In Battlestar Galactica, the audience knows certain information before the characters do, like that cylons can look completely human. In Moon, the audience remains completely unaware of any information that Sam does not know, and only learns it once he does. How does this change in perspective facilitate connecting the dots of how the posthuman functions and what will happen?
ENGL 360 | Future Perfect Human
Prof. Myra Seaman | Fall 2016
It leaves the viewer to discover these functions and truths more organically. By forcing the viewer into the same knowledge (or lack thereof) of a character it allows them to learn and react to things more naturally, as if they are growing alongside the character. Questions of what is human and why it is human become less obvious overtones (like in Battlestar Galactica) and more narrative building blocks that give viewers a chance to construct their ideas and questions in real time, alongside the character(s).
I was surprised that Battlestar Galactica didn’t draw out the dramatic irony more; however, since the viewer is provided with the information that Cylons can appear human before the characters are even aware, the viewer is actively looking for potential undercover Cylons within the crew. This forces us to confront the fact that we are searching for the enemy within our own ranks, looking for the indistinguishable “other”—the difficulty of identifying any Cylon infiltrators attests to Graham’s notion that monsters expose “the fault-lines of binary opposition between human/non-human” and manage to “destabilize the distinction” (54).
In Moon, characters and viewers discover new information at the same time as the plot progresses. This allows viewers to sympathize with the characters, and even speculate what it is that distinguishes the clones from the original—considering it was so natural to identify with and relate to the clone. Both Battlestar Galactica and Moon highlight how the “other” can subvert our taken-for-granted human characteristics.