BSG Meta: Six vs Eight vs Identity
Aug. 22nd, 2008 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaWell, I'm still in South Korea. Still plugging away. Very grateful it's the weekend and not really in the mood to bore everyone with talk of such things, so instead, I have written BSG meta for the first time in ages. Hurrah!
The first cylon-on-cylon opinion we hear about the Eights is a Six opining that her model is weak, which we, as the audience, understand to mean 'human'. Contrast this with Six - the first time we hear a cylon-on-cylon opinion about her is when Boomer talks about how the Sixes are usually so "hardcore" in Downloaded. We meet her committing genocide and infanticide. We meet her through Head!Six who is fascinating and in no way robotic, but also inhuman and terrifying. But Eight, we meet through characters with names. Through Boomer who spends the first season so terrified and through Athena (though back then I suppose she was still Sharon, but still, she claimed a name: Caprica had to be given one), the character who abandons everything for Love.
Six is set up as "all shall look on me and despair," sex-and-violence. Eight is set up as our window to the Cylon's capacity for humanity, redemptive love, evolution and gosh-darned adorable half-robot children. Six and Eight both try to negotiate the distance between human and cylon with their bodies - this constant battle, most obvious with Six but present as an undertow in Eight also, about whether love is sex is sex is love - but Six murders babies while Eight creates them, even though they both started off as Mata Hari. Caprica and Gaius before the mini or Athena and Helo after, they're both doing the same job.
So it's interesting to me that, in season four especially, I feel a strong ambivalence that I think exists in the text also, about this whole "hardcore Six" vs "softcore Eight" and how it might be exactly backwards as soon as you claw the slightest bit under the surface.
It's not that Boomer's observation about the Sixes was wrong, or that Caprica is different fundamentally, so much as Caprica is the first Six Boomer has ever seen - perhaps the first Six that's existed - on more than a...not quite superficial, but perhaps simple level.
It's not that Athena is lacking in naive optimism or a capacity for love, it's that she will also pick her side so damn hard she'll demand a sister's murder to solidify her identity, and the only reasons the Eights on the Rebel Basestar didn't quite get that yet was because they were still...simple. They hadn't had the experience necessary to realise they were going to break down and stick on a side just as hard as Athena one day.
It boils down to: Six is hardcore, but underneath the steel that lets her instigate an unwieldy Centurion uprising, there's a deep, enduring and desperate capacity and desire for love. Six loves the things she's killing and loves her enemies and wants them to love her. "Get it done, no matter what," is wrapped around, "love me, please."
Eight is softcore, but underneath the surface that lets her switch sides and hope blindly for a Lifetime Special ending against all evidence ot the contrary, she's angry and bitter and, well, hateful. Eight commits to hating her enemies and convincing herself it doesn't matter if they hate her too. "Love me, please," is wrapped arond, "Get it done, no matter what."
They're opposites. Though I think that Six's "no matter what," is rooted more in rage and Eight's "no matter what," is rooted more in hate.
Eights don't walk the space between human and cylon very well. Boomer tried in Downloaded and ended up, well, frakking over all the other Eights because she picked her side and it was "being a machine," and everyone else can burn. Athena picked her side and it was "being a human," and everyone else can burn.
It tool me a long time to believe that about Athena or want to. But I remember when she first showed up on Galactica. She was almost certainly lying when she denied knowing what the Resurrection Ship was. She flat out told Adama that though she helped kill the raiders in Flight of the Phoenix she wasn't going to turn over other cylon agents in the Fleet. But then, the comission, Helo, carrot and stick.
I'm not unsympathetic. In Athena's position - at least given what she wanted to achieve - half conversion wasn't an option. But still, I finally got it when Starbuck was trying to talk Sam down from shooting the Six that killed Barolay, and Athena was there, leading the "kill her" charge, complete with us vs them language.
I remember when she wouldn't kill D'Anna on New Caprica even though she would have resurrected and ever though she'd just told her that Hera was alive and Athena thought it was the cruelest lie a person could tell.
