Without the state

Doctor Who - again

The latest episode of Doctor Who (Saturday 21st June) demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of Russell T Davies as a writer of SF. I seem to recall reading an interview somewhere in which he acknowledged that original ideas were not his forte and it is true that he seem to cheerfully pillage ideas from everywhere. The range of references and plot ideas he drops into an average episode is huge. This works well with his great strength I think - he is simply brilliant at world building. The last episode - and the two part season finale to come - seem as if they will depend on a series of small visual and narrative clues built in to previous episodes going back in some cases over previous series and even to the old Who from years back. At the time some of this at the time seemed merely to be 'fleshing out' the story line, but in many cases they turn out to have a significance out of all proportion to their impact on the story line at the time. His juggling of these ideas as both writer and executive producer is a world apart (sorry!) from the dross of Heroes or Buffy. I suspect if Firefly had been able to keep going it might have achieved something similar. Other than that only Babylon 5 seems to have taken the world in which it was set seriously enough to make it coherent, and within the story line, believable. Let's hope Stephen Moffat proves as good.

Someone is wrong on the internet!

I think one of the great things about blogging is the way in which it allows extended conversations with people you would never otherwise meet. Without blogging I would never have ‘met’ people in the US, France, Japan, Brazil and even here in the UK. Of course these conversations can go wrong, for a variety of reasons. For that reason I try to avoid getting into interblog spats, or get too bothered when an innocuous comment suddenly blows up into a flame war. However two things in particular are likely to derail me and make my responses less than optimum. The first is when I am criticised, not for what I say, but for what I am, while the second is being patronised. It isn’t surprising therefore that in this case, things went wrong.

I have to say that I still think the post written about below is an egregious crock of nonsense, perpetrated I suspect by an academic who should know better, made even worse by some of the lunatic comments. Add to this the fact that my final comment was disemvowelled, (including rather amusingly I thought, a quote from the site's own guidelines); that the nominal topic is one of my life long loves Science Fiction (and Doctor Who in particular) and I am persuaded to make an exception, however pointless it might prove in the long run. Now read on…

Beware - if you haven't seen this episode yet (Midnight) there are spoilers.

Of all the people writing for TV at the moment, I would not have expected Russell T Davies to be on the receiving end of claims of racism and anti-lesbian bias. However it seems I was wrong. A post on Feminist SF by the pseudonymous Yonmei, dealing with the latest episode of Doctor Who makes just such a claim. Initially I was pleased to find the site (via Liberal Conspiracy.) Together feminism and SF can offer a mirror up to society in ways that mainstream fiction often cannot do. However I was sadly disappointed (although I have kept the site in my RSS feed for the moment).

In essence Yonmei argues that the episode is both racist and anti-lesbian, based on claims that:

·        because the person possessed by the alien identifies herself to the Doctor as lesbian in an early scene, this means she is singled out because she is lesbian. 

·        the three black people in the episode are in subservient positions and two of the three die.

·        the fact that no one knew the name of the cabin steward who had saved them all is simply because she was black and therefore ‘unimportant’.

Yonmei and some of the commenters on the post argue that the points they make are not just indicative of media bias in general, but represent a deliberate and systematic bias by the writer, Russell T Davis. In practice though, these ‘criticisms’ are based on inaccurate descriptions of the plot.

·        In the case of the lesbian character (played by Lesley Sharp) her sexuality is totally unconnected to her role in the story, but simply part of the ‘fleshing out’ that all writers do.

·        In the case of the black characters, two of the three are actually in charge of the vessel in which everyone is travelling (hardly servants), one dies heroically saving everyone else while the other dies alongside his white crewmate.

·        The discussion in which the Doctor reflects on the fact no one knew the name of the steward is on board the vessel, while waiting for rescue - in other words before anyone could have found out anything. Russell Davies also made it clear in an interview in the supporting ‘Confidential’ programme that this was in part a commentary on the other characters and their attitude to someone they initially saw as a mere functionary. He was also looking to explore the behaviour of people who did not in general behave well under pressure.

My first comment was to the suggestion of racism, pointing out the importance of Martha Jones (played by Freema Ageyman) and to the issue of the anonymity of the cabin steward, making the point above. I suggested that you needed more than one example to support a claim of systematic bias. I didn’t get very far.

Yonmei dismissed this out of hand, accusing RTD of 'institutional racism'. (Quite how an individual can be guilty of institutional anything escapes me.) Yonmei and another  commenter Ide Cyan (who posts on the blog in her own right and is a self described "man-hating separatist") also referred to a previous story in which Martha's mother and sister were enslaved by the Master and forced to wait on him in maid's outfits. It didn’t seem to matter to them that this was part of a story line in which billions of people were also enslaved and billions more killed. No, what is important is that two black characters are made to wear particular costumes by a megolamaniac monster. Ide Cyan also describes Martha as suffering from the "Mammy stereotype" This is so far from reality that my first response was laughter. After all, this is the character who walked the world alone at the end of Series 3, a world devastated by The Master, and whose actions literally saved the entire planet! That is apparently not enough however; it doesn’t count because she was doing it to save a man. Well, yes, but also her family and several billion other people...

