Schooled by PopCul

This wonderful tweet flew by in the stream. Reflecting on the passing of U.S.Supreme Court Justice Scalia, the writer gave a cheeky shrug and compared Scalia’s relationship with Justice Ginsburg to that of Londo and G’kar from the 1990s science-fiction series Babylon 5.

Despite knowing nothing about Scalia and barely a pinky fingernail about Ginsburg I totally got their relationship half a world away in Australia. (You see, I may not have had the most enriching of childhoods. I may not have studied. I may not have known HOW to study, really, until I became a teacher and learned the tactics of my upper-middle class students.)  But. I did watch a hell of a lot of TV as a kid. And Babylon 5 was there in those formative teen years when I was working out what was right and what was wrong; what was just and what was kicked in the teeth unfair. So while I don’t know much about US judicial politics, the B5 analogy deepened my understanding of current events.

Mayhap my small-l liberalism comes from the stories I read and watched and imagined myself into. Maybe story has more thoroughly shaped who I am and who I could be, more so than any other influence. With that hypothesis in mind I sat down to rewatch Babylon 5′s first episode, looking past the screen itself, to see what I was really seeing as a teen and again now, as a woman.

(Also - I really need to write more & get back in the habit. Here’s hoping this helps.)