We were just listening to won of Michael Moore pod casts. They've become as painful to listen to as the show has become to watch, leaving a bitter and lingering after taste. I was so impressed originally with the mini-series and the first season, but by the fifth episode they started to seriously loose me as a viewer. I don't know if I gave Moore too much respect at the beginning because of how greatly his voice and manner resembles Joss Whedon who managed to hold my respect for over seven year barely ever slipping in my personal poles.
Michael Moore has sadly proven that he isn’t Joss Whedon and that he isn't truly much of a SF writer in the end. He is unable to step free from his white middle-class American belief structure to see through the wonderful idea started in the mini-series by what must be luck.
Now even in the beginning I had issues (but I'm critical by nature and cynical by experience) with how they were trying to portray equality both between the sexes on the ship and the predominant Caucasian ethnic in the cast. Setting aside the lack of ethnic diversity and focusing on the so-called equality of the sexes. What we are being given is basically what Moore seems to believe the US (thus for him the world) will be like in another 50 to 100yrs not a culture that has supposedly existed separately from ours since the Egyptians or whenever. While likely they may have had they're ups and downs they wouldn't have had ours. So why should there hang ups be ours? It likely given they've retained their science better than we had that the Visigoths never sacked their Rome, that people weren't dragged from Their Africa to be slaves, woman weren't persecuted in by their Taliban, they may never had witch trails or a Pope. They aren't us. For all we know they've enjoyed sexual equity from the beginning. So the ugliness of sexual inequity may never be a default modern human behaviour. From instances of rape through to conniving women are more and more proven to be social indicators not necessarily originally default human ones.
Rape is something I'll never undestand so I'll move on to conniving. We have many instances of conniving and manipulative people in BG all of which are women. There are many stories written by men (and even a few women) throughout the ages about 'this type of woman'. Not doubt this 'type of woman' existed and currently exist but it can be considered that this stereotype was created and now persists because of social constraints previously placed upon women. A power hungry, forceful or even just ambitious man could strike out into the world and make their way but woman could only fulfill these needs through others (that is of course husbands and other males). It is a reaction to a societal condition.
Compounding this is people default societal reactions to things. Now I wouldn't try to write from a black man growing up in the US South in the 20's anymore than I could write from the perspective a woman who would cover their face in obeisance to men, but I would certainly write a black man a hundred years from now or an Iraqi woman because one can only believe that at the pace of globalization that cultural memory of African slavery and religious misogyny may have passed beyond living experience therefore the decisions those people would make would not be based on such social/religious hang-ups. When we become used to something it becomes everyday, common and we only question it in its absence. Just as we become inured to violence on TV we will become used to seeing other ethnic groups and the sexes in all types of positions in society. We can socially inoculate people to the ideas of equality by its constant example in the media and like wise we can damage it the same way.
So Moore has lost the chance to show us how from different cultural and thus different cultural scenarios might react differently. Or demonstrate how given different major events may have produced a more equitable society. By this I’m not asking for Star Trek, basic equality does not mean utopian society. It does not mean fluffiness, it does not mean the end of inner strife, it only means that possibility their reactions to that strife may be different. But no, Moore is giving us a well-produced but hackneyed plot, plot devices and subjects instead of looking forward as science fiction should.
Well JA Konrath says they way a good blog is confrontational. So if Gina recieves hate mail just by saying that dogs can and do love then I'm bound for a flame war if this blog is ever discovered.
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