Radio Free Skaro Wednesday Cutaway – The Ballad of Jack and Ianto
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In a noteworthy Wednesday cutaway, Radio Free Skaro enlisted the help of some of our LGBT listeners to hold a discussion on the recent uproar about Torchwood: Children of Earth (about which there will be spoilers!) and the perceived homophobia many in the fandom community say it presented. Many thanks go to our own Katrina who leads the panel with listeners Erik and Nat in delivering an hour of informed discussion about this fandom reaction. |
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Show Notes: – James Moran’s Post from July 10, 2009! |
66 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro Wednesday Cutaway – The Ballad of Jack and Ianto”
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I’ve never listened to Radio Free Skaro before as I’m not a huge podcast listener, but I’m very happy to have happened across a link to this over on a Torchwood community.
What an amazing discussion! You three have really dissected the issue down to it’s bare bones. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope the fans who are crying wolf over the homophobia in COE listen to this and come away with a different mindset.
Nat especially did a great job of representing both viewpoints on the subject.
I had opinions to share, but it’s late now and I’ve forgotten them all. 😉
All I’m going to say is that if you’re reading this comment and aren’t sure whether to invest an hour into listening to this podcast, just do it!
It’s all very well to bandy about terms like LGBT, but is it not possible to tell people what this is? I’ve never heard of it. OK, true, I can find out from listening to the podcast, but c’mon guys!
Hi Rumpio,
LGBT is a fairly common acronym. While perhaps it’s not fair to assume everyone knows what it stands for, it’s honestly not hard to find out via a google search or a site like urbandictionary.com. That being said it stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered (or Transsexual).
A note of clarification regarding something mentioned during this discussion. RTD was given kudos for including GLBT characters in both Who and Torchwood when that had never happened before. As John Nathan-Turner always said, “The Memory Cheats.”
In this case, you are forgetting (or did not know) that from its inception until the shuttering of the program in 1989, Doctor Who was a product of BBC’s Children’s Drama department and was required to meet their strictures and guidelines. Today, Doctor Who is produced as a pre-watershed Drama by BBC Wales and is not under the umbrella of the Children’s Drama department.
If RTD was to say, have one of the children featured on Sarah Jane Adventures (produced for CBBC, which absorbed the Children’s Drama Department) have a same-sex couple for parents, that would be impressive. But comparing old vs. new when they had to operate under vastly different constraints is inappropriate.
Like CB said, “I’ve never listened to Radio Free Skaro before as I’m not a huge podcast listener, but I’m very happy to have happened across a link to this over on a Torchwood community.’ I loved hearing Nat talk about the cliches the writers used whether out of laziness or thoughtlessness. One of the things in Day One that made me roll my eyes was Ianto telling his sister it wasn’t men it was just Jack because it made me think of “the straight character suddenly going gay” cliche. Also I have to say, straight girl that I maybe, the juxtaposition of Rhys/Gwen with a baby on the way versus Jack/Ianto destroyed felt very heterosexist. I’m not fond of Gwen, and have long felt that RTD was trying to force me to like her. I started watching the show for Jack, and the member of the cast around him I found myself growing to identify most with was Ianto. I’d really like for Ianto to wake up.
http://www.saveiantojones.com/
@Holdin – I’m afraid you’re wrong, Doctor Who was quite famously made by the BBC Drama Department, to the point where the Children’s Department were quite adversarial in the early years, as any documentary or article on Verity Lambert’s early involvement would tell you.
Doctor Who since 2005 has had a massive child audience (as has Torchwood, but that’s a different issue), while during the JNT era the series became more and more focused on adult fans and decades of continuity and was increasingly losing that audience. Do you honestly think the BBC Children’s Department would have made Resurrection of the Daleks, Attack of the Cybermen and Warriors of the Deep?
Also, for reference, the BBC Children’s Drama department (aka Children’s BBC) was including gay characters in children’s drama as early as 1992 and had the first mid-teenage coming out storyline in 1994. So I don’t think anyone would bat an eyelid if a gay storyline was included in SJA…
Since when was Gay the new Black?
