Useful primarily to argue with
Feb. 28th, 2013 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI am cranky, coughing, and nauseous, and I had to go back to bed in the middle of trying to make notes because I felt too ill. This is highly inconvenient. I don't have the time for this. So then I get more cranky, and aim it at texts.
I have been reading
Garner, Beattie and Mc Cormack (2010) Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things : Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
Cambridge Scholars publishing.
The Regeneration Game: Doctor Who and the Changing Faces of Heroism
John Paul Green
I'm very glad to have got hold of this book because it gives me something to argue with, always a handy start to an essay, and I need to do the section about the Doctor for my dissertation. Some of my disagreements focus on the way it's trying to cover all 10 or 11 Doctors yet doesn't seem to have rewatched all the canon to do so. I mean, nobody has the time to rewatch all the canon for one essay, so that's fair, but that being the case it seems one should admit it and not try and make a mountain out of a patchwork coat (representing a shattered identity, apparently) or make sweeping statements about an era trying to put women back in their place without citing specific incident. It says 7 went back to having a single companion, but that had been the case at the end of 5. And what it says about 5 being weaker and less authoritative is based on him being regeneration sick at the start and needing help, meeting his past selves and arguing with them, and then dying of poison. The exact same things can be said of 3, but his section doesn't mention that at all, and instead is about comparisons to James Bond. Honestly, the main thing I learned from this was that my tutor's constant advice to pick one small piece and focus on it is very necessary advice I should really remember to do better at. It's ambitious and a good theme, but it needs to be far longer to actually make sense, let alone do it justice.
This is the bit I want to poke quite a lot. Because at first glance I felt like agreeing, but then I had a think about it. Because by what definition is the Doctor's masculinity not the dominant model?
(the sentence structure is clumsy, is he thankful the images are dominant or thankful the Doctor doesn't, or is it just me stumbling there?)
It seems the image of masculinity he has in mind is the military type, the King Arthur of power justifications, a strong arm might makes right sort of thing. The action hero, maybe, though I've been thinking on how that's a bit more complicated. If you go right back to knights with swords you get the Highlander version of trial by combat - face each other with a sword and the righteous man (hopefully) wins. Take power with strength of arms, not especially meaning weapons. But the higher tech you get the more the weapons don't require strength. And lately said action and guns oriented power isn't solely a male preserve. Female fighter pilots and that bit in RED where Victoria has that giant gun. But it is still predominantly masculine. But, within masculinities, is it dominant?
Because socially we don't have a King chosen by the sword any more, and our stories aren't primarily designed to support that power model. The civilians rule the military, and our stories show it.
Essay also comments on the apparent inconsistency of the Doctor complaining about guns and explosions and then turning around and exploding a lot of enemies. It is not inconsistent when what he's complaining about is (a) guns as a first resort and (b) guns without asking him first. It's fine when it's him. That's just... it seems like the only consistent rule, he's the authority, so it's going to go horribly wrong without him but it's fine when it's him. Demon's Run very nearly makes that explicit, more shoves in his face the consequences to his chosen identity, when 'Doctor' meaning scientist and intellectual and healer has instead come to mean warrior, because that's what he actually does. That's the key moment in recent episodes, the way messing around with theology was unfortunately key for 10. He might not want to be a general, but he's been acting like one. So, important note, the Doctor is pretty damn military sometimes, not by getting a uniform and grabbing a gun, but by aiming people. Officer and gentlemen, or the kind of man that can order around America's Commander in Chief? It's intellect promoted over might in the chain of command, not eschewing might.
But, sometimes, he fixes things by figuring things out. Sometimes, he does get to be more about intellect than really big bombs. Call that the essence of him, because he's not part of an SG1 style team, he's meant to be a bit quirkier and touristy and his main tool is talking a lot.
I feel, since the rise of the Detective, the triumph of intellect over might is the standard model. And the dominant model of masculinity, at least in a ton of the media.
... I also don't know how to refer to anyone else having an opinion on this one. I've read a lot about Detectives, there was a whole unit on them, but I can't recall reading that they've taken over as The Man.
