Daily Pilots Post
Jul. 17th, 2010 12:00 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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no_takebacksThe 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?
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?
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 07:47 pm (UTC)What happened to Kara after she sacrificed herself for Destiny?
*She returned, through no apparent power of her own.
*She found the signal to Ruined!Earth, through no apparent power of her own. (The Final Five cylons told her to listen to her viper and she found a magic frequency that wasn't previously discovered)
*She puttered around the ship, feeling dead, until her dead father suddenly appeared to her and magically reminded her how to play an old song with the help of some notes Hera scribbled. ALL OF THIS IS THROUGH NO APPARENT POWER OF HER OWN EXCEPT TO KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE PIANO.
*She assigned some numbers to the notes and magically, mystically, on a wing and a prayer, typed them in as coordinates when Adama told them to just jump them anywhere and they magically, mystically worked.
It's all just mystical coincidence/happening and not a single thing there actually requires that it be KARA experiencing these things, if you think about it. The only thing that requires it to be Kara is in Six of One when Bill agrees to let her go on the (pointless?) Demetrius mission because he loves her and wants to believe her. (I guess the Demetrius enabled the human and cylon truce, so it wasn't completely pointless, but that could have happened so many other ways.)
The show misstepped so many times. The easiest fix would have been to make Daniel the missing 7th cylon also Drielide, Kara's dad, and make Kara the first organically born cylon-human hybrid. All the pieces were there and they just didn't connect it. They could've explained her death/resurrection this way, and it would've been such a richer storyline to explore her relationship with Bill, Lee, Laura and even Sam if she'd actually been a cylon. (Even Helo, Sharon and Hera would have had a subplot because what if Hera isn't special because she wasn't the first, etc. etc.) Plus if they really wanted to tell the story of how cylons/humans learn to forgive and love each other IT WAS RIGHT THERE between Kara and Lee for the telling.
It's just so frustrating that they fumbled this particular ball. Because if they wanted to make a point about how immortality and mortality can co-mingle in humanity and/or cylonosity, then why did Kara have to poof? Why did she need to leave the human plane of existence at all if angels were coporeal and could drink and frak and kill people and be confused and have their own head ghosts and get pissed off?
There were just so many better ways to execute it.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 08:38 pm (UTC)*She returned, through no apparent power of her own.
*She found the signal to Ruined!Earth, through no apparent power of her own. (The Final Five cylons told her to listen to her viper and she found a magic frequency that wasn't previously discovered)
*She puttered around the ship, feeling dead, until her dead father suddenly appeared to her and magically reminded her how to play an old song with the help of some notes Hera scribbled. ALL OF THIS IS THROUGH NO APPARENT POWER OF HER OWN EXCEPT TO KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE PIANO.
*She assigned some numbers to the notes and magically, mystically, on a wing and a prayer, typed them in as coordinates when Adama told them to just jump them anywhere and they magically, mystically worked.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You've summed it up beautifully.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 12:00 am (UTC)When you break down her return from death as you did, what exactly did her death accomplish? In Maelstrom we are led to believe she has to overcome her fear of death to become what she really is. Well in Daybreak at the end she says she is not afraid to die but being forgotten, and we never find out what she was.
To me they took a complicated character who was strong but flawed and diluted her by saying she's a supernatural entity.
If they wanted her to bring cylon & human together they could have done it with a vision, much like Roslin in season one. No need to die.
Somehow Kara's dead body winding up on Earth 1.0 made no sense, cause her body and viper would have been dust from the pressure of that gas giant. Not to mention there's no way it could have gotten from the gas giant to Earth 1.0.
They were scrambling to make her death seem important, but all they need is weaken her character greatly in my opinion.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 02:32 am (UTC)Kara died twice! In space in an explosion, then burned up on Earth 1.0! That makes zero sense!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 02:58 am (UTC)Besides originally Lee and Kara were both supposed to be hurling toward the hard deck, profess their love for each other and then somehow manage to get out of harm's way. Would have loved to see this played out.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 03:07 am (UTC)