I Need to Finish Babylon 5
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| Title: | I Need to Finish Babylon 5 |
| Creator: | Eli |
| Date(s): | August 22, 2011, posted August 18, 2013 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Babylon 5 |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | I Need To Finish Babylon 5 - Babylon 5 Revisited and Rethought, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
I Need to Finish Babylon 5 is part of a series of essays by Elaine Barlow (Eli) posted at "Babylon 5: Revisited and Rethought."
These essays use something called "Media Therapy."
The Series
The Introduction to the Series of Blogs
The History of This Project:
Explaining my complex emotional relationship with Babylon 5 is like trying to convince a Kool-Aid drinking psi-cop that the psi-corp is a seriously fraked up organization. I very much doubt there is a point in trying. I have never met a person who approaches creative media consumption the way that I do.
This blog was originally about documenting my new process and my new journey with Babylon 5 after being traumatized by it years ago. This blog was an important process for me, one I believed was very much at the core of the answering the question … Have I truly evolved? … a question that I needed to answer for myself if I was to actually move forward to my next level. Revisiting Babylon 5 was going to be about devoting myself to the following …
… all crucial steps in my further ascension as a person with extremely high self-awareness and deep levels of thinking and intellectual engagement. Babylon 5 is a great tool for this, as are many “thinking man’s” science fiction series like Dune – for example – that really push you into elevated levels of processing. Fully experiencing these kinds of media, devouring their content, placing yourself in the center of that pool of creative knowledge and artistic expression naked and vulnerable and emerging changed, is really the best way to challenge and truly know yourself. That is what this journey was going to be for me; my journey of reconciliation and proof of worthiness – ultimately – a pilgrimage. [1]
- 1. answering certain Universal questions
- 2.surviving the emotional upheaval
- 3.fully understanding certain Universal truths
- 4.fully processing the lessons of spirituality, sociology, and psychological awareness the series brings up
Excerpts
I am just going to admit this up front … I didn’t originally finish watching Babylon 5.
I never watched it when it originally aired, I barely caught it during reruns. I was very late venturing into the Babylon 5 universe, but I did eventually begin the journey. I didn’t stop because of boredom or lack of interest or getting too busy watching other things. It wasn’t anything like that. I stopped because it became just really too painful for me to endure.
As with any true opera, the range of drama and emotions can be overwhelming at times and you find yourself spiraling out of control within yourself. It can sometimes take so much out of you to continue experiencing it, especially when every part of your being is begging you to stop, to slow down, to turn it off for the sake of your sanity and emotional health. So much of me was wrapped up in the depth and philosophy and lessons of Babylon 5 that I became incapable of falling any further into it without risking myself. It was all too much; losing characters I cared about, being pulled apart by melodramatic circumstances that became, oftentimes, too much for me to handle because many of the characters were far too real, far too close to my heart, and far too much like myself.
Babylon 5 was relentless. JMS (J Michael Straczynski) was relentless. There was no stopping it once it all began and if you couldn’t keep up then you might as well have just thrown in the towel. The show was meant to be more than just entertainment, more than just another place to hide yourself from the days events, but a place that forces you to deal with yourself, see the world as you fit into it, and drag you kicking and screaming into philosophical state of awareness that you could not ignore.
There was no escaping him; Sebastian. There was no escaping it; Babylon 5. There was no turning away from Universal truth written between the lines. It’s only a television show, you’ll say. And you’re a complete ignorant, closed off, blind idiot, I’ll reply. It’s a bible for some, a mere road map for others. It’s an opera for some, a ballet for others. It’s an angel on your shoulder for some, a desperate cry in the night for others. It’s a signpost, a wardrobe, a stargate … It’s many things and I assure you, “television show” is the greatest insult ever given to something of Babylon 5’s caliber. You should be ashamed.
It’s been many years now since Babylon 5 aired, many years since the reruns were on television, many years since it won Emmys, Hugos, and Saturn awards, many years since anyone really took a hard look at it, revisited it, and wrote on it. I want to. I want to because I think, at this point in my life, I need to. I’ve come a long, long way since Babylon 5 rewired the way I saw myself, my place in the universe, the universe itself, and the people around me. I’ve evolved in ways I cannot begin to describe in words and because of that, I want to finish what I started. I want to finish what I originally couldn’t out of fear, confusion, and even shame.