It's not rocket science (Carteresque meta)
Actually, this is only peripherally related to Carter, though I think it serves to highlight a major problem the TPTB have with her. It also supports my argument that one of the biggest issues with Carter's credibility is that they tell us how smart and wonderful she is but fall short of *showing* us on a consistent basis.
Caught Arthur's Mantle again the other day. Something bugged me about it but it didn't come together until today. I like Bill Lee. I think he's a terrific character... but how many times do they show him as a bumbling incompetent? I started trying to come up with *any* of the hard scientists at the SGC who've been shown to be competent professionals and I come up with a big fat zero.
They must exist given the technological advances that have been made, but we never *see* it. We just hear about it. (Heads up, people, first rule of writing: *show* don't *tell*!) Now, I don't think an episode devoted to the psychics/engineering version of Daniel's "days, weeks, months of tedious tediousness" would be worth watching. Instead, though, they could SHOW us people who aren't, apparently, known for their failures. One Felger is more than enough, thank you very much. In fact, *one* Felger is the quirky genius people are willing to put up with because he either comes up with the goods eventually or at least sparks others to do so. There's a place in most research organizations for someone like that. There *isn't* a place for an entire department of them. One is entertaining, fifteen is ludicrous.
The SGC is full of not merely competent, but exceptional military personnel. We *see* that all the time. One of the reasons we see it is because it's exciting to watch, so they film it. Fine. That's easy. The medical staff has the same advantage in that we get to *see* their miracles because, again, it makes for good drama. I have no quibble with that.
We don't see many (or almost any) other soft scientists besides Daniel, those we *do* see or hear about have apparently done good work. I can't for the *life* of me remember a single instance where one of them has screwed up as consistently as the hard scientists. *Nyan*, in fact (oh, Nyan, we miss you) proved himself to be an excellent scientist in that he accepted, with fairly good grace, I might add, that his theories were wrong and was *excited* about it. The times we have seen them they haven't done anything overtly stupid/incompetent/bumbling. Now, it's also true that the soft sciences make almost as good drama as the military and medical fields simply because they deal with people. Again, easier to show rather than tell.
So, how do you demonstrate competence in a field that A. is generally boring to watch (no need to check my viewing habits, yes, I confess, I love the Discovery channel and Nova - but that's not what I watch SG1 for - sue me :-); B. deals with made up physical stuff/laws of physics; C. costs a fortune in FX dollars to put on the screen? While it's not as much a no-brainer as the others, *this* isn't rocket science, either. You do it not by *telling* us so-n-so is brilliant, you do it by *showing* us characters who have the respect of their peers, especially peers whose competence we've *seen*. I imagine there's a literary term for this, but I tend to think of it (probably erroneously :-) as the distributive property of characters. :-)
Jack has been shown, time and again, to be not just a competent leader, but an exemplary leader. Yes, he's got a weird sense of humor and for those who object, there's the Cosmic Giddiness infection he picked up somewhere along the way (my sooper sekrit sources tell me he really went to Washington because someone at Bethesda had an experimental treatment for it - shhh - it's a sekrit). But it never kept him from doing his job. We accept Jack's abilities because we've *seen* it. We've also seen those around him who share similar backgrounds recognize it. The good guys trust him, the bad guys want him out of their hair. If Jack tells us something about a new military character, we're going to buy it until proven otherwise (and then we're going to expect Jack to be just as surprised or know the reason why). We're going to watch the other military folks' interactions with Major New Guy and we'll be influenced by that, as well. Major New Guy's *actions* will ultimately tell the tale, but on introduction, we only know what we're told. That's when telling is important. Jack's credibility as a military character has been demonstrated by the story and reinforced by the reactions of the other military (and by some non-military) characters.
