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Monday, November 26, 2007

BSG: Razor

Like a lot of successful TV series, BSG got off to a strong start, then lost dramatic cohesion as the series progressed. It also suffered from a heavy-handed, political allegory—as if Michael Moore were the screenwriter. BSG: Razor marks a strong comeback to what made the show successful in the first place.

A few quick comments:

1.A lot of fans seem to like Chaves-Jacobsen in the role of Kendra Shaw. I can’t say that I share their enthusiasm. She labors valiantly with the part, but she comes across as what she obviously is: a pretty, petite actress who was originally cast for her delicate, China-doll looks, trying very hard to do a credible impersonation of a tough-as-nails gang girl. I think she copes about as well as a miscast actress can.

The miscasting is accentuated by the fact that her dramatic foil is Michelle Forbes, reprising the role of Admiral Cain. Forbes is a natural Tomboy, which is why she’s come to be typecast in these butch-femme roles.

Ironically, Forbes original ambition was to be a ballerina. Forbes is also better at the emotionally conflicted aspect of the role. One reason, I suppose, is that she’s a more seasoned actress, with more life-experience under her belt.

2.The lesbian liaison is probably another attempt on the part of liberal TV producers and screenwriters to promote their social views.

That said, the idea of a lesbian subculture in the officer class is a logical development of the coed military. Women proving that they don’t need men.

However, there’s a certain poetic justice in the fact that her girlfriend is a Cylon spy.

3.Which brings me to another point: in Razor, the male characters have been marginalized. The female characters take center stage. Traditionally, male characters have been the central players in action features. This, again, is probably another attempt to push a liberal social agenda.

4.Of course, back in the golden age of Hollywood, you had self-made women who naturally dominated the screen in star vehicles. But they weren’t playing Marines and Green Berets.

5.Ironically, Laura Roslin only gets a walk-on part in Razor. Between Cain, Kendra, and Starbuck, one of the strong female characters from the regular show, convincingly played by Mary McDonnell, is squeezed out.

Commander Adama has a few good scenes. Olmos, with his natural gravitas, was perfectly cast for this anchoring role. He has more stage presence than the pleasant, but lightweight actor who plays his rebellious son.

6.At the level of political allegory, the conduct of the “war on terror” has always been, to some extent, a debate between utilitarians and deontologists. Different people are temperamentally inclined to one position or the other.

Where survival is at stake, the utilitarians have the upper hand. And, in Razor, the utilitarians are firmly in charged. They are also motivated by an understandable appetite for revenge.

Deontologists view themselves as high-minded men of principle and guardians of civilization. They look down on the utilitarians as ruthless, unscrupulous Machiavellians.

By contrast, utilitarians view themselves as pragmatic realists. They look down on deontologists as suicidally naive utopians.

In BSG, there’s always been an unstable oscillation between the “civil libertarians” and the military. Secular ethics has no solution to this moral and practical conundrum. So it comes down to a power struggle.

This illustrates the need to have a well-rounded Christian value-system in which one ethical criterion doesn’t swallow up the rest.

7 comments:

  1. HAW HAW HAW!!!

    Thank you, Steve, for this AWESOME expose on the evils of 'the liberals' making TV shows.

    Damn liberals!

    ReplyDelete
  2. HAW HAW HAW!!!

    Thank you, hillbilly atheist, for never failing to prove that unbelievers like you have absolutely nothing intelligent to say in response to a Tblog post.

    You should seriously consider donating that unused brain of yours to medical science. Pity to see such a well-designed organ go to waste.

    That's assuming that if the neurosurgeon opened your cranium, he would find anything inside. To judge by the quality of your replies, the MRI would reveal a gaping space between the ears.

    Damn liberals!

    ReplyDelete
  3. HAW HAW HAW!!!

    Good stuff as always Steve!

    Your Lord and Savior knew what he was doing when he picked you to join the team!

    No brain in the head! Classic stuff! LOL!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. HAW HAW HAW!!!

    Mindless as always, hillbilly atheist!

    His Infernal Majesty knew what he was doing when he picked you to join the army of darkness as cannon fodder for a lost cause.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "His Infernal Majesty!"

    AWESOME AWESOME stuff Steve!

    Translated = "The Hot King!"

    Now I begin to understand a little more of the psychological workings of your regenerated mind!

    HAW HAW HAW!!!!

    Bring on the cannons!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ah, yes, the argumentum ad hawhaw.

    Not to mention the full strength version:

    The argumentum ad HAWHAW

    AWESOME AWESOME stuff!

    Who needs to be an intellectual when you can be a hillbilly atheist?

    Thanks for illustrating the psychological workings of your unregenerated mind!

