Daily Pilots Post

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

The conversation on yesterday's Lee Meta post is awesome, I highly recommend going back and reading it if you haven't yet.

Today, as promised, is Kara Meta Day! Time for character analysis, academic investigation, whatever thoughts you have on the complex tangle of person who is Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. I'm going to come clean (again. That seems to be what I do in these posts.) and admit that I am utterly obsessed with analyzing Kara. To the point where I wrote about 30 pages about her for a class last year. I'm very excited to hear what other people think of the character who ate my whole brain.


I am nothing if not a hardcore third wave feminist and my analysis comes out of that perspective. My paper is posted in my LJ, if anyone feels like wading through an analysis of Starbuck and how she advances and subverts the paradigm of the woman warrior. I had a lot of research/analysis material that didn't make the paper though (technically it should only have been 20 pages. oops) and one particular line of thought intrigues me and I want to share. (I apologize for the semi-academic tone, it's hard to shake)

I've thought a lot about Kara as the personification of a goddess, one of the Lords of Kobol, and how that fits into the rest of her character. In my research, I came across several descriptions of female goddesses that seemed to fit Kara as a character in general.

In her essay, “Evolution of “The New Frontier” in Alien and Aliens: Patriarchal Co-optation of the Feminine Archetype”, Janice Hocker Rushing describes the Divine Feminine as “wild, unpredictable, and free; seductive but unable to be possessed,” and also as "not a settled and domestic wife or mother under the patriarchy; she was independent and magnetic.” (98-99) Both of these seem to equally describe a certain hotshot blonde fighter jock.

Esther Harding's description of the Undivided Goddess in Women's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern further expands on this idea, “Her instinct is not used to capture or possess the man whom she attracts. She does not reserve herself for the chosen man who must repay her by his devotion, nor is her instinct used to gain for herself the security of husband, home and family... She is essentially one-in-herself. She is not merely the counterpart of a male god with similar characteristics and functions, modified to suit her feminine form. On the contrary she has a role to play that is her own, her characteristics do not duplicate those of any of the gods.” (124-125) I feel like this is particularly valid to Kara because her role in the quest to find Earth could not be played by any other character, she is unique.

Though she is deeply emotionally connected to her shipmates and friends, there is a core of independence, the "one-in-herself" quality that Harding discusses, that sets Kara apart. In Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, the author, Sylvia Brinton Perera, extends the idea of unity in a single person, describing the Divine Feminine as one who "combines earth and sky, matter and spirit, vessel and light, earthly bounty and heavenly guidance.” (16) Which seems like a fairly apt description of Kara to me. She is earth (Pyramid) and sky (flying), matter (human) and spirit (RDM's "angel" idea or simply the fact that she returned from the dead), vessel (in both "Maelstrom" and "Daybreak" she seems to be a vessel for something other than herself) and light (as she guides the Fleet to Earth), earthly bounty (which *ahem* Lee has sampled?) and heavenly guidance (see above Fleet). Perera continues, "she symbolizes consciousness of transition and borders, places of intersection and crossing over that imply creativity and change and all the joys and doubts that go with a human consciousness that is flexible, playful, never certain for long.” (16) Creativity, change, flexibility in an ability to think outside the box, transition and the borders even between life and death... All of it sounds like Starbuck to me.

What do y'all think?

Comments

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Excellent quotes! In looking up Third-wave Feminism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism) to see where you were coming from, I discovered that this is the term I should have been using for my viewpoint. I've been calling myself a post-feminism-feminist (yeah, I made that up), but Third-wave is what I've meant all this time!

The thing I love most about Kara is how unapologetically herself she is. She can be aggressive (punching Tigh or Lee), a strategic mastermind (um, every time humanity needed a plan), a sexually liberated woman (with Sam and Lee), a warrior (shooting Cylons out of the sky), resourceful (pushing Lee's dead Viper back to Galactica by hooking guns), and all of it without waiting for approval or reassurance. She just DOES and IS and kicks ass without bothering to take names.

