Representing People in Doctor Who →
Amy on Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat and representation in Doctor Who:
In a nutshell, the current psychological and political theories go like this. We live in societies that perpetuate various harmful stereotypes about marginalised groups. Owing to the amount of exposure we receive from the media, politics, education and everyday conversation, we internalise a lot of these stereotypes and biases from a young age. Unfortunately, it appears to generally be the case that no matter how explicitly egalitarian our conscious beliefs are, these biases may still manifest themselves in our thoughts, behaviour and actions, often in unconscious ways. Obviously this has a lot of intersection with the idea of privilege - members of privileged groups often aren’t encouraged to confront the possibility they have these biases. However, the psychological evidence also suggests that these biases are just as likely to be internalised by members of the groups the biases are about. Which is why being a woman doesn’t automatically make you a feminist, for example.
And so, even though I would guess that both RTD and Moffat consider themselves to be progressive and liberal people and writers, they will both still inevitably have these biases lurking in the back of their minds - we all do. And what I think the above examples show is that they and the rest of their writing and production teams have more work to do yet on rewiring those biases and excising them from their work.
Why should we care about these representational issues in the context of a family sci-fi show? For one thing, as it stands the show is introducing some of these biases and stereotypes to a new generation of viewers - people with visible disabilities are people to be feared, for example. And positive representation can have a dramatic effect in the opposite direction, in providing role models and breaking down those stereotypes for members and non-members of the marginalised group in question alike.
It would be a wonderful world where stereotypes were broken down, where we did not have to worry about a bad guy being from another culture or being gay or being disabled, but unfortunately this is not the case. If different groups of people are not being portrayed as heroes (let alone as normal people), then it can be insensitive to portray them as villains. The BBC, as a public body, has responsibilities to address such concerns. In recent years, we have seen broader casting, and we can often see other nationalities appearing in the cast of historical dramas. Another benefit of these responsibilities, is that they push writers like Davies and Moffat into new areas, hopefully creating new and wonderful stories.
Via @quarridors.
