part 2 of ellen day IS VERY UPSETTING.
The murder of Ellen made me furious and stuck with me for a long time. And it’s not that I needed a reason per se to be pissed about this (because, and not to put too fine a point on this: murder), but it sat differently than even the most an egregious case of fridging would have. I mean, I know I’ve gotten a bit tiresome on the tactical non-necessity of killing Ellen, and it’s a bit obvious. But it struck me last night that we didn’t just watch a murder.
We watched an honor killing.
The template for honor killings right now, and where the phrase comes from, is of course from Muslim communities throughout the world, where such practice is a major, but oft-ignored, criminal justice problem. In Latin America, similar crimes are known as “crimes of passion” and were only very recently recognized as homicides, and are still committed with impunity. Intimate partner violence ends in inadequately-punished murder the world over. Though the transparency and details of the justifications change from society to society, the essential elements remain the same. A bunch of men come together to decide that a woman close to one of them has violated their social/religious/sexual taboos, usually for some minor or made-up infringement, in which the woman involved may or may not have had any real choice, and they pressure (and sometimes force) the men closest to her to kill her.
Ellen is someone who might be vulnerable to such a killing in our own societies. She enjoys alcohol and sex, and inserts herself into men’s games of status in order to advance her own, but without, as Starbuck, Roslin, and Cain do, masculinizing herself socially or stylistically. Ellen is very much a gender-transgressive character (as opposed to the other characters, who would be more accurately classed as gender-benders). And indeed, women who are politically active are even more likely than most to be targeted for this type of crime.
And yeah, she did a bad thing when she handed over the plans for the escape, and if they hadn’t been about to get the hell out of there, I could probably imagine a theoretical scenario where she was too much of a liability to be allowed to live (though if that had been the case, it obviously should have been someone other than Tigh to avoid the intimate partner violence overtones which are completely unavoidable in this situation regardless). But the idea that she deserved to die in such an absolute way that no other character ever questions it is in an entirely different philosophical universe.
We like to focus on the innocent victims of such crimes, because they garner the most sympathy and it’s a useful rhetorical device to draw attention to the systemic issue. But what happens when the victim isn’t entirely innocent, as pretty much none of us are? Does she really have it coming, no matter what “it” is? The answer in the BSG-verse appears to be an unsettlingly resounding yes. This is a show that is eminently capable of dealing with things, of showing complex political concepts for what they truly are, and so when something as unconscionable as this is left not only unpunished but unexamined and even unnamed, it stands out as a major technical and philosophical flaw.
Having been enough of a damn fool to try to read the TV tropes page on BSG (advice direct from me to you, DON’T), I’ve come across more than one entry which claims Tigh is a woobie because he “had to” kill his wife. No, really. And the idea that such murders “have to” happen is quite common and socially enforced - Wikipedia informs me that as far back as ancient Rome, honor killings were legally mandated for the families of errant women. But we should not accept this as viewers, and the narrative should not accept the justifications of the characters. The idea that perpetrators of IPV are victims of a force of nature - nobody blames the flood, after all - is one that cannot continue to go unchallenged, on Earth or New Caprica.
Aside from the setup for the eventual Caprica pregnancy-in-captivity storyline that I like to pretend never happened, this is why the sexualized component of the Cavil storyline is so important, as excruciating as it is to watch. Without the betrayal of the map, Ellen’s only sin against the resistance was the sex with Cavil, which broke every boundary that the mentality behind honor killings is meant to enforce. She gave over the map because she knew her exploitation at the hands of Cavil (and no matter how much, and how very understandably, she dressed it up to get through the day, that is unquestionably what it was) was enough to remind the insurgents of their powerlessness during the occupation, which on its own was enough to brand her a collaborator, a carrier of the fear and fury and shame of subservience. This mindset is what convinced Ellen - correctly - that just by being there and being desired she was in it too deep to get out when Cavil coerced her to spy for him.
The metaphor between the human occupation and occupations in Palestine and Iraq, while it sets up a believable background for the killing, isn’t thoroughly explored socially. This, too, is a real-world phenomenon - for example, the (slightly out-of-date, and so, one hopes, inflated) statistic that two-thirds of all murders in Gaza and the West Bank are honor killings receives little attention outside of VAW-focused circles. The rigorous policing of the line between Us and Them, which grows ever sharper and more awful in times of conflict and oppression, happens over the bodies of women like Ellen. I would have much less of a problem seeing it happen if it were not excused and glossed over the way it will be over the next two seasons.
As is shockingly common throughout the text, the show displayed a tragic real-world horror story, but bought the justifications of the perpetrators hook, line, and sinker until the awful behavior becomes recast as heroism. The killing happens during the high-stakes, fast-moving exodus, during which Our Heroes are very much the besieged heroes. All of the resistance members are complicit in the murder. Sweet, easy-going Sam is the character who goes the furthest in justifying it, by reiterating the presumed inevitability of the murder and eventually roping Saul in with an appropriated harm-reductionist argument that her death will be painful and grotesque if Tigh doesn’t kill her. The performative element of honor killings is an important one, with victims used to make an example for other women who may be thinking of stepping out of line. This becomes even more problematic when the three of them are revealed to be part of the Final Five, more family than family; here we have husband and brother standing outside of Ellen’s cell and deciding how she should die.
This is one of those times where I’m kind of conditioned to expect folks are thinking, to chill out, to stop looking for things to be offended about, to stop seeing this and start seeing the story. But that’s rather the point, isn’t it? That this is the story. This is what happened. This is what we are absorbing and understanding through the events on screen. And I’d love to chill out. I’d love not to think about it. I’d love to know, how they all do it. Because I’d like to know. I’d like to know how not to think about all the Ellens and the Ginas and the Sharons and the Karas and the Lauras whose stories are being told with Ellen, or Gina, or Sharon, or Kara, or Laura.* I want to stop seeing it. I want it to stop being there for me to see. I want a break. I’m so fucking tired.