I heard the same conversation 20 years ago, substituting the word(s) ‘Gay’ for ‘Black’ and ‘Straight’ for ‘White.’
You’re commenting on a few internet trolls who do NOT hold the opinion of the majority.
Please also put SOMEHTING in the podcast title, as i thought i was downloading another entertaining review from the Three(4) Who Rule.
This doesn’t make me “homophobic”.
@Johnny–Sorry that you didn’t seem to enjoy our little natter. The description for the podcast indicates that it is going to be something of a departure from the norm; also, 2/3 of the Three Who Rule introduce us by saying this this will be a very special RFS cutaway, so I think that people who wish to skip our blathering have ample opportunity to do so. Personally, I find the boys showing “Madoc” every few minutes more entertaining, as well. 🙂
Hi,
Firstly I’m glad you decided to discuss this, however, I think it is a shame that you picked three panellists who more or less share the exact same opinion. It would have been nice to have someone discussing the other viewpoints, though I would like to thank Nat for at least considering these other viewpoints as valid and for being well informed on a wide range of issues. Other than that, I’m afraid this occasionally came across as extremely patronising – with everyone being labelled as over-reactive childish fangirls. Yes perhaps that segment of fandom does exist, but there are other people, plenty of them, who have issues with this who don’t fit that pattern.
Also, one point that I felt should be addressed – is it’s mentioned during the podcast that there are plenty of other positive portrayals of lgbt couples throughout new Who and Torchwood but you can only think of Alice and May in Gridlock – the reason you can only think of them is because without exception every other lgbt couple have ended with one of the partners being dead, evil or both. Those who are single fair little better, with the majority dying, though there are a couple of characters who don’t fit this pattern. That said, besides Alice and May, every single lesbian turns out to be evil. Even Cassandra who the mention has a throwaway line about being born a boy is presented throughout as being evil and who we’re told has mutilated herself beyond humanity, though at least she does get a redemption arc before she dies.
I don’t believe the show or the writers is homophobic and I am angry at how some people have treated them – but that doesn’t change the fact that the show is failing to challenge the idea, inherent in popular media, that queer characters lead tragic, tragic lives – so it’s better not to be queer.
If Ianto’s death had happened without these other examples or/and if Ianto hadn’t been reduced to a plot device to cause Jack more pain in a cliched manner. Then I would have been far more accepting of the storyline, even though that is only two of my issues with how this was handled.
Lorannah
@Johnny I think gay became the new black sometime circa 1990…
You have a valid point though, almost exactly the same tropes appear when well off rich white guys write begin to write about any minority group. We touched on this briefly in the podcast, talking about how some gay tropes were previously applied to race and are now being applied to transgender, which I believe is in the process of becoming ‘the new gay’…
I do think it’s legitimate to discuss this on the Cutaway podcast though, as this topic is all over the Torchwood fan community forums, so I think it’s equivalent to discussions of accusations of Doctor Who’s ‘gay agenda’. The people who argue the point aren’t trolling, they genuinely believe it and any are LGBT identified themselves so wouldn’t make the accusation lightly.
But don’t worry, this was a one off ‘Very Special episode of Blossom’ and The Three Who Rule will be back on their thrones to dismiss the news and deride The Parting Of The Ways on your usual scheduled podcast this weekend…
@lorannah The panel was put together very quickly, I’d never spoken to the other two before I was put on air with them and I didn’t know what their opinions were going to be, nor them mine until we had a brief introduction beforehand. If I was organising the panel, I would’ve tried to include someone arguing the other side of the story, but I understand why this didn’t happen.
One of the points in my notes http://36.dreamwidth.org/1746.html that didn’t make it into the final podcast was that the episode Greeks Baring Gifts actually fits worryingly closely to the old 1960’s Depraved Homosexual trope, and probably has the strongest argument for being homophobic of any Torchwood episode, especially as we never see this side of Tosh again.
I personally avoided raising plot points from Doctor Who, barring Captain Jack’s introduction (which I think is one of the strongest arguments you can get against Doctor Who being heteronormative) but ironically I’ve previously used some of the points you’ve made as arguments against fans claiming that Doctor Who has some sort of gay propaganda message.
