Another point of view
I don't know whether it's me being me, or me being French, but as I wander on this American-oriented web world, sometimes the cultural gap feels so huge and I feel so...on the outside.
It's quite baffling, for instance, that birth control can still be an issue and cause debates in USA but it's possible to buy sperm on American websites or pick features for your future baby in certain clinics -- something that calls eugneics to the mind -- while, over here, birth control has been settled for a while -- and nobody would even thought of bringing it on -- but we have bioethical laws that forbid many things or try to restrict what we can do with biological stuff (sperm donation has to be free, donor must be anonymous, etc.) and the potential debates precisely focus on that moral ground versus the economic side.
And there's all the religious talk (I don't mean preachy posts but general notes on personal faith, use of God word, or church going comments) that I can't avoid, and that I find sometimes so...overwhelming. What sounds, probably, so commonplace and normal for many people, looks weird to these French eyes.
I don't think it's because I'm an atheist, myself, it's just cultural. I'm sure there are several people around who aren't as godless as I am (I know for a fact that a few of my friends do believe in a higher being, and I'm even the godmother of one of my friends's daughter and I know that my friend send her kids to catechism), but we live, here , in a secular society, in which faith -- or religious practice -- is something very private, completely pushed into the inner world, so intimate that it has completely deserted public speeches or conversations, even between friends, and all the more with "strangers". It wouldn't occur to anyone I know in RL to express religious feelings or casual talk about going to church, unless it's an ad hoc conversation. I might shock some people if I said that it would be like sharing favourite sexual positions or telling about going to partner-swinging clubs, but the analogy would work because it's THAT private.
So sometimes, surfing the Internet is very exotic and feels a bit like watching an American tv show!
Most of the time, it feels like I'm...different.
But, of course the world is more interesting if it's filled with people who are not like me.
Speaking of American tv shows, I'm still rewatching BSG (but have been too lazy to write posts!)and enjoying it a lot. I was so right to be crazy in love with that show when it was on. The finales of s1 and s2 were terrific, the beginning of s3 was awesome. I adore Saul Tigh more than ever (he started breaking my heart at the beginning of season 2 and I have loved the old bastard since then); I have warmed up to Lee, whom I used to find dull and lacking in character until the end of season 3; I keep flipping sides between Roslin and Adama; I cried a lot at the end of 'The Passage", and Helo is my hero (re-watched " A measure of Salvation" and "Rapture" yesterday, and "The Woman King" today). So good, so beautiful, so tall.
The show was so good at dealing with moral issues and at trying to define what being human meant and what it takes to remain "civilized" (something that The Walking Dead with its poor writing and idiotic characters fails to do). It was so good that it allowed the viewers to overlook some flaws, or plot holes, here and there.
Like the fact we never knew the name Six used on Caprica during her affair with Gaius Baltar (which is supposed to have lasted about 2 years, but it's probably a retcon they did for the finale)! He had to use a first name to call her before she came out about being a Cylon Number Six, but he never used it on screen and later simply called her "Caprica Six" when he had to. To tell the truth, I am not a big fan of characters calling each other first names all the time during a conversation (it's usually bad written dialogue unless the characters do it on purpose to annoy one another), because it doesn't happen in real life during conversations, but, in this case, it makes little sense that Gaius never used the human name he first knew her by (unlike Sharon, D'Anna or Doral or Simon, or Leoben or Cavil!), and yet they managed to sell it! I'm sure nobody ever pondered how bizarre it was.
Of course it's very significant given her journey towards humanity, that she just remained Six, or, at best, Caprica Six. She was a character, that is a person, but she also embodied something. She was an archetype.
And there's the issue of the head!characters. Rewatching the show while knowing the ending, I'm having a hard time to reconcile the head!characters from the first seasons to the head!characters of the series ' finale.
During season 1, head!Six kept talking about herself as if she were the woman Baltar had an affair with on Caprica, which would have made totally sense if she were only Baltar's fantasy or the projection of his subconscious. I think that head!Baltar did the same in "Downloaded" but in "The Woman King" he said "him" when mentioning Gaius...and it would work with a conflicted Caprica Six who's trying to free herself from her love for a man who's selfish, untrustworthy, and sided up with D'Anna!
But it seems to make much less sense if the head!characters are independant, real beings, spirits, lords of kobols, angels of God or whatever...
