Mike Gold: Oh, Time-Lord! Abuse Me! Abuse Me!
Yeah, I’m gonna get political on your ass. Pop culture and politics; gasoline and fire.
I do not know which is worse: the self-victimization that we call being “politically correct” or the rampant naval-snorting of the cloistered elite. I do know there’s a book coming out this August called Doctor Who And Race, and it couldn’t be more full of shit if it had been printed on toilet paper.
Here’s the bird’s-eye lowdown on the book: a bunch of narcissistic holy-holy academicians got together to prove they are smarter than you are by writing a whole bunch of essays that definitively declare the 50-year old television phenomenon Doctor Who to be racist and, oh yeah, sexist.
What evidence do they offer? Their central point is that the lead character, the Doctor, is a white male and has remained that way despite many “regenerations.” To tell the truth, each incarnation of the Doctor also was humanoid, so it follows that the hundreds of producers, script editors, directors, actors and writers, lo these many years, are also anti-space alien. After all, the Doctor clearly favors Earth humans over such space alien races as, oh, say, the Daleks. When’s he going to regenerate into a being made of anti-matter?
(By the way, I am compelled to point out that the phrase “space alien” is amazingly stupid, and if you don’t use it when referring to all those outworlders out there, you are not necessarily prejudiced against Mexicans or the Irish.)
Now I don’t know if Gallifreyans are capable of changing sex and/or race upon regeneration. I’d be perfectly fine if Doctor Twelve were a woman and/or of a different race. Way back in 1963, the original producer of Doctor Who was a woman named Verity Lambert. Can we stop for a minute and appreciate just how revolutionary that was back in the day? She produced the first 86 episodes, moving on to other projects in 1965. There weren’t a lot of women producing television series back then. Or today, for that matter.
Integral to the show are its co-stars, often referred to as companions. Since Elisabeth Sladen was cast as Sarah Jane Smith in the early 1970s, the women who have labored alongside the Doctor have been strong professionals who were much more than set decoration and “save me” victims. Indeed, that tradition actually got its start with the very first episode, with the highly intelligent and cosmically capable Susan Foreman, played by Carole Ann Ford. That, too, was a big deal in 1963.
Since its highly successful revival in 2005, the TARDIS has opened its blue doors to black co-stars and to women co-stars, and even to a black woman co-star. And to many actors of differing origins, reflecting contemporary sensibilities.
This book also cites the 36-year old episode “The Talons Of Weng-Chiang” as proof of the program’s racism because the villain was a Chinese man who was played by a white dude. Well, there’s no argument that Asians have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to casting decisions, but in 1977 casting white people was more than merely the norm. It’s like slamming Kabuki for not having employed enough women.
Yes, indeed, the lead actor has always been a white male. That doesn’t mean it always will be, unless there’s something about Gallifreyan physiognomy that I don’t understand (and, doubtless, there’s a lot about Gallifreyan physiognomy that I don’t understand). But, deal with this absolute fact, you simpering monkeys of myopia and self-hatred: there is nothing inherently wrong with being a white male. If you are looking to create a new apartheid for that species, you are as disgusting and as morally diseased as those you blanketly define as racist and sexist.
Hey, do you know which other white British male has been around for a half-century? James Bond, as in the James Bond movie franchise. And in all those movies, not once have they cast anybody except a white British male in the lead. Not a single actor from Togo has been above the title. What’s up with that? Clearly, producer Barbara Broccoli is a racist, sexist pig.
Here’s the rub. Around the year 2063, bunch of professors and self-endowed intellectuals are going to rip you a new asshole because you were astonishingly insensitive to groups of people and to ways of thinking that presently are beyond your ken. This will happen; our history makes this perfectly clear. So pull your head out of your own vomit and realize you are no better than anyone else.
Bottom line: if you’re looking to feel your exploitation, start by looking in the mirror.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: Mindy Newell
THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil
Aw, crap — she’s Australian. Sorry, guys — some of us DO have better things to do with our lives than to go blindfolded into unlit coal cellars at midnight looking for black cats that aren’t there.
Wow. That’s good.
It begs the question “How do you know they’re not there,” but still… that’s good.
They’re cats. If you’re looking for them… they’re not there.
“there is nothing inherently wrong with being a white male.”
Whew!! What a relief that is to my sensitive psyche.
Apparently being a white male is only a problem for a “bunch of narcissistic holy-holy academicians” if the character is a hero. I made the point in Marc Alan Fishman’s column about the new Iron Man movie that white males, and specifically white male Americans, are the go-to demographic for villains.
” ‘Iron Man 3 fires out of the gate with what might be his only namable villain – The Mandarin – only to wink and nod to us that such a racist concept need not be real. While I know this is a polarizing choice, I applauded it.’
Why is it a racist concept? Seriously? Can’t The Mandarin be a Chinese villain without the automatic assumption that he is representative of all Chinese?
It appears that only Americans are a safe choice to be the bad guy. In the first Iron Man movie, the bad guys appeared to be Mid Eastern terrorists… until it was revealed that an American, Obadiah Stane, was behind Tony Stark’s kidnapping. In the second movie, a Russian, Ivan Vanko is the villain, but he’s actually a pawn of an American, Justin Hammer. And of course, as noted, Iron Man’s only notable villain, The Mandarin (SPOILER ALERT!!),
is not Chinese, but just an actor in the employ of an American, Aldrich Killian.
Apparently, guilt by association or ethnicity only works one way. Tony Stark may be the good guy and an American but he certainly can’t be representative of all Americans. All his enemies must be Americans too.”
Now I realize that my objection to all the villains being the same sex, race, nationality as myself might be construed as a bit of that self-victimization that you wrote about last week, but really, Stane and Hammer were always white guys. The Mandarin most certainly was not.
This issue has come up again with the new Star Trek movie in that a very white guy has been cast as the villain when his previous incarnation was… well I may have said too much.
… Greek?
Swiss. That way we don’t offend anybody.
This screed would impress me a great deal more if I knew Mike had read the book, which he very obviously hasn’t (and neither has anyone else, since the book isn’t actually out yet and hasn’t been released nor have review copies gone out).
The editor, as it happens, has posted a reply to the numerous criticisms that, like this one, have been made by people who haven’t actually read the book yet:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/weblog/view-Post,id=62700/
I think the main reason why they decided to make The Mandarin a white guy was the game reason the villains in the “Red Dawn” revival were changed from Chinese to North Korean: they didn’t want to offend China, which has started to spend a shit-ton (technical term) on going to movies. So in this case, it’s not political correctness, it’s economic correctness. :P
“same reason”
“Now I don’t know if Gallifreyans are capable of changing sex and/or race upon regeneration”
It’s long been presumed, but Neil Gaiman set it in stone in The Doctor’s Wife when he described fellow Time Lord The Corsair “A good man…a couple of times a good woman”
I do think some people will NEVER be satisfied. DOCTOR WHO is a very progressive TV show. For one, it advances a very pro-science, pro-secular stance (sometimes it’s even preachy in its atheism). It also has these weekly enemy aliens serving as metaphors of capitalism, war, prejudice, conformity, and everything liberals do not like.
A more liberal SF show you will not find.
Also, DOCTOR WHO is a show where the companion is every bit as important as the hero, maybe even more important, since they’re the ones with the character arcs. And the companions are mostly women, and there have been black males and bisexual white males as companions. It’s one of the most inclusive shows out there.
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