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eye_of_a_catWhile I wait for 2.09 to download:
Finally, the Journalist's Point of View episode! Which is really the Outsider's Point of View episode, although I've never seen it done without journalists (except B5's A View from the Gallery, and if it's okay with everyone I'd rather pretend that never happened). I've read a little of the debate over whether D'Anna knew she was a Cylon, and though I can see that mattering in the future, I don't think it changes anything for the purposes of this episode alone. No matter who the journalist is, the idea of the Journalist's Point of View is always the same: getting to see the main characters from the perspective of a spectator who isn't you.
The reason I like these is part of the reason I like fanfic. They acknowledge that there's a whole universe around the events we get to see, and that that universe contains other people and other ideas and other views. Something that's a throwaway line in one particular episode might not matter too much to that story, or to any other story that turns up on screen, but it still might be relevant to a character or a theme we don't get to see played out in every detail. The stories we usually get, and the approach we usually get to those stories, belong to the main characters; for one episode, it's nice to see that there are other ways to tell them.
The reason I don't like these episodes is this: No matter how balanced the journalist's approach is, no matter how cleverly they build on the events we've seen to show them in a different light, and no matter how valid their interpretations are, we don't actually care. We know what story we're watching, and we know who the main characters are, and whether we like it or not, we usually end up siding with them.
No, really. Think about the scene in every Journalist's Point of View episode where the main characters are trying to do something important, the journalist's filming them, and there's a "Get that camera out of here!" vs. "The people need to know!" argument. Or when two main characters are talking about something important, and one of them shushes the other because the camera's right there. Everyone involved is just doing their job, but we don't usually cheer on the journalist. Move that camera, damn it! You're inconveniencing the people who matter!
This, I think, is the issue at the heart of the controversy over the Gideon massacre. Because, really, what controversy? Tigh was incompetent, the guy in charge of crowd control was dangerously unsuitable, and the soldiers fired into a crowd. This really isn't a moral dilemma. And yes, the military are fighting the Cylons, everyone's under a lot of stress about the whole genocide thing, they're not overloaded with experienced soldiers right now, and so on and so on. 'Given the circumstances, how do we punish the people responsible?' is a fair question - still, 'should we punish the people responsible?' is not. But that's the one that got asked in the episode, and is getting bounced around (along with 'why are people angry at the military?') in a couple of the fandom debates I've read. I think that has a lot more to do with the status of the Galactica military as main characters than it has to do with moral theory and culpability. Galactica!Boomer shot Adama, and because Adama is a main character, the story called for her to be jailed and then killed; some Galactica soldiers shot some extras, and because they're extras, the story can spend a long time pondering whether this is going to have long-term effects in terms of the people we actually care about.
It's not just with the Gideon situation, of course. Adama deciding to put the whole fleet in danger trying to rescue someone who was most likely dead already, back in Season 1, was represented as a morally iffy situation. But we didn't feel the weight of that iffiness quite as much as anyone who'd lived it would have done, because that was Starbuck down there, and we knew Starbuck would be okay.
It's also not just with BSG, and it can have some really interesting effects in other shows. Watch The Shield and try, just try, not to side with the corrupt, murdering, drug-dealing cops when they're trying to get away with it for one more week. You know they're wrong. You'd never side with them in real life. If you were watching the whole thing unfold right before your eyes, you'd want the FBI or Internal Affairs or whoever to swoop in right now and arrest the lot of them; but you're watching a story, and they're the main characters, so you end up - without meaning to, without even realising you're doing it - hoping they won't get caught.
It's not really the bad cops we're siding with, though. It's the story. We want the story to carry on, and we realise it has certain priorities in mind that we probably wouldn't have if we were living through these events. 'The main characters get their own way' is one of those. Partly, this is because the main characters are usually the good guys, and we default to agreeing or sympathising with them more than we perhaps should do; partly it's just because they're the main characters, and they'd be less interesting and therefore less important if they didn't get to make their own choices.
This also means that we tend to get the story's interests mixed up with morality. In B5, the story's interests say that Delenn and Sheridan will be together happily ever(ish) after; Lennier being in love with Delenn isn't wrong in itself, but it messes up the story. Therefore the story requires him to do something that clearly is wrong, and to do it because he loves Delenn, so messing up the story = Doing Something Bad. (Come to think of it, quite a lot of Delenn's scenes go the same way - she wins the high ground over Neroon in Legacies because the story needs her to, not because he was further in the wrong than she was. Which one of them nearly started a war there, again? But Delenn's a slight exception in that she does think she's the main character in a story.) Journalists, in B5 or BSG or anywhere else, interfere with what's going on in a very literal sense. And no matter how much of a cause they've got, we end up wanting them to get the damn camera out of the way.
