Religion Dispatches
As the half-season closes on this sci-fi epic, we take inventory on where the show has gone, and gone wrong. Among the robots, avatars, and people who love them, there are a lot of big ideas, but not enough story.
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Is it the inhumanity of the machines that will prove to be the tragic pivot in this science fiction world, or will it the inhumanity of the humans? Again we find ourselves asking: where does human consciousness begin?
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This week’s episode asks big questions about psychology and religion, and reminds us that a dog is a robot’s best friend.
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Welcome to the first installment of our ongoing coverage of television’s latest contribution to the cultural intersection of science and religion, with bonus themes to include: the body, artificial intelligence, paganism, original sin, immigration, and race. Join Diane Winston, Anthea Butler, Salman Hameed, and Henry Jenkins every week as they delve into deep exegesis of Caprica.
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In the ever more dystopian world of Syfy Channel’s Caprica, teenage girls inhabit robot bodies, or live eternally without bodies at all, human bodies are marked by memories, and all the while there is blood flowing in the virtual streets.
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Tamara, the girl who is dead but doesn’t know it, who exists only within the “magic circle” of a virtual game, takes center stage in this week’s episode, and in our commentary.
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Among other clues to this sci-fi opera, our Caprica watchers took particular note of a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron killer. What can we learn from the possibility that Capricans can be as kitsch-obsessed, cigarette-addicted, and as reckless with civil liberties as earthlings can be?
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More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”
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What does a sci-fi hit have to tell us about ancient Greek theater and today’s electronically-inflected cultural landscape?
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