helpful hint for the colorblind: BE LESS BLIND
I think I'll quote somebody out of context, because that's always worked really well for me in the past.
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street ( Read more... )
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street ( Read more... )
I've heard it said that before they decided to import the McKay character from SG1, the chief scientist on SGA was written as a Dr. Ingram, and the intent was to cast an African-American actor. I really, really wonder what the fandom would look like if that had actually happened. I want to travel to the alternate universe where it did, just to see!
It's like, ok, suppose you have a 22-episode season and just *coincidentally*, whenever there's a need for an admirable, kickass, brave, self-sacrificing, heroic character, the best actor for the part is a blue-eyed blond, and also completely randomly, there are three or four parts for "thuggish animalistic rapist" and the best actor for the part in each case is black.
Right, but I'm thinking more of -- I guess a more genuine kind of lazy foolishness, which is what I see in a lot of the Dr. Who debates. It seems like a lot of the defense that's been going regarding Martha's servant-role and the treatment of her as vastly inferior to Rose revolves around this idea that, well, what if the actress just didn't happen to be black? And it's not even a matter of pattern to me -- even if you had a 100% unblemished record of joy and puppies when it came to racial matters, there's something deeply loaded about taking a black female character of considerable achievement and education and running a whole season of her unrequited love for a man who never thinks she's as worthy in any way as the blue-eyed blonde. That isn't covered by "well, he would have felt that way about anyone after Rose, regardless of race!" or "Rose had to dress like a maid, too!"
It's not like I really think they went, "We need someone to be a companion, but we want to make sure she's just that much less appealing and desirable than Rose -- let's get a black girl, that should do it!" I think they probably really did develop the arc, and then cast a black actress -- I just think they *shouldn't have* cast a black actress for that particular arc, because it *changed* the story in ways that made it racist and weird instead of merely a personal drama about Ten's increasingly warped inability to deal with people.
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I really, really wonder what the fandom would look like if that had actually happened. I want to travel to the alternate universe where it did, just to see!
Yeah. Presumably, they'd have cast a cute, young white guy as Ford, right? And then... well.
Actually, on SV, they originally wanted to cast a black actress as Chloe, but then when they found Allison Mack, they switched the "black character" slot over to Pete. I always wondered what the *show* would have been like if they'd gone with their original thought.
well, what if the actress just didn't happen to be black?
*nodding* Right, totally. It's like saying, "Well, we killed Tara, and people are complaining because, hey, Tragic Lesbians, but what if she wasn't a lesbian?" That's missing the fact that Tara's death isn't JUST about Tara, it's about the fact that just once, just ONCE, it would be nice to have lesbians who weren't inevitably Tragic Lesbians, and you had the *opportunity* to do it better than it had been done in the past, and you didn't.
Similarly, how many *prominent* black female sci-fi heroines are there? If Martha plays into an unfortunate stereotype, *where* is the contrast? Who else is out there, so that we can say "oh, not all black characters in sci-fi are like that?" or "Not all black characters written by Russell T. Davies are like that?"
If Martha was a white girl, I'd still be a little miffed that they failed to give her an arc besides "love the Doctor, serve the Doctor," but she would be like, .001% of all available female characters to choose from. Martha, on the other hand, is practically unique, and so yes, it *matters more* that they get it right.
We're *not* a colorblind, genderblind society yet, which means way less representation for minorities of *all* sorts in our pop culture, and much more stereotypical representation when they do appear. Which, yes, means it's *even more important* when writing a minority to get it right, to not rely on lazy stereotypes. You can't just say "Well, what if she was white?" because once again, the playing ground just isn't equal. If you've only got one shot at something, you can't *afford* to get it wrong. If you've only got one Martha... you'd better get it right.
That isn't covered by "well, he would have felt that way about anyone after Rose, regardless of race!" or "Rose had to dress like a maid, too!"
See, I never thought the Doctor didn't think she was worthy, but... well, it all comes down to the fact that Rose and the Doctor were friends, partners, *equals*, but Martha always seemed to be treated (both by the narrative and the Doctor) as a combination maid, therapist and devotee. I don't think the Doctor really thought she wasn't as smart or tough as Rose, or anything like that, but I think he *was* purposely, deliberatly keeping her at arms' length. And yes, it makes perfect sense in Ten's *arc* for the "post-Rose" companion to be the "rebound" companion, and that he'd be all touchy and weird, "come here, go away"-- but yeah, the fact that there's also a racial element to the story? Makes it harder to take.
