Hanging In There

I started the Battlestar reboot recently, and there's a lot there to enjoy, but some of the larger themes and major plotlines are pretty demanding to work with.  The major obstacle for me is the rather looming specter of Evil Feminine Sexuality, one of those cliches, especially in science fiction, which is guaranteed to tire me out - and this iteration is certainly exhausting me, all of three episodes in.

Odder, though, is the constant resort to Ultimate Dramatic Tension.  In BG's case, this comes to a painful choice to sacrifice some excessive swath of the ever-dwindling human race - and in BG's case, every single time, that sacrifice has been made.  To do this once produces tension.  To do it now three times already in less than five hours' total airtime for the series - it's sort of like a Rose Ceremony, after a while.  Make the cut we can see you think we're supposed to find devastating.  Get on with the effing plot, please.  Because surely there's some plot beyond how many times WE MUST MAKE THIS PAINFUL SACRIFICE IN ORDER TO SURVIVE.  There's certainly an abundance of writing.  I still hope that is in service of something.

The third thing I'm getting tired of watching them wrestle to the ground is the religiosity of the Cylons.  It's a pretty interesting choice, actually, but of course the making of it is all about the point of how religion is itself necessarily evil.

I get why people feel that way.  I don't argue their right to feel it - any more than I argue anyone's right to believe or do whatever they do, which I don't.  Believe in astrology ... give a crap about Snooki and the Kardashians ... make a living shouting to the world about how awful Snooki and the Kardashians are, thereby further underscoring their pop-cultural "importance" ... be a republican.  Hey, whatever.

It just bores me when suddenly I realize no matter how much I want to let-live, I find I am not allowed to live, myself.  That MY being and my beliefs are not acceptable, EVEN IF I accept others.

I have faith - and, what's more, I have religion.  By whatever paltry example my life may be, I witness to that. I don't proselytize.  I know there's plenty of that in the other direction.  I even understand the tendency toward stridency in atheism.  I just wish that, given a lack of provocation, it were possible for me to RECEIVE in kind - a lack of provocation in kind.

Yeah, life is not balanced in that way.

It's got enough going for it - and I'm curious enough - that the squicks this stuff gives me, I'm willing to work around (even if it appears unlikely the show will let me get *past* them).  But some of the themes here I simply find dispiriting.