If you’re a Battlestar Galactica fan like I am, you’ll recognize instantly the scene I’m about to show you. It’s from just two episodes ago, so those of you still plowing through the season 2.5 DVDs, don’t read further.
I post it not just because it’s awesome, but because the advertisement that follows is the worst-placed ad in the history of history:
So full of fail. And that’s without even considering that the commercial is set to Rare Earth’s “I Just Want to Celebrate.”
(Via Sully)
I almost couldn’t believe that. Serious fail.
Oh god. The lyrics. The ‘soup’ exploding upwards. This . . . this is very wrong.
—Myca
Wow, that is the worse commercial placement I’ve seen in my entire life. NO commercial would have been good there, but that’s… stunning.
Oh wow. Wow. That’s fracked. Did this air nationwide or do sci-fi channel commercials vary by market? (I watch online).
I’ve actually been feeling really conflicted about this story development. From a writerly perspective I think it was expertly handled — very real, very “human,” very much something that might happen within this sort of situation and also risky… BSG never compromises its vision or plays it safe when it comes to its emotional realism…
But I also know that feminist critics have expressed a lot of discomfort with the number of strong women characters who have experienced violent deaths on this show, often in very visual and visceral ways, and I think this is a concern that needs to be voiced and heard. On the one hand, I think it’s a testament to the strength and complexity of this show’s women characters that their deaths often “mean more” to the audience or provide more “mileage,” storyline-wise… (also, much of this violence on this show happens within a complex enough critical space and within a complex enough political context that I think the show allows room for, maybe even actively invites, critical discussion about said violence) but on the other hand, I think it’s also a problematic reminder that women and women’s bodies continue to function as symbols in a way men’s bodies do not, and I think dramatic exploitation of that symbolism invariably reinforces patriarchy on some level…. (I’m not certain Lee Adama or Felix Gaeta or Gaelin Tyrol shooting themselves would not have the same kind of “impact”)… and no matter what attempt one might make to reclaim D’s action as an act of power or agency (she’s certainly not a 1-dimensional character), you can’t escape the visual of the show’s only woman of color blowing her brains out …and what does it mean to not only consume this image, but repost it here for ongoing consumption? I struggle with this.
Wow. I watched it without commercials the first time, so I find it funny, but wow.
Tim: Asians still qualify as PoC, last I checked. But you have a good point, it’s been a couple of seasons since we’ve seen anything close to that happening with a man.
Glad I muted the commercials…that’s just awful.
I want to respond to Tim and Doorshut, because they makes some good points, but I disagree with his ultimate conclusion.
First off, as Doorshut noted, Anastasia Dualla is not the only woman of color on the show, not unless Tory, Boomer, Athena, and all the nameless Eights were airlocked when I wasn’t watching. She was the only human left who was a WoC, but given how the show treats Cylons at this point, and the ambiguity as to what a Cylon is, I don’t see value in separating Grace Park or Rehka Sharma out of that group.
But the larger point I want to address is this:
But I also know that feminist critics have expressed a lot of discomfort with the number of strong women characters who have experienced violent deaths on this show, often in very visual and visceral ways, and I think this is a concern that needs to be voiced and heard.
I don’t disagree that female characters have met violent and messy deaths on the show; they have. What I disagree with is that those deaths and dismemberments have been more violent and visceral than that which the men have faced. Off the top of my head, I can think of the violence visited on Billy, Crashdown, Fisk, Garner, Cavil (by D’Anna) and Jammer — not to mention the continued reminders shown by Saul Tigh’s missing eye and Felix Gaeta’s missing leg — and stack it up next to Kendra Shaw’s sacrifice, Cally’s spacing, Dee’s suicide, the horror forced upon Gina Inviere, and Gina’s just revenge on Cain. The humans and Cylons in the BSG universe occupy a dangerous world.
Indeed, women die on the show often — but it is because they, like the men on the show, are at the tip of the spear. Kendra Shaw dies because she’s carrying out her mission to destroy the Cylons. Kat dies because she’s determined to prove her worth by getting all her ships through a radiation field, come what may. Mathias dies inspecting a damaged Heavy Raider. All women doing their duty, and paying the ultimate price for it; if it is startling, it is because those are deaths that would not bother us as much if, say, it was Fisk or Hot Dog or Fischer we were talking about.
And consider Dee’s death. She’s almost nonchalant about it, isn’t she? Strong, resolute, filled with purpose — dead. Compare that to Bill Adama, who is pushed to the same brink that Dee is, the same desire to end it all, to jump in the river and drown. His actions aren’t shown as strong; they’re shown as weak. Weaker than Dee, I daresay. He tries to goad his XO into doing his dirty work for him, lacking the grace and ability simply to say goodbye on his own terms.
