Best gay writer?!

[satanassa]

Quote from Tim Macavoy's 'Brit Bits' article on AfterElton:

"The big news is that Torchwood will return for a fourth series! Cue the angry shouts about Ianto being killed and how you’ll never watch again. Then get over it, because it’s still made by Russell T Davies, one of the best gay writers around."

Tim my friend, if Rusty is one of the 'best'

Comments

[xtricks]

Moffat -- really? He created Jack Harkness, not a gay character but a sexually omnivorous one. And have you been watching the new Who under him? No homosexual characters (even minor screen filler) at all, let alone ones with speaking/acting roles. Not that I've seen so far.

RTD not only created repeated queer characters (though he as some problems with psycho!lesbians), he repeatedly ensures that there is the presence of a variety of sexual orientations in any show he has influence it. Making queer characters not just eye candy or 'issue' characters but also a visible, normal presence in the world.

And beyond that? Who else?

Sure there are ghetto shows, the L word, Noahs Arc, the detective series, a few others but nothing that presents alternative sexualities to a 'mainstream' audiences as part of the human community. Various soap operas will have queer characters and there is the occasional 'queer' episode on many serialized tv shows (genearally showing queers as victims of crime and/or victimizers).

I liked Torchwood not for the romantic story of Jack/Ianto which is really mostly a construct of fandom -- their relationship on screen is open to a lot of interpretation but for the presence of alternative sexualities and queer people as normal, in the world, living their lives and being human.

[ella_caramella]

...there is the occasional 'queer' episode on many serialized tv shows (genearally showing queers as victims of crime and/or victimizers).

Generally showing queers as victims... hmm, isn't that exactly the way he portrayed Ianto in CoE? The victim who gets the abuse from every other character on the scene and then ends up dead?

Didn't he turn Ianto into a random queer character by replacing him with the next random queer character who'll get the high honour to be shagged by Jack?

Where's RTD's originality in this and what makes his tv shows different from the other mainstream tv shows?

[xtricks]

Note that I'm not defending CoE. I think it was not well done. But, it was far from the only thing RTD has done, or the most important (or, Torchwood, for that matter).

Ianto, unlike most queer characters, victims or otherwise, had 2+ years of existence in the show, as a part of at team (a secondary character, yes, but still there over the long-term). He didn't get cut in the first season (as originally planned), or the end of the second (also as originally planned), and he had story lines and things he did that weren't all about being queer.

In the majority of other shows, queer characters show up for an episode to be victims/victimzers or glitter then the entire concept of the existence of queer characters dissapears from that show until the next issue episode comes up.

The difference between work that RTD created and work most others have is that, even when he's not penning every episode (as was the case with Torchwood), shows under his control have a range of sexualities present, which are not limited to either romantic eye candy (which is what much of fandom tries to make Ianto) or issue characters (look the queer has AIDS! isn't that tragic). For the majority of other shows, that simply isn't the case.

Gwen, though clearly heterosexual, had at least one canon same sex moment and it didn't result in one of those melodramatic reflections on her identity, Tosh had an affair with a woman that was both emotional and physical, Owen is clearly simply opportunistic, Jack is sexually omnivorous and without a lot of the idiotic hang-ups about sex mainstream culture has. This milieu was unique. No one else has created anything like it.

Even queer produced shows for queers are almost always romances or soap operas because queers are often trying to figure out how they fit in the world, so the story focus is on interpersonal stuff.

RTD for all his flaws, and god knows he has many, has created the first and so far only, lasting, mainstream popular queer action hero.

Killing off Ianto isn't the only thing he's done and ultimately, it's not the most important.

[ella_caramella]

But it is important, in a negative way, since he deliberately decided to kill off Ianto and with him the only same sex relationship on a popular tv show people actually rooted for. It doesn't matter that he will try to recreate it with a Ianto replacement: the damage is done, it just won't be the same, he just won't have what he was lucky to have the first time around.

My problems with RTD are not tied to CoE alone. I always found his vision of the world and his representation of the 'queers' a bit negative rather than multidimensional.

True he puts queer characters in his shows but it's the way he portrays them that doesn't ring true to me. I always had problems with his QAF, his Bob and Rose, even with his Mine all Mine where the gay character was BTW given almost the same treatment Ianto was given in CoE.

So, while I can agree that yes, he puts gay characters in his shows (YAY!) I don't think in the end he's any different from all the others writers who put gay characters in their shows just to say "Look how brave and progressive we are: we've got a gay character on our show!!!" Ryan Murphy does just the same.

When it comes to Ianto, sure he left him there for 30 episodes but you can't deny Ianto was not only treated like a minor character but he was criminally underused, he was nothing but Jack's bit of fun on the side. And I bet anything you want that if it wasn't for GDL's work on the character Ianto wouldn't have seen episode 6! Jack himself was pushed rather into the shadows, maybe right because of his (almost invisible) same sex relationship with Ianto.

You can't deny the hetero relationships on the show were given normal exposure, just think about Gwen and Rhys, Gwen and Owen, Owen and Diane. One has to wonder how come we know virtually nothing when it comes to the main lead and his male lover.

Gwen kissing the girl in the second episodes has always struck me as naughty titillating for the male audience. Tosh/Mary at least had a story to sustain them. Too bad Mary turned out to be a psycho monster evil lesbian, though.