God, Man, and Battlestar Galactica

The original series unashamedly pinched imagery, and technical design, from Star Wars

Audiences old and geeky enough to remember the original Battlestar Galactica from 1978, or its frequent syndicated re-airings throughout the 1980s, must’ve shared my astonishment by one element of the 2003 remake. Though the core premise survived the 25-year hibernation, I admit being shocked when the title warship leapt beyond the confines of known space to discover a universe filled with… nothing. This marked reversal signifies profoundly altered expectations about humanity’s place in the universe.

When the Galactica and its dirt-streaked flotilla ventured into space in 1978, it encountered worlds brimming with life. Nearly every storyline (there were seventeen stories across twenty-four episodes) featured an encounter with some new alien species. These included a Vegas planet, a medieval planet, and a Cold War planet with a population driving pickup trucks. The revived series, by contrast, features encounters with no life more advanced than trees. This re-envisioned universe is functionally unorganized.

Dr. Robert L. Strain, writing in Perlich and Whitt, attributes this reversal to an abandonment of “the American frontier myth.” There’s something to this: American science fiction has always had an element of Manifest Destiny embedded within it, an enduring desire to strike up trade where civilization exists and, where it doesn’t, to establish colonies. Though writers like Asimov and le Guin have vocally rejected American exceptionalism, they’ve tacitly redistributed that triumphalism onto humans in general.

But that doesn’t really explain BSG’s transformation. Both in its original incarnation and the reboot, Galactica’s fleet never establishes new colonies; it merely hopes to rediscover that one distant outpost forgotten my mapmakers. Even in the original, the Galactica never particularly wanted to conquer indigenous peoples or resettle their homelands. Indeed, they minimized contact with alien races wherever possible. Dr Strain’s frontier metaphor only stretches so far. Both shows actually represent a different operant myth.

The reversal, rather, represents changing expectations about reality itself. Original showrunner Glen A. Larson conceived a universe enjoying sufficient widespread organization to create, not only life, but intelligence. Self-observant wisdom, in Larson’s vision, is this universe’s norm. The revived universe is chaotic, random, and human intelligence is the exception. Structure is something humans create, not something we take for granted. Larson’s universe is planned; the revived universe is flukish. Only the humans themselves remain constant.

The revived series had an ultimately semi-hopeful conclusion,
but only after showing us a sterile, industrial-shaded universe first

It’s tempting to attribute the difference to God—as we would from early revived episodes. Larson, a devout Mormon, considered a benign God and a life-filled universe, both precepts of LDS doctrine, so self-obvious that he could assume his audience shared that supposition. At various points, space gurus lecture characters on transcendent topics blending Mormon dogma with post-Beatles “Eastern” mysticism. Larson produced to entertain a spiritually hungry America, which took God’s pervasive existence for granted.

The 2003 relaunch couldn’t assume such. Though the pilot miniseries mentions priests and religious order, and early episodes feature religious visions, they’re made ambiguous at best. Is President Roslin actually having visions, or merely drug hallucinations? Is Baltar wrestling an angel like Jacob, or does he have a microchip implanted inside his skull? But considering how the relaunched series resolved these questions theistically, the debate is functionally only contrived. The reboot ultimately accepts God too.

Our reversal, then, isn’t whether God exists; it’s whether God can be taken for granted. A theistic universe, in Larson’s telling, makes a decent launching point for science fiction adventure, and a spiritual thread ties everything together. Twenty-five years later, God’s existence, and a purpose-driven universe, makes the show’s ultimate conclusion. God, gods, or godlessness feud throughout the series, culminating ultimately in more questions than answers. The conclusion seems finally theistic, but actually resolves little.

Note that, at the resolution, Adama keeps narrating events to Roslin’s grave. Like Richard Feynman, Adama rejects theism, but cannot accept that his beloved no longer exists. He represents contemporary America, where “No Religion” has become the second-largest religious identification. Like the “Spiritual but Not Religious” crowd, Adama cannot believe beyond his senses, but cannot abandon structure either. Stranded between belief and nihilism, he finally embraces neither, an ever-shifting chameleon, much like the audience ourselves.

We might observe, cynically, that neither BSG universe is truly atheistic. Writers impose “theological” decisions upon events, a reality that bothers postmodern critics like Roland Barthes. But even that addresses our issues: the universe we observe is never random, but filtered through our perception. Theistic or non-theistic explanations never describe what really happens, but rather our ability to see it; therefore the debate cannot resolve. Our place in the debate matters more than its resolution.

