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note: many of the thoughts here arrived to via various conversations with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lierdumoa ::glomps::
Been rewatching SGA eps for vids.
God. God I say, because I love my show.
And I can't even believe I'm saying that, because I didn't ever think there would be a show or a fandom that fit me so *well* but...dude.
It's the morbid and the horrific and the absurd and the ridiculous, all wrapped up together. And I've said it before how much the show feels like it was made to utterly suit my brain alone, except it suits other people so well too and it's like a call saying, hey, you're not alone.
I'm frankly a little shocked that SGA even exists because it's not only a show about misfits, but it's a misfit show. It's a tv show acting like it's a movie. It's a sci-fi series made along the tempermental lines of NYPDblue. It's on the surface a genre show that, if you look closer, is really all about the characters. It's making fun of sci-fi and critiquing it, while at the same time paying it homage. It's in a genre that's all about "saying something" and "social critique" and instead refusing to say anything at all, only reflecting back a world that is very familiar and almost too close.
It is...space. If that makes any sense. It gives you *space* for your mind.
If it helps to explain, I think SGA is a very post-modern series. Where modernist art is densely filled and opaque to the audience, to force the audience to look closer and to force them to divine the author's meaning, post-modernist art tends to push notice away from the author's intent and the author's subjectivity. It is a space for the *audience's* sake and the audience's subjectivity, and not a place for the author to provide meaning; it is a space for the audience to meditate.
In that regard SGA is not only a "space" but an entire universe for the audience to fill.
I really think that SGA might've only been possible with the Sci-Fi channel; that without BSG and SG1, SGA would not have been made, because the show is not only self-reflexive, but reflecting every which way, on the genre (ie. "Sanctuary"), on the structure of a show (ie. "38 min"), on the structure of playacting (ie. "The Tower"), and perhaps even, if you wish to look at it , on the current political and social and cultural structures that we are all living in (ie. "Suspicion", "The Gift", "Siege II", "Trinity", "Critical Mass"). And it doesn't judge, only reflect. How awesome is that? And how rare?
'cause like, it doesn't present choices like, say, saving 2,000 people versus saving 200 people. It's sort of like that choice, but not quite.
With SGA, instead you get two black boxes. In one box you might save ~200 people (and you don't know how many), in the other box you might also save ~200 people (and you don't know how few), but they are different people. You don't get to know who is in which box. You sometimes get to know if choosing one box might condemn the other. Half of the time, you don't even know if you're choosing a particular box for a positive or negative effect.
THAT, folks, is SGA.
And I don't think I've seen it ever done so consistently and so well in a tv show (instead of a movie) that's popular and that's run for so long, 'cause maintaining that sort of tone is insane if you want an audience. People funding a project back away hella quickly if a show isn't escapist, and I think SGA's saving grace is that it's funny. And really, comedy is needed to cut the morbid, and what's more? Morbid things, are as a whole, often funny and ridiculous and absurd. The best of the horrific is intensely facinating and often comedic, and I'm so glad that SGA's providing essentially a place, also, to laugh.
It's post-modernist in a "Butterfly Effect", the theatrical release, kinda way, where the guy wins and loses simultaneously; instead of the Director's Cut, which is more modernist in intent. It's post-modernist in an "Eternal Sunshine" kinda way, it's we're so fucked, but we'll still give it our all and we're still gonna smile, it's you kinda suck, but I love you anyways, it's forgiveness. It's characters who are trying hard and fucking up immensely and trying again, it's a show deeply aware of it's own flaws and playing off them, it's ...a home made on conflict.
And I resonate to that. Or SGA resonates to me. Or something.
[edit]
::headsmack:: so I realized that I should probably define post-modernism as I understand it and am using it in this entry, 'cause it has a bit of a twisty definition and is always wrapped up with and juxaposed against the concept of modernism. Both of these refer to elements of style and elements of intent; in this entry I'm referring more to intent than to style.
Anyhoo, to understand post-modernism, one sorta have to see it against modernism.
modernist: universal truths, fear/sadness/mourning in the midst of dissolution, subjectivity of the author, order out of chaos, search for the fundamental/stable, knowledge for knowledge's sake
post-modernist: diversity/contradiction of truths, celebration in the midst of dissolution, subjectivity of the audience, chaos out of chaos, acceptance of the provisional/temporary, the application of knowledge
Here is it's wiki entry for post-modernism, the part I'm referring to for SGA is this:
lierdumoa ::glomps::Been rewatching SGA eps for vids.
God. God I say, because I love my show.
And I can't even believe I'm saying that, because I didn't ever think there would be a show or a fandom that fit me so *well* but...dude.
It's the morbid and the horrific and the absurd and the ridiculous, all wrapped up together. And I've said it before how much the show feels like it was made to utterly suit my brain alone, except it suits other people so well too and it's like a call saying, hey, you're not alone.