This is not to say that there are not valid critiques of BSG from a feminist perspective. The first and most obvious is simply that the show indulges the male gaze to no end. There’s no reason that a random Eight on a Basestar should be doing naked yoga, other than that Grace Park is an attractive woman that heterosexual men and homosexual women like to look at. There’s no reason that Anders couldn’t be doing naked yoga, except that the show doesn’t swing that way, or at least, not enough.
And the show does pull its punches when it comes to Starbuck’s sexuality; while there is plenty of talk of Kara being the same kind of happy bed-hopper that Gaius Baltar is, we see much more of Baltar’s exploits. This is not because of the male gaze; this is because to show Kara having casual sex would damage her in the eyes of some viewers, make her “slutty.” So instead, we have Anders tell Lee that Kara’s infidelity with him wasn’t the first, and one random pairing of Kara with Gaius — and a whole lot of talk.
That said, I would still put BSG in the upper echelon of reasonably feminist programs on television. This is a show in which women are routinely in charge — from Pres. Roslin to Adm. Cain to Kendra Shaw to Starbuck to the Sixes to D’Anna — and a society which is pretty egalitarian from a gender standpoint. It’s a show that takes a hard and clear stance against sexual violence (and condemns to death those who perpetrate and encourage it), a show that is full of heterosexual lust — and, as we’ve seen thanks to the recent Felix-Hoshi pairing and the Gina-Cain pairing, a show where homosexual relationships aren’t considered anything out of the ordinary. It’s not perfect. But for the state of art in the early 21st century, it does pretty darn well.
Jeffe,
Unfortunately, I think you are wrong about homosexual relationships not being treated as out of the ordinary. While there is some implication in the show that homosexual relationships are not disapproved of in the fiction world (although Saul’s response to Hoshi in the webisodes struck me as being ambiguous as to what he was uncomfortable with), it is certainly not the case that the show treats homosexual relationships as not out of the ordinary. Out of uncountably many romantic relationships the show has shown, there are only two examples of homosexual relationships, both of which occurred in minor cannon (“Razor” and “Face of the Enemy”), neither of which has so far been referenced in the primary on-going cannon. If Felix and Hoshi’s relationship becomes a significant part of the remaining episodes, that will hugely improve the show’s record on handling of homosexual relationships, but if Hoshi or Gaeta is killed off in the next few episodes, that will be a distinct and final black eye for the series in relation to portraying homosexual relationships.
I think I disagree with both Jeff and Tim, about what makes a feminsit show. To me what makes drama feminist is that portrays the women’s realities and shows or allows for the possibility for collective resistance to improve those realities.
So unlike Tim I don’t necessarily object to the graphic and brutal ways women’s bodies are treated on the show. Because women’s realities are often brutal. A lot of the violence against women on BSG is gendered. Callie’s death* was placed in a context of the unequal division of reproductive labour – a context that kills women every day. The way Pegasus six was treated was brutal, but rape is brutal. Kat’s position in life before she joined galactica was strongly gendered, and her experience was shown in that context.
However, I absolutely reject Jeff’s suggestion that showing women in positions of power in any way makes drama feminist (having Margaret Thatcher in a position of power didn’t make British reality feminist).
I also don’t think it shows an egalitarian world. The colonies had a rape culture, and reproductive labour was clearly unfairly divided (two things that I see as the pillars of our unequal gender order). In fact, I see the gender order on BSG to be directly imported. The main difference between that world and ours is that there appears to be no resistance to it. The president was able to outlaw abortion by fiat and while we later learned that there were protests those protests didn’t interest any of the characters we saw.**
And you can explain it – most of these characters are military and that’s not a place where you get far if you fight back. But that’s fundamentally why I don’t think this show has a feminist fingernail. Because not only is there no space for the possibilty that women could collectively resist, there is very little interest in relationships between women.
Of the relationships that are most important to the show none are between women, (except relationships between cylons that take place entirely in the cylon world. Even since they’ve joined the fleet we’ve seen less of teh relationships between the sixes, the eights and Lucy Lawless). I don’t think either episode of this half season has passed the mo movie measure (unless you count D talking to Hera, which I don’t, because it’s not a conversation) and this isn’t rare (unless extensive time takes place on the cylon ships.
When relationships between women do interest the writers (and it is rare) they tend to be hostile or destructive such as Kat and Starbuck and Kendra and Pegasus Six. I’m not adverse to exploring these sorts of relationships, at all, however I do object when these sorts of relationships are the only ones between women that are deemed to be worth showing us.
