Ghost of a flea

Hyper-jumping the shark

Spoiler warning: The following is based on a viewing of Battlestar Galactica Season 3 episodes 1 and 2. I believe what transpires is clearly implied by events in the final episode of Season 2, however, those inclined to watch the series without the freight of my opinion should not read this post until these episodes are available to them.

The central problem with "the postmodern turn" is not, as is widely supposed, its coincidence with the ascendency of relativism in addressing, and failing to address, cultural and political difference. Contemporary doctrines of relativism predate postmodernism by decades - I am thinking particularly of the ways in which the work of Franz Boas has come to be read₁ - and are in any event more closely allied to the logical fallacy of equivalence than a thoroughgoing political or philosophical position. Indeed equivalence, prevarication and sophistry, to paraphrase the Rabbi, have always been with us.

No, the main problem with the postmodern turn is the mistaken notion that in abstracting aesthetic elements from classical or modern schools of art and design, throwing them into a blender and repackaging the mush some sort of aesthetic achievement is the result. I admit The Simpsons was fun for a few years and for at least some of those years had become a litmus test for distinguishing an educated opinion. There is a satisfaction in recognizing a reference to Cape Fear or The Pirates of Penzance, particularly in an age of shocking ignorance of Western culture and civilisation. One might even be lead to hope an urge to be in on the joke might spur some autodidactism where systems of public education have so miserably failed. But a back-handed pedagogy is no substitute for art. The Simpsons is - or at least was - cute and on occasion amusing but rarely more than that.

In Matt Groening's defense I doubt the project was ever meant to be more than an entertaining diversion. It is a sad state of affairs when a desire to follow the plot of a children's cartoon should be the spur for an improving education let alone that this minimal hurdle should prove a step too far for most. South Park recently took at swing at Family Guy for taking postmodern narrative contruction one setting higher on the blender. In Family Guy, "in" references and de-contextualized vignettes are not an embellishment on but a substitute for a plot, this latter having been dispensed with almost entirely. I enjoy the show enormously and, as lineages go, its narrative structure finds honourable antecedents in the modernist stalwarts of surrealism and absurdism. But what works for comedy may be troubling for drama and particularly drama with pretensions to political commentary.

The word "insurgent" has taken on new meaning these last several years. Its association with a particular conflict is not limited to the ersatz Minutemen with their charming indigenous folk practices of head-hunting and child-rape. If the term "insurgent" is attached to some clans of the Uruk Hai it is more importantly associated with the Copperhead newsmen who coined the term; their own insurgency directed toward two war goals: The need to prevent at all costs the disambiguation of evil and the defeat of their Great Satan, George W. Bush. Meanwhile, in a history that has not happened, twelve planetary populations have been reduced to a few tens of thousands, forced medical experiments are carried out en masse in a North Korean-style cybernetic breeding program and those remnants of uncaged humanity are hunted as if for sport. Yet even given recent events in what remains of the Twelve Colonies, and for all they know the last of the human species, I expect Battlestar Galactica to find references not only to "insurgents" but to "activists" and "militants" in its lexicon in short order. If the show's continuity could take the blow I would not be surprised to see a Che Guevara T-shirt for Caprica 6. Galactica's writers are correct to believe using the term "insurgent" will have an emotional resonance for its audience as will its gestures toward "occupation" and "detention" and "torture". I expect many will believe these gestures alone - the mere appearance of a politicized vocabulary - are sufficient to make the show edgy and interesting, intellectual and relevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. For all the thinly veiled references to our current troubles the show has no message behind its metaphors. It is not that Galactica takes a position on the Long War and takes the wrong side. Galactica's refusal to state its case clearly means it is not even wrong.₂ The story dances around the war, evoking its language and imagery, but does not take a coherent stand on matters of duty or survival or hint at how some moral imperative might guide our actions in the world. We are instead meant to believe the show merely "raises questions", the first and last refuge of today's cowards. Some might take this ambivalence as a virtue. I think it is a strange and anemic storytelling to which our culture has been reduced when even mass murder, state-organized rape and threats directly from the seventh-century fail to elicit the simple assertion that our way of life is to be preferred, let alone defended. Talk about the war. Don't talk about the war. But don't not talk about the war and expect to be congratulated for it. Though, sad to say, I expect they will be.

