Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights) wrote2011-08-07 01:53 am
such_heights) wrote2011-08-07 01:53 am
Entry tags:
on RTD, Moffat, representation & Doctor Who
All right. This is some meta in response to a bunch of different things people have been talking about with regard to Doctor Who and marginalised group representation, and whether RTD or Moffat does it better. This has been an ongoing conversation since before Moffat took over, occasionally flaring up into outright arguments, and what frustrates me about a lot of the general thrust of debate is the lack of nuance, or a lack of willingness to concede there are strenghths and flaws in both head writers' approaches to issues of representation in the show, and also that sometimes we conflate matters of personal taste with attempts at feminist criticism, etc.
I have definitely fallen into that last camp myself. By the end of RTD's tenure I felt really run down with the show. I was tired of the angst, felt like the best parts of the show as RTD wrote them all seemed to be long gone, and desperately looking forward to something new. Eleven and the Ponds proved to be exactly that. Season 5 has been my favourite New Who series to date, and I've loved most of S6 too.
I think it's worth remembering that in the above I'm comparing a year and a half against five years, a completed run including several distinct story arcs against a single story that's still in progress. Which doesn't mean you can't criticise Moffat's time as show runner by any means, but it seems relevant to me - we don't even know how his first companion's story is going to play out, yet. There are far more examples of RTD's approach to issues of gender, race, sexuality and so on, both occasions where he's handled them well, and other occasions where he's handled them badly. And I think that Moffat's track record to date has been mixed, too.
So in the below I'm going to talk about four representational issues - gender, race, sexuality, and disability - and my general impressions of how they've been handled by RTD and Moffat respectively. I don't really have a definitive thesis other than I'd probably give them both a 'room for improvement' grade on my hypothetical report card. I'm also going to talk a little bit about why this stuff matters, and finally why there are lots of different ways fans respond to these issues and plenty of them are very valid.
My only firm point is that Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River et al. are all awesome, and if you want to tear one of them down to build up another, this is not the post for you. Oh, and I'm also going to be leaving aside questions of whether or not RTD/Moffat is sexist/homophobic/racist etc - I will quote from some interviews where they directly talk about representational issues on the show, but that's it. I'm more interested in results than intentions.
---
Okay, let's talk about disability first. And here we hit on what I consider to be one of the bigger representational flaws in RTD's era that happily has yet to recur under Moffat - the trope of the evil meglomaniac wheelchair user. We see that trope used in the Cybermen two-parter in S2 with Lumic, the Voyage of the Damned special with Max, and Davros at the end of S4. Given that Davros is a Classic Who villain, that by itself would maybe not be quite so egregious. But one villain a year three years running in that basic, problematic mould was deeply unnecessary.
I am now trying to think of other characters with disabilities in RTD's era and struggling for further examples - please let me know if you can think of some! My rustiness with S1 - S4 becomes evident. But certainly the evil wheelchair users has stuck in my mind, and also in my craw.
In Moffat's era, the most prominent example of a disabled character is Vincent van Gogh in 5x10. I, like many others, found this to be a very sympathetic representation of a character experiencing mental illness, and it means a lot to me personally. There's also Eliot, the little boy from The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, who is dyslexic. I also think this is a pretty good portrayal - it's not a particularly major plot point, and isn't used to diminish Eliot's intelligence or competence.
On the downside, we have van Gogh's return in 5x12, in which his mental illness is used as a plot point to give him visions and leave him in intense distress, hitting far too close to the 'depressed artist with magical powers' trope I'd been pleased to escape in 5x10. Also, there's Madam Kovarian, a mysterious villain with an eye patch, where it seems that said eye patch is part of what makes her at first creepy and then later evil. This repeats the same lazy shorthand as the evil wheelchair users above, demonstrating moral failing through physical imperfection. Kovarian's story isn't over yet, so maybe she'll prove more interesting than she currently seems, but I'm not overly optimistic.
---
Moving on to the topic of sexuality. The sudden lack of queer characters in S5 was noticeable and jarring compared to RTD's era, and I'm relieved that Moffat has rectified that this season. There's an After Elton interview where he talks about that, saying that someone had to point it out to him. Which says a lot about writing and privilege and the danger of not thinking about this stuff.