But you get a ton of detective shows, and they use different models of problem solving but mostly they're about investigation, science, the Sherlock Holmes stuff. And Sherlock himself is still going strong, with varying degrees of emphasis on the muscle parts. RDJr's Sherlock is very different from BC's is different again from Elementary (which I've not watched) or the only slightly tweaked House. But they're all about the application of intellect and deduction and being a grumpy bastard on the basis that you know more than everyone else so the world will just have to put up with it.
Yes?
It seems to me like that's the dominant model. Women are the social ones who make connections and listen to people, men demonstrate their self sufficiency by being Just That Brilliant so people will trail around after them and look after them and try and keep them happy and do what they're told or be proven horribly wrong. They will ignore this trail of people. That's just their natural right as Brilliant Men.
I don't know, I'm making this up from thinking.
But being a grumpy (old) man who thinks he knows best is fairly consistent with the Doctor. This essay I'm reacting to mentions Sherlock comparisons. 4 had the hat that one time, and we know Moffat's connection. To varying degrees, the Doctor is on the Sherlock model, and what I'm saying is, so are the boss dude's on TV, and so is the model for powerful men now.
And yeah, they pair up with military men. They are the boss of military men. That model of masculinity is secondary to them now. Brains aim brawn. Being very knowledgeable, very rational, men, gets things done.
yes? no?
And it's not just specifically Sherlock. The current most popular retelling of the Arthur cycle is actually centered around Merlin, who has steadily become the Interesting One. And even the physical action hero types, they've got a dash of the investigator to them - James Bond is a spy, and in theory he's running around the world to figure things out. Brawn just isn't the boss any more.
From this angle Rory being a combination of military and medical man isn't surprising because he's being the Doctor's Watson. Except of course he's actually following his wife around and happily leaves the Doctor. ... which still makes him Watson. Huh.
The military man haunted by his years of service is another model that comes up over and over. the Doctor has been that recently. Rory arguably became that from trying to keep up with the Doctor. Is interesting.
Books that try and make that solely about the most recent wars though seem to be missing a few things though. I mean, Watson the first was coming back from Afghanistan too. The more things change... *shrugs*
So the flaw in this argument is once again the thing where women are also doing the same things. If and when they are. Women are being detectives, but are they being this kind of cranky intellect detective? I don't watch detectives (unless they're steampunk RDJr ) so I don't have a great deal to draw on.
but I'm going to bet they are, even if you need to watch the numbers carefully before making an argument about the 'rise of' or the 'era of'. Because most things, lately, women get to do. They even on occasion get to do them in networks of other women that talk to each other. Which is pretty cool.
Gender is a stupid game I don't wish to play, so it irritates me when so many things do. I mean at the con at the weekend someone advanced the argument that Starbuck in new BSG was not in fact a woman because she acted like a man. I've seen that in textbooks about the exact same kind of woman, the musculinity argument. But it's stupid! She's a woman because she says she's a woman, therefore everything she does is something a woman does. That's how gender works. That's just not how the story of gender works. Dominant ideologies and stereotypes of gender try and shove people in boxes for reasons of power and probably money and just general bloody mindedness. :-p
But the boxes are for men too. Men in dresses: how many do you see most weeks? Men's formal suits for swish events: why bother with red carpet photos, they're all going to look exactly the same, and the same way they have for decades. What's even with that? The box for men has such defended borders. Seems like women have noticed the ways they need to break in, lets work on showing men how much they could benefit from breaking out. Because really, it doesn't work for them to have restricted options neither.
Granted, they're restricted in the getting paid more and getting more boss jobs end of things, so it's going to be a tough sell, but still. Lipstick! Sparkles! Sometimes cracking an emotion when not actively injured!
