's a story, and unless you're writing it (or a network executive) it's not yours to dictate or change.
Second, the second GLBT character on BSG was a bisexual man. That is a step forward for any show, much less basic cable, much less sci-fi. There's a limit to what can be shown anyway, and for all you know Ron Moore wanted Starbuck to be a Cuban tranny named OscarFuck before the "Standards and Practices" foot patrol from NBC Universal (who owns Sci-Fi and makes BSG) had their way with him. I'm gay and I wish there were more gay characters on television, but blame for that rests solely on the corporations that control television. Folks in TV are strictly bound in that creative output by their employers. You seem to think they have utter control; you seem to not understand the system.
I entirely agree that it is irresponsible to make stupid, unfounded story choices in regards to characters. All stories should be told well, even if they are unhappy ones. But to say that a horrific thing that happens to real people in real life mustn't be done, said, or expressed in a movie or TV show because it's so horrific makes me want to yell things that can't be shown in a movie or TV show.
Ooh, and incidentally here's an interesting article (linked from Andrew Sullivan's blog) about people's lingering discomfort with male nudity in entertainment:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2009&base_name=in_defense_of_the_penis#113513
Seth,
Is that really necessary? I don't like the show. So what? Where is it written that we all have to agree on what's great and what isn't? The readers here asked me to give it a shot. I did and didn't like what I saw. What do you want me to say?
What's weird about BSG is that the universe is remarkably gender-neutral except when it comes to rape. I think that's part of what makes it feel especially gratuitous and sadistic, because it comes out of nowhere given the beliefs one would expect the compatriots of someone like Starbuck to have. We have depictions of strong tough women, and everyone treats them like that, except when we want to fantasize over a damsel-in-distress.
I wonder if this is part of the reason why sci-fi often seems to be more sexist; there's often attempts to depict more enlightened societies, which makes traditional gender stereotyping stand out starkly.
@truthontap, @deva: scientists believe they've found genetic evidence that Neanderthals and early humans reproduced. But Neanderthals weren't exactly our ancestors--more another branch of the hominid tree.
The Sword of Truth novels were deeply disturbing and continued to get more so, partly because of philosophy railroading the book and plot, partly just cause, well, *damn.*
And this overall picture is why as a female geek I keep stepping in and then right back out of sci-fi and comics. I haven't watched BSG, entirely because a male friend was telling me about it and mentioned the rape scene, and I knew it was just going to step on the same issues. Rape is a part of war, and can be a part of psychologically abusing a prisoner, but who usually gets raped? Male prisoners. So... why show solely women getting raped?
Not that I *want* to see guys get assaulted to redress this, but it doesn't make sense to say "this happened to these females because of the nature of war" and then never make that final loop in what rape really is, which is all control and no sex.
As for showing Cylon humanity, there's just... better ways to do it.
I'll give you lackluster acting on BSG at times. You get an F on the writing complaint. You have left everyone else to acknowledge why they think its lackluster but for you it is because, "When narrative isn't done in a particularly inspiring fashion, it seems that the first people to suffer are women, and minorities. It's no mistake that "The Wire" is not only one of the best written shows ever..." Given whom suffers on the Wire BSG has to the most brillant piece of TV ever.
Weak Sauce
@TNC
I'm not saying that merely numbers make something good. I'm saying that people who would spot and be dissatisfied with lazy writing and lackluster acting, specifically the readers of this blog. I'm saying that it's pretty likely those of us who like the show wouldn't be into a series with such poor quality. That's the fact (we are into BSG) that I find difficult to square with your opinion.
I'm not so arrogant as to claim your opinion is incorrect in some objective sense. Shit, who am I to tell that to you!?!?! I'm merely saying that not all opinions are equal for me. I look at where a person is coming from. If Bill Cosby and Michael Eric Dyson were critiquing a rap album, I wouldn't value Cosby's opinion as much as Dyson's because Cosby isn't going to take the time to examine the relative merits of music he doesn't respect as art. Likewise, I don't value fundamentalist exegesis of the Bible as I would someone who value's historical criticism. Likewise to a far, far lesser degree, I find that you've seen too little to value your opinion like I would the others. I don't think you are "wrong."
I wonder if anyone who thinks rape has been thrown around casually on the show has actually watched it as originally shown, or are they, like TNC, blowing through the series on DVD? When you have a week (or longer) to think about what's happened, and weeks to think about how the story arc is going to play out, it doesn't feel "casual".
I warned you, TNC. It's a trap. Attempting to engage fandom regarding your disappointment in a series will result only in more whining and convoluted attempts to try to prove that you are "objectively" wrong or don't mean what you say you mean or that you're hypocritical. They're trolls. And I say this as somebody who actually likes BSG. The worst part of sci-fi is always the fans.
Scott,
It won't happen again. There are plenty of boards to debat sci-fi and BSG. I'll leave it to them. Up and down this board are people debating. We can argue up one side and down the other about whatever--Big Love, Terrell, African-Americanisms, Europeanization, The Watchmen, whatever. But the tone here borders on the religious. If we don't value each other's opinion, I'm not sure why we're talking.
I really like these sci fi threads and think we should have more of them--they needn't be just BSG. We're rewatching Star Wars with our kids (having convinced them it would help them play Lego Star Wars), maybe we could do that next week. Buffy. Authors.
A comment on BSG as an analogue to the Iraq war--I caught that, but to me the issues raised never seemed at all limited to that conflict. The analogy wasn't perfect, and you could go through 1000s of years of history and across the globe to raise the same kind of issues. The difference in sci fi usually is the nowhere to retreat aspect--much harder to melt into the landscape.
The central question of the whole damn show is, after all, "Does humanity deserve to survive?" --James Elliot
I agree. And if you look around at regular earthlings, we'll merrily do everything shown on BSG. It's dark, but I'd have no interest in solely dark--things like Saul's insistence that they fight to keep the cylons off balance for when the old man arrives, his total faith that someday the old man will arrive. And on the counter, we had the explicit threat that if humanity is worth saving, then Gaius Baltar is worth saving. If we save humanity, we save Cain and her crew of monsters--if we start carefully picking out only the perfect from our tiny mass of remaining humanity, who will be left after a few rounds? (And the current eps deal some with Cain's men being able to choose differently on another go around, an important theme of the show: all of this has happened before, does it have to happen again? But on a little personal scale.)
Sci-fi is not for people who sit at home in their underwear because they can't get a date. That's what Jane Austin is for. --Nathan
Ha!
If this isn't at least covertly about male fantasies, then why aren't there any scenes with male rape in BSG?
How common is male rape as a fantasy in any genre, though? For that matter, there's a whole genre of escapist female fiction that often features coerced sex as the hero forces the reluctant heroine to give in to him so the resulting sex isn't her fault--and yet as far as I know this is not a big theme in escapist fiction aimed at gay men. Yes, there are some "the network won't let us" or "audiences wouldn't go there" issues. But even in literature, male rape is used much less often. And when it is, the "I humiliate you and demonstrate my power over you" aspect is very strong.
Ta-Nehisi, I'm a huge BSG fan, but I agree completely about that scene. It left me feeling sick to my stomach and ruined a great episode.
I think it's especially telling that male rape isn't in BSG at all when the series has been lauded left and right for speaking about The War On Terror. Most of the images from Abu Ghraib were specifically about sexually humiliating men.
None of this means BSG is value-less as a show-- I haven't seen it. But even the best shows can have problematic aspects.
Deborah,
That goes to my point: the depiction of rape, despite all the claims of "social realism," are really covert fantasy fulfillment. If it were about social realism, it wouldn't pan out the way it does.
And it goes to the core of TNC's post: science fiction is still saddled with the onus of pandering to male (heterosexual) fantasies. They aren't the only genre that does that, and its arguable that all screen culture does that a bit.
Seth,
Of course, this is a commercial product engineered by a committee that has identified the 18-to-35 heterosexual male lower-middle-class demographic as its target audience. That's part of the critique we're making. And I'm sorry if that makes you squirm.
