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Modern Culture: Battlestar Galactica at the UN
Image credit: Annalee_NewitzLast week saw some of the cast and crew from the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica (BSG) taking up the United Nations on an offer to discuss liberty and security issues in a discussion panel, sharing space with top mandarins from the UN.
A first of it’s kind, the UN recognised the impact that forward thinking TV shows like BSG have had on an international audience that have a thirst to engage with the complex issues at the heart of our struggles in balancing liberty with security when at war (in this case with the Cylons). As a method of resistance, they used suicide bombers. To get information, they tortured Cylons. When they suspected treason, they turned on each other and tossed traitors out the ship’s airlock. They constantly struggled to balance human rights with the precarious security of the fleet, which started out with around 50,000 survivors but lost thousands along the way.
The panel, which included executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick and stars Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos as well as four U.N. officials including Robert Orr, an anti-terrorism expert and the U.N.’s Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Planning Craig Mokhiber, deputy director of the New York office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Famatta Rose Osode, from the Permanent Mission of Liberia to the UN was organized by the UN as part of a new effort to link the organization’s concerns to the creative community. In the audience were fans of the show, network executives, members of the media and more than 100 high school students, who were there representing Think Quest NYC, an educational outreach project.
The real question that comes to mind is why hasn’t something like this happened in the UK and if not, why? Various cultural forms have always checked power and raised public awareness in the past, but what is left of this critical engagement through creative industries in the UK, if any? Must we once again turn to America for guidance or has the creative British response to these issues been a lot more subtle and delicate, laced with irony? Has anyone noticed?
A sample of the panel event is presented below, and for the full 2 hour streaming webcast click on this link http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/specialevents/2009/se090317pm.rm
Sources:
Maureen Ryan
UN News Center
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Having recently finished a masters degree in international public policy from UCL I can be found as serving editor of The Exchange, amongst other things, while not otherwise engaging in a mean dish of pumpkin and bree lasagna with the odd helping of Carcassonne on the side.
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