James Callis Quote of the Week: The Gaius Baltar Award for Moral Cowardice

From the awesome Onion AV Club interview. It's from 2008, quite long, and if you haven't read it, read it now. In-depth, with long James quotes, just beautiful. (Also he references to Shakespeare, Plato and Chaucer within the same interview. Which amuses me a little.)

I might pick another quote from this interview another time, but for a little light relief, I really liked this:

"I think that there should be a Gaius Baltar Award for Moral Cowardice given out to people every year. And this man—it's just, seriously, reading it, I was like, "Christ, this guy is Gaius Baltar!" He's a schoolteacher. The earthquake hits. And he said, "Stay still, everybody, you'll be fine," and just ran! He ran for his life, without any of the kids who he's supposed to be looking after. And the miracle of it is that the earthquake didn't touch his school in the same way. He went back to the class, and they're all alive, thank God. And they were like, "But teacher, why did you run away?" And his replies are just extraordinary. It's like, "I'm not a brave man. I am a coward. And in situations like this, it's every man for himself. I don't really feel very guilty, because I didn't cause the earthquake, and quite frankly, if it had been my own mother sat next to me, I would have left her as well."

Hee! I love the idea of that award. Who would be the first to get it? Moral cowardice might be Gaius' most dominant characteristic (or at least the one that he exhibits the most on the show).
As a news story, that's really pretty shocking, and could have ended horribly. But that's human nature - is it personality or attitude? Gaius, at least, would have felt guilty and tortured about not being the great, admirable person he thought he was. So I feel like he's above that teacher in that sense.

I think there's a similar reference to that in the 2005 TV Guide interview. Let's see:

It's fair to say Gaius is amoral. He's compassionate, he has a conscience, he suffers from remorse, but that's not really morality. His weakness is not standing up for anything, he's always trying to sidestep.

He may be painfully aware of not being a hero, but he doesn't really work to redeem himself - until the very end, when he did stand up for something. He could have left with the cult, but he stayed to fight; he admitted he didn't truly believe in what he preached. He even stood up to Cavil and protected Hera. So maybe that's the biggest personal growth Gaius had: growing a moral spine.

I still think that award is an awesome idea though.

James Callis Quote of the Week: "Conversation Is a Form of Conversion"

It is only through understanding that we can create, you know.. harmony, really. My feeling is.. as a person, not in the show.. is that the only thing you have is other people, and their ideas, and how you meet them and their ideas. And conversation is a form of conversion, they come from the same root. it's desperately important that people start speaking form the same hymn sheet or start understanding where people are coming from. You know, to negate it actually is.. prejudicial, it shows a kind of ignorance and... fear.

We really do live in a world laced with fear right now. We can't seem to help it and the news seems to perpetuate it. And I think we've got a very... I think the task for us as human beings right now is to try and get rid of that fear. The only way you can get rid of that fear is talking to peple, is dialogue, lots of dialogue all of the time. It's a lot more difficult to want to klil somebody when you're face to face with them. It's a lot easier when you're removed, you can do it on the internet or on a telephone line that you can't see somevbody on... It's about finding our humanity.

This is from the BBC Cult TV interview done in 2004. The chosen quote is a response to "Why it's important to know your enemy."

It's a very rare old interview in that it still works. I should really transcribe the whole thing; it's one of my favorite interviews, because it really goes sort of deeper under the skin. Many of the first interviews during BSG were just "how did you get the role" (well, that's in there too) and "what's it like to work with Tricia Helfer" - which is also there, actually, but at least they asked something a bit deeper as well. My only complaint is that the videos are in a weird aspect ratio, and James' face looks twice as wide (he still looks skinny though, just squashed). It's a bit disturbing. But the stuff he says is great. On to the quote.

I like that Professor James shows up briefly to say that conversation and conversion have the same root. It's not just to show off, I think; he's making a good point. When you have dialogue with people, you learn to know the way they think, and it's very difficult to hate someone when you understand their thinking - their pain, their fears, their anxieties, and so forth. My theory is that when you get to know a person, you can no longer hate them, because no one's ugly inside. (I haven't ever gotten to know mass murderers and such though, so I could be wrong in some cases.)

