"Clint Eastwood" by bop-radar, commentary by acridnym
Title: Clint Eastwood
Vidder: bop_radar
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Link to vid: http://bop-radar.livejournal.com/172926.html
Warnings: spoilers for all seasons
Commentary by:acridnym
In my opinion, one of the strangest and most striking aspects of Battlestar Galactica is how it was able to give us a character who had almost no redeeming qualities, caused immense death and suffering through sheer incompetence and egoism, and yet, was so entertaining to watch. As a show that kick started by killing off most of humanity, Battlestar Galactica has been criticized for being unable to convey the immense tragedy of its premise. How do you wrap your mind around death on that large a scale? It’s like that quote that gets attributed to Stalin: the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic. Yet it’s this same flaw that allows me to laugh at the antics of someone who, were he real, I would want dead.
Clint Eastwood is a vid that skillfully weaves together comedy, tragedy, and more comedy. It shows us Gaius’s funniest moments without flinching from the disturbing implications that those moments bring.
Bop-radar is adept at finding the small movements and facial tics that allow her to pack a ton of characterization and meaning into a single moment (see her Lee Adama character study “Middle Man”). As such, it’s great seeing her vid a character who’s a goldmine for outrageous gestures and expressions.
The shot of Gaius raising his hand in the back of the crowd makes for the perfect transition between the opening hamming-it-up-for-the-camera Gaius and the trying-to-escape-the-apocalypse Gaius. Yes, he’s running for his life, but he still wants attention, dammit.
The vid jumps back and forth between Gaius running through the field and Gaius having sex with Six (hey, cause and effect).
In the first two interspersed sex shots, the camera first moves down, then up. No deep meaning I’m assigning that, just pointing it out because it’s pretty. The emphasis on the vertical in the shots (both in motion and composition) contrast beautifully with the more horizontal field shots.
Gaius falling down running is mirrored by Six shoving him down onto the bed.
Going back to horizontal and vertical: Gaius is continually shown hunched over or laying down next to the upright Six. It's a cool-looking way of showing the power difference between them and, of course, also fitting given how much of his time Gaius spends in a horizontal position.
I love how nonchalant Six looks in that first picture.
Seeing Gaius’s downfall (the first of many!) through visual metaphor is all well and good but it would be a shame if we missed out on the wealth of facial expressions he shows in his seven-stages-of-realizing-you’ve-ended-the-world. So, the vid then gives us the same events in a different way.
Poof!
Hey, where’d my imaginary girlfriend go?
Finally, someone let me out of my cage
He’s broken free of his shell-shocked stupor and is now affecting the world around him. Oh shit.
I couldn’t be there
First: Ha! Second: Now that we’re past that whole unpleasant destruction-of-worlds business that was the opening, time to sit back, relax, and enjoy what will surely be a carefree comedy vid.
Despite the opening, the first half of the vid lulled me into thinking it would be strictly comical. After watching it, I got the song for my ipod and, hearing it without the visuals, was amazed at how ominous it is right from the start. I’d been under the impression that it begins light and bouncy and then later takes a sinister turn but really, that was the imagery, bending the song to its purpose.
You shouldn’t be scared
On one level, this is comical in how ridiculous it is. Dualla is a trained soldier who could take Gaius out ten different ways before he even registered what was happening. On another level, this paper-thin facade of harmlessness is hiding a very real danger. Gaius has inadvertently wiped out most of the human race through sheer arrogance and carelessness and he is not a changed man. (I didn’t notice at first but Dualla seems to be swallowing nervously).
Under each snare
Congratulations, Boomer! It’s very very green! Gaius once again weasels his way out of tight spot. We viewers know that following this, Adama will be shot and almost killed, Tigh will be forced into a role he neither wants nor is ready for, civilians will rebel against his command and withhold supplies, and a group of them will be killed by armed soldiers. But Gaius lives to see another day! (Dee, on second thought, you should be scared).
I keep harping on the future consequences because it’s so easy to forget them when seeing the shots in rapid succession. This is especially true on the first viewing if, like me, you’re just expecting a Gaius gag reel. I did find that all the nasty implications hovering on the periphery of the jokes become more and more noticeable on subsequent viewings
Six commands I command you to
Panoramic view
Initially, this seems like an attractive filler clip chosen to go with the lyrics on a superficial level. The cool camera swoop=panoramic. Actually, the shot of the planted cylon device turns out to be very fitting, as the vid shows us in a few clips.