I'm not saying there's equality. Just counting and Bechdel consistently shows actually there's less women and they don't get to talk to each other about the same range of things. But the borders of possibility are nice and wide now, and I reckon numbers is most of the remaining difference.
plus how things get seen. where's my stereotypes icon... nope, doesn't seem to be here... well it wasn't very good anyway. But, stereotypes: People can see the exact same things done by a man and a woman and they'll read them differently through the filters of pre-existing stereotypes. Like one of the books on action heroes reckoned when a man gets beat up and then wins the fight the being beat up is the exception and the winning is considered the usual, but when a woman is a victim and then turns around and wins the victimhood is still seen as the usual. And it takes a ton longer to shift stereotypes than it does to just start writing things differently. Because numbers, weight of, inertia of. You have to keep churning it out pulling against the tide and it'll be consistently read different for ages and ages and it's very annoying. So even if both a man and a woman in the same 'verse have had a story about unexpected technologically intervened with reproduction, it'll look stereotypical on a woman. Or, people just won't see what you've actually writ because they're busy seeing the inside of their own head as shaped by other texts ie stereotypes: Like saying Leela had a leather bikini, or calling Amy a stripper when she was a kissogram. I hear that so much. What evidence did we ever have she took off more than her hat? The Doctor jumped out of cakes (plural, got the wrong one at least once) and he doesn't get called a stripper. And Amy used her costumes for world saving purposes, which thus far the Doctor's cake jumping sideline has not been useful for. But no, Amy gets called a stripper so much I've given up on arguing with it. :-p
... the cake jumping thing could not be called stereotypically masculine. And while both RDJr's Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor dress up as women that one time, that's not exactly part of the standard model either. So there's quirky bits.
Plus the times gender as a discourse gets raised within the text it's all about how bad the Doctor is at performing it. Trying to be a 'normal bloke' with Craig in The Lodger? Hilarity ensues. But what you really see there is the masculine version of how gender performance is always class specific. I read a lot about that in relation to women crossdressing and cross class dressing, but it applies here. If the Doctor is trying, as per usual, to talk to literary authors and political leaders, his gender performance is never doubted. It's when he's trying to do football and flat sharing that 'bloke' becomes an issue. It's not that he's not a bloke, it's that arrogant eccentric tea drinking inventor is not stereotypically a football and pubs kind of bloke.
And when Amy raises the 'bloke' thing in the little bits on the DVDs she reckons he's a bloke because he laughs at the men and shows off to the women. Dominance hierarchy things with men. Act like you own the place. Wanting attention from women. And that seems to fit fairly well. The Doctor's usual tactics for finding information is to appeal to authority. He assumes he is an authority. The companions are generally the ones left to talk to the servants. ... In 50 years of canon you can find contrary versions of everything. See: Astrid. Actually, the biggest, see: making friends with his companions in general. We get Liz or Romana coming from professional and educated backgrounds, but then we get Rose or Ace coming from estates with service jobs, so. The Doctor talks to people he's going to ... pick up? Hmmm.
So what I've been arguing I guess is that the Doctor is a particular stereotype of masculinity, and a socially and culturally dominant type. Not even getting into the 'Time Lord' / Lords Temporal House of Lords hence aristocracy connection, he's a knowledge professional of independent means who never has to worry where the next meal is coming from. He assumes the right to talk to Monarchs, is friends with Prime Ministers, and his best mate is a Brigadier (not a Sergeant he also spent time with). He acts like he owns the place and backs up that authority by knowing more than you do. His intellect is the boss of, well, everyone. And that's a kind of masculinity. Compared to the Sherlockian detective, it's a very common kind of masculinity that is the boss of all it surveys. And he's friends with people in military service because he's being the kind of person who traditionally aims them.
Thoughts? Discussion? Telling me I'm wrongity wrong wrong?
I'm likely to get in an argue with myself later anyway.
... quite a lot later. I'd rather like to go back to bed again. Or at least get another paracetamol.
I have been reading
Garner, Beattie and Mc Cormack (2010) Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things : Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
Cambridge Scholars publishing.
The Regeneration Game: Doctor Who and the Changing Faces of Heroism
John Paul Green
This chapter focuses on the articulation and rearticulation of masculinity and British heroism through the use of 'regeneration' in the popular science fiction series Doctor Who.
