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
Gwen's involvement in this series is absolutely crucial under my reading, I think, because she enters from a position outside that ab initio evil, so that it's not just when Bad People Do Bad Things to Outsiders, but when Being Above the Rules Makes Good People Do Bad Things. We see the process of her being corrupted, of her turning away from Rhys and towards Owen. That's what makes the show About Something, IMO.
(Although in the current political situation, a show about Why Effective Oversight is Important certainly seems to be called for in and of itself, IMO.)
Which isn't to say that I think that Owen and Ianto and Jack and Tosh are the bad guys. They're more innocent than anything else, I think--they don't understand the true weight of what we're doing. Owen thinks he would never rape someone, but didn't think out the ramnifications of what he was doing in 1x01. To Tosh, breaking into CCTV records is business as usual, not a horrible infringement of civil liberties. And so on. Ultimately, their position will have to lead to tragedy or enlightenment. And in some small ways, already has lead to tragedy and/or enlightenment, as in "Cyberwoman."
Personally, I don't think Gwen will be the agent of that change, but I do think it will have to be someone from outside Torchwood.
Even Suzie is simply someone who cracked under the stress, rather than being intrinsically evil. But that makes it worse: Suzie was a good person, and look what Torchwood did to her. That's what it'll do Gwen if she isn't careful, the show seems to be saying to me.