That the only place that I can think of where women talk about their shared experience as women is on the webisodes Resistance demonstrates how peripheral these experiences are to the shows concerns.
* And don’t even get me started on Callie’s death – frak I hate the chief.
** And the arguments made during that episode were unbelieveably stupid and showed that no one making the argumetns (and probably writing the episode) had any idea of the actual reality of abortion. Namely that outlawing abortion doesn’t make it any less common.
Isn’t Joan Holloway supposed to prevent this kind of ad placement? Oh, right, they gave her job to an unqualified man.
Just to add to this thought. In particular, while women occasionally rise to positions of power in the BSG universe they are in no way equally represented there. More than that in every workplace we have seen ( I’m thinking: the fighter pilots, the knuckle draggers, central command, the tilium ship, and I’m thinking the quorum, although that’s stretching the defintion of workplace) many more men are shown working there than women. Since we have to assume that the gender balance of survivors is roughly equal (otherwise presumably we would have heard something) there must be women dominated work all over the fleet. But the show has decided women’s work in thsi world isn’t interesting or important enough to include.
Going back to the ad placement, total fail. You might want to post a violence warning on it too for the unsuspecting.
Maybe a distinction should be made between a feminist tv show concerned about women’s roles in society, which I don’t think is something BSG cares much about, and a show with interesting female characters which BSG certainly has.
That said, I don’t think that we’ve seen many more men working then women. I haven’t counted extras, but among characters I can name it seems like a 60/40 split. Which, as Jeff said, “It’s not perfect. But for the state of art in the early 21st century, it does pretty darn well.”
BTW, does anyone else think that Razor comes close to passing a reverse Mo Movie measure? All the conversations between the Adamas in it seem to revolve around either Starbuck, Shaw or Cain:-)
Namely that outlawing abortion doesn’t make it any less common.
The show acknowledges that in the most recent episode; Doc Cottle, while talking to Tyrol, notes that while abortion is illegal “there are things that can be done,” or something to that effect — essentially admitting that he’s continued to provide the services whatever the law. At any rate, I thought Amanda Marcotte got this one right some time ago, when she talked about this being another in the series of Battlestar civil liberties vs. security arguments, which has bounced from everything from religion to free speech to abortion. And while abortion was ultimately outlawed on the show, nobody seemed to be confused that it was anything other than surrendering a basic civil right in the name of survival. (Indeed, Roslin paid a price for it; outlawing abortion opened the door for Gaius Baltar’s presidential challenge, a challenge he won.)
Maybe a distinction should be made between a feminist tv show concerned about women’s roles in society, which I don’t think is something BSG cares much about, and a show with interesting female characters which BSG certainly has.
Agreed. I don’t think BSG is an overtly pro-feminist show insofar as it’s not a show about gender issues. That said, when it does hit on gender topics, it is usually (though not always) on the side of the angels. Yes, the show has an imperfect and, to some extent, sexist society. But that’s more because the society is based on our own than anything else; where there’s fault, it’s because the show echoes our own world too closely.
BTW, does anyone else think that Razor comes close to passing a reverse Mo Movie measure? All the conversations between the Adamas in it seem to revolve around either Starbuck, Shaw or Cain:-)
Razor really might fail the reverse Bechdel test, because, as noted, all of the conversations between Lee and the Admiral are about Kendra Shaw or Starbuck, at least in part. I think that there’s enough of Bill and Lee talking about command philosophy for it to pass, but it’s close.
Jeffe,
The problem with the abortion episode was that it made zero sense. Even ignoring that outlawing abortion doesn’t decrease abortions, in a situation where the leading cause of death is violence, and much of that is in the form of entire ships being blown up, having extra babies doesn’t help the situation. If the rate of death is such that the currently living population is going to all be dead in a decade due to being killed by cylons, it isn’t going to help to have had a bunch of extra kids get born and then get killed off along the way. Likewise, extra kids means extra mouths to feed, which means running out of food that much faster, something that has the potential to kill the entire population. And extra kids means adults who could be refining tillium or training as fighter pilots are instead required to take care of kids.
The reason that humanity is at risk is because the cylons are killing everyone, not because of a baby shortage. If the fleet finds a safe refuge within several decades, there will be plenty of people young enough to have kids. If it doesn’t then it doesn’t matter if the fleet has a few hundred extra babies around to die of starvation when the fleet runs out of food, or to be killed when the cylons blow up their ships.