Daniel and Teal'c have had similar treatments, with one major difference from Jack. Both of them were, in some way, outcast from their positions/cultures due to their actions. We, however, are lucky enough to have special knowledge that lets us know that, outcast they might be, but they were *right*. Daniel was right that the Egyptians of the Fourth Dynasty didn't build the pyramids (I didn't look this up, man, I hope I got that bit from the movie right ;-) and Teal'c was right that the Goa'uld are not gods. We were given such incredibly overwhelming evidence for these contradictions that it negates the power of their erstwhile peers' reactions to undermine their credibility as characters. Also, we see them move on to a new group of peers who *do* value them (or are bad guys - though, I guess the bad guys value them, too, just not in a way conducive to life, liberty and so forth :-). Their expertise isn't questioned by their new peers which reinforces what we're shown.
Now, none of this means any of these guys are *perfect*. Perfect is boring. Perfect is Mary Sue. Perfect makes for bad drama. It just means they're *credible* in the context of their fictional universe. They're experts and other experts in their fields recognize that expertise. They may disagree, but that's a clash of egos or ideals or being just plain wrong rather than "Teal'c's an idiot, he's always been an idiot and why didn't someone toss him out an airlock ages ago."
Now we get to the bumbling incompetent hard science folks at the SGC. When I started wondering about this, my first thought was that it's just tough to make this stuff interesting in an action adventure show. They're just riffing off the oh-so-serious scientists of the 50s SF movies so many of us grew up watching on black and white TVs on Saturday afternoons. Then, as I started thinking further, I realized there's likely something far more insidious going on. I think the primary reason these guys are all shown to be bumbling idiots is to make sure we all see how much smarter and better Carter is than they are. Sadly, all they've managed to do is undermine *her* credibility (and the credibility of the SGC as a whole) that much more because being smarter and better than Felger the village idiot *doesn't* mean a whole heck of a lot.
See, the scary part of all this is that there's no dramatic reason for them to have done this. It would have been dirt simple to have shown us everything we've seen and only changed a few lines of dialog per relevant episode. Sometimes not even dialog. There was an episode during the recent marathon (S9) where Bill mutters something under his breath (about getting it right someday or getting respect someday - I don't recall the exact quote). Daniel responds with "Yes, Bill we all look forward to that." Or words to that effect. While I don't have a problem with occasionally!snippy!Daniel, this was one instance where they could have used the exact same dialog without undermining Bill's credibility as a character (not to mention whittling away a bit more at Daniel's, but that's for another time). All it would have taken was a bit of business to turn a criticism into a shared joke.
The only conclusion I can come to is that TPTB are insecure about Carter being accepted as a competent professional. (I'd kinda wondered about this from time to time, but the evidence of the past 10 years is pretty solid.) It boggles the mind. It also leads to the next question: Why? I mean, sure, sometimes a character wanders off into the weeds and wants to drag the writer along for the ride. It happens. However. A *good* writer knows when to give them their head and when to drag them back onto the path and make them focus, dammit!. As a pro friend of mine likes to remind everyone, *she's* the writer. *She's* in complete control of the character. The character is nothing more than a construct of her mind and it can't do *anything* on it's own. It's not alive. Most of us understand that when we say "but Daniel refused to cooperate in this scene" we know we're using a sort of short hand for our creative process. Somewhere we recognized that what we had planned wasn't working with what we had written, possibly subconsciously, so "Daniel" wandered off to do something else. (Probably got bored. Geniuses. Can't live with 'em....)
Television *is* different than print or fic. It's a collaborative effort. The writers produce the primary product, which is then interpreted by the actors and the director. Editors, FX, sound, all these folks also contribute their take in their own spheres. While the director has the most direct power over how things play out, within the confines of the script, even he has limitations. Budget is one of the biggies, but time is also huge. There are only so many hours that can be devoted to any given episode and sometimes there's just no time for a do over. Then there are the producers. (Note: I suspect there are any number of people who have a hand in the overarching guidance of a series - I'm not a tv exec and I don't even play one on the 'net so I'm lumping everyone like this under the heading of 'producer'.) If they don't like what their minions are doing to their cash cow, they're gonna get it changed. What I'm seeing is that the producers, TPTB, The Boyz at Bridge, whoever the nebulous folks are, don't see a problem with how the artistic types are writing/directing/acting/editing/whatevering Carter (can someone at LEAST take her to a hair dresser?????).
