JMS on CompuServe (Mar 08, 1996) *POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
Brent Barrett
brent.barrett at 24stex.com
Fri Mar 8 16:28:55 EST 1996
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The following posts may contain SPOILERS for
upcoming Babylon 5 episodes.
Continue at your own risk.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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[ Note from Brent: Before you ask, no I cannot forward
your questions to JMS. He has asked that questions
not originating from CIS accounts not be posted to
CIS. He encourages all of us to wait for the
moderated USENET group, to which he plans to
subscribe. ]
[ Summary: Wants to know if B5 is going to make some jump into the future
to handle the "visions" we've seen of Londo and others in the future.
Wonders if this will be covered in the "spin-off" JMS has said he
would be willing to do. ]
#: 466351 S5/Babylon 5: General
07-Mar-96 16:06:20
Sb: #466017-#The Future of B5
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Well, the odds of a spinoff are few and far between to start with, so
it's probably a moot point. To the other question....
See, this is a puzzlement to me. If I answer your question about when
and how we'll see Londo's future, that ruins the show. This is the puzzling
part...I often get notes saying, "When are we going to see this happen?" Well,
if I were to say, "Okay, you're going to see G'Kar lose his eye in episode 7 of
year 4," then it *completely eliminates* any surprise, any tension, any shock
value to it. I might as well just not make the episode at that point.
So I have an answer to your question. And we will deal with this point.
But to simply blow it out there would be to destroy the impact of anything we
might have in mind.
It's funny...at conventions, actors get asked "how do you create this
character," when the characters were created by me, and I get asked to reveal
coming plot points that I *can't* reveal without kicking the props out from
under the show. I can talk in general terms, but anything detailed has to go
by the boards.
jms
[ Summary: Asks who has organic technology. Assumes the Vorlons and Shadows
do, but asks JMS if the Minbari do as well and wonders if the Shadow tech
is "better" than the Vorlon tech, since the Shadows are so much older.
Then he goes and ruins it by asking a wide-open JMSable question: "Am
I right?" Doh! ]
#: 466353 S5/Babylon 5: General
07-Mar-96 16:06:38
Sb: #466201-OrganicTechnology
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Vorlons and shadows both have organic tech, yes.
jms
[ Summary: Asks what "3 first acts" means in JMS' "V" script. Also wonders
when the "V" story begins. He then asks: The script mentions taking
place "six years after the War, but since the last TV show doesn't end
with an armistice, how did you approach the beginning of your show?" ]
#: 466354 S5/Babylon 5: General
07-Mar-96 16:06:39
Sb: #466261-#Enjoying Babylon 5
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
The last V movie ended with the armistice, as I recall; and 3 acts means
the 3 dramatic sections between commercials.
jms
[ Summary: Ongoing debate between two other users about new characters.
One argues that new characters will detract from the others, while the
other argues that it can be done and points to Marcus as an example. ]
#: 466355 S5/Babylon 5: General
07-Mar-96 16:13:55
Sb: #466065-#The Ensemble Look
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Then you needn't worry. We have no plans to begin adding any more
recurring characters at this point; we have all we need. And, in fact, may
start to lose a few of them in the fairly near future. War is hell, you know.
jms
#: 466167 S6/Babylon 5: Upcoming
07-Mar-96 09:21:23
Sb: #465795-#<Point of No Return>
Fm: PHILIP HORNSEY
>> The whole red-baiting hysteria of the 50s came as close to destroying the
American dream as any threatened invasion. If it had been led by someone a
little less self-destructive than McCarthy, I hate to think what would've
happened.
Just a suggestion, but I wonder if your perception in this regard is not
colored by the place you live in and the people you associate with (other
writers etc.) Fact is, the Red Scare tended to get two specific (and fairly
small) groups of people, Hollywood actors, writers, and executives, and people
affiliated with Democratic administrations in Washington DC. Here in flyover
country, we watched it all on TV (I say that figurativly, and only on the basis
of reading and history, I was not born yet).
Also, the sanction was *social* for the most part. There were firings in
*government*, but in the case of writers, actors, et. al. it wasn't the
*government* that was the threat, it was the reaction of the people, who didn't
want to patronize "communists".
Now, before I get flamed to a crisp for defending Joseph McCarthy, I submitt
that almost all of the allegations that came from the Red Scare were *pure
unadulterated garbage*. Where there was *any* truth, it was usually of the sort
that the person in question hung out with communists in college when communism
was new and hip, and then got out in the real world and started to make money.
