The Simulation has Ended

Jean Baudrillard has died. This author of Simulacra and Simulation has long been one of my favorite postmodernists. But, since I have long found it difficult to remember which of the French postmodernists were alive and which were dead, I may have already included him within the ranks of the dead French guys in my conversations with students. It seems, however, that now with Baudrillard passing and joining the ranks of Bordieu, Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard all the big names are dead, perhaps this will cause relief in the hearts of literature graduate students everywhere. Perhaps not, since their syllabi will still include these names and they will still have ot read all the texts of the dead French guys.

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Is She or Isn't She?

Is it to early to write an obit for the most disfunctional Battlestar Galactica character, Starbuck? With the gender reassignment and the failed romance with her fellow pilot Apollo, Starbuck of the new series has become quite a crack up, and not in a funny way. It seems that Starbuck launched her ship into a planet and shuffled off her mortal coil, and according to the wired blog,

it was possibly the stupidest and most pointless death imaginable for a
kickass pilot and awesome pivotal character. Delving into Starbuck's
childhood abuse and turning it into a flimsy excuse for a sudden mental
breakdown made no sense whatsoever. And what about the whole Leoben
paint-sex scene, coupled with his puppy-eyed sympathy as she remembers
her dead mom? As they say in Australia: yucko.

All true,but I for one am not terribly sorry to see her go. One would like to believe that her absence will bring some dynamic revelation (like she's one of those mysterious other cylons) to the show or some mojo, but it is TV and the TV Gods do manage, to bring those dead characters back when one least expects it. One can only hope that in this case it will not be for a while.

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