| Title | : | Cylons in America : Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0826428487 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780826428486 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 278 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Ray and Pat Browne Award Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture (2008) |
Refugees flee persecution with ever-diminishing resources.
Society is fractured along ideological lines, fostering political corruption and Machiavellian opportunism.
Sexy female robots wield guns.
The award-winning and compulsively watchable Battlestar Galactica, "re-imagined" by creator Ronald D. Moore for the twenty-first century, combines many familiar features of science fiction with direct commentary on life in post-9/11 America. At its best, BSG achieves a level of political and social commentary that has not been achieved anywhere else on modern television.
Cylons in America presents an edgy, stimulating, and sometimes witty collection of critical studies of BSG, examining the series' place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society. The book is divided into three sections: the first explores how BSG creates a microcosm of our current world; the second considers the Cylons as a mirror of humanity; and the third raises central questions about science fiction as a genre, about the nature of episodic television, and about the role of media in popular culture. For anyone wishing to explore the many worlds of Battlestar Galactica, Cylons in America provides the perfect point of departure.
Cylons in America : Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica Reviews
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Read about an essay a day on my lunch .75-hour. It's divided into the three sections, with the first and third sections being full of really engaging stuff, and the second section consisting of the same essay, over and over again. All used the exact same examples from the series and quoted the same theorists (mainly Donna Haraway), and suffered from similar holes - I didn't think the fact that Cylons can't die was obscure knowledge, but it was conveniently forgotten in some of the many arguments on othering.
Would have enjoyed this more if I had read it after season 3, before the series, and, specifically, our knowledge of what Cylons are, changed so radically. Some of the best essays are about race (actual treatment of Asian and Black characters, not "omgz Cylons are the Otherrrrrr!!!"), music, and the way the political landscape of the series changed as American politics changed in the early aughts.
I hope another collection like this gets published. Not least because I hope I'm in it, ha!. -
This one reads like most cultural studies books on popular TV shows and movies (I've read similar books on The Simpsons and The Matrix as well). There are some insightful pieces here, as well as some fairly obvious approaches (I knew stuff on "The Other" was coming, groan). The more politically-oriented pieces are most effective. On a personal note, the whole volume reminded me of why I liked to hang out with cultural studies folks in grad school -- and makes me jealous that some of their fluffier work gets published.
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A nice mix of insightful and so-so arguments, all of which are struggling to construct coherent arguments about a narrative whose ending was unknown at the time.
