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Harbinger of Death or Beacon of Hope? Imagining Feminist and Queer Futures in Battlestar Galactica By Hannah Moulton Belec B.A. in Communication, May 2006, George Mason University A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 20, 2012 Thesis directed by Jennifer Christine Nash Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women’s Studies Todd Ramlow Adjunct Professor of Women’s Studies Dedication To Jenny Gonzalez Perdomo—it doesn’t take much imagining to know that your feminist future would have been bright. ii Acknowledgements So many people helped me get through the past two years, which have been the most stressful but most rewarding of my life. My very best friend, Elizabeth Gordon, pushed me to pursue grad school when I thought I wasn’t good enough. My friends in the GW Graduate Feminists kept me sane and kept me laughing. My thesis adviser, Jen Nash, calmed me down when I came to her with disastrous drafts. And my thesis reader, Todd Ramlow, assured me that my ideas weren’t useless—even when they involved Mr. Darcy—and matched my enthusiasm for the amazing show that inspired this thesis. Liz Bolton gave me her invaluable advice, flexibility, and friendship. Callie Shutters commiserated as only another film studies scholar can, and she provided a sweet sister’s encouragement when I was most unsure of myself. And a man I don’t remember meeting, my great-grandfather Hilton Hoyle Cary, helped make my graduate studies financially possible. Papa, thanks for giving me the chance to pursue this feminist degree, and thank you to the Scottish Rite for being his proxy. But most of all, I need to thank the man who introduced me to Battlestar Galactica and, over the past two years, cooked me countless meals, ran most of my errands, washed all of my clothes, and consoled me through at least a half-dozen emotional meltdowns. I never could have or would have finished this thesis if it weren’t for my dear husband, Eric Belec. Thanks for being the non-normative male half of what I read as our queer relationship. iii Abstract Harbinger of Death or Beacon of Hope? Imagining Feminist and Queer Futures in Battlestar Galactica This project uses the 2004–09 TV series Battlestar Galactica to explore how science fiction helps audiences grapple with feminist issues and imagine more utopian worlds. Drawing on feminist film theory, cyborg feminism, and queer theory, this paper reads queer and feminist resistance into Battlestar Galactica using fan analysis and original critique that uncovers the non-normative potential in the characters’ gender expressions and heterosexual and homosocial relationships. iv Table of Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Reimagining Battlestar Galactica and Feminist Film Analysis 1 Queering Cylons and Soldiers 16 Cruising the Universe for Feminist and Queer Futures 45 Sine Qua Non 69 Works Cited 75 v Chapter 1 Reimagining Battlestar Galactica and Feminist Film Analysis y the time Battlestar Galactica (BSG) aired its fourth season in 2009, the science fiction show was reaching an average of 2.3 million viewers per episode.1 B Pictures of the cast posed in an homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper splashed across the pages of countless newspapers, magazines, and websites, accompanying feverish analysis and speculation about how the series would end. Would the weary, fugitive fleet that fans had followed for years finally find Earth? Would the Hellenic and Judeo- Christian themes inform the answers to the enigmas of the show’s mythology? And who the frak was the fifth Cylon? Although it took me a while to get on the bandwagon, by the time the fourth season of BSG was airing, I too was hooked and had caught up on the miniseries pilot, the background movie Razor, and seasons one, two, and three. In the painful year between the airing of the first half of season four and the last half—a result of the Writer’s Guild strike of 2007—I honestly was scared I would die before seeing the end of the series. Though that particular thought process was probably more a function of my neuroses than my fandom, needless to say, I was and am a huge fan of the series. I even dressed up as BSG’s badass lady fighter pilot Starbuck for Halloween 2011—complete with extra sets of push-ups leading up to the big day. Part of what drew me to the show, and what continues to draw me, are the ways that it expands acceptable gender expressions through its characters. But it’s also the provocative religious and supernatural mysteries, the family drama, the imperfect 1 According to a March 29, 2009, post on the ratings website TV by the Numbers, tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/ 2009/03/24/battlestar-galactica-finale-blasts-away-the- competition/15054 1 characters, and the sheer number of awesome women onscreen. And, after a lot of analysis, I now realize that part of the reason I love the show so much is because of the way that it incorporates and wrestles with feminist social and political issues—and not always progressively. But I wasn’t always this at peace with my fandom. At certain points in the past few years, I’ve had trouble articulating whether I was even allowed, as a feminist media critic, to be a true fan of a show that is—according to my own analysis—at times not feminist enough and at times not feminist at all. My readings of the show have become more vexed as my knowledge of feminist and media theory deepens. This negotiation of the show is couched in a complicated mix of opposition, pleasure, and reinterpretation. And I’m not the only one engaged in such negotiations. This project is an answer to the questions that I kept finding myself asking after I had conducted 50-plus pages of scathing analysis for graduate school assignments that pronounced BSG just another postmodern, postfeminist text that upheld rather than subverted gender, racial, and sexual norms. Why do I, and other discerning feminist and LGBT media critics, still love this show? Am I allowed to love a show that feminist film theory indicates is regressive? Is BSG doing something for audiences that feminist analysis couldn’t show me? Thus, this thesis is a labor of love that will addresses the tensions and contradictions that feminist cultural theorists encounter in relation to texts that, despite their sexist shortcomings, give us pleasure and allow us to engage in productive political imagining. As a feminist critic, I’ve gone through the phases that most students seem to go through after they start their feminist educations, popular or academic. First, you realize that sexism is everywhere. If you’re like me, you go back to school to learn the fanciest ways possible to say “that’s sexist,” and you deploy your arsenal ruthlessly. All of your old favorite movies 2 and shows are, as bell hooks might say, just upholding white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Even the progressive movies and shows that you like are ultimately, below the surface, just apolitical, shallow versions of the same old stories—independent women are miserable and lonely, rape victims are asking for it, old women are jealous hags, female sexuality is dangerous, queer women don’t exist, black women are hypersexual, and everyone else is probably somehow either discounted, silenced, eroticized, or exoticized. This is certainly the mental journey I’ve taken with my favorite texts, including my favorite television show from the past few years—and the one that seemed to brim with so much progressive and feminist potential—Battlestar Galactica. The “reimagined” series—what Creator and Executive Producer Ron Moore calls the 2004 show instead of a remake of the original one-season show from 1978—does gesture toward a more progressive, post-gender world. Just a few examples of these gestures in the show’s narrative include a pragmatic woman president, unisex bunks and bathrooms within the military, a big cast that is about half women and not all white, plenty of women officers in the Colonial fleet—including an admiral who outranks our patriarch leader Bill Adama—and using the term “sir” to refer to women as well as men in military power. But I’ve argued before that, ultimately, the dynamic women characters are punished for deviating from maternal femininity and that the show’s gestures toward a more progressive feminist politics ultimately just defer to and reinforce patriarchal authority. And although I still stand by my readings, I’m having a harder time dismissing BSG’s politics that quickly anymore, especially when I see it inspiring as much discussion as it does in feminist and queer communities. Clearly, all viewers have complex relationships with the films and shows that they watch—they accept, enjoy, and perhaps feel empowered by certain aspects while they dismiss others. They can even identify and disidentify parts of themselves 3 with parts of the characters onscreen, as Jose Muñoz describes feeling about Bette Davis movies when he was a child (Disidentifications 15 ). It’s true that we all have these individualized, and sometimes collective, responses to all sorts of texts. But BSG is a different animal for me than some of the other shows I enjoy (or love to hate, as the case may be): Glee, Frasier, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Parks and Recreation, The Bachelor, the first halves of Law and Order that I catch at the gym.