![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bardic_ladyCompetitive versus Caring
The first category on McNair’s list is competitive versus caring, competitive being the masculine trait and caring the feminine. It is clear throughout AOC that Starbuck cares about the respect of Commander Adama and her relationship with him. She is willing to take on a job that reminds her of the death of her fiancé, an event for which she feels responsible, in order to keep Adama’s respect and goodwill, proving that she puts his commands above her own comfort. Despite this evidence of her caring, Starbuck is still primarily a competitive character. In BD, when Adama prepares to send a strike team in to rescue a group of hostages, Starbuck fights to be allowed to lead the team. Her argument centres on her status as the best shot left in humanity. She zealously guards that status, as well as being the best pilot in the Fleet, channeling her anger and fear into honing her skills.
One of the reasons that these binaries are evident is the society in which they exist. Because modern western society views men through one lens and women through another, any contrast between any man and woman is seen as absolute truth for all members of each gender. Sherrie Inness describes the problem using the characters of Dana Scully, of The X-Files, and Clarice Starling, of Silence of the Lambs, as examples of women in a male-dominated field.
“Depicting Scully and Starling in all-male environments tends to highlight their toughness; they can compete with the boys. At the same time, however, they are seen as exceptional women; thus, their toughness is understood not to be a common trait of women” (Inness 97). The environment aboard Galactica is very different. There are a number of other tough fighting women constantly present on the show, so the divide between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ characteristics is not as broad. There are at least three other prominent female pilots in season one and more are added later in the series. All three are shown to be competitive and tough and none are treated as if this behavior is abnormal. Boomer, a raptor pilot, is shown playing in the same card games as Starbuck. Though her killer instinct is not the same, she is a tough and determined woman. One of Starbuck’s recruits, Louanne “Kat” Katraine, is shown quickly rising through the ranks of the nugget class, easily becoming the dominant and best pilot in her flight group and continuing to push for better and better assignments. By FAB, she is already leading a squad of the Combat Action Patrol (CAP), as evidenced when Adama relays instructions directly to her. Though Lt. Margaret “Racetrack” Edmondson only appears in the final two episodes of season one, she is immediately established as a tough no-nonsense character who is more than capable of fulfilling her duties. Outside of the pilot wing, Sgt. Hadrian, a Marine who acts as Master-at-Arms of Galactica. She acts as chief investigator of weapons related mishaps on the ship and, as such, is designated the task of discovering how a Cylon saboteur succeeded in a suicide bombing on a military vessel. (Litmus) The tribunal she convenes is harsh and brutally honest, landing a young deckhand in the brig when he is caught in a lie, though he clearly has nothing to do with the attack. Because of these examples of tough, competitive women who stand shoulder to shoulder with Starbuck, it is harder to see her as exceptional in that respect. The trait is obviously not limited to men in this universe, so there is no reason to view Starbuck as masculine because she happens to possess it.
Rational versus Emotional
According to McNair, being on the competitive side of the binary makes Starbuck a masculine character; however, in the very next category, she places on the feminine side. McNair splits the genders between masculine rationality and feminine emotion. Though her rationality is on display in HOG, when she plots out the strategy that defeats the Cylons, her emotions often get the best of her. In the Miniseries, her anger causes her to lash out physically at a superior officer, earning her a stint in the brig. It is Colonel Tigh who flips the card table over first. If Starbuck was able to maintain her rationality, he would be entirely to blame for the situation and she would be able to walk away. Instead, he makes a gesture that might be interpreted as threatening and she hits him. Because his gesture wasn’t specifically directed at her, there were others at the Triad table, her decision to strike him counts as the first blow, making her completely culpable and earning her jail time.
Historical narrative stories suggest that a woman with access to weaponry will abuse the power as soon as it is available, likely due to her unfamiliarity with the sphere of violence and her ‘naturally’ more emotional and addictive nature.
“the image of a violent woman brings additional social fears to the forefront… the underlying fear of a lawless, unconstrained, uncontrolled woman…Apparent in the concept of the monster woman is the idea that the violence the female monster embodies is lacking in thought, rational motivation, or principle” (Ng 111).