I'm frankly a little shocked that SGA even exists because it's not only a show about misfits, but it's a misfit show. It's a tv show acting like it's a movie. It's a sci-fi series made along the tempermental lines of NYPDblue. It's on the surface a genre show that, if you look closer, is really all about the characters. It's making fun of sci-fi and critiquing it, while at the same time paying it homage. It's in a genre that's all about "saying something" and "social critique" and instead refusing to say anything at all, only reflecting back a world that is very familiar and almost too close.
It is...space. If that makes any sense. It gives you *space* for your mind.
If it helps to explain, I think SGA is a very post-modern series. Where modernist art is densely filled and opaque to the audience, to force the audience to look closer and to force them to divine the author's meaning, post-modernist art tends to push notice away from the author's intent and the author's subjectivity. It is a space for the *audience's* sake and the audience's subjectivity, and not a place for the author to provide meaning; it is a space for the audience to meditate.
In that regard SGA is not only a "space" but an entire universe for the audience to fill.
I really think that SGA might've only been possible with the Sci-Fi channel; that without BSG and SG1, SGA would not have been made, because the show is not only self-reflexive, but reflecting every which way, on the genre (ie. "Sanctuary"), on the structure of a show (ie. "38 min"), on the structure of playacting (ie. "The Tower"), and perhaps even, if you wish to look at it , on the current political and social and cultural structures that we are all living in (ie. "Suspicion", "The Gift", "Siege II", "Trinity", "Critical Mass"). And it doesn't judge, only reflect. How awesome is that? And how rare?
'cause like, it doesn't present choices like, say, saving 2,000 people versus saving 200 people. It's sort of like that choice, but not quite.
With SGA, instead you get two black boxes. In one box you might save ~200 people (and you don't know how many), in the other box you might also save ~200 people (and you don't know how few), but they are different people. You don't get to know who is in which box. You sometimes get to know if choosing one box might condemn the other. Half of the time, you don't even know if you're choosing a particular box for a positive or negative effect.
THAT, folks, is SGA.
And I don't think I've seen it ever done so consistently and so well in a tv show (instead of a movie) that's popular and that's run for so long, 'cause maintaining that sort of tone is insane if you want an audience. People funding a project back away hella quickly if a show isn't escapist, and I think SGA's saving grace is that it's funny. And really, comedy is needed to cut the morbid, and what's more? Morbid things, are as a whole, often funny and ridiculous and absurd. The best of the horrific is intensely facinating and often comedic, and I'm so glad that SGA's providing essentially a place, also, to laugh.
It's post-modernist in a "Butterfly Effect", the theatrical release, kinda way, where the guy wins and loses simultaneously; instead of the Director's Cut, which is more modernist in intent. It's post-modernist in an "Eternal Sunshine" kinda way, it's we're so fucked, but we'll still give it our all and we're still gonna smile, it's you kinda suck, but I love you anyways, it's forgiveness. It's characters who are trying hard and fucking up immensely and trying again, it's a show deeply aware of it's own flaws and playing off them, it's ...a home made on conflict.
And I resonate to that. Or SGA resonates to me. Or something.
[edit]
::headsmack:: so I realized that I should probably define post-modernism as I understand it and am using it in this entry, 'cause it has a bit of a twisty definition and is always wrapped up with and juxaposed against the concept of modernism. Both of these refer to elements of style and elements of intent; in this entry I'm referring more to intent than to style.
Anyhoo, to understand post-modernism, one sorta have to see it against modernism.
modernist: universal truths, fear/sadness/mourning in the midst of dissolution, subjectivity of the author, order out of chaos, search for the fundamental/stable, knowledge for knowledge's sake
post-modernist: diversity/contradiction of truths, celebration in the midst of dissolution, subjectivity of the audience, chaos out of chaos, acceptance of the provisional/temporary, the application of knowledge
Here is it's wiki entry for post-modernism, the part I'm referring to for SGA is this:
"incredulity toward metanarratives", meaning that in the era of postmodern culture, people have rejected the grand, supposedly universal stories and paradigms such as religion, conventional philosophy, capitalism and gender that have defined culture and behavior in the past, and have instead begun to organize their cultural life around a variety of more local and subcultural ideologies, myths and stories.