I also agree totally on the fear argument. I'd even call it hysteria - almost every month, there is a new news item that inspires fear and panic. Swine flu is the latest example. I think we need more calm discussion of big issues, and less "OMG watch out you're gonna die!" It seems to grab the least informed the most, like people instinctively grab onto fear when they're not sure if something is safe. There's nothing wrong with playing it safe, per se, but I think it's psychologically unhealthy to live in fear.

I'm not a huge fan of the "face to face vs. internet" argument, because my experience is that you can get to know people very deeply online and share things you'd be shy to share offline. A lot of conversation depends on context - they might or might not be from the same root - and it can be difficult to create an intimate context if you're meeting a friend in a coffee shop.

However, I guess what he's talking about here is a context of prejudice and hate, and in that case, the internet can indeed be a place where hate is spread freely. It's easy to hate people you can't see - you lose the idea that they're all somebody's daughter or son, somebody's friend, wife, husband, mother, father, etc. There's something about the internet that makes it easy to see different people as a manifestation of their ideas, rather than as human beings with feelings. Debate and trollery can be a very fine line to draw, and I've seen this many times. (And maybe even been guilty of it myself.)

I love when James talks about understanding other people. He's very serious and warm talking about this, and you can tell we're going into his core values here. Sometimes I think he should be a diplomat.

James Callis Quote of the Week: "We're Not So Significantly Different"

There are so many great interviews I have yet to transcribe, thought I'd make a little weekly feature (which will probably not remain weekly for long, but I'm optimistically making a label for it) - a quote from an interview that I think is particularly good.

The first one comes from the Hypaspace Podcast for May 2, 2008. It's a one-question interview about Gaius' "You are perfect just as you are" speech in Escape Velocity (Season 4.0). I think it's a particularly beautiful and eloquent response, and I want to especially compliment the Hypaspace Podcast for letting him speak without cutting in with stupid jokes or comments that he needs to react to the whole time. (The link goes to an mp3 file; the James interview is first, right after the news.)

"An extreme amount of pressure is being, um, burst(?) upon this person, and a lot of it is self-inflicted. The more pressure that is exerted... it seems the more extreme the reactions are to that pressure. And what we see in somebody like Gaius Baltar is somebody going thru the run of... You know, it looks like it can't get any worse, and then it suddenly does. And he's just going thru lower and lower cycles, and he's in a desperate, as it were, desperate self-need of... wanting not to be guilty anymore. I don't know if that's redemption necessarily. So he's finding it for himself, it's kind of... You know, he's the person who WANTS to believe it more than anything else... and I think on that level, those things look most impassioned and there's people to hear it.

But on another level, you know... It's a cry for help and also a cry for hope in some way. Essentially he's saying that... Once you've looked into the very deepest place within yourself... You will understand that so many people are so similar to you. That all of the things that you think divide you are just... They're an illusion, they're constructs. And that's why you know the truth about others, because you know the truth about yourself, we're not so significantly different, nobody... When you know the truth about yourself, and when you look deep within yourself, it's like looking into... I don't know.

There's a lot of things that everybody is capable of when push comes to shove, when your life or those that you love are threatened. When that happens, I believe your brain works in a different way. And I think that there's something about seeing in the darkness which then makes you run... Run for the light, run for the hope. And on that level, he's just been... You know, the darkness is, one man's just beaten the shit out of him. And actually beating him up... of... some logical.. what was it? Legal ... thing... they weren't allowed to be more than twelve people in assembly. So what is it... monsters follow the dream of reason, something like that."

I've noticed James says "on some level" and "on one level" and similar things a lot, and it's not just in this interview. Maybe it speaks of his multi-layered way of thinking: nothing's really that simple and you need to acknowledge the different levels of thought and emotion involved in our reactions.

I found this quote particularly touching, because you can hear his deep compassion and respect for other people so well. It's one of the things I love the most about him. He sees all people as equally valuable, and while I don't think anyone is free of biases, I really admire people who try to see everyone as equal. A part of that is appreciating variety in personalities and views, but also seeing the similarity underlying them. I think this kind of thinking is the basis for all diplomacy or equality or peace, because we need to see each other that way to build a society where we can truly be free and be human.

When he says things like this, I feel a deep, warm connection with him. Maybe it's because we have similar values, or because I struggle with seeing myself as valuable, and it feels healing to think James would value me like everyone else. Or maybe it's because he's expressing a deep connection all humans share on some level. Because we're not so significantly different.