Doctor Who and racist/sexist hiring practices

Can I just write about this, please?

Seen on livejournal:

The short version is that, yes, 100% of the writers and directors were both male and white. Because Steven Moffat can't even be bothered to make a little effort to find one person of color and/or one woman. This explained a lot for me about why the show has been drenched in fail. The people at the top can't even bestir themselves to give a shit about their racist and sexist hiring practices. In all of Britain, tell me there isn't a single person of color and/or woman who would like to write or director for Doctor Who. Tell me, and you'd be a liar.

First of all, I think that for a show to be drenched in fail, the writing has to be bad. It doesn't actually matter if the person writing is black or white or Asian or whatever. It's the actual quality of the writing that matters.

Second, I am getting a little tired of people looking at the cast and crew of a show and raising hell when there isn't a "strong female character" or "strong colored character." For a society that loves artistic license so much, can't we allow the artists behind shows to decide what they will, and to let their own imaginations and talent dictate their creations, and not political correctness? I would rather that the writers be chosen because they're good, NOT because it would look good for the show to hire someone from a minority group. You can't just scream "racist!" or "sexist!" without any proof, and you can't just declare that a show is awful once you discover that the people behind the scenes are of a specific race or gender. It's unsound and it's not evidence-based, and it's such a hair-trigger reaction that really irritates me. People should be conscious of representation in the media, sure, but maybe they should do their research before saying things that are potentially libelous.

If we're going to discuss the quality of shows, let's dwell on the script, the production, the character development, the plot. Let's at least acknowledge that these are things that quality depends on--NOT whether the only black character in a recent episode gets killed within the first five minutes. (AND! It's a show that features, as its main characters, a couple--Amy and Rory--where the woman wears the pants in the relationship, and where the lead character's female love interest, River Song, is made to look superior to him in athleticism, in knowledge of things to come, in general awesomeness, and even in operation of his own spaceship. One of her regenerations was even black, which was completely unnecessary, and yet which was done in an effort to include a colored character. Isn't it just so convenient to overlook these things, as well as the existence of female producers for Doctor Who, when you're arguing about discrimination.)

The bottom line? People who write for one of the biggest shows in Britain should be hired because they're good enough, not because of tokenism.

A Three-pipe problem

I have to write this here, because no one in real life is interested enough to listen to it. Ha. Ha.

The Sherlockian , written by Graham Moore, came in 2010 to a world recently reminded of the existence of the Great Detective of Baker Street. There was the Hollywood film starring Robert Downey Jr., and that other unremarkable British film that piggybacked on its success, and then the BBC SHERLOCK series. In a way even the most staid Sherlockian purist should be grateful for the influx of new blood brought in by these adaptations. I mean, if the old school fandom could survive “Detective Conan” and “The Great Mouse Detective” and “Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century,” then what can’t we survive? The Baker Street Irregulars and other scion societies live on.

The adaptations also stirred activity by way of more online communities interested in discussing the canon as well as the newly-created fanon. I appreciate this because, being one of the first—if not the very first—fandom, Sherlock Holmes shouldn’t be lagging behind in the consciousness of geeks everywhere, while more and more fandoms crop up with every new book written, every new series filmed, every new movie made. Long before either the internet or Star Trek was born, fanfiction (pastiches) of Sherlock Holmes was being written and published and enjoyed worldwide. Authors now famous for a variety of things—GK Chesterton, Christopher Morley, Ronald Knox, and so forth—participated in the Game.

The Game, as stated in the second Morley principle, consists of pretending that “The characters in the stories are not fictitious creatures of some author's imagination. They are real people.” Arthur Conan Doyle, if he is mentioned at all, is mentioned as the Literary Agent of a real John Watson.

The Game began, with Ronald Knox and Christopher Morley, a new kind of literary criticism. For example, a biography of Sherlock Holmes—again, an entirely fictional character to a sane mind—was pieced together by WS Baring-Gould from tiny clues in the ACD’s narrative. The existence of a son by Irene Adler was even posited (and that son eventually turned out to be Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe—a fact still tenaciously believed by many). After all, Holmes himself said: “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” The application of Holmes’s own methods to the text spawned a game that is still being played more than a century later.

