Starbuck: Lost in Castration
Once upon a time, in what used to be a far away land called Hollywood
but is now a state of mind and everywhere, a young actor was handed a
script and asked to bring to life a character called Starbuck. I am
that actor. The script was called Battlestar Galactica.
Fortunately I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands
strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead
imaginations of a lot of Network Executives. Every character trait I
struggled to give him was met with vigourous resistance. A charming
womaniser? The "Suits" (Network Executives) hated it. A cigar
(fumerello) smoker? The Suits hated it. A reluctant hero who found
humour in the bleakest of situations? The Suits hated it. All this
negative feedback convinced me I was on the right track.
Starbuck was meant to be a loveable rogue. It was best for the show,
best for the character and the best that I could do. The Suits didn't
think so. "One more cigar and he's fired,"they told Glen Larson, the
creator of the show. "We want Starbuck to appeal to the female
audience for crying out loud!" You see, the Suits knew women were
turned off by men who smoked cigars. Especially young men. (How
they "knew" this was never revealed.) And they didn't stop there. "If
Dirk doesn't quit playing every scene with a girl like he wants to
get her in bed, he's fired!" This was, well, it was blatant
heterosexuality. Treating women like "sex objects". I thought it was
flirting. Never mind. They wouldn't have it.
I wouldn't have it any other way, or rather Starbuck wouldn't. So we
persevered, Starbuck and I. The show, as the saying goes, went on and
the rest is history – for, lo and behold, women from all over the
world sent me boxes of cigars, phone numbers, dinner requests,
marriage proposals... The Suits were not impressed. They would have
there way, which is what Suits do best, and after one season of
puffing and flirting and gambling, Starbuck, that loveable scoundrel,
was indeed fired. Which is to say Battlestar Galactica was cancelled.
Starbuck however, would not stay cancelled, but simply morphed into
another flirting, cigar-smoking, blatant heterosexual called Faceman
Another show, another set of Suits and, of course, if the A-Team
movie rumours prove correct, another remake.
There was a time – I know I was there – when men were men, women were
women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of
feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been
won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once
flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And
everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.
Witness the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica. It's bleak,
miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it
reflects, in microcosm, the complete change in the politics and mores
of today's world as opposed to the world of yesterday. The world of
Lorne Greene (Adama) and Fred Astaire (Starbuck's Poppa), and Dirk
Benedict (Starbuck). I would guess Lorne is glad he's in that Big
Bonanza in the sky and well out of it. Starbuck, alas, has not been
so lucky. He's not been left to pass quietly into that trivial world
of cancelled TV characters.
"Re-imagining", they call it. "un-imagining" is more accurate. To
take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that
a television show based on hope, spiritual faith, and family is
unimagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and
family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality
in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens
(Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy our civilisation.
One would assume. Indeed, let us not say who are he guys and who are
the bad. That is being "judgemental". And that kind of (simplistic)
thinking went out with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and
Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne and, well the original Battlestar
Galactica.
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