The abortion episode was, like the show’s fondness for torture, part of the script writers wanting to show the characters making tuff choices, no matter how nonsensical that meant the scripts had to be.
The next generation is not nonsense to the Galactica fleet, Charles. Your arguments about the difficulties of raising babies under present conditions are valid, but I think you’d be reaping short term savings at a crippling long term cost. Children are essential to any people’s survival, to these people more than anyone.
Their prime is being killed off by the dozen, by the hundred and by the thousand, and the ones that aren’t killed are aging. Old people mean extra mouths to feed, too. If the fleet can maintain a body of young adults they might manage to keep them alive in spite of being unproductive, while a population teetering under a top-heavy age demographic will find euthanasia looking increasingly attractive.
They can’t afford to think they might all get killed anyway and they can’t afford to think a safe harbor is just going to appear before them, and they can’t afford to bank on the cylons leaving them in peace long enough for it to do them any good. Whether they find a harbor tomorrow or spend the rest of their lives in space, the safety of the human race may depend upon a generation being born in their present.
I must be missing something else, too. I confess I don’t understand how does a society where the highest ranking political leader, the highest ranking military officer, the ships top two fighter aces and limitless marines, engineers, superior officers and knuckle draggers are women without (as far as I can see) a trace of resentment from men, can be argued a sexist society. How can it even be in question?
Maco,
New born babies won’t become young adults for 15 years (by a generous definition of young adults). In 15 years (as Baltar explains), at the current rate of casualties (in the second season), everyone in the fleet will be dead. Long before 15 years, the fleet will be destroyed by wear and tear and attrition of the ship. What they most can’t afford to do is pretend that the current conditions are sustainable in any way over a decade long haul. The fleet will not survive another 15 years of continuous warfare without resupply, no matter how many babies they have in the next year. That is clearly presented as the reality of the situation, and any planning that ignores that reality is dangerous to the survival of the humanity.
On the sexism of the society, as Maia explained, the society is clearly and explicitly a rape culture. It immediately establishes an enslaved prostitute class, the crew of the Pegasus is comfortable participating in systematic gang rape of the enemy and brags about it in specifically sexual terms. The president is a woman only because the entire hierarchy above her was killed in the war, and she is initially treated dismissively by Adama (and by Doral) because she is a “school teacher” (when she hasn’t been a school teacher in years). While the military does include women in combat positions, and has for long enough to have a female admiral (although she is only the highest ranking military officer by the loss of everyone above her, she is not the head of the Navy), it is clear that the military is predominantly male, and command positions within the military are even more predominantly male. Are there any women in CiC on the Galactica or the Pegasus besides Dualla and Cain? Certainly there aren’t many. The head of the deck crews on both ships are men, the XO’s are both men, the 2nd officers are both men. The original CAGs are both men. The head of engineering on the Galactica is a man. The majority of the Quorum are men. The main doctor character is a man (but his nurses are mostly women).
The Colonies are certainly less sexist than the US in the 1950’s, and in a few respects (women in combat positions, unisex bathrooms, that’s all I can think of) may be less sexist than the modern US, but it is certainly not portrayed as a non-sexist society.
Charles: New born babies won’t become young adults for 15 years (by a generous definition of young adults). In 15 years (as Baltar explains), at the current rate of casualties (in the second season), everyone in the fleet will be dead.
Baltar predicted at the current rate of casualties and at their current rate of replacement, humanity will become extinct. If fifty thousand people are killed over the next fifteen years, but fifty thousand people are also born, humanity will not go extinct.
Fifteen years may seem like too long a time in the future to worry about but it is short sighted to ignore it. The future is going to come and they are going to need people when it does. The only new blood they’ll have will be whatever is born in their present. Even if everyone had children I doubt any function in the fleet would feel adequately staffed, and lack of bodies has consequences; for lack of a pilot a raider launches a nuke into the fleet. For lack of a medic a wounded soldier dies on the deck. For lack of relief, a tillium miner works himself to death.
And the presense of children is psychologically valuable. As gloomy as their lives are, I can only imagine it infinitely more depressing to have no one to look at but people aging and dying and crumbling under endless labor and threat of death. But Hera’s adopted mother looked radiant for a refugee.
What they most can’t afford to do is pretend that the current conditions are sustainable in any way over a decade long haul. […] dangerous to the survival of the humanity.
I disagree. What they most can’t afford to do is believe they have no future.
The president is a woman only because the entire hierarchy above her was killed in the war, and she is initially treated dismissively by Adama (and by Doral) because she is a “school teacher” (when she hasn’t been a school teacher in years)
No, the presidency fell to the secretary of education only because the entire hierarchy above her was killed in the war. The presidency did not fall to a woman only because the entire hierarchy above her was killed in the war. Sheesh.
