Meta: Stargate and the Military
Aug. 11th, 2009 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseHaving a sick day today, watching Stargate:SG1 season 7 on telly (which is weird, because I've never had a telly - this one belongs to my auntie, for whom I am housesitting), and having worries. We've watched seasons 1-5 on Hulu now, and I've found Japanese internet sources for the Daniel-relevent bits of season 6 plus "Fallen" plus "Moebius," and I'm trying to figure out where I go from here wrt this fandom.
Because okay, obviously I've fallen for this one hard and fast. I saw my first ep of Stargate a year and a half ago on the Canadian Scifi channel, which for some reason we received where we were beaching it in Mexico. The ep was "Hathor," and I was both irritated in intrigued by it - the mythology was kind of terrible, and the heterocentrism was irritating, and it had kind of a cheese thing going on, but ooooh was I into Daniel Jackson and his pretty little woobie faaaace.
And then we started watching it, and I stopped caring about the bad mythology/sociology/linguistics.
(tangent: I've done this periodically over the last ten years with 90s shows, since I grew up without television of any kind. As I've been able to get my hands on shows, I marathon them and then spend months reading over the backlog of fanwork they produced. There are still a couple shows I need to pick up. But I tend to be passive in those fandoms - I don't produce my own fanworks. I dunno why.) But Stargate has me writing, doing meta, making icons, joining comms. It's working on becoming one of my active fandoms.
But I'm running into a major, major problem (no pun intended). I don't like the military. I recognize the need for arms, but I don't believe that there's any such thing as a morally okay war. All killing is killing, and organized murder is always wrong, if occasionally necessary. It is never good, never heroic. The military, military spending, military secrecy - these are things that I work against, and that I habitually distrust.
I've coped with the pugilistic nature of the show through the first few seasons by dint of stubbornness and handwaving. Also, it helps that the show itself positions the SGC as this little happy bubble of love outside of, and frequently opposed to, the military-industrial complex. Hammond is Good Daddy, geeks are loved and protected and valued, they talk as often as they shoot. The show takes all of the things that I've been trained to oppose and fear about the military and lumps them onto the NID, who are eeeevil, and to whom our White Hats offer only enmity. Protocol is ignored, insubordination permitted, difference allowed to flourish - the premier team is an insubordinate smartass, a long-haired peacenik geek, an outspoken hyper-smart woman, and Teal'c. Not one of them fits the specs for military conformism. And that's played as a good thing!
But when the show gets overtly political - when Weir comes in talking about demilitarization and peace and is treated by the narrative with distrust, when the show fusses about accountability or finance or the Russians or the classification of the Stargate Program - it just feels wrong. When things get rah rah go USA, I'm not a happy fangirl. My political loyalties put me on the wrong side, or at least make me uncomfortable with the emotional reaction the show elicits from me. I kind of feel, sometimes, like I'm betraying myself.
In the early seasons, I can handwave. I can cope. But as the show gets darker, loses its candycolored edge, starts pulling Daniel hardcore warriorstyle, starts being more overt with the political stuff, it gets harder for me. Looking at these eps of s7, I don't think it's going to get better. I mean! in "Lost City," Weir mentions manifest destiny, and Daniel says but but but the Goa'uld! Even Daniel isn't on my side any more? :( And from what I've heard, within SGA the SG1 characters very much represent the establishment, coming into the new syncretic culture of Atlantis and trying to stamp it out, to re-establish American norms. And I think that would hurt me pretty badly.
Maybe this is where I get off. Maybe I'm just season 1-4 girl - because the Ascension stuff also bugs me, treating genuine and important and (to me) dearly-held mysticism like some sort of scifi deus ex machina, and then making it morally/ethically ambiguous? Eeesh.
I really want to pick up Atlantis, because I know some amazing fen who've been hanging out over there. I want to watch later-seasons SG1, because Ben! Claudia! But I don't know if it's going to make me fall out of love with my characters. I'm not sure if it's going to be safe.
Because okay, obviously I've fallen for this one hard and fast. I saw my first ep of Stargate a year and a half ago on the Canadian Scifi channel, which for some reason we received where we were beaching it in Mexico. The ep was "Hathor," and I was both irritated in intrigued by it - the mythology was kind of terrible, and the heterocentrism was irritating, and it had kind of a cheese thing going on, but ooooh was I into Daniel Jackson and his pretty little woobie faaaace.
And then we started watching it, and I stopped caring about the bad mythology/sociology/linguistics.
