Here we go again - Homosexuality in Caprica

Television, Movies Games and Books Caprica
#1

I watched the latest episode of Caprica last night and I’d like to share some of my thoughts about the portrayal of homosexuality in Caprica.

Some things that I thought were positive about it:

[ul]
[li]Sexuality is incidental
[/li][li]Gay marriage is both legally and socially approved
[/li][li]The emphasis seems to be less on the sexuality and more on how the characters interact
[/li][li]Like BSG, Caprica is a world where sexuality is not shunned as a bad thing.
[/li][/ul]

Some of the things that I didn’t like:

[ul]
[li]All of the LGBT characters are at least morally questionable
[/li][li]At least one of them could be considered a villain
[/li][li]Both are not perturbed by the thought of murder
[/li][li]One of them is in fact an actual murderer
[/li][li]The bisexual woman (Athenian Academy lady) is polygamist: this is not exactly a condemnatino of polygamy but I think it was created to push our buttons
[/li][li]The bi woman seems to be a drug addict
[/li][/ul]

Now, I understand that RDM has a penchant for morally ambiguous characters – and that makes his shows very awesome, but I can’t help feeling like the characters have had their sexuality tacked onto as a little gimmick, something to make it interesting to the audience, one way or another.

In BSG I think a lot of us ended up empathizing a lot with Gaius Baltar – a man who was responsible for the deaths of billions. I guess what I’m getting at is that a character can still be interesting and not two-dimensionally evil even when they commit atrocities (which is true in real life). But why, oh why, do the gay characters always have to have so many faults? These are not, you understand, the regular trappings of the human condition. One of them is most definitely a murderer! I won’t go so far as to say this is a negative view of homosexuality as I don’t think that there was conscious maliciousness on the part of anybody involved, but it really just highlights the fact that science fiction has yet to produce gay characters who could be seen as the hero. They’re either ancillary, or they’re evil.

I understand that Caprica is trying to faithfully illustrate real people in these situations, and that obviously none of these characters are downright evil, but come on. Can’t we have at least one homosexual engaged in legal activities here?

Please tell me what you think about this. I’m curious to see how other people took it.

#2

It’s kinda frustrating, the same thing happened in BSG (to my recollection) with the commander of the Pegasus. There’s nothing wrong with a gay villain, but do ALL non-hetero characters need to be ‘bad guys’?

I’d like to see more polygamist characters in Science Fiction, good and bad. SciFi has traditionally been a societal sand box that discusses and demonstrates different concepts a little bit before society itself is ready for it. Some of the examples of pretty obvious, like the half white/half black face guys in TOS’s Let That Be Your Last Battlefield and the Uhura/Kirk kiss, some of it is more subtle.

Poly is a concept that’s ripe for depiction because it’s a rapidly emerging phenomena in our culture in various forms. This means opportunities for good stories and could really serve a positive function in terms of making it less ‘shocking’.

#3

And, well, we don’t know that either of those characters won’t turn out to be the heroes in a season or two.

#4

But I want an Oompa-Loompa nooooooow!

#5

Well, there is the ‘villain’ part…

But yeah, BSG handled that whole thing badly. Literally as an afterthought.

#6

Polygamy is a hard sell because it is often linked to thea buses it has been associated with over time. I mean, I can only think of one show that has polygamy, and that’s the show’s raison d’etre.

I must not be paying very close attention to Caprica. There are several scenes in the second episode I didn’t recall seeing, and I didn’t realize anyone was gay or lesbian.

#7

Shoot, I’ve never heard of poly abuses. I’ve heard of plenty of religious sexual abuses, however, in cults/religions/etc that happen to also practice non-monogamy.

Yet another reason to incorporate polyamory/gamy into SF, so the two need not be ‘linked at the hip’, as it were.

#8

I dont have much of an issue with how they are treating homosexuality in BSG, and Im gay myself. I actually find it humorous the brother in the mafia is gay, and the story he told Willy while they were walkin around Little Tauron made me laugh.
As for the polygamist, that was just bizarre. Not in the sense that I find it bizarre that they would have it as such, but how there wasnt just multiple wives, but multiple husbands as well. But maybe that and the whole drug use is part of the Soldiers of One belief system. Polygamy and hallucinogenic drugs are part of various faiths at different times in history…
Honestly, Id rather have interesting gay characters than a bland goodie-two-shoes gay character, and thats what Im getting so Im happy.

#9

Multiple wives and husbands isn’t a shocking new concept, Heinlein’s “line marriages” in his later books (Friday presents the best descriptions) work like that. They’re marriages that last potentially hundreds of years, with the people involved changing out as they die off/are added in/etc. It’s a pretty neat idea.

#10

I like how Caprica deals with it better than the way BSG did - we got Cain and Gina’s relationship at the start of S4, and then the lovely Gaeta/Hoshi bit in the final webisodes - not that it needed to be central to the story but one would expect them to be treated in the course of the main story, right? Just like all the hetero sexuality we saw? But that’s going over old ground.

I can’t quite figure out what’s up with the poly family - are they all onetruegod people? What’s actually up with our Sister lady person? I hope that’s explained a bit more clearly in the coming episodes.

