"No Exit"--last night's BSG episode title
Feb. 14th, 2009 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tzikehDetailed explanation of the meaning of the title under the cut.
No Exit, or Huis Clos, is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, who is probably the most famous of the modern Existentialists. The parallels between the play itself and last night's story on the Cylon basestar are numerous. I'll try to encapsulate the plot, and several important moments that resonate in BSG here. ("Huis clos" doesn't translate exactly to "no exit". It's much more like "closed in," but "no exit" makes for a better title of a play. )
The most famous line of dialog from the play: "Hell is other people."
The plot of No Exit is as follows. A Valet brings a man into a room. The man, Garcin, knows that he is dead, and that this room, which he can never leave, is his place in Hell. He asks the Valet what is outside of the room, and the Valet answers that basically, they are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Garcin makes a point of telling the Valet that he hates sleeping, and is glad to discover that one never sleeps in Hell, though he also admits that without sleep, one lives life without a moment's break, and that if he can no longer sleep, and is damned for all eternity, he will have to suffer *his own presence* for all eternity. And the lights can never be turned off. (Welcome to The Jean-Paul Sartre Show! If you wish to dig your own eyeballs out, we have rusty sporks in the lobby.)
The Valet next brings in Inès. She assumes Garcin is to be her torturer. He explains that no, he's just damned too. They immediately begin to get on one another's nerves. Like you do. Next the Valet brings in Estelle, who is blonde, bitchy, entitled, and an adulterer. Everyone gets on everyone's nerves. Like you do. Inès says, more than once that she is trapped between Garcin and Estelle, the two dominant personalities--she refers to herself several times as weaker than the two of them, and does not know which one will hurt her worse.
So we have Garcin=Cavil, Inès=Boomer, Estelle=Ellen, and Valet=Centurion.
At one point, Garcin starts pounding on the door, demanding to be set free. Astoundingly, the door opens. They all stand frozen, because the mystery of what is out there, in that maze of twisty passages, could be far far worse than what they have in their tiny torture chamber. No one goes through the door. Eventually, through their confrontations, all of their sins are revealed, and we discover why each of them is in Hell. The three of them, trapped in the same room for eternity, unable to escape via sleep (no beds, only sofas; no sleep ever again), unable to block one another out (if they try to press fingers into their ears, they hear one another in their brains--even thoughts). The Valet has left a paper-knife in the room; it is the only weapon. Eventually, Estelle stabs Inès, who laughs at her. Inès takes the knife and stabs herself multiple times, laughing all the while. "What are you doing? I'm dead! It has all happened before."
They know now that there is no official torturer coming: they are all one another's torturers, and have been placed together forever precisely because of who they are. Hell is other people.
There's dialog about unending cycles, and it all being one huge plan, and... there's a shitload more from the play that is undercurrent to the scenes on the basestar, but I'd be writing this out all day. But my (and many, many others') theory about Battlestar is that this time around is about *breaking* the cycle of destruction and damnation--and Boomer and Ellen go through the door after all.
And just for fun: The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 10:29 pm (UTC)I'm so grateful to you for posting this! You had referenced it earlier, in one of our LJ conversations, and I was going to have to confess that I've never read this particular play and could you please explain your reference to me? But now you've written this up!
Interesting take.
I'm going to rewatch the ep and see if I like it better (as of now, I'm still thinking too much talky, too much 'tell' and not enough 'show' - I'm not displeased with the plot points, only in the way they were presented to us)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 10:47 pm (UTC)But okay, it's done, we now have info we can parse through, and I'm betting Ishay made sure Sam was a vegetable, when he otherwise might have recovered.
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Date: 2009-02-15 02:41 am (UTC)explaining the entire backstory to ustalking, almost as if he had a premonition that surgery wouldn't be entirely successful.no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-14 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 12:34 am (UTC)(love the icon!)
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Date: 2009-02-15 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 06:45 am (UTC)Thank you SO MUCH for pointing this out. I've only read No Exit in my language, and to this day, when I hear the title in English, I just don't associate it with Sartre; it's made too powerful an imprint all those years ago with different-sounding words.
(OT: I was re-reading R.U.R. last fall and simply couldn't stop thinking about BSG. Damn, I LOVE this show.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 06:49 am (UTC)Have you read Sometimes a Great Notion, from which the BSG writers took the title, and the theme, for the 4.5 premiere? If you think No Exit was on the mark thematically, you gotta check out the Kesey novel. It's nice to know the writing staff is made up of people who read books and shit.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-15 10:39 am (UTC)I've put Sometimes a Great Notion on my reading list, thanks; I've only read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by him.
um, er...
Date: 2009-02-15 06:51 am (UTC)Re: um, er...
Date: 2009-02-15 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-16 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 01:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 06:39 am (UTC)