Leonard Nimoy and Mr. Spock

In the spirit of catching up with the last few months' activities, the March 6th issue of the Jewish Standard included another one of my op-eds, one I wrote regarding the  recent passing of actor Leonard Nimoy, best known for his portrayal of Mr. Spock on the Star Trek television series and motion pictures. Appearing under the title of Live Long and Prosper, with "Leonard Nimoy and Mr. Spock" as the subtitle, the piece goes like this:


The death of Leonard Nimoy on Friday, February 27, at 83, marked the passing of an American icon—indeed, a star of global renown, and a Jewish hero as well.

Nimoy’s accomplishments were many. He was an author, poet, musician, photographer, philanthropist, educator, and director, and of course an actor who played many roles on stage and screen. But he is best known for his role as Mr. Spock on Star Trek, the television series that first aired in 1966. It is a role he reprised in the various sequels, spinoffs, and remakes that appeared after the original series went off the air in 1969.

Nimoy was a Boston native, fluent in Yiddish, whose parents were Orthodox Jews who escaped from the Soviet Union. As he related in various interviews, his background informed his portrayal of the sole alien being on the Starship Enterprise. Spock hailed from the planet Vulcan but was also half-human, making him an alien on Vulcan as well. His status reflects that of immigrants and their children, first-generation Americans who, like Nimoy, grow up in a household, community, and culture that still has one foot in the old world.

As a child attending Orthodox services, Nimoy observed the Cohenim delivering the priestly benediction, and as an adult he appropriated their hand gesture when he introduced the Vulcan salute. The greeting that he added to the salute, “live long and prosper,” echoes the sentiment of the benediction, as well as the simple greeting “shalom” (further echoed in the ritual response, “peace and long life”). There is certainly cause for pride in this small Jewish contribution to global popular culture, but does this mean that Star Trek incorporates Jewish undertones, as Haaretz writer Nathan Abrams insisted in an article published the day after Nimoy’s death? Certainly, Jewish fans can take pleasure in the fact that Nimoy and co-star William Shatner are Jewish. So were several of the series’ writers, and we can assume that they all brought some elements of a Jewish sensibility to the program.

But let’s be clear that Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry, who was not Jewish, and who included characters from a variety of different backgrounds—Scottish, Irish, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and African—but never one who was identifiably Jewish. Indeed, the only characters with any real Jewish identity in the Star Trek universe appeared in a few of the many original novels published under license from Paramount Pictures. No doubt this is not because of any bias or prejudice on Roddenberry’s part, but rather because he associated Jewishness with religion, rather than nationality. His vision of the future was one in which science and progress reigned supreme, and any seemingly supernatural phenomena would inevitably be revealed to be a product of a highly advanced science, or biological evolution.

The conspicuous absence of any Jewish characters from Roddenberry’s melting-pot future can lead viewers to search for them in disguised, symbolic form, to look for what Sigmund Freud referred to as the return of the repressed. And the obvious form for a crypto-Judaic character to take would be that of an alien being. Indeed, while Shatner had the kind of looks that allowed him to pass as a WASP from Iowa, Nimoy’s features gave him what was considered at the time to be a relatively interchangeable “ethnic” appearance, so that earlier in his career he played Spanish, Mexican, and Native American characters. And certainly there are Jewish elements incorporated into Nimoy’s man from Vulcan, and into other aspects of Star Trek. Consider the episode called “Patterns of Force,” in which an alien planet patterns itself after Earth’s Nazi Germany, and is trying to wipe out their neighboring planet, called Zeon (an obvious reference to Zion).

But I want to suggest that Abrams and others are wrong about Spock being implicitly Jewish. It perhaps is revealing that Abrams mistakenly refers to the character as “Dr.” Spock, a mistake not uncommon among those not very familiar with the series. Nimoy’s character usually is referred to as “Mr.” Spock, in keeping with naval tradition about first officers, and occasionally by his rank, which was at various times commander, captain, and ambassador. Dr. Spock was, of course, Benjamin Spock, the famous pediatrician whose bestselling book, Baby and Child Care, served as a bible to the parents in the postwar era. Like Roddenbery, Dr. Spock was not Jewish. The name Spock is Dutch, originally spelled Spaak.




Spock’s home planet, Vulcan is named for the Roman god of fires and forges, and Vulcans are revealed to be related to another alien race, the warlike Romulans, named for the founder of Rome. Vulcan philosophy, which venerates logic above all else, represents a view that is very much in keeping with Athens rather than Jerusalem. Vulcans revere Surak as the founder of their philosophy. Surak has little in common with Moses but quite a bit with Socrates, with some Gandhi thrown in for good measure. So while Spock’s home planet is depicted as having the kind of hot, dessert-like climate that we associate with the Middle East, the stronger connection is to the European side of the Mediterranean.