How Prince's Music Changed America

Like Michael Jackson before him, the public outpouring of emotion this week at musician Prince’s passing has provoked discontinuous reactions. People too young to have experienced him the first time are posting Facebook and Twitter images of his peak in the late 1980s, when his innovative fusion sound dominated multiple charts. But they aren’t celebrating him as he was when he died. They’re celebrating the Platonic Ideal of Prince.

Hardly a wonder, either: though he briefly creased the Top Twenty with 1997’s “The Holy River,” he hasn’t produced an out-and-out chart hit in a quarter century. Unlike David Bowie, who persevered through a decade-long illness to produce two of his best albums, Prince largely avoided the limelight, even forcibly removing videos from YouTube. Recent footage reveals he remained a consummate musician, but his best work was long behind him.

Yet people respect his accomplishments, because they are undeniably accomplishments. His CV reads like inevitable hero-worship, even from lukewarm audiences: an unusually wide vocal range, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, comfortable with both the technocratic studio environment and the human-dominated stage. Like Bowie, he had no difficulty mixing his flamboyant, sexually omnivorous public persona with his lifelong spiritual quest. As a musician and celebrity, he had something to offer everyone.

But for me, his songwriting looms largest, primarily because of its disdain for limits. In a music business heavily chopped by categories, Prince’s a sound combined multimodal guitar playing, Dylan-esque lyrical complexity, a prominent dance backbeat, and the best mix of rock and funk ensemble playing. Like Sly Stone, his band was integrated. And like Hendrix or Jackie Wilson, he drew large white and black audiences despite music’s historically segregated demographic.

Like those prior artists, Prince showed no restrictions in his embrace of musical influence. He played American, European, and International chord progressions with equal ease. If some technique from country music, show tunes, or advertising jingles piqued his fancy, he incorporated it. But he never felt like someone merely imitating somebody else; his skillful integration of influences made every artistic appropriation feel wholly, inevitably, like Prince.

This inclusiveness seems obvious now. We applaud politely whenever, say, Selena Gomez uses a tabla and sitar to supplant a traditional Western rhythm section on some overproduced single, calling her “eclectic” and “international.” A duet between country ensemble Florida Georgia Line and hip-hop eminence Nelly produces a crossover hit that unites audiences who often cannot stand one another. Cross-genre fertilization happens so often, we forget how revolutionary it once was.

Worse, we accept this efflorescence only in approved ways. Nelly and FGL managed to produce a chart hit by combining America’s two top-selling genres; neither ventured into truly uncharted territory. Top-40 radio has become so risk-averse that tracks cross over from the indie, dance, and “Heatseekers” charts over a year after release, because corporate program directors won’t gamble on anything that isn’t thoroughly test-marketed in advance.

And the business is deeply technocratic in ways invisible to consumers. As Charles Duhigg reports in his book The Power of Habit, the music industry is dominated by focus groups, analytic software, and substitutes for individual initiative. Even Pandora, the most common way people who dislike radio discover new hits, doesn’t really introduce new artistry: Pandora’s algorithm is so strict, fans discover new artists but not new sounds.

Thus it’s easy to overlook the influence Prince had on the music-listening audience. We could forget the impact he had on a suburban white boy whose parents kept him proactively sheltered from the modern world. Imagine that boy, riding a schoolbus with the radio tuned every day to the Top-40 station, the most studiously inoffensive music available to listeners. Why, to that boy, everyday radio must’ve sounded positively abject.

Now imagine that boy, in 1987, a year dominated by slick, bland, over-loud artists like Starship or Whitesnake. A year when black and white students sat on opposite sides of the schoolbus, not because laws required it, but because they just did. A year when raucous beats, unsupported by lyrics or melody, encouraged boorish behavior among largely unsupervised schoolkids. Suddenly, through all that crap, he hears “Sign ’o’ the Times.”

Prince gave me hope that popular music didn’t have to be a tool of exclusion. He let me believe that one song could reach across racial, economic, and social lines, to make everybody sing along. Because Prince wasn’t ruled by categories, I realized, I didn’t have to be, either. That sounds easy to say now. But Prince proved we could live it, too.

