Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

Status
Not open for further replies.
I thought Russell T Davies had a bad rep for his female characters. Or is that another writer? Vintage Paw does some good analysis on the Doctor Who thread here.
 
cesare said:
I thought Russell T Davies had a bad rep for his female characters. Or is that another writer? Vintage Paw does some good analysis on the Doctor Who thread here.
Click to expand...

Stephen Moffat is the 'big bad' in that regard, although there have been criticisms of Davies' handling of it as well. At the moment, anyone who takes over the reigns as showrunner is going to be branded more generally as being crap at gender because the issue of having a woman in the role of the doctor has become quite a big issue for many, but even I admit that isn't necessarily fair (it's less the fact that the doctor has always been a man so far that annoys me, and more the attitude that it could never be a woman). With Moffat in particular, there have been endless examples of really quite dodgy gender politics, where otherwise 'strong female characters' :rolleyes: are undermined by little jibes about their gender and how it affects their abilities, you know the kind of stuff. There have been some good analyses of Amy and her role as wife/mother - the best of which take into account Rory's role, as well as River's positioning as wife/prisoner. I'd be hard pressed to find any of them again, but they're out there.

Moffat is also criticised for his portrayal of race and sexuality. Some of it can come across as being a bit 'I hate Moffat, I'll find as much wrong with his stuff as possible' but even accounting for that, the points many make do have merit, and when taken as a whole in the context of everything he's done as showrunner it all adds up to a pretty damning dossier of evidence against him.

There's very little said about his portrayals of class, but then I'm not surprised about that. We're far more likely to baulk at Amy's portrayal as going from kiss-a-gram to glam fashion model in terms of how it positions her as an object to be looked at by men than we are in terms of capital (even though the two are related and we should look at both); likewise we are far more likely to be angered asking why Clara has to be a governess or a nanny because 'why do women always have to take that caring, nurturing role' rather than also thinking about those roles in terms of buying a woman's labour in that way. It's not surprising, and I'm not certain there would be many people willing to entertain those arguments even within the most ardent groups of people who pick apart every gendered image in the programme.

You could make the argument that Davies does class better, with his portrayals of Rose and Donna. But his representations of them as women falls down at the end, despite how great and independent they were, because both of their stories end with them finding their own version of happiness with a man, and you could argue that is tied in with their class. Martha perhaps fares better here, because she's the one at the end who remains independent (despite being with Mickey), still fighting, being in charge, and living a life that is more or less equivalent to the doctor's in terms of trying to keep earth safe from alien threats. She was the middle class one of the 3 of Davies' companions - so you could easily make an analysis of that.

(I haven't read this thread; sorry if what I've written bears no relation to what you're all talking about.)
 
That's okay, tag away :)

I'll spend some time reading back a bit, sounds like an interesting topic.

(I admit to having purposefully stayed away from this thread because the very premise of it sounds like the worst kind of hell - but I'm certain there have been some very interesting arguments and discussions that have sprung up in its 700+ pages.)
 
sihhi said:
More generally are the two claims here true:

"This particularly the case in Britain, which has long produced the best science fiction in the world, all of which has been roundly snubbed by the bourgeois literary establishment."

1 Have capitalist publishing and awards snubbed science fiction?

2 Does Britain produce the best science fiction in the world, after all Margaret Atwood as supported in the article is Canadian ?
Click to expand...


Isn't your question 1 slightly different from the claim you quote? I certainly think it's true that SF/fantasy/horror has been largely snubbed by the established literati and the Serious Literature Award Givers. Publishing as a capitalist business, as making money off SF/F/H certainly hasn't snubbed these genres.

As for question 2 - how long is a piece of string?
 
sihhi said:
1 Have capitalist publishing and awards snubbed science fiction?
Click to expand...

Specifically on this point, it is pretty much a given within 'the literary establishment' that SF* is often unfairly given the snub of 'genre fiction' - that title is seen as a snub, it's not valued as highly as 'literary fiction'. However, it's recognised that there have been some great breakaway authors like Le Guin, Atwood, Dick, Delany etc. but even then there is the feeling that their work isn't quite the same as something by Rushdie or Morrison (themselves positioned in certain genres within literary fiction - writing on race, using magical realism, etc.), or the standard straight white male literary fiction.

In terms of capitalism, there is a clear and profitable market for SF writing, it sells quite well (but only to a certain type of customer). So on the face of it, it isn't snubbed in that regard. But, there are SF publishers and other literary fiction publishers, and rarely do SF books cross over from one to the other. They have their separate industry awards, and while there are some very prestigious SF awards, I don't get the impression that they hold as much weight within the literary fiction sphere of influence, and any winners of those awards are very, very unlikely to ever see their books entered in for the mainstream literary fiction awards.

Even though SF has shown itself to be able to subvert in quite ingenious ways because of its strangeness-yet-familiarness to our world, and take on some very hefty subjects, there's still a huge amount of snobbery involved.

And then we have Fantasy. Before GRR Martin and the Game of Thrones craze (and I'd argue since then as well), fantasy is seen as even lower down on the hierarchy of worthwhile fiction than SF. It's all wizards and dragons and magic and that sort of shit that kids and men who haven't grown up and women who fantasise about sexy vampires like. As you might expect, there's snobbery within the SF audience about fantasy too. This is an interesting piece on a similar subject (with ASOIAF spoilers - if you care about that sort of thing).

Categorisation doesn't help. Separating genres in bookshops, Amazon, etc. into 'Fiction' and 'Science Fiction and Fantasy' (and 'Crime') ensures that we think about them differently. When all 'serious' literary fiction gets put in the 'Fiction' category, then any literary SF still being put in the SF section sends the message that it isn't serious or worthwhile. But then of course we need to unpick what we mean by 'serious' and the snobbery involved in that. Political analysis can be made for every single book written.


