BSG meta: "Gendering Cylonity: Otherness in Human/Cylon Relatinships."
Battlestar Galactica has been pretty consistent in giving us an equalish point of view on male and female characters so they both occupy the subject position at various points in the arcs, the main ones being Adama, Roslin, Kara, and Lee. Which is why Kara and Anders have started to interest me more than they did before Anders' Cylonity was revealed, at least on a metafictional level. I shipped them before, but the reveal opened my favorite pairing to all these new possibilities that so far have been completely ignored and I'm a bit disappointed by it.
The show has a specific way of approaching Cylon/Human relationships in terms of point of view and the framing of the narratives that I first noticed in season one, and I was hoping that we would see a variation on that in Sam/Kara. Point of view positions in fiction can be seen in terms of subject vs an object which is also referred to as the "I/Us vs Other" position. It's often interchangable, but there are certainly texts now that play with the idea of the Other being in the subject position.
Canon and/or mainstream texts have a bad history of often putting women in the Other/Object position. Cylons, just by being machines and clearly not humans, can be seen as the Other in the BSGverse, so it's always kind of bothered me that the two significant Cylon/Human romantic relationships we see on BSG both have women occupying the Cylon position, which makes them the Other. And the narrative choice of framing the Helo/Sharaon and the Caprica/Gauis relationship from the POVs of the men, especially in the early stages, gives the Cylon women the object position in their relationship. This is interesting in that the Cylons are sort of objects in that they're machines and not considered humans.
I had a theory, early on, that the general acceptance of and the writers' choice to go with these relationships had to do with the fact that women are portrayed as machines/objects and they're usually objectified by the media anyway, so this balance of power was familiar to the audience/writers. I'm still not sure if it's true, but just for the sake of variety, I've kind of really, really been wanting a Cylon/Human relationship on the show where the man is the Cylon. So, we got Kara/Leoben, in a way. And now we have Kara/Sam. Let's see how they're different from Helo/Sharon and Gauis/Six.
Helo/Sharon: Is framed, in its very early stages, from Helo's POV. We're alone on that planet with him as he experiences everything and when Sharon finds him and enters his narrative. And she is in his narrative, not the other way around even though he's the one who is playing unknowingly in the Cylons' hands. When we finally start getting the Sharon POV on this relationship, it's given to us in a way where we're still unclear of her motivations so her psyche is still harder to grasp than Helo's. Part of the suspense of the story relies on us being uncertain of Sharon's real loyalties, so we can never be fully inside her head. Meanwhile, Helo continues to be visible and certain in all his actions. The dynamics shift a bit once they're back on the fleet, but she's still the outsider locked behind the bars. Sharon never really stops being the Other in their relationship while there is a focus on their relationship (which there hasn't been much of lately), so it keeps playing to stereotypical gender dynamics. Lately, it seems that Sharon's Cylonity is more about the angst it brings Helo's way than it is about her, so she's still being viewed through the Helo POV, in a way.
Baltar/Six: We entered this relationship through Six's POV, in a way, since we meet her before we do Baltar. But even before Baltar enters the picture, Six has already been established as inhuman and inhumane through the killing of the infant she meets. Then she's the 'freaky,' religious, clingy one when Baltar gets to act all rational typical male playboyish. She's more emotionally invested in this relationship, but her attachment is seen as out of the ordinary, especially for her. And Head!Six, whom we see more of, is not only a racial other, but she's also otherworldly and possibly supernatural. We're still not certain what the deal is with her, but it's interesting to note that we have an insider's view of Baltar's insanity so even his insanity, which should mark him as the outsider, doesn't take away from his status as the POV character in this relationship. She's in his head, so we kind of never see her outside of his context or his POV.
The Kara/Leoben thing is interesting because we do see this relationship from Kara's POV, so that makes Leoben the Other. But...Leoben is still the one with the power in the relationship, and Kara's the one being objectified. The Kara POV itself is odd in that it's uncomfortable because she's not any Kara we've really met before. When the scene first starts of them having dinner, it's not exactly clear what has passed between them or what are the terms of their relationship. When Kara kills him, though, she is the one who is sort of destroying a sense of faux normalcy by introducing violence.
And Sam/Kara should've really fixed my issues with my theory. The writers have rarely portrayed Kara as a stereotypical female, and Kara is one of our main POV characters, so a relationship between Kara and Cylon!Sam should place Sam in the Object/Other position, yes or yes? Except, it's not working out that way. Some of the most 'irrational' we've seen Kara acting lately has been in Sam's presence. And insanity is just another way of marking out Otherness. So when we're approaching Kara/Sam these days, Sam is the 'sane' one, acting normal, and being understanding while Kara is acting like she's the Cylon. Which is understandable plotwise, but I keep thinking that the gender dynamics are playing some part in how the writers are portraying Kara's relationships with Cylon men vs how they've portrayed the relationships of Cylon women with human men. Even the three seconds of time with them in "Escape Velocity" was clearly in his POV, what with her sleeping and not having a POV.