(tangent: I've done this periodically over the last ten years with 90s shows, since I grew up without television of any kind. As I've been able to get my hands on shows, I marathon them and then spend months reading over the backlog of fanwork they produced. There are still a couple shows I need to pick up. But I tend to be passive in those fandoms - I don't produce my own fanworks. I dunno why.) But Stargate has me writing, doing meta, making icons, joining comms. It's working on becoming one of my active fandoms.
But I'm running into a major, major problem (no pun intended). I don't like the military. I recognize the need for arms, but I don't believe that there's any such thing as a morally okay war. All killing is killing, and organized murder is always wrong, if occasionally necessary. It is never good, never heroic. The military, military spending, military secrecy - these are things that I work against, and that I habitually distrust.
I've coped with the pugilistic nature of the show through the first few seasons by dint of stubbornness and handwaving. Also, it helps that the show itself positions the SGC as this little happy bubble of love outside of, and frequently opposed to, the military-industrial complex. Hammond is Good Daddy, geeks are loved and protected and valued, they talk as often as they shoot. The show takes all of the things that I've been trained to oppose and fear about the military and lumps them onto the NID, who are eeeevil, and to whom our White Hats offer only enmity. Protocol is ignored, insubordination permitted, difference allowed to flourish - the premier team is an insubordinate smartass, a long-haired peacenik geek, an outspoken hyper-smart woman, and Teal'c. Not one of them fits the specs for military conformism. And that's played as a good thing!
But when the show gets overtly political - when Weir comes in talking about demilitarization and peace and is treated by the narrative with distrust, when the show fusses about accountability or finance or the Russians or the classification of the Stargate Program - it just feels wrong. When things get rah rah go USA, I'm not a happy fangirl. My political loyalties put me on the wrong side, or at least make me uncomfortable with the emotional reaction the show elicits from me. I kind of feel, sometimes, like I'm betraying myself.
In the early seasons, I can handwave. I can cope. But as the show gets darker, loses its candycolored edge, starts pulling Daniel hardcore warriorstyle, starts being more overt with the political stuff, it gets harder for me. Looking at these eps of s7, I don't think it's going to get better. I mean! in "Lost City," Weir mentions manifest destiny, and Daniel says but but but the Goa'uld! Even Daniel isn't on my side any more? :( And from what I've heard, within SGA the SG1 characters very much represent the establishment, coming into the new syncretic culture of Atlantis and trying to stamp it out, to re-establish American norms. And I think that would hurt me pretty badly.
Maybe this is where I get off. Maybe I'm just season 1-4 girl - because the Ascension stuff also bugs me, treating genuine and important and (to me) dearly-held mysticism like some sort of scifi deus ex machina, and then making it morally/ethically ambiguous? Eeesh.
I really want to pick up Atlantis, because I know some amazing fen who've been hanging out over there. I want to watch later-seasons SG1, because Ben! Claudia! But I don't know if it's going to make me fall out of love with my characters. I'm not sure if it's going to be safe.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 09:23 pm (UTC)I haven't watched hardly any of SGA, so I can't really speak to that. But it sounds like you're in touch with fans of that show, so you can ask them about the values underlying the canon.
But it's a Hollywood show -- with all that entails. For all that it was shot and produced in Canada.
All I can say is, fanfic is legendary for being useful for changing or rewriting what you think they did wrong -- from screwing up the religious references to underplaying the female characters to whatever you want to fix.
i hope you find a way to continue to enjoy it. and you might very well stay happily in early seasons with that daniel. plenty of fans did.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 10:18 pm (UTC)Out of curiosity, wanna expand on the religious issues?
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 10:51 pm (UTC)also, Heroes I and II might make you happy because it's all about how their secrecy is not a good idea in the long run. they have a journalist/pr guy make an impassioned case.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-11 11:20 pm (UTC)But the whole non-interference thing continues to be very problematic.
The whole way the gateverse treats religion is a huge disappointment to me, but i basically ignore their take on it and substitute my own, or spin it in a way that i can make sense of.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 04:57 pm (UTC)The faux-mythology of Stargage makes me laugh - they oft times shoot themselves in the foot but it gives me a lot to waffle about on
I am re-writing the Ascension Meta From Hell in parts for
no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 11:20 pm (UTC)I really love your meta point on Daniel as descendant, not ascendant - for one thing, it's a narrative that I very much prefer! And it makes sense out of some pretty hashy canon. Not to mention Kwanyin.
I'm not sure if I love Stargate's waffly mythology, because it gives us space to play, or if I just really want to wallop them for not doing any homework whatsoever.
I'll be very interested to see what your thoughts are on the later seasons, because I'm not sure that I'll watch them myself - I feel like the mythologically right place for Daniel to go after descending would be the Wise Peacenik a la Frodo Baggins/Luke Skywalker, and it seems like they choose to do the opposite and militarize him, and I don't even know.