IMO Doctor Who isn’t homophobic/heteronormative simply because it shows that same sex relationships exist and that these can be happy, they can be sad, they can last into old age or end in break up or death. Also the fact is that the majority of couplings on Doctor Who end with one or both dying because death is the Doctor’s ‘constant companion’.
A show where the Ninth Doctor flirts with and eventually kisses Captain Jack goodbye can never be truly homophobic…
Thanks Nat,
i knew you were one of the good ones…or wait, is that heteronormist lol
I hate labels, i hope the day never comes when i get psycho-analysed 😉
Ianto was one of the only remaining characters whose death people would actually care about, I think. And I found it heartbreaking.
The merest shadow of a slip of the idea that his death was indicative of some sort of homophobia never even occurred to me until I read some of the vitriol on the Internet.
Nobody accused Brokeback Mountain of homophobia because Jack Twist died.
Every single female companion in the new DW series ever suffers some horrible fate by the end of their run, and THEY’RE not accused of a GAY agenda. No, wait….
I thought that it was a worthy discussion but it could have been over with in 5 minutes as the consensus was that TW was not homophobic and it was just some fans going a bit mad.
On the topic of “Greeks Bearing Gifts,” I can definitely see why that episode would cause concern about the intent of the writers. It turns out, however, that the writer originally wrote the alien as a man; it was only when the show started to go through rewrites, etc. that they decided to change the alien to a female. Clearly, they thought this would add some sex appeal and some naughtiness–they did try so hard to be naughty in series 1. My feeling is that they changed the sex of the alien without seeing what sort of tropes or cliches that might make the story fit when viewed with a critical eye. This is not to be apologist; merely to point out that I often think faults in Torchwood arise from poor or unimaginative writing rather than from any political or social bent.
I was really glad to hear a well-informed, thought-out and insightful discussion on what is obviously a very important issue. I’m a gay man, and I share the opinion of the hosts that the Jack/Ianto story arc was not intended to be homophobic or political in any way, but I do see why some people have expressed concern at what on the surface may appear to be just another perpetuation of the tired gay stories. Thanks everyone for the best cutaway yet, and in the future I’d love to hear more from all three of the hosts– maybe a spin-off, the Torchwood to RFS’s Doctor Who? Stranger things have happened!
Thanks for the reply Nat and yes I agree with you that Greeks Bearing Gifts was a lot more troublesome. I have been involved in several discussions about that episode since series 2 started airing and whilst people were unhappy with the stereotype it reinforced, they were willing to forgive it to a certain extent because it was balanced out by Jack/Ianto being portrayed as a healthy, satisfying relationship.
I’m with Becca on this – intent isn’t everything, appearances matter too. I think a lot of the heteronomatist elements that appear frequently throughout Doctor Who stem from the fact that: a) the writing is frequently lazy; b) the production team often put these references in either with good intentions in order to make the world they’re creating more diverse or for added sexiness, without thinking through the ramifications of those decisions; c) that they have a tendency to think that only dark/tragic stories have artistic worth and they want to put queer characters at the center of them (I’m particularly bitter at this because I’m fed up of being told beautiful or hopeful stories aren’t artistic).
None of these are terrible things, none of these make them bad people or mean they’re trying to put out homophobic messages – but unless people point out these flaws they’re not going to become more aware in the future and more careful. It’s not so much that they shouldn’t tell these stories in the future, it’s that I want them to tell other stories as well. And preferably to try and avoid or at least subvert the cliches, rather than playing into them.
Sorry that got long and I’ve not even touched on the way that the show has badly handled other issues like disability.
Oh well
Lorannah
Scrolling down the comments, I was thinking about what to write, and there goes Al who says it for me.
Great podcast guys, keep it up.
This is a comment I left on James Moran’s blog about this:
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“Of all the people to survive, he’s not the one you would have chosen, is he? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies that would make you a monster.” – Mr Copper, Voyage of the Damned.