*We’re going to get back to that cross-examination someday. Promise.
We watched an honor killing.
The template for honor killings right now, and where the phrase comes from, is of course from Muslim communities throughout the world, where such practice is a major, but oft-ignored, criminal justice problem. In Latin America, similar crimes are known as “crimes of passion” and were only very recently recognized as homicides, and are still committed with impunity. Intimate partner violence ends in inadequately-punished murder the world over. Though the transparency and details of the justifications change from society to society, the essential elements remain the same. A bunch of men come together to decide that a woman close to one of them has violated their social/religious/sexual taboos, usually for some minor or made-up infringement, in which the woman involved may or may not have had any real choice, and they pressure (and sometimes force) the men closest to her to kill her.
Ellen is someone who might be vulnerable to such a killing in our own societies. She enjoys alcohol and sex, and inserts herself into men’s games of status in order to advance her own, but without, as Starbuck, Roslin, and Cain do, masculinizing herself socially or stylistically. Ellen is very much a gender-transgressive character (as opposed to the other characters, who would be more accurately classed as gender-benders). And indeed, women who are politically active are even more likely than most to be targeted for this type of crime.
And yeah, she did a bad thing when she handed over the plans for the escape, and if they hadn’t been about to get the hell out of there, I could probably imagine a theoretical scenario where she was too much of a liability to be allowed to live (though if that had been the case, it obviously should have been someone other than Tigh to avoid the intimate partner violence overtones which are completely unavoidable in this situation regardless). But the idea that she deserved to die in such an absolute way that no other character ever questions it is in an entirely different philosophical universe.
We like to focus on the innocent victims of such crimes, because they garner the most sympathy and it’s a useful rhetorical device to draw attention to the systemic issue. But what happens when the victim isn’t entirely innocent, as pretty much none of us are? Does she really have it coming, no matter what “it” is? The answer in the BSG-verse appears to be an unsettlingly resounding yes. This is a show that is eminently capable of dealing with things, of showing complex political concepts for what they truly are, and so when something as unconscionable as this is left not only unpunished but unexamined and even unnamed, it stands out as a major technical and philosophical flaw.
Having been enough of a damn fool to try to read the TV tropes page on BSG (advice direct from me to you, DON’T), I’ve come across more than one entry which claims Tigh is a woobie because he “had to” kill his wife. No, really. And the idea that such murders “have to” happen is quite common and socially enforced - Wikipedia informs me that as far back as ancient Rome, honor killings were legally mandated for the families of errant women. But we should not accept this as viewers, and the narrative should not accept the justifications of the characters. The idea that perpetrators of IPV are victims of a force of nature - nobody blames the flood, after all - is one that cannot continue to go unchallenged, on Earth or New Caprica.
Aside from the setup for the eventual Caprica pregnancy-in-captivity storyline that I like to pretend never happened, this is why the sexualized component of the Cavil storyline is so important, as excruciating as it is to watch. Without the betrayal of the map, Ellen’s only sin against the resistance was the sex with Cavil, which broke every boundary that the mentality behind honor killings is meant to enforce. She gave over the map because she knew her exploitation at the hands of Cavil (and no matter how much, and how very understandably, she dressed it up to get through the day, that is unquestionably what it was) was enough to remind the insurgents of their powerlessness during the occupation, which on its own was enough to brand her a collaborator, a carrier of the fear and fury and shame of subservience. This mindset is what convinced Ellen - correctly - that just by being there and being desired she was in it too deep to get out when Cavil coerced her to spy for him.
The metaphor between the human occupation and occupations in Palestine and Iraq, while it sets up a believable background for the killing, isn’t thoroughly explored socially. This, too, is a real-world phenomenon - for example, the (slightly out-of-date, and so, one hopes, inflated) statistic that two-thirds of all murders in Gaza and the West Bank are honor killings receives little attention outside of VAW-focused circles. The rigorous policing of the line between Us and Them, which grows ever sharper and more awful in times of conflict and oppression, happens over the bodies of women like Ellen. I would have much less of a problem seeing it happen if it were not excused and glossed over the way it will be over the next two seasons.
As is shockingly common throughout the text, the show displayed a tragic real-world horror story, but bought the justifications of the perpetrators hook, line, and sinker until the awful behavior becomes recast as heroism. The killing happens during the high-stakes, fast-moving exodus, during which Our Heroes are very much the besieged heroes. All of the resistance members are complicit in the murder. Sweet, easy-going Sam is the character who goes the furthest in justifying it, by reiterating the presumed inevitability of the murder and eventually roping Saul in with an appropriated harm-reductionist argument that her death will be painful and grotesque if Tigh doesn’t kill her. The performative element of honor killings is an important one, with victims used to make an example for other women who may be thinking of stepping out of line. This becomes even more problematic when the three of them are revealed to be part of the Final Five, more family than family; here we have husband and brother standing outside of Ellen’s cell and deciding how she should die.
This is one of those times where I’m kind of conditioned to expect folks are thinking, to chill out, to stop looking for things to be offended about, to stop seeing this and start seeing the story. But that’s rather the point, isn’t it? That this is the story. This is what happened. This is what we are absorbing and understanding through the events on screen. And I’d love to chill out. I’d love not to think about it. I’d love to know, how they all do it. Because I’d like to know. I’d like to know how not to think about all the Ellens and the Ginas and the Sharons and the Karas and the Lauras whose stories are being told with Ellen, or Gina, or Sharon, or Kara, or Laura.* I want to stop seeing it. I want it to stop being there for me to see. I want a break. I’m so fucking tired.
*We’re going to get back to that cross-examination someday. Promise.