Now she murders unarmed women she knows will never come back because they were speaking to Hera. I actually think Adama fundamentally misunderstood why Athena shot Natalie, but I'm not sure he was wrong exactly when he asked if she hated her own people that much. Or at least if she feels she has to convince herself she hates them or she'll fall apart?
It's interesting that first act of cylon-on-cylon violence is committed by Athena when she shoots another Eight at the end of season one, when Helo works out who and what she is. It's committed in an attempt to abandon her people and walk off on her own path, at their expense, with things that also matter to them. While the first known and credited act of cylon-on-cylon violence is committed by Caprica, though she does it in an attmept to bring her people with her and share what she's learned.
I'm not really sure what I think all of this means, except perhaps, that Eight is good at crossing lines, while Six is better at living between them?
Hell, maybe that's why Eight is often coded in the show as being more human. Another watershed Eight moment for me was the Eight who dabbled with Athena's memories and how, to her, it was completely not a violation, it was probably something closer to love and it was certainly something she had every right to do because there is a sense of shared communal ownership that crosses between the models, and she hadn't yet realised that Athena had stopped being one of them, at times violently. We've seen how Athena reacts to the slightest notion of communal ownership of Hera or her own life: I really, really don't think she would have liked knowing that the other Eight took her memories. Well, that's it, isn't it, did she "take" them or did she "share" them? Is Captain Agathon married to the entire production line? Sort of, yeah. It's just Athena would rather stop being what she is than admit it.
Because that's what we've seen with the Cylon. Slowly they stop being who they are. You must die. You must not share your mind. I honestly am all for the Cylon evolving, becoming more individualised as seems to be their natural tendency when given the space to do so. But at this point, it seems less like, "You must 'grow up' to the point where you are no longer a danger to those around you," and more like, "You must 'grow up' to be just like the humans."
I wonder...if there's something we're missing here.
We're so programmed to fear even partial gestalts. To dismiss them as unhealthy, or communist, or in this case alienbadalien.
Which is maybe the real point of all of this. Six is more alien than Eight. And she keeps moving toward us - toward "human" - without scarring herself in order to get rid of everything that might still brand her as "cylon" the way Athena did.
How do we deal with that?
She's far more loving and more generous than Eight, but she's alien. She's not human. So too often, it's easy not to notice.
/Meta.
The first cylon-on-cylon opinion we hear about the Eights is a Six opining that her model is weak, which we, as the audience, understand to mean 'human'. Contrast this with Six - the first time we hear a cylon-on-cylon opinion about her is when Boomer talks about how the Sixes are usually so "hardcore" in Downloaded. We meet her committing genocide and infanticide. We meet her through Head!Six who is fascinating and in no way robotic, but also inhuman and terrifying. But Eight, we meet through characters with names. Through Boomer who spends the first season so terrified and through Athena (though back then I suppose she was still Sharon, but still, she claimed a name: Caprica had to be given one), the character who abandons everything for Love.
Six is set up as "all shall look on me and despair," sex-and-violence. Eight is set up as our window to the Cylon's capacity for humanity, redemptive love, evolution and gosh-darned adorable half-robot children. Six and Eight both try to negotiate the distance between human and cylon with their bodies - this constant battle, most obvious with Six but present as an undertow in Eight also, about whether love is sex is sex is love - but Six murders babies while Eight creates them, even though they both started off as Mata Hari. Caprica and Gaius before the mini or Athena and Helo after, they're both doing the same job.
So it's interesting to me that, in season four especially, I feel a strong ambivalence that I think exists in the text also, about this whole "hardcore Six" vs "softcore Eight" and how it might be exactly backwards as soon as you claw the slightest bit under the surface.
It's not that Boomer's observation about the Sixes was wrong, or that Caprica is different fundamentally, so much as Caprica is the first Six Boomer has ever seen - perhaps the first Six that's existed - on more than a...not quite superficial, but perhaps simple level.
It's not that Athena is lacking in naive optimism or a capacity for love, it's that she will also pick her side so damn hard she'll demand a sister's murder to solidify her identity, and the only reasons the Eights on the Rebel Basestar didn't quite get that yet was because they were still...simple. They hadn't had the experience necessary to realise they were going to break down and stick on a side just as hard as Athena one day.