To re-emphasize what Persia says just above -- instrumental rape (=object rape, forcible penetration with an object) of males was such a standard practice under the Bush Administration that they didn't want it to be considered rape. If the BSG PTB (Powers That Be) truly and purely wanted to show the horrors of war, they would have subjected males to them.
Film- and TV-makers often use rape and abuse of women as the short road to being "edgy" or "dark" -- because it upsets both men and women, because it's visceral. But there's also the fact that it specifically drives away female viewers, and IMHO that is a feature, not a bug.
It's a feature two ways. In the first place, if your show drives away women but holds men, you have that all-important *male demographic*, for which advertisers will pay more per head. TV shows have been cancelled before this for being too popular with women, because the network was afraid of being a woman's brand.
In the second place, TPTB are mostly men, and they want to impress other men with their manliness. The most reliable way for a man to prove he's a Man is to do something a woman can't or wouldn't do: pee his name in the snow, or make a show "edgy" with the kind of violence that triggers PTSD in a lot of women. And there's no snow in LA.
Getting myself back on topic, I think it's also possible for both ideas to be true, no matter how contradictory: That the show features strong, independent women, and yet also has issues with consistency with treating women. It's inevitable in a show with not just an ensemble cast, but with an ensemble of writers. (Michael Angeli is the one who writes women horribly and his episodes are almost always male-dominated)
Six and Eight (Boomer) ended up being the only Cylons to really take on a weekly role on the show. The male cylons were always supporting characters who rarely appear, for whatever reasons we don't know about. We don't know, had the crew of the Pegasus gotten their hands on one, that they wouldn't have raped a male cylon, too. But their victim was a Six for the purpose of pushing Baltar into a new role. I think it would have been interesting had the victim been Leoben, but he just doesn't work in that role with the second half of the season. (Although it would have been funny if it had and Baltar fell in love with him or something and then we would have had that whole deal about the gay/bisexual villain).
Scott,
I think you mean well, but I think the framing needs to be changed from a question of how the show "treats women" - and I don't mean to say that violence against women (or anyone else) or sex or such shouldn't be depicted, because that makes it sound like it's an issue of tweaking the script.
The real issue is this: with the depictions which constitute the show, whose fantasies and desires are being serviced? Whose aren't? Why? One of the earlier comments on this thread remarked on their weariness with the "strong girl kicks ass" mode of making SF "woman friendly." I don't think it does.
Maybe SF on TV really is about male (adolescent/young adult, heterosexual) fantasies. If that's the case, then don't complain about the marginalization of the genre.
Lemmy, what if my answer is that I don't think anybody's fantasies or desires are being serviced by BSG?
Then I would ask: why the preponderance of rape of women? Again, if they are playing the "social realist" card, it should play it all the way, not in a way that covertly feeds into sadistic fantasies alone.
Because ... that's not what they wanted to write, and they're not responsible for other people's fantasies?
Actually, after your condescending "I think you mean well," I'm going to take my own advice to TNC. You're not actually looking for a discussion. You're trying to prove a point you'll never prove. Good luck!
Except, Scott II, the show doesn't exist in a cultural or historical vacuum and (this is perhaps ranging too far afield) I believe authors and artists ought at least consider what messages their work is sending.
Re: male rape. I just read/skimmed the thread, and off the top of my tipsy head, the only examples of male rape in film and literature I can think of come from Oz and Lawrence of Arabia (and that was v. obliquely intimated, not depicted), whereas I'd need to start grafting on extra hands to count the female rapes. Otoh, the one place you do run into male rape a lot is in fanfiction, which is produced almost exclusively by women for women. It differs from rape depictions in professional work - the pov and emphasis is on the victim, if it's sexually explicit, it's likely to be a rape fantasy, but it's interesting that it does pop up in a female-dominated activity.
“How common is male rape as a fantasy in any genre, though? For that matter, there's a whole genre of escapist female fiction that often features coerced sex as the hero forces the reluctant heroine to give in to him so the resulting sex isn't her fault--and yet as far as I know this is not a big theme in escapist fiction aimed at gay men.”
That escapist female fiction you speak of, they call them “Bodice Rippers” don’t they, a good number of them take place in the Victorian Era? I was quite surprised to find out about them on-line and realize that they were so popular with women.
But there is a problem with your comparison. Your closest direct comparison would be male rape committed by females, not other males. And the problem there, until very recently, women couldn’t rape men like men rape women.
A woman could always use a foreign object “Greek style” but that’s a million miles away from vaginal intercourse. Put aside the issue of non-consent. On average, I’d think many men don’t like the idea of anything shoved up inside them, period. While most women, I’d guess, enjoy intercourse if done by a partner who cares about their pleasure.
But I did say, until very recently, women couldn’t rape men like men rape women. A few years ago an American soap opera did a story I thought was very unique. It featured a male character, your basic heroic cop, kidnapped by his ex-wife. The ex-wife character was a sweet, almost mousy type that went bat-guano crazy and proceed to commit all sorts of horrible crimes. The ex-wife tied up her ex-husband, stripped him naked, forced erectile dysfunction pills down his throat and basically raped him. Her goal, she wanted his child.
Normally, an adult man has control over how his genitals work during sexual activity. If he doesn’t want an errection, he won’t get one. Certainly in a situation with as much anxiety as being sexually assaulted by a woman that he has no interest in, I imagine this kind of rape would be pretty much impossible. The somewhat cheesy film starring Denzel Washington, “Ricochet”, illustrates this. Washington’s character gets drugged and a hooker forces herself on him. When the character’s wife finds out about it, by overhearing that her husband now has a STD, she has no sympathy for him. He says that he fought her off with every inch of his body and she retorts with, “I can think of several inches that didn’t put up much of a fight”.
The difference in the soap opera story was the use of ED drugs. A man with perfect function who takes the drugs would find his errection almost uncontrollable. Forget sexual thoughts, enough friction in his pants would make walking difficult. I have not seen a story anywhere since, that used the same concept. That surprises me somewhat, as there are enough men into the whole BDSM scene to give it a high enough profile in modern cinema.
@Nuada
It's possible to be attracted and still not want to have sex with someone. In these (admittedly limitted and far less traumatic) instances, its absolutely been possible for a woman to rape a man.
The immediate pain and trauma isn't the point, or else roofies would make it all okay. What makes rape heinous is the usurping of choice, the violation of one's body against choice, and the long term pain that kind of violence can cause. You can be raped by someone you're attracted to, even raped by someone who you have rape fantasies about. If you don't want it, for whatever reason, not just libido, that's rape, and when you're robbed of control over your own most intimate functions, you still suffer the damage.
“It's possible to be attracted and still not want to have sex with someone. In these (admittedly limitted and far less traumatic) instances, its absolutely been possible for a woman to rape a man."
How would such a thing be possible…for a woman to rape a man, through intercourse, against his will? And if it is possible, why would it be far less traumatic?
“The immediate pain and trauma isn't the point, or else roofies would make it all okay. What makes rape heinous is the usurping of choice, the violation of one's body against choice, and the long term pain that kind of violence can cause. You can be raped by someone you're attracted to, even raped by someone who you have rape fantasies about. If you don't want it, for whatever reason, not just libido, that's rape, and when you're robbed of control over your own most intimate functions, you still suffer the damage.”
Christ man, give me some credit. I understand and already knew everything you said here. But it all, under most circumstances, only applies to women. Without the ED drugs being used, (ED drugs, not GHB / “roofies”), how could a man be forced to maintain his errection? Men basically have control over their intimate functions, women don’t.
"Normally, an adult man has control over how his genitals work during sexual activity. If he doesn’t want an errection, he won’t get one."
Errr... what? As a man, I can tell you that this is not true. There isn't any mental "control". Sometime you get errections when you don't want them, that have nothing to do with sexual arousal. Likewise, sometimes you can't get an errection when you do want one, despite sexual arousal (thats what all those fancy pills are for). Add to this the fact that there is a significant mechanical aspect (response to physical stimulus) to an errection. It is certainly possible for someone to force a man to get an errection against his will (and it is quite possible for a man to have mixed feelings on the subject, conciously or not.)