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no subject
Anyway - firstly, on SGA. I agree with much of what you said at the start there, that fanfic (and in this case, fannish interpretation of a contemporary tv show) is in and of itself postmodern in style and context. I think that *we* are postmodern people, that we live in it and think through it and are affected by it on many levels. I think SGA is born of the postmodern, without necessarily containing all of the characteristics of a "typical" postmodern text. Where I disagree with you is in your choice of which elements of SGA do or do not fit into a postmodernist paradigm. This is less about our reading of pmod though, than our reading of the show, I bet. For instance:
i don't see it underminming or questioning any metanarratives or establishing local contingent narratives. the bad guys are clearly evil, the good guys are good,
Oh my lord, no. I disagree. I don't think there's a stable good or bad guy in the whole damn show. There are those with uniformly good intentions, sure, but SGA plays with the underlying idea of what a good intention is, where it comes from, exposing how much of it really is just... internal ideology. Take Elizabeth's sanctioning of torture, for example. She is supposed to be the most enlightened of humans, the best we have, good intentions up the wazoo. Take the Wraith, the most obviously 'evil' force in the pegasus galaxy. They started out as plain life-sucking machines with fancy outfits, and have become much more complicated. Now, they have internal politics, they have a civil war brewing, and they have, as we learned in the ep with the young girl wraith, the capacity to love, to empathise, to fight what biology and society requires them to become. Everyone in SGA is steeped in an extraordinary amount of realness. They're all so fallible and prone to making stupid jokes and messing up and getting crushes on the wrong people and even when they're good (and even when they're bad) they disagree and make mistakes. SGA seems to me to be a product of the postmodern in that it rejects the good/evil dichotomy and questions the idea of the quest/adventure as the path of righteousness (ie see how ascension is treated) and I love it because the people who created it are just like me - products of the postmodern, and they know what makes me tick. Plus, hotness.
re postmodernism as discipline - I can tell you that the whole thing was puzzling me a fair bit as well (if pmod is over, what has replaced it?) and as i had used some pmod theory in my phd proposal, i needed to figure it out. I'm not there yet, because in general, nothing DID replace it. Instead, a series of smaller disciplines that existed alongside pmodism and fed off it while being part of it (like postcolonialism, for example, and cultural studies such as you're involved in) have become more prominent in the sturcturing of english departments across Ireland and the UK. So while these disciplines are not postmodern and while they reject some of the tenets of pmod, those strategies for tackling texts and interpretation are now treated as universal, as an inheritance of sorts. Such is my impression, anyway. I've always been fascinated by pmodism myself, while having problems with certain aspects of it (such as illustrated by arguments between pmodism and feminism) and the opinions I'm talking about here are just ones I've managed to glean from my first few months of work, so take them with a pinch of salt!!
Wasn't Habermas the first great internet fan, anyway? So I'm with you there!!
no subject
see, i really don't see sga as complex or sophisticated as either one of you does, i guess. in fact, i think that's what makes it so interesting as a source text, b/c i've readmore interesting portrsyals of the genii and even the wraith in fanfic that i ever gather from the show.
to return to my bsg example here: conmpare the cylons with the wraith as the central antagonists...i'd argue the cylons are portrayed in a much more sophisticated manner, are much more ambiguous...at this point in time, i can't really wholeheartedly support *anyone*'s actions, and i think that's a good thing.
sga on the other hand creates holes where *we* fill in ambiguity, i.e., *we* debate how ethical it was to let the wraith feed on the prison planet, but the text itself does very little to question the protagonists' decisions...or look at the tower!!!
let's look at the torture scenes...i really don't think there existed the same levels of complexity in critical mass as there did in the torture episode on bsg (and i'd have to think about it a bit more to give a complete analysis)...which is not to say that i don't love sga with the passion of a thousand hearts...it's just that i think it requires *us* to do more of the work whereas on bsg i don't feel the need to complexify the characters b/c they're already there (and i'm not sure complex characters are even a characteristic of postmodernism in the end but i guess ambiguity is and i just don't see it in sga to a level that moves beyond anhy good modernist text)
ok...i get the many-theories-model and that's where i'm at right now just taking from wherever...the experience i seem to be having is that my vocabulary gets derided as obsolete while the underlying ideas are scavenged and used at will (sorry, i have this entire hypertext trauma at the moment that really doesn't belong in permetaform's lj :-)
no subject
I haven't seen so much as a clip of BSG so I can't really comment there, but coming at it from the other side of the interpretive equation, with a show like Smallville, where viewers of any sense were almost *forced* to apply wild interpretations to dumb-seeming text just to get any sense out of the show at all (ha - like the theory that lex spent most of season 4 completely brainwashed), I can definitely see how there are grades of interpretation there. I don't know that I buy the heart of your theory about SGA being relatively simple and the audience creating depth through interpretation, mainly because it's such a *subjective* theory. *You* feel that SGA is unsophisticated, but I don't, and there's no real way to measure the *actual* sophistication of a show when to guage it immediately requires interpretation by a subjective audience. Do you see what I mean? I can't give concrete examples with BSG but I'd happily spend time talking about the complexity of the SGA verse.
And a hypertext trauma sounds painful!!!!
no subject
no subject
eeeee. ::WINCE::
also ::HUGS::