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| Time for a change? Always! |
So the new Doctor has been chosen for Doctor Who.
For the record, I loved him in Local Hero and think he's fearsome and intense in The Thick of It but I do remember when Chis regenerated into David and... ummm, I had very little clue who he was, partly because I wasn't into Doctor Who that much at the time (having only discovered it properly watching re-runs before 'A Christmas Invasion') and I think the excessive hype over the casting of future characters may just have reached fever pitch.
Case in point, the debate over whether the Doctor should have been a woman this time round...
Ugh...
Look, for years people labelled me as a feminist and my response was always 'no, I'm an equalist' (egalitarian) but this never worked so I gave up, threw my hands in the air and embraced the label in vain hope that perhaps I could do some good with it...
What I discovered when digging into feminist theory, especially that which is pervasive on the internet, was a group of people, chewing the cud, who think that misandry is progressive, would sooner moan than actually instigate political change and over-state trivialities while failing to focus on true inequalities (whether purely a female issue or just a people issue).
A truly equal society is meritocratic. Meritocracy as a pure concept therefore should be inherently gender-blind. I won't delve into the issue of CEOs and boardrooms because my point of view on it all is too liberal (read, not angry) and I don't want to be shot through the lungs by radical feminists.
So with that groundwork down, do I think the Doctor should have been a woman this time?
My answer: No.
Tokenism is a horrible thing and the exact opposite of a meritocratic system. If a woman had been chosen it wouldn't have been because they had done open casting for men and women and chosen the best out of a mixed line up. No, they would have auditioned only females. If the former had occurred I would probably say 'well, I will take what they give us' but I don't think that would happen. The choice to make the Doctor a woman would have been a narrative one before casting even would start.
Yes, I'm that cynical.
What I object to now in the fallout is the gender-shaming of Peter (this isn't even mentioning the producers' need to justify casting a white, British man, or the tittering about him being 'too old'. Good grief!)
To paraphrase the feeling of some people (read, some feminists):
"Oh look, another man being cast in the lead of a hit TV show, this is once again a sign of the institutional sexism in this patriarchy."
Quite.
What we need is good female characters in fiction not retrofitting a current one to be a woman.
Doctor Who has always had great female characters: Romana, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North), Susan Forman, Barbara Wright, etc etc two of the above named were characters who sat in the highest seat of power possible (Romana as Madame President of the Time Lords and Harriet as Prime Minister!)
Sci-fi in general has a good track record for strong females (more so that a lot of genres) so what we really need to ask for is more well-written females for young girls to want to grown up to be and young boys to admire, in Doctor Who and other original stories. I'm hopeful on that count.
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| This is what the internet calls 'Rule 63': gender-swapping characters to see what would happen. Ok... |
References:
Picture 1: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llvt76J6vn1qk2h0eo1_500.jpg
Picture 2: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/374/557/005.jpg
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