Abrams associates Vulcan intellectualism with the people of the book, but the aliens do not seek a balance between faith and reason, in the fashion of Maimonides, but rather enforce a strict discipline, suppressing all emotion, in a way that is very much in keeping with another branch of ancient Greek philosophy, Zeno’s Stoicism. Moreover, suppression of emotions often is linked to dehumanization, as a means of forcing individuals to adapt to mechanization and industrialism, yielding a technological being well suited to being a cog in a machine, rather than a mensch, a real, well rounded human being. We may therefore identify with Spock’s struggles, and admire his superior physical and mental abilities, but it is his human side that is the most Jewish part of him.

Following a long tradition in western culture, Roddenberry used orientalism to convey a sense of the alien, and this includes Jewish as well as Arabic, Persian, and Chinese elements. With his raised eyebrows, Spock bears a certain similarity to Ming the Merciless, the alien villain from the old Flash Gordon serials. But it was not until long after Roddenberry’s death in 1991 that a Jewish film director, J. J. Abrams, who was recruited to reboot the series, invokes the destruction of the Temple and subsequent diaspora by having the planet Vulcan destroyed by Romulans. In that 2009 film, called simply Star Trek, time travel is used to generate an alternate timeline, and Leonard Nimoy makes a cameo appearance as the original, now-elderly Spock, while Zachary Quinto takes on the main role as the new Spock. (Quinto is of Italian ancestry, and Italians and Jews often have been cast interchangeably in film and television.) Nimoy’s final film appearance was in the 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, also directed by Abrams.

 

As a science fiction fan, I can appreciate Star Trek in all of its iterations, and I can enjoy it as a form of American entertainment and popular culture without exaggerating its Jewish undertones. And as a Jewish-American, I can feel pride and affection toward Leonard Nimoy, as a landsman, as the producer and star of the TV movie about a Holocaust survivor, Never Forget, as the author of the photography book Shekhinawith its erotic Kabbalistic theme, and as the originator of the Vulcan salute and the saying “Live long and prosper.”

Fantasies of Seinfeld

So, my son has discovered Seinfeld, and turned into a huge fan of the series. Not that there's anything wrong with it, mind you. The series is, after all, the best sitcom ever in the history of broadcasting.

As has so often been repeated, it was the show about nothing, which actually means that it was the show about communication (ever read what Plato had to say about rhetoric in the Phaedrus and the Gorgias?). It was Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life turned into twenty-two minutes of comedy a week. And more often than not, it was a show about media--someone needs to compile a key of all of the references to motion pictures, other television shows, comics, and other forms of popular culture that were used in the series. As a show about nothing, it was easy to fill it up with innumerable references, allusions, and quotations.

And so, not surprisingly, Seinfeld has lent itself to further play with its iconography, re-imagining the sitcom along the lines of grand fantasy. In this spirit, I want to share with you an image my son found on the net, entitled Seinfeld Wars:







I thought that was pretty comical, especially George as R2D2, and Newman in the background as Darth Vader. Jerry fits in nicely as Luke Skywalker, Elaine makes sense as Princess Leia (and Elaine is essentially a Jewish-American Princess, even though the character is identified as a shiksa (non-Jewish woman) on the show--George and Kramer are both Jewish character types as well, even though they are presented as gentiles).

Probably the toughest decision was whether to make Kramer into Chewbacca the Wookie (Kramer does have some animalistic traits), or to depict him as C3P0, as was done here. I think this was the right choice, as they share the same quality of awkwardness, although the decision to have him hold a gun strikes me as a mistake--that's not C3P0 at all! Instead, a better correspondence would have been to give Kramer one of his typically confused expressions.

So anyway, I took a further look, and found a Seinfeld Wizard of Oz as well:







This one isn't as good, simply because the correspondence between the characters is less than perfect. Sure, Elaine could be Dorothy, who else? Jerry? Actually, in terms of group dynamics, that would make more sense. So, Jerry as the Tin Man? No heart? Jerry? I don't think so. Kramer as the Scarecrow works in regard to body type and that same awkwardness, although (as my son just pointed out to me), personality-wise the Cowardly Lion might be a better fit. Again, George as the Cowardly Lion seems to be more about body type than personality. So, nice try, but it just doesn't work.

Now, I have not done an exhaustive search, so maybe a Star Trek Seinfeld is out there? Jerry as Captain Kirk, Elaine as Lieutenant Uhura, George as Dr. McCoy, and Kramer as, what else? The alien, Mr. Spock. Well, if it hasn't been done, maybe there's an artist out there willing to take this on?

How about applying McLuhan's laws of media to form a Seinfeld tetrad? Here goes:

Enhance=Jerry
Obsolesce=George
Retrieve=Kramer
Reverse=Elaine

All right, all right, enough already, I admit it. This has been the blog about nothing, and that's no fantasy.