However, there's a line that I noticed for the first time during this reviewing: in season 1 on Cylon-occupied Caprica, a Six, I believe, commented on Faux-Boomer's behaviour regarding Helo and the colonials in general. She said "we are becoming our characters".
I think it's true of the skinjobs, true of the Final Five and true of the head!characters as well. The Eight that were sent to seduce Helo started pretending to be Boomer, that is a human Sharon from the fleet, then she began to believe in her character and became Sharon Agathon. The spirit who appeared to Baltar in the guise of a Six became Caprica Six too (hence her moments of passion or her outbursts of jealousy)...at least for a little while, until Gaius and the real Caprica Six found each other again.
Also, the skinjobs are artificial beings that look like real people, like human beings. They are fake people who were made up out of data, designed after models, not only for the looks but also in terms of personality. The same could be said of fictional characters made up by writers.
Perhaps, BSG while being an intriguing and riveting study on humanity, is also a metaphorical take on artistic creation. We'd have the completely fleshed-out characters who see themselves as the humans in the story; the skinjobs that are a step behind in the creative process (a lower level in evolution) but have potential to become "real"; the head!characters that are pure spirit, ethereal, only echoes of the creator's thoughts, possibilities on the paper, dreams of characters.
And this is where Greek mythology meets popular culture meets science and they all meet poetry. Caprica Six is a sort of chimera, a dream made woman, who's a bit of a monster too, mythical and dangerous, an impossible fantasy for a man...But there's also the meaning of chimera in genetics: an organism that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells. Basically it's two sets of DNA in one organism.
BSG was all of that too: a science-fiction show with space battles, robots and skinjobs that allowed the writers to tackle poltical, ethical and philosophical issues, but also a mythological story of beginnings and cycles, and a poetical tale that used poetical means and borrowed a lot from the classics.
I made my peace with the Time Square finale, a long time ago, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that the idea of using some characters, especially the head!characters, as a Greek Chorus voicing meta comments, or at least, as "outsiders"-- and in the case of the head!characters, both watching from another (higher) plane AND interacting with Baltar and Caprica Six--, that very idea was there from the beginning.
When it comes to fiction, if it's well done,I would take the poetical over the logical any time.
It's quite baffling, for instance, that birth control can still be an issue and cause debates in USA but it's possible to buy sperm on American websites or pick features for your future baby in certain clinics -- something that calls eugneics to the mind -- while, over here, birth control has been settled for a while -- and nobody would even thought of bringing it on -- but we have bioethical laws that forbid many things or try to restrict what we can do with biological stuff (sperm donation has to be free, donor must be anonymous, etc.) and the potential debates precisely focus on that moral ground versus the economic side.
And there's all the religious talk (I don't mean preachy posts but general notes on personal faith, use of God word, or church going comments) that I can't avoid, and that I find sometimes so...overwhelming. What sounds, probably, so commonplace and normal for many people, looks weird to these French eyes.
I don't think it's because I'm an atheist, myself, it's just cultural. I'm sure there are several people around who aren't as godless as I am (I know for a fact that a few of my friends do believe in a higher being, and I'm even the godmother of one of my friends's daughter and I know that my friend send her kids to catechism), but we live, here , in a secular society, in which faith -- or religious practice -- is something very private, completely pushed into the inner world, so intimate that it has completely deserted public speeches or conversations, even between friends, and all the more with "strangers". It wouldn't occur to anyone I know in RL to express religious feelings or casual talk about going to church, unless it's an ad hoc conversation. I might shock some people if I said that it would be like sharing favourite sexual positions or telling about going to partner-swinging clubs, but the analogy would work because it's THAT private.
So sometimes, surfing the Internet is very exotic and feels a bit like watching an American tv show!
Most of the time, it feels like I'm...different.
But, of course the world is more interesting if it's filled with people who are not like me.
Speaking of American tv shows, I'm still rewatching BSG (but have been too lazy to write posts!)and enjoying it a lot. I was so right to be crazy in love with that show when it was on. The finales of s1 and s2 were terrific, the beginning of s3 was awesome. I adore Saul Tigh more than ever (he started breaking my heart at the beginning of season 2 and I have loved the old bastard since then); I have warmed up to Lee, whom I used to find dull and lacking in character until the end of season 3; I keep flipping sides between Roslin and Adama; I cried a lot at the end of 'The Passage", and Helo is my hero (re-watched " A measure of Salvation" and "Rapture" yesterday, and "The Woman King" today). So good, so beautiful, so tall.