Now, all that said, it remains extremely difficult to force an errection, and theirfore rape a man in the manner in which you are discussing. But it is certainly *possible*.
That goes to my point: the depiction of rape, despite all the claims of "social realism," are really covert fantasy fulfillment. If it were about social realism, it wouldn't pan out the way it does.
The real issue is this: with the depictions which constitute the show, whose fantasies and desires are being serviced? Whose aren't? Why?
Given the number of female BSG fans in the thread who really enjoy the show--and not because we have fantasies about watching Sharon raped--I think your point is disproven. It comes back to the old "sci fi is just read/watched by adolescent/very immature males" which we have spent much of the thread arguing wasn't really accurate in 1950 and certainly isn't true today.
The fantasies BSG deals with are "what would I do in an extreme situation, as one of the few survivors of humanity? Who should be included in that humanity? What is justifiable for survival when you're really the last of your species? Is genocide okay under those circumstances? If I worked for Roslin, what would I do? What if I was just a poor grunt on one of the other ships?" etc. For example, I think a lot of people have concluded that the representative democracy (unless Bill says no) thing doesn't work for their situation, and so what government would work?
I agree with the person upthread who said that rape of women is horrifying to both sexes. (Though it can be depicted in a way that's meant to also arouse. But to me the rapes on BSG don't do that at all.) That's what the mistreatment of the female cylons is meant to do, horrify, make us point out that no one rapes the centurions, prompt arguments about how the Pegasus sees Gina as a woman, not a toaster, etc.
I find it interesting that the attempted "sharon" rape gets all the attention. That and the torture of the #6 on Pegasus advanced the plot.
I've seen no comments on another attempted rape that was fairly gratuitous. Those who actually watched the show probably remember that gory scene.
I guess no one notices gratuitous violence anymore. But TV writers better use PC plot devices!
I'm a law student, and for the past month our criminal law lecturers have been teaching us a course on sexual offences. Last year we studied murder - some of the cases were quite horrific and involved people under extreme pressures - but the lecturers managed to dispell the somber atmosphere at least once a class with a witty aside or joke. Our current lectures are quite different - they can only be approached in the most serious manner. Unlike our lectures on fraud, theft, and mureder, our lecturers have not put it into a philosophical framewhork to explain why it is wrong - but then, if you do not know why this is already, it is not likely that you ever will.
It became obvious that, morally, we see the rapist as a much more reprehensible figure than the murderer - despite the heavier sentence that murder carries. Rape is a crime almost entirely conducted by one half of society, with the other half usually being the victim. No-one dares to joke as, where someone who has experienced the loss of a loved one at the hands of a murderer is unlikely to be offended by light-heartedness concerning killing, they do when either they or someone close to them has experienced rape. Murderers share little except their intent, but all rape is gratification in exchange for suffering.
One of the things I liked best about the first series of BSG back in 2003 was, whilst most definitely a work of Sci-Fi, it felt real. At least for the first few episodes, I didn't get the feeling that I could say for sure which of the main characters would live and which would die. The characters seemed a lot deeper, and the setting seemed so much more hopeless than any American series I'd ever seen - it seemed like a real war. The later series' were still good, despite the odd episode which just went stupidly (the one where they had a chance to wipe out the entire Cylon race only to be foiled by Helo was particularly dumb.
Rape is real, the people who carry it out are usually banal in the extreme - marked mainly only by their low intelligence and brutishness. It is often found where law ceases to function - in warfare especially, so it is not unrealistic to find it here. I did not find the highlighted scenes unrealistic, and, short of a long monologue by the character suffering the rape, cannot think how they could have been handled in a less discomforting way.
Sorry if this is all rather dark, but you can hardly handle the way rape is depicted unless you first tackle the nature of the thing itself.
Sorry, I'm rather late getting to this... BUUUT there has been a lot of rather insightful critiquing on this board. Not all of it has been. Something that caught my eye that I feel I need to correct:
"Of course, this is a commercial product engineered by a committee that has identified the 18-to-35 heterosexual male lower-middle-class demographic as its target audience. That's part of the critique we're making. And I'm sorry if that makes you squirm."
@Lemmy C:
I dunno how exactly that argument holds up, Lemmy. I tried showing BSG to my cousin, who, while not exactly lower-middle-class (I'm not even entirely sure how someone from the LMC has basic cable, but whatever), was born into such and still identifies with it. He is your typical LMC guy in many ways: a tradesman, a connoisseur of Miller brands, a frequenter of dimly lit dive bars, no college education, etc. And he despised it. I tried showing it to his brother (who happens to be incredibly similar, same type of likes and career choice). Same deal. These are guys who are within your identified demographic.
Now, working outside that demographic, you have my brother and I, both in the dead-center of the middle class; you have my ex-girlfriend, very much an upper-middle-class child with a love of science fiction; you have my best friend, not a sci-fi lover but a passionate devotee of politics, who also was a middle-middle-class kid but eventually became upper-middle class; you have my roommate, an artist and video game nut, who, though we've never discussed it openly, obviously comes from some money. All of us are college-educated (well, my brother's still in college, but I'm pretty certain he's going to finish). One of us is gay. One of us is over 35. One of us is a woman. So I don't really get how this little sampling squares with the demographic you cited.
Ta....the core of BSG is the Turing Heresy....that is......if god made made man in its image, then man is inherently capable of making a sentient cybernetic being in man's image.
All the theme questions devolve from this.....is it ok to torture in extreme need? What if the torturer is human and the victim is a machine? Is is ok to rape a machine?
And the otherside......Can a machine be moral? If machines rape and torture is that inhuman? Can machines have religious faith?
The BSG cylons pass the Turing Test with stars.....homo sapiens cyberneticus are not distinguishable from homo sapiens sapiens even in sexual encounters.
These are questions we need to be thinking about, given that first manufactured intelligences will likely be sex toys.
See Ghost in the Shell II: Inosensu.
ummm...and also Citizen Cyborg
A little late in the thread for this, but my $0.02 is that the Slate piece was half-baked-contrarianism-for-the-sake-of-contrarianism typical of the site.
TNC, I'll certainly agree that violence comes easy on BSG, but I part ways with you on the issue of context and explanation. As AC mentioned, the rape and torture of Pegasus Six advanced a significant sub-plot (the Baltar/Six relationship), and in dealing with the aftermath of the experience, Six directly addressed the "is humanity worth saving?" theme that has been running through the entire series.
Lee sums up this theme at the trial in Season 3 when he says "We're not a civilization, we're an armed gang". I can certainly see how some viewers would get the impression that the violence in BSG (murder, rape, suicide, etc.) is casually tacked on, but its meant to create a milieu where the base impulses of human beings are closer to the surface due to their situation. Despite their best efforts maintain a functioning society, the risk of someone coming out of nowhere to violate one's body or peace of mind is always present.
Nuada: "Without the ED drugs being used, (ED drugs, not GHB / “roofies”), how could a man be forced to maintain his errection? Men basically have control over their intimate functions, women don’t."
Following your logic, it isn't rape if the woman gets wet and experiences arousal.
However, this does happen and it doesn't make the experience suck any less. On the contrary, it makes things worse: the victims own body is out of their control, both in terms of what is happening and how they respond to it.
Triumvere--speaking almost completely offtopic because the invisibility of male rape annoys me, yes, it's very possible for a woman to rape a man. Physiologically the body does all sorts of interesting things you'd think it wouldn't when under stress. Soldiers *in combat* can get erections. That has nothing to do with actual arousal, it's just because the limbic system is dumb.
I have also heard from a discussion on male rape that it also depends on whether or not the man was very weary/previously beaten up, because that makes a physical response more likely. Which makes sense, because human physiology and the process of physical arousal are both weird.