Finally, the Journalist's Point of View episode! Which is really the Outsider's Point of View episode, although I've never seen it done without journalists (except B5's A View from the Gallery, and if it's okay with everyone I'd rather pretend that never happened). I've read a little of the debate over whether D'Anna knew she was a Cylon, and though I can see that mattering in the future, I don't think it changes anything for the purposes of this episode alone. No matter who the journalist is, the idea of the Journalist's Point of View is always the same: getting to see the main characters from the perspective of a spectator who isn't you.
The reason I like these is part of the reason I like fanfic. They acknowledge that there's a whole universe around the events we get to see, and that that universe contains other people and other ideas and other views. Something that's a throwaway line in one particular episode might not matter too much to that story, or to any other story that turns up on screen, but it still might be relevant to a character or a theme we don't get to see played out in every detail. The stories we usually get, and the approach we usually get to those stories, belong to the main characters; for one episode, it's nice to see that there are other ways to tell them.
The reason I don't like these episodes is this: No matter how balanced the journalist's approach is, no matter how cleverly they build on the events we've seen to show them in a different light, and no matter how valid their interpretations are, we don't actually care. We know what story we're watching, and we know who the main characters are, and whether we like it or not, we usually end up siding with them.
No, really. Think about the scene in every Journalist's Point of View episode where the main characters are trying to do something important, the journalist's filming them, and there's a "Get that camera out of here!" vs. "The people need to know!" argument. Or when two main characters are talking about something important, and one of them shushes the other because the camera's right there. Everyone involved is just doing their job, but we don't usually cheer on the journalist. Move that camera, damn it! You're inconveniencing the people who matter!
This, I think, is the issue at the heart of the controversy over the Gideon massacre. Because, really, what controversy? Tigh was incompetent, the guy in charge of crowd control was dangerously unsuitable, and the soldiers fired into a crowd. This really isn't a moral dilemma. And yes, the military are fighting the Cylons, everyone's under a lot of stress about the whole genocide thing, they're not overloaded with experienced soldiers right now, and so on and so on. 'Given the circumstances, how do we punish the people responsible?' is a fair question - still, 'should we punish the people responsible?' is not. But that's the one that got asked in the episode, and is getting bounced around (along with 'why are people angry at the military?') in a couple of the fandom debates I've read. I think that has a lot more to do with the status of the Galactica military as main characters than it has to do with moral theory and culpability. Galactica!Boomer shot Adama, and because Adama is a main character, the story called for her to be jailed and then killed; some Galactica soldiers shot some extras, and because they're extras, the story can spend a long time pondering whether this is going to have long-term effects in terms of the people we actually care about.
It's not just with the Gideon situation, of course. Adama deciding to put the whole fleet in danger trying to rescue someone who was most likely dead already, back in Season 1, was represented as a morally iffy situation. But we didn't feel the weight of that iffiness quite as much as anyone who'd lived it would have done, because that was Starbuck down there, and we knew Starbuck would be okay.
It's also not just with BSG, and it can have some really interesting effects in other shows. Watch The Shield and try, just try, not to side with the corrupt, murdering, drug-dealing cops when they're trying to get away with it for one more week. You know they're wrong. You'd never side with them in real life. If you were watching the whole thing unfold right before your eyes, you'd want the FBI or Internal Affairs or whoever to swoop in right now and arrest the lot of them; but you're watching a story, and they're the main characters, so you end up - without meaning to, without even realising you're doing it - hoping they won't get caught.
It's not really the bad cops we're siding with, though. It's the story. We want the story to carry on, and we realise it has certain priorities in mind that we probably wouldn't have if we were living through these events. 'The main characters get their own way' is one of those. Partly, this is because the main characters are usually the good guys, and we default to agreeing or sympathising with them more than we perhaps should do; partly it's just because they're the main characters, and they'd be less interesting and therefore less important if they didn't get to make their own choices.
This also means that we tend to get the story's interests mixed up with morality. In B5, the story's interests say that Delenn and Sheridan will be together happily ever(ish) after; Lennier being in love with Delenn isn't wrong in itself, but it messes up the story. Therefore the story requires him to do something that clearly is wrong, and to do it because he loves Delenn, so messing up the story = Doing Something Bad. (Come to think of it, quite a lot of Delenn's scenes go the same way - she wins the high ground over Neroon in Legacies because the story needs her to, not because he was further in the wrong than she was. Which one of them nearly started a war there, again? But Delenn's a slight exception in that she does think she's the main character in a story.) Journalists, in B5 or BSG or anywhere else, interfere with what's going on in a very literal sense. And no matter how much of a cause they've got, we end up wanting them to get the damn camera out of the way.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 04:32 am (UTC)PS: I love how I can read all the BSG spoilers I want to and still not have a clue what's going on. I love that show, and have sat through the whole first season twice, but I still can't put a name to most of the characters, and so much happens in any given episode that many events just slide right through my mind. I may as well just be in it for Starbuck and give up on the rest. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 02:51 pm (UTC)Does the Stargate Program become public knowledge? I'm trying to work out whether or not I'd want to know if there was a species of evil parasitic aliens out to get me... I think I'd be watching that documentary pretty damn carefully, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-20 06:06 am (UTC)Thanks for a thoughtful post. Enjoy 2.09, it's much better.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 03:04 pm (UTC)That's why I'm not too sure what to make of the ending - were we supposed to be more sceptical of the 'hey, they're all people! Give them a break, their hearts are in the right place!' message because the Cylons were behind it?
