BSG meta: "Gendering Cylonity: Otherness in Human/Cylon Relatinships."

[prozacpark]

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

Comments

[projectcyborg]

very interesting observations -- I actually hadn't considered how these relationships encode gender inequality. I tend to think of them in terms of their collapse of Cylonicity with race and sexuality. as "queer" pairings, what intrigues me is the way difference rubs off on the human partner; Helo, Gaius, Kara, and (literally) Cain become queered in myriad ways. these other axes of difference (including race and Cylonicity) are flexible in ways that gender (on BSG) is not, so I think that complicates your monolithic self/Other opposition somewhat. but certainly they're hugely overdetermined, and gender is an important aspect of that.

[prozacpark]

Cylonity being equated with racial otherness is probably intentional on the writers' part. However, I had never thought of Cylonity encoded sexuality, which is an interesting way of looking at it. I need to revisit some of the episodes keeping that in mind.

And I admit that I cheated a bit and left out the Gina/Cain relationship from my analysis of Human/Cylon relationships. Mainly because my memories of "Razor" are hazy, and I didn't think I could analyze the dynamics of that relationship without needing to rewatch. But Gina/Cain would be one of the more interesting relationships to look at in terms of Cylonity encoding sexuality and gender stereotypes. It'd be interesting to see how these dynamics play out in a relationship that's lacking a male POV to filter the narrative through.

[frolicndetour]

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.

I'm not sure I'd really thought about that before, maybe because I watched all of season one after I saw the end of season two, including Downloaded. So I already felt like I knew Sharon to some extent. Plus it's hard not to project Boomer onto her, with the shared memories. (I guess Boomer/Chief might be an example of a human/cylon relationship where we were in the female/cylon point of view? Of course, now that's wrecked somewhat.)

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.Yes. And they kept that up through all of season two. Which actually made Sharon a compelling character, but we were always in Helo's perspective, except for the times when she was being victimized (in very gendered ways, too.) And now, when we can be confident of her motives, they're still doing it - their story is still told from Helo's POV, as

[prozacpark]

(I guess Boomer/Chief might be an example of a human/cylon relationship where we were in the female/cylon point of view? Of course, now that's wrecked somewhat.)

The Boomer/Chief dynamic is made different by his being a Cylon, but we can still read them as a Human/Cylon relationship since at that time, the writers were writing him as human. I wanted to analyze their relationship dynamics, but Boomer/Chief happened before I was fully invested in the show, so my memories of it are vague. I remember some bits from Sharon's POV, but I can't remember if the Chief POV was more prominent?

I hadn't considered Caprica/Tigh, but you're right: That was done from his POV despite both of them being Cylons. Since they're both Cylons, their mutual racial otherness cancels itself, so all we're left with are the typical gender dynamics.

I would disagree about Kara and Leoben. . Yeah, I kind of disagree with me about the Leoben/Kara, too. ;) In some ways, it's the most interesting relationship of all the Cylon/Human ones we have because