XPost: rec.sport.pro-wrestling   
   From: BillV2320@webtv.net   
      
   Starbuck: Lost in Castration   
   Once upon a time, in what used to be a far away land called Hollywood   
   but is now a state of mind and everywhere, a young actor was handed a   
   script and asked to bring to life a character called Starbuck. I am that   
   actor. The script was called Battlestar Galactica.   
   Fortunately I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands   
   strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead imaginations   
   of a lot of Network Executives. Every character trait I struggled to   
   give him was met with vigourous resistance. A charming womaniser? The   
   "Suits" (Network Executives) hated it. A cigar (fumerello) smoker? The   
   Suits hated it. A reluctant hero who found humour in the bleakest of   
   situations? The Suits hated it. All this negative feedback convinced me   
   I was on the right track.   
   Starbuck was meant to be a loveable rogue. It was best for the show,   
   best for the character and the best that I could do. The Suits didn't   
   think so. "One more cigar and he's fired,"they told Glen Larson, the   
   creator of the show. "We want Starbuck to appeal to the female audience   
   for crying out loud!" You see, the Suits knew women were turned off by   
   men who smoked cigars. Especially young men. (How they "knew" this was   
   never revealed.) And they didn't stop there. "If Dirk doesn't quit   
   playing every scene with a girl like he wants to get her in bed, he's   
   fired!" This was, well, it was blatant heterosexuality. Treating women   
   like "sex objects". I thought it was flirting. Never mind. They wouldn't   
   have it.   
   I wouldn't have it any other way, or rather Starbuck wouldn't. So we   
   persevered, Starbuck and I. The show, as the saying goes, went on and   
   the rest is history — for, lo and behold, women from all over the   
   world sent me boxes of cigars, phone numbers, dinner requests, marriage   
   proposals... The Suits were not impressed. They would have there way,   
   which is what Suits do best, and after one season of puffing and   
   flirting and gambling, Starbuck, that loveable scoundrel, was indeed   
   fired. Which is to say Battlestar Galactica was cancelled. Starbuck   
   however, would not stay cancelled, but simply morphed into another   
   flirting, cigar-smoking, blatant heterosexual called Faceman Another   
   show, another set of Suits and, of course, if the A-Team movie rumours   
   prove correct, another remake.   
   There was a time — I know I was there — when men were men, women   
   were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of   
   feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been   
   won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once   
   flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone   
   is more lonely and miserable as a result.   
   Witness the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica. It's bleak, miserable,   
   despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects, in   
   microcosm, the complete change in the politics and mores of today's   
   world as opposed to the world of yesterday. The world of Lorne Greene   
   (Adama) and Fred Astaire (Starbuck's Poppa), and Dirk Benedict   
   (Starbuck). I would guess Lorne is glad he's in that Big Bonanza in the   
   sky and well out of it. Starbuck, alas, has not been so lucky. He's not   
   been left to pass quietly into that trivial world of cancelled TV   
   characters.   
   "Re-imagining", they call it. "un-imagining" is more accurate. To take   
   what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a   
   television show based on hope, spiritual faith, and family is unimagined   
   and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family   
   dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which   
   we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are   
   justified in their desire to destroy our civilisation. One would assume.   
   Indeed, let us not say who are he guys and who are the bad. That is   
   being "judgemental". And that kind of (simplistic) thinking went out   
   with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Katharine Hepburn and John   
   Wayne and, well the original Battlestar Galactica.   
   In the bleak and miserable, "re-imagined" world of Battlestar Galactica,   
   things are never that simple. Maybe the Cylons are not evil and alien   
   but in fact enlightened and evolved? Let us not judge them so harshly.   
   Maybe it is they who deserve to live and Adama, and his human ilk who   
   deserves to die? And what a way to go! For the re- imagined terrorists   
   (Cylons) are not mechanical robots void of soul, of sexuality, but   
   rather humanoid six-foot-tall former lingerie models who f**k you to   
   death. (Poor old Starbuck, you were imagined to early. Think of the fun   
   you could have had `fighting´ with these thong-clad aliens! In the   
   spirit of such soft-core sci-fi porn I think a more re-imaginative title   
   would have been F**cked by A Cylon. (Apologies to Touched by An Angel.)   
   One thing is certain. In the new un-imagined, re-imagined world of   
   Battlestar Galactica everything is female driven. The male characters,   
   from Adama on down, are confused, weak, and wracked with indecision   
   while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing   
   cigars (gasp) and not about to take it any more.   
   One can quickly surmise what a problem the original Starbuck created for   
   the re-imaginators. Starbuck was all charm and humour and flirting   
   without an angry bone in his womanising body. Yes, he was definitely   
   `female driven´, but not in the politically correct ways of   
   Re-imagined Television. What to do, wondered the Re-imaginators? Keep   
   him as he was, with a twinkle in his eye, a stogie in his mouth, a girl   
   in every galaxy? This could not be. He would stick out like, well like a   
   jock strap in a drawer of thongs. Starbuck refused to be re-imagined. It   
   became the Great Dilemma. How to have your Starbuck and delete him too?   
   The best minds in the world of un-imagination doubled their intake of   
   Double Soy Lattes as they gathered in their smoke-free offices to curse   
   the day this chauvinistic Viper Pilot was allowed to be. But never under   
   estimate the power of the un-imaginative mind when it encounters an   
   obstacle (character) it subconsciously loathes. "Re- inspiration"   
   struck. Starbuck would go the way of most men in today's society.   
   Starbuck would become "Stardoe". What the Suits of yesteryear had been   
   incapable of doing to Starbuck 25 years ago was accomplished quicker   
   than you can say orchiectomy. Much quicker. As in, "Frak! Gonads Gone!"   
   And the word went out to all the Suits in all the smoke-free offices   
   throughout the land of Un- imagination, "Starbuck is dead. Long live   
   Stardoe!"   
   I'm not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same   
   way it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it "resonates"   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)