I just think they *shouldn't have* cast a black actress for that particular arc
See, and again, it kind of goes back to, what is the *larger pattern*. If, since 1963, we'd had a whole assortment of companions on the TV show-- white, black, Indian, whatever-- and if they'd had a whole range of personalities-- then it wouldn't matter so much that Martha just *happens* to have the arc of being "Not As Good As Rose, Except She Proves Herself By Putting Ten's Wants And Needs Above Everything Else In The World, Like A Good Servant."
But, yeah. You can't fix forty years of "no non-white leads on Doctor Who" by suddenly *ignoring* race. When you do start saying something, you have to pay attention to what you're saying.
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However, I think there's a false underlying assumption that comes out when we talk about race and hiring, in any field, which is that it's always a choice between Very Best Person! and Sad Second Choice. Maybe in some cases there are roles that someone was simply BORN TO PLAY and no one else will do, but in other cases, I think it just seems that way because the actor shapes the character, and because that's what we become used to. Freema's a fine actress, she's doing a very nice job, I think. Does that mean she was SO AMAZING AND RIGHT that the producers' hands were tied, and they just simply had to cast her? Eh, I doubt it. I imagine there was a shortlist of actresses that they considered who would *all* have done an excellent job with the role. In the casting process, you choose one of them, not just on a Universal Talent Scale of 1 to 100, but also on how the actress fits the role.
My feeling is, this actress didn't *fit* this role well, because of racial baggage. Actors don't get jobs *all the time* because they didn't mesh with the look or the personality that the producers wanted to convey, and in the case of this particular arc, I do think that they problematized the arc and angered a ton of their fans by making Ten look like a racist asshole who expects his black companion's life to revolve around him for no real reward, when he doesn't appear ever to have treated any of his white companions that way.
It sucks a lot that actors of color lose jobs so often because of their race, but the world we live in isn't going to become fair and fantastic overnight. My preference for this situation would certainly have been to do the same season-long character arc with a white actress (or a white actor -- I think that would've been interesting and thoughtful in many ways, even if the sexuality issue was left very subtextual, which I think would be my inclination anyhow), have her go away for the very reasons Martha goes away, and then bring in a character of color when you're ready to tell a story about a Companion as Hero again, and not just the story about Mistreatment of a Longsuffering Companion.
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And? I think your idea for a male companion would have been fabulous; it would have adjusted the dynamic in interesting ways. Too bad TPTB didn't think of that.
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Actually, in the old-school Who I'm familiar with he pretty often treated companions in exactly the same way -- for example with Three and Jo, or Three and Four with Sarah Jane, and especially Four with 'noble savage' Leela (a clear example of your point about the difference between a white and black actress in a role). And come to think of it, Four's treatment of Harry Sullivan is pretty much a Captain Mainwaring-like 'stupid boy!', comparable to Mickey, even though Harry too is a (white) doctor.
That being said, there's a fine line when trying to write CoC with more sensitivity to racial issues -- it's very, very easy to tip over into writing stereotypes. If we want things to change with regard to portrayals of those characters, then at some point they have to be treated as Just Anther Character, and allowed to have the same sort of non-race-specific reactions as the white characters. It might or might not work in any particular individual case, but it needs to be tried.
On the whole, I thought S3 of new Who did a reasonable job with Martha -- it seemed clear that she got a lot out of the relationship even when there was the unrequited crush thing going on. There were quite a lot of scenes with her and the Doctor with a very Rose-like feel: a mutual 'isn't this just TOO COOL!' or deep concern about Martha from the Dcotor as they go about exploring wherever, to the point where I sometimes wondered if they were adapting scripts written with Rose in mind. But with both it's very much in the spirit of earlier Who -- it's only the semi-spwcific treatment of romance aspects that's new.
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I'm always chary of arguments about how "easy" it is to start writing stereotypes accidentally. My reaction is -- isn't that why writers do research? If you want to write about werewolves in Victorian London, you go out and *learn stuff* about Victorian London. I'm always puzzled that white writers so often treat characters/people of color as if they are Utterly Inscrutable Forever and Ever. Meet some people of color, for crying out loud! Note how they are different from each other, and do not match your stereotyped expectations in every way! It's not rocket science, honestly. I think the professionals who work in television, in wildly diverse environments like L.A. or London (okay, sometimes Vancouver or Cardiff, but still! We're not talking about a cornfield in Iowa, here!) can be called upon to make the effort.