Wild Palms 2007

I'm teaching a course on the Science Fiction Genre this semester, I've been doing it once a year on average for over a decade now, the emphasis is on film, but we also cover other media including books, magazines, theater, radio, television, cable, home video, and we also talk a bit about music and video/computer games. Actually, today was the last class meeting, and the final is next week (good luck guys!).

So, this semester, for the first time, I had the students screen the 1993 television miniseries Wild Palms (copies of the DVD are placed on reserve, students watch it on their own time, then we discuss it in class). I never had a chance to use it before, because it wasn't available on video for about a decade (it came out on VHS circa 1994, but was discontinued not long afterwards), and only came out on DVD late in 2005.

My students were not at all familiar with Wild Palms, hadn't even heard of it, and this is no doubt due to the fact that the miniseries was not only unavailable for something like a decade, but has rarely, if ever, been rerun on television. Many of my students are quite savvy when it comes to sci fi, so I imagine that anyone who was too young to see it when it aired, or otherwise missed it, would be in the same boat, that is, not fully aware of this remarkable production.

So, let me first of all tell you that this is quality television. If you like programs like Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Twin Peaks, or The Prisoner, then you ought to check out Wild Palms.

Here's some background for you. The miniseries is 285 minutes long, which means it's almost 5 hours. It was intended to be a miniseries, so the story is resolved in the end, not left open for a series to follow. In this sense, it is like a movie, albeit a very long one, although it is broken up into 5 episodes (it was aired over one week). But it also draws in some ways on the soap opera genre, specifically the primetime soap opera such as Dallas and Dynasty, with a large number of characters involved in complex familial, romantic, economic, and political relationships.

The miniseries was officially billed as

Oliver Stone Presents
Wild Palms

and the famous film director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Alexander, World Trade Center) is seen as the creative force behind the miniseries, although he does not actually direct any of the episodes (in film, the director is generally considered to be the auteur, in television it's the producer). Stone is listed as the Executive Producer along with Bruce Wagner, who is credited as the writer, and Wagner is the writer of the comic that the miniseries was based on, which was illustrated by Julian Allen, and appeared in the magazine Details back in 1990.

Stone's JFK looms large in the background of Wild Palms, which revolves around a mysterious conspiracy, and Stone even appears briefly in a scene in which he is being interviewed on television, the interviewer asking Stone if he's bitter now that the files on JFK have been unsealed and Stone has been vindicated.

The story is set in 2007, which makes it interesting to watch now that it is 2007, but 2007 was 14 years in the future back then. The future that Stone and Wagner envisioned is quite different from our own, but I imagine that many people would say that Wild Palms' image of an America subtly slipping into authoritarianism was not so far off the mark. But images of the future ultimately say more about the times that they were produced in than the times that they depict (and supposedly predict). More on this later, but first some further notes on the production.

The casting is very interesting, and very interestingly television-ish. The main character, Harry Wycoff, is played by James Belushi, who back in 1993 was best known as the brother of John Belushi, and a kind of John Belushi-light on Saturday Night Live (some of my students had trouble with this casting, because they identify Belushi with his more recent sitcom dad persona). It was an unusual choice, because this was basically a dramatic role, although there were some moments where he shifted into a comic persona. Harry's wife, Grace, was played by Dana Delany, who best known for her starring role in the TV series about Vietnam, China Beach, which went off the air just a couple of years before the miniseries premiered. Grace's mother, Josie, is played by Angie Dickinson, a move actress and at one time a sex symbol with a long track record, also known for her television work as the star of the seventies series, Police Woman. Coty, the son of Harry and Grace, is played by Ben Savage, then best known as the younger brother of Fred Savage of The Wonder Years, but soon afterwards to become the star of Boy Meets World. Bebe Neuwirth, a very talented Broadway actress, but best known as Lilith, the wife of Frasier Crane on Cheers, plays the role of the famous actress Tabba Schwartzkopf. Film and television actress Kim Cattrall, who would in a few years become famous for her role as Samantha in Sex and the City, plays Harry's old lover, Paige Katz. Additionally, the character actor Robert Loggia, known for his work in the crime genre, typically as a mobster, plays the villainous Senator Tony Kreutzer; the British actor David Warner plays the imprisoned revolutionary and Grace's father, Eli Levitt; Ernie Hudson, who would become known for playing Warden Glynn on Oz, was Tommy, a friend of Harry's; Charles Rocket, probably best known for getting fired from Saturday Night Live after saying "fuck" on a live broadcast in 1981, played Stitch, a comic revolutionary. And that's just to mention some of the cast!