Do you think Adama would not have dimissed a male secretary of education? Ask yourself if the (then) widely-acclaimed genius Gaius Baltar, or the (then) popular PR officer Doral had assumed the presidency instead of Roslyn if he’d have been properly deferential and receptive to their advice as the Cylons were nuking the colonies. I don’t see it.
While the military does include women in combat positions, and has for long enough to have a female admiral (although she is only the highest ranking military officer by the loss of everyone above her, she is not the head of the Navy)
Yes, she’s the highest ranking officer now that every officer above her is dead. Why does it have to be more than that?
it is clear that the military is predominantly male, and command positions within the military are even more predominantly male.
I don’t think the existense of a gender dispary equates to sexism. What if every woman who wants to join the military were to join, and women are still outnumbered by men? If women are even slightly less attracted to that kind of lifestyle, it means fewer women than men will join, and fewer of those who join will go the necessary distance to reach the upper echelons.
Charles S., you’re right that Battlestar does not show a perfectly egalitarian society. But that’s precisely because it’s modeled on our society. It’s meant to be reflective of our world, and that necessarily means that there will be some sexism in it.
That said, gender politics in the show tend to appear to be where ours would be in, say, 10-15 years. No, rape culture isn’t eliminated, and prostitution still exists. Yes, during war, people are turned loose to use rape as a weapon (by, incidentally, a female commanding officer).
But the society is more egalitarian than ours, at least slightly. There are women in combat, flying combat fighters, commanding the equivalent of aircraft carriers and fleets. That’s ahead of where we are now. Roslin is, yes, the Secretary of Education. But at one point in the miniseries, she’s talking to a more senior minister who is also female; the objection to Roslin is never that she’s a woman, but that she was 43rd in line for the presidency. Consider if through disaster, Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, became president. How “legitimate” would he seem? How qualified would you think a guy whose major job experience was running Chicago’s schools would be to lead a country crippled by a genocidal nuclear attack?
When Starbuck takes charge as CAG for Galactica, nobody thinks that it’s a bad idea because she’s a woman. (They might think it’s a bad idea because she’s Starbuck, but that’s a different thing). When Cain reappears, nobody objects to Cain because she’s a woman; they object to her because she’s heavy-handed and dictatorial.
I’ve never said that gender politics on Galactica are perfect, and frankly, they won’t be — any art created out of our society is going to have gender issues. How could it not? But by the standard of our art, the series does pretty well. Certainly, I’d put BSG up against Star Trek or Star Wars or pretty much any other science fiction series you can name; on feminism (and a whole lot else), it comes out ahead.
Jeffe,
I don’t think I disagreed with anything you are saying. The abortion episode was a senseless POS, it demonstrated that the portrayed society is sexist, and it demonstrated that the show runners have no interest in exploring feminist resistance to sexist oppression. I pointed out the first of those points because I hate that episode for the writers’ shoddy work thinking through the situation, not because Roslin is demonstrated to be a tool of the patriarchy. It is up there with Black Market on the list of bad BSG episodes. I don’t have any problem with Roslin being a tool of the patriarchy, plenty of women are, particularly women in positions of power.
To the extent that BSG can be argued to be feminist, it is not because the depicted society is marginally less gender restrictive than our own. I don’t think that imagining a marginally less sexist society is a major achievement (all of the Star Trek series imagine a much less sexist society than our own or than the BSG culture). I do think that BSG can be applauded for having more and better female characters than other scifi tv shows and movies (to the extent that that is an accurate claim), although, as Maia pointed out, the show has to be faulted for lacking any significant positive relationships between female characters (Roslin’s relationship with the priest in the early seasons, and some of the relationships between female cylons in the third and fourth seasons are the only ones that come close) and there is simply nothing on a par with the main heterosexual and male homosocial relationships.
The show can also be faulted for not actually being concerned with women resisting sexist oppression, particularly since it does show that the collapse of society within the fleet produces greater sexist oppression (abortion ban, increase in forced prostitution), as well as class oppression and ethnic/religious oppression. We have seen resistance to class oppression highlighted several times, and resistance to ethnic/religious oppression maybe once or twice (done badly, as I recall), but I’m drawing a blank at portrayals of resistance to sexist oppression being highlighted.
I like the show a lot, and I think it has some excellent female characters (it is a sad thing that scifi shows get points for that), but I think it is hard to see it as any sort of major accomplishment in feminist scifi television programing. Buffy kicks it ass and the Star Trek series were comparable in having major female characters and a nominally less sexist society and little interest in, or understanding of, feminism.
