Category: Culture

Shakespeare Sale

Shakespearefolio_1

If you have a spare 3.5 million lying around (pounds, that is; in U.S. dollars you’ll need $6.1 million), you may want to consider investing it in an original Shakespeare First Folio that will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s in July:

"Hailed by auctioneer Sotheby’s as the most important book in English literature, the First Folio is credited with saving for posterity many of the bard’s plays including ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Julius Caesar’ which had never before been printed.

"’The First Folio preserves 18 of his plays, including some of the most major, which otherwise would have been lost for all time,’ English literature specialist Peter Selley said as the volume was put on show on Thursday.

"’Relatively complete copies of the Folio in contemporary or near contemporary bindings very rarely come to market. There is only one copy recorded as remaining in private hands,’ he added."

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May 19: Go To The Movies!

Davincicode

Got plans for May 19, the day that the movie The DaVinci Code is slated to open? If not, go to the movies. If so, then go to the movies sometime that weekend before May 21. Just don’t go to The DaVinci Code.

That’s the advice being given to Christians by Christians who know how Hollywood works and know the best way to get the bean-counters in Hollywood to listen:

"May 19th is the date the Da Vinci Code movie opens. A movie based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor.

"What can we as Christians do in response to the release of this movie? I’m going to offer you the usual choices — and a new one.

"Here are the usual suspects:

"A) We can ignore the movie.

"The problem with this option: The box office is a ballot box. The only people whose votes are counted are those who buy tickets. And the ballot box closes on the Sunday of opening weekend. If you stay home, you have lost your chance to make your vote heard. You have thrown your vote away, and from Hollywood’s point of view, you don’t count. By staying home, you do nothing to shape the decision-making process regarding what movies will make it to the big screen.

"B) We can protest.

"The problem with this option: It doesn’t work. Any publicity is good publicity. Protests not only fuel the box office, they make all Christians look like idiots. And again, protests and boycotts do nothing to help shape the decisions being made right now about what movies Hollywood will make in the next few years. (Or they convince Hollywood to make *more* movies that will provoke Christians to protest, which will drive the box office up.)

"C) We can discuss the movie. We can be rational and be ready with study guides and workshops and point-by-point refutations of the lies promulgated by the movie.

"The problem with this option: No one’s listening. They think they know what we’re going to say already. We’ll lose most of these discussions anyway, no matter how prepared we are, because the power of story always trumps the power of facts (why do you think Jesus taught in parables?!). And once again: rational discussion of history does nothing to affect Hollywood’s choices regarding what movies to make.

"But there’s a fourth choice.

"On May 19th, you should go to the movies.

"Just go to another movie.

"Save the date now. May 19th, or May 20th. No later than Sunday, May 21st — that’s the day the ballot box closes. You’ll get a vote, the only vote Hollywood recognizes: The power of cold hard cash laid down on a box office window on opening weekend.

"Use your vote. Don’t throw it away. Vote for a movie other than DVC. If enough people do it, the powers that be will notice. They won’t have a choice.

"The major studio movie scheduled for release against DVC is the DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge. The trailers look fun, and you can take your kids. And your friends. And their friends. In fact, let’s all go see it.

"Let’s rock the box office in a way no one expects — without protests, without boycotts, without arguments, without rancor. Let’s show up at the box office ballot box and cast our votes. And buy some popcorn, too.

"May 19th. Mark your calendars now: Over the Hedge‘s opening weekend. Buy a ticket.

"And spread the word. Forward this e-mail to all the Christians in your address book. Post it on your blogs. Talk about it to your churches. And let’s all go to the movies."

Spread the word. And go to the movies on May 19.

(Credit note: I received notice from an email forward originally sent by Barbara Nicolosi of Act One. The campaign was originally started by Quoth the Maven.)

Who?

Okay, now that Battlestar Galactica is on break until next season, Sci-Fi is now airing the new series of Dr. Who on Fridays.

I caught the first two episodes of it last Friday, and so far I’m pleased.

The series seems to be a tad darker and more serious than the original series, which went off the air in the 1980s, but that’s because it’s being written more for adults than kids (now that the original Dr. Who fans have grown up).

It still has a lot of goofy fun in it, though.

I also like how the Doctor’s new assistant (Rose) is much more confrontational with him than many previous assistants have been, demanding to know things (like just who he is) and challenging him when he says things, bringing a more real-life perspective.