I'm very glad to have got hold of this book because it gives me something to argue with, always a handy start to an essay, and I need to do the section about the Doctor for my dissertation. Some of my disagreements focus on the way it's trying to cover all 10 or 11 Doctors yet doesn't seem to have rewatched all the canon to do so. I mean, nobody has the time to rewatch all the canon for one essay, so that's fair, but that being the case it seems one should admit it and not try and make a mountain out of a patchwork coat (representing a shattered identity, apparently) or make sweeping statements about an era trying to put women back in their place without citing specific incident. It says 7 went back to having a single companion, but that had been the case at the end of 5. And what it says about 5 being weaker and less authoritative is based on him being regeneration sick at the start and needing help, meeting his past selves and arguing with them, and then dying of poison. The exact same things can be said of 3, but his section doesn't mention that at all, and instead is about comparisons to James Bond. Honestly, the main thing I learned from this was that my tutor's constant advice to pick one small piece and focus on it is very necessary advice I should really remember to do better at. It's ambitious and a good theme, but it needs to be far longer to actually make sense, let alone do it justice.
Each of the Doctor’s regenerations offers a performance of masculinity, although rarely does the Doctor fulfil (thankfully) dominant images of masculinity. It is still a case of intellect over might, although throughout the series the Doctor has aligned himself with male companions who have been, or are, in active military service.
This is the bit I want to poke quite a lot. Because at first glance I felt like agreeing, but then I had a think about it. Because by what definition is the Doctor's masculinity not the dominant model?
(the sentence structure is clumsy, is he thankful the images are dominant or thankful the Doctor doesn't, or is it just me stumbling there?)
It seems the image of masculinity he has in mind is the military type, the King Arthur of power justifications, a strong arm might makes right sort of thing. The action hero, maybe, though I've been thinking on how that's a bit more complicated. If you go right back to knights with swords you get the Highlander version of trial by combat - face each other with a sword and the righteous man (hopefully) wins. Take power with strength of arms, not especially meaning weapons. But the higher tech you get the more the weapons don't require strength. And lately said action and guns oriented power isn't solely a male preserve. Female fighter pilots and that bit in RED where Victoria has that giant gun. But it is still predominantly masculine. But, within masculinities, is it dominant?
Because socially we don't have a King chosen by the sword any more, and our stories aren't primarily designed to support that power model. The civilians rule the military, and our stories show it.
Essay also comments on the apparent inconsistency of the Doctor complaining about guns and explosions and then turning around and exploding a lot of enemies. It is not inconsistent when what he's complaining about is (a) guns as a first resort and (b) guns without asking him first. It's fine when it's him. That's just... it seems like the only consistent rule, he's the authority, so it's going to go horribly wrong without him but it's fine when it's him. Demon's Run very nearly makes that explicit, more shoves in his face the consequences to his chosen identity, when 'Doctor' meaning scientist and intellectual and healer has instead come to mean warrior, because that's what he actually does. That's the key moment in recent episodes, the way messing around with theology was unfortunately key for 10. He might not want to be a general, but he's been acting like one. So, important note, the Doctor is pretty damn military sometimes, not by getting a uniform and grabbing a gun, but by aiming people. Officer and gentlemen, or the kind of man that can order around America's Commander in Chief? It's intellect promoted over might in the chain of command, not eschewing might.
But, sometimes, he fixes things by figuring things out. Sometimes, he does get to be more about intellect than really big bombs. Call that the essence of him, because he's not part of an SG1 style team, he's meant to be a bit quirkier and touristy and his main tool is talking a lot.
I feel, since the rise of the Detective, the triumph of intellect over might is the standard model. And the dominant model of masculinity, at least in a ton of the media.
... I also don't know how to refer to anyone else having an opinion on this one. I've read a lot about Detectives, there was a whole unit on them, but I can't recall reading that they've taken over as The Man.