Ide Cyan also described Martha’s character as being treated as a second best character to a departed white girl. A huge part of series three is of course driven by the simple fact that the Doctor is in mourning. (If you have read Philip Pullman’s Subtle Knife trilogy you will see strong resonances with the separation of the Doctor and Rose).Far from being a 'Mammy stereotype', Martha is a strong, intelligent, independent black woman. After all – you don’t spend a year walking the world the Master created without being pretty damn special.

Ide Cyan responded to this by describing the story line as being an aggrandising mirror for white straight males (this is about a series produced by a gay man remember!)

I tried to probe the other issue – the supposed negative take on lesbianism. I argued that the matter of fact acceptance of a character’s sexuality was actually a positive; that it meant the writer looked beyond the reified status of the character as a lesbian to her position as a human being.  Again I didn’t get very far. Essentially both Ide Cyan and Yonmei appear to believe that placing any lesbian or black character in jeopardy before a straight white male is evidence of bias.

The response from Yonmei included these gems:

“At a guess you yourself are a straight white male”

“I suspect that leap of imagination is beyond you right now. But maybe it’ll sink in. Given a few years. Until then you may be right not to join in discussions where people with more experience than you are talking about things that you don’t comprehend.“

It became clear to me at this point that concepts like plot, dramatic effect, story arcs, scheduling, even the simple fact that the story had to be told within about 40 minutes meant nothing to these people. Everything has to be made subservient to gender and racial politics – an attitude every bit as sexist and racist as those they attack. My ‘incomprehension’ is down to my gender and sexuality and any attempts to put my case are dismissed as me being ‘angry’ because I can’t ‘force them to agree with me’.

My responses to this were the start of the disemvowelling. I suppose with hindsight I might have been politer – but I could have been a damn site ruder too! For what it is worth, I have copied most of the remainder of the exchange below - with vowels restored.

ian on June 17, 2008 6:32 am

1. I have never seen such a patronising heap of garbage - even on the internet as your last comment.
2. You know sweet fa about me - about my history, my background.
3. I don’t think in your case it is a failure of imagination - just the opposite. A lesbian character is placed in a TV plot but the story has nothing to do with her sexuality. What happens to her has nothing to do with her sexuality. That is a positive - it means her sexuality is treated as normal. You however construct a vast conspiracy around one small line. You want every lesbian character to be given privileged representation in the plot.
4. As it happens I am straight - but I am also disabled. If I see a character in a wheelchair who is also a villain, or who comes to a sticky end I don’t think this is stereotyping the disabled. I think that there is at least one writer who manages to see past the stereotype and recognise that disabled people live in a world where things happen to them.
5. I hope for the next generation’s sake you are not an academic foisting this garbage on young minds, but I have a sinking feeling you are…

·  ian on June 17, 2008 6:36 am

Oh - and as for experience - I saw the very first episode of Doctor Who with William Hartnell and I have followed it ever since. I have been reading science fiction (and every other literary form) for 50 years and politically active for almost as long. I think it you need to grow up and - in the words of your own web site - remember that “Communication techniques include understanding the flow of an argument, what’s going on with it, and making sure the discussion continues effectively.” You have singularly failed.

Now I really am going.

·  Yonmei on June 17, 2008 10:16 am

ian: You know sweet fa about me - about my history, my background.

And yet, somehow, I deduced - correctly, I might add! - from your incomprehending comments that you are indeed straight, white, and male.

For the rest: well, I think you are now just angrily repeating yourself, unable to understand why you can’t just force me to agree with you.

Now I really am going.

At last.

 

So people – I need some help here. Is this exchange really an indicator of racism and sexism on my part? Or are these people really so extreme and blinkered as they seem? Remember at least one describes themselves not just as a man hater, but as a separatist.  For my part I find the idea of female separatism almost literally alien.  

One point does seem to come through. I see nothing wrong with subjecting TV, film and other modern media forms to the same intellectual scrutiny as the written word has received historically. Similarly, the often tortured, relationships between men and women in society need to be closely examined. From what I have seen though, the whole field of media studies - with a few honourable exceptions - seems inane, simplistic and anti-intellectual. Platitudes are presented as major discoveries, nonsense as scholarship. If this exchange is typical, does this apply to academic studies of gender and sexual politics too? Please tell me I’m wrong.

Envy

I've just subscribed to Sky, after much resistance over the years on my part. Idly skimming through the hundred's of channels now available I was struck by a number of things.