The Wikipedia entry on the miniseries contains a plot synopsis, as does the TV.com listing. Neither summarizes the complex and convoluted plot in its entirety, nor do they give away the ending. I won't go into much detail here, but what's intriguing about this image of a future America is the sense of slipping gradually into fascism. Individual citizens are beat up and kidnapped in public, in broad daylight, off of the streets, in restaurants, etc., by men in black types, secret service/agents/police, this happens repeatedly, and mostly people ignore it, make believe they don't see anything. In and of itself, it makes for a powerful set of images, and the idea for this comes from the real life situations in countries such as Argentina and Chile back in the 70s and 80s.

The leader of the opposition is imprisoned in a "Perceptory," an image again taken from real life, e.g., Nelson Mandela. And children are kidnapped and indoctrinated, turned against their parents, an idea that has its source in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The rhinoceros is a significant recurring symbol in Wild Palms, and it is an allusion to the 1959 play by Eugène Ionesco in which one individual after another turns into a rhinoceros, symbolizing the spread of fascism and Nazism in Europe. Rhinoceros is a classic example of theater of the absurd, and Wild Palms could be considered a TV miniseries of the absurd, coupled with numerous film noir elements.

There are references to a nuclear event brought on by terrorism at some point in the recent past, which occurred in Florida, Boca to be specific (but actually part of the conspiracy). Now, as a New Yorker it's always a relief when my hometown isn't made to be ground zero in these narratives, as we were always the ones who were hit first in all of the old atomic war stories (but not, refreshingly, in 24 or Jericho). But this event in Wild Palms serves the same function as our 9/11, in changing the political climate of the United States (in the miniseries, there is a reference to Pearl Harbor as similarly pivotal). It is also interesting to note that that region of Florida was ground zero for another kind of era-defining disaster, the disputed 2000 presidential election.

The title Wild Palms, which presumably comes from the Faulkner novella about an ill-fated love affair (which is part of the plot in the miniseries), points to the geographical setting of the narrative, Los Angeles, and we are very much in the world of Hollywood show business here, which perhaps accounts for the noticeable use of Jewish names for many of the characters (and German names as well). There are also several gay characters, unusual especially for this time, but not for Hollywood. And there is a strong Japanese emphasis, which is definitely a west coast thing, but also reflects the ascendancy of the Japanese economy in the 80s, Japan's important role in electronics and computer technology, and also the influx of Japanese popular culture in the past few decades. The use of tattoos for identification purposes follows, I believe, the Yakuza (Japanese mafia), but also presages the recent rash of tattooing in mainstream culture. There's also a lot of play and pun with GO!

Virtual reality technology is the big thing in Wild Palms, and there is a Neuromancer-like interface (William Gibson has a cameo appearance where he is identified as the man who coined "cyberspace") to a virtual world where individuals can interact with one another through avatars that appear to be fully human. But the big breakthrough is its combination with holographic technology to create entertainment that breaks out of the box and projects into the room, and this is used to create a sitcom that takes place in your own living room (the technology is called Mimecom, and the slogan goes, is it real or is it Mimecom?, a take off on the actual advertising for audio cassettes that went, is it live or is it Memorex?). Like I said, this is Hollywood.

The sitcom is part of a conspiracy plot, however, and another technology that's introduced is Mimosine, a drug that makes VR and holograms seem real to us. Note the connection to mimesis here, and also Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, but there actually is an amino acid called mimosine which inhibits DNA replication in mammals, possibly a reference to the child abduction plot element. Mimosine is shown to be addictive (addicts bleed blue liquid out of their noses, reminiscent of the nose bleeds caused by cocaine use, especially associated with the entertainment media), and there are hints of future drug dealers and addicts, and links back to LSD and psychedelics. While most of the story centers on prominent personalities, there is a bit of the cyberpunk scenario in Wild Palms (i.e., Wilderzone), and also some references to technoshamanism.

The sitcom is called Church Windows, and the program, the VR/holographic technology, and the Mimosine drug all have the same source, Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the founder of the Church of Synthiotics and the New Realism. This is patterned on L. Ron Hubbard (it's said that Tony wrote science fiction, just like Hubbard), on Dianetics, and Scientology. Tony is a cult leader, and where Scientology hooks you up to some kind of electric device, Synthiotics connects you to VR technology. And just as Scientology has very powerful connections to the entertainment industry (again, a West Coast thing), Wild Palms takes this a step further in making Tony a media mogul. And he is not only a senator, but a presidential candidate, so there is a strange combination of religion, media, and politics at play here. It may seem a bit distant today, when the media tend to be identified with liberal politics, but let's not forget about all that conservative talk radio. And more importantly, Wild Palms looks back to the eighties, and that was the decade when a Hollywood movie actor became president, and there was, and is, a conservative cabal out there in addition to Reagan (John Wayne, Bob Hope, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger). Also recall that Reagan's rise also represented the ascendancy of the religious right, the Moral Majority, and they remain a powerful force in the Republican party. So, a media-religious-political complex is a plot element that reflects trends originating in late 20th century America.