* there's a ridiculous argument over whether you should call it SF or sci-fi - with SF giving off a more 'literary' and 'respectable' and 'worthy' air.
 
sihhi said:
What do you think of this earlier LP analysis of Doctor Who - I haven't watched any of it properly only for some baby-sitting.

.......

1 Have capitalist publishing and awards snubbed science fiction?

2 Does Britain produce the best science fiction in the world, after all Margaret Atwood as supported in the article is Canadian ?
Click to expand...


I'm not a fan but what I know about SF and attitudes toward it are covered much more comprehensively by Vintage Paw.

I don't watch Dr Who. Well, I saw a few Christopher Eccleston episodes back in 2005.....
 
Ambition on a warm, muggy Saturday night can take many forms.

iBlev90.7rNs.jpg


Ambition never looked duller. Or whiter. Nice of them to let a black man have a go on the decks however. Now that's intersectionality.
 
Does this New Inquiry essay praise the thrust into Marighella war in the USA at the end of the 1960s with the Weathermen?

It points out

3. It is 1970, and the Weather Underground has just declared a state of war. In a recorded statement, the radical leftist group makes this declaration:
All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika’s youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire.

<snip>

the left must develop methods for the perceptualization of politics if it is to counter the allure of capitalist narratives — narratives that include not merely audiovisual agitprop but also the taken-for-granted assumptions and expectations that are built into capitalist society.

To perceive neoliberalism as oppressive requires the ability to put smaller experiential pieces into a pattern. It requires seeing that capitalism’s component parts — privatization, deregulation, risk-shifting, labor flexibility — together form a pattern of injustice. Shifting the terms of representation can make such patterns clearer: Consider the sequence 1, 3, 7, 15, 31. Most people will glance over these numbers without noticing any meaningful relation between them. However, if one reorganizes the information into a new ontological grouping by rewriting the sequence in binary (1, 11, 111, 1111, 11111), a striking and obvious pattern reveals itself. Similarly, by recasting experience using novel political ontologies and taxonomies, one might render visible macro-patterns and perceptions that were previously unavailable.

<snip>

Former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers explains that “the sense was that we had to do whatever we had to do to stop the war” and that “the mood … kind of ricocheted between determination and despair. There was a real sense that things were gonna get pretty bad.” Similarly, another former member Brian Flanagan says, “The Vietnam war, it made us crazy, it was sort of a mass mania driven by the United States bombing of Vietnam, among other things.”
This language — speaking of “moods” and “manias,” and how things “seemed” and “felt” — seems indicative of a politics that has been heavily perceptualized. Thus, when the radicals rallied behind the slogan “Bring the war home!” perhaps for them it already was.

A US author writing for a US audience. The implicit assumption is that:
1 abandoning mass struggle for urban guerrilla teams (secret/underground by their very nature) was the way forward.
2 a similar emotional shift as accompanied the formation of Weather can help the masses 'see' that they are oppressed/neoliberalism is oppressive (1,3,7 as 1,11,111 etc)

Again hard to really understand what's being said.
 
copliker Probably obvious, but presence of a non-white participant doesn't mean a party event is not exclusive - there is a growing black middle class in the US (though you might not think there is from some analyses, slowed down in recession but still incorporation into upper-range colleges etc. esp. as a result of growing intermarriage).

The $75/$150 entry fee means those participants white, Asian, black or Hispanic will almost certainly not be working-class which should be the focus for a radical journal committed to new ideas like The New Inquiry.
 
sihhi said:
copliker Probably obvious, but presence of a non-white participant doesn't mean a party event is not exclusive - there is a growing black middle class in the US (though you might not think there is from some analyses, slowed down in recession but still incorporation into upper-range colleges etc. esp. as a result of growing intermarriage).
Click to expand...
Also (in this country at least) people still like to think they are nice and PC by having a token black person on board.
 
sihhi said:
Does this New Inquiry essay praise the thrust into Marighella war in the USA at the end of the 1960s with the Weathermen?


A US author writing for a US audience. The implicit assumption is that:
1 abandoning mass struggle for urban guerrilla teams (secret/underground by their very nature) was the way forward.
2 a similar emotional shift as accompanied the formation of Weather can help the masses 'see' that they are oppressed/neoliberalism is oppressive (1,3,7 as 1,11,111 etc)

Again hard to really understand what's being said.
Click to expand...

No, I don't think so. The Weathermen thing is just an example of the kind of state of mind the author thinks is necessary for change, basically a shift in worldview. It's not an argument about political strategy and tactics at all beyond the question of how does the Left overcome the power of ideology when intellectual arguments aren't sufficient to shift a person's worldview. The shifting of people's worldview becomes the 'perceptualization of politics' and the shift itself psychologised and individualised as a 'gestalt shift'. He's taken a theory from the philosophy of science, mixed it with some psychology, a little bit of oppression, and come up with...not very much at all really.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

_Russ_
Penny Mordaunt
2 3
Replies
86
Views
3K
danny la rouge
danny la rouge
Fez909
Japanese attitudes towards immigration vs UK
3 4 5 6 7
Replies
198
Views
6K
krtek a houby
krtek a houby
Kid_Eternity
Collective - new left wing party?
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
154
Views
6K
PR1Berske
PR1Berske
Kid_Eternity
New Labour government - legislative agenda
27 28 29 30 31
Replies
900
Views
31K
Pickman's model
Pickman's model
Bingoman
Alex Chalk time is up
Replies
3
Views
466
PR1Berske
PR1Berske
Back
Top Bottom