Maco,
I should drop this, but I have a hateful obsession with the logical/demographic/statistical errors of that episode.
Consider:
Baltar estimates that the current mortality rate means everyone will be dead within 15 years.
Baltar suggests that increasing the birth rate will counteract this.
The overwhelming cause of death in the fleet is violence, mostly inflicted on either entire ships or on sections of ships. The entire population (or a percentage) of the people within a ship or part of a ship are killed during an attack. If there are ten people in a ship, they die. If there are twenty people in the same ship, they still die. If each ship in the fleet increases its population by an extra ten babies, then, when one of those ships is destroyed, those ten extra babies die as well. Increasing the birth rate increases the death rate.
If babies are restricted to the least vulnerable ships, then the eventual population of the fleet will overwhelmingly be made up of small children, who are incapable of performing the necessary functions of the fleet. If, 15 years from now, the fleet population is made up of children under 15, then the fleet will all be dead shortly thereafter.
One of the greatest dangers the fleet faces is that at some point it will run out of food or water (this is explicitly shown multiple times). Those situations have the potential to kill everyone in the fleet, no matter what the population is. Increasing the population doesn’t help to protect against these incidents, instead it increases the frequency of these incidents (since children eat food and drink water).
Another risk the fleet faces is that much of the population is horribly overworked, leading to disastrous accidents. Taking care of babies is additional work, decreasing the number of people available to carry out the other critical jobs, leading to an increase in exhaustion, leading to an increase in deadly accidents.
Forcing women to give birth will not substantially increase the birth rate, and increasing the birth rate will not save the fleet. The only thing that will save the fleet is resolving the crisis, and forcing women to give birth will not help to solve the crisis.
It isn’t a question of the fleet acting as though it has no future, it is a matter of the fleet recognizing that the current situation is unsustainable over the long-term, and that the primary mission, after immediate day-to-day survival, has to be to resolve the on-going crisis, and find a habitable planet where they are free of cylon attack. Having extra babies in no way helps to achieve that goal.
Furthermore, if an increased birth rate is important, then Roslin could have imposed increased rations for new parents, reduced work hours for new parents, increased access to recreation for new parents, etc. There are plenty of ways to achieve a (useless, counter-productive) increase in births in the fleet without resorting to forced pregnancy and forced births. The solution offered in the show was both tuff and stupid.
Charles, I think your decisions are not optimal. You trade large gains for weak gains and I don’t think the BSG fleet can afford that.
Sparing a mother’s discomfort by losing the contribution of her living child to build, lead, defend, and provide for the fleet is one of them. To the resource-strapped fleet, I imagine that even failing to recycle a pop can carries a legal penalty and you might be shot for dumping a repairable engine part. What are they compared to a human?
I know that if a woman really feels she has to, she will find a way to end the pregnancy. They have a black market. They have drugs. They have homeopathic medicines that I’m sure can induce abortion, and I doubt Cottle will blow anyone’s whistle, so if a woman just has to do it, I know it will get done. Nor do I imagine the legality of abortion for valid medical reasons are threatened.
Another risk the fleet faces is that much of the population is horribly overworked
But you spared the fleet the burden of child care by sacrificing the lifetime of general labor that the child could have provided.
If babies are restricted to the least vulnerable ships, then the eventual population of the fleet will overwhelmingly be made up of small children […] the fleet will all be dead shortly thereafter.
It could come to that, though I doubt they will unthinkingly sacrifice so many adults for the sake of so many children that the fleet functions are compromised. If necessary, they would sacrifice some of their children before losing so many adults that the fleet can’t be held together, but that itself underscores the need for having sufficient children.
Basically, the human race’s ability to protect and regenerate itself and the cylon’s ability to attack and attrit the human race are in competition. If the cylons are still attacking them in thirty years, either in space or on some planet, it will either be a humanity that has been weaving new members into the fabric of its society for thirty years, or it will be a humanity that hasn’t been because they were waiting to find a safe haven. For lack of one thread…
Your image of a fleet full of infants reminded me of something. I once watched a movie about two rural children orphaned in post WW-II Japan. A ten year old boy became solely responsible for himself and his five year old sister with no money or home or resources, although he did have access to a few hidden cache’s of food his parents were wise enough to hide. He did his best, he conserved, he worked, he nurtured her, fought off scavengers and thieves, but she eventually died of a sickness brought about by poor living conditions, though he sold his last untapped cache of food for money for a doctor. I think he died of sickness himself, or grief, I don’t remember, but for a while he did very well, and it struck me that children are very able if they have to be. They can work, fight, and build nearly as well as any adult, and if their survival depends on it they will. So if the fleet scratches its way to a new home with a population that is 95% underage, it might make it.