One of the reasons I have the utmost respect for Tom Fontana's work is that he's genuinely interested in his characters of color as subjects and as individuals. But at the same time, characters like Augustus and Said, Gee and Lewis and Pembleton, are not raceless -- they are specifically *African-American* men, and that informs their characters...without making any of them interchangable with any of the others. I say this just so you know that I'm setting RTD and other showrunners a task I think is totally within the bounds of possibility to accomplish! Hell, even the occasional sitcom can produce characters of color who are both really *characters* and really *of color* -- Turk and Carla on Scrubs are some of my favorite human beings on television ever; both their ethnicity and their full personhood are present and accounted for.
The trick to not writing stereotypes is not to do it. If it doesn't come naturally for you, work harder to get there. My free advice to writers. *g*
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I agree, although I think that applies to any characters who don't have your own experiences (i.e. most of them, really). I suppose I personally have a tendency to wing it, although since I write in Harry Potter fandom I can get away with it to a certain extent because that posits a world where the wizard characters really are 'colourblind', but have a fully-functioning equivalent prejudice about magical blood.
(Mind you, I'd like to see a story which dealt with the probably different reaction of 'Muggle-born' students to racial differences -- I can't off-hand think of one. If I get round to writing one of the Dean Thomas stories I had in mind -- and I'm waiting for the last book before doing any more! -- I should probably incorporate that theme.)
As for Who, I think the clunky bits are more to do with Martha's family than Martha herself. Martha's cool.
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To put this in context, at the same time, the BBC was also running the Black and White Minstrel Show, which featured white performers in black face singing stuff like Camptown Races. It boggles the mind.
I don't know why the Beeb changed their mind in regard to Leela. They kept the contacts for a few episodes, but they were causing her problems so Terrance Dicks wrote an in story explanation to get rid of them.
Leela's run on Doctor Who also saw the production of the Talons of Wang-Chiang, a story that featured a white actor painted Yellowface. When this serial was broadcast on TVOntario in Canada, it resulted in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission and it has never been shown here since.
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On the general point, much 1960s/70s TV stuff looks dodgy now, but at the time it was probably a minor irritant compared to a lot of bigger racial problems. It's a positive sign that things have moved on, at least.
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Actually, that isn't what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is-- Martha's role, her story arc, is problematic for Martha in a way that it wouldn't be for a white character. That aspect of Martha's arc is explained more here and also here.
Basically, in several individual episodes, she's explicitly given the role of the Doctor's servant, the one who works for him, who serves him, who tends to his physical and emotional needs without getting an equal measure of attention from him in return. In the finale, although we're led to believe that she's actually going to play some kind of active role in saving the world, instead we get a climax where Martha plays no particularly important role at all; in fact, she insists repeatedly that she is not important and only the Doctor is important, worth hearing about or believing in.
For a lot of people, giving a black female character a role like this, where she completely subsumes her wants and needs and emotions and only cares about what her white "boss" needs and thinks and feels-- it feels like stepping backwards to sometime between the 1920s-1950s, when this was basically only kind of role a black female actress could ever hope to play.
Incredibly talented actresses like Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers made *careers* out of playing this role-- the faithful, slavish black servant who just loves her white master or mistress so much that her own needs are totally unimportant. So when you give Martha lines like "[the doctor] is everything to me, just everything," even though, as she then acknowledges, she's barely just met him, and he barely even notices her-- it makes me cringe, it really does.
The "Mammy" role was a role that appeared over and over again in movies and books for *decades*, helpfully attempting to justify slavery and oppression by making it seem so *nice*. (Black people don't *want* to be free or independent, you see; they love being servants because they care about their masters so *much*, and besides, the white people really, really *need* them around, so it's just best for everyone if they stay in servitude.)
Anyway. I really just can't emphasize enough how much this *isn't* about "the Doctor doesn't like Martha as well as he likes Rose," and I hope I haven't given that impression in earlier comments.
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If the truly best actor/actress for the job is a PoC, the role is problematic for a PoC to play, but integrity of the characters/story would be compromised by changing either the new role or the previously established characters--which is the lesser evil? Hiring a second choice white actor/actress? Throwing continuity and character development out the window? Is there a third, better option?
