Focus on the Family

[Note:  I am attempting to upload this from an airport and editing on my iPad, so I apologize for the more straightfoward treatment of the material this week. I’ve done my best to connect the various posts and have added some additional thoughts at the conclusion. -CT]

 

This week, our class continued to explore ideas of gender in the world of Caprica. Focusing primarily on the women, students began to contemplate the ways in which sexuality and gender intersect. Although I study this particular overlap extensively in respect to Horror, our class evidenced some interesting ideas in this arena and I will leave it to them to carry on the discussion.

What If Clarice Were A Male Character?

In this week’s episode, Clarice further illustrates her extremist lived religion, stating “Apotheosis will bring the twelve worlds under the one true God, and it’s my destiny to make that happen, and I will.”

I think its interesting to analyze Clarice’s depiction in relation to Roseanne in the article, “Roseanne: Unruly Woman As Domestic Goddess.” As the article states, much of the criticism Roseanne garnered was most likely because she was a woman. I thought that there was definitely an interesting parallel that could be made between Roseanne’s behavior and Clarice’s behavior. As previously stated, most viewers would most likely characterize Clarice as an extremist. After reading the article, however, I tried to think of Clarice if she had been cast as a male. If she had been a male character, I think her views would be viewed less as extremism, and more as bold and revolutionary (although the character would still be depicted negatively). I am basically making the argument that since she is a woman, her behaviors seem all the more shocking than if she were a man. I am not sure if anyone understands where I am coming from, but this aspect of gender depiction in the media seems to be an unfortunate reality.

-Max Wallace

Things We Got in the Fire

It’s that little voice in the back of our heads that never quite goes away; tinged with shades of guilt, fear, shame, and regret, we hide the things that remind us that we are fallible. We lock away the things that make us human. We transform, grow and stretch—we become—and we hide the traces of who we were. Desperate to be clean, we compartmentalize the worst and call ourselves civilized.

Clarice, still clinging to the one idea that she ever had (not, I would add, unlike Joe Adama from earlier in the season), chases after Zoe for all the wrong reasons. What Clarice doesn’t know—and will probably never understand—is that Zoe has already become a face of God. (The avatar has allowed her to achieve eternal life, but this is, as we know, not the same thing.)

Ultimately, the universe of Battlestar Galactica and Caprica has only ever really taught us one thing with respect to salvation:  God is love. The rub, however, is that we must learn to love as God loves:  without question and without discrimination; we must learn to love all of ourselves, which is, after all, the greatest love of all.

 

Chris Tokuhama studies popular culture, youth, Suburban/Gothic Horror, and media as a graduate student in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California while balancing a full-time job in the Office of College Admission. Primarily interested in modern mythologies and narrative structures, Chris wonders why the photo in the cabin had corners. Comments, questions, and Starbucks gift cards can be sent to tokuhama [at] usc [dot] edu.

Let There Be Zoe

The pieces slowly begin to come together with Zoe and V-world. Zoe finds Tamera, the only other avatar in the V-world that cannot be killed. While Zoe is mystified at first, she quickly learns that Tamera’s only interest in Zoe is to inflict as much harm on her as possible. While Zoe is being brutalized, (interesting depictions of Zoe, the helpless woman in distress, at the mercy of a violent gang) she sees her original self in a dream.

The viewer is then shown how avatar Zoe came into existence. Zoe had ideas and created a visual robot prototypes which Daniel Graystone in certain ways mimicked to create the first Cylons. But Zoe’s crowning achievement was making a virtual avatar of herself. One that could live in the V-world without the attachment of a real person. Zoe marveled at her creation. It was as if she were God, breathing life into Adam for the first time. And not unlike the Bible, Zoe created life in her own image. Zoe’s eyes sparkle and we can see how proud she is of her creation; how through this creation she has superseded the bounds of science at the time and opened up an entire new realm of possibilities. She had re-enchanted the world on her own terms.

Fire/Water

 

So far gone, there was no way out; she exploded in a burst of light, once again becoming beautiful.

As difficult as it is to watch someone die, it is, for me, always more painful to witness the depiction of suffering; growing out of an undergraduate career steeped in a study of Biological Science, I regularly ate while watching surgeries (don’t judge me) but never really learned to stomach pain. Now, as a graduate student, Horror has taught me to distance myself in order to study what I see on screen, at times necessitating a psychological barrier to keep from experiencing shock. Although I am certainly capable of comprehending the notion of anguish, recognizing the deleterious nature of chronic pain, it has taken an enormous amount of effort to actually empathize with the feeling. Looking at the picture of Gina above, I cannot help but but be overwhelmed with sadness–and this, I realize, is a good thing.

There has been much talk lately about the rash of suicides in America among gay teens–and suicide, for anyone who knows me, is a subject that strikes me at the core. Every life we lose is not just a travesty, but a failure that reflects back on us:  we, as a community, have failed our young people in some way for we have not helped them to develop coping skills and have not successfully addressed some of the core issues at play. We are, in some small way, all culpable for these deaths and although we are racing to change things, every life lost is one too many.

Playing God in Caprica

As a first time viewer, what struck me was how characters yearned for control in order to execute plans for the good of both science and religion. Clarice’s plan for apotheosis would put her in control of not only the religious covenant of monotheists, but also the polytheists who she would selectively save. She asserts that these polytheists accept the idea of heaven created by God, so why not a heaven built by his disciples? In virtual heaven, she can convert them to believe in one true God. Meanwhile, Daniel Graystone is attempting to forge an alliance to regain control of his company by finding a cure for human grief through the dead’s recreation in a virtual world. Daniel once built robots as a way to create life, now he wants to recreate life that once was.

Re-enchantment is taken to a whole new level in Caprica – Clarice plays God in apotheosis, while Daniel plays God by keeping you from vanishing after you die. These two characters aim redefine the natural order of death, respectively, and ultimately rewrite the myth of mortality by providing mankind with new ways to make sense of death through both spirituality and faith in the supernatural.

In the Darkness, I Find Light

Shoes clicking, she walked through the streets with thoughts in her head and a gun in her hand; she was the queen of New Cap City—in time, would become its god—and didn’t even know it. But that is her future. Right now, she is just a girl who has finally awakened.

Inspired by the analysis of Jacob [and apologies for parroting your ideas–this is my take on your take], I began to think about how the story of Caprica’s “There Is Another Sky” is a familiar one, if you’ve been exposed to any amount of entertainment growing up; it is the story of Alice, of Dorothy, of Neo, and of many others who have left on a quest and come back a hero. Throughout the episode, various characters (e.g., Sam, Tamara, and arguably Zoe) expressed a desire to return home or were admonished to “wake up” and each has, in turn, been ushered along by guides who have demonstrated that the power to change, to belong, to be, or become, has existed in them (and us!) all along. These nascent heroes, like their fictional forbearers, have all ventured into the darkness and found their way back to the world of the living; each of these heroes has woken up and tapped into the power that this revelation brings.