--- Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net wrote:
No doubt Wendy will at this point leap up and accuse me of apologising for Nation.
No, I'm not-- I think you're right on all points so far :-).
betrays the
sexist mindset of its author. (The same author who later gave us Kasabi, but admittedly also wimpy Veron and a couple of slinky Hi-Tek bounty hunters.)
Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to knock nation in *general*-- he put forward some pretty sharp scripts, and gave us the ur-bitch Servalan--it's just that for this one, I really wonder what he was doing.
Wendy's argument seems to hinge on the phallic nature of the rocket.
Not totally :-).
still don't buy it. The use of stock footage as a budget control measure is backed up elsewhere in the series (eg the night-time runway sequence in Redemption) and also in Dr Who's Genesis of the Daleks (more or less contemporaneous with early B7) when they might even have used exactly the same bit of footage (I don't have a video so I can't check).
No, in *Genesis* that one wasn't stock footage, it was a camera travelling down the side of the rocket set with a bit of dry ice and a flare out. Again, the script specified "rocket," and in this case it specified a rocket because Genesis was an allegory of WWII.
'what we have here isn't just a spaceship taking off, it's a man firing off his rocket in order to provide a woman with children'
No, actually. Firstly, if it's anyone's rocket, it's hers, not his.
No, it's not hers, it's one she's looking after. Anyway, even if it is hers, it obviously takes a man to push the right buttons.
Secondly, he's not providing her with children, he's sending them away (okay, okay, so he's sending them somewhere where they can live and grow and all that shit). And they are not hers anyway
If we've already agreed that the rocket is a metaphor, than the children thing can be a metaphor too, can't it? Just as he doesn't *actually* have sex with her, he perpetuates her race in some other way, so he doesn't have to *actually* get her pregnant for the equation of male action --> female perpetuation of species to read.
She waits, virginal, dressed in diaphanous robes, for this bloke to come along and fulfil her. What part of this *isn't* a sexual metaphor?
I think it's clear by now that the subliminal message of the text is so subliminal that most people haven't even noticed it before (though as Una points out, that might only make it more insidious).
I agree, and especially with Una's point-- but why *is* it that people miss out on this subliminal message? Perhaps because these messages are so accepted in our culture that we don't question them.
OTOH, most people seem to agree that the whole Meegat arrangement is 'silly'. Which as an indictment of sexism is pretty accurate - sexism *is* silly, and those who endorse it only stand to make fools of themselves.
Isn't it devaluing a fairly insidious form of prejudice to dismiss it as simply "silly"?
As for the characters being unpleasant, I'm all for it. I don't want them to be nicey-nice squeaky clean heroes, I want them to show that they have it in them to be complete bastards from time to time.
I agree *totally*! Which is why I've found some of the arguments on the lyst in defense of "Deliverance" kind of offensive-- there is this thread of "Oh, Avon is a *nice* guy really, he *really* wanted to save Meegat, he really did Meegat a favour by not being brutal to her..." Give me a break. Why must some people justify Avon's every action, and whitewash his nastier side? Avon's my favourite character, but not because I think he's a nice guy. I think he's a bastard, but he's a very *interesting* bastard.
being sexist (or racist, ageist, or speciesist - and Avon makes a speciesist remark in Project Avalon) then fine. Let them be so
Yes, but again, that's not so much the problem. The character of Avon has been placed into a situation which is *inherently* sexist, and any action he could possibly take would have a sexist tone to it. And it would have been exactly the same if it had been Blake, or Gan, or Vila (although not Jenna or Cally :-)...).
Wendy (quoted yet again in a post ostensibly replying to Una): 'The mortality rate following the Liberator is pritty phenominal. As for people left behind to a terrible fate ,it has happened before,look at every other single prisoner who came to Cygnus Alpha on the London, for example.'
Quite. So why not add Meegat to the list?
Why not, indeed? As a plot point I have no problem with Meegat dying-- I have a problem with people who want to gloss this over and pretend she was given a choice. , Also with Nation writing her not as a character but as a plot device.
this is unlikely. More probable is that Meegat is simply dumped - by Nation - after she has fulfilled her useful role within the story. Which might appear to support Wendy's case were it not for: the prisoners on Cygnus Alpha (male) ; the Decimas (alien) ; Avalon's rebels (all male, as far as was seen) ; and the slaves on Spaceworld (again, all male as far as we know.
Yes, but I'm not talking about those stories. I'm talking about Deliverance. You can't justify Avon's actions in one story by referring to his/the crew's action in others, some of which are aslo incidentally by completely different authors. Anyway, when the series was broadcast, the audience would mostly have been seeing episodes in isolation, they wouldn't have been thinking in terms of previous or future episodes.
Interestingly, later on this problem seems to have been recognised by a scrpt editor, because they do start to provide reasons, however flimsy sometimes, as to why this week's guest actor couldn't join the crew.
role in the relevant episode. The closest to a second Meegat in a Nation episode is Veron in Pressure Point, who is given the choice and elects to stay (in the middle of the Forbidden Zone).
I'd say not. Firstly, Veron is a child and therefore can be excused for acting as she does-- Meegat should be old enough to know better. Secondly, Blake doesn't treat her as a child; he respects her opinions and does give her a choice, and allows her to live by that choice. And although Veron betrayed them at first, he recognised and respected the circumstances behind that action.
On that evidence, you could probably tilt it either way you want to say that abandoning Meegat on the grounds of her being female
I didn't say that she was abandoned *because* she was female. Just that she was abandoned in a way which strikes me as particularly misogynist.
disappeared because she had done her part as a supporting character, regardless of gender. Still sloppy writing, though.
Agreed. The least he could have done, is to insert a line to the effect of "So Meegat and her people decided to stay, then?" They did something similar in Children of Auron after all, quickly wrapping up what had happened to the survivors.
developed. I'm not sure it's possible to talk about any one of those without considering the impact of the others.
Fair enough -- but by the same logic we should be considering the episode only within the context of the episode (and, in some cases, of the rest of the series), not by what some fans have later imagined in their own minds to fill the plot holes for themselves to make them feel better, and/or to whitewash Avon.
Wendy
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