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tentacular revolution

Skulltopus 2: Bad Night at Fang Rock

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Further to this post, in which I sketched out the ideas of the author China Miéville concerning the relationship between the tentacular and the Weird, and the superpositioning of the Weird and the hauntological in monsterology (please read that before you read anything below), here’s my first attempt to look at Doctor Who through that lens.

‘Horror of Fang Rock’ (1977) seems like an obvious first port of call.  Set just before the First World War (in other words, in the years of the rise of the semiotic octopus, just before the explosion of the Weird), the Rutan is a tentacular monster, though the tentacles are rarely seen and, on the whole, the creature seems more like a jellyfish (even down to its “affinity with electricity”).

It seems to be a manifestation of the nebulous electrified military modernity that the character Reuben so resents and fears.  It seems permeated with technology through its affinity with electricity.  It uses the generator, speaks of its ability to shape-shift as a “technique” and leaves bits of its own alien tech all over the place, including a “signal modulator” that chimes thematically with all the concentration on the lighthouse’s wireless telegraph.  It also espouses an ideology of empire and militarism, and uses an arrogant tone of snobbery with regards to the Sontarans, which is entirely fitting with the story’s intense focus on class.

(So, there’s an obvious connection here which I’ve made before.  ‘Fang Rock’ is set in the early 20th century and features a tentacular monster which seems to carry metaphorical weight to do with imperialism, technology, militarism, global conquest… just the kinds of things that tentacles were being used to signify in the early 20th century political propaganda posters mentioned by Miéville and in my first Skulltopus post.  Obviously, this connection is complicated by the fact that the story I’m talking about was written, made and broadcast in 1977, not 1907 or 1917… but the connection is tempting all the same, as a possible example of semiotic drift, of the cultural bric-a-brac of one age hitching a ride into another via that previous age’s representation as a period.)

The story, as a whole, seems more sympathetic to the working class characters than the ‘upper class’ ones. However, the various strands of the drama which explicitly deal with class only arrive at an open and easily comprehensible liberal critique of snobbery, privilege and inequality, albeit a barbed one.  The nature of the Rutan threatens to sharpen the critique, though it is ultimately far too contradictory a figure to function as a straightforward metaphor, of either a reactionary or radical nature.  The Rutan personifies the oncoming dangers of the twentieth century in a form that associates itself with militarism, military technology, class and imperialism.  However, beyond this core of metaphorical specificity, there is a difficulty in pinning down the Rutan.

It cannot be said to metaphorically embody British imperialism, specifically.  True, it appears in a story in which British imperialism is referenced… but then so is the imperialism of other nations, albeit via the xenophobia of Reuben, who mentions various nationalities engaged in imperialism at this point, saying that none of them can be trusted.…

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Skulltopus

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In his fascinating essay ‘M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire’ (the link is to a PDF), the author and theorist China Miéville wrote:

The spread of the tentacle – a limb-type with no Gothic or traditional precedents (in ‘Western’ aesthetics) – from a situation of near total absence in Euro-American teratoculture up to the nineteenth century, to one of being the default monstrous appendage of today, signals the epochal shift to a Weird culture.

Miéville charts the way that the cephalopodic suddenly erupts into late 19th-early 20th century “teratology” (monsterology), with conflicted foreshadowings and pre-disavowals (Verne, for example, and Victor Hugo) leading up to a story called ‘The Sea Raiders’ by H. G. Wells, in which previously unknown squidular monsters suddenly surface and go on an inexplicable rampage off the British coast, and on to the “haute Weird” of William Hope Hodgson and, especially, H. P. Lovecraft.

In this Weird tentacular, Miéville sees much significance.  His argument, as I’ve gathered from the essay mentioned above (and from listening to various talks he’s given), is that the squidular, tentacular and cephalopodic, but especially the octopoidal, arises as a teratological metaphor to supply a need felt by those writers travelling through the crises of modernity at the turn of the 19th-20th century and after.  In their formless and protean nature – many octopuses and squid have developed natural camouflage abilities, making them capable of astonishing feats of transformation – the octopoda seemed to be the shape to use in order to convey shapelessness.  Moreover, the very “novum” or newness of the tentacular (in the West) as a symbol was attractive to those seeking to convey something that had not been conveyed before, that perhaps cannot be coherently conveyed at all.