It actually happens far more often than you would think. It's just excruciatingly underreported for social reasons. (I've read of a male rape victim who said the police laughed at him.)
In a way, all of that adds another layer to the question of why the show didn't deal with this while being all gritty and realistic.
Fanfic, on another aside, deals with rape in a range of ways, from rape fantasies (totally different) to accurate portrayals of rape and healing to...well, efforts by thirteen-year-olds to deal with the subject. I think that's a different discussion.
It occurs to me:
SPOILER!!!!!
Does what happened to Helo last week count as rape? He was tricked into have sex with somebody he would not have voluntary had sex with.
I thought last night's episode was dreadfully dull, incidentally.
Regarding the BSG scene in question, is rape really an exceptional component in BSG's enlightened gender neutral world? I thought Sharon was being raped more for being a Cylon than a woman, although both are essential to the reason she would be raped. Human men exploit Cylon women. The line in the next episode is so crucial: "You can't rape a machine."
And it's not just human men. Its the cruelty Admiral Cain unleashes upon the Pegasus' 6 as well. Admiral Cain - a female - has no moral objection to the treatment Sharon and Gina (the Pegasus 6) received because they are Cylons. Contrasted with Admiral Adama and Gaius Baltar, both of whom are disgusted by the fact that Cylon prisoners would be treated as such.
I am somewhat sympathetic to TNC's point, especially given that they decided use Cylon women as rape victims while using a Cylon man, Leoben, as a device with which to issue commentary on water-boarding in season 1, but I think the Cylon nature of the victims is an important component. These characters are not fully accepted into Colonial society, as enlightened and progressive it may be.
sharky -- I think the point was not that it's impossible for a woman to rape a man, but highly unlikely. Whereas men rape other men for purposes of torture, power play and/or humiliation all the time, be it in a war or in a prison. This rate is going to be at least as underreported if not more so than the tiny percentage of female-on-male rapes, because cultures (by which I mean prison culture, military culture, socioreligious cultures, etc) which use male-on-male rape as a humuliation and power technique do so because of taboos against gay sex. Men who are raped by other men are afraid of being ostracized or killed for having a homosexual encounter, even though it was involuntary. Just like women who are beaten and killed for having been raped by men.
The overall point is that we don't see this in our media, except for the rare examples already brought up, or in formats where the male victims are children (thus implied as powerless, so it's less emasculating for male viewers to empathize with them -- "obviously" an adult male should have been able to fight back and if he didn't, he really wanted it deep down or knew he deserved it -- and this is one of the reasons why living is a rape culture sucks so very hard).
I was upset when I watched the scene with Sharon/Athena, for all the "right" reasons. I was upset overall with how Gina was treated, again because I was supposed to be; it was less viscerally upsetting because we only saw the aftermath with her in the series and in Razor, but still. I didn't find the scenes gratuitous because they fit the culture the show was trying to portray, though of course arguments can be made for either side how well that worked for individual viewers. That said, the series could have made a much bigger splash in the realism pond by having someone (male) trying to get at Adama by kidnapping and raping Lee, because the posters above are correct: this is the reality of war just as much as the rape of females (be they prisoners, enemies or even fellow soldiers).
*spoiler*
Scott II: I'd say yes, though I'm sure won't hear about the effect it had on him so it'll never be acknowledged as rape by the show's canon. Just a guess, based on every other genre show that's gone that route (Riley in Buffy, frex, but there's a long list).
*end spoiler*
TNC, I was just making the point that Robert Raphael Barrimond MBA made much more concisely: I wasn't saying your opinion is objectively wrong, I'm saying it read as though you were saying that the show was objectively bad. It was really more a tonal point. We cool.
Lemmy C, on the other hand: you doubled down on the most boring essays in my film studies classes. Weak rape sauce. Not all storytelling by males is about male fantasies, and just because a man's mind conjures a character who would rape doesn't make that man a rapist. I hope there's at least one thing in your life that you actually enjoy on its own merits, because deconstructionist theory will quickly beat all possible emotional enjoyment out of any entertainment or art medium you ever watch.
To reiterate what I and Scott II have been trying to tell you: you're conflating the "fantasies" of characters and stories with the sexual fantasies of the storytellers. You're trying to have us believe that writers can't possibly write stories that aren't direct transliterations of personal biases, prejudices, wants and desires. As if anyone writing of Hitler dreams of genocide. Not only is that a perfectly wrong claim of storytellers, but you couldn't possibly prove that even if you tried - moreover, it's as though you measure whether to like a cup of ice cream based on what you think the cow was thinking about when she was milked. Completely tangential to the point of absurdity. Yet in the same breath you said BSG is a corporate committee product - and that would by definition mean that no individual person's "fantasies" informed the show, and contradict your point another way. The writing team has both men and women. The head of the Sci-Fi Network is Bonnie Hammer.
I really hate to ask, but do you think that men think rape is sexy? You've bordered on saying that about three different ways now, so please put your cards on the table. I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not.
Seth, I happily agree that not all men who are at titillated by rape fantasies are rapists (just like many women who have rape fantasies don't want to be raped) - fantasies are complicated things. I also agree that there is nothing essential about speculative fiction or science fiction as such that is male-dominated.
What I think you are being completely disingenuous about is the dual nature of depiction, particularly the depiction of violence, especially sexual violence. It horrifies and it titillates at the same time (though not everyone equally.)
What I am telling you, Seth, is that narrative is symptomatic. I don't know whether the storytellers are obsessed with rape or whether this is cynical. It doesn't matter. I'm not talking about the fantasies of the producers as such when I talk about these fantasies: I'm talking about the fantasies of the presumptive audiences. Again, even though war often includes the rape of men (by men,) we don't ever see that, just like we don't see male homosexual erotic imagery. Crudely, it freaks men out to see men sexually dominated and penetrated, even implicitly.
Where they are willing to be edgy and where they aren't indicates the implicit (one might say "unconscious," but that underestimates the role of cultural models) understanding that they are making images for men to consume first and foremost. (The existence of a female audienceship doesn't change that: I know of plenty of women who play Halo, but I can assure you that they made sure there would be nothing in that game that might compromise an unabashed, undiluted appeal to young men.)
The thing is, I'm not even a big fan of feminist theory, especially when it's over-extended or hyperbolic. It's just so freakin' obvious that there's a covert appeal to those kinds of fantasies. I think sexual domination is widespread part of male sexual fantasy, yes. I don't claim they 'think' it's sexy, and most civilized human beings are morally repulsed by it. (Though research indicated that about 57% of men admit that they would, indeed, consider sexually violating someone if they knew there was absolutely no chance of punishment. That's a very sobering statistic. Look at the research by Dolf Zillman or Diana Russell - there's not a lot of evidence to the contrary.)
By the way, by my reckoning, LMC (lower-middle-class) is college-educated, employed in clerical, technical and skilled labor positions, without a graduate degree. That fits a big wedge of the sci-fi demographic as I know it. The existence of outliers means little.
And Seth, what I'm saying isn't "deconstructionist theory" - if you knew much about critical theory in the past 40 years, you would know that deconstruction is a technique. Maybe you mean "poststructuralist theory." But I don't care if it threatens to beat the "emotional enjoyment" of entertainment, if that emotional enjoyment comes from being uncritical of what constitutes that enjoyment. I think TNC is correct to bring post-colonial and racial question regarding Resident Evil, and the defense that he's beating the emotional enjoyment out of it is irrelevant to me (for one thing, I can enjoy things I critique - part of developing any critical sophistication is the ability to do so, otherwise, your position in regard to culture is sophomoric at best.) Ultimately, what Paul de Man said (paraphrased) applies: those who resist theory are under the domination of an old one.
So the lower middle class now includes everyone who does not have a post-graduate degree? :eyeroll: That's a good way to expand it to include almost the entire country, and the majority demographic of every single television show that ever was now is evidently aimed at the lower middle class.
