beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2007-02-16 04:52 pm
beccaelizabeth) wrote2007-02-16 04:52 pm
Gwen as audience identification figure
I was reading this about Gwen in Torchwood being unlikeable if she keeps shagging and lying next season. And it sort of mystifies me that someone could perceive that as a problem, because isn't it rather the point? We're not watching the good guys.
... right? It's not just me?
Torchwood lie, cover up, and mindwipe. They steal. They have tech that can save lives, help other people do their jobs, but they keep it to themselves. In Doctor Who they're clearly set up as the bad guys - they're enemies of the Doctor, and it's his universe. Team Torchwood are part of that. They're not the good guys at all.
So Gwen starts out as a regular cop, trying to help people, good intentions... and look where that goes, when she starts playing by Torchwood rules.
But it isn't just Torchwood that screws her up. She was lying to Rhys before that. Told him the murder wasn't anything to do with her. So she's got this nice cosy world at home, embodied in Rhys, and she's very attracted to it (and therefore him). But it's the kind of nice that happens because she can leave the job outside. Small Worlds, haven't transcribed it, but she was saying how it never followed her home before. She has this nice cosy island of happy and normal, and outside is where the bad things happen.
But it only works because Rhys is so entirely part of that cereal packet norm - if he starts understanding what's out in the dark that means bringing a bit of it home all the time.
Torchwood? New and sexy. Darker truths. Blood. People as meat. People as monsters. And Rhys can't understand that - must not, or it destroys his value for her as symbol of normal. But she's attracted to it, somehow. She wants Torchwood, wants what it can give her. Attracted to Owen, the bastard, the darkest of them.
So she shags both.
Okay.
Now... she's the audience?
She's the one that leads us in to this world?
Her existence is asking a question - why are *we* watching? Why are *we* attracted to this story? And which half, in the end, do we go home to - which half (or is it just half) is *real*?
Because there might not be aliens (maybe, probably) but there's problems out in the dark somewhere every day. Leave problems at work and go home to something else. Be glad there's cops and docs and social workers and go sit and watch TV for a while; all that's just fiction and we don't have to care.
And there obviously aren't secret government sponsored groups out there, watching our every move on CCTV, keeping things from us for our own good. So we don't have to worry about that part.
Right?
... or, you know, it's about a bunch of brave yet outnumbered heroic types trying to hold back the alien invaders. But somehow I have a lot more trouble putting that read onto this show ...
*shrugs*
... right? It's not just me?
Torchwood lie, cover up, and mindwipe. They steal. They have tech that can save lives, help other people do their jobs, but they keep it to themselves. In Doctor Who they're clearly set up as the bad guys - they're enemies of the Doctor, and it's his universe. Team Torchwood are part of that. They're not the good guys at all.
So Gwen starts out as a regular cop, trying to help people, good intentions... and look where that goes, when she starts playing by Torchwood rules.
But it isn't just Torchwood that screws her up. She was lying to Rhys before that. Told him the murder wasn't anything to do with her. So she's got this nice cosy world at home, embodied in Rhys, and she's very attracted to it (and therefore him). But it's the kind of nice that happens because she can leave the job outside. Small Worlds, haven't transcribed it, but she was saying how it never followed her home before. She has this nice cosy island of happy and normal, and outside is where the bad things happen.
But it only works because Rhys is so entirely part of that cereal packet norm - if he starts understanding what's out in the dark that means bringing a bit of it home all the time.
Torchwood? New and sexy. Darker truths. Blood. People as meat. People as monsters. And Rhys can't understand that - must not, or it destroys his value for her as symbol of normal. But she's attracted to it, somehow. She wants Torchwood, wants what it can give her. Attracted to Owen, the bastard, the darkest of them.
So she shags both.
Okay.
Now... she's the audience?
She's the one that leads us in to this world?
Her existence is asking a question - why are *we* watching? Why are *we* attracted to this story? And which half, in the end, do we go home to - which half (or is it just half) is *real*?
Because there might not be aliens (maybe, probably) but there's problems out in the dark somewhere every day. Leave problems at work and go home to something else. Be glad there's cops and docs and social workers and go sit and watch TV for a while; all that's just fiction and we don't have to care.
And there obviously aren't secret government sponsored groups out there, watching our every move on CCTV, keeping things from us for our own good. So we don't have to worry about that part.
Right?
... or, you know, it's about a bunch of brave yet outnumbered heroic types trying to hold back the alien invaders. But somehow I have a lot more trouble putting that read onto this show ...
*shrugs*
no subject
That we know about, which seems to be the point: Torchwood works in secret. The ability of the humans (or perhaps just the British people?) to rationalize away the alien seems to rival even that of Sunnydale, at least in new Who.
But that doesn't respond to my question, which is whether a secret governmental organization that routinely ignores the civil liberties of the British subjects (such as they might be under the unwritten constitution) and answers only to the Sovereign (if even to her) is constitutional (and I honestly don't know, because the whole concept of an unwritten constitution makes no sense to me). If not, the organization is illegal, and its members are criminals. No?
But my reading was always that H.I.M. Victoria was overstepping her authority.
The show makes perfect sense to me--as an illustration as to how dangerous secret organizations without proper democratic oversight can be. Gwen's mission, and everything else alongside it, seems to follow naturally from that premise. Indeed, the show has struck me as being surprisingly thematically consistent in portraying its characters in this light (with some odd interludes, like "Small Worlds"). So I wouldn't call anything about the show "ludicrous."
Which is a breath of fresh air after so many shows which seem to glorify organizations like Torchwood....
no subject
no subject
We have no constitution. If it's government-mandated it's legal. If it says in the charter that it only answers to the crown? It only answers to the crown. She's the monarch. It's impossible for her to overstep her authority.
no subject
But then Torchwood simply reads as an anti-monarchist argument, which isn't a substantially different reading....
Then again, even to this clueless American, this seems like an oversimplified reading of British constitutional politics. I know there are supposed limits to the Sovereign's authority. She's not allowed in the House of Commons, for one, and -- ahem -- can be tried and executed for treason by Parliament.
If it's government-mandated it's legal.
Mu understanding is there's a distinction between the Crown and her Government. Elizabeth is Head of State and rules Britain (and Canada and Australia and....); Blair/Harriet Jones/Whoever is Head of Government and runs the government, which means that Torchwood isn't government-mandated, but state-mandated.
Indeed, it can't be government-mandated; Harriet Jones wasn't even supposed to know that it existed, if you remember.
It may be a distinction without a difference, but then, above about Torchwood simply reading as anti-monarchist.
no subject
bad wolf
... in my head that comment makes sense on it's own, because with them being maybe werewolves and possibly bad
but then it's asking questions about if Rose did the right thing
and really, if you can't kill Daleks, who can you kill?
no subject