Pick and choose
When Gaius is looking for someone to implicate in the planting of the cylon device, that he is throwing someone’s life away is not an issue. Of course, the guy he accuses does turn out to be a cylon. Not that Gaius knows this. He’s just looking for someone that the fleet will believe is a cylon, an outsider that they won’t rally behind. It’s luck that in looking for the makings of a believable cylon, he stumbles upon a real one. (Tragedy will again be averted through dumb luck at 1:08 when Gaius demonstrates his deep, intimate knowledge of tillium refineries).
I love the placement of this next to the card game. That’s all it is to him.
Also worth noting: Gaius will later be shown asleep at his lab table and at the quorum. But cards! Cards are SRS BUSINESS.
All you different crews
This shot, aside from being really funny, hammers home how oblivious the others on Galactica are. Yeah, they give Gaius plenty of weird looks (although here, they're not even doing that) but it doesn't dawn on them until too late that maybe this not someone who should be in charge of screening for cylon agents or housing atomic bombs.
Picture you
The way the vocalist almost spews the lyrics here matches Gaius’s drunken grousing perfectly. Since it's Lee he's spewing the lyrics at, this provides a nice segue into the Operation Tillium shots.
You're too crazy
As good as they are, I've tried not to comment on the gags unless I, y'know, have an actual comment to make. Something beyond "Hey! It's really funny!" But this one was too good to pass up. Hey! It's really funny! (Sadly, it doesn't transfer well to stills. Go watch the vid again).
Also: I had no idea that it's Tigh Starbuck is looking at until I took the stills. Behold! The transformative power of vidding!
What life is
From the first viewing, this has been the most striking moment of the vid for me. The graceful but offhand movements of the Sixes in their usual blithe cheerfulness synch so well with the rising synthesizer (or if it’s not a synthesizer, whatever backgrund instrument is making that ominous sound).
I ain’t happy
I’m feeling glad
In the context of the vid, the contradictions and wordplay in the lyrics take on the sense of Gaius’s constant backpedaling and reshuffling of alliances, his talking his way out of whatever mess he’s currently in. The best example is here, where an affirmative head nod flows effortlessly into a head shake.
I ain’t happy
I’m feeling glad...
And here’s where the vid throws a mean curve.
Okay, hookers in the president’s office, that’s kind of funny... But the somber lighting and the fact that everyone else is living in tents with mud floors (and about to be living under cylon martial law) kind of puts a damper on it.
(On a less depressing note, watch Six go from laying on the desk during Gaius's campaign to sitting in his chair when the cylons invade).
This is one of the only shots of the vid that is completely humorless. It’s like a shadow of the pattern established in the vid’s first half: Gaius does something wacky, cut to reaction shot of weirded-out saner person. But there’s no way to put a humorous spin on the disgust and contempt Gaeta is fighting to contain as he turns away. This shot is especially dark, knowing the ostracism and attempt on his life Gaeta will endure in the Collaborators episode (not to mention all that will happen to him later).
It’s coming on
Aaaand, we’re back to the fun times! Getting whiplash yet?
The essence the basics
Without it you make it
We saw part of the bathroom sex scene before the New Caprica shots, back when the corruption was all in good clean fun (I didn't comment on it the first time around because, like with so many of the funny shots, I didn't have anything to add other than "Ha ha!" But you watched the vid, right? You know where all the funny parts are). Now, we go back to the same scene, having seen the ramifications on New Caprica.
More specifically, we see the part of the scene that wasn’t shown before, the part where President Roslin tells him to be her candidate for the vice-presidency. The scene is still funny, but in a disturbing way. (Funny in a disturbing way is what this vid becomes all about).
Rhythm
You have it or you don’t...
Oh, that crazy Gaius. Clearly.The vid is not a steady transition from comedy to tragedy. Even after the New Caprica disaster we see the bathroom stall sex, Gaius caught jerking off in the lab, Gaius fast-talking the centurion. But this new string of gags comes with specter of New Caprica floating over it and the chorus sounds more threatening every time it plays. It’s around this stage I start asking myself: should I really be laughing at the screw-ups of someone who has caused so much suffering? (Note: I don't ask myself this during the above scene. Because that is funny, nothing to be done about it).
With the Gaius-cult sequence, disturbing and funny again collide. Gaius as Jesus is funny. Gaius’s followers being beaten amidst government and military-backed persecution, not so much (because the notion of Gaius having followers wasn’t scary enough).