Also, I should probably mention Tyrol/Cally here as well. Where Tyrol is a Cylon, but he's more of a POV character than Cally has ever been, so Cally comes off as being the 'insane' one. Again, her Otherness expresses itself as insanity, in the traditional "Mad Woman in the Attic" fashion.
I'm not completely sure where Gauis' form of insanity fits in this, except that we've always understood where his insanity is coming from (the visions/chip in his head) while Kara's and Cally's coded insanity has been more mysterious and random.
I'm glad that the show has moved away from having the Cylons as the Other in these relationships, but why did it have to happen in relationships where men are the Cylons? So when the fictional dynamics of speciesism meet the very real gender dynamics of the real world, the stereotypes that win out are the ones that continue to place the women in the Other position. Which is just annoying.
While not in the context of relationships (even though Leoben probably thinks of the Starbuck torture stuff as foreplay), I also find the imprisonment of Leoben and Gina interesting in the gender context of the show. Clearly, the Pegasus people are eviler, so it makes sense that Gina's treatment was much worse than Leoben's. However, there are definitely other things at play here. When we meet Gina, she's been completely dehumanized (decylonized?), and when we finally see her regain her voice and a sense of identity, she's all about the difference between Cylons and Humans...she's been alienated and will never see herself as human again. In some ways, Sharon's imprisonment is also about dehumanizing her. There's the constant referring to her as an object, and really, it takes her a couple of arcs before anyone (besides Helo) is willing to acknowledge that she might just be a person.
Leoben's torture/imprisonment plays out very differently. As with Cain's treatment of Gina, Starbuck is all about proving that Leoben is not human. There's the constant referring to him as an object, the total denial of his having a soul, and the mindless torture that I kind of think Starbuck would not have put a human through. But...Leoben maintains his position that he is human throughout the torture. He also kind of has leverage against them, and despite his imprisonment, he has an upper hand in many ways throughout the episode. Unlike Gina, who is completely broken and messed up when we first meet her. And in the end, Starbuck sort of acknowledges his humanity by praying for his soul. Gina never stops being an Other, but Leoben's humanity is confirmed pretty early on despite the fact that Gina was on the show for longer.
The show has a specific way of approaching Cylon/Human relationships in terms of point of view and the framing of the narratives that I first noticed in season one, and I was hoping that we would see a variation on that in Sam/Kara. Point of view positions in fiction can be seen in terms of subject vs an object which is also referred to as the "I/Us vs Other" position. It's often interchangable, but there are certainly texts now that play with the idea of the Other being in the subject position.
Canon and/or mainstream texts have a bad history of often putting women in the Other/Object position. Cylons, just by being machines and clearly not humans, can be seen as the Other in the BSGverse, so it's always kind of bothered me that the two significant Cylon/Human romantic relationships we see on BSG both have women occupying the Cylon position, which makes them the Other. And the narrative choice of framing the Helo/Sharaon and the Caprica/Gauis relationship from the POVs of the men, especially in the early stages, gives the Cylon women the object position in their relationship. This is interesting in that the Cylons are sort of objects in that they're machines and not considered humans.
I had a theory, early on, that the general acceptance of and the writers' choice to go with these relationships had to do with the fact that women are portrayed as machines/objects and they're usually objectified by the media anyway, so this balance of power was familiar to the audience/writers. I'm still not sure if it's true, but just for the sake of variety, I've kind of really, really been wanting a Cylon/Human relationship on the show where the man is the Cylon. So, we got Kara/Leoben, in a way. And now we have Kara/Sam. Let's see how they're different from Helo/Sharon and Gauis/Six.
Helo/Sharon: Is framed, in its very early stages, from Helo's POV. We're alone on that planet with him as he experiences everything and when Sharon finds him and enters his narrative. And she is in his narrative, not the other way around even though he's the one who is playing unknowingly in the Cylons' hands. When we finally start getting the Sharon POV on this relationship, it's given to us in a way where we're still unclear of her motivations so her psyche is still harder to grasp than Helo's. Part of the suspense of the story relies on us being uncertain of Sharon's real loyalties, so we can never be fully inside her head. Meanwhile, Helo continues to be visible and certain in all his actions. The dynamics shift a bit once they're back on the fleet, but she's still the outsider locked behind the bars. Sharon never really stops being the Other in their relationship while there is a focus on their relationship (which there hasn't been much of lately), so it keeps playing to stereotypical gender dynamics. Lately, it seems that Sharon's Cylonity is more about the angst it brings Helo's way than it is about her, so she's still being viewed through the Helo POV, in a way.