Which brings me to The Sherlockian , a book focusing heavily on the first and most exclusive Sherlockian society: The Baker Street Irregulars. To call them fans might be correct but inaccurate. These are scholars who have gained prestige in the study of Sherlock Holmes. Whether they’re doing it for fun, as Ronald Knox and Christopher Morley appear to have done, or for altogether different reasons, is immaterial. The point is this: in The Sherlockian , Alex Cane—an Irregular who claims to have found the lost volume of Arthur Conan Doyle’s diaries—is found dead in his hotel room, garroted with his own shoelaces and with the word ELEMENTARY written in blood on the wall.

The chilling part is: in 2004, Richard Lancelyn Green, a Baker Street Irregular and an authority on Arthur Conan Doyle, was found dead in his luxury flat, garroted by a shoelace tightened with a wooden spoon. No, he hadn’t found the missing volume of ACD’s diary, but the event did come after the sale of a collection of “lost material”—letters, drafts, notes—at Christie’s. He believed that these materials belonged in the British Public Library, where the public could access them, rather than being dispersed among private bidders, most of them American. He publicly opposed the sale. After some time, he began to believe that his life was in danger. Whether these concerns were unfounded is unknown. The coroner gave the case an open verdict—it was quite possibly suicide but nobody could rule out murder. The case remains unsolved even today, despite the best efforts of Sherlockians everywhere.

And that is probably the most interesting thing about Graham Moore’s novel, The Sherlockian —that it’s based on a real case. On the one hand, it does offer a Sherlockian the opportunity to read something (relatively) mainstream and enjoy being smug about something he already knows, but which has to be explained to the uninformed reader. There is hardly a page without a reference to a Sherlock Holmes story or to a known event or fact of Arthur Conan Doyle’s life and times. And, I have to be honest, seeing this line from a well-known and much beloved poem about Sherlock Holmes--“Only those things the heart believes are true”—gave me goosebumps and made me want to put the book down to hold some tears back. (I posted the poem in this blog some time back; it’s found here.)

The Sherlockian captures some of the most frustrating and wonderful things about growing up obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. Harold, the main character and the only one who does manage to solve the mystery, is the socially awkward and youngest Irregular whose highest aspiration has always been to be inducted into the BSI. He likes Sherlock Holmes conventions because they are the only place that he can wear his deerstalker hat and people wouldn’t laugh at him. (He has what might be an eidetic memory and he probably has Asperger’s.) However, his lifelong obsession with Sherlock Holmes doesn’t stop him from seeing the flaws of either the creator or the creation, and he’s aware that he probably looks ridiculous to Sarah, the (Non-Sherlockian) journalist who accompanies him as he flies across the pond to solve the mystery. I suppose it’s the best perspective with which to view the fandom: a gut-wrenching obsession coupled with awareness of its inherent ridiculousness.

None of this squee-making fannishness, however, can disguise the fact that The Sherlockian is really two very flimsy whodunits combined into one mystery that is only slightly more substantial.

In the present day, Harold and Sarah track down the location of the diary and Alex Cane’s killer; in 1900, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, brought to life by Graham Moore, are on the trail of the murderer of three young women. (As an additional layer of complexity, the mystery is also obliquely related to the "death" of Sherlock Holmes when ACD decided to push him off the Reichenbach.) Little impressive detection is actually done in either mystery. Most things that the author was at pains to conceal are actually very apparent from the first pages (e. g. Sarah’s true identity). And I know that real life doesn’t work like mystery novels do, but I wish that, in writing the Arthur-Bram mystery, Graham Moore had stuck to the first of Ronald Knox’s (50% tongue-in-cheek, 50% entirely serious) Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction: The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

Criticism on the nature of mysteries aside, The Sherlockian also offered little by way of narrative richness and style. I’m not Laurie R. King’s biggest fan—her characters, even if they aren’t Mary Sues or Gary Stus, still tend to be one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs—but I wonder what she could have done with the book, with her skill for weaving narratives with sumptuous detail, if the premise of The Sherlockian had fallen into her lap. I can think of a handful of Sherlock Holmes pasticheurs who might have handled the text more deftly. Even Neil Gaiman, whose work I don’t like but who apparently was inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars in 2005, might have written it better… no, wait—he couldn’t.

Still, The Sherlockian seems to fall apart if you take away the fun and interesting facts rooted in ACD’s canon. Mystery novelists have fought for so long to get the genre recognized as “legitimate” literature, and writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and PD James have gone to great lengths to ensure that their books are actually novels—concerned with the human experience and condition, not just telling a corking story. I don’t mean that Graham Moore’s novel is less legitimate or less clever; only that I found the sparse style unsuited for a novel which might have held so much potential. A novel that might have explored more thoroughly the nature of awkwardness and obsession and death among people who like murder so much in theory.