There's legitimate criticism to be made about the manner of Canton's sexuality being confirmed at the end of 6x02, as sort of an afterthought and a joke, but for me personally it's still great given what a prominent and awesome character he is. One of us, one of us! And then we got Jenny and Vastra as well, and the fan response to them has been entirely charming. So I feel like Who is mostly on track on the issue of sexuality once more.
In RTD's era, what was striking was how often queer sexuality would come up in different scripts by different writers. Not just big examples like Captain Jack, but plenty of throwaway lines too - S3 particularly is a great example of this.
As far as Jack goes, he'll always mean a lot to me. He burst onto my screen when I was a closeted teenager in a small town, and he was out and proud and this incredible sci-fi action hero. I'll always love both RTD and Moffat for combining forces to give me that moment. However, the Doctor's later treatment and rejection of Jack does sit uncomfortably with me.
In the Tenth Doctor's era, it seems to me that the people he travels with can mostly be divided into two groups - companions he loves unreservedly, and ones he has a more complicated and awkward relationship with. Rose and Donna along with a few guest characters fall clearly into the first, with Jack, Martha and Mickey falling into the second. Which, when you consider the demographics involved, makes for awkward viewing.
I feel like the best illustration of the problem comes from a fanvid by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cherryice, What We Had, which was made before S4 and involves the Master but I think gets at the thing that bothers me. Jack, of course, has gone onto Torchwood and become an extremely long-running and popular character, and Martha and Mickey make returns on multiple occasions in order to be extremely fabulous. Nonetheless, the Doctor's treatment of them bothers me and to my mind, weakens the show and the Tenth Doctor's character.
---
Which leads me nicely onto race. As I said, Martha and Mickey - both completely amazing. The Doctor's treatment of them due to the fact they are not Rose - less great. They both have to prove themselves time and again to the Doctor in a way that Rose and Donna don't, which unfortunately mirrors the all-too-real experience of many non-white people who are automatically considered to be less qualified for any given task than their white counterparts. Seeing that structure reflected on a show like Doctor Who is a real shame. They also both leave the Doctor because they can't take that implicit and constant rejection any longer - contrast that to Rose and Donna's declarations that they'll travel with the Doctor forever.
However, their decision to leave the Doctor does actually open up their sense of agency, and for the rest of their arcs they both very much do things on their own terms. No being dumped on beaches on parallel worlds or having their memories forcibly removed for them! And were it not for Noel and Freema both being off having exciting careers elsewhere, you could easily imagine their characters continuing to show up as part of the Whoniverse.
Turn to Moffat's tenure so far and two chromatic characters particularly stand out - Liz Ten from 5x02 and Nasreen from 5x08/5x09. Both awesome, both quickly gain the Doctor's respect, and both get some pretty cool stuff to do. Nasreen became the first South Asian character to enter the TARDIS, and having a future British queen who isn't white is a pretty great thing to see. In S6 we also had Lorna Bucket, who was very, very brave.
Unfortunately, both RTD and Moffat have a tendency towards killing off chromatic characters at a higher rate than their white characters, to the extent that it can pretty predictable who's going to die when watching an episode. Again, it's lazy storytelling. Moffat's era also is a lot whiter on the whole than RTD's time was - chromatic guest stars are fewer and further between, and I'm hoping that's something that will improve in the future.
Although RTD's casting was more racially diverse, at the same time we also had chromatic guest stars often used primarily to be cannon fodder/show off the leads' superior intelligence, compassion or heroism. A particularly noticeable example of this is in the first episodes of S1, S3 and S4, where Rose, Martha and Donna's suitability for being companions is shown against the lack of suitability of other characters - Mickey in S1, a fellow med student in S3, and a journalist in S4, all of whom are chromatic characters.
To reiterate, it's not about intentions, but about results. Overall, like a lot of Western media, the overall image painted is one where non-white characters are more expendable, less heroic, or less worthy. More characters like Nasreen in the future, please, and fewer like the valiant but doomed Isabella and Guido from 5x06.
