Cally, Dee, and Ellen: on the reviled feminine on BSG (Dee)
the womenlovefest magic continues. FASHIONABLY LATE, OKAY.
Day 1: what gender-neutral society?
Day 2: why these ladies?
Day 3: Ellen Tigh
Day 4: Dee
I think a lot of fandom dislike around Dee herself or her storyline is quite revealing, if not of us, then of the BSG-verse. The explicitness with which Dee’s perspective collapsed into her relationship, and therefore into a trope where female characters are props for male narratives, looks to me like flawed, lazy storytelling - and it’s more than fair to dislike her place in the narrative, or to take issue with Dee/Lee because it serves to subsume a WOC into a white man’s story, or for any other reason at all. ( Though IT IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK IT IS I PROMISE.) That said! I think Dee/Lee makes sense for Dee and develops her in some interesting, if painful, ways.
I recognize that it’s unfortunate that I’m looking at Dee mostly through the lens of her marriage. I could take the easy way out and say that it’s just that it’s the most important development of her character, and it is, but that doesn’t mean uncritically accepting the story as it played out. At the same time, this is where fandom’s issues with Dee seem to flare up, and I’m not talking about DIE FOR OUR SHIP nonsense, if only because God knows I don’t have the patience. There’s a lot of deep discomfort with Dee’s corner of the quadrangle, which seems to get displaced onto Dee herself. (Some very thoughtful and non-hatey discussion here.)
I’d like to think about why that becomes impatience with the character, rather than criticism of the plot. We cringe at the idea of the woman who thinks the best she can do is standing by her man, and for good reason, but given the world in which women (fictional and real alike) take shape, that’s not a particularly uncommon experience. I don’t think we should have contempt for people who do exactly what we pressure them to do, day in and day out.
I mean, the last time someone proposed to her, she said no in the name of certainty, of (her inexperienced, hyper-romanticized idea of) real love, of hope for the future. Then he up and WALKED INTO A BULLET. THAT DAY. Then just a few months later, Lee - for whom Billy died - pops the question. After that, or even without all that, could you look at his poor beautiful fucked-up face and be the only person in the world who hasn’t let him down catastrophically and tell him no? I couldn’t.
That’s not to say Apollo, God-Prince of Damaged Goods, is himself an irresistible temptation in that moment. It’s about him, but it’s not about him. It’s about the centrality of her own experience in caring about him. What she gets out of the relationship is the effort she puts into it. She’s generally at least as powerless as any of them - she doesn’t give orders, just relays them; she’s been under direct physical threat and able to do exactly nothing about it several times (Bastille Day, VOD, Sacrifice), standing right there while people were being eviscerated in front of her eyes; she can’t even hope to leave an intellectual or emotional mark on the world because the world’s already ended.
But she can do this. She’s going to save the ever-loving shit out of Lee Adama, whether he likes it or not.
Dee is this odd bird, a pragmatic idealist, a person who can handle the cognitive dissonance of seeing and interacting with the world as it is while believing her morals so solid as to be uncompromised. Dee has assisted, twice, in illegal sabotage of the reigning power. She’s a key player in the jailbreak in 2.0 - hell, they were all thinking it by that point, but Dee is the first one to suggest it out loud. I wish you were in command, sir. Then she helps steal the election, not because she’s ever claimed any particular loyalty to Roslin (or interest in politics, really) because she thinks Baltar is bad, New Caprica is bad news, and therefore she’s doing the right thing. She can absolutely own the consequences of her actions, without ever thinking it’s a bad thing to do. Those are the mental tools she’s accessing when she tells Lee that he loves Kara, but she’ll have him anyway. Because she wants and cares for him, certainly, but also for the greater good of protecting Lee from himself. The expectations surrounding marriage are just as irrelevant to her as the most sacrosanct tenets of martial or civilian law.
It’s a miserable situation all around, but the idea that this is some sort of inscrutable choice based on an evaluation of their relationship rests pretty heavily on overlooking the character’s own story and inner life. I’m okay with the argument that if this relationship was going to be so important we should have gotten more of her perspective on it, not least because I like her so much and wanted more of her perspective always, but the foundations for her decisions are as solid as could be. Dee’s continued acceptance of Lee, however clearly he’s spiraling and bringing her down with him, is about the deep and sometimes dangerous power of the very human ability to form bonds, of our need to give and receive care. It’s not something we should expect from people, it’s hugely unfair that it’s how women are defined, but I bristle at the implication that that’s a flaw.
Whether or not that should be taken as an expression of strength, it is an expression of a strong personality. In the desire to save someone (someone in particular or anyone at all), there’s a need for validation by some project or other. There’s an ability to empathize with and simultaneously objectify another person. There’s arrogance, in thinking you can change the world for everyone or for someone, but there’s nobility in it, too.
That’s all true whether someone white knights their way in guns blazing against a physical enemy, or calming words when the enemy is despair. When we valorize the kind of saving we usually associate with masculinity, all swooping in and blowing the bad guys out of the sky, and simultaneously revile the interpersonal, relational saving which we so encourage and even expect in women, and which is equally necessary, no more or less - that’s where I get off. I fail to see how it is good to subordinate mind to matter (insofar as those things are separate) so totally that we value only the preservation of the first.
It’s desperate and tragic, because they’re all desperate and tragic. It’s only the end of the world. She’s the secondary character in a relationship that gets short narrative shrift and does quite the opposite of what it set out to do. And Dee being, well, the wife means that she’s flattened out into one expected feminine role, with the emotional causes and effects of her choices largely obscured. But - they don’t have to be. Looking at Dee’s perspective on the relationship, giving her enough agency to assume she has motivations (some admirable, some less so, some complicated but ultimately neutral), allows her most important storyline to work for her as a character.
