Redemption, Part I
Jul. 3rd, 2014 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catspawI've newly watched this ep again, and it's reminded me how odd it seems. Specifically Jack's comment, 'Over my rotting corpse'. That seems so out of character, so out of left field, to me it makes me pull up short every time I watch the ep.
So, SG peeps. What's your take on this? I can come up with a couple of reasons why this line might exist at a stretch, but no matter how hard I try to justify it, I always come down to one thing: lazy writing to set up the conflict later in the ep.
Open to any and all interpretations :-)
So, SG peeps. What's your take on this? I can come up with a couple of reasons why this line might exist at a stretch, but no matter how hard I try to justify it, I always come down to one thing: lazy writing to set up the conflict later in the ep.
Open to any and all interpretations :-)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-05 11:42 am (UTC)While that level of anti-Russian sentiment rings odd by the 1990s, it was very common here in the US in the 1950s up through the early 1970s. Jack isn't that much older than I am, but older enough that he would have gotten more of it (frex, he'd clearly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, while I pretty much don't). "Better Dead Than Red." "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Member Of The Communist Party?" Khrushchev shouting "We will bury you!"
No American my age does *not* know how long it would take the ICBMs to make it over the Pole and trip the DEWline, or what Strike Zone they live in (I am proud to say I have always lived in a First Strike Zone...) We did atomic bomb drills in school while I was in first and second grade: my school was near Livermore Labs...
Ah, the joys of the Cold War.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-05 01:46 pm (UTC)We did atomic bomb drills in school while I was in first and second grade
And there's that difference, right there: you got bomb drills, we got 'Protect and Survive', which involved emulsion paint and sheltering under kitchen tables in the absence of a fallout shelter, IIRC.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-06 01:51 am (UTC)Of course, "duck and cover" wouldn't save anybody from an A-bomb. I think the idea was to save us all from flash-blindness and the broken glass of the shockwave (because of course it was a 60s school, and so mostly glass).
So while I'm not entirely sure Jack would hold on to that level of anti-Soviet paranoia that far into his adult life, he would certainly have grown up with that...
Emulsion paint
Date: 2014-07-06 05:12 am (UTC)Latex paint, apparently.
I didn't realise it was called anything different over there, sorry!
Re: Emulsion paint
Date: 2014-07-06 05:18 am (UTC)...is the idea *really* that *paint* is going to save you from atomic radiation...?
Re: Emulsion paint
Date: 2014-07-06 03:04 pm (UTC)But of course! :-D And if I need to Yankify something...? *g*
I think the paint might have been equivalent to the 'cover' part of Duck and Cover. i.e. to save your eyes from the flash. But the idea that given, what, 30 minutes warning? Less, maybe, seeing we were so close to the then USSR - anyone was going to have a) the sense and b) the time to paint all their windows with emulsion, then collect together tables and doors to make a rough shelter in the middle of their house and stockpile food and water there enough for 48 hours was, frankly, ridiculous. I remember much derision at the time.
Bad government, bad. No biscuit.
Re: Emulsion paint
Date: 2014-07-06 11:28 pm (UTC)I am at your disposal! [I really don't like the fact that the most common fannish form is "deBrit"; of course, it's a harkback formation to "debride" both of which have the connotation of removing something unwanted or unnecessary, but, I dunno, it implies that American usage is the Universal Default, or something. Which, um, NO.]
So, er, any time you need me to, ah, give you a Yank.... ;)
Re: Emulsion paint
Date: 2014-07-07 05:45 am (UTC)