---
Lastly, I'll touch briefly on gender. I'll keep this section brief - I know a lot of us are both Doctor Who fans and committed feminists of varying kinds, and I think we all have our feelings about the treatment of women on the show. What I will say is this. Doctor Who, at its heart, is in large part about ordinary - and sometimes not-so-ordinary - women having extraordinary adventures, from Barbara and Susan right through to Amy and River. And whatever frustration we feel at individual writers, episodes and story arcs, I think the show always gets back to that in the end. It's why I love it so much - having that huge plethora of women in space to love and identify with and be inspired by is something special, I think, and it's something bigger than any one showrunner.
Both RTD and Moffat have created fantastic female characters who have enduring legacies and devoted fanbases. They both also fall prey to the temptation to sacrifice these women's agency and free choices in the name of drama and plot, and sometimes in the name of the Doctor's angst. I wish they wouldn't do that, and I'm hoping by the end of this season Amy will have had some real chances to start making some decisions about where she wants her life to go from here.
However, I also firmly think that no matter what we think of their story arcs, Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River are all well-defined, three-dimensional and fantastic characters worthy of our fannish devotion. The writers may not always know how to treat them right, but that doesn't make them less awesome on their own terms.
---
So, why does this stuff happen, and why should we care? This actually touches on the work I'm currently doing in my MA dissertation, but I'll try and keep it short and not too dull. If you're interested in reading more on the subject, I recommend googling 'implicit bias'.
In a nutshell, the current psychological and political theories go like this. We live in societies that perpetuate various harmful stereotypes about marginalised groups. Owing to the amount of exposure we receive from the media, politics, education and everyday conversation, we internalise a lot of these stereotypes and biases from a young age. Unfortunately, it appears to generally be the case that no matter how explicitly egalitarian our conscious beliefs are, these biases may still manifest themselves in our thoughts, behaviour and actions, often in unconscious ways. Obviously this has a lot of intersection with the idea of privilege - members of privileged groups often aren't encouraged to confront the possibility they have these biases. However, the psychological evidence also suggests that these biases are just as likely to be internalised by members of the groups the biases are about. Which is why being a woman doesn't automatically make you a feminist, for example.
And so, even though I would guess that both RTD and Moffat consider themselves to be progressive and liberal people and writers, they will both still inevitably have these biases lurking in the back of their minds - we all do. And what I think the above examples show is that they and the rest of their writing and production teams have more work to do yet on rewiring those biases and excising them from their work.
Why should we care about these representational issues in the context of a family sci-fi show? For one thing, as it stands the show is introducing some of these biases and stereotypes to a new generation of viewers - people with visible disabilities are people to be feared, for example. And positive representation can have a dramatic effect in the opposite direction, in providing role models and breaking down those stereotypes for members and non-members of the marginalised group in question alike.
Visual representation of counterstereotypical marginalised group members seem to be one of the most powerful ways to break down implicit bias, the research suggests. Doctor Who can be seriously awesome in this respect, as I've mentioned in various examples above. There's also definite room for it to be better.
---
And lastly, a note on how we engage with less than perfect source material. Unfortunately, there isn't that much out there that is perfect, or even close to it, and in the end we all pick and choose based on a combination of things we like and things we can put up with. We compartmentalise. Sometimes we enjoy elements of canon source even while we might simultaneously think there's a critical point to be made. Sometimes we deal with these issues enough in our offline life that we want to ignore it when we hit fandom. Sometimes it's because we deal with these issues so much in our offline life that we can't ignore it when it crops up in fandom. Sometimes we don't pick up it at all, or disagree when someone else argues that it's problematic. Sometimes we just don't want to engage that day, that month, or ever.
I'll be honest - Moffat's iteration of Doctor Who makes me really, really happy. And I think that's important too. It doesn't mean I refuse to consider the possibility his writing is less than perfect, but I do reserve the right to engage with the issues on my own time and in my own terms. I also reserve the right to ignore scathing criticism of this thing that I love and that makes me happy, because fannish squee is a precious commodity and I'm keeping this one for as long as I can. And I think that's valid too.
