BSG: Queering One's Gaze & the Traces of Ideology
I walk down a street in the interstices of school
and our gazes meet.
The road I tread
mows through her irises, presses her prisms
and I own
the eyes with which she watches me...
I'd like to bring into attention the 'gaze' by which we watch people, a function of gaydar, tied to knowing. It's a rather peculiar thing, I think, that certain people see you and look at you differently from the position of desire, especially when they themselves are open to queering or queerness.
I'm quite adept at knowing if a person is gay simply by the way he/she looks at me or looks at other people.
Quite literally, the "queer gaze".
Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica and my never-ending ramblings. Do female characters, in fact, look at you the audience? Do they look at other characters with the same depth which reality deals us? Or is it simply how we perceive being perceived? (Sound Freudian to you? Sounds Freudian to me.)
This idea brought about a prOn fic idea where Tory wakes up in somebody's bunk and realizes that everyone looks at her differently (ending with the President dealing her a look quite unlike the one Helo gives her, something she can't quite decipher...except that it's lined with desire.) Wouldn't it be interesting to see the different ways people look at each other in terms of desire, and how even the writers of the show seek to police the politics of desire in this supposedly "sexually open" society?
I just saw a very encouraging, potential Tory/Roslin/Six scene, when Gaius!head kisses Galactica!Six and Six proceeds to delve into this fantasy with Tory and Roslin watching her. Mise-en-scene between these characters with a yummy Athena thrown into the bunch. This is foursome/threesome fodder and anybody who'd like to write the subtext and the in-betweens can go right ahead and make me happy.
Then there was a Tory/Roslin scene with Zarek thrown in for good measure. One could definitely see from these two women's dynamic. They had a mutual respect and something else going on a comfort level that allows them to contradict each other. (I swear, the aide is shagging the president! Must be the gaze!)
Naked!Helo was particularly yummy to look at and that he was a central character in this week's episode was somewhat...er, okay. Lucky Athena. Lucky Helo. I love their little, hetero family with all its strange kinks. I'd shag 'em both if it weren't for Hera and the bad writing. Tahmoh's acting was pretty okay, but really. The writing made them all look bad, most especially Tigh, who for some reason, I hate all over again. Ugh.
Delving deeper into Saggitaron beliefs, I'm reminded of a Babylon 5 episode where the doctor wasn't allowed to operate on a sick patient because it was against their beliefs. I have to agree with Helo that one has to respect beliefs, no matter how 'backward' they seem. Coming from a country where the goddess has been relegated to witch-craft and hocus pocus, I believe we're entitled to our own truths and some, even as they're blotted from the surface, maintain a subterranean existence because well...because they're about as important to us as all our other dominant beliefs about technology, medicine, and progress.
There are many things we do not know and the shaman's stick may be as good as a pill. As human beings, many of us have forgotten the old ways, shirk it, and forget that those who practice it aren't any less human than those who don't. That maybe --just maybe --we exist in dimensions beyond this one, touched and healed only by the mystical.
It's rather interesting to note that the healer of old became a witch in order for men to understand where her power stems; the babaylan (before the Spanish came in and waxed wroth all over our culture) was not only a repository of memory and a healer; she took the role of leader. Women in pre-Spanish society actually preferred penis rings on their men; they were the aggressors. Virgins were considered inexperienced, useless fraks and usually, a family would make sure that she had enough experience before marrying her off. Masturbation was frakkin' OKAY.
Isn't that interesting about our society? Once Christianity sank its teeth in, however, everything changed.
That the Saggitarons were thought by their contemporaries in much the same way the Spanish thought of us and our 'superstitions', our ways of healing, and of the treatment of our women...well okay. We're made to think badly of the Saggitarons; everybody seems to despise/protest the way they shirk modern medical practices. It'd be interesting to explore the idealogy, the whole way of looking and perceiving that informs everybody's judgment with regards to the archaic and the metropolitan, especially in BSG.
The episode was a good day for filling in the blanks with better writers in the form of fan fiction writers. The character writing for this episode was horrible; the camera-work felt as though it didn't know what it wanted from the scenes. Regardless, there were tons of queer gazing (to be done) and Tory/Roslin, which we haven't had any, since Roslin's been confined to sharing her spaces with men the past few episodes.
We do get some Racetrack, who is adorable and could only be gay. Maybe Dualla and she could get together sometime...and Starbuck --oh Kara! --when will you ever share the screen with people other than male pilots, angry!Dee, and rebels?
Hopefully somebody comes up with Tory/Roslin smut pretty soon, dig through all the possibilities of this rather interesting episode (because of how it deals with the seats of power, gazes, etc), if I don't. Because seriously, I'd adore you if you did.
and our gazes meet.
