Battlestar Galactica as Apocalypse

A week has gone by now since the series finale of the SciFi Network’s Battlestar Galactica, an epic television saga that stretched over four years and held my imagination captive, sometimes to the point of obsession.

In the first couple of days after the final episode, I was hesitant to admit even to myself that I felt disappointed. As I thought backwards over the series, I had so many unanswered questions and was frustrated that some things didn’t appear to make much sense, and I worried that what had seemed like one of the most complex and brilliantly thought out television shows of all time (especially during the first two seasons, with competing theologies and prophecies as a major plot element) had been rather carelessly wrapped up.

However, it suddenly occurred to me that when considered as an apocalypse, the finale was infinitely richer and more interesting. Now, what do I mean by that?

In modern English, the word “apocalypse” has come to mean “disaster,” especially relating to a cataclysmic vision of the end of the world. But in its Greek origin, it’s the “vision” that’s the apocalypse, not the disaster; literally, it just means “unveiling” or “revealing” – hence, the ancient literary work originally entitled Apokalypsis in Greek was translated into English as The Book of Revelation. The story told in Revelation is not “the end of all things,” but the passing away of the current state and the transition to a new and better existence; this is an archetypal theme that recurs across time and culture in human history, and can be found even in modern popular culture: classic examples would be Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, as well as Richard Wagner’s four opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, which partly inspired the Tolkien saga. Battlestar Galactica has much in common with all of these stories.

In his preface to The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien was careful to insist that his story was not allegorical, but rather “applicable,” meaning that it was intended to be flexible enough to allow readers to find meaning however the tale resonated for them; hence, at its first publication many thought it was about the rise of Hitler, and in 2001 when Peter Jackson’s films began to come out, some people thought Sauron was Saddam Hussein and others thought he was George W. Bush; other authors have asserted that it’s a highly symbolic Catholic re-telling of John’s Revelation. Wagner’s Ring Cycle has the same advantage: vast tomes have been written discussing the political, economic, psychological, philosophical and autobiographical interpretive possibilities of the work. Viewed this way, the fact that Battlestar Galactica left many questions unanswered enhances the opportunities for finding individual and multiple relevances.

Despite claims to the contrary by many so-called literalists, the Biblical Revelation also (and intentionally) leaves many questions unanswered; though many insist that “the Bible is very clear on [fill in the blank],” even the most casual backward glance across history shows that Revelation, in particular, has been understood many different ways; still, the basic gist (after much chaos, everything turns out for the best) is (almost) universally recognized.

Battlestar Galactica most definitely cannot be said to be “allegorical” to Revelation, but it is so frequently and so overtly referential – episode 4.12 was even called “Revelations” – that parallels are inevitable. There are angels and symbolic beasts and holocausts, plagues and resurrections, even visions of destroyed and rebuilt cities. The show quite literally featured “a new earth” (Rev. 21:1).

Yet it is – ironically – in its eschatology that Battlestar Galactica most closely resembles Revelation. This may sound startlingly odd, given that BSG had no obvious redemptive savior figure or Rome/Beast character and dealt largely with two religious groups at war with each other (the quasi-evangelical monotheistic free-will Cylons vs the polytheistic predestinarian humans, with a smattering of atheists on either side), especially since members of both “sides” end up in the new Eden.

There are no saints in Galactica’s universe, but there aren’t any villains, either. All of the characters have flaws, but none of them can be said to be “bad.” Even the unscrupulous Gaius Baltar, who helped to usher in the initial cataclysm by giving the Cylons access to the security mainframe did so inadvertently; he thought he was doing Number Six a favor and never intended the consequences.

Baltar is a particularly interesting case; in the last two seasons, he was unsubtly depicted as a Christ-like figure, complete with Jesus-y hair, beard and a cult of followers who believed in his teachings. And yet he is clearly not a Jesus stand-in, not least because he doesn’t believe in God; whereas the biblical Jesus sacrificed himself for others, Gaius Baltar is first and foremost about self-preservation. Every choice he makes in the series, and all the consequences that follow, stem from selfishness and cowardice. He is the first to throw principle out the air lock.

This is significant because it underscores the important point that this is not a Christian allegory; if it were, it would alienate many viewers and restrict its applicability. Instead, it uses certain familiar references as a framework on which to hang a larger point, much in the same way that Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen has absolutely nothing at all to do with Nordic religion.