Strangely, as Gaius’s influence drops and the number of lives he could potentially destroy goes down, the vid’s tone gets darker. Going back to the death and statistics quote, it might be because it’s easier to identify with the (fewer) endangered people around him.
It’s all in your head
Originally, I was going to caption this “So fitting, it needs no comment.” But thinking about it, I do want to address bop-radar’s decision to use a head-Gaius clip instead of one of the hundreds of head-Six clips available and what affect this has. Like the “what life is” clip, it ups the ante. At this point in the vid, the sight of Gaius’s imaginary evil robot girlfriend has become common-place. This clip shows that, for everything preceding it, we still have not reached the limits of Gaius’s crazy. (Also, he's literally telling himself that it's all in his head).
I’m feeling glad
Creepiest shot EVAR.
My future
I’m a sucker for the connecting-two-scenes-with-one-movement technique. This is also a cool way to bookend the vid. After all, the vid opened with, among other things, Gaius being shoved to the ground while a cylon took the explosive shrapnel for him. His position on the ground is unnerving in its reference to his elevation to a Christ figure. Also disconcerting: how the grass around him (and only around him) is dead.
The end title screens, though simple, work very well. The wobbling letters recall Gaius’s spastic gestures and are also a cool visual representation of the fading melodica (I am so happy I got to use that word). This may be digging too deep but the way only the Gaius Baltar text is shaking reminds me of the pattern used in the early gag sequences where the Gaius=crazy shot is placed alongside the shots of someone with a wtf look on their face.
So, after watching the vid, I’m left with the question: When does something stop being funny? Or, put another way, when does it become unconscionable to find humor in something? Watching Gaius on New Caprica, I can't help but remember watching Fahrenheit 9/11, seeing Bush read “My Pet Goat” while the twin towers collapsed, and thinking “This would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrible.” A less dramatic and less US-centric example of this issue at play: I remember laughing at surveyfail and the smackdowns it resulted in--and then realizing I was taking pleasure out of something that had been deeply hurtful to trans-people. I don't want to reduce this vid to the questions it’s raised for me but I do want to at least mention them because they're the reason Clint Eastwood has had such staying power with me and has been, at times, so chilling and funny at once.
Vidder: bop_radar
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Link to vid: http://bop-radar.livejournal.com/172926.html
Warnings: spoilers for all seasons
Commentary by:acridnym
In my opinion, one of the strangest and most striking aspects of Battlestar Galactica is how it was able to give us a character who had almost no redeeming qualities, caused immense death and suffering through sheer incompetence and egoism, and yet, was so entertaining to watch. As a show that kick started by killing off most of humanity, Battlestar Galactica has been criticized for being unable to convey the immense tragedy of its premise. How do you wrap your mind around death on that large a scale? It’s like that quote that gets attributed to Stalin: the death of one man is a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic. Yet it’s this same flaw that allows me to laugh at the antics of someone who, were he real, I would want dead.
Clint Eastwood is a vid that skillfully weaves together comedy, tragedy, and more comedy. It shows us Gaius’s funniest moments without flinching from the disturbing implications that those moments bring.
Bop-radar is adept at finding the small movements and facial tics that allow her to pack a ton of characterization and meaning into a single moment (see her Lee Adama character study “Middle Man”). As such, it’s great seeing her vid a character who’s a goldmine for outrageous gestures and expressions.
The shot of Gaius raising his hand in the back of the crowd makes for the perfect transition between the opening hamming-it-up-for-the-camera Gaius and the trying-to-escape-the-apocalypse Gaius. Yes, he’s running for his life, but he still wants attention, dammit.
The vid jumps back and forth between Gaius running through the field and Gaius having sex with Six (hey, cause and effect).
In the first two interspersed sex shots, the camera first moves down, then up. No deep meaning I’m assigning that, just pointing it out because it’s pretty. The emphasis on the vertical in the shots (both in motion and composition) contrast beautifully with the more horizontal field shots.
Gaius falling down running is mirrored by Six shoving him down onto the bed.
Going back to horizontal and vertical: Gaius is continually shown hunched over or laying down next to the upright Six. It's a cool-looking way of showing the power difference between them and, of course, also fitting given how much of his time Gaius spends in a horizontal position.
I love how nonchalant Six looks in that first picture.