I've always hesitated to lay the blame on them being dazzled by the blond hair, blue eyes and long legs, (I don't like it when I'm judged simply for being female - card carrying feminist here, folks... just in case you haven't noticed along the way ;-) but I gotta say, I think it's part of the problem. I recently commented somewhere that if Vala were actually a male character and treated women the way Vala treats men there would be *very* few women who would tolerate her at all. For that matter, I can't think of more than one or two men I know who would accept that kind of behavior from a sympathetic male character. (Apparently, sexual harassment is only disgusting when it's committed by a man.) There were surprisingly few comments which makes me wonder if it's just general disagreement (good grief, if you disagree with me, SAY SO!!!! I love a good debate!) or if, as I suspect, it made people uncomfortable to think in those terms.
Y'all see where I'm going with this, right?
I have no intention of going off into a long dissertation on Western feminist thought, but when you dig down and take a good look at it, I think the problem is based in Western culture's disassociative personality disorder with regard to women. There are still, yes, now, in the 21st century, still vast swaths of people in Western society who have real problems with the very basic concept that women are people, too. Carter's lack of credibility is a sad example of it because I don't think it's intentional. I really don't think TPTB (or quite a few fans, for that matter) would understand what I'm talking about. I think it's such an ingrained part of their world view that they don't realize what they've said about how they view women by how they've presented Carter.
How do you make a woman "credible" in a Man's World[tm]? You surround her with incompetent men. She can't help but shine! Yeah! That's the ticket! But she'll have to have a strong leader to keep her in line. Oh! Oh! And she could fall for him! Yeah! Of course she would! Isn't that why girls go to college and stuff, after all? To get their MRS? Just gotta make sure we don't put any guy scientists in there who look like they have a clue, cuz then nobody would think she belonged.
*sigh*
Give me a break.
Caught Arthur's Mantle again the other day. Something bugged me about it but it didn't come together until today. I like Bill Lee. I think he's a terrific character... but how many times do they show him as a bumbling incompetent? I started trying to come up with *any* of the hard scientists at the SGC who've been shown to be competent professionals and I come up with a big fat zero.
They must exist given the technological advances that have been made, but we never *see* it. We just hear about it. (Heads up, people, first rule of writing: *show* don't *tell*!) Now, I don't think an episode devoted to the psychics/engineering version of Daniel's "days, weeks, months of tedious tediousness" would be worth watching. Instead, though, they could SHOW us people who aren't, apparently, known for their failures. One Felger is more than enough, thank you very much. In fact, *one* Felger is the quirky genius people are willing to put up with because he either comes up with the goods eventually or at least sparks others to do so. There's a place in most research organizations for someone like that. There *isn't* a place for an entire department of them. One is entertaining, fifteen is ludicrous.
The SGC is full of not merely competent, but exceptional military personnel. We *see* that all the time. One of the reasons we see it is because it's exciting to watch, so they film it. Fine. That's easy. The medical staff has the same advantage in that we get to *see* their miracles because, again, it makes for good drama. I have no quibble with that.
We don't see many (or almost any) other soft scientists besides Daniel, those we *do* see or hear about have apparently done good work. I can't for the *life* of me remember a single instance where one of them has screwed up as consistently as the hard scientists. *Nyan*, in fact (oh, Nyan, we miss you) proved himself to be an excellent scientist in that he accepted, with fairly good grace, I might add, that his theories were wrong and was *excited* about it. The times we have seen them they haven't done anything overtly stupid/incompetent/bumbling. Now, it's also true that the soft sciences make almost as good drama as the military and medical fields simply because they deal with people. Again, easier to show rather than tell.