The other major BSG character who serves as a referential Jesus is Kara Thrace, better known as “Starbuck.” She literally dies, is resurrected and leads the people to salvation, though even she does not know it or understand her role. She is, in many ways, the anti-Baltar: though also obviously a flawed and broken person in many respects, she is deeply spiritual and militantly principled, willing to risk everything, her life included, in the pursuit of what she believes to be right; she goes on faith. But Kara Thrace is not a God stand-in, either; she’s a stand-in for us, as is Baltar. In the same way that humans and cylons and Wotan and Alberich and Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are initially held up as opposites but are revealed to have much in common, they represent the inherent complexity of individual identity.

As an allegory Battlestar Galactica would make no sense because there are no direct correlations; yet the series derives many layers of meaning from overt references. Consider that, in their own ways, Starbuck, Baltar, Number Six, Roslin, Apollo and Hera are all referential Jesus figures. (Recall especially the episode where Apollo, the son of the top authority in the fleet (Apollo is also the son of Zeus), is floating in cruciform in a lake, that Roslin is a “dying leader” and Hera is a “miraculous birth” both foretold by prophecy, and that Number Six was given Jesus’ place in the famous “Last Supper” parody photo.)

So what to say about the finale itself? Bearing in mind that things can be referential without being allegorical, ultimately Battlestar Galactica presents us with a hopeful, redemptive vision akin to the 21st chapter of Revelation’s “new Jerusalem.”

Masterfully, BSG viewers were led to assume from the initial miniseries that the saga would end at Earth, and were then flabbergasted to arrive there half-way through the fourth season only to find an uninhabitable post-apocalyptic world. We stood with the characters on what appeared to be the Brooklyn waterfront, gazing at a ruined and deserted Manhattan skyline and wondered, now where?

Like many things in the biblical Revelation, it doesn’t seem to make literal sense that we stood in a nuked-out New York City two-thousand years gone and then a few weeks later arrived at a different place that is explicitly shown to be Earth, but 150,000 years before the present day. But Admiral Adama explains to us, “Earth isn’t a place, it’s an idea.” Similarly, I’m not sure we are meant to believe that the “new Jerusalem” is literally a city that will descend out of the clouds.

The “new earth” isn’t the spiritual end of the road, either. We know this because Anders says farewell to Starbuck with the words, “See you on the other side,” and because Laura Roslin finally dies upon reaching “the promised land.” (See, with “applicability” you can be both Moses and Jesus and simultaneously neither!)

Despite this emotional denouement, the overall mood of the final scenes is hope-filled. As in Revelation, where the tree that spans both banks of the river that flows from the throne of God grows leaves to be used “for the healing of the nations” (22:2), cylon and human have recognized their common origin, put aside the mutual injuries of the past, and committed to a new way of living. They, like the people of Nineveh, discover that prophecy doesn’t mean you throw up your hands and surrender to inevitability, it means that you respond. We are told over and over again in Battlestar Galactica that “all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.” In the final episode, the characters collectively decide to break the cycle, and thus achieve their redemption.

Rescuing Kundry

When we first meet Parsifal, midway through the first act, he is a bumbling ball of ignorance, all id and no superego. When Kundry tells him that his mother has died, he attacks her and tries to choke her. Gurnemanz and the knights pull him off her, and then she brings him a drink of water. “Well done, according to the Grail’s mercy,” declares Gurnemanz. “For evil is ended when it is repaid with goodness.”

Kundry is a wildly misunderstood character. At the top of the second act, the evil sorcerer Klingsor wakes her with an invocation: “Herodias you were, and what else? Gundryggia there, Kundry here!” This is a reference to her many incarnations, one of the strongest Buddhist aspects of the work: karma has condemned her to successive lives in which she must atone for some great sin.

Misinterpretations of Parsifal often begin with this line. Kundry’s original identity was Herodias, wife of King Herod of Judaea, mother of Salome. Alone with Parsifal in Klingsor’s garden, she will confess: “I saw Him…Him! And…I laughed.” That is to say, she observed Christ carrying his cross on the road to Calvary on the day we now call "Good Friday"; she beheld ultimate suffering, and she mocked it. This has unfortunately given rise to the idea that Parsifal is an anti-Semitic work.

The truth is that the historical Herodias was neither religiously nor ethnically Jewish. That is not a recent discovery, and Wagner was almost certainly aware of it. Furthermore, Kundry’s other named incarnation, Gundryggia, is a figure from Nordic legend: an Aryan. Kundry’s sin is not Jewishness, as so many people have assumed Wagner intended. It was her fundamental lack of compassion.

Moreover, Kundry is portrayed by Wagner as a victim of discrimination. The stage directions describe her as a woman with dark eyes, black hair, and a deep red-brown complexion. In act one, the young squires of the Grail deride her behavior, saying she acts like a “wild beast,” and they accuse her of being a heathen sorceress who hates them.