I go into all this not because I'm pushing the politics of Wild Palms, but just to explain where the miniseries is coming from. Conspiracy makes for an exciting plot, and the miniseries draws on the conspiracy theme that begins with the Kennedy assassination, runs through Nixon's Watergate scandal, and culminates in the Reagan era. But instead of the heavy-handedness of films like JFK, the sci fi scenario provides enough distance to handle these themes safely, and even make them fun. The distancing effect of science fiction was put to good use by Gene Roddenberry in the Star Trek series, enabling him to tackle social issues that could not be dealt with in a straightforward manner. But Star Trek's style was realism, the same for Battlestar Galactica, whereas Wild Palms is much closer to David Lynch's Twin Peaks in being mysterious and intriguing, and stylized and yes, artsy (in a good way).

Wild Palms is a delight if you are into symbolism, and quotations and allusions. Towards the end, there are clear allusions to scenes from the movies Videodrome and Blade Runner. There are quotations of Yeats' "Running to Paradise," Eliot's "The Hollow Men," and Whitman's "O, Captain, My Captain" (about the Lincoln assassination, but often invoked in reference to Kennedy). There's an outrageous version of "All Along the Watchtower" done crooner-style, and Tony Kreutzer sings the Groucho Marx song, "Hello, I Must Be Going." The soundtrack in general is terrific if you're into sixties music--I get chills from the way Gimme Shelter is used in the last episode. The two groups at war with one another are The Fathers, which references both hierarchical religious organization and the older generation on one side of the generation gap, and The Friends, which references the Quakers who are associated with peace, as well as the baby boomer peer group (e.g., Woodstock) on the other side of the gap. In this sense, Wild Palms anticipates the culture wars that continue to plague us today.

A further note, Harry's daughter, Deirdre, nicknamed "Buddha," is a late talker who has not started to speak yet. I understand this to be a metaphor for silence in the face of atrocity, cultural trauma, a bit of Pete Townsend's Tommy. But I can't help but wonder if this character wasn't also inspired by an encounter with autism (as was the case for Townsend). I was surprised to see, when I looked up Angie Dickinson, that her character in Police Woman had an autistic daughter who appeared in a few episodes.

Be that as it may, Wild Palms has the kind of depth to it that makes repeat viewing worthwhile.

God and the Machines

In a recent post on Bob Blechman's blog, entitled Cylon Monotheism: Religion in Battlestar Galactica, Bob makes reference to my own post here on this blog, in which I praise the incorporation of religious themes in the show, specifically making the humans all pagans in the Greco-Roman mode, albeit with a tendency towards secular humanism, while the Cylons, technological creations of the humans who evolved from robots to some form of biotech human enough to breed with us, are portrayed as monotheists, albeit with a tendency towards fanaticism. Bob disagrees, however, with my own positive evaluation:

I concur that Battlestar Galactica is wonderful, both as Sci-Fi and as television drama of any kind. However, I find the Cyclon's religious affectations confusing and troubling within the total context of the show.

As a model media ecologist, Bob raises some very good, thought-provoking questions. as he goes on to write a bit later on:

If, in spite of being created in the image of their creators, Cylons reject polytheism, how did they stumble across monotheism?

In a 1977 Issue of ETC: The Journal of General Semantics, in an article titled "Alphabet, Mother of Invention," Marshall McLuhan and Robert K. Logan speculate on the possible origin of monotheism:

"Western thought patterns are highly abstract, compared with Eastern. There developed in the West, and only in the West, a group of innovations that constitute the basis of Western thought. These include (in addition to the alphabet) codified law, monotheism, abstract science, formal logic, and individualism. All of these innovations, including the alphabet, arose within the very narrow geographic zone between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Aegean Sea, and within the very narrow time frame between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C. We do not consider this to be an accident. While not suggesting a direct causal connection between the alphabet and the other innovations, we would claim, however, that the phonetic alphabet played a particularly dynamic role within this constellation of events and provided the ground or framework for the mutual development of these innovations."

Perhaps Cylons, while surely literate, as robots are not subject to McLuhan's and Logan's media assertions. One could argue that Battlestar Galactica is not media ecological at all, and therefore need not adhere to the tenants of ME. The humans of BG can develop an advanced civilization without the benefit of alphabetic literacy, or, if their alphabet is phonetic, they can retain their polytheism in spite of it.

Religious robots, while intriguing, remain a problem, especially self-ordained monotheistic robots. I believe that the depiction of Cylons as monotheistic in the absence of human mortality or alphabetic literacy can only be seen as a true leap of faith on the part of Battlestar Galactica's creators.

Now, I admit that the fact that I am intrigued by all this and moved to write about it brands me as an irredeemable geek. So be it!