My point is *only this*. Firings, ostracizm, and blacklisting, are *very*
different things than the *government sanctions* of fining, jailing, and
execution. We had a *couple* incidents of jail time and that was for things
like contempt, but there was nothing over 5 years searved (which is still
unforgivable) and their were *no* executions. I also don't think America would
have stood for it. Sure everyone was scared, but there were *plenty* of people
on the fence. The *speed* of McCarthy's collapse with the simple words "Have
you no decency Sir? At long last?" are proof of that.
I certainly respect your opinions in this regard, and you do know people I
don't, but there is a *reason* for my attitude, and it is *not* in defense of
McCarthy or his goons. Basically, the price of Liberty is Eternal Vigiliance,
but they left a part out, the true price of Liberty is Eternal *Accurate*
Vigilence.
If we say to the nation that we are so weak that a buffoon like McCarthy, or
even one somewhat less self destructive, as you suggest, can destroy all that
we have built, then we allow ourselves to believe that our values are weak, and
no stronge than any others. This is a very dangerous thing. Our values,
liberty, self determination, and personal responsibility, are the strong values
of a strong, *confident* people. I think it is both incorrect and destructive
to paint McCarthy or any of our monsters as people who came close to destroying
us and then defeated themselves. *WE* did it. *WE* saw the man for what he was.
*WE* ended his career. Even his supporters deserted him.
Confident, free, liberty loving people are dessicated soil for the seeds of
tyranny. When we *constantly* say we are, or were, worse than we are, when we
ascribe all our successes to fortune, when we do not take credit for what we
have done right, we *minimize* the right. We are *not* a base and destructive
people motivated by greed, we are a wise and resiliant people motivated by
self-interest and so enlightened as to know that it is *in our intrest* to
*always love liberty*.
To make so much of McCarthy, who was nothing more than a thug and a bully we
recognized and *crushed* (and whose name is now more abominated), *even* in the
face of real and great danger from the enemy he professed to fight, is to make
America *yet again* a nation of poor pathetic victims, ready each day to be
fleeced by a new charletan.
To do that, is to invoke a self-fullfilling prophesy.
Phil^^^^
FREE MARS!
#: 466352 S6/Babylon 5: Upcoming
07-Mar-96 16:06:33
Sb: #466167-#<Point of No Return>
Fm: J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Yes, but equally dangerous, Phil, is blindness or self-delusion about
real failings and real problems. Each population that marched off to
annhilation under a dictatorship did so convinced that their values and their
morals and their national fabric was supremely strong.
Pride has a tendency to goeth before a fall.
For additional reading check out "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg."
Check out European history. We're not a different species over here on this
side of the atlantic; we're just as capable of being foxed as the next guy in
another country.
And your notion that the government wasn't responsible for what happened
to people during the HUAC period doesn't jibe with the truth. It was the FBI
which contacted networks and asked them for lists of anyone considered
communist; the FBI who suggested there might be problems unless certain people
were removed. It wasn't just people who'd attended Young Communist meetings
who were targeted...it was anyone who *knew* anyone who'd been at these things,
or had in fact NEVER been to anything like this. People were called before HUAC
and asked to *name names*, and if you didn't, then you were hiding something,
being uncooperative, facing contempt charges, so you named the names that had
been named before, or made up new ones, gave up your buddies or your co
workers, whatever was necessary to keep from being jailed or fired.
The problem was worse than just "inaccuracy." It was rooted in meanness
and cynicism. I know someone who was asked during the second World War to make
short films for the military and the newsreels, and to do radio shows,
celebrating the US and the Soviet Union working together to defeat the Nazis.
All well and good, right? Well, this same person, after the war, was
grey-listed for having produced Communist propaganda MADE AT THE REQUEST OF OUR
OWN GOVERNMENT at the time. Meanness. Cynicism.
To be named before HUAC was to instantly get a file at the FBI in your
name. As soon as that happened, you could reliably depend on having your phone
tapped, your business associates would be questioned, your mail would be
intercepted...no, the government didn't say publicly, "don't hire this person,"
but when all this starts to happen, jobs and reputations disappear. People
committed suicide over the destruction of their careers, their *lives* being
torn apart. Did McCarthy pull the trigger? No, but the people he targeted are
just as dead as if he did.
