In “Wrestling with Wild Things, Part 1“, I promised to go through the 2009 movies that made me cry and break down why I broke down. But I first spent some quality time with the most recent of the bunch, Where the Wild Things Are, parsing what it’s about and how it works.
I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way, because it’s time to turn on the floodgates.
Today, we talk about why memories make people sad, the narrativization of loss, advances in clinical psychology, and why everything you think you know about therapeutic art may be wrong. Oh, and there are references to Star Trek V and Wing Commander. You know, to get everybody in the mood.
The Wrestler, Wild Things, Up, and the secret to happiness, after the jump.
BSG has been “overthought” (overthinked?) to death over the last few years. Lots of blogs dedicated to it, especially during its final season. If I have to read one more post about how “the humans are acting like robotic killing machines… how ironic!”, I will… well, not read it.
—Kevin
Welp, for good or for bad, I have taken Kevin’s words to heart. After watching the first eight episodes of BSG, I spent most of this week trying to figure out what the heck to write about them. Rule of law, the nature of the soul, the ever-shifting line between freedom and safety: so far, these themes have been so close to the surface that you almost can’t call them “subtext” anymore. They’re pretty “text text,” as it were. (Or should we call them “supertext”?) In any event, I don’t want to bore you, Kevin, or anyone else. I won’t be retreading any topics that have almost certainly been written about before.
So I said to myself: if I’m going to write about Battlestar Galactica, but I’m not going to talk about political theory, religion, or robot ethics, what’s left to talk about? When I thought about it, the answer was obvious.
Freudian psychology.
Yeah, you heard that right, kids. Get ready to psychoanalyze some Cylons!*
*Don’t worry; I’m not going to be talking about Oedipus. Not much, anyway.
Preface
I’m a BSG virgin.
Which is weird, I’ve gotta say, especially when you consider what a big nerd I am. You know what’s sitting on my nightstand right now? Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama. Yes, friends. I’m that nerdy.
Going into this new series, I only knew these few facts about BSG:
- It was about robots,
- one of the robots was Tricia Helfer,
- and basically everyone on the Internet hated the series finale.
So, yeah. I have that to look forward to.
Naw, to tell you the truth, I was super-excited that you folks picked Battlestar Galactica for me, and it was with gleeful anticipation that I snuggled up on a friend’s couch to watch the miniseries.
That glee was immediately dashed to the ground, its blood-glistening brains left to dry up on the floor. Because, my friends, Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries may be the bleakest, most misanthropic piece of television I have ever seen.*
That isn’t to say I don’t like the show, of course!
But that’s what I want to talk about today, in this first of a many part series on the new BSG. Bleakness. Depression. Ennui. Despair. Misanthropy.
Mmm! Sounds fun! But first, let me recap the miniseries for those of you whose minds haven’t been colonized by Cylons lately.
*Well, except for Neon Genesis Evangelion, maybe. Anyway, the race is close.
The last episode of Gossip Girl continued the show’s return to form, and thankfully contained various acts of wanton cruelty.
try to humiliate her best friend, crush an innocent underclassman, thwart her mother’s crucial fashion show not once, not twice, but three times
(that’s from NY Mag’s weekly breakdown of the show’s finer points).
We can debate (and they do) whether any of her assorted misdeeds was effective at getting her friend back, a point I’ll take up later. But we don’t need to argue about her motivation: her best friend has rejected her and her mother is neglecting her in favor of a younger, blonder, protegé.
This is actually a hallmark of Blair’s character, and of one style of drawing a character in general: Psychological transparency. Her motivations are intelligible, and her actions are related to them in a straightforward way.
On the other hand, there’s Chuck, whose relationship to his motivation changes in this episode. A brief examination of how will shed light on how the show is written, and what it means to write (and read) a character.
Aside from ethnic stereotyping that didn’t even skirt the issue (Mariachis are sexy! Indians are crass capitalists! Chinese are pandas!), there was an overriding theme to this year’s Super Bowl ads. It started with the Audi Godfather spot.
