Friday, March 20, 2009

Battlestar Earth

Watched the finale of Battlestar Galactica tonight. Kinda disappointing, actually. They left many questions unanswered and basically used a vague mysticism to explain other questions, but it wasn’t terrible and had many good moments. And if I’m disappointed in some of the answers they provided, it was, after all, their story, and they could end as they choose.

As I considered their choices for the ending, I thought about how popular writing is a walk between what your reading public wants and what you want for the story. It’s good when both of those coincide. It’s good when a writer wants to please his/her audience. I have actually thrown books across the room when the writers, trying to be clever or perhaps even disliking the reader, writing an ending that had no basis. I see this a lot in so-called dark fantasy, where – after a great adventure – the whole cast dies or ends up miserable and broken.

I’ve never liked unhappy endings. I’ve seen enough senseless misery and pointless tragedy in real life that I have no interest in reading about it. I don’t require totally happy endings, but I want hopeful ones. I want the hero’s sacrifice to mean something. Once an author has burned me with a pointless story -– or one in which the message is that life is pointless and meaningless –- I won’t read them again. Won’t buy their books and will recommend other people not buy them. They wasted my money.

Of course, I know a lot of writers out there are young so they could possibly be forgiven for liking darkness. After all, they think they’re being shocking and mature. They have no idea that a million, better writers have already walked the avenues of despair. I guess each generation has to drink from that bitter cup themselves. But what a waste of time.

We humans are like that. We read history, say we know history, but go out and make the same cruel, bloody mistakes. One of the themes of Battlestar Galactica was: “This has happened before. It will happen again.” Although in the last episode, the writers gave us a bit of hope -- that maybe a complex system, repeated enough times, could eventually learn and choose something different. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Could we choose to grow beyond what we are now?

I don't know, but I hope so. I hope so.


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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's because the next generation always has a power-hungry element and the rest think they can do it better than their parents' generation. It's the arrogance of youth, for starters.

SBB said...

Good point, FF, with a lot of truth. We forget the mistakes of the past so we're doomed to repeat them.