First (and the reason behind my reluctance to date) is the huge quantity of plain crap.

Second, the large number of channels devoted to property. I don't mean creative or useful programmes like Grand Designs or Property Ladder, or mildly entertaining like the many variants on Location Location. The ones I mean seem to have no purpose other than promoting envy - 'this house is huge, way out of your price bracket and you are never ever going to get anywhere near it."

Are people really interested in the grotesque ego trips of some unknown rapper, or the often hideous monstrosities erected in sunny locations across the world? I know I can turn these programmes off, but the poor unfortunates who have to see these things every day don't have that luxury.

Third, the huge quantity of plain crap (yes I know I have said this already, but there is just soooo much of it...)

X Files

I've just taken delivery of what must be a pretty good deal - the complete set of all nine series of the X Files, plus the feature film in one big box - 61 DVDs and almost 9000 minutes of film!  That would be some marathon viewing session, but I think its likely to take me a couple of years to work through it. I completely missed some series so much of it will be new. Can't wait.

Serenity and Libertarianism

For some bizarre reason, the film Serenity (and its TV series precursor - which I haven't seen yet) have been claimed as 'libertarian'.  For those who haven't seen it, the film is centred on  the exploits of the crew of a space ship led by a veteran of an interplanetary civil war (on the losing side).

The film opens with a bank robbery, in a scene recalling 'The Wild Bunch', although as one commenter claims here, because the money comes from taxation it has already been stolen so that doesn't count! By that logic I could hang around waiting for someone to be mugged, knock the mugger over the head and legitimately walk off with the proceeds.

I think the problem is that the people making these claims are not really familiar with Science Fiction as a literary form. They seem to think it began when they discovered it. Looking back though to the early days you will find nothing new in Serenity, not as science fiction, not as a film nor in its ideas. It isn't a bad film, just not especially original on any count.

The big bad government - the 'Alliance' - is a supposed coming together of the US and China. Joss Whedon, in the extras to the Serenity DVD sees this as positive, but you wouldn't know that from the discussion in Blogistan. It isn't an original concept by any means but ironically probably the best known version of it comes from Jerry Pournelle, an arch neocon, although in his case we have the 'Co-Dominion', an uneasy alliance between the US and the USSR. Nor would you know that the driver for humanity leaving earth was overcrowding and pollution - neither of them I suppose particularly high priorities for your average right libertarian.

The film itself is equally derivative - it contains elements of Star Wars, Alien and many others as well as drawing heavily on Whedon's own work. The character of River Tam is clearly another version of Buffy, while the Reavers recall both the myriad demons and monsters from Buffy, (especially in the climactic battle between River and the Reavers) as well as innumerable zombie films.

So is it indeed libertarian?

The short answer I suppose is no. The longer answer is 'only if you think libertarians have a monopoly on liberty' (which to be fair is what many do indeed think!) In practice it is a pirate movie - if Serenity is libertarian then so is 'Pirates of the Caribbean'.

 

God Inc

[via Baroque in Hackney]

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

I watched the film ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ recently. Based on the comic books by Alan Moore, it is in the same vein as The Wild Wild West, full of anomalies and sly humour. It can however also be read as a metaphor for the relationship between the US and Europe and the struggle against Communism. I’m not sure of this is an unconscious carry over from the comics however, since I’m not a great comics fan. It would be dangerous to read too much into this of course, but popular culture so often reveals the underlying trends and opinions in society much better than journalism or academia.

Consider – the European members of the League are almost all either effete or depraved in some way - Dorian Gray – corrupt, licentious; Mina Harker – a vampire; Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde – drug addict; Skinner the Invisible Man – a thief, misusing science for personal gain. Alan Quartermain is presented as the last gasp of the British Empire, while Nemo is now no longer a European, but a sword wielding Hindu mystic, proficient in both martial arts and science. Only the American member is uncomplicated, in the form of Tom Sawyer, fresh faced, energetic but essentially an Innocent Abroad. The members of the League redeem themselves in the end of course – this is still Entertainment not Art.

Their opponent is M (in a sly reference to the Bond movies) who turns out to be Moriarty with a declared aim of triggering world war and seizing power in the chaos. His secret hideout, deep in Siberia, is a hybrid of the Kremlin and the Dark Satanic Mills of Victorian England.

Consider too the ending – Quartermain lies dying while the final coup de grace is delivered to the villain by Sawyer, taking on the mantle of the old lion (the British Empire). At the very end though, the possibility is left open that there is still life in that lion yet.

Politicians, economists and the reality of climate change

I’ve finally got round to seeing ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. It is a fairly routine adventure story, topped off with great effects and lots of heroic ‘derring-do’. The nut jobs who complained about it as propaganda for the climate change lobby clearly need to get out more, because in the end the science in the film is there only to serve as a trigger for the action.