Starbuck is often chaotic, her personality guarantees that she walks the line between rules and breaking them, but most of her actual violence is thoughtful. Being a sniper requires precision and thought, as well as the patience she never displays in her personal life. Her motivation in all of her military related violence is very clear, to defend her friends and her people. From the Cylons’ first appearance in the Miniseries, they make it extremely clear that they have no qualms about killing humans, in fact, their stated mission is to exterminate all human beings. The obvious response to this kind of genocidal attack is to meet it with violence and Starbuck is a weapon loaded and aimed at the Cylon forces.
It is good for the forces of humanity that they have Starbuck on their side, as being her enemy is a certain ticket to devastation. However, this attribute can be disconcerting to a modern audience. “The tough woman is disturbing to her audience because she often acts or shows the potential to act on her aggressive emotions. She is also alluring, however, because she embodies women’s desire for power, self-sufficiency, and autonomy” (Inness 24). There is no doubt that, despite her sometimes unstable self-control, Starbuck has all three. In terms of societal power, Starbuck is established in BD as the next in line to be Commander of the Air Group (CAG). That status as second-in-command of the pilot wing of the military makes her essentially the fourth in command of Galactica and therefore of the entire human military. In AOC, she acts as flight instructor and tells her students that “Pilots call me Starbuck, you may refer to me as God” (AOC). The power she wields is significant, especially in a world where the entirety of humanity is on the run from a much more powerful force. In a world spun out of control, any power any person can use becomes that much more valuable. Her self-sufficiency is unquestionable. She survives alone on an oxygen-less desert moon and creates her own mode of escape with no help from anyone else. Her status as secondary CAG also implies a degree of autonomy. She is able to give her own orders, implement her own strategies. Her autonomy is particularly evident in BD where she commands a strike team of Marines on a rescue mission. She determines the strategy once they have entered the hostile ship. She fulfills all the categories Inness outlines as women’s desires, establishing herself as an exemplary pattern of womanhood.
Aggressive versus Gentle
In all the remaining categories on the chart, Starbuck registers as strongly masculine. Between aggressive and gentle, she is clearly aggressive. She starts fights and gets into people’s faces, as she does in AOC when she begins pilot training with the new recruits. One of the recruits is talking to another while Starbuck is speaking and she moves away from the podium and leans down, putting her face about seven to ten centimeters, to deliver a scathing reprimand. Her willingness to get into another individual’s personal space is a sign of aggressive behavior which, when added to her previously noted tendency towards physical violence, clearly shows her to be an aggressive and therefore, according McNair’s chart, masculine individual.
In common modern parlance, a woman who exhibits numerous masculine characteristics is described as butch. Though the term originally only referred to a masculine style of dress, it has been adapted to incorporate ‘masculine’ behaviors on the part of a woman. Though in terms of dress Xena is the opposite of Starbuck, wearing a short skirt and armor which accentuates her female figure, the characters share aggressive tendencies which are generally considered butch. “Xena evidences far more butchness in behavior. Unashamedly violent, displaying anger without hesitation and often gleefully, and uncomfortable with verbal or physical displays of emotional closeness or weakness, Xena’s actions and attitudes typify the hypermasculine hero” (Helford 149). Starbuck is in no way ashamed of her violent tendencies. In the Miniseries, when Tigh has flipped over the table, it takes her less than a second of reaction time to decide to strike him and execute her attack. She has to be physically restrained to keep her from continuing her attack. In AOC, when her class of nuggets fails at their first attempt at Viper flight, her tirade to them demonstrates a degree of glee in her anger. She doesn’t simply yell or repeat the same complaint over and over, she is precise and varied in her insults, suggesting that she derives some sort of enjoyment for having exactly the right terms to shred the object of her wrath. Starbuck’s discomfort with closeness is mostly visible in her body language and quickness to disengage when put into a position where emotions might be shown. In the Mini, when she has believed that Apollo has been killed and then he shows up alive, her first response is stunned delight, which leads to the pair standing, hands clasped. There is a moment where it almost seems like one of them will admit to being pleased to see the other and then she clears her throat and pulls away before the situation can get too emotionally deep. All these behaviors are coded masculine, even hypermasculine, yet they are exhibited by a woman without apology or any hint that she finds it unusual to be this way. Perhaps even more telling, none of the people around her find it odd.