My favorite exchange was this:

ROSE (upon meeting a bunch of aliens socially for the first time): They’re so alien. . . . The aliens are . . . so alien. You look at ’em . . . and they’re alien.

THE DOCTOR: Good thing I didn’t take you to the Deep South!

ROSE: Where are you from?

THE DOCTOR: All over the place!

ROSE (still thinking about the aliens): They all speak English?

THE DOCTOR: No, you’re just hearing it. It’s a gift of the TARDIS. A telepathic field gets inside your brain–translates.

ROSE: It’s inside my brain?

THE DOCTOR: Well, in a good way.

ROSE: Your machine gets inside my head. It gets inside and it changes my mind and you didn’t even ask!

THE DOCTOR: I didn’t think about it like that.

ROSE (outraged): No! You were too busy thinking up cheap shots about the Deep South!

BA-BOOM!

As a native of the Deep South, I approve!

I gave ’em a couple of points for the first Deep South/alien joke, but the rejoinder scored ’em an extra TEN!

MORE ON DR. WHO.

The Art of the Grant

SimpsonsbaldwinFor some weird reason, FOX News found it worth noting yesterday that actor Alec Baldwin and a bunch of other artsy types gathered in Washington for Arts Advocacy Day, in order to encourage lobbying for arts funding. That means, among other things, the National Endowment for the Arts. I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.

Baldwin and others addressed a "crowd of… lawmakers and state arts officials". I’m sorry, but as an artist I find the words "state arts officials" really creepy.

I can’t say that I really know that much about how the NEA funds things like dance or theater, but they have become notorious in recent years for funding controversial, shocking, offensive and ugly art exhibits. They probably fund a lot of other stuff, too, but they are best known for bankrolling modernist, anti-Christian claptrap.

I have considered applying for a grant, myself, but in the end I just couldn’t do it. It generally means attaching your art to some (liberal) cultural theme like "Art and Global Warming", "Art and the Inner City", "Art and the  Goddess", or some such… it would just kill my soul.

Personally, I think the only visual art that the government should fund is art for public spaces. Murals, sculptures, that sort of thing. They should also feel an obligation to fund art that is not so "current" that it will fall out of style a couple of decades down the road. We owe it to our kids to leave something beautiful behind us, rather than rusting hulks of scrap metal.

Back in the Nineties, Congress made some big cuts to the NEA after it endowed some particularly stupid pieces that got a ton of press. It looked like they might let the agency dry on the vine.

No such luck. In his speech Tuesday, Baldwin said "If you told me back in 1996, we would have a Republican president and Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress, and the NEA would be flourishing and would be safe, it wouldn’t be possible…".

Amen, brother. Amen.

GET THE STORY.

Jesus Decoded

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ communications department has released a web site responding to the claims made in The Da Vinci Code.

The site–www.jesusdecoded.com–contains articles by various people on various aspects of the book, as well as the upcoming film. Amy Welborn is one of the folks contributing it.

The site doesn’t have an overabundance of info at this point, but it is a good effort that should help a lot of people. It also may grow substantially over time. There is a Q & A section where readers can submit questions and get answers.

There is also a "Jesus Decoded" TV special that will be available on DVD next month.

GET THE STORY.

VISIT THE SITE.

Galactica Leaving?

Given what folks have said in the comboxes, I’m sure many are jazzed about tonight’s season finale for Battlestar Galactica.

It’s apparently got so much story in it that the show’s creators convinced the network to allow them to break out of the hour-long format and do a 90-minute finale (airing from 10-11:30 Eastern & Pacific).

I’m expecting a major clifffhanger at the end–if not a major rolling cliffhanger (that is, multiple cliffhangars involving different plot lines, piled on top of each other).

Last season we got a cliffhanger involving the sudden self-outing of Sharon as a Cylon in an out-of-the-blue act of extreme violence.

This year the cliffhanger may be even more intense. (The show’s creators like to top themselves.)

But it appears we’ll have to wait even longer to find out what happens on the other side of it.

And we may not find out on the Sci-Fi Channel at all.

Huh?

Here’s what’s going on: Normally Sci-Fi’s shows run 20 episode seasons, divided into two blocks of ten. The first 10 episodes air as a "summer season" and the second 10 episodes air as a winter season, starting in January. That’s the way SG-1 and Atlantis work, and it’s the way BGS has . . . until now.

Word is that Galactica will skip the "summer season" and will not start showing new episodes again UNTIL OCTOBER.

I am majorly unhappy about this.