The mysticism of the end of Kara's arc still bothers me. I waited all the way to the poof for a non-mystical explanation for her death and return. For a show that had such gritty realism up to Maelstrom, I wanted more than "I guess she's just an angel". I mean, I cut my teeth on Star Trek, where the writers had to find ways to break or disable the technology just to not have the easy out they otherwise provided. BSG had no transporters, no replicators, no tracking devices in their comm devices.

They had none of the comforts of space-faring culture I'd come to suspend disbelief for. And I loved it. So, of course, they end up killing my favorite character and bringing her back. I waited for the reasonable explanation. I figured she had ejected in Maelstrom, right before the explosion. And the Heavy Raider she thought she saw must have really been there, and picked her up. (I said all of this to my husband as we watched her appear to blow up, since we knew she wasn't gone long on the series.) I didn't even mind if it was a Leoben that picked her up.

But Kara finds her corpse on Earth 1.0? Wait, what? How the frak does that even work? She's corporeal and Kara, but not Kara. Setting aside the how-the-hell-is-that-an-explanation-ness, the Kara that returned was more at peace. There was less self-doubt. I didn't mind the way her character changed (ignoring the return from the dead), because it made sense that she might eventually get over her old wounds, as the end of the worlds and her role in it continued to strengthen her and reinforce her usefulness to humanity. And of course, there was Lee, always there for her, proving that not everyone failed or left her.

And then the poof. Kara deserved a better ending. She deserved to go out in a blaze of glory shooting Cylons, or woolly mammoths, or cavemen, or ANYTHING. She also deserved a happy ending. Or even a vague, fill-in-your-own-ending, standing in the field on Earth 2.0 with her soulmate, both of them no longer married to other people, both in a mental headspace where their future could be shared. It didn't have to be happily-ever-after. Just a moment of no angst, fade to black.

/rant :)

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I've taken a lot of time to think about why I don't vehemently hate the poof as much as everyone else does. I guess it's because I've seen it before. I saw that scene. I saw it in the Angel episode "You're Welcome." As you cut your teeth on Star Trek, I cut my fandom teeth on Whedon that thrives in land of "I'm gonna kill off your favorite characters, and no amount of whining is gonna make me change that." Needless to say, my personal canon around Kara's poof, consists of Whedon themes.

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

NOBODY puts a stake through my heart (pun intended) quite like Joss. Maybe RDM is a Wheedon fan? :)

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

I hope so...I know for a fact that Whedon's an RDM fan. For a while they were playing a game of "You steal my actor, I steal yours"... bits of the finale reminded me of the Angel penultimate episode... Plus there are those two characters in Caprica---Cyrus Xander and Clarice Willow. Though that might just be Jane Espenson's doing.

PS The thing that visited Kara in Maelstrom was TOTALLY the First, and she totally bargained with the Powers that Be to come back and set things right.

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Holy plotbunny, Batman! I may need to write a Wheedonverse crossover for the months Kara was gone.

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

I actually wrote that theory into my BSG/Buffy crossover fic.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

"The mysticism of the end of Kara's arc still bothers me."

I have no words to describe how strongly I feel about this. There were many paths the writers decided to take that I was not particularly fond of or that I felt were poorly developed. But none, absolutely none reek of failure as much as this one. I absolutely LOATHE it. My hatred of the poof pales in light of this.

One of the things that was really amazing about Kara was how utterly human she was. She had such amazing, admiring qualities (such as the ones you mentioned in your post) and so many flaws. She was such a vibrant human being. Her life was all about extremes - extreme successes, extreme failures, extreme pain, extreme love.