There's the common assumption that one measures the decline of a
democracy in body counts and increasingly inconvenient laws and regulations.
But this is symptom, not cause. Laws follow norms, and norms follow values in
the political food chain. And the values of HUAC were the values of terror,
and spying on your neighbor, and looking for the enemy beneath bedsheets. A
democracy, ANY democracy, is based first and foremost on the notion of trust,
however flawed, that the person beside you, however different his specific
beliefs may be from your own, nonetheless hews to the same notions of liberty,
and that when push comes to shove, you will be wiling to lay down your life to
protect that person's rights. Take that away in a paroxysm of paranoia,
distrust, conspiracies, hearings and vague accusations, and everything else
falls apart. The center does not hold.
To question ourselves is not to weaken our democracy, but to strengthen
it, because we know precisely what we believe and why we believe it; we're not
victims if we learn from our mistakes and thus fail to repeat them. If we
*deny* our mistakes, or try to bury them, or rationalize them, then we create
the potential for trouble. We are at our most vulnerable when we are the most
self-congratulatory and assured. Because then we get blindsided.
"Fact is, the Red Scare tended to get two specific (and fairly small)
groups of people, Hollywood actors, writers and executives, and people
affiliated with Democratic institutions."
Yes, and the Nazis tended to get two specific (and fairly small) groups
of people, jews and communists. So I guess that's okay too.
Any attempt at repression *always* starts by first targeting artists,
writers, and intellectuals, the ones in a position to verbalize and explain why
what's happening is *wrong*. You want to eliminate, neutralize or destroy
their credibility. This is standard operating procedure. That's where it
starts, but not always where it ends. To assume that because we've always
caught it before means we always *will* is, again, to set yourself up for a
fall.
The manipulators always go after an easily identifiable group first, one
which they can easily tar with the brush of responsibility for society's
problems. We're seeing it again today, writ smaller, in the constant and
repeated assaults on Hollywood...attacking the *picture* of the problem rather
than the problem itself.
Again, you demonstrate the problem. "Well, it's just these two small
groups, really." Then it becomes three groups. Then four. Or you just stay
with the two groups...and you harrass, chivvy, destroy, terrorize, humiliate,
bankrupt and ultimately lead to the death of many of them. But as long as it's
just a couple of small groups, it's not that bad, really.
"Every man's death diminishes me. So ask not for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee."
I'd also point out that when HUAC started, it was as the result of
accusations that there were commies in the Military and the Pentagon; but when
they found that they could get on TeeVee and the Newsreels by bringing in
actors...that's what they did. What does it do to a nation starstruck by
actors to see these same shining examples of the American dream standing before
the cameras and naming names of other actors, business associates, others? You
speak of the values of a nation...what effect does that have on our values?
What *are* our values if we allow this to take place...or dismiss it after the
fact as having hurt only a few people, really.
It did great harm to the fabric of the nation, not in fines or jail
sentences, but in the *heart* of the nation, the way we look to one another.
Its effects reverberated long after the HUAC hearings stopped. It bred a level
of paranoia that when the youth culture of the 60s began to pop up, many of
them were instantly categorized as commies; "Go back to russia where you came
from" was a common cry to longhairs in that time. Because to dissent was
unpatriotic; the only ones who attacked the government were the commies, end of
discussion. The parents of kids who were teenagers in the 60s had come through
McCarthy, had learned the wrong lessons of citizenship.
No executions? Perhaps Julies and Ethel Rosenberg had some part in
spying, maybe they didn't, I don't know if we'll ever know for sure. But the
Russians were working on a-bomb technology long before, and records show that
they got it pretty much on their own. They were executed as part of the
hysteria of the times, their trial a rush to judgment.
No, we're not so weak a nation that McCarthy himself can destroy it; WE
destroy it, if we allow ourselves to be convinced to turn one another in, to
have the heart and soul of the nation sold out to terror and paranoia. Every
nation has within its breast the seeds of its own destruction, within its own
population; what some individuals do is water that seed, and fertilize it. If
it grows, it grows in us. They don't do it to us, we do it to ourselves. And
given the right conditions, the right environment, the right soil...we could do
it. Even here.
jms
/*********************************************
* Brent Barrett brent.barrett at 24stex.com *
* Senior Software Engineer Automedia, Inc *
* -- Watch Babylon-5! -- *
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