Death of the British Invasion

1001 Albums To Hear Before Your iPod Battery Dies, Part 3
The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle

Official history records that the Zombies released two studio albums in the 1960s, but that’s deceptive. Their first LP, Begin Here (released in America as The Zombies), was a collection of singles, B-sides, demo recordings, and other sundries, compiled largely without the band’s aid. Slovenly management and no label support hobbled their art. By 1968, having released nothing but 45s, the Zombies were on the edge of dissolution.

The Zombies’ principal songwriters, keyboardist Rod Argent and bassist Chris White, composed their band’s first dedicated LP, Odessey and Oracle, secure in the knowledge that the band would shatter before the album’s release. The title’s spelling supposedly reflects a cover artist painter who didn’t check the paperwork before painting. The album debuted to indifferent reviews. Then the third and final single, “Time Of the Season,” became a world-dominating phenomenon.

Recorded at legendary Abbey Road Studios, just after The Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper, this album definitely shows the Fab Four’s influences. But from the opening strains of “Care Of Cell 44,”, a letter from a man awaiting his lover’s anticipated release from prison, it’s clear the Zombies aren’t merely beholden to the Beatles’ influence. They’re creating something unique to themselves, possibly years ahead of the late British Invasion around them.

Without doubt, the Zombies were better technical musicians than the Beatles. A graduate of a cathedral music school, Argent in particular was capable of syncopated rhythms, difficult chord progressions, and offbeat time signatures that eluded Lennon and McCartney. Their baroque arrangements, now classic rock radio staples, went substantially unappreciated in their time. But they use them to maximum effect on this album.

But they weren’t just musically advanced. This album’s lyrical content took pre-Woodstock audiences completely by surprise. “Cell 44,” the album’s first single, mixes remarkably dark themes with hippie-era musical bounce, playing the irony for all it’s worth. The second single, “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914),” combines images from war poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen into a bleak portrait of war’s innate horrors, predating most American Vietnam-era protest songs.

The original lineup of the Zombies

Both singles went nowhere, unfortunately. Album cuts like “I Want Her She Wants Me” and “Maybe After He’s Gone,” written in darkly funereal tones, didn’t attract hippie-era attention. And while occasional critics appreciated “A Rose For Emily,” based on the Faulkner story of the same title, and “Beechwood Park,” a masterwork of nostalgia, audiences in 1968 were unprepared for anything so dark. The stark, visionary musicianship went largely unheralded.

Only when “Time Of the Season” upended everything did the Zombies begin receiving the recognition they deserved. By then, however, it was too late. Broke and riven with managerial problems, the band splintered; most members left music, at least temporarily. Though unscrupulous promoters floated several fake Zombies lineups, the original band didn’t perform these songs live until 1990—and the survivors didn’t tour America with this music until 2015.

The dark themes, allusive lyrics, and musical sophistication probably didn’t suit their time. Despite Argent’s inarguably Sixties organ work, this album frequently has a sound more akin to 1973. The 1960s were substantially divided between the Beatles’ optimism, leading to an acrimonious breakup, and the Stones’ sullen teenage posturing, which has remained lucrative for over fifty years. The Sixties weren’t prepared for the Zombies’ subtle musicianship, or their lyrical ambiguity.

No songs on this album runs very long. The longest, “Cell 44,” approaches four minutes, and “Time Of the Season” hits three-and-a-half, but by contrast, these feel almost marathon-length. Few tracks exceed three minutes. Even with surprising time signature changes on tracks like “Brief Candles,” or the subtextual wrath of “Friends of Mine,” the sound sometimes feels circumscribed by the limits of a vinyl 45, probably imposed by the label.

Perhaps that says something there. Despite hip contemporary complaints about industrial interference in artistic integrity, recording has always been a struggle between music as art, and music as business. The Zombies shattered, not as some have claimed, because of artistic differences, but because management was indifferent to their vision. The Zombies has profound musical potential, but didn’t follow the pulse of their time very well.

Since its release, Odessey and Oracle has achieved cult status, mainly by word of mouth. Unlike most LPs of its generation, it remains available in its entirety, without being chopped into “Greatest Hits” confetti. Anyone listening, expecting happy hippie-era escapism, will find it as jarring as it must have seemed in 1968. For an oldie, this album maintains its harsh edge. Nearly fifty years later, it still bites.

Is Led Zeppelin Threatening Creativity?