Bob raises the question of whether Battlestar Galactica is media ecological or not. The temptation, as a fan, a fan of anything, is to defend the program and provide rationales, rationalizations, logical explanations, for all of its inconsistencies and inaccuracies. That's what fans do to shore up the universe that they we want to believe in (this bears more than a passing resemblance to the ways in which followers in any given religion seek to interpret their sacred texts in order to maintain the plausibility of their belief system). But I'm not interested in doing that. Frankly, it seems to me that most science fiction film and TV is more about presenting an engaging narrative (or more often, an engaging set of visual effects) than it is about producing a credible scenario based on scientific extrapolation and/or speculation (SF writing is quite different from the audiovisual forms, however).

And even when they do a good job on the science and technology side of things, the creators seem to know next to nothing about the field of communication, and invariably get things wrong, or simply fail to imagine what nonhuman communication might be like. Typically, the aliens are less alien in their communication than members of oral cultures can be. Then you have something like Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the concept of meaning in communication seems to totally escape him, along with the distinction between the signifier and signified. I remember when the film came out, back when I was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and one of my Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers came back after seeing it, and was marveling at the possibilities of universal communication through music that the film seemed to present. I tried to explain that it didn't matter if the symbol was speech or music, because it would still have to mean something. I didn't get through to him, however, no doubt due to his inebriated state of mind.

Even Star Trek: The Next Generation fell prey to this. I recall an episode that involved contact with a race that the Federation had been unable to establish communication with in all previous attempts, despite the best efforts of both sides, as the alien speech was translatable (through the "universal translator"), but just didn't make sense. Captain Picard finally figured out that the aliens speak in references to stories, i.e., myths, legends, and the like, so that to indicate that I'm in trouble I might say the equivalent of "Daniel in the lion's den." Certainly an original idea, but it makes no sense, because they could not communicate in narrative unless they had grammar and vocabulary, which presupposes the possibility of making novel statements without referring to some story which could only have been communicated through grammar and vocabulary in the first place.

So, it would not surprise me if Battlestar Galactica messed up in trying to conceive of alien communication. Except that the series makes no attempt to do so. The humans all seem to speak English (what a throwback to the good old days of SF!), as do the Cylons. Whereas the Star Trek franchise did make the commendable effort to develop alien languages, notably Klingon, along Sapir-Whorfian (therefore media ecological) lines (as a warrior race, the Klingon language relies on the imperative form of verbs much more than we do, and their imperative forms are much more developed and complex than ours), and Star Wars introduced the amusing technique of using subtitles with alien speech (back in 1977 when it was first seen in the theaters, everyone laughed out loud when they saw it), Battlestar Galactica does not seem to be very interested in languages. In contrast, J. R. R. Tolkien began by creating fictional languages, and based on his "Elf Latin" he created the myths and legends of Middle Earth (I wrote a paper on this once, and it was supposed to be published in an online proceedings, but that never got organized, so maybe I'll post it here, if there's sufficient reader interest--ha ha).

Battlestar Galactica is interested in visual symbols, however, which fits in with the visualism of Greek culture (as opposed to the oralism of Hebraic heritage, a point central to Walter Ong's work, as Tom Farrell explains in the first major book-length examination of Ong's scholarship, Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, and also see An Ong Reader: Challanges for Further Inquiry). And there is some evidence of something along the lines of runes or hieroglyphics as they encounter ancient religious artifacts, I believe (but to be honest I was not paying much attention to these things, so I would have to look at the episodes again to be certain).

But to get back to Bob's post, he essentially raises the question, do they have alphabetic literacy on Battlestar Galactica? The answer appears to be yes. I just took a quick look at the program's website and checked some of the images in the Gallery, just to confirm that the writing "Battlestar Galactica" can be found on insignia on uniforms and mugs, and of course it's also written on the ship itself. Given that the humans are Greco-Roman in their orientation, it is not surprising that they would used the Roman alphabet that we all use, but it's also part of the program's conceit that these humans from a distant part of space are essentially the same as us in the way they speak, dress, behave, etc. And if the humans have alphabetic literacy, it follows that the Cylons, who were created by the humans to serve them, and who are superior to the humans in just about every way, would also have alphabetic literacy.

Now, we can turn to the media ecological thesis that monotheism is a by-product of alphabetic literacy. Bob cites a seminal article by Marshall McLuhan and Bob Logan, published in the general semantics journal Etc. back when Neil Postman was the editor. After McLuhan passed away, Logan went on to write an entire book, now in a revised edition, entitled The Alphabet Effect: A Media Ecology Understanding of the Making of Western Civilization, and one of the early chapters is devoted to the argument that Moses and monotheism, not to mention The Law, was an effect of the Semitic alphabet, aka aleph-bet. Another book that carries the thesis into controversial new areas is Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (a similar argument about the alphabet bringing about the end of goddess worship was made by Joseph Ashcroft in his doctoral dissertation completed in the old media ecology program at New York University). But the argument that the alphabet led to monotheism was first put forth, I believe, by Harold Innis in Empire and Communications (and see also Innis's The Bias of Communication).