To have her become an angel is to have all that humanity reduced. It is to say a human could never experience such things to such an extent. This kind of thinking really infuriates me. It's like those people who say the pyramids must have been built by aliens or gods because it would have been impossible for mere humans to ever build something as impressive as that. She was amazing BECAUSE she was human, not in spite of it.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hhmm. It's funny that, among so many like-minded people, I have such a different reaction to the mysticism/poof, etc.

I don't read Kara's angel-hood as a devaluation of her humanity or as a denial of her freedom. She chose to sacrifice her life in a leap of irrational, hopeful faith - she saw death not as the end of herself but as a transition into fuller awareness; an opportunity to find the impossible salvation her people had spent the last three years searching for fruitlessly - and to me she had never seemed more human than she was at the moment she made that decision. She finally faced everything in her past that she had run from most desperately, and she found peace in an act of mercy towards a mother she justly hated and hopelessly loved. She believed in herself, fully and fearlessly, probably for the first time in her life. And she decided to risk everything on the chance that the mysterious powers who had guided the fleet this far might just confide their final secrets to her.

Would I be in favor of someone following hallucinatory visions to their death in real life? Of course not. But this isn't real life, and in the mythical context the show had established and in the character of Kara Thrace as we knew her, I found her decision in Maelstrom a compelling and believable one. And I don't think that we have to believe that when she came back she had lost her humanity. I think part of the point was that human beings (ALL human beings) had immortal as well as mortal life inside them; Kara was still herself, she just broke the normal rules (as always) and led a liminal, mixed life of mortal and immortal elements rather than settling firmly on one side or the other of death's dividing line. But she lived after death, still individual and human.

I don't have a problem with that characterization or mythology. My problem, actually, is wholly plot-centric. The *big* missing piece in Kara's final story arc, as others have pointed out, is that there is never any clear reason established as to why her death was necessary for her to be able to lead the people to Earth. It apparently gave her access to mystic song memories, but Head!Angels were appearing to people left right and center throughout the series and neither death nor Cylonhood was required for humans like Baltar or Roslin to receive divine messages. I don't see why Kara's Head!Daddy couldn't have popped in at that bar at any time, regardless of her mortal status, to pass along his melody. Her death was never made integral to the mechanisms by which humanity found their final home. That is what made her death seem unnecessary, and *that* is what is really wrong with this story, in my mind. The lack of clearly plotted follow-through robbed her sacrifice of all the potential meaning it might have had if it had really proved central to humanity's last journey. As it is, it seems like Kara died because the gods couldn't be bothered to send their key message through previously established non-lethal channels. And that is NOT OKAY.

However, as I said, I don't hate the idea on a character level. I think they could have saved it with better plotting and follow-through.

That's my take on it, anyway :)

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

there is never any clear reason established as to why her death was necessary for her to be able to lead the people to Earth.

I agree with this completely. It sums up much of why I am not a fan of Maelstrom.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I totally understand that reaction. Pesonally, I love the episode Maelstrom, but the comments of many Kara fans have opened my eyes to the problems that her storyline ran into later on when the purpose of her death was never established. This is a pity, because it does create problems for Maelstrom in hindsight. But I love Katee Sackhoff's performance in that episode, and it has a number of the most haunting and perfect scenes of the series for me. But I can see now why you and so many others consider it a major mistake in terms of Kara's overall story.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

:D Yeah. I love Katee's acting in Maelstrom. It's amazing. The problems I have with it are numerous, but I don't mean to take away from the acting or directing. It's the character development and plot that bother me. If you are curious, I wrote my view on it here (http://sci-fi-shipper.livejournal.com/36577.html#cutid1). It's a more general comment on the direction the writers took with Starbuck from Maelstrom on. It was a somewhat heated post, but a lot of very smart people made some excellent points that had me thinking a lot about her character.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for this link! Your post and the following conversation there is thought-provoking and wonderfully open to numerous points of view. I must admit that I get a bit nervous about delving into analyses of gender roles and/or religion in BSG because these topics tend to raise deep emotions in many people, including myself, and I can find myself getting a bit depressed in the midst of such debates sometimes. But this post really handled those questions well and reminded me of what a great group of people are involved in this fandom. I enjoyed reading it, and it provided food for thought -- thanks again!