Randy California (top left) and Spirit

The concept of ownership in America has officially become untenable. The case of Michael Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, alleging the famous British blues-rock band plagiarized the iconic opening measures of “Stairway to Heaven,” demonstrates how narrowly restrictive intellectual property law has become. It transforms one of rock music’s most famous compositions into a ripoff of a frankly boring and forgettable deep-album cut. But it does much worse.

Skidmore, representing the estate of prog-rock semi-luminary Randy California, purports that Jimmy Page, who almost certainly knew California’s work—Zeppelin opened for California’s band Spirit on a 1968 US tour—recycled Spirit’s instrumental “Taurus” into the opening bars of “Stairway.” Skidmore calls “Taurus” an “ethereal yet classical guitar composition.” Most music lovers who’ve heard the actual track would probably call it “boring.”

The case, filed nearly two years ago but approaching trial now, has merit. Skidmore makes a persuasive case that Page knew Spirit’s music. Anyone hearing “Taurus” without being warned might believe, for eight or ten seconds, that they were hearing “Stairway to Heaven.” Skidmore’s thirty-five-page complaint certainly has a prima facie case. The question becomes, is that very brief similarity legally actionable? And if so, does it have wider implications?

The similarities, though brief, are undeniable. Music critic Alex Ross, who understands these things better than me, argues that the similarities are superficial. But to the untrained ear, the similarities are audible. The difference is that Spirit circles that one motif for two-and-a-half minutes, and simply peters out. Zeppelin, by contrast, uses that brief motif as foundation, launches from there, and never stops building. Zeppelin clearly composed the better song.

Jimmy Page (with guitar) and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin

Intellectual property in music has become hot property lately. Classic twang-rocker Tom Petty now partly owns Sam Smith’s snoozy Top-40 hit “Stay With Me,” because it supposedly resembles Petty’s “Won’t Back Down.” Millions of dollars ride on the case of whether Robin Thicke’s track “Blurred Lines” ripped off Marvin Gaye, or merely composed an homage. In both cases, similarities to the original tracks are less distinct than the Zeppelin case.

Both cases seem really weird to interested amateurs. “Stay With Me” has a similar backbeat to “Won’t Back Down,” but the two songs resemble one another less than Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Dani California” resembles Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”—a comparison Petty has reputedly laughed off. The Peppers even unabashedly pinched Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” chord progression for “Dani Califonia’s” final instrumental breakdown. But the Peppers aren’t in court.

And similar backbeat isn’t enough to base a plagiarism case. That isn’t me saying it; John Fogerty, in 1988, took his guitar into the witness box to prove similar backbeats don’t mean he plagiarized his composition “Run Through the Jungle,” which he doesn’t own, in writing “The Old Man Down the Road,” which he does. Courts sided with Fogerty. The Fogerty precedent should apply to Sam Smith, and musicians generally.

Basically, under current US copyright law and the Berne Convention, the similarity between “Taurus” and “Stairway” is too brief for sustainable legal action. But even worse, this case, even more than the “Stay With Me” case, has chilling implications for creativity. If even small, transitory similarities constitute theft, if pinching three bars from another composer equals plagiarism, most artists, not just musicians, are culpable for at least occasional theft.

John Fogerty, who was accused
of plagiarizing himself

Bob Dylan’s classic album Highway 61 Revisited includes long passages deliberately reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg. Dylan couldn’t claim ignorance; he’d appeared onscreen with the poet in his “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video. Andy Warhol regularly reproduced, not just mimicked, classic artists and graphic designers, some still living then. My first published poem, “I Do Not Love You,” was written in imitation of June Jordan—not advertised as such, but present nonetheless.

Clearly plagiarism does exist. Michael Bolton lightly tinkered with the Isley Brothers track “Love Is a Wonderful Thing,” slapped his own name on it, and made millions before getting caught. But even that brings issues: the Bolton case began within one year of the single’s release. Zeppelin is defending itself forty-five years after “Stairway’s” release, and nearly twenty years after Randy California’s death. The long delay seems specious at best.

If this case succeeds, it will have chilling effects on artistic creativity. If one composer can claim absolute ownership over three measures of music, ideas cannot flow. Artists depend on exchange to create new works; Randy California’s composition borrows liberally from Palestrina and Bach. Copyright law was written to protect intact or significantly-intact works, not fragments. Cases like this could literally kill art.