So, how do you demonstrate competence in a field that A. is generally boring to watch (no need to check my viewing habits, yes, I confess, I love the Discovery channel and Nova - but that's not what I watch SG1 for - sue me :-); B. deals with made up physical stuff/laws of physics; C. costs a fortune in FX dollars to put on the screen? While it's not as much a no-brainer as the others, *this* isn't rocket science, either. You do it not by *telling* us so-n-so is brilliant, you do it by *showing* us characters who have the respect of their peers, especially peers whose competence we've *seen*. I imagine there's a literary term for this, but I tend to think of it (probably erroneously :-) as the distributive property of characters. :-)
Jack has been shown, time and again, to be not just a competent leader, but an exemplary leader. Yes, he's got a weird sense of humor and for those who object, there's the Cosmic Giddiness infection he picked up somewhere along the way (my sooper sekrit sources tell me he really went to Washington because someone at Bethesda had an experimental treatment for it - shhh - it's a sekrit). But it never kept him from doing his job. We accept Jack's abilities because we've *seen* it. We've also seen those around him who share similar backgrounds recognize it. The good guys trust him, the bad guys want him out of their hair. If Jack tells us something about a new military character, we're going to buy it until proven otherwise (and then we're going to expect Jack to be just as surprised or know the reason why). We're going to watch the other military folks' interactions with Major New Guy and we'll be influenced by that, as well. Major New Guy's *actions* will ultimately tell the tale, but on introduction, we only know what we're told. That's when telling is important. Jack's credibility as a military character has been demonstrated by the story and reinforced by the reactions of the other military (and by some non-military) characters.
Daniel and Teal'c have had similar treatments, with one major difference from Jack. Both of them were, in some way, outcast from their positions/cultures due to their actions. We, however, are lucky enough to have special knowledge that lets us know that, outcast they might be, but they were *right*. Daniel was right that the Egyptians of the Fourth Dynasty didn't build the pyramids (I didn't look this up, man, I hope I got that bit from the movie right ;-) and Teal'c was right that the Goa'uld are not gods. We were given such incredibly overwhelming evidence for these contradictions that it negates the power of their erstwhile peers' reactions to undermine their credibility as characters. Also, we see them move on to a new group of peers who *do* value them (or are bad guys - though, I guess the bad guys value them, too, just not in a way conducive to life, liberty and so forth :-). Their expertise isn't questioned by their new peers which reinforces what we're shown.
Now, none of this means any of these guys are *perfect*. Perfect is boring. Perfect is Mary Sue. Perfect makes for bad drama. It just means they're *credible* in the context of their fictional universe. They're experts and other experts in their fields recognize that expertise. They may disagree, but that's a clash of egos or ideals or being just plain wrong rather than "Teal'c's an idiot, he's always been an idiot and why didn't someone toss him out an airlock ages ago."
Now we get to the bumbling incompetent hard science folks at the SGC. When I started wondering about this, my first thought was that it's just tough to make this stuff interesting in an action adventure show. They're just riffing off the oh-so-serious scientists of the 50s SF movies so many of us grew up watching on black and white TVs on Saturday afternoons. Then, as I started thinking further, I realized there's likely something far more insidious going on. I think the primary reason these guys are all shown to be bumbling idiots is to make sure we all see how much smarter and better Carter is than they are. Sadly, all they've managed to do is undermine *her* credibility (and the credibility of the SGC as a whole) that much more because being smarter and better than Felger the village idiot *doesn't* mean a whole heck of a lot.
See, the scary part of all this is that there's no dramatic reason for them to have done this. It would have been dirt simple to have shown us everything we've seen and only changed a few lines of dialog per relevant episode. Sometimes not even dialog. There was an episode during the recent marathon (S9) where Bill mutters something under his breath (about getting it right someday or getting respect someday - I don't recall the exact quote). Daniel responds with "Yes, Bill we all look forward to that." Or words to that effect. While I don't have a problem with occasionally!snippy!Daniel, this was one instance where they could have used the exact same dialog without undermining Bill's credibility as a character (not to mention whittling away a bit more at Daniel's, but that's for another time). All it would have taken was a bit of business to turn a criticism into a shared joke.