I would still recommend the book. After all, it isn’t everyday that a mainstream introduction to Sherlockian culture (of the BSI kind) comes along. And because I have a soft spot for the way the author brought to the fore one of the biggest Holmesian mysteries of all--why Sherlock Holmes was killed off, and why he came to live again in 1901. The book made me want to hunt for a black arm-band to wear in honor of Holmes's (temporary) death.

I just wouldn’t recommend the novel as a three-pipe problem.

And wow, I really hate that nobody reading this blog is going to get that last reference.

Links:
The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction: http://www.mysterylist.com/declog.htm
Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes (Ronald Knox):
http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/books/knox_essays_in_satire/essays_in_satire_knox.pdf
In the Beginning was Ronald Knox: http://members.cox.net/sherlock1/grand.htm
An article in The Guardian on Richard Lancelyn Green:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/23/books.booksnews

this timorous beastie

I once read this story where Snape (yeah yeah) made a very valid point. (In fic he's always making valid points anyway.) I mean about how people assume that Hermione has a very organized mind because she has all these timetables and lists, when in fact, it's people with disorganized minds who really need them. I think he was right. (It turns out I'm one of those pathetic people who quote fic wisdom as gospel.) I like making lists--grocery lists, things to do lists, things to bring on trips that are two months away, things to do in the summer when it's only September. Right now I'm up to my neck in radio transes, and my detox in between every two transes is making a list for a trip two weeks from now. It somehow feels like this tangled bramble that is my mind gets sorted out somehow, and it makes me less afraid of the future.

And I have no idea why I felt like sharing this now. Excuse me while I ramble on randomly.

Hello, clerkship

One day you're a student, and the next, BOOM, you're a doctor.

No, not really. The thing is, I think I've been living in a happy bubble for the last three years, where the reality and gravity of my profession still hadn't sunk it. Things did a 180 for me yesterday when, after an extremely benign orientation at Psychiatry care of the chairman, a resident came into the room (where we were all lounging about waiting for the next thing to do) and said, "Alam niyo bang mayroong dalawang ICC na dapat naka-24 hour duty ngayon?" I felt like a headless chicken for the next few minutes. Apparently, because there are no clerks (who, if they're rotating in Neuropsychiatry, are assigned for duty in Neuro rather than Psych), WE--third year know-nothings--have been assigned to monitor patients and do 24-hour shifts, from 7 am to 7 am, AND we're still expected to show up for all of the classes from 8 am to 5pm.

I know my seniors will probably roll their eyes at this because they've gone on duty a gajillion times, and because monitoring a patient or making admitting notes is nothing to them, but wow, suddenly it was like I was a limbless person thrown into an ocean and expected to swim. In fact I'm still feeling a little bit at sea here. Up to this point we had only ever met patients who had already been evaluated before we got to them, so nothing we said or did could possibly have an impact on the management or outcome of the patients. We diagnosed things pretty much like people sitting at home watching HOUSE. We were just having fun. And it was really okay to make mistakes.

I'm also a little bit afraid. I saw the notes that an intern had made before me and I just couldn't believe my eyes. It was like he did this thoroughly horrible and careless examination of the patient, taking everything she said as gospel. You don't do that. You just don't. So instead of a schizophreniform or schizophrenic patient, his notes read more like the patient was just depressed, because he believed everything she said without realizing her lacking reliability or without consulting the two available relatives.

What if I missed something vital during MY evaluation of patients? My decisions will have such an impact on their lives. Eventually there will come a point when I won't have anyone to rely on but myself, and my (extremely bad) clinical judgment.

I know I used to complain that medicine takes so long. Now I think that maybe it shouldn't be five years but twenty, PLUS specialization.

What some call censorship; CCP, the art exhibit and "blasphemy"

I don't agree with death threats. I don't agree to anything that threatens to cause material harm to any party.

But.

Imagine an art exhibit with photos of famous people from the LGBT community. The photos are defaced and strong words like "whore" and "fag" and, you know, words I can never bring myself to type, dot these images. These images, imagine them, show these people as the lowest of the low, as though they're hardly even human.

If the LGBT community took a stand to have these photos removed, calling them offensive, insulting, and an outright manifestation of discrimination, they would be completely justified. I'd probably be campaigning right along with them. The whole world would probably be campaigning right along with them.

