Saturday, January 23, 2010

Caprica and America's Culturally Blank Children


The above is an ad for the new show on Syfy called Caprica, as you can tell. My dad was looking forward to it all week (it was on last night), and talking about the ad. When showing it to my sister (who is 13), he remarked on the apple and asked her if she knew what it symbolized and what it was a reference to.

My Sister: Umm, OH, TWILIGHT!
Me: That's pathetic.
Her: What?
Dad: (laughs)
Me: How could you not know what the apple represents?
Her: Ummm, Snow White?
Me: NO!
Dad: (laughs)
Me: Have you ever heard of this book called the Bible, (insert her name here, but she has requested that I don't mention it)?
Dad: Snow White was a fair guess.
Me: No it wasn't! Oh, come on, (name), Twilight? Are you serious?
Dad: (laughs)
Dad: Adam and Eve. Temptation. It represents a choice.
Me: Well, I suppose Twilight is about a choice too, but still.
Her: Oh.

I might have been a bit hard on my sister, but really. What have we come to that people see the apple and think Twilight? The apple in Twilight was chosen as a reference to the story of the Fall. a might equal b, but b equals c, so let's follow it through to the natural conclusion that a=c. Transitive Property of equality (and I'm reviewing for math next semester [not really]).

Summary of the Episode: SPOILERS

Caprica itself was really cool. It's a spin-off from Battlestar Galactica (which I have never seen, but it sounds cool). It begins with a subtitle "58 years before the Fall." Cut to a virtual night-club. These were invented so teens can go and do stuff without suffering any consequences in the real world. It is entered through a Holo-Band. The three real people in the night clun, Zoe, Lacey, and Ben, are part of a secret terrorist organization of a monotheistic religion (they decline to tell us which one, but it could be any monotheistic religion. That's not the point. The point is that they're radicals because the rest of the worlds (yes, there are several) are all polytheistic). Zoe & Ben blow up a train while Lacey bails out. Zoe's dad, working on androids for the military, enters the nightclub and finds a version of Zoe living inside. Zoe created her and had been trying to get her into the real world. Zoe's dad begins working with the father of a girl who had been on the train to get the virtual version of Zoe into the robot body.
Tangent:

Something I thought was funny: Zoe's parents are yelling at her because she's never had to work for anything, always has stuff handed to her, has no idea what it is like to "build something".... and she says to her mother "I guess I'll just have to learn how to marry into money then."

End of tangent.

He also tries to create a virtual version of the other guy's daughter, but that doesn't work very well. Zoe did/knew something that he didn't. Her virtual self feels real, while the other girl knows she's fake and can't feel her heart beating. Zoe's digital self gets transfered into the robot. She's really pissed because she didn't want to leave the virtual world in the first place, and she definitely didn't want to be a robot. According to my dad, who has watched Battlestar Galatctica, her rebellious nature will cause the robots to rebel and form the Silon, which are apparently important in Battlestar.

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