So, from a media ecological point of view, monotheism is all but inconceivable without writing, and appears to be specifically linked to the alphabet. Does this mean that cultures with alphabetic literacy necessarily move from polytheism to monotheism, however? Here, I think the answer is no. As Lynn White, Jr. says of technology in Medieval Technology and Social Change, an innovation opens a door, it does not command. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans developed monotheism on their own, however much they eventually accepted the idea as it spread from the Jews to Gentiles via Christianity. For that matter, while the Semitic alphabet made its way to India in antiquity, where it led to the invention of the number zero and positional notation in mathematics, it did not lead to monotheism per se. What does seem to occur, however, is a tendency towards more abstract notions of the divine, so that the literate elite in ancient Greece and Rome rejected the mythic narratives and personalization of the gods (criticizing Homer), and turned toward a form of religious worship that acknowledged "the gods" as a higher power, and along the way reduced the number of deities, and even moved Olympus from a mountain top to the more distant sky. Hinduism also moved towards more abstract conceptions of the gods, to the extent that they could be seen as manifestations of one divine force. And of course Buddhism is so abstract that there is no god in a personal sense. Along the same lines, in the west the abstraction of monotheism eventually leads to deism, and finally to abstracting God out of existence with atheism.

So, it would be conceivable for the humans on Battlestar Galactica to have alphabetic literacy, but never arrive at pure monotheism. Alternately, it would not contradict anything in the narrative to date if it were the case that they had developed monotheism, but rejected it, much as, for example, in the New Age movement we find people raised as monotheists who have turned to neo-paganism. Battlestar Galactica's scenario indicates that the humans that populated the 12 colonies (whose names correspond to zodiac signs) split from those of us on the 13th colony of Earth some time in the distant past. If the split came during antiquity, before monotheism caught on beyond the confines of ancient Israel and Judah, and the Greco-Romans who split had no further contact with Judaic culture, it would be conceivable that they might never invent or adopt monotheism, and just continue to move towards a more abstract polytheism that eventually yields to secular humanism. This possibility is reminiscent of a Star Trek episode (original series) with the absurd scenario of a planet somehow populated by aliens who are more or less human and followed a similar course of history, except the Roman Empire remained pagan and persisted into their equivalent of 20th century Earth; at the end of the episode, Captain Kirk and company realize that references to "sun" worship were actually about worshiping "the Son," implying that Christianity had just been introduced.

Now for the big question that Bob raised: How could it be that the Cylons are monotheists when the humans that created them are not? Since the Cylons do have alphabetic literacy, they therefore have the necessary prerequisite for monotheism. One possibility is that the humans developed monotheism, but it never caught on among them, and instead was adopted by the Cylons. This would follow the pattern of Christianity originating with the Jews, who largely rejected the new religion, and likewise Buddhism originating with the Indians, who mostly remained Hindus or became Muslims. The alternate possibility is that the Cylons developed monotheism on their own. As they have the alphabet, and appear to be quite capable of independent thought and novel ideas, this certainly seems within the realm of possibility. And this would be, in my opinion, the more interesting scenario.

But what troubles Bob is the idea of religious robots. Now, holding aside the question of whether it was the older, robotic Cylons who embraced religion, or the newer, organic models, Bob wonders whether it makes sense that a robotic religion would emerge if the Cylons cannot die, but rather simply have their consciousness transferred as long as there is a resurrection ship or facilities within range. And he is right in making the point that one of the important functions of religion is to help us to come to terms with our own mortality (see Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, which I brought up in a previous post). But however much the Cylons have extended their lifespans by decreasingly the likelihood of imminent demise, they would have to be aware of the possibility of true death should they find themselves out of range of resurrection, or should the technology fail (and media ecologists know that nothing is foolproof and fail safe), and anyway sooner or later entropy will catch up with them and they will die along with the universe. So they still must live with the knowledge that eventually their consciousness will be extinguished, and perhaps the need to deny death may be all the more greater when they are so much closer to immortality than we are? But, apart from this issue, there is the question of whether death is the only reason for religious belief? In the absence of death, might a race of beings turn to religion for other reasons, say to provide a sense of the meaning of life, to provide guidance on how to live their lives, to establish a sense of justice and morality, or simply to provide legitimacy for their social arrangements and actions?