Like a lot of critically acclaimed but small audience series (e.g. Veronica Mars) with their complex, not-self-contained plots, BSG actually skews toward the more educated, if discussions online and in real life are any guide. People who like politics will get deeply into it as The West Wing in space. People who like complicated narrative that doesn't tie up neatly every week get into it. People who want to relive their best college or AP classes taking apart how X was used in the show and what this reflects get into it. Sci fi fans if anything tend to be college educated, having gone into those techy things that require a degree.
I'll agree to be realistic the show should have suggested Pegasus rape of a male cylon prisoner, though as others have noted they had a Six for reasons of moving Baltar's storyline, and I don't see Gauis-Leoben; they both like to talk about themselves too much. And that, just as the network put the kibosh on their intention to show suicide in despair as happening pretty often in the fleet, the network or their sense of where viewers would go didn't let them treat male rape in the same way as female rape. But noting that in our society it's rarer to depict homosexual male rape in fiction does not lead to the conclusion that every show that shows one and not the other is fulfilling male fantasies.
Categorizing the shows fanbase as "lower middle class male, plus outliers" is just silly. Either produce data to back it up (and lmc does not include the college educated, skilled trades, etc) or back off the "of course sci fi is aimed at lmc males" which is as silly as "of course sci fi is aimed at teenage males."
Deborah: I'm going to try to restate what I'm getting at.
That, culturally, it's not the norm to have portrayals of male rape is not quite the issue. That men and women are both raped in war is not quite the issue.
That producers chose to portray the rape of women as a part of the grittiness of war, without examining any other part of that, is worrisome.
And it is definitely offputting, given how sci-fi overall treats female characters, to think of creators saying "okay, we're going to touch on the topic of rape, so we need a victim. Quick, someone find a woman." That's nothing more than a locked-down example of the cultural mindset, and no, a lot of people who would otherwise enjoy sci-fi don't like it.
rape = bad
rape of women = commonplace in the bsg series
rape of men = not commonplace in the bsg series
this isn't difficult
using rape as a casual standard threat/weapon against women is really heinous
“Errr... what?”
Come on, don’t be cute.
"As a man, I can tell you that this is not true."
I happen to be a man too. A married, heterosexual man. So I guess your expertise on the matter is no greater than mine.
“There isn't any mental "control". Sometime you get errections when you don't want them, that have nothing to do with sexual arousal.….….. It is certainly possible for someone to force a man to get an errection against his will (and it is quite possible for a man to have mixed feelings on the subject, conciously or not.)
Now, all that said, it remains extremely difficult to force an errection, and theirfore rape a man in the manner in which you are discussing. But it is certainly *possible*.”
No mental control, none at all??? Ok, I’m fully willing to admit that while I do have a college degree; it wasn’t in a field of study that covered this topic. So I don’t claim to have any special knowledge. But I still can’t see how a man can be forced to have a sustained, full errection by a woman.
Do take notice of the words, “sustained” and “full”. (If the man starts going limp or even partially limp, it makes things far more difficult and thus the comparison to women falls flat.) You said it’s extremely difficult but possible. It what case would it be possible for a woman to force a man to sustain a full errection? Not “in what case could a man be forced to have one”, that’s not what I said. There are always crazy examples that can come out of left field. “How could a woman force a man to have one”, that was my point.
I want to respond to two of the above posts (and the topic in general):
"And it is definitely offputting, given how sci-fi overall treats female characters, to think of creators saying "okay, we're going to touch on the topic of rape, so we need a victim. Quick, someone find a woman." That's nothing more than a locked-down example of the cultural mindset, and no, a lot of people who would otherwise enjoy sci-fi don't like it."
I don't quite understand this. What proof do you have that the creators work like this? The depiction of rape was not an attempt to necessarily "touch on the topic of rape" because the writers just felt like dealing with "issues." The depiction of rape in that particular episode was doing a lot of important thematic work. The theme of the show has something to do with how easily humans de-humanize their enemies. In this episode, the characters who are willing to commit rape view the prisoner, Athena, as something completely devoid of humanity, and as such, a perfect candidate to be violated.
Now I have watched the series with a number of people and up until this episode I have known certain people who cannot quite understand that these "robots" have their own humanity and are not just machines...things. This episode transforms that. It forces the audience member to recognize that Athena is not just a collection of wires and programmed responses--she's as legitimately a person as any human. Her rape is one of the first moments where we the audience can fully see that these "creators" of the show want to make us see the humanity of the machines.
It wasn't a casual decision just to "deal with rape" and it wasn't 'lets just find any female character to have raped'--their was serious thought and there was logic behind which character was raped. It made perfect sense within the confines of the plot. Calling it all just a random effort by a couple of men sitting around wanting to just write about rape makes no sense.
As for the above post:
"rape = bad
rape of women = commonplace in the bsg series
rape of men = not commonplace in the bsg series
this isn't difficult
using rape as a casual standard threat/weapon against women is really heinous"
I could be mis-remembering, but I do not remember rape as being a commonplace threat against the women of the show, meaning the human women. It is a common threat against the female characters on the show who happen to be machines and--here is the key-- who are viewed by a specific group of men (the Pegasus officers) as entirely devoid of humanity, personhood, genuine emotions, etc.
So even though you think it isn't difficult or complicated, it is more complicated than you'd like it to be. Everything has a context and as in what I wrote above, the context in this show is incredibly significant.
“Following your logic, it isn't rape if the woman gets wet and experiences arousal.
However, this does happen and it doesn't make the experience suck any less. On the contrary, it makes things worse: the victims own body is out of their control, both in terms of what is happening and how they respond to it.”
No, that does not follow with my logic whatsoever. I even thought about mentioning your exact point. But I didn’t expect someone to misunderstand me and play the role of “schoolmaster” to my callous, misinformed youngster.
Following my logic, there is no comparison with female rape, short of the female using ED drugs on the man. I guess if you wanted to go out on a limb a bit, you could compare a woman’s body lubricating itself against her own will to a man ejaculating, at least in terms of involuntary actions. But even then, I would suppose that some men might have more control over that than others.
Sexual titillation is no doubt part of why depictions of women being raped are much more common than depictions of males, but I think there's another aspect--seeing a female character raped or threatened with rape is an easy way to activate righteous rage at the perpetrators in male viewers, heroic fantasies of protecting the weak and punishing the villains. In some cases child abuse can be used for this purpose too (and hopefully for most viewers child abuse isn't titillating), think of the Rorschach origin scene in the Watchmen movie for example. By contrast, I think seeing a male character get raped or sexually humiliated doesn't activate the same righteous power fantasies in most male viewers, instead it's a much more uncomfortable, squicky experience because male viewers can't help but identify somewhat with the character being raped (think of the rape scene in Deliverance and the audience reaction to it), as opposed to seeing them as a weaker "other" who needs to be defended with an exercise of male strength.
In the case of BSG I think this sort of thing is more the explanation for why only female characters have been threatened with rape--it's basically primarily a plot device to make viewers really hate the rapists and want to see them punished, which for example justified the scene of Helo and Tyrol running in and killing Sharon's rapist (if he had just been beating up Sharon I think viewers would have been more conflicted about whether Helo and Tyrol were justified in killing him). The purpose is to create black-and-white emotions which are fairly different from the conflicted, uncomfortable feelings that male viewers would experience if instead it was a male character that was a victim of rape. This is why I think it's bad writing, because the writers aren't really trying to get you to see what this experience would realistically be like from the perspective of the character who was actually raped, it's mainly rape-victim-as-plot-device.
“Soldiers *in combat* can get erections. That has nothing to do with actual arousal, it's just because the limbic system is dumb.”
“It actually happens far more often than you would think. It's just excruciatingly underreported for social reasons. (I've read of a male rape victim who said the police laughed at him.)”
Sharky, key parts of my original posts that were seemingly completely missed by several posters were; the “normally” part and the “sexual activity” part. (I’m talking about the mechanics of the action; I know there is a difference between rape and sex.) There are always, crazy, non-sexual examples.
