The first in a new series of posts looking at the way Doctor Who
has tackled World War One.
Looked at from a certain viewpoint, 'Human Nature' / 'The Family of
Blood' makes all the right noises. All the proper sounds issue from it
when it is tapped. It notices social hypocrisy about war,
perhaps even moralising about it. For instance, while the young boys at
the school are taught how to be good little soldiers, a veteran of the
Crimean war is to be found begging outside the town hall.
There
is also an acknowledgement that war is unpleasant. The boys tremble
and cry when forced to actually point weapons at an approaching enemy,
with even the odious Hutchinson is seemingly relieved at the realization
that they've been shooting at empty scarecrows. Joan lost her husband
at Spion Kop (a battle of the Second Boer War, which would've been a
British victory but for the farcical incompetence of the British
generals). The Headmaster has his speech in which he describes using
his dead mates as sandbags.
There is an attempt at
balance, at the dramatic demonstration of values rather than the elaboration of a didactic authorial point-of-view. Yet, the characters' values are not allowed to go uninterrogated. Irony is much used. So the Headmaster rounds up his boys to fight, responds with
angry self-righteousness to the taunting of Baines/Son, and so on... but
also evinces sincere horror at the idea of allowing what he thinks of
as a little girl to be caught in the crossfire. Of course, there's
another irony there because he's prepared for
male children
to be sent into the line of fire. Females, especially working class
females, are to keep silent (presumably unless cheering you on your way to the
carnage).
There's an awareness of open sexism and racism in the episodes, issues that other forays into the past - 'Daleks in Manhattan'
for instance - have almost entirely ignored and effaced. Baines and
Hutchinson look down on Martha and Jenny and make their nasty little
racist joke. John Smith assumes that Martha's talk of aliens is a case
of "cultural misunderstanding"; a primitive failing to comprehend the
difference between fiction and reality. Joan scoffs at the idea of a
black maid training to be a doctor, apparently finding this concept even
more immediately and self-evidently ridiculous than time travel or
aliens.
The Class Struggle in Trumpton
There's quite a common fad nowadays in TV drama, perhaps best exemplified by
Mad Men:
setting a story in a past era allows lots of implied sneering at crass,
blatant, old-style sexism, racism, etc... all underwritten by a kind of
tacit, back-slapping awareness of how much better
we are than the people back
then,
now that we're all enlightened liberals, cured of such silly
shibboleths. In 'Human Nature' / 'The Family of Blood' there is at
least an awareness of class as a factor, though 'classism' is depicted
as just another category of prejudice alongside racism and sexism. This
representation of 'classism' arises through the implicit contrast of
the Trumptonesque community that is depicted - Mr Farmer, Mr Baker, Miss
Maid, Mr Teacher, etc. - with the willingness of the story to notice
inequalities in the way people are treated. Class is thus effaced via
the Trumptonisms while also hinted at as a way in which a minority group
of scullions are ill-treated and disadvantaged; a safe way of noticing
inequality that permits liberal clucks of disapproval while leaving real
class struggle obscured. There is no inkling that class society may be
the fundamental problem, that this may even be the reason why the
society of Britain in 1913 has an Empire into which it will soon be
feeding an entire generation like steak into a mincer.
Nor
would one expect any such inklings. This story is an artifact of
mainstream entertainment production. It is to be expected that it will
fit snugly into the hegemonic ideology of the industry. It occupies the
liberal mainstream and takes the standard approach to the national
past: it interrogates aspects of that era which we think we can now look
back on with a degree of condescension, disavowing elements of the past
that we have supposedly progressed beyond, thus salvaging and embracing
wider notions of national identity and heritage which thus seem to have
weathered necessary critique. The solution is implied by the critique,
thus rendering the critique a form of support for the wider notion of
national progress, of a national virtue more fundamental than the
transient flaws. This is a strategy very much used in such mainstream
entertainment, a way of representing our 'national' past (and, in a
slightly different mode, our present). Look at 'The Empty Child' / 'The
Doctor Dances' for an in-
Who example. The sexual morality of
1940s Britain is subjected to critique by aspects of the story (i.e. the
implied abuse of children co-existing in a society that stigmatizes
very-young unwed mothers, different levels of acceptance towards gays at
different class levels) but the "damp little island" emerges vindicated
by the mending of the central fractured relationship and the
surrounding context of progress triumphant, i.e. the supposed national
heroism of fighting Hitler, and the promise of social safety nets in
future ("don't forget the NHS").
Missing the Target
I think the most
telling scene in 'Human Nature' may the one where Tim Latimer is forced
to practice using the Vickers gun against some dummies. It shows the
story's highest moments of critique but there is a gaping hole in the
scene which shows, by its very near-absence, the issue upon which the story tries
to foreclose, partly unsuccessfully, as it turns out... (something I'll write about later). The
scene emphasizes that boys are being taught warfare at school.
