BSG Finale--Brief Comments

[arguchik]

So I was generally satisfied with the ending to the show. I thought they wrapped up the narratives for all of the major characters pretty well. I like how they left it.

Except for one thing--and this extends a critique of racial politics in the show that I've been developing for quite awhile. I've posted this comment to a discussion forum that I belong to, and have received the expected responses: "Yeah, that troubled me too." and "Cut them some slack. It wasn't intentional." (The latter type of response outnumbers the former by about 2:1.)

Did they really need to knit BSG history into our earth history by dropping a bunch of white people into the middle of Africa, and then implying that a half white, half Asian/cylon child is the Mitochondrial Eve of all humanity? This amounts to an ethnic cleansing of our theories of the deep, evolutionary history of the human species: it is like...reassuring white people that "they" contributed to our early development as a species too. In the scene where the line of BSG characters (Tigh, Galen, Adama Sr., Lee, and Hoshi...I think--all men, you'll notice) is observing the passing group of...presumably Homo erectus or Australopithecus people...they actually say, "our DNA is compatible with theirs--we can interbreed with them." As viewers, we are meant to feel good about this eventuality, to feel as if this offers a chance at rebirth, new life, for the people we have come to love and to identify with, over 4.5 seasons. However, I have to point out that the logic being expressed here is the same logic that Thomas Jefferson employed, in his treatise advocating that white settlers interbreed with indigenous people as one part of an overall plan to eradicate their cultures and assimilating any survivors into the invading, colonizing English/Western European culture. This narrative of hope and rebirth in a "new land" is the mask for a colonizing impulse. Lee Adama advocates "breaking the cycle," but in fact they are not breaking that cycle, they are simply choosing new subjects to dominate.

And no, I am not going to "cut them some slack" for this. I'm actually more troubled by the thought that this narrative move was unintentional, rather than overt and consciously intended. Why? Because it is the unconscious, unquestioned racist assumptions that have historically been far more difficult to confront, counteract, and uproot, than the overt and premeditated acts of racist bigotry. However, just because I'm not cutting them slack doesn't mean I am dismissing the show out of hand for being "racist." It's not that simple. The fact is, we are all racist, if you want to use that kind of grammar. What I mean is, we all grow up steeped in a culture and language that are profoundly structured by racist logics. There is no "pure" cultural space in which to stand or from which to judge and to speak; no "pure" cultural food that we can eat or feed to our children, if you'll pardon that metaphor.

Narratives are complex. People are complex. But we don't do ourselves any favors by setting aside or turning a blind eye toward the complexities we find distasteful, in favor of the ones we like. To do so is to oversimplify. I am not "ruining the show" by expressing my critique of it. The best we can do is to fully recognize, think through, and openly discuss logics of dominance whenever and wherever we meet them--whether it's in a beloved book or TV show, a historical figure, our parents, or ourselves. That is the hard work that is required, if we truly want to bring about social justice in this profoundly unjust world.

Comments

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

I thought the final Earth part was lame on several levels. Probably the thing that annoyed me the most was that the people they found were "tribal, without language". What is that supposed to mean? How is a tribe possible without language? How can they decide that they will interbreed with these people to continue the human/cylon race without having made first contact? Don't the indigenous people have a say in the matter? Oh, right! They don't have language - "no means no" but pre-verbal tribal people can't say no.

Also, they were all talking about agriculture, building houses, and hunting. Where did all these people raised in cities learn these skills? Yeah, something tells me Lee Adama's talk of doing the least possible amount of work tells us what would happen over the next few hundred years or more - enslave and rape the preverbal tribes, and sit back while they build houses and gather food.

I guess if it's all supposed to be our prehistory, it meshes well with both primitivist and christian mythology - the fall from grace caused by knowing forbidden knowledge, resulting in the stratification of society, capitalism, oppression and sin.