I have to agree with Chicken Pie Cylon, I really liked how they introduced Sam’s sexuality - it just was, as natural as Joseph being interested in the girls. That’s a nice change from the way we see a lot of non-heterosexual practices portrayed in pop culture. That said, I wonder where they’re going with Sam as a character…

#11

I have to admit, I didn’t even notice there were gay characters. I read SeraphX’s post and was like, “Huh? Wow, I totally missed that.”

#12

That’s what I’m here for :smiley:

According to Jane Espenson Sam Adama is married to another man – and that everyone’s fine with that. To be fair, he only mentions his homosexuality once, “I was always trying to cruise the hot guys and your father would always get the sister” or something like that.

Clarice, the Sister at the Academy didn’t have anything totally explicit besides having wives. Which, if we take that literally, is plenty explicit. You can find the interview with Espenson here

#13

I read a really great interview with Sasha Roiz, the actor who plays Sam Adama. It talks about the character’s motivations, his relationships with Joseph, Bill/Willie (I just can’t think of him as that), and his husband, Larry. Apparently Sam and Larry are the one happy, functioning relationship in the series, from the sound of it :stuck_out_tongue: I look forward to seeing it progress, since last week’s ep made me absolutely love Sam.

Interview is here, for the curious. I guess I should warn for some minor spoilers? Maybe?

#14

Not to derail the thread here, but…

Sam is married to Larry?!??!?!?!??!??!??!?!

#15

I read that as Larry the Cylon at first:

#16

I’m glad I’m not the only one!

#17

I actually like Sam as a character. But it just feels weird to me that we have yet another murderous LGBT character in sci-fi. From what I remember, GLAAD gave Sci-Fi ( I refuse to say SyFy) a failing grade when it comes to representing LGBT folk on their network. I’d like to think that RDM and his awesome hair are better than to consciously belittle LGBT characters. As far as it goes, I don’t believe that. I just wish we had more, well, heroic LGBT characters.

But it’s worth waiting out for. The man Sam killed was a douche and who knows why he was killed? At any rate, it will be a strand in the series that I will be paying a lot of attention to. If I see anything else, whether positive or negative, I’ll post it here for everyone to mull over.

#18

Yea i am on the I completely on the I missed the homosexuality train. Well out side of the Poly lifestyle. But I would wait to completely decry it as we have only seen two episodes. The Gaeta/Hoshi romance was between two fairly strong characters. And in the end it would appear that Gaeta was on the wrong side i personally believe he was right in his actions. And Hoshi was always a good dude. So i hope that things will eventually work out and we will hopefully get strong positive homosexual characters

#19

This is an interesting topic—as is the whole subject of homosexuality depicted in Sci Fi.

I agree with Pike, BSG totally introduced gay characters as an afterthought. To have it clear that the BSG universe had unisex bathrooms and complete gender equality while at the same time not having open same-sex relationships depicted as accepted and ordinary—just very inconsistent.

The fact that a major character --Sam Adama—is gay on Caprica is clearly progress. But I’d say it’s too soon to tell if Caprica follow thru on it right. I mean, if he’s just the “token gay” then that’s a missed opportunity.

It’s really pretty outrageous that there’s been no main characters in U.S. Sci Fi TV that were gay. I’ve been watching Torchwood lately, they’ve broken that barrier (although maybe to an extreme degree cuz EVERY almost character in Torchwood appears to be bi-sexual.)
There was discussion on the forum a while back about the curious lack of gay characters in Star Trek. I’m of course, a HUGE Star Trek, and not being gay myself it never occured to me before that in ALL the TV serieses of Star Trek and all the movies, not a one single gay character? Sci fi in general and Star Trek in particular are supposed to be about looking at things in different ways and accept other ideas. So it’s particularly shameful I think that its so behind the times. Who is blame? The Studio execs? The sensors? The audience? The writers? Who knows.

There’s some fan made Star Trek out there, including Star Trek: New Voyages (also called Star Trek Phase II) that’s pretty good.
And not long ago I saw one of their most recent episodes called “Blood & Fire”. I was so proud that they finally broke the barrier. In that episode, a fairly major character : Kirks nephew is not only gay, but has a romantic relationship with a fellow crewmember, and it’s not just a side plot but central to the plot.
It’s funny, when Kirk finds out that his nephew wants to marry his partner, Kirk is shocked, not because his nephew is gay, but because he has a hard time adjusting to the idea that his nephew is in love and ready to marry.

Anyway, I’m hopefull that Caprica will be rich in providing ways to look at our society in different ways.

#20

Blood & Fire was written by David Gerrold (author of ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’ and then many many great books and stories) who later went on to be part of the TNG crew in the first year. He helped define what TNG was, but one of his disappointments in the experience was something that happened on that series.

Roddenberry had announced that TNG would incorporate discussion of sexual orientation into the show, so DG wrote an episode that featured a homosexual couple. The episode was re-written to remove this, and subsequent conversations on the subject were basically quashed. He ended up finally leaving the series, and I think this experience was a big part of that because of how it was handled.

So we could have potentially gotten this milestone out of the way 20+ years ago, but… alas.