Xena is not the only warrior woman before Starbuck to display traits that read to the modern audience as aggressively masculine. “She [Ivanova] shows many characteristics typically associated with men… She is a hard drinker…, enjoys a bar brawl using fists and bottles, and threatens all and sundry regardless of rank with everything from physical violence to cunning practical jokes” (Ney 227-8). Starbuck starts drinking upon her second appearance in the Miniseries and continues to do so throughout the series. She seems to drink anything put in front of her, though she is most often seen drinking something that resembles a scotch on the rocks. (CD) She is never drunk in the first season, that is left to Tigh, but her choice of liquor again clearly marks her as unfeminine in the eye of a modern viewer. Women are typically expected to drink the lower alcohol content “frilly” drinks, martinis and blended fruit drinks, leaving the straight up hard liquor to the men. As previously mentioned, Starbuck takes part in several fist fights during the first season and she is very competent at taking items in her surroundings, like beer bottles and her cane in CD, and using them to her advantage. As for threats, Starbuck revels in threatening her pilots to keep them in line. When she leads a briefing in BD, she scolds a pilot for consistently bumpy overly fast landings. She makes a reference to his hurry being in order to get back to his bunk and masturbate and insinuates that if he messes up again, she will remove his masturbating hand. Though her threats usually come with a little bit of humor, they are still said with the gusto of one who knows the power she holds as a tough woman in charge.
Female toughness is often modified and contained by the presence of men who are harder and more tough, thereby rendering the tough women weak by comparison. “As often happens in the portrayal of a tough woman, such as Sarah Connor, Kidda’s toughness is modified by the more extreme toughness of a male” (Inness 132). While it is true that tough women are often overshadowed by an even tougher man, in BSG, that is not at all the case. There are no men in the Galactica universe tougher physically and mentally than Starbuck. Commander William Adama is a strong man, but he is also portrayed as sentimental to a degree that weakens his powerful stance. Though the most glaring examples of his sentimentality do not surface until the second and third seasons, in Act of Contrition, he chooses to continue to search for Starbuck despite knowing that her oxygen should have run out and that the search is depleting valuable fuel and equipment reserves that the Fleet will need to survive. This choice, to pursue his dead son’s fiancée to the detriment of the rest of humanity, clearly marks him, according to societal rules about toughness and emotion, as weak. Capt. Lee “Apollo” Adama is emotional from the start. In the miniseries, his attitude is that of a spoiled child, snubbing his father and clinging to his memories of childhood slights. In the next episode, Starbuck herself dresses him down for seeking friendships rather than leading the pilot wing (33). This petulant schoolyard attitude belies his impressive fighter’s physique and places him outside the tough category. Dr. Gaius Baltar is not constructed as tough as all, he is weak, emotional, deceitful, and self-serving. He is personally responsible for the security breach that caused the Cylon Holocaust, but he denies his responsibility and instead accepts favors to preserve his own life (Mini). He is grateful for a Cylon trick that causes 1300 further deaths as it prevents his exposure (33). Colonel Saul Tigh is a drunk and his portrayal begins with his inability to control his emotions, as well as a disdain for his sloppy behavior on-duty (Mini). Chief Galen Tyrol is a more minor character and his arc is primarily defined by his romantic relationship with Boomer and his willingness to lie for her (Water, AOC). Lt. Felix Gaeta is barely on screen, and when he is, he is a console jockey with no opportunity for toughness. Billy Keikeya, the President’s aide, is also a primarily romantic character, young and inexperienced (Mini, BD). The closest to Starbuck in terms of physical toughness is Lt. Karl “Helo” Agathon, who survives after being left alone on Caprica after the nuclear disaster, relying only on his wits and survival instincts. However, as soon as he is reunited with a Sharon Valerii, Helo’s resolve and toughness is consumed with lust turning into love, even after she is revealed to be a Cylon enemy. Through all of this, Starbuck is consistently tough, mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Part III