A Scandal in Fandom: Steven Moffat, Irene Adler, and the Fannish Gaze

[jblum]

The thing about the latest round of "Is Steven Moffat sexist?" that's currently flapping round the blogosphere, is that if within the same week you can manage to get accused of hating women by a Guardian blogger, and simultaneously accused of championing women and hating men in the Christmas special by the Daily Mail ... you're probably doing

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[ext_945914]

This is a really excellent post, and there's a lot of things in it I hadn't considered; will definitely be mulling over this for a while! No offense taken whatsoever :) As is obvious, I was quite steamed when I wrote my original piece, and so was neither as tactful nor as balanced as I could have been. That's not an excuse - I said what I said, and should own it - but it does mean I'm willing to move forward from that point, and have a more robust discussion of what's going on.

I think the most important point you're discussing here is the way we all construct our own fan narratives about various characters and stories, and then quietly elide those things that don't fit. Your take on the original Adler story, for instance, is just as correct as mine, yet not one that had occurred to me. When you say, of Kate's movie: "The icons in those stories are agonizingly close to everything she wants... so close that there might actually be value in ignoring the bits that aren't," I am deeply sympathetic. This is something I've done with stories, too - ignoring the problematic elements so I can enjoy the whole - and particularly with some older works, there's an argument that this is really what we *have* to do, in order to make judgements about them that aren't actually judgements about the culture, period and context of their creation. Conan Doyle's The Lost World, for instance... helloooo, racism and sexism! Classic story and great idea, but my DOG did it have me wincing.

But for that same reason, we're always going to be more critical - rightly, I think - of newly-created or reinterpreted stories: because any excuse we might be willing to extend a past effort along the lines of 'Well, it was (insert any pre-90s decade or era), of course the ladies got a raw deal!' must, for a current story, be rephrased as, 'Well, it has elements that bug/offend me, but my criticisms are less important than the bits I liked.' And this, for me, is the crux of why I feel so conflicted, and get so cross, about both Who and Sherlock: because I do not want the current period to be yet another time when, a decade or two from now, different audiences are looking back and saying, 'Well, it was the early 2000s, of course the ladies got a raw deal!' We should be better than that by now; and if we aren't, then we ought to aspire to be.

And for that reason, I cannot set aside what happens to Moffat's female characters: because I don't believe their treatment is less important than what I otherwise like about Who and Sherlock. Every line in every script is a decision someone made; every plot is a discussion the creators had. Why did Old Amy have to die? Why was her 'ganger killed without a thought? Why did she spend the whole season locked in a box and pregnant, instead of having adventures and pregnant? Why does Amy go on to be a model, rather than doing anything else at all? Why does River suddenly start loving the Doctor when he tells her that she loves him in the future? Why does Molly Hooper exist purely to get ego crushed and her heart broken? Why doesn't Mrs Hudson get any snappy comebacks? Why, in the final act, must Irene be rescued from terrorists? (Which, I'm sorry, but the white lady rescued by a white man from the brown men with turbans and swords? That is a toxic, dangerous trope. You do not use it lightly.) These are easy questions to ask, and if you ask them each in the context of the episode, there's a reasonable answer to give. But ask them en masse, and suddenly you have a trend of creators making decisions which, consciously or not, conspire to make the ladies less awesome than the men around them.