The road I tread
mows through her irises, presses her prisms
and I own
the eyes with which she watches me...
I'd like to bring into attention the 'gaze' by which we watch people, a function of gaydar, tied to knowing. It's a rather peculiar thing, I think, that certain people see you and look at you differently from the position of desire, especially when they themselves are open to queering or queerness.
I'm quite adept at knowing if a person is gay simply by the way he/she looks at me or looks at other people.
Quite literally, the "queer gaze".
Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica and my never-ending ramblings. Do female characters, in fact, look at you the audience? Do they look at other characters with the same depth which reality deals us? Or is it simply how we perceive being perceived? (Sound Freudian to you? Sounds Freudian to me.)
This idea brought about a prOn fic idea where Tory wakes up in somebody's bunk and realizes that everyone looks at her differently (ending with the President dealing her a look quite unlike the one Helo gives her, something she can't quite decipher...except that it's lined with desire.) Wouldn't it be interesting to see the different ways people look at each other in terms of desire, and how even the writers of the show seek to police the politics of desire in this supposedly "sexually open" society?
I just saw a very encouraging, potential Tory/Roslin/Six scene, when Gaius!head kisses Galactica!Six and Six proceeds to delve into this fantasy with Tory and Roslin watching her. Mise-en-scene between these characters with a yummy Athena thrown into the bunch. This is foursome/threesome fodder and anybody who'd like to write the subtext and the in-betweens can go right ahead and make me happy.
Then there was a Tory/Roslin scene with Zarek thrown in for good measure. One could definitely see from these two women's dynamic. They had a mutual respect and something else going on a comfort level that allows them to contradict each other. (I swear, the aide is shagging the president! Must be the gaze!)
Naked!Helo was particularly yummy to look at and that he was a central character in this week's episode was somewhat...er, okay. Lucky Athena. Lucky Helo. I love their little, hetero family with all its strange kinks. I'd shag 'em both if it weren't for Hera and the bad writing. Tahmoh's acting was pretty okay, but really. The writing made them all look bad, most especially Tigh, who for some reason, I hate all over again. Ugh.
Delving deeper into Saggitaron beliefs, I'm reminded of a Babylon 5 episode where the doctor wasn't allowed to operate on a sick patient because it was against their beliefs. I have to agree with Helo that one has to respect beliefs, no matter how 'backward' they seem. Coming from a country where the goddess has been relegated to witch-craft and hocus pocus, I believe we're entitled to our own truths and some, even as they're blotted from the surface, maintain a subterranean existence because well...because they're about as important to us as all our other dominant beliefs about technology, medicine, and progress.
There are many things we do not know and the shaman's stick may be as good as a pill. As human beings, many of us have forgotten the old ways, shirk it, and forget that those who practice it aren't any less human than those who don't. That maybe --just maybe --we exist in dimensions beyond this one, touched and healed only by the mystical.
It's rather interesting to note that the healer of old became a witch in order for men to understand where her power stems; the babaylan (before the Spanish came in and waxed wroth all over our culture) was not only a repository of memory and a healer; she took the role of leader. Women in pre-Spanish society actually preferred penis rings on their men; they were the aggressors. Virgins were considered inexperienced, useless fraks and usually, a family would make sure that she had enough experience before marrying her off. Masturbation was frakkin' OKAY.
Isn't that interesting about our society? Once Christianity sank its teeth in, however, everything changed.
That the Saggitarons were thought by their contemporaries in much the same way the Spanish thought of us and our 'superstitions', our ways of healing, and of the treatment of our women...well okay. We're made to think badly of the Saggitarons; everybody seems to despise/protest the way they shirk modern medical practices. It'd be interesting to explore the idealogy, the whole way of looking and perceiving that informs everybody's judgment with regards to the archaic and the metropolitan, especially in BSG.
The episode was a good day for filling in the blanks with better writers in the form of fan fiction writers. The character writing for this episode was horrible; the camera-work felt as though it didn't know what it wanted from the scenes. Regardless, there were tons of queer gazing (to be done) and Tory/Roslin, which we haven't had any, since Roslin's been confined to sharing her spaces with men the past few episodes.
We do get some Racetrack, who is adorable and could only be gay. Maybe Dualla and she could get together sometime...and Starbuck --oh Kara! --when will you ever share the screen with people other than male pilots, angry!Dee, and rebels?
Hopefully somebody comes up with Tory/Roslin smut pretty soon, dig through all the possibilities of this rather interesting episode (because of how it deals with the seats of power, gazes, etc), if I don't. Because seriously, I'd adore you if you did.