Making Darwinism Extinct

I would be lying if I said that I found Anne Kustritz's essay boring, unintelligible, or irrelevant to the overarching analysis of the Battlestar Galactica series, as well as our modern outlook on future and evolution. I will say this - it certainly seems to be more aggressive than I would deem necessary. True, there is a certain obsession with juxtaposing fertility and evolution, and futuristic evolution most always seems to suggest not only a stronger human race, but a more successful "race" of electronics and eventually robotics. Yet, her constant barrage on the series's attempt at imagining a future where class, race, and social issues are still present and relevant yet are slightly more lacking in the areas of queerness and sterility seems a little unfair.

How does one convict an art piece? This is my qualm, as I stand back and survey the media forms that we have experienced and analyzed up to this date. Would there be a heated debate over hyper-sexualized male roles if there was not one about females? Admittedly Battlestar does serve to create believable, yet still incredibly masculine, "heroic" images of the male characters as a staple of the show. The hyper-feminine male character, Balthar, is actually the one who is oft seen as sniveling, pathetic, and immoral. The audience can't help but have a viscerally negative reaction to the character.

And what about the penguins? Now, although they make a good analogy, this just convinced me that the entire essay was out on a limb. And not one on the evolutionary tree. This argument is self-extincting. She offers no solution, just a rigid system of complaints, at one point narrowing it down to the fact that supporters of a familial community have no other point but to help others survive. Well, of course! They're penguins - that's what they do. It's the most natural thing on earth.

This is not to say that Kustritz's point about queerness, as well as sterility, is not invalid altogether. There obviously needs to be a shift in the way society defines a nuclear family, and the value placed on individuals that is dependent on their ability to produce genetically similar, and genetically successful offspring. In some ways, the robotic love story of the film really encapsulated the idea of love simply for the bond between, and not the creation of something new. There was a validation of contribution to society on a higher plane than simply Darwinism.