But you get a ton of detective shows, and they use different models of problem solving but mostly they're about investigation, science, the Sherlock Holmes stuff. And Sherlock himself is still going strong, with varying degrees of emphasis on the muscle parts. RDJr's Sherlock is very different from BC's is different again from Elementary (which I've not watched) or the only slightly tweaked House. But they're all about the application of intellect and deduction and being a grumpy bastard on the basis that you know more than everyone else so the world will just have to put up with it.
Yes?
It seems to me like that's the dominant model. Women are the social ones who make connections and listen to people, men demonstrate their self sufficiency by being Just That Brilliant so people will trail around after them and look after them and try and keep them happy and do what they're told or be proven horribly wrong. They will ignore this trail of people. That's just their natural right as Brilliant Men.
I don't know, I'm making this up from thinking.
But being a grumpy (old) man who thinks he knows best is fairly consistent with the Doctor. This essay I'm reacting to mentions Sherlock comparisons. 4 had the hat that one time, and we know Moffat's connection. To varying degrees, the Doctor is on the Sherlock model, and what I'm saying is, so are the boss dude's on TV, and so is the model for powerful men now.
And yeah, they pair up with military men. They are the boss of military men. That model of masculinity is secondary to them now. Brains aim brawn. Being very knowledgeable, very rational, men, gets things done.
yes? no?
And it's not just specifically Sherlock. The current most popular retelling of the Arthur cycle is actually centered around Merlin, who has steadily become the Interesting One. And even the physical action hero types, they've got a dash of the investigator to them - James Bond is a spy, and in theory he's running around the world to figure things out. Brawn just isn't the boss any more.
From this angle Rory being a combination of military and medical man isn't surprising because he's being the Doctor's Watson. Except of course he's actually following his wife around and happily leaves the Doctor. ... which still makes him Watson. Huh.
The military man haunted by his years of service is another model that comes up over and over. the Doctor has been that recently. Rory arguably became that from trying to keep up with the Doctor. Is interesting.
Books that try and make that solely about the most recent wars though seem to be missing a few things though. I mean, Watson the first was coming back from Afghanistan too. The more things change... *shrugs*
So the flaw in this argument is once again the thing where women are also doing the same things. If and when they are. Women are being detectives, but are they being this kind of cranky intellect detective? I don't watch detectives (unless they're steampunk RDJr ) so I don't have a great deal to draw on.
but I'm going to bet they are, even if you need to watch the numbers carefully before making an argument about the 'rise of' or the 'era of'. Because most things, lately, women get to do. They even on occasion get to do them in networks of other women that talk to each other. Which is pretty cool.
Gender is a stupid game I don't wish to play, so it irritates me when so many things do. I mean at the con at the weekend someone advanced the argument that Starbuck in new BSG was not in fact a woman because she acted like a man. I've seen that in textbooks about the exact same kind of woman, the musculinity argument. But it's stupid! She's a woman because she says she's a woman, therefore everything she does is something a woman does. That's how gender works. That's just not how the story of gender works. Dominant ideologies and stereotypes of gender try and shove people in boxes for reasons of power and probably money and just general bloody mindedness. :-p
But the boxes are for men too. Men in dresses: how many do you see most weeks? Men's formal suits for swish events: why bother with red carpet photos, they're all going to look exactly the same, and the same way they have for decades. What's even with that? The box for men has such defended borders. Seems like women have noticed the ways they need to break in, lets work on showing men how much they could benefit from breaking out. Because really, it doesn't work for them to have restricted options neither.
Granted, they're restricted in the getting paid more and getting more boss jobs end of things, so it's going to be a tough sell, but still. Lipstick! Sparkles! Sometimes cracking an emotion when not actively injured!
