This first season episode brings us to the ancient Mongolian civilization (albeit via a race of Mongolian descendants who have been transplanted to another world by the evil Go'auld) and a world in which women are viewed as slaves and/or merchandise to be sold or traded or married off at will. The obvious message in this episode--preached via our heroes Jack, Tealc, and Carter--is that women should be free to fulfill their own destinies, to show their own faces, and to live their own lives as they see fit. This is a good message, and I think that any Christian should be willing to support it. (After all, the Bible says that in the kingdom of God, there is neither "male nor female," so I would think that a believer in Christ should be the first to challenge a view of women--or anyone--that calls for their enslavement and oppression.)
However, there is an underlying narrative here that I want you to be particularly aware of as you watch this or other episodes like it across the genre spectrum. The underlying message is this: that after millennia of ignorance, we in the past two centuries have finally seen the light and have lifted women out of the status of dependence and second-class citizenry. This is a common theme in our society, and it is touted heavily in both our schools and our entertainment media.
The problem is, the message is flawed. I have spent the better part of my life studying ancient and medieval history, and I can tell you with some confidence that almost no women from those periods, despite what we would view as apparent evidence to the contrary, would have seen themselves as second-class citizens. Women, after all, were the bearers of children, weavers of fabrics, and chieftains of everything that had to do with the home (which included management of workers, motherhood, and a degree of manual labor that most of us--including men--would find completely overwhelming). They had power that most women today would find impossible to wield in their households, for the simple reason that the agrarian structure of the family, as expressed during the ancient and medieval eras, necessitated a clearly defined family unit. The husband/father was "chieftain" of the family unit, in charge of everything that his sons and daughters did, the protector of the family unit, and (as circumstances dictated) an elder in his community. The wife/mother was in charge of the household, the daily manual labor involved in keeping the household running, and the daily responsibilities of parenting.
The best way to translate this structure of the home is to use the model of a platoon. Every platoon has a commanding officer, but there is also a second officer who takes care of the daily responsibilities of keeping the unit operational. In ancient and medieval societies, it was understood that the woman held this "second in command" position in the home. The reason she was "second in command" and not in charge of the home itself was simple: childbirth. Until the past century or so, childbirth everywhere on the planet was a deadly serious enterprise for women with immense risks for the new (or not so new) mother. Forget what we today consider the common ailments of pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbirth for women during those centuries was potentially fatal, and the very least a mother could hope for was to be somewhat incapacitated for nine months. Hence the need for men to be protectors and leaders--without the possibility of becoming pregnant themselves, men could literally stand guard over their wives while they were in the process of giving birth.
Many people within the Christian community talk about the evils of feminism. I personally don't think that feminism (even with some of its excesses) is to blame for the breakup of families or any other major social ills we are experiencing in America and the West today. The fact is, feminism itself is simply a symptom, a symptom of man's abandonment of a lifestyle that had served him for 5800 years for a new, technologically driven, unnatural lifestyle in which no one farms but everyone expects to eat. Without the old ways of tilling the ground for our food, we have simply lost any real reason to keep the family structure the way it has been for thousands of years. As a result, men began to leave their homes en masse in the nineteenth century for factories. Their wives and daughters followed shortly thereafter in the twentieth century, having realized that there was no reason for them to be at home. Now the family unit is breaking down, and increasingly, we are seeing people grow up without a real sense of what family is.
Yes, we've made advances as a society. However, we also have a tendency to see the way we do things today as "better" or "smarter" than the way people did things 20 or 30 generations ago. That arrogance keeps us from seeing just how vulnerable we really are, and how little we would have if it were not for a simple flip of a switch. The Bible tells us that God has a special plan for families. That plan is not a plan of oppression or domination, but it is also not the plan currently held to be right and good in our society today. It may be that if we want happy homes and happy families, we may need to reevaluate our own perspective on the generations of the past. Their wisdom, as different as it may be from our own, is wisdom we dare not ignore.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Battlestar Galactica--Lost Planet of the Gods
I have one thing to say about this 2-parter:
This
is
the
dawning
of
the
age
of
Aquarius
age
of
Aquariuuuuuuuuuuuuuus!
Many of the same themes that run through sci-fi movies from the late '60s and early '70s are clearly present here--the pagan cosmology shrouded in Eastern mysticism, the use of terms such as "life force" to refer to souls, and the reverence of kings, princes, and rulers from bygone eras as if they were gods. The spiritual content of this 2 hour opus' final half is so devastatingly demonic that not only would I not recommend it for Christian families to show their children, but I would also be loath to view it again as a believer in Christ myself. This fascination with mannish accomplishments, such as the ancient Egyptian Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Sphinx (all of which are shown here), as well as the use of stars (i.e. astrological signs--"Caprica," get it?) as guiding symbols that allow men and women to locate themselves in the void of uncertainty (or, in this case, the void of an unexplicable deep darkness in space) is openly symbolic of both the New Age movement which became popular in the '70s, '80s, and '90s and of millennia-old occultic practices.