Roslin could have imposed increased rations for new parents
I’m sure Roslyn makes sure their children are given food.
reduced work hours for new parents, increased access to recreation for new parents, etc.
Within their ability to provide it. They don’t have a lot to offer. We’ve always heard the stories of how a previous generation had to make sacrifices for the high quality of life we enjoy today, but I don’t think you realise that they may be that generation. It may be that getting their children to a safe haven will cost them everything they have to give.
There are plenty of ways to achieve a (useless, counter-productive) increase in births in the fleet without resorting to forced pregnancy and forced births.
No one mentioned, or appears to be considering, forcing pregnancy. And children are not useless. Maybe, now that they have Cylon allies, they’ll find a way to clone themselves and D/L their memories into a thousand copies apiece. Then this whole discussion is moot.
Thanks for debating it with me though. Perhaps I just put myself too much in their place, or you not enough. You watch the show, but judge their actions as a 21st-century American.
Maco,
You buy the writers’ sloppy and false construction of how mortality is operating in the fleet. If you blithely accept their nonsense as fact, then you get to the more interesting discussion of “What is to be done.” My objection is to the shabbily done scientificalizing that was used to construct the scenario so that the main characters could make the “tuff” decision to prioritize survival over human rights. The scenario was bullshit, so I fail to give a damn about the handling of the “tuff” question. The writers failed entirely to make me believe that there is any way in which banning abortion was even faintly relevant to the survival of humanity in the show, so the “which would you choose?” question falls flat on its face.
I doubt I can convince you of that, and there is no reason you would want to be convinced, and you certainly aren’t going to convince me that the episode rational didn’t suck, so we should probably leave it at that.
Jeff,
By the way, rewatching the miniseries and the start of season 1 this last week, I realized that you are right about Adama’s response to Roslin becoming president. It is much less clearly sexist than I had remembered. My recollection, soon to be refreshed, is that Tighe retains a more clearly sexist opposition to Roslin for a much longer period, but Adama rapidly switches over to recognizing her as the president in the section that I’ve watched so far.
While he acts to limit the president’s power even in first season (in the part I haven’t rewatched yet), it is clear from later events that that has more to do with his lack of interest or belief in civilian authority over the military than it does with a specific lack of respect for a female president.
You buy the writers’ sloppy and false construction of how mortality is operating in the fleet. If you blithely accept their nonsense as fact, then you get to the more interesting discussion of “What is to be done.”
Sorry. You seem to buy the writers’ sloppy and false construction of how humans would compare to machines in point-and-shoot combat, so I assumed you accepted their paradigm as written, else what is the use of debating the correctness of their actions?
The original Galactica handled this same question but in a better way. They showed children scurrying around and let us assume things are all working out.
No, I reserve the right to accept the premise of the show and still reject as uninteresting and meaningless particularly sloppy and poorly conceived episodes within the show. Specifically, I find discussion of the moral and ethical questions raised by particularly poorly thought out episodes to be null. If they can’t structure the episode in a manner that makes the scenario set up for the exploration of the ethical question a coherent scenario, then for me there is no interesting ethical question raised.
Particularly in relation to questions of surrendering basic rights for some supposed greater good, for me one of the first and most important questions to ask is “Is this sacrifice of basic rights absolutely necessary to achieve this supposed greater good?” If the answer is no, then there is no need to explore whether the specific basic right is worth surrendering for the specific greater good proposed. If the show sets up a scenario in which a basic right must be surrendered for a greater good, but there are huge, gaping holes in the premise that giving up this basic right would actually help to achieve this greater good, then I am forced to stop at the first question and declare the scenario a failure for exploring the question of whether this would be a trade worth making. Particularly dumb complex ethical questions just aren’t a good basis for working out anything interesting.
On the other hand, I haven’t watched that episode in some time, so I can’t recall how much credibility the show attaches to Baltar’s demographic analysis. If it isn’t actually given a huge weight of certainty by the script, then I think this episode becomes better. One of the central points of the show, from the miniseries to the most recent episodes is that people in power manufacture Tuff Decisions for their own benefit. A significant aspect of the show is a critique of the US under Bush post-9/11. As a country, we traded away basic civil liberties on a lie that that would make us safe, that that was necessary to make us safe. Every time the ruling characters in the show claim that they must make the Tuff Decision and sacrifice someone else’s needs for the greater good, we should not assume that they are right, or even that they are acting in good faith.