I never said a man can’t get an errection against his will. I simply highly doubted that a woman could ever force a man, the same way a man could force a woman. To make a close comparison, the woman would have to force an errection AND make the man stay erect until he ejaculates. (Not that a male needs to ejaculate for him to rape a woman, I know that too. But if a man can force a woman until that point, if I’m wrong, the reverse should be true.)
I’m just not seeing the comparison. If there are actual documented cases, I’d be willing to rework my position. I heard of one story…one…on a talk show. The story seemed pretty farfetched. I understand issues of social stigma. But by 2009, there are some rather egalitarian societies out there. There must be a few rock solid cases out there.
And although I didn’t start this thread jacking, I’m going to try to let this die on the vine. Mr. Coates is very considerate to keep indulging us but I’m sure even he has his limits.
Deborah, I was wondering who would refer so selectively to that remark.
No, not everyone without a post-grad degree is LMC. Why don't you read my description of what characterizes the LMC again and get back to me. You may want to check the bit about the actual kinds of careers that I mentioned.
"Where they are willing to be edgy and where they aren't indicates the implicit (one might say 'unconscious,' but that underestimates the role of cultural models) understanding that they are making images for men to consume first and foremost."
This is the last time I'm repeating my argument, because at this point we're two ships passing in the night and you refuse to engage me in an actual discussion. In debate, I would say you're simply extending your kritik of the resolution, without having made any study of the subject or engagement with the arguments I or others have made.
"And Seth, what I'm saying isn't
'deconstructionist theory' - if you knew much about critical theory in the past 40 years, you would know that deconstruction is a technique. Maybe you mean 'poststructuralist theory.'"
Pardon my slippery verbiage. Deconstruction is a theory as well as a technique, and it was redundant to include that word. But you're engaging an ad hominem and missing the point: all that you're critiquing the IMDB summary of the show to prove (only to yourself) your presupposition of all men as cowards and rapists, and of all sci-fi fans as white male lower-middle class nerds. (And I'm middle-middle-class now, damnit! -_-)
Anyway, deconstruction accomplishes absolutely nothing concrete but to show that language is imprecise, assert that authors are nothing but self-flagellating regurgitators with no imagination, and that people say things differently than they intend to. Congratulations. You have successfully ruined storytelling. But you refuse to acknowledge that you're only reading into this what YOU choose to read as an audience, and some of that may happen to align with what the writer chose to write - or not. Deconstruction isn't an objective science, and you're crudely trying to shoehorn claims of fact into the subjective biases you carry with you.
"Okay, we're going to touch on the topic of rape, so we need a victim. Quick, someone find a woman."
I'm isolating this statement for its awe-striking lunacy, because I hope (and assume) it was a joke. You really, honestly think that that is how writers write? "Boys, this scene needs a little something. You know what that means: RAPE TIME!" Have you ever written anything fictional (aside from all your other comments, that is) - do you understand the concept of narrative? Of imagination? Of ingenuity?
Lemmy, I'm stepping back from this. I no longer suspect you're a troll, and I'm sorry if that pissed you off. But you're not going to convince me (or hopefully anyone else) with your critique, because the deconstruction you're applying is one against all storytelling - it's non-unique to BSG, and non-unique to television or sci-fi. Your point is really nothing more grandiose than that your tastes differ from mine, and this attempt at deconstruction is cute but isn't based on the show, at all. It would be much more nuanced and interesting to contemplate if you'd watch the entire series' run. BSG can be on-the-nose about plot points sometimes, but its morality and its inter-character (and intra-species) relationships are far more nuanced than you assume that men are capable of creating.
And again, almost everything that happens on the show happens for a reason that starts with the characters. It is warranted action (to the characters' motivations, not your perceptions of moral "justice"). That is one reason I am a fan of the writing and storytelling on BSG. You can peddle your meta-assumptions (assumptions of the show's content shaped by assumptions about men as a gender) until we're all bluer than Dr. Manhattan's third leg, but successful critiques require thorough understanding of the work at hand. And you're unable or unwilling to examine this work of pop art on its own merits (and in light of that, your "deconstruction" is merely whittling around the story or movie until you find a reason to dismiss it outright, and its creators as perverts, bigots, or dilettantes).
I hope someday you realize that this limitation on your worldview is self-imposed, or at least that you are able to look past those blinders enough now to at least enjoy some form of art that isn't made by smelly, rape-wanton men - even if none of it is ever storytelling, because you can't help thinking that all of it is somehow true. Surely I have my own blinders, to the extent that I'm a (gay) man, to the extent that I can take in a film or story as its own fictional thing, and don't try to strangle it the moment it provokes a reaction in me.
wtf: WTF? It's not a "casual standard threat" on the show in the slightest, and it's used as a weapon against women only by the most incorrigible, vile characters on the show. There is no vending machine in the mess hall that dispenses Rape Cola. There is no "rape coaster" theme park on the Cylon baseships. You just have no idea what you're talking about.
Jesse M.: Anything that happens in a show is a 'plot device.' It's not a pejorative. Make an argument here.
Is it easy to throw in and stir the pot? Yes. But when it's humans - Colonial guards, who are supposed to be the good guys - raping Cylon women, then it introduces a bit of *ahem* MORAL COMPLEXITY to the show. It uses the gut reaction of "rapists are awful people" to turn our expectations of how people in authority (or just the "civilized ape" of humanity in general) should behave. I don't think that can be so easily dismissed, because I think BSG does a clever job of making "good guys" do bad things and "bad guys" do good things.
Scott II: That Helo scene was most certainly rape, and it was most certainly one of the most Shakespearean moments on that show.
Brian made some v.v. good points as well. The objects of rape on the show are almost uniformly Cylon women, who along with the other Cylons are almost uniformly (up until this season) tortured, beaten, humiliated, and shamed because they are of the Cylon race and most of the Fleet still see them as nothing but the enemy.
If you folks had really seen the show, we'd be on to a discussion about the racial and religious commentary of the show, rather than this sick obsession with rape. Battlestar Rapelactica it is, I guess.
Anything that happens in a show is a 'plot device.' It's not a pejorative. Make an argument here.
You ignored the main argument of my post about how typically shows make use of the rape of females but not rape of males because the emotions the former provokes in male viewers are more simple, black-and-white, and self-righteous. And on a related note, if you're going to use rape as a plot device, at least use it for something more subtle than making the audience boo and hiss at the rapist (in the case of the raped Pega-six at least they took some time to show the long-term psychological damage that had been done to her). I don't really think the rape plots introduced much moral complexity to the show since the Pegasus leaders were pretty obviously fascistic villains, not sympathetic characters driven to do bad things by circumstances. Not that they weren't entertaining villains, but I never really felt any ambiguity about the fact that their actions were obviously wrong.
i09 has the definitive take-down of the Slate article: http://io9.com/5165920/the-men-who-make-battlestar-galactica-feminist
Jesse M: And you don't think the Pegasus crew were a good example of what Galactica and the rest of the fleet could've become if their leaders hadn't been Adama and Roslin? I think the lack of ambiguity, the lack of nuance, the lack of any hesitation to do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons is what set the Pegasus apart from the Galactica, and underscored the fragility of noble hearts. You're missing the point: the Pegasus as a ship was entirely separated from its humanity in more than just the physical way. It's not the most subtle point, but it's another bleak shade on the canvas that has been painted of our silly little species over time on the show.
Too much to catch up with so if I'm repeating something someone else said, apologies.
I'm not really any kind of feminist, but I think there's some truth in the criticism. The main thing for me being the Cylons. The female Cylons, all of them, are highly sexualized/seductive in a way the male Cylons just aren't. They seduce/love both men and women. Exempting D'Anna they tend to be downright needy for men. The male Cylons, not even Tyrol who some female viewers apparently do find attractive, are not precisely seductive in any way. Leoben is maybe closest to being like the females, he desperately wanted Starbuck to love him, but mostly he's seen as borderline loony and not as a kind of seductive/sexy figure.