See Also: Copy This Copyright Rant

Fear of a Bionic Planet

Boston Dynamics' first high-profile walking robot shuffled like a newborn colt

Whenever Boston Dynamics (a former Google subsidiary) releases videos of its newest robotic accomplishments, most internet fans feel compelled to comment on how humans treat the robots. Every video demonstrates the robots’ ability to compensate for adverse conditions by having employees trip, kick, or bludgeon the robots with instruments. The robots always obligingly stay upright… and cue the predictable “robot uprising” jokes.

Not my friend Jay. Among America’s last die-hard pinkos, Jay sees these robots as the apotheosis of his longed-for workers’ utopia. “Everyone will be unemployed in 20 years,” he boasts. “Even professions such as surgeon and medical doctors are going to be automated.” Where this ex academic considers this a dangerous precedent, Jay applauds the possibilities: “With this technology we can build a luxurious socialist economy where no one has to work.”

Though I don’t disagree with Jay’s reasoning, I’d question whether this is reasonable, or even possible. I base my doubts on two basic questions: How have such prophecies unfolded in the past? And, would most people consider this development desirable? I have simple answers for both: “poorly,” and “no.” Given recent advances in technology, and general resentment of work, these opinions may seem counterintuitive. So let me defend my positions.

First, the prophecies. Clear back in 1997, Utne Reader featured a series of articles, dominating an entire issue, on how society’s ever-accelerating pace was detrimentally affecting Americans broadly. In one sidebar (apparently not archived online), the editors included several now-obsolete predictions about how speeding technology would transform the future. With both computers in the 1960s and automation in the 1930s, futurists proclaimed the imminent demise of work.

By their second high-profile model, Boston Dynamics made their robots trot like harness ponies

They didn’t mean just a little bit, either. These futurists predicted that humans broadly would struggle to find anything with which to occupy the now-abundant time. Around the same time, without apparent irony, David Brin wrote something similar about near-future prospects in Popular Science. These predictions make having time to burn feel, as Jay says, “luxurious.” This overlooks that we have names for unemployed people trying to burn off excess time: addicts.

So, our predicted coming leisure time keeps never happening, big deal. We need only succeed once and we’re all golden, right? Maybe, but I’d dispute that. While having abundant free time sounds wonderful, anybody who’s taken a long weekend to run naked through sun-dappled fields of daffodils knows how quickly the bliss peters out. Before long, you find yourself melancholy, studying anthills, wondering whether it’s time to return to work yet.

Catholic economist John Médaille notes that most people, confronted with self-directed time, spend it doing stuff that, if they received pay for it, we’d call “work.” Woodworking, knitting, community theatre, writing a blog… some people consider these paying careers. Others do them for fun. The only leisure-time activities that don’t resemble work are those which involve dissipating your time away, like watching television or getting drunk.

Socialist writer Barbara Garson admits she began her discursion on hierarchical employment, All the Livelong Day, assuming, as socialists do, that capitalism forces work upon unwilling workers. (Writing, in her mind, wasn’t really “work.”) However, she discovered that people want work, they seek it, and when profit-first employers strip work of meaning, workers try to infuse meaning back in. Work, she realized, isn’t a burden, but a shared human desire.

Boston Dynamics' latest piece of self-promotion walks bipedally, handles rough terrain,
and picks itself up when this bearded turkey shoves it with a log

Many sociologists define humans distinct from other animals by three traits: forming relationships, cooking food, and working. As Jesus said, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field neither labor nor toil. Christian scholars often take work as an emblem of Original Sin, following the Genesis account; but other faiths share the belief. Consider the Buddhist maxim: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Even scientists and non-religious persons recognize the centrality of work. Psychologists speak of the existential malaise humans suffer when lacking meaningful work, and the documented psychological consequences of long-term unemployment strikingly resemble PTSD suffered by ex-soldiers and rape survivors. And Jay would redistribute this meaning-making activity onto robots. But why? Work isn’t something to offload onto others. Work gives our lives meaning.

Turning our responsibilities over to robots sounds empowering. Isaac Asimov, wounded by the irrationality of World War II, proposed the same over sixty years ago. But as advances in technology prove overwhelmingly banal, and advances in psychology demonstrate humans crave work, that attitude seems naïve now. Robots may redefine what work means for coming generations. But work should not, arguably must not, ever completely go away.