So why is it so different with images of Jesus Christ? I'm really trying to understand other people here; I am in no way trying to be smart-alecky. If those imaginary photos of LGBT-directed insults were removed due to pressure from the relevant groups, wouldn't the LGBT community heave a sigh of relief and satisfaction? (I mention the LGBT community not to make it a polar opposite of the Christians and Catholics and the Bishops; only to use it as an example of a minority group that has its rights like every other group does.) What makes it so different that this time the people who raised an outcry were Christians? Why is it OK to discriminate against Christians? Why is it not okay to campaign to have art exhibits like those in the CCP removed, when they do offend a lot of people? Why would it be okay, in my hypothetical but all too possible situation, to apply the correct pressure to remove those slanderous photos from CCP, but they call it censorship when the force behind it is "conservative" and "conventional"?

Why is it censorship as long as the CBCP is the first one to speak up? They're just one group, like the rest. Whether you believe they have power or not, they are just one group, and they have rights like we all do, and they have freedom of expression as well. Whether the powers that be will bow to the pressure they exert is another thing altogether.

Just help me understand. Why is it not okay to discriminate against the atheists and the freethinkers and the LGBT, and always, always okay to discriminate against Catholics? I am getting a little tired of this double standard, and all I really, really want is to understand why it exists so that I can stop being so hurt.

Why is it okay for movies like Easy A to have words like "Jesus-freaks"? Why is it okay to make fun of Christians and not of everyone else? Does the fact that Christianity has been "in power" (an absurd and oversimplified concept) for two thousand years justify the violation of human rights against discrimination in the present? Why? Why? Why?

Why is it that everyone's catchphrase is "respect", but that no one ever seems to remember it when it comes to Christians and Catholics? Why?

I don't think I'll ever understand.

--------------------------

ETA.
...And, you see, because I understand that freedom of speech is not absolute--meaning it is NOT the same thing as freedom from criticism--I'm just going to let you come at me. I will let you say what you want. Because that is what freedom means.

I just wish that you, whoever you might be--whoever might be reading this and might be thinking of commenting--would approach the topic with the same sensitivity, and respect, and fairness of outlook that I try, try, try to use. Because I have tried. I really, really have. When we're angry we tend to use strong words. Sure. I get that. But maybe, just maybe, you can understand that topics like these require something more than strong words. That they might, for example, require kindness.

Art, imitating life

I used to have this HUGE thing for Jason Robert Brown's music, and today I was searching my iPod for songs to listen to while traveling to community, and I thought of him. I googled him again and found this strangely appropriate paragraph, which is apparently how he rephrased something that Stephen Sondheim said to him:

Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn't. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterwords, say only this: "I loved it". It doesn't matter if that's what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not "in spite of its flaws", not "even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it", but simply, plainly, "I loved it." If you can't say that, don't come backstage, don't find me in the lobby, don't lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don't. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I'll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you:that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist's life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me "I loved it." That moment must be respected."

And the thing is, that really surprised me. I've always thought of Sondheim as a really tough guy, who just puts his art out there regardless of what people think of it. (And through the years, despite his genius, there have been some pretty mixed responses.) But I think that was wrong of me, and that I missed something that is so integral to his work: that it is all so intensely personal. (And I think I missed a huge chunk of what "Sunday in the Park with George" was all about! Now, despite myself, I think I understand it better.) Whether it's good art or bad art, or good musical theatre or bad musical theatre, whenever I pop a CD of his into a player (or a CD of Jason Robert Brown's, for that matter), I am actually listening to pieces of a man's soul, put to music. Interspersed, too, with the art and soul (haha.) of the people who sang his songs, the musicians who played the notes.

I know that my little story--my 13,999 word story that took so long to write but still ended up underdeveloped and a little awful--is nothing to Sondheim's immortal work, and that ten years from now the fifty people or so who have read it will probably have forgotten all about it, but it is still a part of my soul, and I hope that when it's revealed people will be... nice to me. Nice enough. Nice enough to tell me, "I loved it."

Les examens

The smell of possibility means everything
On this wet morning
When the third exam is placed before you.
It's an old exam and you've seen
The questions before; you know
All the answers and how
You got them wrong before.
Again and again crashing through fences
And then backing up sheepishly once you've realized
You're wrong, not you, never you
Never right.
You think you know the answers now
But there's something, something in the light
And the possibility
And the feathered hope, light-winged
That travels over your exam paper
Confusing you
And the warmth in thinking
Maybe just maybe
But you've failed this exam before
And should know exactly
The right places to shade
Because there is no other option, and if you fail again
You've failed
Forever.