Day 1: what gender-neutral society?
Day 2: why these ladies?
Day 3: Ellen Tigh
Day 4: Dee
I think a lot of fandom dislike around Dee herself or her storyline is quite revealing, if not of us, then of the BSG-verse. The explicitness with which Dee’s perspective collapsed into her relationship, and therefore into a trope where female characters are props for male narratives, looks to me like flawed, lazy storytelling - and it’s more than fair to dislike her place in the narrative, or to take issue with Dee/Lee because it serves to subsume a WOC into a white man’s story, or for any other reason at all. ( Though IT IS BETTER THAN YOU THINK IT IS I PROMISE.) That said! I think Dee/Lee makes sense for Dee and develops her in some interesting, if painful, ways.
I recognize that it’s unfortunate that I’m looking at Dee mostly through the lens of her marriage. I could take the easy way out and say that it’s just that it’s the most important development of her character, and it is, but that doesn’t mean uncritically accepting the story as it played out. At the same time, this is where fandom’s issues with Dee seem to flare up, and I’m not talking about DIE FOR OUR SHIP nonsense, if only because God knows I don’t have the patience. There’s a lot of deep discomfort with Dee’s corner of the quadrangle, which seems to get displaced onto Dee herself. (Some very thoughtful and non-hatey discussion here.)
I’d like to think about why that becomes impatience with the character, rather than criticism of the plot. We cringe at the idea of the woman who thinks the best she can do is standing by her man, and for good reason, but given the world in which women (fictional and real alike) take shape, that’s not a particularly uncommon experience. I don’t think we should have contempt for people who do exactly what we pressure them to do, day in and day out.
I mean, the last time someone proposed to her, she said no in the name of certainty, of (her inexperienced, hyper-romanticized idea of) real love, of hope for the future. Then he up and WALKED INTO A BULLET. THAT DAY. Then just a few months later, Lee - for whom Billy died - pops the question. After that, or even without all that, could you look at his poor beautiful fucked-up face and be the only person in the world who hasn’t let him down catastrophically and tell him no? I couldn’t.
That’s not to say Apollo, God-Prince of Damaged Goods, is himself an irresistible temptation in that moment. It’s about him, but it’s not about him. It’s about the centrality of her own experience in caring about him. What she gets out of the relationship is the effort she puts into it. She’s generally at least as powerless as any of them - she doesn’t give orders, just relays them; she’s been under direct physical threat and able to do exactly nothing about it several times (Bastille Day, VOD, Sacrifice), standing right there while people were being eviscerated in front of her eyes; she can’t even hope to leave an intellectual or emotional mark on the world because the world’s already ended.
But she can do this. She’s going to save the ever-loving shit out of Lee Adama, whether he likes it or not.
Dee is this odd bird, a pragmatic idealist, a person who can handle the cognitive dissonance of seeing and interacting with the world as it is while believing her morals so solid as to be uncompromised. Dee has assisted, twice, in illegal sabotage of the reigning power. She’s a key player in the jailbreak in 2.0 - hell, they were all thinking it by that point, but Dee is the first one to suggest it out loud. I wish you were in command, sir. Then she helps steal the election, not because she’s ever claimed any particular loyalty to Roslin (or interest in politics, really) because she thinks Baltar is bad, New Caprica is bad news, and therefore she’s doing the right thing. She can absolutely own the consequences of her actions, without ever thinking it’s a bad thing to do. Those are the mental tools she’s accessing when she tells Lee that he loves Kara, but she’ll have him anyway. Because she wants and cares for him, certainly, but also for the greater good of protecting Lee from himself. The expectations surrounding marriage are just as irrelevant to her as the most sacrosanct tenets of martial or civilian law.
It’s a miserable situation all around, but the idea that this is some sort of inscrutable choice based on an evaluation of their relationship rests pretty heavily on overlooking the character’s own story and inner life. I’m okay with the argument that if this relationship was going to be so important we should have gotten more of her perspective on it, not least because I like her so much and wanted more of her perspective always, but the foundations for her decisions are as solid as could be. Dee’s continued acceptance of Lee, however clearly he’s spiraling and bringing her down with him, is about the deep and sometimes dangerous power of the very human ability to form bonds, of our need to give and receive care. It’s not something we should expect from people, it’s hugely unfair that it’s how women are defined, but I bristle at the implication that that’s a flaw.
Whether or not that should be taken as an expression of strength, it is an expression of a strong personality. In the desire to save someone (someone in particular or anyone at all), there’s a need for validation by some project or other. There’s an ability to empathize with and simultaneously objectify another person. There’s arrogance, in thinking you can change the world for everyone or for someone, but there’s nobility in it, too.
That’s all true whether someone white knights their way in guns blazing against a physical enemy, or calming words when the enemy is despair. When we valorize the kind of saving we usually associate with masculinity, all swooping in and blowing the bad guys out of the sky, and simultaneously revile the interpersonal, relational saving which we so encourage and even expect in women, and which is equally necessary, no more or less - that’s where I get off. I fail to see how it is good to subordinate mind to matter (insofar as those things are separate) so totally that we value only the preservation of the first.
It’s desperate and tragic, because they’re all desperate and tragic. It’s only the end of the world. She’s the secondary character in a relationship that gets short narrative shrift and does quite the opposite of what it set out to do. And Dee being, well, the wife means that she’s flattened out into one expected feminine role, with the emotional causes and effects of her choices largely obscured. But - they don’t have to be. Looking at Dee’s perspective on the relationship, giving her enough agency to assume she has motivations (some admirable, some less so, some complicated but ultimately neutral), allows her most important storyline to work for her as a character.