It boils down to: Six is hardcore, but underneath the steel that lets her instigate an unwieldy Centurion uprising, there's a deep, enduring and desperate capacity and desire for love. Six loves the things she's killing and loves her enemies and wants them to love her. "Get it done, no matter what," is wrapped around, "love me, please."
Eight is softcore, but underneath the surface that lets her switch sides and hope blindly for a Lifetime Special ending against all evidence ot the contrary, she's angry and bitter and, well, hateful. Eight commits to hating her enemies and convincing herself it doesn't matter if they hate her too. "Love me, please," is wrapped arond, "Get it done, no matter what."
They're opposites. Though I think that Six's "no matter what," is rooted more in rage and Eight's "no matter what," is rooted more in hate.
Eights don't walk the space between human and cylon very well. Boomer tried in Downloaded and ended up, well, frakking over all the other Eights because she picked her side and it was "being a machine," and everyone else can burn. Athena picked her side and it was "being a human," and everyone else can burn.
It tool me a long time to believe that about Athena or want to. But I remember when she first showed up on Galactica. She was almost certainly lying when she denied knowing what the Resurrection Ship was. She flat out told Adama that though she helped kill the raiders in Flight of the Phoenix she wasn't going to turn over other cylon agents in the Fleet. But then, the comission, Helo, carrot and stick.
I'm not unsympathetic. In Athena's position - at least given what she wanted to achieve - half conversion wasn't an option. But still, I finally got it when Starbuck was trying to talk Sam down from shooting the Six that killed Barolay, and Athena was there, leading the "kill her" charge, complete with us vs them language.
I remember when she wouldn't kill D'Anna on New Caprica even though she would have resurrected and ever though she'd just told her that Hera was alive and Athena thought it was the cruelest lie a person could tell.
Now she murders unarmed women she knows will never come back because they were speaking to Hera. I actually think Adama fundamentally misunderstood why Athena shot Natalie, but I'm not sure he was wrong exactly when he asked if she hated her own people that much. Or at least if she feels she has to convince herself she hates them or she'll fall apart?
It's interesting that first act of cylon-on-cylon violence is committed by Athena when she shoots another Eight at the end of season one, when Helo works out who and what she is. It's committed in an attempt to abandon her people and walk off on her own path, at their expense, with things that also matter to them. While the first known and credited act of cylon-on-cylon violence is committed by Caprica, though she does it in an attmept to bring her people with her and share what she's learned.
I'm not really sure what I think all of this means, except perhaps, that Eight is good at crossing lines, while Six is better at living between them?
Hell, maybe that's why Eight is often coded in the show as being more human. Another watershed Eight moment for me was the Eight who dabbled with Athena's memories and how, to her, it was completely not a violation, it was probably something closer to love and it was certainly something she had every right to do because there is a sense of shared communal ownership that crosses between the models, and she hadn't yet realised that Athena had stopped being one of them, at times violently. We've seen how Athena reacts to the slightest notion of communal ownership of Hera or her own life: I really, really don't think she would have liked knowing that the other Eight took her memories. Well, that's it, isn't it, did she "take" them or did she "share" them? Is Captain Agathon married to the entire production line? Sort of, yeah. It's just Athena would rather stop being what she is than admit it.
Because that's what we've seen with the Cylon. Slowly they stop being who they are. You must die. You must not share your mind. I honestly am all for the Cylon evolving, becoming more individualised as seems to be their natural tendency when given the space to do so. But at this point, it seems less like, "You must 'grow up' to the point where you are no longer a danger to those around you," and more like, "You must 'grow up' to be just like the humans."
I wonder...if there's something we're missing here.
We're so programmed to fear even partial gestalts. To dismiss them as unhealthy, or communist, or in this case alienbadalien.
Which is maybe the real point of all of this. Six is more alien than Eight. And she keeps moving toward us - toward "human" - without scarring herself in order to get rid of everything that might still brand her as "cylon" the way Athena did.
How do we deal with that?
She's far more loving and more generous than Eight, but she's alien. She's not human. So too often, it's easy not to notice.
/Meta.
