----- Original Message ----- From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net Otherwise, they might just as well have put Zen down on the planet with
him...
Now, that would certainly have roused the entire crew to cooperate to rescue Blake!
Kind of hard for them to do so, since the ship was in stasis at the time (and had the computer been gone, they wouldn't have been able to do much anyway).
Fiona said:
Not racism, surely? According to the episode "Traitor," there existed
the
"stock equalization act," a Federation law which ensured that when a
planet
was colonized, each race from Earth had to be fully represented in order
to
give a complete racial mix.
Not too many people like to be referred to as equalized stock.
Perhaps so, but you should take that up with the scriptwriter.
Furthermore, Dayna's skin colour is never commented on in a racist way (and seldom remarked upon at all) in the series; interestingly, though, I have seen this done in fanfic...
I don't know if the reference in Power ("the black woman must win") is a racist one or simply descriptive (along the lines of "give the secret message to the gal in the blue tunic")
I was counting it in the "remarked upon," category, simply because it doesn't seem to be pejorative, or not necessarily pejorative anyway. In one fan story I was thinking of, Dayna is told to "get back to the jungle where your kind belongs" (or words to that effect-- the word "jungle" is definitely there anyway), which is what I *would* consider a racist remark, and the likes of which I've yet to hear in B7.
But this does raise a more valid point about the series. If the
Federation
is homophobic, then, if Blake is gay, why is he not showing it? He hates
the
Federation, after all, and he is on his own ship, in the company of
other
people with an equal amount of contempt for the Federation.
But who have all been conditioned (particularly in the case of Blake, whose mind has been tampered with in many ways) to hate certain things about themselves and other people.
Um-- sorry, where? If we take Blake alone (for reasons which shall be explained below) his conditioning doesn't seem to involve any element of self-loathing, just a desire to conform and a distaste for the rebel movement (if what you mean by your last sentence is to hate other people's political leanings, fair enough, but it's a bit of a stretch).
Secondly, the fact that Blake makes strong (and successful) efforts to reverse his conditioning in many other ways is significant.
Thirdly, I've actually yet to see evidence that Jenna, Vila, Soolin or Avon were conditioned before the series began (for that matter, while Cally and Dayna were subject to mental conditioning within the series, there's no evidence that they were before either). Other than, of course, to socialization, to which we are all subject-- and which is decidedly reversible, especially in the case of homosexuality/homophobia. Even in the case of a homophobic society; there's a very good book, "I Am My Own Woman" (original title Ich Bin Meine Eigene Frau), which is the autobiography of a transgendered man who lived under the Nazis and afterwards, and casts a lot of interesting light on queer resistance to repressive regimes.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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