I'm not saying there's equality. Just counting and Bechdel consistently shows actually there's less women and they don't get to talk to each other about the same range of things. But the borders of possibility are nice and wide now, and I reckon numbers is most of the remaining difference.
plus how things get seen. where's my stereotypes icon... nope, doesn't seem to be here... well it wasn't very good anyway. But, stereotypes: People can see the exact same things done by a man and a woman and they'll read them differently through the filters of pre-existing stereotypes. Like one of the books on action heroes reckoned when a man gets beat up and then wins the fight the being beat up is the exception and the winning is considered the usual, but when a woman is a victim and then turns around and wins the victimhood is still seen as the usual. And it takes a ton longer to shift stereotypes than it does to just start writing things differently. Because numbers, weight of, inertia of. You have to keep churning it out pulling against the tide and it'll be consistently read different for ages and ages and it's very annoying. So even if both a man and a woman in the same 'verse have had a story about unexpected technologically intervened with reproduction, it'll look stereotypical on a woman. Or, people just won't see what you've actually writ because they're busy seeing the inside of their own head as shaped by other texts ie stereotypes: Like saying Leela had a leather bikini, or calling Amy a stripper when she was a kissogram. I hear that so much. What evidence did we ever have she took off more than her hat? The Doctor jumped out of cakes (plural, got the wrong one at least once) and he doesn't get called a stripper. And Amy used her costumes for world saving purposes, which thus far the Doctor's cake jumping sideline has not been useful for. But no, Amy gets called a stripper so much I've given up on arguing with it. :-p
... the cake jumping thing could not be called stereotypically masculine. And while both RDJr's Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor dress up as women that one time, that's not exactly part of the standard model either. So there's quirky bits.
Plus the times gender as a discourse gets raised within the text it's all about how bad the Doctor is at performing it. Trying to be a 'normal bloke' with Craig in The Lodger? Hilarity ensues. But what you really see there is the masculine version of how gender performance is always class specific. I read a lot about that in relation to women crossdressing and cross class dressing, but it applies here. If the Doctor is trying, as per usual, to talk to literary authors and political leaders, his gender performance is never doubted. It's when he's trying to do football and flat sharing that 'bloke' becomes an issue. It's not that he's not a bloke, it's that arrogant eccentric tea drinking inventor is not stereotypically a football and pubs kind of bloke.
And when Amy raises the 'bloke' thing in the little bits on the DVDs she reckons he's a bloke because he laughs at the men and shows off to the women. Dominance hierarchy things with men. Act like you own the place. Wanting attention from women. And that seems to fit fairly well. The Doctor's usual tactics for finding information is to appeal to authority. He assumes he is an authority. The companions are generally the ones left to talk to the servants. ... In 50 years of canon you can find contrary versions of everything. See: Astrid. Actually, the biggest, see: making friends with his companions in general. We get Liz or Romana coming from professional and educated backgrounds, but then we get Rose or Ace coming from estates with service jobs, so. The Doctor talks to people he's going to ... pick up? Hmmm.
So what I've been arguing I guess is that the Doctor is a particular stereotype of masculinity, and a socially and culturally dominant type. Not even getting into the 'Time Lord' / Lords Temporal House of Lords hence aristocracy connection, he's a knowledge professional of independent means who never has to worry where the next meal is coming from. He assumes the right to talk to Monarchs, is friends with Prime Ministers, and his best mate is a Brigadier (not a Sergeant he also spent time with). He acts like he owns the place and backs up that authority by knowing more than you do. His intellect is the boss of, well, everyone. And that's a kind of masculinity. Compared to the Sherlockian detective, it's a very common kind of masculinity that is the boss of all it surveys. And he's friends with people in military service because he's being the kind of person who traditionally aims them.
Thoughts? Discussion? Telling me I'm wrongity wrong wrong?
I'm likely to get in an argue with myself later anyway.
... quite a lot later. I'd rather like to go back to bed again. Or at least get another paracetamol.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-28 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-01 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-02 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 01:50 pm (UTC)Also, did you give us blanket permission? I have this feeling you might have? But I could be getting your username confused with someone else.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 02:31 pm (UTC)So, if you're doing blanket permissions, yeah, is permitted, or it would be hid.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-01 02:06 pm (UTC)I hope you feel better soon. [healing vibes, hot drinks, hugs]