Mileage will vary a lot on everything I've covered. I hope it's clear from this post that I think that's totally okay, and sort of my point. Few things are perfect, and we love them anyway, and sometimes part of our loving them is critiquing them, and sometimes it isn't, and that's fine. But given this subject keeps going round and round and round, I thought I would type out my own thoughts on the subject for posterity.
---
Possibly foolishly, I'm going to bed after I hit post. Therefore, I'll be around to address any comments/corrections etc in the morning.
I have definitely fallen into that last camp myself. By the end of RTD's tenure I felt really run down with the show. I was tired of the angst, felt like the best parts of the show as RTD wrote them all seemed to be long gone, and desperately looking forward to something new. Eleven and the Ponds proved to be exactly that. Season 5 has been my favourite New Who series to date, and I've loved most of S6 too.
I think it's worth remembering that in the above I'm comparing a year and a half against five years, a completed run including several distinct story arcs against a single story that's still in progress. Which doesn't mean you can't criticise Moffat's time as show runner by any means, but it seems relevant to me - we don't even know how his first companion's story is going to play out, yet. There are far more examples of RTD's approach to issues of gender, race, sexuality and so on, both occasions where he's handled them well, and other occasions where he's handled them badly. And I think that Moffat's track record to date has been mixed, too.
So in the below I'm going to talk about four representational issues - gender, race, sexuality, and disability - and my general impressions of how they've been handled by RTD and Moffat respectively. I don't really have a definitive thesis other than I'd probably give them both a 'room for improvement' grade on my hypothetical report card. I'm also going to talk a little bit about why this stuff matters, and finally why there are lots of different ways fans respond to these issues and plenty of them are very valid.
My only firm point is that Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River et al. are all awesome, and if you want to tear one of them down to build up another, this is not the post for you. Oh, and I'm also going to be leaving aside questions of whether or not RTD/Moffat is sexist/homophobic/racist etc - I will quote from some interviews where they directly talk about representational issues on the show, but that's it. I'm more interested in results than intentions.
---
Okay, let's talk about disability first. And here we hit on what I consider to be one of the bigger representational flaws in RTD's era that happily has yet to recur under Moffat - the trope of the evil meglomaniac wheelchair user. We see that trope used in the Cybermen two-parter in S2 with Lumic, the Voyage of the Damned special with Max, and Davros at the end of S4. Given that Davros is a Classic Who villain, that by itself would maybe not be quite so egregious. But one villain a year three years running in that basic, problematic mould was deeply unnecessary.
I am now trying to think of other characters with disabilities in RTD's era and struggling for further examples - please let me know if you can think of some! My rustiness with S1 - S4 becomes evident. But certainly the evil wheelchair users has stuck in my mind, and also in my craw.
In Moffat's era, the most prominent example of a disabled character is Vincent van Gogh in 5x10. I, like many others, found this to be a very sympathetic representation of a character experiencing mental illness, and it means a lot to me personally. There's also Eliot, the little boy from The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, who is dyslexic. I also think this is a pretty good portrayal - it's not a particularly major plot point, and isn't used to diminish Eliot's intelligence or competence.
On the downside, we have van Gogh's return in 5x12, in which his mental illness is used as a plot point to give him visions and leave him in intense distress, hitting far too close to the 'depressed artist with magical powers' trope I'd been pleased to escape in 5x10. Also, there's Madam Kovarian, a mysterious villain with an eye patch, where it seems that said eye patch is part of what makes her at first creepy and then later evil. This repeats the same lazy shorthand as the evil wheelchair users above, demonstrating moral failing through physical imperfection. Kovarian's story isn't over yet, so maybe she'll prove more interesting than she currently seems, but I'm not overly optimistic.
---
Moving on to the topic of sexuality. The sudden lack of queer characters in S5 was noticeable and jarring compared to RTD's era, and I'm relieved that Moffat has rectified that this season. There's an After Elton interview where he talks about that, saying that someone had to point it out to him. Which says a lot about writing and privilege and the danger of not thinking about this stuff.
There's legitimate criticism to be made about the manner of Canton's sexuality being confirmed at the end of 6x02, as sort of an afterthought and a joke, but for me personally it's still great given what a prominent and awesome character he is. One of us, one of us! And then we got Jenny and Vastra as well, and the fan response to them has been entirely charming. So I feel like Who is mostly on track on the issue of sexuality once more.
