Why people are wrong about Doctor Who.

[sebastienne]

A lot of people of whom I am very fond have made the (very valid) deconstruction of Doctor Who as a white middle-class man who goes around the universe telling people how they ought to do things. I have often disclaimed that I choose to circumlegate these issues because of all the good things I get out of Doctor Who fandom, but a recent post on the Doctor Who Society mailing list has caused me to rethink this.

The Doctor's status as a middle-class white man is very tenuous. It is as tenuous as that of a trans man, because a medical examination could "out" him. It is as tenuous as that of a man on the autistic spectrum, because he learns the rules of human interaction as an outsider. His apparent class-status is part of that; he has learnt the best way to get what he wants is to adopt a certain kind of privileged-male arrogance, except when he's adopting some other persona in order to get what he wants. (Because what he wants is generally to avert catastrophe, save lives, etc, I won't begrudge him that too much.)

“How many heterosexual Doctor Who fans does it take to change a lightbulb? Both” provides an excellent analysis of the queerness of Doctor Who fans, and of the show itself, and points to some things that I had never even considered before as to why I love the show so very much.

Sadly, it's also perturbed me a little; is Moffat's tenure actually going to remove some of the Doctor's glorious queerness? While he was functionally asexual, he could be a queer cipher, a Holmesian "other" in a way I'd never fully analysed; but, unless Moffat gives him boyplots as romance-focussed as "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Silence in the Library", a lot of the ways in which my dear Doctor differs from the standard sci-fi hero are going to be lost. I can take one Irene Adler, but a whole season of them will sadden me.

Comments

[flippac.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I buy it, I'm afraid - a middle class white trans man or autistic man is still middle class and will gain hugely from that status. There's a reason murdered trans people generally aren't white and middle class, and I can tell you about the intersection of autism and class all day long. If the Doctor's alienness felt like it had anything like the same level of impact, I might feel differently about that. But the actions required to out him or raise reasonable suspicion are generally well beyond the societally acceptable.

And it's not as if he never messes up. Sure, we can blame the ending of New Earth on serious interference from above if we want, but that ep left me unwilling to trust them enough not to get seriously triggered by all the things Fear Her didn't say about the aftermath because they did it last time - just brushed it under a carpet of "all better now, hooray!", and that's something the kyriarchy loves to do in order to consolidate ground.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

The Doctor using the appearance of white-middle-class respectability to get what he wants is much darker and more troubling with Tennant, I think, than with the earlier Doctors. Comparing the Fourth Doctor's "have I the right?" in Genesis of the Daleks with the Tenth Doctor's hideous hypocrisy in Journey's End, for example. But you are right, of course, that I'm arguing only from the Doctor's best and that's not really on.

As for the actions required to out him; I'll have to think on that. I'm not sure that it's entirely relevant, because I'm not sure that a trans person's level of outing-anxiety will necessary be correlated with the likelihood or ease of any possible outing. But you're certainly right about the consequences of outing, I was pretty bloody insensitive on that one, need to think before I post rather than letting the squee overtake me.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I do have issues with Who as Middle Class Able Bodied White Man Saves The Day; but only in the same way that all of mainstream western culture is focused through that lens, and that while you can see it as a parable for queerness and neuroatypicality, we still have to see that parabel through the focus of a Middle Class etc Man. (I have the similar issues with Simon and River Tam in Firefly - I didn't see the lack of Chinese people in the Firefly universe until it was quite strongly pointed out to me, cos I read Simon and River as Chinese. Except for that part where actually, they're not).

And I know what you mean about sexuality being more visible making it harder to read stuff queer. A lot of people fall for the phalacy (can't spell that word - falsehood, anyway) where characters are heterosexual until proven gay. In Torchwood, where some characters DO "prove" themselves "gay", it makes questions of sexuality much easier to dismiss. Moffat won't give him boyplots, I don't think, because it's pre-watershed, and they can do that on Torchwood, now.

I've been having thinky thoughts about representation queer, recently, which go like this - I thought it would get better in the (british) media once the civil rights legislation came through because it gave gay people a narrative structure that wasn't tragedy. I'd bargained without the fact that queer content gets given higher ratings, so the narratives STILL tend towards tragedy. Anyway. Way off topic. Rambling dinstinctly. But; yes. This is all interesting.

[flannelcat.livejournal.com]

I have the similar issues with Simon and River Tam in Firefly - I didn't see the lack of Chinese people in the Firefly universe until it was quite strongly pointed out to me, cos I read Simon and River as Chinese. Except for that part where actually, they're not).

...

You know, I did exactly the same thing?

Or rather, I read River as Chinese, even though I read Simon as British, and had no problem with the notion that they were brother and sister.

Also, the use of Chinese language / dress in the series has painted it as a much more multicultural society than it is - looking at it again, there's no chinese lead-actors, and very few in the background. I'd also painted Inara as Arabic, but turns out Morena Baccarin is Brazilian...

Have you read: http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/16/joss-whedon-and-the-blurry-line-between-homage-and-appropriation/

(With apologies for derailing the topic)

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

This being because FOX wouldn't let Joss cast the chinese actors he wanted for the role and the arguments over that being one of the many cotributory factors in the show's treatment by that network.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

It is as tenuous as that of a trans man, because a medical examination could "out" him.

I am uncomfortable with this comparison, because the Doctor doesn't identify as a human. It's useful for him to pass as human, but a medical examination will reveal him for what he is, and what he's happy to be, rather than -- as for a trans man -- revealing him to be what he's not.

I am all in favour of treating straightciswhiteablemen as blank slates onto which we, the active participants of our culture, can project what we need and want to project. (Problematic as it is to treat these qualities as neutral.) But, hmm, just because a certain character stands in for one of lower privilege, it doesn't mean they have low privilege themselves? As anotherusedpage put it, Simon and River Tam are still white.

So while I like the idea of making sense of the Doctor's narrative as a trans narrative, I think it's important to remember that while he may be the closest we get to a trans man on a family show, he's still some way off. Thus yes, like a trans man his privilege is tenuous, but no, his privilege isn't as tenuous as a trans man's.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Yes, as people have already pointed out, I'm overstepping the mark in my desire to reclaim the Doctor as queer. Thanks for your thoughts.. I'm definitely having brain-fail since I got back into posting about politics, I think I maybe need to proofread and think about more rather than posting every time I have a "good idea"...

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I have nothing useful to say because I am apparently quite stupid today, but I'll be pondering it once the little hamster that powers the light bulb comes back from holiday.

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can see the trans nature of dr who. ButI do like the queerness that happened in doctor who with RTD. While a lot of his writing has been a little silly I love the fact that we know have a queer dr who universe, and I think a lot more queer fans because of it.

[liminereid.livejournal.com]

In reference to the class discussion, i think the doctor's rootlessness has huge implications for his class status at leats viewed from a british standpoint. The mark of the british middle classes focusses around homeownership and a certain poltical inertia. they are stable and solid and reliable. To be pseudo-homeless, a traveller, puts you in either the udner class or the aristocracy who ahve the wealth to maintain a travelling home and the arrogance to behaviour as the Doctor does. Basically I just don't buy him as middle class at all.
(Though the show itself in middle class in many ways as it relies on a fundmental inertia of good triumph and settled established society reasserting itsef and that this reassertion is good.)