Another possibility I haven't mentioned is the possibility of divine revelation, that God actually exists and revealed Himself to the Cylons. Within Battlestar Galactica this possibility seems to be inconsistent with the fact that the Cylons have committed genocide against the human race. But I don't think there's anything in particular that that the program shows us that actually indicates that the Cylons are deluded fanatics--that is, the program presents the Cylons' beliefs in a neutral manner, and it's only our own incredulity that keeps us from entertaining the possibility that they really are on a mission from God (remember Sodom and Gomorrah?).

Certainly, there is nothing new about violence being committed in God's name, so I think viewers can recognize in the Cylons something very familiar. The obvious connection is to Islamic terrorists, and more broadly to religious fanatics of all stripes and colors, but all major religions, I believe, have taken up the sword at one time or another in their histories, in order to wipe out the infidel. Nor is there anything about alphabetic literacy that is inimicable to violence. McLuhan often stressed the militancy of the alphabet, given its bias towards homogenization. The alphabet was a great technology for military organization. Before the alphabet, battle was basically a matter of running amok and trying to kill as many of the others as possible--that was the way the Trojan War was fought. Jump ahead a few centuries after the introduction of the alphabet, to the era depicted in the recent film 300, and order and discipline, modeled after the alphabet, becomes the rule, one that was intensified by Alexander the Great, and even more so by the Romans--it was all about holding a line (like the written word), uniformity in forming a shield war and phalanx, etc. For more on this, see McLuhan's follow-up to his bestselling The Medium is the Massage, his War and Peace In the Global Village.

Which brings me to a point of great significance for our discussion, the myth of the origin of the Greek alphabet, which McLuhan discusses in both The Gutenberg Galaxy (and see my previous post on Gutenberg!) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. According to Greek myth, the alphabet was introduced by Cadmus, who was a Phoenecian, in fact the son of the king of Phoenecia. This acknowledges the Semitic origin of the alphabet, and it follows that the Semites of Phoenecia, traders who sailed all around the Mediterranean, would be the source of the alphabet's dissemination to Greece. The Greeks called it the Phoenecian alphabet, from which is derived the term phonetic. Cadmus was told by the oracle at Delphi to found a town, which became the city of Thebes. Before doing so, however, he was forced to slay a dragon, and then, following Athena's instructions, sowed the dragon's teeth, from which sprung up a race of men called Spartes (Greek for "sown"). All of them were armed for battle and savage, and Cadmus tricked them into fighting among themselves until only five were left, the ancestors of the five noble families of Thebes, who took Cadmus as their king.

McLuhan felt there was an important insight in this myth, relating to the association between the alphabet and the military. The significance of the teeth is that they occur naturally in a line, looking relatively identical, and therefore are the body's analogues to the letters of the alphabet (alphabet as extension of the teeth); teeth also have much to do with the consonants of the alphabet, as the action of tongue in relation to teeth results in different sounds (e.g., "s" and "t"). Of course, teeth are sharp, they are natural weapons, and again they resemble an army of men, at least an orderly one of the sort made possible by the alphabet.

So, do you see where I'm going with this? The Cylons are Battlestar Galactica's very own Spartoi, they are the new beings sown from the dragon's teeth, they have a Phoenician/Semitic link (again the most obvious connection being to fanatical Arab Islamic terrorists, and note also the Semitic sounding music during the opening credits, as well as the similarly styled rendition of "All Along the Watchtower," which only the final four newly discovered Cylons could hear, in the season finale).

Do I have to spell it out? It's not a question of whether the Cylons have the alphabet, or alphabetic literacy. The Cylons are the alphabet sprung to life, they are what you reap when you sow the dragon's teeth. They are the alphabet as it evolves into the printing press, and mechanization takes command, giving rise to mass production, the multiple, identical copies that, ultimately, are written in the letters D-N-A, so send in the clones. As letters on a page, the Cylons naturally worship a divine Author-ity. Looking at it from this angle, Battlestar Galactica is very media ecological.

A few further thoughts come to mind, however anticlimactic they may be.

A descendant of Cadmus, King Laius of Thebes, was the father of Oedipus. And the Cylons are trying to fulfill an Oedipal fantasy by killing their collective father, the humans, and marrying their mother Earth. Is Battlestar Galactica a Greek tragedy? It certainly has many of those elements.

But at its conception, it was more of a Biblical narrative, of wandering in the desert, of revelation at Mount Sinai, and eventual arrival in the promised land. A perfect theme for this time year! Could it then be that the Cylons have more in common with angels than with demons, being nearly immortal, superior in power, more certain about God, interested in breeding with humans (as angels were early in Genesis), great and terrible (let us not forget the angel of death who slew the Egyptians' first born)? Can anything less than an act of God then save the remnants of humanity? Will the Cylons turn out to be fallen angels? Will a savior arise?

Well, the hour is growing late, and tomorrow The Sopranos are back on, introducing a very different set of issues, so the Cylons will just have to wait.