My heroine when I was aged 7 or 8 (far left). Other than the long hair, it is distressingly difficult to tell her apart from her two penis-bearing companions. I’m really amazed that Vox approved of this.
Amanda at Pandagon writes fairly often about the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. I don’t really read those posts beyond the occasional skim, primarily because I don’t watch the show and therefore the in-depth angst and debating about character motives, plot lines, etc. end up being pretty meaningless to me.
As it turns out, though, I should’ve been commenting on ‘em all, all along! This dude, who I have vague memories of reading about a few years ago and coming away with the impression that he has bad hair that he’s really proud of (and my memories are so vague, I may even be confusing him with someone else, but that would mean that I have no memory of him at all–so let’s hope, for his sake, he’s at least the bad-hair guy)…but as I was saying–
“Vox” (that is his name, right? Like, that’s such a classic Battlestar Galactica name, too!) begins his article by stating the following:
Starbuck goes off on the new “Battlestar Galactica” in a 2004 essay that looks increasingly on target as the current series fades away.
“Starbuck?” By this does he mean “Dirk Benedict, the actor who played the character “Starbuck” in the original series..?” This strikes me as an odd way to refer to a person–like stating that “Conan” gave a speech about the state of California’s budget last week. Then again, I’m not sure that Dirk Benedict has actually done anything of note since his role in the original Battlestar Galactica series, while Arnold Schwarzenegger has, so maybe that’s not the best comparison I could make. But anyway, I’m going to have to fly with the assumption that we are talking about Dirk Benedict, as it’s never cleared up one way or the other during the course of the article.
The embedded paragraphs, presumably from “Starbuck,” are pretty lame. Whatever “Starbuck’s” acting qualifications were or are, a future as a professional writer does not seem to be in the stars for him. For instance, slamming the current remake because it doesn’t conform to the old-school moral principles embodied by, he holds up as examples, Margaret Thatcher and Katharine Hepburn–and the flaw here, he states, is because the current remake is clearly female-driven. Which makes me wonder what men he thinks were in control of the programming of the Margaret Thatcher and Katharine Hepburn cylons that rendered them “male-driven”…or really, if anything resembling “thought” entered into the writing of those paragraphs at all. I would agree for sure that “emotion” did, though, especially this part:
The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak and wracked with indecision, while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing cigars (gasp!) and not about to take it any more….
As I recall, the only character on the original series who puffed a cigar was…oops, you guessed it…”Starbuck.” Hell hath no fury like an aging B-grade actor’s signature prop scorned! I admit I did feel a pang for him when I read that “cigar” line, though. Poor guy!
But back to my original theme–why I never comment over at Pandagon on the Battlestar Galactica threads, nor have I written anything at all anywhere on the subject–because, as I said, I don’t watch the show. HOWEVER–! Vox has taught me that that is not a requirement to parse the thing down to its bones–these are the only requirements you need!
1. Quite liked the cheesy original show
2. Watched about three minutes of the “re-imagined” version
Well, hell, me too! On both counts! So let’s see what the Voxster has to say:
In that three minutes, the blonde Cylon chick murdered an infant in its stroller, then had sex with someone as her metal backbone glowed red.
You know, my three minutes of viewing time ended up being a sequence where a bunch of people were standing around talking at each other in a vaguely spaceship-y, futuristic setting. I also failed to bird-dog Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple during my viewing of Superbowl XXXVIII. I wonder how it is that I never tune in in time to catch the interesting, anti-family-values shit, like evar. Is it all a massive coincidence of timing, or is it perhaps more likely that I don’t run around desperately searching for the most sensationalist viewing bytes in any given programming to enable my powerful need to be self-righteously offended? Hard to say.
But really, it’s all about how the bitchez suck and if you really start to analyze it, how they don’t even qualify as real people. Really! The Voxster:
Whatever modicum of vague interest remained after that was destroyed when I heard that Starbuck had been given a sex change.
It would have been interesting if Dirk Benedict’s character had undergone a sex-change operation and started demanding that his fellow Galactites refer to him as “Starbuckina!” But sadly, no–what Vox means is, the character of “Starbuck” is a female character, which is really about the worst thing you can do to a character–change it from a male to a female. Why is that such a henious and hideous offense, though, you may ask..? Does the part involve the character being a sperm donor or writing his name in the snow without using his hands..?
Nah. But Vox doesn’t really say why it’s so offensive. He makes a few rather vague allusions to “realism,” though he fails to pinpoint exactly why a character being female instead of male is not realistic. (I feel “real,” and I’m, like, a chick–am I delusional? Anything’s possible, I suppose!) Maybe his lack of clarity was brought home to him in his comments thread, because he provided an update to the original article where he dragged a comment up from the muck to use as a clarification of the whole realism aspect:
Watching Kara Thrace knock out guys in the boxing ring and stand toe-to-toe with men twice her size, I realized its nothing but PC schlock.
I can’t really speak to any actual scene in the new Battlestar Galactica that the commenter above is referencing–I can’t say if it looks “realistic” or not. However, I’m trying to imagine it looking less realistic than, say, Sylvester Stallone kicking Dolph Lundgren’s ass in Rocky IV or Ralph Macchio becoming such a master of martial arts after a few months of washing Mr. Miyagi’s car that he can kick the ass of any number of dudes twice his size and with decades more unarmed combat training–aren’t cinematic fight scenes frequently exercises in suspension of disbelief? Or does the presence of Teh Penises on all of the actors sufficient to suspend ALL disbelief no matter how unrealistic the pugilistic comparison..? Teh Penis! because men use that when they engage in hand-to-hand combat…!
Yes, it’s gotten silly. And in case you didn’t think that has been clearly enough underlined, Vox underlines that his own self:
You know, given that a woman has never been known to knock out a man in several thousand years of pugilistic combat,
No woman has ever knocked a man out! Oh, that NEVER EVER HAPP–
Gosh, that took about three seconds of searching YouTube.
a dead giveaway that “she” was a robot
Ha ha, yeah! I think I’m done here.
See, you totally miss the logic on Planet Vox:
(1) Boys Rule
(2) Girls are Losers
(3) If Girls aren’t (all) losers, then boys have no one to beat, which means they can’t be rulers, which means they’re losers, which can’t be right (see 1 & 2).
It’s all very simple.
Simple-minded, I mean.
A few days ago, we had some friends over for dinner, and conversation (as it does) turned to The L Word. I mentioned that Jenny kicks it and Xena comes to investigate, and our friend and I spend a minute squeeing over Lucy Lawless. She’s all like, “I even started watching Battlestar because she’s on it!” “Yeah,” I replied, “But even before that, it was difficult not to have a maddening crush on—”
“—Katee Sackhoff omg,” we screamed, simultaneously. That may have been followed by squeals and giggles—I plead the fifth.
(More on point, Vox’s argument is doubly stupid, since having more women on a show, even in positions of power, even in typically male occupations, does not mean that show embodies feminist ideals. Certainly not perfectly.)