It's occurred to me that one of the other reasons the journalist episodes usually don't ring quite true is that the journalists usually don't ask difficult questions (or when they do, they're content to be brushed off with 'we're the good guys, so shush'). I mean, after an intergalactic war or a recent apocalypse, "What's it like to work here?" is not exactly the height of investigative journalism...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 04:04 pm (UTC)That's really our only hope for the episode being anything other than stupid and annoying.
It occured to me that the episode would have been much better if it were Playa doing the documentary. I mean, she's a journalist we already know, she *has* asked difficult questions and caused significant trouble by doing so. It would have been less an outsider's POV than a different POV from inside, and that would have been much more interesting.
But, I hate being told that to an outsider our heroes look like heroes. I don't want to be told how to interpret a text. It makes me sulky and resentful and turns me to such perversions as Delenn/Lennier shipping and Warrior Caste apologetics. Not that I'm even sure what the BSG equivalent of such perversions would be.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-21 11:22 pm (UTC)Yeah. It's difficult to have any kind of impact this way, when the whole format is a one-off thing. Not that I think we've heard the last about the Gideon massacre, or anything like that, but... yeah. (Although, does this mean that any civilian anger over that from now on is going to come across as a result of the Cylon journalist stirring up trouble?)
I don't want to be told how to interpret a text. It makes me sulky and resentful and turns me to such perversions as Delenn/Lennier shipping and Warrior Caste apologetics.
And thank Valen for that, or you could have ended up writing Sheridan/Delenn fics set post-S5 where the Shadows, Vorlons, Warrior Caste and ISN all line up before them to apologise for doubting their true love and unquestionable wisdom.
(It's weird, though - the first-year English students I teach have a habit of stopping mid-interesting-point to say "Am I reading too much into this? The author wouldn't have meant that, would he?", and I hadn't realised until I taught them how much it irritated me to imagine an author standing at my shoulder the whole time I was reading something.)
Would the BSG equivalent be Cylon apologetics, or the POV of some of the civilians?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-23 06:19 pm (UTC)Snerk. Nah, I'd never have done that. I might have written Susan/Talia, though. That was a canon couple that I enjoyed, and that never got enough time on screen. Or more likely I wouldn't have written B5 fic at all. I tend to mostly be motivated to write when canon makes me mad.
Would the BSG equivalent be Cylon apologetics, or the POV of some of the civilians?
I don't think either, really. Cylon apologetics seem to be an important part of show canon. As far as civilians...which civilians? I guess 2.08 tried to be that, and just ended up annoying me. Elosha's POV would have been a natural one for me to write from, which is why I'm still sulking that she's gone.
But the thing is, BSG has really pushed my buttons with Laura Roslin. I don't want her to be wrong just because canon thinks she's right. Maybe ambiguous, maybe morally problematic, but not wrong and not a bad leader. I don't want to take someone else's side against her. I just love her too much.
And also, canon includes so many POVs that it's hard to write against it. If I'm writing against Roslin the Prophet, I'd just be taking Adama's side. Or Tigh's. Or Kara's, or Lee's, or whatever. And any POV that hasn't been questioned still could be the next episode. It's not like B5, where you have the Truth, with the occasional unbeliever like Garibaldi (who must, of course, be proven wrong).
So here I am writing shipperfic for an almost-mainstream pairing, and wondering what happened to my brain. Eventually I think I'm going to figure out why writing Apollo/Roslin is the True Key to understanding the uncanonical secrets of the BSG universe. Either that or I'll give it up and start shipping something else. This open-canon thing sure is confusing.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-26 12:21 pm (UTC)I think she was doomed from the moment Boomer said that the Cylons understand the human holy texts better than the humans do. If you only need one character's voice to repeat the prophecies, then... Although it would have been far more interesting, especially if the Cylons are counting on the humans interpreting those prophecies in a particular way, if she'd lived.
And also, canon includes so many POVs that it's hard to write against it.
Maybe that's it. I just can't help thinking that there's some clear narrative voice here I can't quite see. Maybe because there's no real good guy/bad guy difference - not in terms of morality (although, maybe) but in terms of what the Cylons and the humans both want to happen. Whatever the Cylon plan is re: the Galactica, it seems to be going fine.
If you usually write when canon makes you mad, are you already expecting it to do that with Laura Roslin in the future?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-26 01:55 pm (UTC)That's a good point. I mean, it's fairly invevitable that she'll die or go evil sooner or later. And then I will sulk and need to write revisionist!fic.
BTW, I'm very curious to see what you make of Cain. She seems to be a Neroon-type outside POV character.