In RTD's era, what was striking was how often queer sexuality would come up in different scripts by different writers. Not just big examples like Captain Jack, but plenty of throwaway lines too - S3 particularly is a great example of this.
As far as Jack goes, he'll always mean a lot to me. He burst onto my screen when I was a closeted teenager in a small town, and he was out and proud and this incredible sci-fi action hero. I'll always love both RTD and Moffat for combining forces to give me that moment. However, the Doctor's later treatment and rejection of Jack does sit uncomfortably with me.
In the Tenth Doctor's era, it seems to me that the people he travels with can mostly be divided into two groups - companions he loves unreservedly, and ones he has a more complicated and awkward relationship with. Rose and Donna along with a few guest characters fall clearly into the first, with Jack, Martha and Mickey falling into the second. Which, when you consider the demographics involved, makes for awkward viewing.
I feel like the best illustration of the problem comes from a fanvid by
cherryice, What We Had, which was made before S4 and involves the Master but I think gets at the thing that bothers me. Jack, of course, has gone onto Torchwood and become an extremely long-running and popular character, and Martha and Mickey make returns on multiple occasions in order to be extremely fabulous. Nonetheless, the Doctor's treatment of them bothers me and to my mind, weakens the show and the Tenth Doctor's character.---
Which leads me nicely onto race. As I said, Martha and Mickey - both completely amazing. The Doctor's treatment of them due to the fact they are not Rose - less great. They both have to prove themselves time and again to the Doctor in a way that Rose and Donna don't, which unfortunately mirrors the all-too-real experience of many non-white people who are automatically considered to be less qualified for any given task than their white counterparts. Seeing that structure reflected on a show like Doctor Who is a real shame. They also both leave the Doctor because they can't take that implicit and constant rejection any longer - contrast that to Rose and Donna's declarations that they'll travel with the Doctor forever.
However, their decision to leave the Doctor does actually open up their sense of agency, and for the rest of their arcs they both very much do things on their own terms. No being dumped on beaches on parallel worlds or having their memories forcibly removed for them! And were it not for Noel and Freema both being off having exciting careers elsewhere, you could easily imagine their characters continuing to show up as part of the Whoniverse.
Turn to Moffat's tenure so far and two chromatic characters particularly stand out - Liz Ten from 5x02 and Nasreen from 5x08/5x09. Both awesome, both quickly gain the Doctor's respect, and both get some pretty cool stuff to do. Nasreen became the first South Asian character to enter the TARDIS, and having a future British queen who isn't white is a pretty great thing to see. In S6 we also had Lorna Bucket, who was very, very brave.
Unfortunately, both RTD and Moffat have a tendency towards killing off chromatic characters at a higher rate than their white characters, to the extent that it can pretty predictable who's going to die when watching an episode. Again, it's lazy storytelling. Moffat's era also is a lot whiter on the whole than RTD's time was - chromatic guest stars are fewer and further between, and I'm hoping that's something that will improve in the future.
Although RTD's casting was more racially diverse, at the same time we also had chromatic guest stars often used primarily to be cannon fodder/show off the leads' superior intelligence, compassion or heroism. A particularly noticeable example of this is in the first episodes of S1, S3 and S4, where Rose, Martha and Donna's suitability for being companions is shown against the lack of suitability of other characters - Mickey in S1, a fellow med student in S3, and a journalist in S4, all of whom are chromatic characters.
To reiterate, it's not about intentions, but about results. Overall, like a lot of Western media, the overall image painted is one where non-white characters are more expendable, less heroic, or less worthy. More characters like Nasreen in the future, please, and fewer like the valiant but doomed Isabella and Guido from 5x06.
---
Lastly, I'll touch briefly on gender. I'll keep this section brief - I know a lot of us are both Doctor Who fans and committed feminists of varying kinds, and I think we all have our feelings about the treatment of women on the show. What I will say is this. Doctor Who, at its heart, is in large part about ordinary - and sometimes not-so-ordinary - women having extraordinary adventures, from Barbara and Susan right through to Amy and River. And whatever frustration we feel at individual writers, episodes and story arcs, I think the show always gets back to that in the end. It's why I love it so much - having that huge plethora of women in space to love and identify with and be inspired by is something special, I think, and it's something bigger than any one showrunner.