I also wonder what it’ll do to the ratings of Sci-Fi’s Friday night lineup. Despite being last in the lineup of shows for that night, Galactica pulls higher ratings than SG-1 and Atlantis. That’s the OPPOSITE of what normally happens on a network: The lead-in shows get higher ratings, which then fall off as the evening wears on.

Galactica has been so good that it’s done the reverse. I’m sure that SG-1 and Atlantis have benefitted from this, with viewers deciding to tune in early since they’re committed to be there to see Galactica. But without Galactica in that 10 p.m. slot, the ratings for SG-1 and Atlantis may suffer, with viewers having less motivation to tune in.

(I know I’ll be less motivated to rush home after Friday night square dancing and tune in, meaning that I may not stay up for the replays of the Stargates and may instead just wait to see them on DVD.)

Why would Sci-Fi do this?

I don’t know. They may be trying to bring Galactica in line with the way TV series normally air their new shows, which have a fall premier and then play through spring, with a summer hiatus.

But there may be more to it than that.

SY-FY PORTAL IS REPORTING THAT NBC UNIVERSAL, WHICH OWNS SCI-FI, MAY BE MULLING WHETHER IT WANTS TO YANK GALACTICA OFF SCI-FI AND PUT IT ON NBC.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

That’s a prospect that makes me distinctly . . . nervous.

Many have called BSG the best show on television, and I certainly think it stands up against the junk normally airing on the Big 3 networks (none of which I tune in to watch).

It’d be nice to see Galactica get the mainstream success that its quality merits.

But.

You need much bigger ratings to stay on the air on a major network than on a cable channel, and if Galactica’s ratings don’t take off fast, NBC could decide to pull the plug on the show . . . whereas it could have stayed on Sci-Fi for years and years and years. (Like SG-1.)

Also: NBC network executives could "take more of an interest" in BSG if it were promoted to the bigtime, meaning more interference with the way Ron Moore and his team have been running the show.

And since the suits at NBC don’t understand science fiction the way the suits at Sci-Fi presumably do, that could mean a lot of idiotic, ham-fisted interferences in the show . . . like the ones that killed Crusade.

So I’m nervous, and we’ll have to wait to see what happens.

Looks like there’s more than one Galactica-related cliffhanger afoot.

But, Is It Art? Part III

Hey, Tim Jones, here.

It has been several weeks since my last post in this series on art, but my schedule was cruelly interrupted by some paying work. Things have slowed just a bit, so I want to encourage all of you to VISIT MY WEBSITE.

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, y’know.

In my FIRST POST, I offered a framework for thinking about the different aspects of man-made objects (design, decoration, illustration and fine art).

In the SECOND POST, I broadly defined some categories of visual art (realism, abstraction, non-objective and non-representational art).

Now I want to talk about the implications of these categories for artists, offer some views on the opportunities that visual art presents, as well discuss the problems and strengths of different kinds of art. This time we’re talking about realism.

THE GREAT THING ABOUT REALISM

– I love impressions. One of my favorite TV shows (briefly) as a kid was called Copycats and starred impressionists like Rich Little and Frank Gorshin. Not long ago, I caught part of a TV bio of Dean Martin, and saw some old footage of Frank Gorshin doing an impression of Martin. It was a really good impression. Not just kinda good, but dead-on, scary good, which made it hilarious. Gorshin (who played the Joker The Riddler on the original Batman TV series) could do that. Dean Martin was entertaining to watch, but Gorshin’s impression showed everyone what it was that made him entertaining to watch. Gorshin studied, analyzed and practiced Dean Martin until he was almost more Martinesque than was Dino himself.

This is the kind of power that realism can have, whether we are watching an impression, or looking at a work of art. Great realism can grab people and stop them in their tracks. At an art exhibit, you might hear people saying things like, "Wow. How do they do that? I can’t even draw a stick man.". This is perfectly natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. People admire great skill, whether they see it in art, hear it in music, watch it demonstrated in dance or in any other human endeavor.

Neither artists or art lovers need to apologize for appreciating, or striving for, a high degree of realism. It not only can have great visual power, but is one of the few ways of actually measuring artistic skill (gasp!!). Oddly, this makes it seem both controversial and dangerous to some. Though most people readily acknowledge that not everyone can be a great musician (just watch American Idol), or dancer, or athlete, there are those who behave as if everyone is born an artist, and the one thing we must never talk about is whether they deserve the designation.

