beccatoria (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccatoria) wrote2008-08-22 07:00 pm
beccatoria) wrote2008-08-22 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
BSG Meta: Six vs Eight vs Identity
Well, 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.
no subject
I disagree that Athena "couldn't bear" to kill Three on New Caprica. The way I interpreted the scene, Athena had no way of killing the Three and making it permanent. Thus, incapacitating her rather than killing her was the choice least likely to blow the whole evacuation plan. However, I do agree that Athena thought D'Anna was being needlessly cruel by bringing up Hera, and I suspect Athena chose to shoot her in the kneecaps precisely because it was the best way she could get back at her. Kneecapping is supposedly THE most painful method of incapacitating someone, and Athena would've known that she was condemning D'Anna to several hours of agony. So I don't think Athena's changed that much between "Exodus" and "Guess What's Coming to Dinner". At the time she shot D'Anna she simply had fewer options than she did when she shot Natalie. Besides, we've seen her kill someone permanently as early as Season 2, when she double-crossed Zarek's henchman on Kobol and killed him with the gun he gave her. She never seemed to suffer any pangs of conscience over that.
Now, one could argue that permanently killing a fellow Cylon is much graver morally than killing a human (at any rate, the average Cylon would probably see it that way, although humans would beg to differ). Zarek's henchman (so forgettable I can't even remember his name) was just a human traitor she barely knew, and who was trying to manipulate her into doing his dirty work. Natalie, however, is family. Estranged, but family nonetheless, so it's a much more personal murder. But again, I don't think it's a new development. A few episodes after she kneecaps D'Anna, permanent Cylon death becomes an issue for the first time, and she goes along with the genocide plan with no resistance. Arguably, if she'd had the opportunity to kill D'Anna permanently back on New Caprica, she might well have taken it.
I guess I agree with almost everything you say, but I frame it in a less oppositional way. Maybe because I:
a) adore both the Sixes and the Eights
b) have always found Six (or at least certain versions of her) at least quasi-sympathetic, even going back to Season 1.
That said, I hope you're right that the show is going in that direction, not simplistically having made Caprica Six "bad" and Athena "good", then flipping and simplistically making Caprica "good" and Athena "bad", but continuing to blur those lines and make them both complex, imperfect personalities. I don't want Athena to become a villain, but I would like the show to explore that ruthless side of her, the one she's always had in canon, but which has always been downplayed by the show prior to "Guess What's COming to Dinner". What I definitely DON'T want is for the show to take the lazy way out and just turn her bad offscreen, like they did with Boomer in Season 3.
So, in conclusion, utterly brilliant analysis, and I have to get over my kneejerk "Well, she's not THAT bad" defensive reaction re: Athena. And yes, I realise you're recounting the narrative the show is telling, but I get defensive anyway. I also get defensive about Caprica Six being woefully underused, and many other things.
no subject
In season four she's out for blood, her initial response to her sisters is to be disgusted with them for being weak when they ask for her leadership - and even if she has a point she basically just tells them to get lost, to the point that it's Sam with all his fear, terror and ambivalence about being a cylon who reaches out to the dying Eight in the Hybrid's chamber because for some reason Athena can't. That, to me, was...really painful to watch.
To be honest with you, I also had a kneejerk "she's not that bad," reaction to Athena because I really didn't want to believe this about her and it was only Faith and Guess What's Coming to Dinner that really made it unavoidable to me how much pain Athena is in.
I also tend to get very defensive about the underuse of Caprica Six to the point that I vidded it so I totally understand where you're coming from there.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think that they'll go for anything as simplistic as a reversal of the "good" and "bad" stereotypes because it was never that clean cut in the first place. I think that the show itself was always significantly ambiguous in terms of the Sixes' evilness and the Eights' trustworthiness even in the first season and a strict dualist approach to them was only ever a simplistic reading on the part of some viewers (though I hope, not that many).
If anything, I'm worried that the writers won't explore this line of development and will keep acting like Athena is behaving in a moderately healthy way. I worry they're not aware how painful it was to hear her baying for her own sisters' blood, like if she leads the charge she can prove she's not a cylon anymore.
Then I remember things like her inability to reach out to the dying Eight and think...that's pretty unambiguous: they must have known what was going on, and I feel reassured and excited to see what they'll do with the character.
no subject
Then I remember things like her inability to reach out to the dying Eight and think...that's pretty unambiguous: they must have known what was going on, and I feel reassured and excited to see what they'll do with the character.
Bolded for truth.
Good point on the lack of ambiguity. I'd say that as of "Faith" and "Guess What's Coming to Dinner", the writers have officially crossed the line from subtle canon that they can ignore if they feel like it, and right into bigtime obvious canon with future plot implications. I could see it if the dying Eight had been Boomer, what with the neck-snappy thing. But that anonymous Eight was just another estranged sibling against whom she has no personal grievance.
And as you say, it becomes obvious that Athena is in massive emotional pain. I mean, she didn't derive any satisfaction from her actions in Faith. Speaking of Boomer, I suspect the parallels between Boomer in Rapture and Athena in GWCTD were deliberate. In both cases, an Eight who's been acting in a maternal role towards Hera sees Hera seems to prefer someone else. And in each case, they kill (or attempt to kill) an innocent, primarily out of jealousy.
I don't think Athena shot Natalie out of conscious jealousy, any more than she was consciously trying to sabotage the truce. The way they filmed the scene and its lead-up did a really great job of showing that Athena was simultaneously out of her mind with fear of the opera projections and capable of malicious intent. She wasn't in a particularly rational state, but she knew full well that she was killing Natalie.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of her pain was coming from Hera. The kid's obviously got major problems, but Athena has no safe way to vent her emotion about it. She's got the triple whammy of:
1. Seeing her child in pain and being unable to fix it
2. Thinking that if not for the actions of others, Hera wouldn't be in this pain (however, publicly raging against the president or the ship's doctor would probably not be wise, given Athena's precarious position. So she swallows that anger). Also guilt at having been taken in by the deception.
3. Insecurity about Hera's feelings for her. Said insecurity obviously is not helped by Hera's attachment issues, and Athena likely feels that IF she'd raised the child from birth, Hera would've bonded with her and they wouldn't have these problems. Difficult to fix since you can't push a button and obtain affection from a small child, just to make yourself feel better. Parenting is usually a thankless business, no matter what (or so I'm told). Add in a brand-new parent of a special-needs kid who's been raised by others much of her life, and it's an even bigger mess.
That need to be loved is a common Cylon pre-occupation, of course. Hardly surprising that she'd show it, too. Incidentally, I'm not fanatically anti-Roslin. But from Athena's point of view, Roslin capriciously kidnapped her child, and then bungled the job of looking after her, thereby handing her to the other Cylons gift-wrapped. And that's still a better outcome than what would've happened if the Cylons hadn't found her.
Which, again, not what Roslin intended, but Athena's the one who has to deal with the aftermath in the form of Hera's trauma. And it's actually entirely possible that Hera would've had troubling prophetic dreams even if she'd lived with her parents from birth, but Athena can't know that for sure.
because i am verbose, Part 2
And granted, things probably would've been even worse if she'd gone home, and she wouldn't have had Helo. But from her POV, she's clawed her way to where she wants to be, and cut out huge chunks of herself to get there. And along come these Cylons who want what she has, to ally with the Colonials, but they HAVEN'T had to suffer for it like she has, so how dare they try to take what's hers? They haven't earned it.