Seeing Gaius’s downfall (the first of many!) through visual metaphor is all well and good but it would be a shame if we missed out on the wealth of facial expressions he shows in his seven-stages-of-realizing-you’ve-ended-the-world. So, the vid then gives us the same events in a different way.
Poof!
Hey, where’d my imaginary girlfriend go?
Finally, someone let me out of my cage
He’s broken free of his shell-shocked stupor and is now affecting the world around him. Oh shit.
I couldn’t be there
First: Ha! Second: Now that we’re past that whole unpleasant destruction-of-worlds business that was the opening, time to sit back, relax, and enjoy what will surely be a carefree comedy vid.
Despite the opening, the first half of the vid lulled me into thinking it would be strictly comical. After watching it, I got the song for my ipod and, hearing it without the visuals, was amazed at how ominous it is right from the start. I’d been under the impression that it begins light and bouncy and then later takes a sinister turn but really, that was the imagery, bending the song to its purpose.
You shouldn’t be scared
On one level, this is comical in how ridiculous it is. Dualla is a trained soldier who could take Gaius out ten different ways before he even registered what was happening. On another level, this paper-thin facade of harmlessness is hiding a very real danger. Gaius has inadvertently wiped out most of the human race through sheer arrogance and carelessness and he is not a changed man. (I didn’t notice at first but Dualla seems to be swallowing nervously).
Under each snare
Congratulations, Boomer! It’s very very green! Gaius once again weasels his way out of tight spot. We viewers know that following this, Adama will be shot and almost killed, Tigh will be forced into a role he neither wants nor is ready for, civilians will rebel against his command and withhold supplies, and a group of them will be killed by armed soldiers. But Gaius lives to see another day! (Dee, on second thought, you should be scared).
I keep harping on the future consequences because it’s so easy to forget them when seeing the shots in rapid succession. This is especially true on the first viewing if, like me, you’re just expecting a Gaius gag reel. I did find that all the nasty implications hovering on the periphery of the jokes become more and more noticeable on subsequent viewings
Six commands I command you to
Panoramic view
Initially, this seems like an attractive filler clip chosen to go with the lyrics on a superficial level. The cool camera swoop=panoramic. Actually, the shot of the planted cylon device turns out to be very fitting, as the vid shows us in a few clips.
Pick and choose
When Gaius is looking for someone to implicate in the planting of the cylon device, that he is throwing someone’s life away is not an issue. Of course, the guy he accuses does turn out to be a cylon. Not that Gaius knows this. He’s just looking for someone that the fleet will believe is a cylon, an outsider that they won’t rally behind. It’s luck that in looking for the makings of a believable cylon, he stumbles upon a real one. (Tragedy will again be averted through dumb luck at 1:08 when Gaius demonstrates his deep, intimate knowledge of tillium refineries).
I love the placement of this next to the card game. That’s all it is to him.
Also worth noting: Gaius will later be shown asleep at his lab table and at the quorum. But cards! Cards are SRS BUSINESS.
All you different crews
This shot, aside from being really funny, hammers home how oblivious the others on Galactica are. Yeah, they give Gaius plenty of weird looks (although here, they're not even doing that) but it doesn't dawn on them until too late that maybe this not someone who should be in charge of screening for cylon agents or housing atomic bombs.
Picture you
The way the vocalist almost spews the lyrics here matches Gaius’s drunken grousing perfectly. Since it's Lee he's spewing the lyrics at, this provides a nice segue into the Operation Tillium shots.
You're too crazy
As good as they are, I've tried not to comment on the gags unless I, y'know, have an actual comment to make. Something beyond "Hey! It's really funny!" But this one was too good to pass up. Hey! It's really funny! (Sadly, it doesn't transfer well to stills. Go watch the vid again).
Also: I had no idea that it's Tigh Starbuck is looking at until I took the stills. Behold! The transformative power of vidding!
What life is
From the first viewing, this has been the most striking moment of the vid for me. The graceful but offhand movements of the Sixes in their usual blithe cheerfulness synch so well with the rising synthesizer (or if it’s not a synthesizer, whatever backgrund instrument is making that ominous sound).
I ain’t happy
I’m feeling glad
In the context of the vid, the contradictions and wordplay in the lyrics take on the sense of Gaius’s constant backpedaling and reshuffling of alliances, his talking his way out of whatever mess he’s currently in. The best example is here, where an affirmative head nod flows effortlessly into a head shake.
I ain’t happy
I’m feeling glad...