I would rather choke back another helping of Star Trek:The Next Generation's righteous finger-wagging and self-flagellation than endure Galactica's fence-sitting. At least the received liberal opinion of Paramount in the 1980s had the courage of its admittedly limited convictions. Star Trek was faithful to its sick inversion of Scripture's wisdom: By all means blame the mote in the Federation's eye while studiously overlooking the log in the eye of empire be it Klingon, Romulan or Cardassian. All with the smug assurance that "they" are really like "us" in the end no matter how their leaders treat "their people" let alone how their people treat "their women". After all, the Federation's white-bread suburban future lacks the thrilling sexually charged blacksploitation potential or heavy-metal authenticity of a Klingon warrior. If you are only driving your Galaxy-class starship through the neighbourhood to buy drugs or walk on the wild side it can be a tame little adventure besides. And all the while the Federation's post-capitalist utopia rolls across the high sierra of the galaxy; a sanctimonious sludge assimiliating everything in its wake more surely than the Borg...

Perhaps Ron Moore will have the courtesy to let us know if "we" Westerners are the Cylons or what. Better yet, if those real, living human beings enlisting with the elected government of Iraq mere place-holders for the collaborators of New Caprica. For all the former are flesh and blood the latter are all too obviously more real to the post-moral left; typically concerned for brown people in principle but curiously unconcerned for them in the matters of basic rights to the franchise, freedom of expression or security of the person. In this, if in so little else, the advocates of postmodern thought have hit the mark: Where the referential chain between signifier and signified breaks down we are lost in the Matrix. Shoot up as many security guards or bystanders as you like. Their false consciousness leaves them sleeping, not truly alive, and their continued sleep renders them batteries for the ultimate class-enemy. Killing them, the argument runs, is only doing them a favour and is in their greater class-interest no matter their individual suffering and death. More important than that we are supposed to have transcended the simplisme of right and wrong let alone of good and evil. If Che has taught us anything it is that sunglasses and slaughter look cool.

Perhaps Baudrillard and his ilk are right and there has been a break in those chains of signification that rendered our actions meaningful. The answer, however, is not to parrot a kindergarten finger-painting ethos of race, gender and class but to decide like adults what values we will choose to defend. It may be good marketing to hint that we are the Cylons or, in an Orientalist Saidism₃, that the Cylons are yet another demonized Other. It may be our civilization will prevail despite the enervating effects of marketing as a place-holder for the beliefs that once defined us. It may even be that it is Mammon who will prevail over the death-cultists in the end; all the claims to love death may only serve to chlorinate the gene-pool leaving holiday swimmers in their wake. Even so, Galactica's "naturalistic science fiction" finds its closest resemblence to the world as yet another postmodern confection too cool to take a stand let alone take a side and too concerned about the bottom line to risk its aliens alienating its audience.₄

This is not just fannish debate and these are not just abstract problems. Talk of insurgency and occupation as if the words themselves are sufficient argument is not an analysis. Indicting the West of crimes we have not committed is no substitute for grappling with an enemy that would kill or convert us all. It may be we must once again learn the lesson of appeasement; re-pay the the price of dismissing "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." If that price proves too high to pay this time then God help us all. We would have to bear the burden of a real insurgency - a Jacksonian insurgency - and find ourselves passing on precious copies of Heinlein to our children; reminding them of what it meant to be free. In that future there will be no postmodernism, no marketing and no equivocation, no elections or representative government in Iraq or anywhere else: Only the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. And may God forgive the real collaborators who convert to the Temple of Elemental Evil with the words "There is no God but the Cylon God". By all means worship your demon-god of nothingness in whatever broken hell it resides. We will spend our last breath if that is the price we must pay to send you to it.

₁ Or rather, referenced. Very few anthropology students are asked to read Boas let alone bother to do so on their own account. Boas' work itself is a reflection of his genius and heaven forbid some of it rub off on somebody.
₂ With apologies to Wolfgang Pauli.
₃ That is to say, a position advanced by Saidists.
₄ I understand there are no aliens in Galactica per se. So sue me.

Rag-tag fugitive Update Writing for Protein Wisdom, cranky-d has related thoughts on the subject and asks an important question: Can we enjoy the show anyway? I agree we can.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at October 9, 2006 10:14 AM

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Posted by: ry at October 9, 2006 11:16 PM

Posted by: Chris Taylor at October 10, 2006 10:34 AM

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