Both RTD and Moffat have created fantastic female characters who have enduring legacies and devoted fanbases. They both also fall prey to the temptation to sacrifice these women's agency and free choices in the name of drama and plot, and sometimes in the name of the Doctor's angst. I wish they wouldn't do that, and I'm hoping by the end of this season Amy will have had some real chances to start making some decisions about where she wants her life to go from here.
However, I also firmly think that no matter what we think of their story arcs, Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River are all well-defined, three-dimensional and fantastic characters worthy of our fannish devotion. The writers may not always know how to treat them right, but that doesn't make them less awesome on their own terms.
---
So, why does this stuff happen, and why should we care? This actually touches on the work I'm currently doing in my MA dissertation, but I'll try and keep it short and not too dull. If you're interested in reading more on the subject, I recommend googling 'implicit bias'.
In a nutshell, the current psychological and political theories go like this. We live in societies that perpetuate various harmful stereotypes about marginalised groups. Owing to the amount of exposure we receive from the media, politics, education and everyday conversation, we internalise a lot of these stereotypes and biases from a young age. Unfortunately, it appears to generally be the case that no matter how explicitly egalitarian our conscious beliefs are, these biases may still manifest themselves in our thoughts, behaviour and actions, often in unconscious ways. Obviously this has a lot of intersection with the idea of privilege - members of privileged groups often aren't encouraged to confront the possibility they have these biases. However, the psychological evidence also suggests that these biases are just as likely to be internalised by members of the groups the biases are about. Which is why being a woman doesn't automatically make you a feminist, for example.
And so, even though I would guess that both RTD and Moffat consider themselves to be progressive and liberal people and writers, they will both still inevitably have these biases lurking in the back of their minds - we all do. And what I think the above examples show is that they and the rest of their writing and production teams have more work to do yet on rewiring those biases and excising them from their work.
Why should we care about these representational issues in the context of a family sci-fi show? For one thing, as it stands the show is introducing some of these biases and stereotypes to a new generation of viewers - people with visible disabilities are people to be feared, for example. And positive representation can have a dramatic effect in the opposite direction, in providing role models and breaking down those stereotypes for members and non-members of the marginalised group in question alike.
Visual representation of counterstereotypical marginalised group members seem to be one of the most powerful ways to break down implicit bias, the research suggests. Doctor Who can be seriously awesome in this respect, as I've mentioned in various examples above. There's also definite room for it to be better.
---
And lastly, a note on how we engage with less than perfect source material. Unfortunately, there isn't that much out there that is perfect, or even close to it, and in the end we all pick and choose based on a combination of things we like and things we can put up with. We compartmentalise. Sometimes we enjoy elements of canon source even while we might simultaneously think there's a critical point to be made. Sometimes we deal with these issues enough in our offline life that we want to ignore it when we hit fandom. Sometimes it's because we deal with these issues so much in our offline life that we can't ignore it when it crops up in fandom. Sometimes we don't pick up it at all, or disagree when someone else argues that it's problematic. Sometimes we just don't want to engage that day, that month, or ever.
I'll be honest - Moffat's iteration of Doctor Who makes me really, really happy. And I think that's important too. It doesn't mean I refuse to consider the possibility his writing is less than perfect, but I do reserve the right to engage with the issues on my own time and in my own terms. I also reserve the right to ignore scathing criticism of this thing that I love and that makes me happy, because fannish squee is a precious commodity and I'm keeping this one for as long as I can. And I think that's valid too.
Mileage will vary a lot on everything I've covered. I hope it's clear from this post that I think that's totally okay, and sort of my point. Few things are perfect, and we love them anyway, and sometimes part of our loving them is critiquing them, and sometimes it isn't, and that's fine. But given this subject keeps going round and round and round, I thought I would type out my own thoughts on the subject for posterity.
---
Possibly foolishly, I'm going to bed after I hit post. Therefore, I'll be around to address any comments/corrections etc in the morning.
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