Imperial warfare, yes, because the Headmaster says that their targets
are "tribesmen from the Dark Continent". The Head overrides Tim
Latimer's qualms about shooting people armed only with spears in the
most condescending terms, telling him that he hopes that the boy will
one day have a "just and proper war" in which to "prove himself". This
brings on a flashforward in which Tim sees himself and Hutchinson
engaged in that very future war, seemingly about to die (as it turns
out, the Head is right about Tim "proving" himself... the moment he
forsees here is the moment that, we will later learn, both prompts and
endorses his decision to take part in the war, instead of being a conshy
Red Cross volunteer as in the novel). Tim hesitates and consequently
gets a beating from the sneeringly sadistic Hutchinson, with Smith's
approval.
Everything about this scene screams at us
that we are supposed to disapprove. The way the scene is evidently
expected to surprise most viewers (those not public school educated) by
depicting children being taught how to use machine guns, the
incongruously youthful-look of the actor playing Tim, the bluff and
blimpish attitude of the Headmaster, the idea of him actively
hoping
for a war, his notion of war as a proving ground, the overplayed
loathsomeness of Hutchinson, the shock of seeing Smith (the
quasi-Doctor) consent to the corporal punishment of a child, the
stony-faced Joan as she looks on in evident disapproval, the racism
inherent in the reference to Africans, the foreshadowing of the horrors
of the trenches, etc. It's all calculated to make the average
early-21st century Western liberal everyperson squeal with disapproval,
even down to the "beating" that Tim is condemned to. Is there anything
more likely to cause gales of outraged horror than the idea of pulling
down a young boy's trousers and thwacking his bottom with a stick? The
scene wields this like a triumph. 'See how horrible it was back then?'
More
seriously, we are quite evidently expected, as audience members, to
empathize with Tim's moral scruples. Yet notice what is
not said.
Tim doesn't object to shooting at "tribesmen" on the grounds that he
has no business being in their country. He objects on
technical grounds, on the grounds that the level of weaponry is mismatched, that such an uneven conflict is unfair.
Of
course, we wouldn't expect anybody in such a situation, in that place
at that time, to object on anti-imperialist grounds or anti-war grounds.
Nobody in a British public school in rural England in 1913 would be
likely to interrupt a lesson to object to imperialism in the manner of
the radical Left of the time (indeed, when the crunch came, the majority
of the European Left shamefully accommodated themselves to imperialism,
nationalism and war). Nor would anyone in such a context be likely to
enunciate objections that reflect our widespread present-day liberal
embarrassment over the Empire (bearing in mind that, these days, even
apologists for the Empire like Niall Ferguson have to admit that it
entailed much that was morally dubious). However, the scene avoids only
the crassest possible method of inserting modern concerns/attitudes
into the mouths of characters (the
Walking to Babylon method, one
could call it, after the novel in which a Victorian male and some
ancient Babylonians think like modern Western liberals so that Benny can
like them). If it aims to present a snapshot of the past untainted by
our desired attempt to see our own concerns reflected in the thoughts
and actions of the characters, it fails. It succeeds in rejecting
modern ways of thinking only to the extent that it rejects any focus
upon the issue of British imperialism. The scene forecloses
noticeably
upon this issue, while openly addressing other (more mainstream, less
radical) modern moral concerns. It shows us, quite clearly, the
problems of the past by which we
ought to be shocked... and
imperialism doesn't figure, except perhaps as an implied by-product of
racism (which is a reversal of the real sequence). Racism is among the
targets of the scene, certainly. However, this very proffering of
racism as an evil
of the past effaces both present-day racism
(which we like to think of as a rare departure from the norm... which it
isn't) and any further investigation into why the Headmaster would
characterize the practice dummies as "tribesmen". He does it because
he's a bit of an old racist. End of. Gosh, they were politically
incorrect back then, weren't they? Tim's objection to shooting the
"tribesmen" despite their lack of modern weaponry is forcefully waggled
in our faces as evidence of his (apparently natural and intrinsic) moral
extra-sensitivity, his ahead-of-his-time-ness, his like-us-ness, for
which he will be martyred to the cane by the posh barbarians of
nearly-a-century-ago.
Marching Onwards and Upwards
We are plagued by
Downton Abbey syndrome
these days: the past re-imagined and sanitised to make it palatable to
modern sensibilities. There are various methods. The most extreme method is to simply ignore
things (for instance, it would
surely have been very unlikely that Solomon in 'Daleks in Manhattan' would be able to walk around 1930s New York without anyone discriminating against him on the grounds of race).
Otherwise, aspects that seem unfortunate to us are depicted in a way
that makes them seem like aberrations, or as atavistic holdovers amidst
the whiggish march of liberal progress. The real barometers of History
are an enlightened few - those most forward-thinking, those most like
us, those furthest forward on the upward curve of liberal cultural
evolution - grieve over these aberrations and try to combat them, or at
least flout them. They are in the story to represent us in the past.
