The Way We Were

The Bush administration had done what needed to be done. To compare it to a sci-fi show is like comparing freedom to communism. VIVA LA BUSH!

The Bush administration has done what was necessary. Viva la Bush!

you have completely gotten wrong the entire show. are you sure you were watching the same show as the rest of the world? because this sounds almost like a completely different series ...

I must confess I had a lot of problems with this article. As a movie lover, I've given a lot of thought to what went wrong with pop culture during the Bush era. I detailed my reactions to "The Way We Were" here:

http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2008/12/way-we-werent-art-under-bush.html

I don't think most of Newsweek's cultural critics give a hard enough look at what was really wrong with the country during this time, nor at the role arts and culture played, or didn't play, in the process.

The beauty of this new incarnation of "Battlestar Galactica" is not the amazing special effects or the award-worthy work of its stellar casr - it is that there is no pure good and no pure evil. Instead, we are treated to a cast of characters who are all amazing shades of grey and we, the audience, must decide on which side of the fence we choose to sit. Antagonists who could have been merely cardboard cutouts find the audience's pity at times - does Sharon, who has bucked her prgramming, deserve the vitriol she receives from the Colonists; is Leoben's blind faith wrong; did Gina (Six) deserved to be abused during interrogation? Had these characters been true representations of current people (Musllims, evengelical Christians, terrorists et al), audiences most definitely would not have explored these ideas in their own minds. Instead, with these ciphers, we can look at the issues divorced of our preconceived notions and decide how we feel about things unfolding in our own world. I applaud the creators of the new BSG for daring us to confront ourselves every week.

I love the show BSG. Newsweek's intro was right on - all I can do is rephrase the same thoughts. The show is deeper and darker than what you would expect from sci-fi, and the drama and moral quandaries are very well-done. Every show is about choices between sacrificing freedom or security, and there isn't a clear-cut right answer, when the survival of a species is at stake. Indeed, sometimes the show is downright ugly when faced with their version of harsh reality, and the spectator has to ask "is it worth it?" The biggest change from the 1970s version was that the new Cylon cyborgs have engineered themselves to look and act human. It used to be a clear-cut battle against shiny chrome robots, not unlike the Star Wars rebels fighting the faceless clone troopers. In the new incarnation, the war more closely resembles terrorism than epic battles, and it's frightening not because of the special effects in a far-away world (which are good - the zero-gravity space fights look amazing), but because it feels very close to home.