beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I 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

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, ( Read more... )

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?
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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.

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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. ( Read more... )


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. ( Read more... )



... 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. ( Read more... )


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.

This semester I'm studying 'Researching Popular Culture', which is focusing on crime fiction.

The idea is to see how ideology and myth play in a particular genre of fiction.

The stories we're looking at were written by and for a particular class (and ethnicity, and gender, and so on) of people, in a particular place, at a particular time. They got really popular. That suggests a large number of people found them both useful and comfortable.

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I feel like I've spent a lot of words and gone round the long way to get to not very much conclusion at all.

And to do a presentation for class I have to start it with close reading something from the time we're studying, so this kind of general flapping isn't helping me pass.



Also not helpful is the scheme of work has us starting to study Chandler in week 6, after the assessment. Next week is week 4, but he told us to bring the books in and we'd probably start on it then. Before the week 5 assessment. That's 2 weeks less to do the reading in, and one of those a week we'd rather spend studying texts we can actually get marked on. But no. So now I have to (a) read and close read a text to go with the Victorian Studies Reader essays and turn into an assignment and (b) read The Big Sleep, both before tomorrow afternoon.

It would really help to have done more of that already.

Also, to get sleep that actually works, instead of the draining kind.

My class notes. I share.
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I went to the UEA and I successfully navigated the bus and the paths at the university and I did not get lost and the car was waiting for me to go home.

Now I has headache of stabby doom. I feel very much like there's a large piece of metal been inserted sideways just behind and above my eyes. Ouch.
... not that that's ever happened to me so technically I don't know what that would feel like.
ANYway
Achy, feel sick, did talking so am now in the rebound of did I in fact make sense, but that was interesting studying.

Also my laptop was useful for showing clips from The Daleks, which wouldn't work in the official type projector. I don't know how much the rest of the class could see but we did show it.

So, anyway, my class notes. They aren't tidied up, typo checked or anything. I'm going to find a dark room and pull covers over my head.

No, wait, I'm going to find a painkiller and attempt to eat something. That would likely help more.


2008 04 30 Dr Who
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PS on way out discovered tutor does not like canon Jack/Ianto. Says it doesn't add anything.

ha!

... I add the funny abbreviation for cultural studies to my tags specifically to answer this complaint.