To be nice - like we are - but back then. The nice-but-then characters
anticipate and/or champion a modern liberal social outlook, despite
being decades (or centuries) away from the historical period in which it
will develop. Thus
Garrow's Law (a kind of
Judge John Deed in
period costume... I promise you, it's every bit as ghastly as it
sounds) has the 18th century lawyer William Garrow feeling political
sympathy and romantic empathy for a persecuted gay couple, thus mapping
21st century liberal notions of sexuality and political morality onto a
past era which would've found them incomprehensible.
Downton Abbey itself is based on this kind of retroactive moralising, but from a deeply disingenuous and outright Tory point of view (in the sense of 'benevolent' patriarchy and one-nation paternalism, not the really-existing-conservatism of ultra-freemarketeering rhetoric).
Downton Abbey's portrayal of class takes in the Trumptonesquerie of the 'we're all in it together, and we all have our role to play' view, mixed with a half-amused (oh-ho-weren't-they-politically-incorrect?!) and half tutting presentation of
cultural mores and manners. The attitudes are depicted so as to simultaneously shock and titilate modern sensibilities. Class is manifested in terms of cultural attitudes that are funny in their old-fashionedness. Magge Smith's character is the tell-tale marker of how we're meant to see things: she's outrageously snobbish but her snobbery is evidently supposed to be likeable for its outrageousness, its truculent pig-headedness, its obstinacy. The old battleaxe is lovable for the very attitudes which are presented as the quaint eccentricities of a noble relic. She, and the past she comes from, are ultimately absolved. Meanwhile, Hugh Bonneville is the essence of the benevolent patriarch of one-nation Tory myth. He's the nice guy who happens to have a duty of care for everyone thrust upon him by his elevated position. The presentation of the 'Great War' in
DA takes a similar route. It was a catastrophe that engulfed everybody in Trumpton... sorry, Downton, equally; there were some horrible things like shellshock; some of the attitudes of people during the war were amusingly/shockingly 'of their time'; the root cause was cultural rather than structural; the ruling class had a duty of care and, by and large, they made good, etc. The show even tries (ludicrously crudely) to depict some of the social changes brought about by the war, by having the upper-crust characters suddenly interact far more intimately with the below-stairsers. The whiggish march continues as His Lordship enjoys a tortured bromance with his valet, etc. In many ways, Grantham (the Earl of) is a nice-but-then character. He's not 'the same' as us, but he's one of those who paved the way for the world to reach our wonderful plateau of tolerance and equality... indeed, by the Tory standards of his show, we may have gone to far down that road as a society. He's a lost ideal that we should aspire to emulate: the man who made drastic class divisions work for everyone, the way they were 'supposed to', without our modern excesses.
'Human Nature' / 'The Family of Blood' is not as bad as
DA, but it has a bad case of nice-but-then syndrome. In just the Vickers-gun-practice-scene,
both Tim and Joan are nice-but-then characters. What the nice-but-then
characters disapprove of is very telling. It is a way to measure what
the text expects (so to speak) its audience to disapprove of. It is a
measure of the normative assumptions that the text's creators take for
granted. What they are given to frown at is a way of measuring the
parameters of the politically conceivable
within the text. The
scene we've been looking at acknowledges the issues of racism, jingoism,
blimpishness, physical brutality in education, etc., but, as noted, it
forecloses upon the issue of imperialism.
Moreover,
even those sins it notices are safely packaged away within the past,
within the bad-old-days that may be acknowledged as bad to the extent
that bad things like these happened then. We, from our position of
modern-minded, liberated, liberal, tolerant, progressive, humane
nowness, can afford to tut at the silly and unpleasant behaviour of the
people of 1913. We can compare ourselves to them and (especially when
we see ourselves vicariously present and stony-faced in the persons of
the nice-but-then characters) feel mighty good about ourselves.
Of course, this sort of thing didn't begin with
Mad Men or
Downton Abbey. The nice-but-then character is not a new invention. In 60s
Doctor Who,
just off the top of my head, there's the guy in Nero's court, freeing
slaves because he's a secret Christian (don't get me started). Indeed,
the nice-but-then character may be embedded in every foray
Doctor Who takes into the past. It may literally
happen
within the narratives of 'An Unearthly Child', 'Marco Polo', 'The
Aztecs', etc., with Ian and Barbara - the 'civilized', late-20th century
Westerners - trying to explain friendship and human rights to the
savages, Easterners and natives of yore.
*
Lots more of this to come, I'm afraid.
It would seem that vast amounts of Doctor Who were made by an organisation that, in its widespread branches and ascending echelons, actively colluded in facilitating and covering-up the abuse and rape of children. Lots of children.
