In last Friday's episode of Battlestar Galactic ("The Hub"), Gaius Baltar, the human collaborator who helped the Cylons to destroy human society, theorized that he is the embodiment of the wrath of God:
"Pythia talks about a flood that wiped out most of humanity. Nobody blames the flood. A flood is a force of nature. Through the flood, mankind is rejuvenated, born again. I was another flood, you see. I blamed myself. I blamed myself. But God made the man that made that choice. God made us all perfect. And in that thought, all my guilt flies away, flies away like a bird."
It's another step in the Baltar's intriguing, responsibility-denying journey. He loses his guilt not when he feels forgiveness, but when he feels lack of agency. And yet he still wants to claim credit for the perceived positive effects of his evil actions. It's this sort of philosophical wishiwashiness that makes him such an effective villain—we don't just hate him for helping commit genocide; we hate him for his bizarre mixture of denying and embracing that act. His theology has become an elaborate rationalization; he wouldn't believe in God's wrath if he didn't create the situation that required that kind of explanation.
This is a good analysis of his self-justifying. But it doesn't make me hate him - it makes me love him. While I agree taht he should take more responbility, I think there's something so human about what he does. Who could stand all that guilt without any self-justification? If you carried a "dark, heavy, unimaginable, soul-breaking guilt", would you not justify a little bit at least?
Posted by: Deniselle | July 24, 2008 at 08:31 PM
Oh, absolutely-- and there's no doubt that he's my favorite character on the show. (Well, maybe Adama beats him. Maybe.) But the justification is part of what makes him a great villain-- the best villains are the sympathetic ones. Khan is a great example-- if Kirk put me through all that I would hate him too.
Posted by: Gabriel Mckee | July 24, 2008 at 08:45 PM