it's interesting
Jan. 27th, 2012 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerIn between naps, I've been rewatching the DS9 series.
One of the things I always found the most interesting about it was the depiction of Bejor. ST writers had never shown us as much about another race's civilization, religion, and politics, even those of the Klingons or Vulcans. The story of a people rediscovering themselves and their nationhood after decades of occupation and abuse by a foreign power, the tense relations between the Bejorans and their nominal allies the Federation, and the open hostility towards the still-powerful Cardassian Empire, these all seemed (despite the intriguing overlay of the Bejorans' Buddhist-esque religion) like an interesting commentary on Israel, at least viewed from one angle. In particular, the remarkable episode "Duet", with a bravura performance by Harris Yulin that may be the best of his long career, has unmistakable parallels to Israel's relentless pursuit of Nazi war criminals (although it also has resonance with crimes of the Bosnian War, ongoing while the series was being aired).
When Battlestar Galactica was reimagined, the writers took the opportunity to draw parallels to modern events. Especially when they used some of the short web-films that depicted the resistance on New Caprica and that were not broadcast on television, they showed how sympathetic figures, in an attempt to resist a despotic and overwhelming force, would use the tactics Americans associated with the Iraqi resistance (hiding weapons in religious buildings, attacking the enemy with suicide bombers, readiness to countenance friendly, civilian casualties).
But as I watch the second season of DS9, I'm struck by the parallels, impossible to have predicted, between Bejor and modern Iraq. A people who no sooner free themselves from tyranny than they start tearing at each other in a struggle for control, a people whose faith has sustained them through decades of suffering but which ruptures in the same way as the population, with a more moderate branch looking towards the future and engagement with outside forces while a deeply conservative minority faction uses violence (including suicide terrorism with the promise of martyrdom) and nativist, xenophobic propaganda to try to gain control of the society as a whole. A hodgepodge ruling council made up of politicians from all bands of the spectrum, including plenty who are looking only to line their own pockets.
I suppose what it says most is that there is nothing new under the sun (whichever sun), and that some patterns are inevitable in the human(oid) condition.
One of the things I always found the most interesting about it was the depiction of Bejor. ST writers had never shown us as much about another race's civilization, religion, and politics, even those of the Klingons or Vulcans. The story of a people rediscovering themselves and their nationhood after decades of occupation and abuse by a foreign power, the tense relations between the Bejorans and their nominal allies the Federation, and the open hostility towards the still-powerful Cardassian Empire, these all seemed (despite the intriguing overlay of the Bejorans' Buddhist-esque religion) like an interesting commentary on Israel, at least viewed from one angle. In particular, the remarkable episode "Duet", with a bravura performance by Harris Yulin that may be the best of his long career, has unmistakable parallels to Israel's relentless pursuit of Nazi war criminals (although it also has resonance with crimes of the Bosnian War, ongoing while the series was being aired).
When Battlestar Galactica was reimagined, the writers took the opportunity to draw parallels to modern events. Especially when they used some of the short web-films that depicted the resistance on New Caprica and that were not broadcast on television, they showed how sympathetic figures, in an attempt to resist a despotic and overwhelming force, would use the tactics Americans associated with the Iraqi resistance (hiding weapons in religious buildings, attacking the enemy with suicide bombers, readiness to countenance friendly, civilian casualties).
But as I watch the second season of DS9, I'm struck by the parallels, impossible to have predicted, between Bejor and modern Iraq. A people who no sooner free themselves from tyranny than they start tearing at each other in a struggle for control, a people whose faith has sustained them through decades of suffering but which ruptures in the same way as the population, with a more moderate branch looking towards the future and engagement with outside forces while a deeply conservative minority faction uses violence (including suicide terrorism with the promise of martyrdom) and nativist, xenophobic propaganda to try to gain control of the society as a whole. A hodgepodge ruling council made up of politicians from all bands of the spectrum, including plenty who are looking only to line their own pockets.
I suppose what it says most is that there is nothing new under the sun (whichever sun), and that some patterns are inevitable in the human(oid) condition.
