caprica

Feb. 4th, 2010 02:43 pm
sophiaserpentia: (Default)
[personal profile] sophiaserpentia
I've been watching Caprica with [livejournal.com profile] cowgrrl, and she posed this question last night. It's a good one, so I'm curious to see what other people think.

Caprica is a society with legalized pot, sanctioned group marriage, total acceptance of homosexuality, and general sexual freedom. But since this is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, we know that there is soon going to be a war between Cylons and Humans leading to the eventual destruction of Caprica and the other 11 colonies.

So... is this portrayal of Caprica as a pleasure-permissive society an indication that the writers and producers believe these are features of an advanced human civilization? Or, do they indicate that Caprica is a decadent society ready to fall due to its own hubris? Or is it wrong to interpret this portrayal as delivering any sort of political statement?

Date: 2010-02-04 08:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stacymckenna.livejournal.com
I'm almost completely behind having just watched the pilot miniseries last week, but based on the brief description you've given, I'd likely take away:

Evolved/advanced civilizations are highly susceptible to destruction by barbarism.

Kind of a social entropy of sorts... the lowest common denominator in time will eventually succeed.

Date: 2010-02-05 07:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com
Hmm. I have a lot of complex thoughts in response to this. The historian side of me grates a little at the idea of barbarians being responsible for the downfall of civilizations. Generally speaking, barbarians have been more in danger FROM empires than they were TO them.

If you mean philistines (I wish there was a better term) then there may be something to that -- I suppose we'll see. OTOH from the doomsayer's perspective there is a considerable amount of hubris in building a 100,000-strong army of military robots.

Date: 2010-02-05 08:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stacymckenna.livejournal.com
There is quite possibly an issue with vocabulary and definition. I am notoriously averse to history as a course of study, so you definition of barbarian and mine likely differ. If "barbarian" is a purely relative term, then it would depend on the two societies being compared. In our history, I can see where empires tend to dominate barbarians. If evolved/barbarian are objective terms, with certain traits being attained only when one has "evolved", then our history may consist entirely of various levels of barbarians. Have we had what would be considered an evolved/advanced civilization on par with what Caprica is presenting? One of the traits you indicated in their portrayal is a lack of focus on military efforts. If evolving as a society means dropping military forces, that would leave the evolved society open to overthrow from those "barbarian" societies like most of our history's empires.

My original comment was based essentially on an objective definition of evolved/barbarian, where all of our current societies would likely be termed "barbarian", and Caprica being the utopian "evolved" society people aim for - much like the search for spiritual enlightenment.

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