I earlier offered a very broad definition of abstraction, saying that every piece of art, even the most "realistic", is to some extent an abstraction. I will add to that a very broad definition of realism as any faithful representation of the physical world. This doesn’t necessarily mean expressionless copying, or one-to-one reproduction of every detail, but simply art that is inspired by and faithful to the physical aspects of reality. This broad understanding of realism can include a wide range of styles, from hyper-realism up to and including impressionism.

Realism can be quite expressive. Simply in the selection of the subject, the composition, the lighting, or the surroundings, a straightforward realistic depiction can express quite a bit of subtext. In other words, a lot of the artist’s self expression can be present before the brush ever touches the canvas. A good deal of it can happen at a subconscious level. This is one reason that I tell my art students please not to worry too much about self expression, as it will happen on it’s own as they mature and develop their skills.

Goingspie The work of Ralph Goings (left) is a good example of highly realistic art that functions effectively as an authentic artistic expression. In his obsessively observed and subtle renderings, we can get a sense of why he paints the things he does. He finds great beauty and interest in the most mundane objects and settings. He apparently loves to hang out in diners, and that means he can’t be all bad. His stuff is just fun to look at, and you get a sense that in his work he celebrates his fascination with everyday life.

In terms of learning, realism is by far the best way to start developing the physical and perceptive skills that a good artist needs. For this reason, there was for a long time a strong emphasis on realism in academic art training. Not that realism ought to be an end in itself, but it is a natural starting place for visual art. Every discipline has rules, and you need to know the rules before you can meaningfully break the rules.

Nfechin1_1 The work of Nicolai Fechin (left) is a good example of art that is faithful to reality, but also ventures into meaningful abstraction, and even a kind of expressionism. A typical Fechin painting includes interesting abstract passages, highly energetic brushwork, bold use of color and an obvious love just for the paint, itself. But holding all that together and transcending it, is Fechin’s clear understanding of light, space and physical form. A study of his work reveals a deep knowledge of anatomy and the subtleties of the human face. Frequently in his work, the realism of the face serves as an anchor for the rest of the piece.

THE PROBLEM WITH REALISM

– Realism is this property of faithful representation, but if that is all that realism is (in other words, if it is only the work of a highly trained copyist) then it will fall short of what art should be. If the artist is not capable of infusing into the image some sense of how they think or feel about the subject, then it does indeed fall flat. If this is the case, then all painters could be replaced by photographers, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out..

A painting can be a very realistic representation and still be trite, silly, dull, or in any number of other ways, just bad art. There is such a thing as an accurate, but lifeless, representation.

A great deal of 19th century academic realism was bad art. It sometimes seemed to be a cold, academic exercise. At the opposite end of the spectrum, it was just as often the victim of maudlin sentimentalism. The same problems plague artists to this day, and are hardly unique to realistic art. Modern art suffers much from the same diseases. There is such a thing as calculated spontaneity, and manufactured angst.

Hirschwelles Great realistic art doesn’t just give us a dry representation of the subject, but also highlights and enhances what is unique about the subject, as well as offering some insight into the artist’s feelings about it. The caricature of Orson Welles (at left), by the famous Al Hirschfeld, is a great example. Hirschfeld had a wonderful knack for reduction, simplification and enhancement. If Welles’ head were really shaped like that, of course, he would be in a long-term care facility. No one’s head is really shaped like that… and yet, somehow the drawing looks just like Orson Welles. Hirschfeld departs from strictly literal realism in order to emphasize the most Welles-ian aspects of Mr. Welles. He distorts, but (and this is important) it is a lovingly faithful distortion that draws its inspiration from Welles himself. Hirschfeld studied Welles… in a way, loved Welles. It seems a simple drawing, but I guarantee that it was not simple for Hirschfeld

In addition to what the image says about Mr. Welles, though, we have the delightful calligraphy of the drawing itself, the crisply rendered shapes, the flowing lines… overall, an elegant simplicity combined with an exuberant energy and humor that begins to tell us a great deal about the artist. This is art (simple as it is) that is firing on all cylinders. It is the result of preternatural giftedness (talent), combined with careful study, hard work and enthusiasm.

This highlights the important distinction between a work of art as a representation of something else (subject), and a work of art as an interesting and beautiful object on its own. Great art is both.

Next: "Modern" Art, and Why Art is Important.