Usually, I like to see at least one thing--something--that a Christian viewer can take out of an episode of television without feeling like he or she has to compromise his or her values in the process. In this episode, however, there is nothing that a Christian can look at and say, "I relate to that on a spiritual level." Even the loss of Apollo's new wife to the Cylons, while tragic (and well-acted), is without virtue. Remember that only one episode previous to this one (Saga of a Star World), Serena is married to someone else (presumably her son's real dad) who dies in the Cylon holocaust that descends on the 12 colonies. What happened to her widowhood, her period of grieving? As we used to say in my hometown, you need to wait until the body's cold before you start thinking of falling in love again. The sexual inuendo, not only in Serena's actions toward Apollo but in the "replacement squadron"'s actions toward Starbuck, reeks of sleaze, not romance, and while it might be believable for the couple to come together over time (i.e. years) after grieving their own personal losses, the way this relationship blossoms on the show is, I fear, more indicative of the values of the production staff than it is of the deep feelings that a real man or woman would experience in their situation. (By the way, the human race has been reduced to a rag-tag flotilla of spaceships, right? Then why are they letting women--who constitute a clear vehicle for the human race's continued survival--risk their lives flying vipers in combat? Isn't procreation a priority for these folks, now that their population is down to only a few thousand?)
Not even Baltar can redeem this episode. Come on, Baltar ends up stuck with Lucifer after pleading his case with the other humans? What are the show's producers saying here, that once you sin, you can't ever find hope or salvation again? Clearly this is what we are to gather from the fact that we even have a character on the show named "Lucifer" at all, and from the New Age-style cosmology that seems to be developing here. It would have been better for the producers to have had Adama and his officers seize the chance to use Baltar to strike at the Cylon homeworld. Even that outcome, while utterly ridiculous (wasn't he the one that brought the Cylon onslaught in the first place?), would be more in line with what a believer in Christ could accept as truth.
Simply put, there is nothing in this episode that a Christian can look at as positive. This show--like movies such as 2001, Barbarella, and Logan's Run--contains content of such an openly demonic nature that, while indicative of the principles and priorities of the lost souls who produced it, cannot be said--at any level--to be appropriate viewing for Christian families who want to raise Christian sons and daughters. You are welcome to disagree, of course--I am as interested in being your personal censor as I am in having my face branded with a hot iron--but as a believer, I came away from this episode feeling more soiled, more dirty, and less in tune with my Creator than I ever did watching an entire season of other sci-fi fare. You can expose your children to this episode if you want, but you'd better be prepared for uncomfortable questions--questions to which I hope you will have sound Bible-based answers.
This
is
the
dawning
of
the
age
of
Aquarius
age
of
Aquariuuuuuuuuuuuuuus!
Many of the same themes that run through sci-fi movies from the late '60s and early '70s are clearly present here--the pagan cosmology shrouded in Eastern mysticism, the use of terms such as "life force" to refer to souls, and the reverence of kings, princes, and rulers from bygone eras as if they were gods. The spiritual content of this 2 hour opus' final half is so devastatingly demonic that not only would I not recommend it for Christian families to show their children, but I would also be loath to view it again as a believer in Christ myself. This fascination with mannish accomplishments, such as the ancient Egyptian Pyramids, the Parthenon, and the Sphinx (all of which are shown here), as well as the use of stars (i.e. astrological signs--"Caprica," get it?) as guiding symbols that allow men and women to locate themselves in the void of uncertainty (or, in this case, the void of an unexplicable deep darkness in space) is openly symbolic of both the New Age movement which became popular in the '70s, '80s, and '90s and of millennia-old occultic practices.
Usually, I like to see at least one thing--something--that a Christian viewer can take out of an episode of television without feeling like he or she has to compromise his or her values in the process. In this episode, however, there is nothing that a Christian can look at and say, "I relate to that on a spiritual level." Even the loss of Apollo's new wife to the Cylons, while tragic (and well-acted), is without virtue. Remember that only one episode previous to this one (Saga of a Star World), Serena is married to someone else (presumably her son's real dad) who dies in the Cylon holocaust that descends on the 12 colonies. What happened to her widowhood, her period of grieving? As we used to say in my hometown, you need to wait until the body's cold before you start thinking of falling in love again. The sexual inuendo, not only in Serena's actions toward Apollo but in the "replacement squadron"'s actions toward Starbuck, reeks of sleaze, not romance, and while it might be believable for the couple to come together over time (i.e. years) after grieving their own personal losses, the way this relationship blossoms on the show is, I fear, more indicative of the values of the production staff than it is of the deep feelings that a real man or woman would experience in their situation. (By the way, the human race has been reduced to a rag-tag flotilla of spaceships, right? Then why are they letting women--who constitute a clear vehicle for the human race's continued survival--risk their lives flying vipers in combat? Isn't procreation a priority for these folks, now that their population is down to only a few thousand?)
Not even Baltar can redeem this episode. Come on, Baltar ends up stuck with Lucifer after pleading his case with the other humans? What are the show's producers saying here, that once you sin, you can't ever find hope or salvation again? Clearly this is what we are to gather from the fact that we even have a character on the show named "Lucifer" at all, and from the New Age-style cosmology that seems to be developing here. It would have been better for the producers to have had Adama and his officers seize the chance to use Baltar to strike at the Cylon homeworld. Even that outcome, while utterly ridiculous (wasn't he the one that brought the Cylon onslaught in the first place?), would be more in line with what a believer in Christ could accept as truth.
Simply put, there is nothing in this episode that a Christian can look at as positive. This show--like movies such as 2001, Barbarella, and Logan's Run--contains content of such an openly demonic nature that, while indicative of the principles and priorities of the lost souls who produced it, cannot be said--at any level--to be appropriate viewing for Christian families who want to raise Christian sons and daughters. You are welcome to disagree, of course--I am as interested in being your personal censor as I am in having my face branded with a hot iron--but as a believer, I came away from this episode feeling more soiled, more dirty, and less in tune with my Creator than I ever did watching an entire season of other sci-fi fare. You can expose your children to this episode if you want, but you'd better be prepared for uncomfortable questions--questions to which I hope you will have sound Bible-based answers.
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