The only conclusion I can come to is that TPTB are insecure about Carter being accepted as a competent professional. (I'd kinda wondered about this from time to time, but the evidence of the past 10 years is pretty solid.) It boggles the mind. It also leads to the next question: Why? I mean, sure, sometimes a character wanders off into the weeds and wants to drag the writer along for the ride. It happens. However. A *good* writer knows when to give them their head and when to drag them back onto the path and make them focus, dammit!. As a pro friend of mine likes to remind everyone, *she's* the writer. *She's* in complete control of the character. The character is nothing more than a construct of her mind and it can't do *anything* on it's own. It's not alive. Most of us understand that when we say "but Daniel refused to cooperate in this scene" we know we're using a sort of short hand for our creative process. Somewhere we recognized that what we had planned wasn't working with what we had written, possibly subconsciously, so "Daniel" wandered off to do something else. (Probably got bored. Geniuses. Can't live with 'em....)
Television *is* different than print or fic. It's a collaborative effort. The writers produce the primary product, which is then interpreted by the actors and the director. Editors, FX, sound, all these folks also contribute their take in their own spheres. While the director has the most direct power over how things play out, within the confines of the script, even he has limitations. Budget is one of the biggies, but time is also huge. There are only so many hours that can be devoted to any given episode and sometimes there's just no time for a do over. Then there are the producers. (Note: I suspect there are any number of people who have a hand in the overarching guidance of a series - I'm not a tv exec and I don't even play one on the 'net so I'm lumping everyone like this under the heading of 'producer'.) If they don't like what their minions are doing to their cash cow, they're gonna get it changed. What I'm seeing is that the producers, TPTB, The Boyz at Bridge, whoever the nebulous folks are, don't see a problem with how the artistic types are writing/directing/acting/editing/whatevering Carter (can someone at LEAST take her to a hair dresser?????).
I've always hesitated to lay the blame on them being dazzled by the blond hair, blue eyes and long legs, (I don't like it when I'm judged simply for being female - card carrying feminist here, folks... just in case you haven't noticed along the way ;-) but I gotta say, I think it's part of the problem. I recently commented somewhere that if Vala were actually a male character and treated women the way Vala treats men there would be *very* few women who would tolerate her at all. For that matter, I can't think of more than one or two men I know who would accept that kind of behavior from a sympathetic male character. (Apparently, sexual harassment is only disgusting when it's committed by a man.) There were surprisingly few comments which makes me wonder if it's just general disagreement (good grief, if you disagree with me, SAY SO!!!! I love a good debate!) or if, as I suspect, it made people uncomfortable to think in those terms.
Y'all see where I'm going with this, right?
I have no intention of going off into a long dissertation on Western feminist thought, but when you dig down and take a good look at it, I think the problem is based in Western culture's disassociative personality disorder with regard to women. There are still, yes, now, in the 21st century, still vast swaths of people in Western society who have real problems with the very basic concept that women are people, too. Carter's lack of credibility is a sad example of it because I don't think it's intentional. I really don't think TPTB (or quite a few fans, for that matter) would understand what I'm talking about. I think it's such an ingrained part of their world view that they don't realize what they've said about how they view women by how they've presented Carter.
How do you make a woman "credible" in a Man's World[tm]? You surround her with incompetent men. She can't help but shine! Yeah! That's the ticket! But she'll have to have a strong leader to keep her in line. Oh! Oh! And she could fall for him! Yeah! Of course she would! Isn't that why girls go to college and stuff, after all? To get their MRS? Just gotta make sure we don't put any guy scientists in there who look like they have a clue, cuz then nobody would think she belonged.
*sigh*
Give me a break.