Translating Battlestar Galactica
damned_colonial's essay on US imperialism in the new Battlestar Galactica galvanized me to write a bit on the show's very contemporary setting. This isn't a direct response to the imperialism essay, by the way. I think damned_colonial's points about excessive US-centrism are valid.
(If you know next to nothing about BSG, minor spoilers follow.)
But many (myself included) have commented on how bizarre it is that these people from some distant, almost wholly un-Earth-related culture are so darned 20th/21st-century Earth-like (or, as damned_colonial observes, American). Is it just bad world building? Does it have to break suspension of disbelief? I'm going to argue no (though less specific Americanism would be nice).
I suggest that BSG is best perceived as a story that has been extensively "translated." Now, we all accept a certain amount of "translation" in our sci fi, particularly when it comes to language itself. We understand that the Centauri aren't really speaking English when they're alone together. But we accept the contemporary English translation as we'd accept watching a movie about the French Revolution in English or reading a translation of Dostoevsky.
We do, however, usually assume that names are literal names: Moya is called Moya; Dax is called Dax. But names can be translated too. Tolkien's a good example. In naming his hobbits, he gives us "translations" of what he considered their "real" Hobbitish/Westron names. Thus, "Samwise" is a translation of "Banazir" (if I'm remembering correctly), which means "half (or some) wise"; hence, "Samwise." And the diminutive "Ban" gets translated as "Sam."
BSG is in this broader category of translation. "Apollo," of course, does not really mean our "Apollo"; it's a translation for something that indicates "sun god of a rather influential but now largely defunct though still well-known pantheon." "Adama" isn't really "Adama"; it's really "name that sounds like it's related to ancient, influential stories concerning the first man created." We get the "translations" rather than the "real" names because the translations are more evocative for us. They convey, in our cultural context, more or less what the real names would convey to the characters in theirs.
But BSG, being a visual medium, takes this translation still further. It doesn't only translate words but styles, objects, occurrences. Thus, Roslin doesn't really wear contemporary business suits or glasses; she doesn't really have "cancer" or need "chemotherapy"; Starbuck doesn't really smoke "cigars"; the flag (if there is one) isn't really being folded in the American fashion. These things are translations for whatever alienesque things these people are really experiencing as normative, contemporary, and familiar for them.
This process of cultural "familiarization" is essential to narrating the story. BSG is about a people whose civilization has been destroyed. "Home" has been condensed down to a few ships fleeing in a convoy. For these people, everything that is familiar exists within those walls and is starkly juxtaposed to the threat and strangeness "out there." For us as viewers to understand this crucial dichotomy, we have to be able to view their "familiar" as our "familiar." We have to see them as us, not just in broad "they're people too" terms but in very intimate cultural terms.
(And, yes, this position does assume that all the viewers are American, and I agree that that's problematic.)
BSG can be thought of as a legend that has come down to us through many tellings and versions. We might imagine it as akin to the "real" events in the way that Xena is akin to life in Homeric Greece. This reading, incidentally, allows the original BSG to exist quite happily side-by-side with the new one with no contention at all as to which is the "real" or "canonical" version. They're just different tellings of the same basic legends, like the Volsungasaga to Wagner's Ring.
Me, I'm a stickler for good world building. And BSG's American contemporaneity was originally a stumbling block I just had to blot out. But when I think of it as a distant translation, a retelling, I don't have worry about the verisimilitude of the setting anymore. I can concentrate on the verisimilitude of the characters as psychological entities and the internal consistency of the universe that challenges them. And that's what I'm loving about this series!
(If you know next to nothing about BSG, minor spoilers follow.)
But many (myself included) have commented on how bizarre it is that these people from some distant, almost wholly un-Earth-related culture are so darned 20th/21st-century Earth-like (or, as damned_colonial observes, American). Is it just bad world building? Does it have to break suspension of disbelief? I'm going to argue no (though less specific Americanism would be nice).
I suggest that BSG is best perceived as a story that has been extensively "translated." Now, we all accept a certain amount of "translation" in our sci fi, particularly when it comes to language itself. We understand that the Centauri aren't really speaking English when they're alone together. But we accept the contemporary English translation as we'd accept watching a movie about the French Revolution in English or reading a translation of Dostoevsky.
We do, however, usually assume that names are literal names: Moya is called Moya; Dax is called Dax. But names can be translated too. Tolkien's a good example. In naming his hobbits, he gives us "translations" of what he considered their "real" Hobbitish/Westron names. Thus, "Samwise" is a translation of "Banazir" (if I'm remembering correctly), which means "half (or some) wise"; hence, "Samwise." And the diminutive "Ban" gets translated as "Sam."
BSG is in this broader category of translation. "Apollo," of course, does not really mean our "Apollo"; it's a translation for something that indicates "sun god of a rather influential but now largely defunct though still well-known pantheon." "Adama" isn't really "Adama"; it's really "name that sounds like it's related to ancient, influential stories concerning the first man created." We get the "translations" rather than the "real" names because the translations are more evocative for us. They convey, in our cultural context, more or less what the real names would convey to the characters in theirs.
But BSG, being a visual medium, takes this translation still further. It doesn't only translate words but styles, objects, occurrences. Thus, Roslin doesn't really wear contemporary business suits or glasses; she doesn't really have "cancer" or need "chemotherapy"; Starbuck doesn't really smoke "cigars"; the flag (if there is one) isn't really being folded in the American fashion. These things are translations for whatever alienesque things these people are really experiencing as normative, contemporary, and familiar for them.
This process of cultural "familiarization" is essential to narrating the story. BSG is about a people whose civilization has been destroyed. "Home" has been condensed down to a few ships fleeing in a convoy. For these people, everything that is familiar exists within those walls and is starkly juxtaposed to the threat and strangeness "out there." For us as viewers to understand this crucial dichotomy, we have to be able to view their "familiar" as our "familiar." We have to see them as us, not just in broad "they're people too" terms but in very intimate cultural terms.
(And, yes, this position does assume that all the viewers are American, and I agree that that's problematic.)
BSG can be thought of as a legend that has come down to us through many tellings and versions. We might imagine it as akin to the "real" events in the way that Xena is akin to life in Homeric Greece. This reading, incidentally, allows the original BSG to exist quite happily side-by-side with the new one with no contention at all as to which is the "real" or "canonical" version. They're just different tellings of the same basic legends, like the Volsungasaga to Wagner's Ring.
Me, I'm a stickler for good world building. And BSG's American contemporaneity was originally a stumbling block I just had to blot out. But when I think of it as a distant translation, a retelling, I don't have worry about the verisimilitude of the setting anymore. I can concentrate on the verisimilitude of the characters as psychological entities and the internal consistency of the universe that challenges them. And that's what I'm loving about this series!