    ReplyDelete
  7. 1. As I pointed out over at Trekbbs to one of the more shrill commentators about the lesbian issue, I'd pause before saying this was an attempt to promote a "liberal social agenda." The GLAAD bit certainly was, and, let's face it the Quiznos commercial qualifies as the single most awkward commercial break ever. Quizos, bringing you kesbianism, Mmmm, toasty. What's up with that?

    Anyway, Cain goes nuts. She then has her ex-lover beaten up and systematically degraded over the course of ten months by Thorne and the whole crew. They take out their desire for revenge on her, and she lets them. This seems to me to play into the issue of lesbians and domestic violence, not not in a favorable light. If anything, this highlights the general underreporting of DV among females as a whole, which directly undermines the assertion that lesbians commit DV at the same rate or less than the male population.

    Gina is also the engineer of the murder of hundreds of Pegasus' crew. The Six model as a whole is the one who planted the Cylon virus, so we can charge her with being the agent of the genocide of the human race. Again, how is this painting lesbians in a favorable light? Further, she manipulates Cain even after the attack. One could wonder if this makes lesbians look highly manipulative.

    As to Kendra, well, I have a theory that Dee is the final Cylon. Her name is Anastasia Dualla. Since her first name is Greek for "Resurrection" and Gina's last name was old Gemonese for "Resurrection," IMO, this was practically telegraphed to us. There is an obvious parallel between Kendra and Dee with respect to their jobs and their appearance. So, if you ask me,she was chosen because she looks like Kandace McClure. I agree, her acting appeared rather stiff, but her character stands in the same relation to Cain that Gaeta and Dee stand in relation to Adama. That has to be intentional. Could they have found a better actress? Yes. Could they have found one that looks as much like Kandace? Doubtful.

    Yes, the male characters have been marginalized, but this movie is also intended to point the way to S4. It's dropping hints about what is to come. Three of the Final Five are male and white. Of the Four revealed, Tori is the only female. It stands to reason the Final Cylon is female, and of, how shall we say, like Tori, of darker complexion, so it makes sense to focus on the females here.

    When you give it close thought, the females in Galactica all parallel closely in a number of ways, generally marked by tragedy:

    1. Ellen Tigh betrayed her people and was executed by her husband who later learned he is one of the Final Five.

    2. Roslin is dying of breast cancer.

    3. Cain went nuts and was murdered by Gina. What we have in Razor, I might add, is a strong contrast between the characters of Cain and Gina. Cain is dehumanized as she watches the degradation of her crew and the genocide of humanity and becomes more Cylon. Gina is "humanized" through her degradation. She moves from mechanical to human. Both do so in negative terms.

    4. Gina was degraded and went nuts killing Cain and then taking herself and Cloud Nine with her.

    5. Boomer attempted to kill Adama when her software was activated, resisted her programming, was murdered, came back on Caprica, and has been systematically going nuts ever since.

    6. Cally is married to one the Final Five. Want to bet things don't go so well after that revelation comes her way?

    7. Kat died heroically.

    8. Starbuck has been kidnapped by Cylons twice. She was abused by her own mother. She was abused by Leoben in some kind of Stockholm Experiment, and now she's been to Earth and has returned to guide them? Doubtful. If you ask me, Earth is full of ancient Cylons who want to do humanity in and they took her, succeeded where the other Cylons failed, and she's come back having been brainwashed.

    9. Socrata Thrace died from cancer.

    10.Three has been boxed.

    11. Athena's baby was hidden from her. Helo had to kill her so she would resurrect among the Cylons and then come back.

    12. Six has been conflicted from the beginning, and now she's in lockup on Galactica.


    13. Tori has just been irrelevant to the plot

    14. This leaves Dee, and she's trapped in a marriage with a philanderer, but she really loves him. She also has to contend with Starbuck. Billy was also shot before her eyes. IMO, she started out complicit with the Cylon attack but she's changed her mind slowly through watching the systematic degradation of humanity and then falling in love with Lee. She's changed sides.

    15. Kendra's course fits this same trajectory.

    If you ask me, all of these women are being used to telegraph the identity of the Final Cylon. It's female, and it's Dee. She's the one of the Final Five who has been self-aware all this time, and each of these women is a typological parallel to her character. So, it makes sense that Razor would focus on the females, since, IMO, they are trying to point us to the identity and character trajectory of the Final Cylon.

    And, yes, while I don't think it is at all intentional, we are seeing the need for a strong Christian set of values here, for what we're seeing is characters act out the fictional nexus between man and machine but do so in a mostly negative manner. Gina is raped into her "humanity," in a literal sense. Cain undergoes this same phenomenon only figuratively. The story is also cyclical, with events being repeated constantly, only the players are different. Only a strong set of positive (Christian) values can really bring the cycle of violence and tragedy to an end.

    ReplyDelete