Baltar/Six: We entered this relationship through Six's POV, in a way, since we meet her before we do Baltar. But even before Baltar enters the picture, Six has already been established as inhuman and inhumane through the killing of the infant she meets. Then she's the 'freaky,' religious, clingy one when Baltar gets to act all rational typical male playboyish. She's more emotionally invested in this relationship, but her attachment is seen as out of the ordinary, especially for her. And Head!Six, whom we see more of, is not only a racial other, but she's also otherworldly and possibly supernatural. We're still not certain what the deal is with her, but it's interesting to note that we have an insider's view of Baltar's insanity so even his insanity, which should mark him as the outsider, doesn't take away from his status as the POV character in this relationship. She's in his head, so we kind of never see her outside of his context or his POV.
The Kara/Leoben thing is interesting because we do see this relationship from Kara's POV, so that makes Leoben the Other. But...Leoben is still the one with the power in the relationship, and Kara's the one being objectified. The Kara POV itself is odd in that it's uncomfortable because she's not any Kara we've really met before. When the scene first starts of them having dinner, it's not exactly clear what has passed between them or what are the terms of their relationship. When Kara kills him, though, she is the one who is sort of destroying a sense of faux normalcy by introducing violence.
And Sam/Kara should've really fixed my issues with my theory. The writers have rarely portrayed Kara as a stereotypical female, and Kara is one of our main POV characters, so a relationship between Kara and Cylon!Sam should place Sam in the Object/Other position, yes or yes? Except, it's not working out that way. Some of the most 'irrational' we've seen Kara acting lately has been in Sam's presence. And insanity is just another way of marking out Otherness. So when we're approaching Kara/Sam these days, Sam is the 'sane' one, acting normal, and being understanding while Kara is acting like she's the Cylon. Which is understandable plotwise, but I keep thinking that the gender dynamics are playing some part in how the writers are portraying Kara's relationships with Cylon men vs how they've portrayed the relationships of Cylon women with human men. Even the three seconds of time with them in "Escape Velocity" was clearly in his POV, what with her sleeping and not having a POV.
Also, I should probably mention Tyrol/Cally here as well. Where Tyrol is a Cylon, but he's more of a POV character than Cally has ever been, so Cally comes off as being the 'insane' one. Again, her Otherness expresses itself as insanity, in the traditional "Mad Woman in the Attic" fashion.
I'm not completely sure where Gauis' form of insanity fits in this, except that we've always understood where his insanity is coming from (the visions/chip in his head) while Kara's and Cally's coded insanity has been more mysterious and random.
I'm glad that the show has moved away from having the Cylons as the Other in these relationships, but why did it have to happen in relationships where men are the Cylons? So when the fictional dynamics of speciesism meet the very real gender dynamics of the real world, the stereotypes that win out are the ones that continue to place the women in the Other position. Which is just annoying.
While not in the context of relationships (even though Leoben probably thinks of the Starbuck torture stuff as foreplay), I also find the imprisonment of Leoben and Gina interesting in the gender context of the show. Clearly, the Pegasus people are eviler, so it makes sense that Gina's treatment was much worse than Leoben's. However, there are definitely other things at play here. When we meet Gina, she's been completely dehumanized (decylonized?), and when we finally see her regain her voice and a sense of identity, she's all about the difference between Cylons and Humans...she's been alienated and will never see herself as human again. In some ways, Sharon's imprisonment is also about dehumanizing her. There's the constant referring to her as an object, and really, it takes her a couple of arcs before anyone (besides Helo) is willing to acknowledge that she might just be a person.
Leoben's torture/imprisonment plays out very differently. As with Cain's treatment of Gina, Starbuck is all about proving that Leoben is not human. There's the constant referring to him as an object, the total denial of his having a soul, and the mindless torture that I kind of think Starbuck would not have put a human through. But...Leoben maintains his position that he is human throughout the torture. He also kind of has leverage against them, and despite his imprisonment, he has an upper hand in many ways throughout the episode. Unlike Gina, who is completely broken and messed up when we first meet her. And in the end, Starbuck sort of acknowledges his humanity by praying for his soul. Gina never stops being an Other, but Leoben's humanity is confirmed pretty early on despite the fact that Gina was on the show for longer.