two doctors

May 19, 2012

Beyond Redemption

Jack Graham 80s, about time, androgums, anti-semitism, dune, imperialism, nazis, philip sandifer, race, racism, robert holmes, robert shearman, season 22, shakespeare, shockeye, sontarans, two doctors 7

I think there is something inherently dodgy about the notion of ‘redemptive readings’. It seems to imply a determination to look at a text in a positive way that is at odds with what could be called ‘proper scepticism’. This objection is itself open to the objection that it’s silly to approach a piece of entertainment product with ‘scepticism’, especially when it is part of a series of which one is supposedly a fan. But, this loses sight of context and agency. There are various ways of choosing to watch the same thing. When you sit down to enjoy an episode of a show you like, for fun, you’re a bit odd if you’re not expecting, hoping and trying to like it. When you’re watching it with the express intention of analysing it and then writing about what it means, proper scepticism becomes appropriate. Trying to like what you’re watching becomes a somewhat iffy strategy in that context. Besides, doesn’t the necessity of trying to find ways of praising what you’re analysing tell us something in itself? This muddle also loses sight of the distinctions that are always to be found within the concept of enjoyment, distinctions that are all too often spuriously aggregated. You don’t have to think something is politically or morally correct in order to like it (though, in practice…). No more do you need to think that something is aesthetically sophisticated or beautiful in order to relish its aesthetic. Conversely, you may dislike a beautifully made piece of art which offers praiseworthy political or moral analyses. Or you may take enjoyment from the act of hostile reading itself. I, for instance, very much enjoy hating and criticising certain things, and I don’t see anything wrong with this.

This is by way of a preamble to talking about ‘The Two Doctors’, which has been subject to an attempted rehabilitation from the charge of being reactionary on the issue of race. The re-evaluation of the story has been pioneered and best expressed by Robert Shearman in About Time 6. The essence of his argument is that the Androgums are a comment on the concept of the monster as employed by Doctor Who. They are characterised as generic monsters but it is disarming when people treat them as such because they do not look like monsters. They are treated the same way as the Sontarans – all of them racially evil and hateful – but, because they do not have potato-heads or eye-stalks, this poses a problem. We notice the inappropriateness, even tastelessness, of generalising about the evil of an entire race when they look like us. We don’t blink when the Doctor describes the entire Jagaroth race as vicious and callous but it bothers us when the same racial villainy is implied about aliens who look human. Philip Sandifer recently summarized and expanded the case admirably, here.

I’m enormously tempted by this reading… and, maybe, if I’d approached ‘The Two Doctors’ with the express intention of finding a ‘redemptive reading’, I would’ve happily seized upon it.…

October 28, 2011

Behind the Times

Jack Graham anti-semitism, colonialism, daleks, imperialism, monty python, orientalism, racism, riots, robert holmes, shakespeare, talons of weng chiang, tomb of the cybermen, two doctors 4

Doctor Who was (and is) frequently racist in its representations. Probably no more or less than most other cultural products of our society, but nonetheless…

Now, to deal with the banalities first, I don’t accuse anybody involved in making the show of being deliberately racist. I don’t generally know much about their opinions. When you hear about their views, you tend to hear that they were liberals or soft-lefties. People reminiscing about working with Hartnell tend to raise his right-wing opinions on race (and other things) as though they were considered unusual. And that’s not the issue anyway. I’m not interested in making personal attacks on this or that writer or producer.

The show started nearly 50 years ago… so a lot of it is old, dated, the product of vanished days. This is often raised by fans who see the problems in certain Who stories but, understandably, are eager to defend them. Nobody wants to feel that something they love is tainted by racism – that terrible bogey word that stops people thinking clearly because, like so many important words, it’s been systematically stripped of its context and has become a Bad Thing that menaces society from without.

I ‘get’ this desire to explain away racist representations in stories we love. I get it totally… but I’m against the giving out of passes on the grounds that something is ‘of its time’.

E. P. Thompson – in a very different context… in his book The Making of the English Working Class – coined the phrase “the enormous condescension of posterity”, to refer to the oblivion into which the struggles of ordinary people get consigned by bourgeois history. It’s a great phrase (which I have previously and idiotically attributed to Christopher Hill!) which expresses something about what is arrogantly forgotten when you invoke ‘the times’ to excuse reactionary representations.

Cyber-Race

In the Hammer film, The Mummy, George Pastell plays the sinister Egyptian who brings the Mummy back to life, which chimes with his role in ‘Tomb’ (and also with the character Namin in ‘Pyramids of Mars’, another story in which genre semiotics transmit a representation of ‘foreign’ cultures as sources or vehicles of sinister, uncanny forces which threaten white Westerners). As I’ve argued elsewhere, ‘Tomb’ is racist largely because it is a reworking of the ‘Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb’ type story. Klieg is the guy who tries to resurrect the Mummy in order to use it.

Those kinds of stories – gothic colonialist fiction of the 19th century which found its way into 20th century pop-culture via movies – carry certain kinds of baggage with them because they stem from British imperial engagement in Egypt. They’re about Brits breaking into Egyptian tombs, finding Egyptian mummies, being cursed by Egyptian curses as punishment. They express – quite unconsciously I’m sure – a certain anxiety about colonialism. Beneath the surface they seem to whisper ‘we’re barging around where we shouldn’t be and we’re gonna pay for it’. But inherent in such anxiety is fear of the colonised people and their culture.…

September 5, 2011

Blink and you’ll miss your chance to get a man

Jack Graham blink, series 5, sexism, steven moffat, two doctors 4

Someone I respect a lot has recently said that Moffat’s Who stories don’t really display much in the way of viewpoints. With all due respect to Gallibase forum poster Affirmation (and that’s one heck of a lot of respect), I actually think Moffat’s stories do tell us a lot about what he thinks. I think they tell us quite a bit about what he thinks about women, for instance.

‘Blink’, for example, tells us that following a woman you’ve just met is an acceptable (even whimsically amusing) way of wooing her. It tells us that geeky internety guys are amusingly tragic pratts… but that women exist to redeem them by accepting them. Ultimately, the gorgeous young girl misses her opportunity to ‘get’ the hot cool copper (she automatically imagines marrying him once she’s automatically attracted to him) and has to settle for the nerd. Settling for the nerd (i.e. finally getting herself a man of some description) is the sign that she’s grown up, settled her issues, is ready to move on with life, etc. Living with her mate and having a laugh were the preludes to Real Life, the start of which (for both female characters) is naturally signfied by becoming a wife or permanent girlfriend to the nearest man ready to accept her.

And ‘Blink’, I should add, is one of Moffat’s better stories (in my ‘umble). Compared to other of his episodes, ‘Blink’ actually does seem (to me) to have some things to say. It rather amusingly takes bad sitcom characters and subjects then to a very non-sitcom plot (which is more than Gareth Roberts could manage). Of course, they’re still just bad sitcom characters… but the episode does say something about the passing of time and the achievement of emotional maturity.

Of course, the sentiments expressed are somewhat sexist (see above) and are not particularly original or shattering. Life passes quicker than you think it will, you don’t always get what you want or expect in life… well, unless you’re the steadfastly and creepily loyal nerd who eventually ‘wins’ his ‘out-of-his-league’ girlfriend once she realises what a loyal puppydog he is.

One doesn’t have to be Freud, does one?…