Why is there no race wank for BSG?

[elspethdixon]

Fandom, it seems, never gets tired of wanking about race (and is it just me, or does SGA fandom seem particularly prone to it?). It's the wank that will not die, almost as never-ending as the warnings-vs.-no-warnings debate, but with a higher potential for defriending and personal insults.

And yet... you know, though the SGA race discussions keep on coming, I have yet to see any for Battlestar Galactica, fandom's other currently popular sci-fi show.

(Obviously, I feel compelled to start wanking on race, too--it's contagious, kind of like the plague).

I'll be fair, and admit up front that I don't like and don't watch New BSG--mostly because back when it first came on, I heard one too many people going on about how it "wasn't really sci-fi" because it was "serious drama," which filled me with an irrational resentment. Also, remakes that aren't a loving homage to the spirit of the original generally don't do much for me, especially if I happen to have fond feelings towards characters from the original version.

That said, many other people in fandom and on my flist like and watch it, and produce meta about it: meta on the gender implications of someone named Kara, meta on the ethical implications of humans trying to wipe out Cylons, meta on whether Roslin was justified in shoving Girl!Cylon!Boomer out the airlock... and yet I haven't seen any race meta for it yet. Which is curious, because I've been expecting for a while now to see someone bring up the fact that most of New BSG's cast, and all of their non-Cylon main characters, are white.

To be fair, I didn't notice the all-white-ness either, until seanchai pulled up the imdb page on it in an attempt to find out who the hell this Kara person people on lj kept talking about was (she's apparently someone pretending to be Starbuck, just as "Lee Adama" is Lt. Kennedy pretending to be Apollo) and said, "Hey, where did the black actors go? Is it just me, or did this show have a lot more diversity in the cast back during the '70s?"

"Good point," I said. "Why is Admiral Tigh white now? And where did Boomer go?"

"Oh," she said, "Boomer turned into an Asian woman who was secretly an evil robot."

"The robots aren't all clunky and silver anymore?"

"No," she said. "Now all the Cylons now look like hot women."

And we rolled our eyes and returned to watching downloads of original BSG, because it is full of glorious space-opera cheesiness, and entertainly bad late-70s hair.

Obviously, I'm not qualified to do serious meta on the new show, but it seems to me that someone who actually watches it could write something interesting about the implications of Boomer's transition from black, male pilot to female, Asian (Evil!Robot) pilot, about Tigh's transition from competant (black) admiral to apparently evil (white) colonel, and about the fact that the writers chose to cut Sheba (the female pilot who serves as Apollo's love interest in the original) and replace Starbuck with... a female pilot who could be a love interest for Apollo (so, what was wrong with the one they already had?).

After all, people meta on SGA, which is basically fluff posing as military sci-fi, and New BSG, from what I hear, is actually trying to be a serious show.

Comments

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, honestly I think that most of new BSG fandom isn't particularly familiar with the original series. I bet if you polled the majority of fans they wouldn't be able to tell you that Tigh and Boomer were originally black men. Also:

Tigh's transition from competant (black) admiral to apparently evil (white) colonel,

Tigh may be evil in the same mentality that has Tony Stark up for "best comics villain" in some poll I just saw. I'm willing to bet if you watched the show, he'd be your favorite (except maybe Tom Zarek -- *points to icon*, fans self with Richard Hatch love)

and about the fact that the writers chose to cut Sheba (the female pilot who serves as Apollo's love interest in the original) and replace Starbuck with... a female pilot who could be a love interest for Apollo (so, what was wrong with the one they already had?)

Most fans (or, cough, most people who watch the show for the stories and not for their beloved ship) will tell that Starbuck and Apollo are far more compelling when NOT framed as each other's love interests. In fact, Apollo had his first major romance -- and current marriage --with a different (and, incidentally, non-white) character. Seeing Starbuck as primarily "Apollo's love interest" seems to be baggage that fandom brought to the show but not part of the show itself from the beginning. Kara is actually introduced as the former fiancee of his dead brother, which (if fandom wasn't crazy) one would think would actually mitigate against shipping them.

The race wank definitely HAS happened in BSG, though -- it just mostly happened in 2003 when the show was initially cast. If the wank is not going on now, it's because (a) it's been gone over before and (b) there have been a lot of recent developments in that fandom that are keeping people busy.

I would agree that the casting of major roles, as with almost all television shows (is there a current exception besides Grey's Anatomy?) could be more diverse. (Though Edward James Olmos is so heavily identified as a Latino actor -- even while not playing a Latino character -- that it's hard to view even the major cast as lily-white).

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Also, a note, Sheba may have been cut, but there are definitely other female pilots besides Starbuck -- not to mention a female president who is arguably the show's central characters, and female characters in roles ranging from mechanic to presidential aide to. . .well, crazy Cylon supermodel. All told, this is still one of the more racially diverse shows and one of the MOST gender-equality-progressive shows on TV.

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Not really related to your point, but I enjoyed the hell out of BSG for the miniseries and the first season. I do love the original, and it's not something that really embraces that love -- New BSG has always had the annoying attitude of "Look at the crap those people made in the 70s. This is how you make science fiction," not to mention Ron Moore being convinced he invented tight-continuity, plot-driven, "dirty," epic s.f. -- but what the first season was was damned good post-apocalyptic s.f..

As someone who scared the crap out of herself in junior high by reading every post-nuclear speculative piece she could find from the 50s and 60s part of the high school and public library collections, let me say that some good post-apoc is most appreciated.

It started getting silly in the second season, but, frankly, I don't think the creative heads of the project anticipated getting a second season. It reads like they only had the plot worked out to a certain point, and once they got past that point, panicked and threw in prostitutes and magic babies.

And now ... well, I haven't been able to watch the third season due to absence of t.v. in my life, and from the spoilers I've seen, I'm very glad of that. It seems to have stopped being a show about ordinary people -- not great and not even particularly good people -- who, through sheer, dumb luck, survived the unthinkable and are now alone in the dark, trying to figure out how to keep surviving. Now, it seems to be about People With Destinies and vast, semi-divine plans, and everyone being Special.

I want my post-apoc back.