Returning to the question of rejecting some nonsensical things even though I suspend disbelief for other nonsensical things, note also that the combat capabilities of Cylon raiders and Centurions is something that has remained relatively stable over the series. There may be some episodes where they suddenly start shooting like Storm Troopers, but I can’t think of any episodes where that is core to the premise of the episode. Likewise, the inexplicable ability of the fleet to successfully resupply most of the time remains relatively stable through out the series. I may think that the fleet should be out of irreplaceable key resources by now or that the Raiders should have been much more successful in shooting down vipers all along, but the show declares over and over that that is not the case. I can either accept the show’s declarations or I can give up on the show. I like the show and neither of those nonsensical points (nor the existence of FTL drives, for that matter) are central to the thematic or narrative interest of the show, so I accept those nonsensical points and move on. The show isn’t about how cyborg robots aren’t hugely more capable in combat than humans, it isn’t about how a small fleet of extremely technologically advanced ships would be able to carry a sufficient supply of irreplaceable parts to be able to survive without resupply for several years, these are just background conveniences.
On the other hand, Baltar’s explanation of the demographics of the fleet in the abortion episode is directly contradicted by what is shown about how people in the fleet die in almost every other episode. Baltar’s demographic prediction is wrong within the internal consistency of the series. In order to discuss whether the Tuff Decision Roslin made was the right decision, I am forced to consider whether this particular convenience that the writers introduced fits with anything they have established previously. In order to debate the questions the episode attempts to raise, I have to actively accept that the thing the episode treats as true fits within the world that the show has established. The demographic question becomes central to the thematic and narrative point of the episode. To accept that Baltar’s prediction of the effect of banning abortion is accurate, I have to reject what I am shown in every other episode. Instead, I choose to believe that that particular episode was poorly conceived and executed. I’m happy to accept nonsense that is necessary for the series, but I’m not willing to accept nonsense that is required for a single episode and is nonsense in relation to the series consistency, not just in relation to our reality.
No, I reserve the right to accept the premise of the show and still reject as uninteresting and meaningless particularly sloppy and poorly conceived episodes within the show.
I do too. I’ve had to do so more often than I’d like with this show. When it began, I never would have thought it could end after only four seasons and I’d have no regrets, but its fascinating and thrilling aspects are mingled with so much emo baggage, contrived plots (as you said) and absurd turnabouts that I won’t miss it much.
To accept that Baltar’s prediction of the effect of banning abortion is accurate
Oh! I see! But Baltar didn’t make a prediction about the effect of banning abortion. He only predicted that at their present rate of loss, the human race will be extinct within the present generation. Roslyn used that as a factor in her decision.
I don’t believe Roslyn or Baltar think “banning abortion will save humanity”, but I do believe that she believes that End Game is too close to gamble on losing any life that they don’t have to.
how a small fleet of extremely technologically advanced ships would be able to carry a sufficient supply of irreplaceable parts to be able to survive without resupply for several years
I can’t resist. Geek time. The fleet includes agricultural, mining, processing and industrial fabrication ships, and they established an immense underlying reliability in their design in “33” when after jumping every half hour for five days the fleet hadn’t lost anyone, and in the escape from New Caprica, when they revved up and took off without a hitch after two years cold shutdown. If it weren’t for cylon attrition, and assuming they occasionally mine for resources like tillium and water, I’d wager the fleet could be maintained for generations.
Your image of a fleet full of infants reminded me of something. I once watched a movie about two rural children orphaned in post WW-II Japan . . . it struck me that children are very able if they have to be. They can work, fight, and build nearly as well as any adult, and if their survival depends on it they will.
Sorry Maco, but I feel compelled to point out that the reference you’re making here is incorrect. The movie you are talking about is Grave of the Fireflies, and the children in that movie die because the young boy proves incapable of making wise long-term decisions that would ensure their survival. He places pride above access to crucial resources that would have saved both of their lives, and ultimately is just too immature to handle the responsibility of caring for his sister. Their deaths were not inevitable due to a lack of resources, their deaths were the result of the boy’s poor decision-making skills, which in turn were the result of his age and lack of maturity. He really didn’t do the best that he was physically capable of doing, which the author of the original semi-autobiographical story that the film is based on has attested to in interviews.
Possibly, oliemoon. I agree with your interpretation of the movie. Very tragic to watch it happen, knowing it could have been avoided. I intended to suggest children can do more than some of us think, not that they can survive without guidance. In the passage you quoted I supposed there were some surviving adults, and a percentage of the underage population to be in the 14-18 range.