Y: The Last Man, Babylon 5, and the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
This morning I was on my way to work with Kyle after getting Jamba Juice( a. OMG why did I think that was a good idea when it was sooo cold! b. Jamba Juice doesn't seem to have nutrition facts on their website anymore except for one flavor and I can't find anywhere else that has them on the new Breakfast things [I got the Berry Topper].) We were listening to NPR because Kyle broke his ipod and doesn't have a CD player in the car only a tape thing with an adapter. They were talking about Boeing being butthurt about not getting this airforce contract and a bomb aimed a recruitment facility (Which was "not terrorism"... presumably because it was white US citizens doing it not Arabs). Of course then they moved on to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and people's sons being killed and women being afraid to sleep at night and suddenly I remembered something interesting from my previous night's reading.
sophia_helix lent me the first volume of Y: The Last Man recently and last night I read it (quite interesting by the way). The basic premise of the series is that one day everything male (human or animal) dies suddenly en mass (except one guy and his monkey). Well the aspect of the story that I started thinking about this morning was the plotline of an very militant woman in the Israeli army who becomes the head of it when everyone above her dies, and that since basically Israel is the only country with a military left after the men all die, she basically just starts taking over. The people start getting dissatisfied with this, enough is enough, but she claims they need more of a "buffer zone". Now this is hardly the first time I've head the term, or even the first time I've heard it in relation to the Israeli/Palestinian issue. But somehow the combination of these factors made my brain connect it to Babylon 5 and Narn/Centauri conflict.
The Centauri use the excuse of a buffer zone for almost all of their military actions, especially against the Narn. And as soon as that connection was made in my brain I definitely felt like the political situation warranted looking at with the lens of Jewish history (after all Babylon 5 has a lot of Jewish references and influences)... but I felt like it was odd that the Centauri (especially when they were being so badly behaved) would be characterized as Israel (Given the other examples of Jews in the show... not because the Israelis don't have a lot of blood on their hands). But then of course I realize that the Narns really better exemplify Jewish History and Israel's militant state. They were enslaved for 100 years (Egypt anyone), executed en mass( You can bet they say "Never Again"), and as a result have become fanatically militant and sort of hard to be around. I don't think that it's a direct allegory. I think it's much more generalized and thematic, but I do think that there is some sort of suggestion in the show's handling of the Centauri/Narn conflict and particularly in G'Kar's transformation. I haven't finished the series yet (I'm still about halfway through season 4) but I really do feel like the idea that the desire to destroy the other will destroy you and the only way for either to survive is to help each other... even if the scars never heal and there is no love lost between you.
(No cuts because most of this is terribly general and/or is something revealed in the first episode/volume... and because I think this should be of interest [or create interest] in people who aren't familiar with either canon.)
sophia_helix lent me the first volume of Y: The Last Man recently and last night I read it (quite interesting by the way). The basic premise of the series is that one day everything male (human or animal) dies suddenly en mass (except one guy and his monkey). Well the aspect of the story that I started thinking about this morning was the plotline of an very militant woman in the Israeli army who becomes the head of it when everyone above her dies, and that since basically Israel is the only country with a military left after the men all die, she basically just starts taking over. The people start getting dissatisfied with this, enough is enough, but she claims they need more of a "buffer zone". Now this is hardly the first time I've head the term, or even the first time I've heard it in relation to the Israeli/Palestinian issue. But somehow the combination of these factors made my brain connect it to Babylon 5 and Narn/Centauri conflict.
The Centauri use the excuse of a buffer zone for almost all of their military actions, especially against the Narn. And as soon as that connection was made in my brain I definitely felt like the political situation warranted looking at with the lens of Jewish history (after all Babylon 5 has a lot of Jewish references and influences)... but I felt like it was odd that the Centauri (especially when they were being so badly behaved) would be characterized as Israel (Given the other examples of Jews in the show... not because the Israelis don't have a lot of blood on their hands). But then of course I realize that the Narns really better exemplify Jewish History and Israel's militant state. They were enslaved for 100 years (Egypt anyone), executed en mass( You can bet they say "Never Again"), and as a result have become fanatically militant and sort of hard to be around. I don't think that it's a direct allegory. I think it's much more generalized and thematic, but I do think that there is some sort of suggestion in the show's handling of the Centauri/Narn conflict and particularly in G'Kar's transformation. I haven't finished the series yet (I'm still about halfway through season 4) but I really do feel like the idea that the desire to destroy the other will destroy you and the only way for either to survive is to help each other... even if the scars never heal and there is no love lost between you.
(No cuts because most of this is terribly general and/or is something revealed in the first episode/volume... and because I think this should be of interest [or create interest] in people who aren't familiar with either canon.)