| dc.description.abstract | In 2003, Battlestar Galactica (BSG) was re-invented from its 1978 roots and
updated to a post-apocalyptic narrative that reflects numerous issues in current American
culture, including the influence of religious rhetoric in post-9/11 politics. As theorized by
psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the fictions of a culture reveal the subconscious values and beliefs
of that culture, 1 and BSG has proven fertile ground for such investigations. Four major
compilations of critical essays on BSG have been published to date, with some articles
analyzing the post-9/11 politics and others on the use of religion in the narrative, but few
examine these elements in conjunction with each other or how the characters use them.
This combination of political and religious rhetoric is especially important in how BSG
cultivates multiple messianic characters to drive its narrative and resolve complex issues
for its characters - yet the published scholarship remains silent on this.
For a single narrative to contain multiple messianic characters is a rare
phenomenon, for as mythologist Joseph Campbell observes, such salvation figures operate
on global and cosmic scales. 2 Yet BSG transforms the characters of Laura Roslin and Gaius
Baltar into a space-age Moses and Christ, respectively, and more importantly it makes their
tag-team messiahships a necessity for the narrative. In creating this messianic multiplicity,
BSG suggests that a single individual cannot address all of the needs of a desperate people
- a messiah can function either in the political realm ( serving as an agent of physical salvation) or on a spiritual level (delivering emotional redemption), but not both. Much of
this messianic dualism emerges in the characters' rhetorical strategies - relying on classical
Aristotelian forms vs. Judeo-Christian sermonic oratory, how they address underlying
needs to appeal to the people, and in the ultimate 'scope' of their messianic influence on
their societal and cultural history. Their messianic transformations and the mythic nature of
the BSG narrative itself take a modem twist on Jungian archetypes and Campbellian
universals, and thus guided by the same theorists that influenced their construction, I
analyze the messiahships of Laura Roslin and Gaius Baltar through their use of political
and religious rhetoric, how that rhetoric transforms them and their followers, and what this
unique storytelling reveals about post-9/11 American perspectives. | en_US |
