The reaction to this episode that you link to, Iain, has offended me far more than the episode could have.
The strength of the reaction did take me aback. Someone mentions the furore over the Buffy episode "Seeing Red" (in which Soulless!Spike incomprehendingly tries to force himself on Buffy) and that brought back a rush of bad usenet memories. :-)
the equally stereotypical portrayal of men
I'm not one who gets offended by the portayal of men in the media. Living as we do in a male dominated society there are always plenty of positive male stereotypes around to counter the bad ones. Even in this day and age the majority of fictional characters, both good and bad, tend to be male.
What annoys me is when portaying the world as it actually is, with good and bad things happening to everyone, is deemed to be sending a 'bad message'. Some viewers are hyper-sensitised to certain issues. I realise that TV is a powerful medium, and it should not reinforce racist, sexist or any other kind of negative stereotypes. On the other hand, neither should it shy away from depicting difficult subject matter as long as it does so with honesty and even-handedness. It's balance that's important. Battlestar Galactica has shown horrible things happening to women. It's also shown horrible things happening to men. Hell, Roslin blew a male Cylon out of an airlock, and Starbuck tortured a male Cylon. Both reprehensible actions, but taken by strong and sympathetic women who are allowed to be as dynamic, and as flawed, as their male counterparts. Starbuck may be co-opted into a male world, but she's a hell of a good role model. Roslin is more typically fulfilling a "female" archetype, and yet she remains a forceful character. Other female characters are weaker: Ellen Tigh is a scheming gold-digger, and Six is a manipulator who uses sex as a weapon. But there are plenty of weak male characters, such as Tom Zarek the scheming terrorist, Saul Tigh the venal bully, or Baltar the cowardly traitor.
To my mind, true equality resides in showing that people are just people. You can have positive role models, and you can redress imbalance, but you should also show the negative aspects of humanity too - as long as it's done intelligently and with balance. The moment you say "no lesbian shall ever die on TV" or "no brutal act shall ever befall a woman on TV" is the moment you move away from reality and towards an idealised world in which some viewpoints are given more importance than others.
To take another example from Buffy, the killing of Tara in Season 6 resulted in online 'death threats' to Joss Whedon and insults to the actress. A significant portion of the fanbase could not see her death as anything other than a terrible and cowardly betrayal of the hitherto positive depiction of a lesbian couple. Of course, even the most cursory examination of Buffy shows that every romantic relationship in the show gets smashed apart.
Essentially this episode of Galactica means to shock - partly because it enjoys being gritty, and partly because it means to do so to make us consider who is worse, the Cylons or the humans. It pushes our sympathies back towards the cylon captives, and makes our stomachs churn with disgust at their treatment. That means, certainly, showing women who are terrorised and beaten, but I think that must be weighed in context against the show's depiction of women who are strong and resilient.
no subject
The strength of the reaction did take me aback. Someone mentions the furore over the Buffy episode "Seeing Red" (in which Soulless!Spike incomprehendingly tries to force himself on Buffy) and that brought back a rush of bad usenet memories. :-)
the equally stereotypical portrayal of men
I'm not one who gets offended by the portayal of men in the media. Living as we do in a male dominated society there are always plenty of positive male stereotypes around to counter the bad ones. Even in this day and age the majority of fictional characters, both good and bad, tend to be male.
What annoys me is when portaying the world as it actually is, with good and bad things happening to everyone, is deemed to be sending a 'bad message'. Some viewers are hyper-sensitised to certain issues. I realise that TV is a powerful medium, and it should not reinforce racist, sexist or any other kind of negative stereotypes. On the other hand, neither should it shy away from depicting difficult subject matter as long as it does so with honesty and even-handedness. It's balance that's important. Battlestar Galactica has shown horrible things happening to women. It's also shown horrible things happening to men. Hell, Roslin blew a male Cylon out of an airlock, and Starbuck tortured a male Cylon. Both reprehensible actions, but taken by strong and sympathetic women who are allowed to be as dynamic, and as flawed, as their male counterparts. Starbuck may be co-opted into a male world, but she's a hell of a good role model. Roslin is more typically fulfilling a "female" archetype, and yet she remains a forceful character. Other female characters are weaker: Ellen Tigh is a scheming gold-digger, and Six is a manipulator who uses sex as a weapon. But there are plenty of weak male characters, such as Tom Zarek the scheming terrorist, Saul Tigh the venal bully, or Baltar the cowardly traitor.
To my mind, true equality resides in showing that people are just people. You can have positive role models, and you can redress imbalance, but you should also show the negative aspects of humanity too - as long as it's done intelligently and with balance. The moment you say "no lesbian shall ever die on TV" or "no brutal act shall ever befall a woman on TV" is the moment you move away from reality and towards an idealised world in which some viewpoints are given more importance than others.
To take another example from Buffy, the killing of Tara in Season 6 resulted in online 'death threats' to Joss Whedon and insults to the actress. A significant portion of the fanbase could not see her death as anything other than a terrible and cowardly betrayal of the hitherto positive depiction of a lesbian couple. Of course, even the most cursory examination of Buffy shows that every romantic relationship in the show gets smashed apart.
Essentially this episode of Galactica means to shock - partly because it enjoys being gritty, and partly because it means to do so to make us consider who is worse, the Cylons or the humans. It pushes our sympathies back towards the cylon captives, and makes our stomachs churn with disgust at their treatment. That means, certainly, showing women who are terrorised and beaten, but I think that must be weighed in context against the show's depiction of women who are strong and resilient.