And here’s where the vid throws a mean curve.
Okay, hookers in the president’s office, that’s kind of funny... But the somber lighting and the fact that everyone else is living in tents with mud floors (and about to be living under cylon martial law) kind of puts a damper on it.
(On a less depressing note, watch Six go from laying on the desk during Gaius's campaign to sitting in his chair when the cylons invade).
This is one of the only shots of the vid that is completely humorless. It’s like a shadow of the pattern established in the vid’s first half: Gaius does something wacky, cut to reaction shot of weirded-out saner person. But there’s no way to put a humorous spin on the disgust and contempt Gaeta is fighting to contain as he turns away. This shot is especially dark, knowing the ostracism and attempt on his life Gaeta will endure in the Collaborators episode (not to mention all that will happen to him later).
It’s coming on
Aaaand, we’re back to the fun times! Getting whiplash yet?
The essence the basics
Without it you make it
We saw part of the bathroom sex scene before the New Caprica shots, back when the corruption was all in good clean fun (I didn't comment on it the first time around because, like with so many of the funny shots, I didn't have anything to add other than "Ha ha!" But you watched the vid, right? You know where all the funny parts are). Now, we go back to the same scene, having seen the ramifications on New Caprica.
More specifically, we see the part of the scene that wasn’t shown before, the part where President Roslin tells him to be her candidate for the vice-presidency. The scene is still funny, but in a disturbing way. (Funny in a disturbing way is what this vid becomes all about).
Rhythm
You have it or you don’t...
Oh, that crazy Gaius. Clearly.The vid is not a steady transition from comedy to tragedy. Even after the New Caprica disaster we see the bathroom stall sex, Gaius caught jerking off in the lab, Gaius fast-talking the centurion. But this new string of gags comes with specter of New Caprica floating over it and the chorus sounds more threatening every time it plays. It’s around this stage I start asking myself: should I really be laughing at the screw-ups of someone who has caused so much suffering? (Note: I don't ask myself this during the above scene. Because that is funny, nothing to be done about it).
With the Gaius-cult sequence, disturbing and funny again collide. Gaius as Jesus is funny. Gaius’s followers being beaten amidst government and military-backed persecution, not so much (because the notion of Gaius having followers wasn’t scary enough).
Strangely, as Gaius’s influence drops and the number of lives he could potentially destroy goes down, the vid’s tone gets darker. Going back to the death and statistics quote, it might be because it’s easier to identify with the (fewer) endangered people around him.
It’s all in your head
Originally, I was going to caption this “So fitting, it needs no comment.” But thinking about it, I do want to address bop-radar’s decision to use a head-Gaius clip instead of one of the hundreds of head-Six clips available and what affect this has. Like the “what life is” clip, it ups the ante. At this point in the vid, the sight of Gaius’s imaginary evil robot girlfriend has become common-place. This clip shows that, for everything preceding it, we still have not reached the limits of Gaius’s crazy. (Also, he's literally telling himself that it's all in his head).
I’m feeling glad
Creepiest shot EVAR.
My future
I’m a sucker for the connecting-two-scenes-with-one-movement technique. This is also a cool way to bookend the vid. After all, the vid opened with, among other things, Gaius being shoved to the ground while a cylon took the explosive shrapnel for him. His position on the ground is unnerving in its reference to his elevation to a Christ figure. Also disconcerting: how the grass around him (and only around him) is dead.
The end title screens, though simple, work very well. The wobbling letters recall Gaius’s spastic gestures and are also a cool visual representation of the fading melodica (I am so happy I got to use that word). This may be digging too deep but the way only the Gaius Baltar text is shaking reminds me of the pattern used in the early gag sequences where the Gaius=crazy shot is placed alongside the shots of someone with a wtf look on their face.
So, after watching the vid, I’m left with the question: When does something stop being funny? Or, put another way, when does it become unconscionable to find humor in something? Watching Gaius on New Caprica, I can't help but remember watching Fahrenheit 9/11, seeing Bush read “My Pet Goat” while the twin towers collapsed, and thinking “This would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrible.” A less dramatic and less US-centric example of this issue at play: I remember laughing at surveyfail and the smackdowns it resulted in--and then realizing I was taking pleasure out of something that had been deeply hurtful to trans-people. I don't want to reduce this vid to the questions it’s raised for me but I do want to at least mention them because they're the reason Clint Eastwood has had such staying power with me and has been, at times, so chilling and funny at once.