It could be said this is because of the Cylons' espionage needs, (if you ignore their recently explained origins) but one of the Sixes seduced a female starship captain. Wouldn't it be just as likely, or moreso, that you could seduce a female starship captain with a guy than with a gal? I mean did they know 30/40 years in advance that the main female starship captain would be a lesbian?
A good deal of the Cylons seem to me to be playing on the, sometimes borderline pornographic, sexual fantasies of men. That the women are strong and dominating certainly doesn't go against that. In fact many of the female characters seem to fit a kind of dominatrix theme, right down to Caprica Six literally beating Tigh up before sexing him up. For the other kind of fantasy there's also a consensual three-way relationship that's two women plus Baltar and Baltar's harem. Except for a few scenes of guys in towels I don't think any female fantasies are really played to or at least not to the same extent.
At the same time I think they want to have it both ways. They want to play on adolescent male sexual fantasies and, simultaneously, critique or even condemn them. I'll have to admit sometimes that works, but it does make me queasy at times.
What mitigates this, in a way, is that the show is often simply misanthropic. The males aren't sex fantasies, but they're not ideal at all. Mostly they'd all be really screwed up, exempting maybe Helo, even if the genocide never happened. The Tigh/Adama friendship they tout has long involved a mix of alcohol and deep hurting. Individually Tigh and Adama are tormented people with histories of deep psychological dysfuncions. The men sometimes have "stereotyped male vices" as much as the women have stereotypes female ones. (Authoritarianism, excessive aggression, etc) In some ways the things I listed about the women are also commentaries on how perverse/disgusting men "really are" at base when robbed of civilization.
I have something of a love/hate view of this show. I find it addictive, but oftentimes I find its flirtation with gloom and misanthropy grating.
"Have you ever written anything fictional (aside from all your other comments, that is) - do you understand the concept of narrative? Of imagination? Of ingenuity?"
Yep! Although I'm not sure where my other comments are fictitious. Since they're... talking about physiology and the underreported state of male rape. And yes, that was meant to carry the point home with humor.
I believe you're simplifying a little too far; this isn't about your canon as a piece of entertainment/art. This is about a cultural phenomenon that many people are more than weary of that shows up again in your canon. It's about a show that says the same thing we've heard a million times before... just set on a different ship.
And yes, I have created a variety of situations and written about emotional abuse, sexual abuse, even a fanfic piece including torture. I do not see a situation where the setting and material force me to write rapes. It has to do with me being the author; I can write at my discretion. -.-
Also, a note on the internal logic. It's been asked before, but if the scene was set up to portray the mindset of "you can't rape a machine..." why were they? That seems to be mistaking the purpose behind rape (control) for the media one (attraction.) Which is, surprise, another bit of cultural misinformation women are tired of having broadcast.
Ta-Nehisi,
I don't watch BSG.It was on for a while here in Europe, but it is gone now. I did watch the original, back when, and that is sort of enough. So this is essentially not a thread for me.
But your point in general is very interesting. Can you please elaborate on what you want to say considering Spike Lee and Woody Allen and their female characters?
I just don't get what you mean...
Maybe it's my English... Sorry about that.
Daphne--I think the original series stopped a lot of people from giving the new BSG a chance. That's really a shame, as it has nothing to do, really, with the original, and is a thoughtful and mature series. I hope you'll give it a chance on DVD (where I think it holds up better than on a week-by-week basis).
TNC....women, children, minorities....and cylons.
What do these groups have in common?
Subordinate in power and control?
The cylons were built to be slaves, right?
Sharky darling, I was ranting at Lemmy, not you. I apologize if I didn't parse as I should have. Objectively, every instance that I can remember of rape on BSG is about control, and not attraction - not in the slightest. I'd love a counter-example from the show, but until someone gives one I still maintain that some of you dolphins are talking out of your blowholes.
And Sharky, I'm pleased as punch that you can write at your own discretion. I just find it amusing that you and other folks never allow anyone else their own discretion. Ultimately I grant that that's (obviously) your option as an audience member rather than showrunner, writer, or producer. But again, I want you to realize that that is your own personal choice - it's not some objective commandment of narrative, and to some people it seems as silly and absurd as refusing to write about genocide. Just because you don't want to see it and examine it doesn't mean others shouldn't/don't.
I'd love to know if you people kvetched this heartily about The Sopranos, in particular the turbulent life of Dr. Melfi - or about the women in Mad Men. If you protest whenever television shows and movies essentialize Muslim women into silent, supplicated ciphers wearing veils. Battlestar isn't those shows, but it is a character drama, and just because you ACTIVELY CHOOSE to ignore the nuance/moral ambiguity doesn't mean it isn't there. Peace ya'll; I've been watching Meet the Press and David Gregory and Newt Gingrich are hurting my head. I gotta get out of here... have a nice lazy Sunday, TNC peoples.
Daphne, I think the Spike Lee and Woody Allen references were toward both writer-director's tendencies to use female characters as plot devices, not active characters in their own right.
@sharky
The scene was not set up to portray a "you can't rape a machine" mindset. That was a legalistic justification for rape as well as a cover story for those who did not support rape but did not dare to oppose it either.
It was clearly perceived as rape by the characters. The writers made a point of showing a "human" rape victim distressed by macho talk about using the "machine" as a sex slave.
The ostensible purpose of the rape from the point of view of the perps was to "break her in" prior to making the victim available as the ship's sex slave.
The actual purpose, so far as I can make it, was fourfold: dehumanizing the victim, sadistic gratification, revenge and terrorism. Although the head rapist was portrayed as a control freak, the victim was already under total control in the first place so that could hardly have been a motive.
Public rape was reserved for "machines" but "people" (military and civilian) were executed without cause, tortured and publically humiliated under that commanding officer's reign of terror.
If anything, the scene was set up to portray a sadistic, authoritarian mindset. There were enough scenes doing the same thing that this one could have been avoided.
But the attempted rape was of course also a plot device.
I think the attempted rape allowed them to show a bit of the abuse process without showing anything too distasteful as well. The repeated raping of another character was a very important plot device but thankfully nothing was shown. Perhaps the writers felt they would make it more real for some viewers by showing something similar happening to another character.
They could obviously have written a different story which didn't involve rape. But that one did...
attraction or control?
Prior to the attempted rape scene under discussion, rapists have lines about how the attrative the victim is and how much fun they had with another.
In the other attempted rape scene that I remember, the perp is clearly sexually frustrated. If anything, it's the perp who is being controlled and enslaved.
I want to add more context to the rape scenes you mention in order to flesh-out a reading of them.
First of all, one must take into account that, from the point of view of the rapists, Athena and Gina (the 2 cylons whose rapes you describe) are machines, not women, and they're machines who contributed substantially to the genocide of the human race. Kara is a human, but the cylons imprison and attempt to inseminate her because they envy and wish to emulate human reproduction--a central conflict in the show. Kara's is a systematic and not a casual rape, and it is a different kind of rape altogether.
Gina became Admiral Cain's lover in order to infiltrate and sabotage the human military. Gina used sex in order to do violence; when they caught Gina, Cain responded by doing the same thing. Also, with both Gina and Athena, rape was used as part of a program of torture carried out to gather intelligence. In neither case is rape casual. And Gina, with the help of a human who is appalled by her rape, ultimately murders Admiral Cain.
Rape happens in war. Battlestar is a show about war between humans and machines. And the people who commit or attempt rape on the show are clearly, transparently bad guys. If you want a war show that ignores the horrors of rape, skirts the unequal way in which rape harms women, and forgets that rape is a central tool in the torturer's toolkit, then go watch Voyager, because at least you'll still be watching a good show.
With a bogus "war on terror" harming men, women, and trans people all over globe, I believe we need and deserve a drama that depicts what really happens in war. I'm happy the creators of Battlestar Galactica think so, too.
"If you want a war show that ignores the horrors of rape, skirts the unequal way in which rape harms women, and forgets that rape is a central tool in the torturer's toolkit, then go watch Voyager, because at least you'll still be watching a good show."