The octopus – as I’ve mentioned on this blog and in Panic Moon, following my reading of Miéville – suddenly appears in and conquers the 20th century political propaganda poster (you can see an amazing array of such political octopus propaganda at this blog… to which I have contributed myself).  I’ve suggested (rather obviously and, I’m sure, unoriginally) that the many arms of the octopus, radiating outwards from the central hub of the body, make it a perfect graphic figure for representing the putative multifarious global reach and manipulative ability of centralised power, whether that power is military, commercial, ideological, whatever.  Exactly the kind of centralised but increasingly global power that was arising in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The octopus poster tends to show the creature reaching to many places at once.  Miéville himself has spoken of the octopus as suggesting manipulation.  He has noted how, in these propaganda representations, the octopus is used to signify just about everything from “perfidious Jews” and “perfidious Bolsheviks” to “capitalists”, “unrestrained railroad building” and “landlords”.  In other words, it means everything… hence it means nothing.  The octopus became immensely “symbolically fecund” in the early decades of the 20th century, but with no set cultural consensus about what it probably meant (unlike vampires and werewolves, say, which had – and still have – very well established, longstanding semiotic baggage). …

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Fang Rock, Class and the Tentacular Revolution

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If you ask me, ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ is one of the best ever; a thriller that focuses on characters who really interact while they’re trapped together, featuring Tom and Louise at their acme.

It investigates the nature of belief in an age of rising science and technology: Adelaide’s astrology fetish compares to the superstition of Vince and Reuben, with Vince’s terror as real as hers, and Reuben’s fear of monsters more a manifestation of melancholy stubbornness at the rise of unsympathetic forces he doesn’t understand (like electricity… which is also the weapon of the monster that kills and impersonates him). Meanwhile, Leela lectures Adelaide that consulting her “shaman” (despite Adelaide’s denial, that is the right word for people like Miss Nethercote) is a “waste of time”… but, with relishable irony, the semi-educated Leela simply believes in science because her mentor has told her to.

‘Fang Rock’ has a quiet undercurrent about sex too. Adelaide is understood by Harker to be Palmerdale’s “fancy woman” and Skinsale obviously envies this (though god knows why)… but he’s also clearly very taken with Leela. Paddy Russell gives us a whole shot simply to establish how much Skinsale digs Leela on sight. Vince is very flustered by Leela’s impromptu striptease (which she completely fails to understand) and pays attentions to Adelaide, which she simply treats with a patronising indulgence (to her he’s an instrumentum vocale, not a young man). And then we have the porn under Reuben’s bed. Mind you, I’m not a Freudian so I’m not saying anything about phallic symbolism. Sometimes, a lighthouse is just a lighthouse.

‘Fang Rock’ is also very interested in class and the way it was changing in the early 20th century. Palmerdale is loaded and is therefore a scumbag, obviously. Crude but very Whoish… and true enough in general terms. He seems dead posh to the keepers… but to Skinsale (a wonderfully apt name, considering the manner of his death) Palmerdale is a nouveu riche, arriviste, vulgar little money-grubber… and such things obviously matter to Palmerdale since he has evidently purchased his lordly title. He tries to buy everything. He even seems to be paying his mistress (albeit for being a secretary rather than a concubine). Skinsale, meanwhile, considers himself Palmerdale’s social superior, despite obviously being skint (old money, obviously… and with a reputation built on enforcing empire in India). Palmerdale gets loads of his sailors killed but makes sure that he escapes (there are lifeboats enough for the gentry, as with the Titanic disaster, but not for the commoners) after causing the crash because he’s anxious to use insider info to fleece the markets… and then views Harker’s recriminations as irrelevant impertinence, and the keepers as more servants.

It’s worth noticing that the Doctor treats the workers (other than the cloddish and xenophobic Reuben) with respect. He starts off calling Vince “Mr Hawkins” while the poshos automatically talk to him like he’s a footman.

Vince, upon realising that Palmerdale is dead, burns the cash that His Lordship gave him, instinctively understanding that if he’s found in possession of it, the society he lives in will simply assume that he murdered the venal, titled git for the money.…

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