“What harm has she done you?” asks the wise old Gurnemanz. “She has nothing in common with you, yet when help is wanted in danger, her zeal speeds her through the air, and she never looks to you for thanks.”

The Grail Temple is hidden in a magical forest, "where time and space are one," protected by a spell that keeps all who are unworthy from ever finding it. That is how Gurnemanz initially recognizes Parsifal’s potential: only those whom the Grail summons may approach. Significantly, Kundry can come and go from the forest as she pleases. I have never seen anyone else comment on this: it seems the Grail welcomes Kundry, but it is the knights who never extend to her the invitation to visit the temple itself. She is strange, mysterious, unfamiliar, and therefore they are suspicious.

Kundry needs to be loved, to have her humanity valued, and, above all, to be forgiven. It is Parsifal who is eventually able to offer her pardon. Compassion and forgiveness seem like such simple things, but Wagner realized that in fact they are immensely difficult for people. What couldn’t be achieved in this world if we were only willing to forgive each other all transgressions as Christ commands? In this way, when Parsifal calls her “Friend” in the third act, his compassion is more heroic, brave and triumphant than any mortal sacrifice in any other Wagner opera.

On a beautiful Good Friday, when the world is filled with signs of renewal, it is Parsifal who then leads Kundry to the temple for the first time, where she is released from her curse of immortality and sinks lifeless, but transcended and redeemed, to the ground. Parsifal is not an opera about racial or gender exclusion; on the contrary, it is a hymn to inclusion, a command to look beyond people’s superficial traits and embrace their inner human worth.

A vindictive opera? An assassination of basic ethics? Hardly.

The Christianity of Parsifal

Poor Parsifal.

Grossly misunderstood, this opera has inherited a fearsome reputation regarding the composer’s intentions. Nietzsche wrote, “For Parsifal is a work of perfidy, of vindictiveness, of a secret attempt to poison the presuppositions of life – a bad work. I despise everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassination of basic ethics.”

Some have viewed this opera as a paean to Aryan blood-purity, a vulgarly racist work containing a Jewish harlot who seduces Christian heroes, consigned to servitude and absolved of her Jewishness by Christian baptism and then promptly killed off. Others have even tried to argue that the kingdom of the grail is a secret homosexual society, saying that King Amfortas suffers because he dared to sleep with a woman.

Those ideas are at the extreme end of the spectrum, but it is generally acknowledged – wrongly – that Parsifal is a work of Christian propaganda. It’s not a ridiculous conclusion to reach: though Jesus is never mentioned by name, there are countless allusions impossible to miss, and the first and last acts culminate in what certainly looks like a communion ceremony. But as Wagner was not a Christian (see my series from January of this year), it makes about as much sense for him to write an opera for the purpose of proselytizing as it does for the opera world’s most notorious heterosexual philanderer to dedicate his final masterpiece to an idealized all-male gay private club.

Christian imagery abounds in Parsifal, but there are also overt references to pre-Christian paganism and Buddhism; audiences just don’t recognize them. Above all, Parsifal is a philosophical work, fully saturated with a Schopenhauerian outlook on the meaning of life – specifically the denial of the will as path to spiritual transcendence – and Wagner believed that while religions were not literally true, they revealed essential truths about humanity and he viewed religious symbols as valuable tools for use by creative artists.

What most people identify as Parsifal’s “Christianity” is just that: familiar symbols lifted by the composer for the purpose of establishing a framework in which to tell his story. It is also not generally realized that Wagner was fully aware that the Grail itself, so central to the Parsifal plot, is not Christian at all, though it had been co-opted in religious folklore as Christianity spread northward from Rome. Christianity does not believe that the cup from the Last Supper was also used to catch Christ’s blood as it dripped from the cross, and that it survives in a secret location today with the ability to grant the bearer immortality. That is an ancient pagan belief: the Grail was originally a dish or rock with special powers.

Yet Parsifal is a work with a deeply Christian ethos. A running theme in all of Wagner’s operas is “redemption,” but Parsifal has a radically different take on what that means. “Redemption” for Wagner always meant love, often achieved through mortal sacrifice: Senta throws herself into the fjord for the Dutchman, Elisabeth expires on the frozen peak of the Wartburg praying for Tannhäuser’s safe return, and Brünnhilde rides her horse gleefully into Siegfried’s blazing funeral pyre. In Parsifal, redemption is achieved through simple acts of compassion. That is the heart of Parsifal’s meaning, and it is also the heart of Christianity.