With all due respect, I find it incomprehensible that you would read my post--a post wherein I actually cite a rape scene I "liked"--and actually conclude that I'm arguing for scrubbing rape out of the series. I don't deserve your agreement. But I also don't deserve to be strawmanned. Like I said--we can debate all day. I'd simply ask that you respect the argument as I made it.
Comments from the peanut gallery aka husband: BSG could have been a lot better instead of the weekly soap. It was too narrow, too little space exploration and things like the Ship of Lights that Richard Hatch wanted to do. As far as the rape no comment.
You claimed the depiction of rape is too "casual" and is just "nihilism." I explained that by showing how rape unequally harms women and is a common torture technique, Battlestar actually works to effect a positive change at a critical moment.
You consistently claim you're being straw-manned by the comments to your post. I don't see where I said that you said rape can't be depicted, but I certainly see how you avoid discussion with every other commentator by doing an "i said, you said, don't disrespect me" game, which is the real strawman in this sinking-ship discussion.
Please, don't water-down feminism with knee-jerk off-text readings of some the realist stuff on television.
I definitely agree on the depiction of sexual assault in BSG. TV is a medium that, save for a very small number of exceptions (The Wire, Mad Men, and not much else) is 'gloriously and righteously dumb,' to paraphrase Fake-Lester Bangs. It just doesn't make sense to try to examine something as brutal, easily sensationalized, and triggering as rape on pretty much any normal TV show, BSG included.
TV writers: know your limits. Really. If you aren't absolutely sure that you can keep it from sliding into torture porn and trivialization, then don't do it. That includes you, Joss Whedon.
I think you're crazy for comparing Battlestar to The Wire and Mad Men, though. That's like taking every book you read and comparing it to Shakespeare, or expecting every meal to be filet mignon. I would love it if someone made a scifi/fantasy show with that level of writing and acting, but I'm not holding my breath.
"rape on BSG is about control, and not attraction" Seth
TR: Respectfully I think it's a bit of both. Offhand I can't think of any "plain-looking" character who's been raped on BSG. Maybe Starbuck, but I think that's even disputable. (Disputable as being rape, as such, as well as her being plain)
Granted part of that is because TV actresses very rarely are plain-looking, but the female characters raped are explicitly intended to be attractive. As someone else mentioned their looks are commented on by the rapists. Personally I do think it's possible the Pegasus boys saw the Cylons as something like sex-toys and did consider it to be sexual as well as revenge. (As mentioned there's a good deal of, fairly explicit, cases of characters mixing violence/hatred with sexual desire. Although not all who do that are male as Tory Foster does something like that to Baltar)
Granted for Cain, the woman who ordered the rape, it is just about control and vengeance. I think it's quite likely she found the Cylon-rapers repulsive, similar to guys who have sex with chickens or something, but useful for her control/vengeance deal.
And the other thing mentioned is it's very hard to know who to sympathize with in this series. Athena is fairly sympathetic, but she does assassinate the leader of a potential ally. Gina is a rape victim who earns some sympathy, but she's also a generally loyal and competent agent for the Cylon goal of wiping out humanity. Ultimately she does nuke an entire vessel killing many people and leading to their occupation. (Although the nature of the show makes it where I'm not sure wiping out humanity is necessarily seen as indefensible. To be honest oftentimes I found myself thinking that if this is humanity than the Cylons have a rational case for euthanizing it)
Anthony,
One way to avoid being charged with strawmanning is to quote what the person said, as opposed to summarizing. For instance, you write:
Here is your original post:
I interpret that as meaning I want "a war show that ignores the horrors of rape, skirts the unequal way in which rape harms women, and forgets that rape is a central tool in the torturer's toolkit." Is that fair a interpretation or isn't it? If not please, specifically point out what I've missed. With that interpretation I responded with the following:
I charged strawman because my original post does not say I'm looking for a show that ignores rape, nor does it say that "the depiction of rape is too "casual" and is just "nihilism." It says this:
Again, you don't have to agree with that. But I'd ask you to confront it. Point out, specifically, what you disagree with there. Or perhaps you don't disagree with that, maybe it's what I said in comments, like this:
Again, I think your summary ("You claimed the depiction of rape is too 'casual' and is just 'nihilism.'") falls short of what I actually wrote. My argument is that "awful happens in war" is a rather banal point--it's an ancient theme of literature going back to the Homer. Story is the engine. Story is what makes it new. Without that you have nihilism--or earnestness.
One last thing:
I don't think I even mentioned feminism in this entire piece. There's a reason for that--frankly, in this context, I don't much care about feminism. I just want to see a good story. There are a lot of people here who think BSG is exactly that, which is fine. I just want us to be sure about what we're arguing about. I can only do that if I read what you write. There's no point in yelling past each other.
Scott II:
TNC in reply:
That's the price you pay for talking about things people care about. I have never discussed anything where emotions are strong where the tone isn't a bit rugged. The tone gets "religious" or "political" or whatever non-empirical ethos you pick. I think the point is can we as a group take it without flying apart. I've "had words" with my wife, I still love her and still want the rest my life to be joined with her.
Fine. Let's play the quote game.
Excuse me, but you titled the piece "BSG and Gender Politics." I was using feminism and gender politics interchangeably, which isn't totally kosher because gender politics includes more than feminism, but either way my statement is and was this: I think you're watering-down gender politics in your a-contextual reading of the depiction of gender (and specifically sexual violence) in BSG, which I addressed by giving an in-text (close) reading of BSG (to which you never respond). In your comments, you seem to have left the post title, "BSG and Gender Politics," behind and taken up a different argument: violence in BSG is an aesthetic problem of bad writing. That's not the point I'm speaking to. Instead, I'm speaking to your political argument (which I go into below). If you didn't intend to and don't think you've made a political point, you need to rename the post.
Actually, this is precisely what you said:
And in fact this is your political point, and the one I'm interested in, because it's an a-contextual indictment of something that's actually positive (explained in my reading, which is also quoted below). You're entitled to what you think is good and bad writing. I'm not here to argue aesthetics. It doesn't bother me at all that you don't enjoy BSG.
These next two quotes seem to me to be the rest of your political point:
I don't mind you disliking the writing, but you have yet to show how the depiction of rape causes women to suffer. I'm arguing that it's helpful because
You rehash your point in your update:
To answer these quotes, let me point you back to my reading, which, unlike your writing, uses examples from the show:
Please do me the respect of responding to THIS PART of my writing, if you're familiar enough with the show that the examples are clear for you.
Now let's finish the quote game. At the risk of repeating myself repeating you, you said:
But actually you said in a comment:
Despite this contradiction, you for some reason said:
But actually, that's exactly what you wrote, as I've just displayed in quoting you. I know you're more proud of your point about aesthetics, but it's your political point I'm interested in. Discussing why we do or don't like something is, as you say, just opinion and something we can do all day. Discussing the politics of the show (the point of your post, if you really intended the title) is a little more firm and can be explored by a comparison of examples, which is all I'm trying to do. Can we agree on that?
Now, here's your infamous misreading of what I said:
Any fool can see you're deliberately misreading me here. I simply said if you can't appreciate the truly courageous way BSG exposes and undercuts the reality of sexual violence, then don't watch it, and don't mislead people about what BSG is doing, either. In this statement, I'm (I think clearly) rhetorically suggesting that you overlook the powerful, positive political impact of BSG's use of rape, and instead seem to think it's bad politics (please recall that you titled the post "BSG and Gender Politics"). (Titles count, you know.)
I just wanted to say that I--the Anthony that responded, briefly, to Daphne above--am not the same person as the anthony who tendentiously quotes TNC back at himself and reminds him of his post's title.
That is all.
Anthony,
Thanks for using blockquotes. I think you've made your case, and I've made mine. People can look through both and see what they find convincing and what they don't. You've made the case that I've "deliberately" misread you and that I'm "misleading people." That's your contention. I think I'll leave it to the readers to decide. I wouldn't want to misrepresent you anymore.