Some political points were made of course but they were nothing to do with climate change – I’m sure the irony of millions of illegal immigrants heading south over the Rio Grande into Mexico was not lost on US audiences for example. In the end though, to use the fact that a filmmaker takes liberties with the science of climate change for dramatic effect, as an argument against the reality is to say the least bizarre. I suspect that those who are still trying to deny what is going would be doing so in letters written in green ink if they didn’t have access to e-mail.

I don’t see such concern for scientific rigour in other films. As I've said before - how many buses can leap across 30 foot gaps in the roadway (Speed), how likely is it that a virus could be uploaded to a computer you've never seen, built using technology you have no idea about (Independence Day), how likely is it that you could clone a replica Hitler to take over the world (The Boys from Brazil) how likely is any of the action in any James Bond movie? And as for The Stepford Wives! Its one thing to criticise a move because it is badly written but really people - get a life!

The latest report from the IPCC seems to have finally demonstrated the reality of climate change and what we face over the next 100 years. The projections are frightening:

• Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
•  Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
•  Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
•  Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
• Increase in heatwaves very likely
• Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

These predictions exclude areas of really tentative science. For example, there is no consensus about the effect of melting polar ice on currents like the Gulf Stream or about the speed with which it would happen. Because they have been excluded it is possible that the impact on sea levels would be much greater, while the impact on temperature is also uncertain. The scenario in The Day After Tomorrow is still one of the possibilities if rather more remote than once thought.

There are those scientific ignoramuses (ignorami?) who would argue that these uncertain impacts should have been included, thus widening the range of error. There are even more stupid people who decry the fact that scientists revise their views. Take this for example:

On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Their conclusion then was "The trend shows no indication of reversing"! And, wonders of wonders, the impossible to conceive "reversing" occurred!

Take care with this because there is some fast footwork going on. See how the conclusion ‘The trend shows no indication of reversing’ morphs into ‘impossible to conceive’? If that isn’t scientific stupidity it is intellectual dishonesty – which is even worse because it is deliberate.

However, giving these people the benefit of the doubt, they clearly do not understand the idea of scientific method and its impact on uncertainty or even the concept of statistical uncertainty. I don’t think it is accidental that the most outspoken opponents of the thesis of human driven climate change are politicians and economists. Both groups claim to have the answer to your every ill, neither group shows any sign of understanding science and in general they do not progress by admitting of uncertainty of any kind, let alone on issues such as this. In that respect I thought the exchanges between the politicians and the scientists in The Day After Tomorrow to be quite realistic, as the politicians struggle with the political impact of bad news.

Those who deny the fact of climate change and its human component seem to be resorting to ever more desperate arguments in vain attempts to undermine the basic facts. The latest uses tentative suggestions that Mars is coming out of an ice age as the basis for an argument that this proves climate change on Earth is not man made. They ignore the fact that Mars doesn’t have large bodies of water and that the drivers of its climate will therefore be very different to those on Earth. Consequently the same event – whether it be sunspots or cosmic rays or whatever else is flavour of the month – is likely to lead have different climatic consequences on the two planets. They also seem quite happy to use scientific data gathered over a relatively short timescale – and recognised by its authors as highly tentative - to dispute decades of work by thousands of scientists.

You may have come across Mr Myron Ebell (an economist), who argues that the whole thing is a conspiracy to do down the US. It is Mr Ebell, (not a climatologist) who claimed that the UK Chief Scientist didn’t know what he was talking about because he wasn’t a climatologist. Spot the flaw in that argument? I’ve seen Mr Ebell described as an intellectual terrorist and that isn’t wrong. He is certainly willing to shift his ground and argue black is white so I suppose we have to class him as a politician too. This site documents Ebell’s activities quite comprehensively.

He isn’t alone of course – take this comment on the Guardian Comment is Free site.

Environmentalists just form the rump of the social scientist west-hating morons who are actually willing the environment to collapse so they can say I told you so and blame the US.

Sadly such hysteria is all too common. It probably means a dim future for our children and grandchildren.

Another video

This one was too big for YouTube so I have had to make it smaller, which will affect the quality.

It is I think much slicker than the last and used better quality and higher res image files. It is based on my Tango images (you can also see these on Flickr here) with a nice tango soundtrack, so after the Sex Pistols in the last one, you may need to turn the volume back up...

Let me know what you think.

 

Making video

EDIT: I'm probably going to delete this file from YouTube - looking at it again I think it just a bit too rough. If you think I'm wrong please let me know.

*

I've been experimenting with putting some of my digital images into video format. This is a very quick and dirty first cut around some images I did of cheerleaders. I'm not too happy with the quality - the original images were quite small and needed to be resized to do what I wanted, then the flash conversion at YouTube seems to have degraded it further. Even so for 30 minutes work I'm quite pleased with myself.