The thing is, saying "we should always hire the best actor/actress for the job" is examining the problem as if it existed in a vaccuum, and my whole comment was basically about how you can't do that, because to address racism, you have to recognize patterns and context, and not just treat individual examples as if they *weren't* part of the pattern.
I mean-- ok, here's a really obvious example. Suppose back when "Buffy" was holding auditions for the character of Spike, Nicholas Brendon's twin brother randomly showed up and just happened to be a slightly better actor than James Marsters. Would he get the part? Probably not, because it would be incredibly distracting for casual viewers to turn on the TV and be like "Wait, Xander is a vampire now? Why is there a vampire that looks just like Xander? Is Spike secretly one of Xander's ancestors? Is he a clone? What's going on?" Probably, James Marsters would get the part instead, because of all the baggage and confusion that it would cause to hire Nicholas Brendon's twin brother to play Spike.
The fact that Nicholas Brendon's twin brother might be the most talented actor *doesn't make him the right person for the part,* because the role doesn't exist in a vaccuum. It exists in a bigger context, as part of a bigger story-- we're not talking about casting a one-man show, here. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not sure I'm saying it right.
I mean, it's like if you coincidentally, three times in a row, cast three redheads as three Babes of the Week on SGA and they all end up hooking up with Ronon Dex. After you've done that three times, people are going to *pick up on the pattern* and say "Ronon is totally into girls with red hair," and think of that as an integral part of his character-- he loves redheads! Of course! Even if it *actually* was just a coincidence, by the third time you open up auditions for Ronon's Babe of the Week, you *have to ask yourself*, "OK, are we going to purposely cast another redhead, or purposely go for something different, or just choose randomly? Because people pick up on patterns, and if we cast another redhead, it's pretty much the same as making it canon that Ronon loves redheads, so *if that's the message we want to send*, then we should do that."
You have to think about the message you're sending with your choices, because people pick up on patterns. Roles don't just exist on their own, with entirely no relation to other roles, no connection to other actors and actresses, no references to other shows, to our history or society. They exist in a context. And a smart casting director *knows this*, and will cast accordingly. Making it about "the best actor for the part" is a straw man, I think, especially because so many roles (like the Doctor himself, for instance) are NOT and probably never will be open to "the best actor for the part."
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I still don't think it really *does* boil down to that, though. I mean, just off the top of my head, I can think of so many ways that there still could have been a "rebound Companion" story arc, with Freema cast as the companion-- *without* the unfortunate stereotype that DW S3 invokes.
-- Give her an episode like "Father's Day," where we could have learned more about what's important to *Martha*.
-- Give her something *active* to do in the finale, besides being the disciple who insists loudly on her own insignificance, would have helped a lot.
-- Give Martha some active motivation to travel with the Doctor *besides* having a crush on him.
(Or, if you really *must* have Martha being in love with the Doctor, then just have her be more adult about it. I mean, she's a smart, mature, adult woman. Either have her *do* something about her crush-- make a move and get rejected and deal with that-- or else have her realize that Ten has way too many issues to be her boyfriend and show her at least trying to get over it, instead of just pouting and pining whenever Rose is mentioned.)
Also, as a lot of other people have pointed out, it would have helped if Martha hadn't come directly on the heels of Mickey, another black Companion who *was* brave, smart and loyal, but was constantly dissed by the Doctor and treated as "not good enough" for most of his appearances.
So I really don't think it comes down to "destroy the integrity of the story" or "cast a white girl." I honestly think that all the suggestions I've made, would have made DW S3 *stronger*-- give us a chance to get to know Martha better, make her a stronger character, treat the romantic subplot with more maturity, think about the resonances between Mickey and Martha and what kind of message that might send. Etc.
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Maybe in Britain it's different and a series really is nailed down tight before you start filming, but in the States, at least, episodes are being written and storylines are being adjusted throughout the season. The latest widely publicized examples I can think of are the Sylar character's run being extended and the Zack character's run being cut short on Heroes. Also, Marc on Ugly Betty got brought on permanently, and the characters brought into humanize Wilhelmina Slater (her daughter and the Texas business man) were cut once they figured out they didn't work out. Or, one of the more famous changes of all, Majel Barrett played Number One (the XO) in the original Star Trek pilot, but audiences couldn't deal with a woman in command, so she was re-written in as Nurse Christine Chapel.
Storylines (at least on American television) are pretty mutable, and even if their series arc required the Doctor to be an asshole, they could have adjusted Martha's behavior, once a black actress was selected to play her.
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