Gumming Up The Works

Frankenbay_1

A young boy has learned an expensive lesson: The painting pictured to the left was not a trash receptacle for his wad of gum. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

"A 12-year-old visitor to the Detroit Institute of Arts stuck a wad of gum to a $1.5 million painting, leaving a stain the size of a quarter, officials say.

[…]

"The gum stuck to the painting’s lower left corner and did not adhere to the fiber of the canvas, officials told the Detroit Free Press. But it left a chemical residue about the size of a quarter, said Becky Hart, assistant curator of contemporary art.

[…]

"’Even though we give very strict guidelines on proper behavior and we hold students to high standards, he is only 12 and I don’t think he understood the ramifications of what he did before it happened, but he certainly understands the severity of it now [that he has been suspended and disciplined by his parents],’ said [school director Julie] Kildee."

GET THE STORY.

I certainly hope that Ms. Kildee is correct that the boy did not intend harm, but stories like this have me shaking my head over how much longer it takes children to mature these days than it did fifty to one hundred years ago. Or, even twenty-five years ago, considering that when I was twelve most kids knew better than to stick a wad of gum to an artwork. They might stick it to the underside of the desk, which does show immaturity, but they knew better than to stick it to a painting.

PigsPolytheists In Space!

A reader writes:

I have a massive quandry…  I am having a problem rooting for the colonials in Battlestar Galactica due to the fact they are polytheists.  The cylons are Monotheists.

What did you think of [last week’s episode] Downloaded??!!!  <SPOILER DELETED> is great.

Okay, second question first. I thought that "Downloaded" totally rocked. Having an episode from the cylons’ viewpoint was totally great, and I can’t way to see how they play out the implications of this episode in the two-part season finale that starts this week.

I also thought that <SPOILER DELETED> was really, REALLY great. (For those who have seen the episode, <SPOILER DELETED> is the revelation that Caprica 6 has as soon as she wakes up in the rebirth tank–the one that "could cause a problem" for her with the other cylons. DO NOT spoil this in the combox for those who haven’t seen the episode. Just refer to it as "<SPOILER DELETED>".)

It was also nice to have numbers assigned to some of the other cylon models–to know that Sharon/Boomer is an 8, that the Lucy Lawless character is a 3, and that that TV-reporter-male-cylon guy is a 5.

Now to the main question: the monotheism/polytheism question.

In principle, I don’t have a problem watching a drama in which the good guys are polytheists and the bad guys are monotheist, because in reality some polytheists are good and some monotheists are bad.

For example: Suppose Battlestar Galactica got re-envisioned as an earth-based drama occuring in Kashmir.

Instead of the twelve colonies, we’ve got twelve Hindu villages–which are then wiped out by an invading hord of Taliban that have been skulking around Pakistan after their defeat several years ago in Afghanistan. The surviving Kashmiri villagers then are forced to flee for their lives to the lost, thirteenth village–called Earthstan–while constantly being persecuted by the Taliban hordes.

In watching such a series, I wouldn’t have any problem at all rooting for the villagers over the Taliban. It doesn’t matter that the villagers are Hindu and thus polytheists, while the Taliban are Muslim and thus monotheist.

Being a monotheist is not enough to get you on the side of right in my book. If you’re a monotheist who persecutes innocent polytheists, you’re a bad guy in my book, and I’ll root for the polytheists against you.

Now let’s apply this to the complexities we actually see in the series.

Yes, it’s true: The human culture presented in the series is largely polytheistic. But it’s not entirely polytheistic. There are atheists in the population (like Baltar) and agnostics (like Adama).

And there even seem to be human monotheists. If you watch the original mini-series, you’ll notice that the cylon they find at Ragnar Anchorage is walking around with Adama and talking about God (singular) and what he wants and Adama talks back to him about God (singular) and the conversation plays naturally. The fact that the guy is a monotheist isn’t a dead giveaway that he’s a cylon (something else gives him away, but not that), so there seem to be human monotheists out there somewhere.

So human culture isn’t monolithically polytheistic. (I guess it’s polylithically theistic.)

The cylons, by contrast, do seem to be solidly monotheistic, except for lone individuals who have "gone human," like the original Galactica Boomer (who is now on Caprica).

So what are we to make of this? Are we to approve or disapprove of polytheism?

I don’t think that the series means for us to do either. The polytheism of the main humans in the series is something of a relic of the original Galactica, with its Mormon-Egyptian-Greco-Roman themes. (They even visited the tomb of one of their gods of Kobol in the original series.) What’s new is that they’ve made the cylons monotheists.