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that you liked it. I understand about the depressing aspects of discussing meta and I doubt I'll be delving again - it gave me a lot of unexpected stress. :(

That said, I'm glad to have had a wide variety of opinions. I have a greatly diverse group on my flist - lots of k/s shippers, cylon shippers, anti-shippers (LOL!) makes for great discussion

*HUGS*

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Her death was never made integral to the mechanisms by which humanity found their final home.

This. A thousand times this.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Rachel,

I really, really admire the way your brain works. It is such a shame you weren't among their writing staff. If the scenario you described had been the one we saw, not only would I accept it, I would really love it. It has both logic and lyrism, poetry. And it doesn't deny or diminishes her humanity at all. Instead, it takes it to a whole new level. Her death would have been so meaninful. Tragic, but so meaninful.

This combined with the distinction you described in a previous post between self-suficiency and politics, devine and human, Kara and Lee... well if all that had been present in the show, I believe we would have had a true masterpiece. We already like BSG so much with all its misfired plotlines, can you imagine what we all would be like if the show had been even better? OMG.

Unfortunately, none of that ever crossed the writers' minds. Consequently,as you pointed out , ther was "never any clear reason established as to why her death was necessary " . Therefore, I can't help but think it was a cheap, ill-conceived storyline and one that in the end frustrated me a lot, not only because I fell Kara's character (and her relationship with Lee) deserved better, but also because it ended up lessening her humanity.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think it was a cheap, ill-conceived storyline and one that in the end frustrated me a lot, not only because I fell Kara's character (and her relationship with Lee) deserved better, but also because it ended up lessening her humanity.

Yes, it took me a long time to recognize how flawed the overall storyline became, because there was a lot that I really enjoyed in Season 4 and 4.5, but I would have to agree with you, and also with Taragel's insightful comment below, when it comes to the missed opportunities this plot led to for Kara's character.

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on much of this. I like the human story - it bothers me, and has always bothered me, when sci-fi stories abandon human ingenuity and use randomly found alien tech or divine intervention to wrap up the storyline. Kara's humanity was very important to me, as a watcher, and I disliked that she became "other" - it didn't work for me on many levels.

[kag523.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't have time to answer, so I'm just going to say: "Exactly what sci_fi_shipper just said." That expresses my feelings PERFECTLY.

And now I'm heading back into my AU where I can rewrite things the way that I want to, and avoid all of that nonsense. *laughs deviously*

[scifishipper.livejournal.com]

And then the poof. Kara deserved a better ending. She deserved to go out in a blaze of glory shooting Cylons, or woolly mammoths, or cavemen, or ANYTHING. She also deserved a happy ending. Or even a vague, fill-in-your-own-ending, standing in the field on Earth 2.0 with her soulmate, both of them no longer married to other people, both in a mental headspace where their future could be shared. It didn't have to be happily-ever-after. Just a moment of no angst, fade to black.

I'm not a fan of the poof for many reasons, but your list of "other" endings makes me think about another reason. It's very passive. Kara was NOT a passive person - she didn't stand around and wait for people to tell her what to do or to push her in some direction. She took action. So, it seems very passive for her to just disappear. There is the perspective that she finally found peace, but that doesn't entirely solve the OOC nature of it for me. She said the words that she was done and it feels good, but it wasn't quite enough for me. Her character progression towards the poof, I suppose, was supposed to lead to wanting the period of rest and release. In looking back, I sort of think she'd react in a way that was similar to Lee's - some joy about exploring or starting over. I guess in some ways she did start over, but it's so vague and un-Starbuck like. :(

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Kara was NOT a passive person - she didn't stand around and wait for people to tell her what to do or to push her in some direction. She took action.

Ex-ACT-ly. End of line.