The show was so good at dealing with moral issues and at trying to define what being human meant and what it takes to remain "civilized" (something that The Walking Dead with its poor writing and idiotic characters fails to do). It was so good that it allowed the viewers to overlook some flaws, or plot holes, here and there.
Like the fact we never knew the name Six used on Caprica during her affair with Gaius Baltar (which is supposed to have lasted about 2 years, but it's probably a retcon they did for the finale)! He had to use a first name to call her before she came out about being a Cylon Number Six, but he never used it on screen and later simply called her "Caprica Six" when he had to. To tell the truth, I am not a big fan of characters calling each other first names all the time during a conversation (it's usually bad written dialogue unless the characters do it on purpose to annoy one another), because it doesn't happen in real life during conversations, but, in this case, it makes little sense that Gaius never used the human name he first knew her by (unlike Sharon, D'Anna or Doral or Simon, or Leoben or Cavil!), and yet they managed to sell it! I'm sure nobody ever pondered how bizarre it was.
Of course it's very significant given her journey towards humanity, that she just remained Six, or, at best, Caprica Six. She was a character, that is a person, but she also embodied something. She was an archetype.
And there's the issue of the head!characters. Rewatching the show while knowing the ending, I'm having a hard time to reconcile the head!characters from the first seasons to the head!characters of the series ' finale.
During season 1, head!Six kept talking about herself as if she were the woman Baltar had an affair with on Caprica, which would have made totally sense if she were only Baltar's fantasy or the projection of his subconscious. I think that head!Baltar did the same in "Downloaded" but in "The Woman King" he said "him" when mentioning Gaius...and it would work with a conflicted Caprica Six who's trying to free herself from her love for a man who's selfish, untrustworthy, and sided up with D'Anna!
But it seems to make much less sense if the head!characters are independant, real beings, spirits, lords of kobols, angels of God or whatever...
However, there's a line that I noticed for the first time during this reviewing: in season 1 on Cylon-occupied Caprica, a Six, I believe, commented on Faux-Boomer's behaviour regarding Helo and the colonials in general. She said "we are becoming our characters".
I think it's true of the skinjobs, true of the Final Five and true of the head!characters as well. The Eight that were sent to seduce Helo started pretending to be Boomer, that is a human Sharon from the fleet, then she began to believe in her character and became Sharon Agathon. The spirit who appeared to Baltar in the guise of a Six became Caprica Six too (hence her moments of passion or her outbursts of jealousy)...at least for a little while, until Gaius and the real Caprica Six found each other again.
Also, the skinjobs are artificial beings that look like real people, like human beings. They are fake people who were made up out of data, designed after models, not only for the looks but also in terms of personality. The same could be said of fictional characters made up by writers.
Perhaps, BSG while being an intriguing and riveting study on humanity, is also a metaphorical take on artistic creation. We'd have the completely fleshed-out characters who see themselves as the humans in the story; the skinjobs that are a step behind in the creative process (a lower level in evolution) but have potential to become "real"; the head!characters that are pure spirit, ethereal, only echoes of the creator's thoughts, possibilities on the paper, dreams of characters.
And this is where Greek mythology meets popular culture meets science and they all meet poetry. Caprica Six is a sort of chimera, a dream made woman, who's a bit of a monster too, mythical and dangerous, an impossible fantasy for a man...But there's also the meaning of chimera in genetics: an organism that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells. Basically it's two sets of DNA in one organism.
BSG was all of that too: a science-fiction show with space battles, robots and skinjobs that allowed the writers to tackle poltical, ethical and philosophical issues, but also a mythological story of beginnings and cycles, and a poetical tale that used poetical means and borrowed a lot from the classics.
I made my peace with the Time Square finale, a long time ago, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that the idea of using some characters, especially the head!characters, as a Greek Chorus voicing meta comments, or at least, as "outsiders"-- and in the case of the head!characters, both watching from another (higher) plane AND interacting with Baltar and Caprica Six--, that very idea was there from the beginning.
When it comes to fiction, if it's well done,I would take the poetical over the logical any time.