Since our native sympathies are with the humans rather than the cylons, this could be read as an endorsement of polytheism over monotheism, but that doesn’t seem to be what the producers are doing.

Watching the show carefully, it seems that they’re trying to explore the viewpoints of both sides and not establish either side’s religion as right or wrong. It’s certainly true that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but that doesn’t make their monotheism wrong in the eyes of the show.

Thus there are episodes in season 1 in which Galactica 6 stresses to Baltar that one of God’s main commands is procreation (true) and in which she tells him God loves him (true) and wants to redeem him from his sins (true) and that he needs to open himself to the will of God (true) and that he can thereby become an instrument of God (true)–which he then does BY HELPING THE HUMANS BLOW UP A CYLON BASE.

6 also tells Baltar that God doesn’t take sides in this conflict–that he transcends our conflicts and is not to be viewed as a tribal deity who always endorses the wars of one side over the other. Instead, God wants the love of all. This is certainly a rather enlightened view of God that doesn’t square with a monotheism=evil interpretation.

We also have the cylons distinctly calling into question the deity of the colonists gods, suggesting that they were mortal beings (like Athena, who lept to her death on Kobol) and calling them "idols"–which we from time to time see the colonists actually using. The monotheist perspective is thus allowed to critique the polytheist one in a way that does not happen in reverse. The polytheists on the show never attack the monotheistic view. They may attack the cylon’s beliefs about what God is like, but they don’t mock the notion that there might be a single, supreme God.

Except for occasional expletives like "gods d*mn it!" or "oh my gods!" or an occasional prayer for the soul of a dead person, the polytheism of the humans really doesn’t come into the plot that much. (The tomb of Athena story on Kobol was an exception.)

For the most part, there is much more exploration of monotheism and the monotheist viewpoint. Monotheism is where the action is on the show.

And it’s not clear that God is pleased with either society we see in the series. The cylons, for example, can’t reproduce on their own and are thus unable to fulfill what they acknowlege to be one of God’s commands. This is apparently because they lack love (which also allowed them to destroy human civilization). Those cylons who have learned to love from humans (Caprica 6 and the two Boomers) immediately start questioning whether it was right for their people to wipe out ours. In the most recent episode, two of these characters are forced to conclude that the cylon invasion was just wrong and that they must work to atone for it.

Similarly, the humans (particularly Adama) have been driven to recognize the sins of humanity and to question–at least in the abstract–whether human civilization deserved to survive, what with having enslaved the cylons and (one might add) having permitted abortion. This isn’t to say that the cylons were right to invade, but it points to significant sins for which humanity deserved a comeuppance.

Of course, when the series first premiered, I was quite nervous about the polytheism/monotheism thing and where the series creators were going to take it, but as the show has unfolded, it’s become clear that they aren’t making a statement about whether polytheism or monotheism or atheism is true. They’re simply exploring the dramatic tensions that are latent in these worldviews.

That’s okay. In fact, that’s something I’d do if I were writing the series. Drama is all about tension and unease, and if you can make the viewer tense and uneasy then you’re creating drama–you’re hooking into the emotions that will bring him back for more.

If someone handed me a series about a bunch of polytheistic humans pitted against a bunch of robots and asked me to re-envision it (essentially what Sci-Fi did for exec producer Ron Moore), I might very well make the robots monotheists. That’s a good move dramatically, because it forces the viewers to not view this as a simple good vs. evil battle.

Nobody in a drama should ever be purely good or purely evil, because nobody in real life is purely good or purely evil (except for Jesus and Mary being purely good, but it is so hard to write dialogue for them).

Purely good and purely evil characters are what you may find in fairy tales, but in works written for adults they make the drama flat and uninteresting. If the creators of Battlestar Galactica flipped the religions of the two groups, making the humans
monotheists and the cylons polytheists (or atheists) then the series
would be a lot less interesting than it is.

The viewer’s native emotions will be on the side of the persecuted humans (because, well, they’re humans), but if you want the villains to be anything other than the Evil Walking Toasters that they were in the first series, you need to give them some good points–and a religion that the viewers sympathize with is a good way to do that.

The viewer thus feels tense–uneasy. He’s torn between sympathizing with the humans because they’re humans and sympathizing with the cylons because they’re monotheists. We know, ultimately, that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but as long as you can keep that tension going–as long as you don’t resolve it by endorsing one religious view over another–you’re doing drama, which is what you’re here to do.