Captain Jack is neither evil nor dead. Ianto is not dead because he was in a gay relationship. The universe does not sit in moral judgement of people, bad things happen to good people and vice versa. If Captain Jack had had a girlfriend she would have died in the same way as Ianto did. There was a storytelling reason for doing it – you may not like it, but that’s the only reason.
Also, to simply make a character simply evil is bad drama – regardless of their sexuality. Bad drama in the service of homophobia is even worse, but that doesn’t mean that LGBT characters can’t have moral complexity or failings. Making a character simply good is equally bad drama, regardless of a the worthiness of the cause it is apparently supporting. Moving away from dramatic truth and towards propaganda always damages the cause you’re trying to advance.
If, as some of the more conspiracy-oriented postings here and elsewhere have suggested, the idea was to “de-gay” the show for BBC1, then Ianto would have been written out on Day One (or even before), not placed in the emotional centre of the story. Just look at Russell T Davies’ history in mainstream TV (which includes introducing Captain Jack on BBC1 in a family slot) to see what arrant nonsense this is.
As has already been said, drama tends to be about crisis, so happy relationships and people are few and far between regardless of sexuality. Also people tend to die, especially in thrillers (see also Spooks).
Off the top of my head, though, here are three happy, not-dead, not-evil, not-hetrosexual couples: the Cassini “sisters” in Gridlock, the private detectives in Jekyll and Maxxie and James in Skins. Also, I’d say that Ian Gallagher is one of the more well-adjusted (and non-evil, non-dead) characters in Shameless – not currently in a relationship, but he is only twenty.
Last of all, the success of Doctor Who and Torchwood has brought a number of happy, successful gay men (and their stable relationships) into the spotlght: including John Barrowman, Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss.
This whole dead/evil gay thing is overly simplistic and only applies (if at all) to bad, propagandist drama which is mainly, thankfully, in the past (I’d accept that The Celluloid Closet has some valid points about this). You can’t just trot out the trope every time an LGBT character dies, that’s just a lazy knee-jerk reaction. If you’re trying to make a point about the portrayal of LGBT characters in drama you need a much more thoughtful anaylsis, not just “thou shalt not kill the gays”.
You also have to be honest about your personal attachments to a character and your feelings about their death and what extent they may be leading you to an erroneous conclusion about the cultural impact of that death. I think some comments are confusing this and, in the emotion of the moment, are unwittingly accusing the writers reinforcing homophobia – not understanding how offensive such a simplistic conclusion is.
None of this is to belittle how hurt some people are feeling at the moment. I just think you should be a bit more thoughtful in your critical analysis – and maybe the best way to start would be to give it some time so that you can detach the analysis from your emotional response. Especially if you’re planning to comment here, on the blog of someone who is closely involved and who cannot help but take ill-thought out remarks personally.
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Plus, from an earlier comment:
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Ianto didn’t die because he was gay, he died because shit happens – and it happens tenfold if you’re a member of Torchwood. The fate of characters isn’t a moral punishment – there’s no deity of fiction handing out lessons.
The line: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” from The Importance of Being Earnest is a piss-take of just that kind of thinking.
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I do agree that series one’s Day One and Greeks Bearing Gifts are much more troublesome, though. Day One just about gets a pass because of the alien pheromone thing, although it still loses marks for titillation. Tosh’s story in Greeks… is essentially the story of someone being emotionally manipulated by a criminal (and, arguably desparate, alien). I think the main problem isn’t so much in the portrayal of Tosh, but in that of Mary as being essentially an evil character. Despite this, I still put it down to her being a criminal on the run, rather than simply because she was a lesbian (if that’s the correct word to use about an alien attracted to a human female) – but some more moral complexity would have been better, I think.
Just a quick post about LGBT characters on US TV, which I’m by no means an expert on. A couple of shows I’d like to stick up for: The Wire and Six Feet Under. They were both on HBO though so not mainstream in the way that Torchwood and the UK shows discussed in the podcast are.
Oh, and I didn’t say: great discussion.
Great discussion! I have lots of comments and they’re not really coherent, but please bear with me. 😉
1. There are a lot of fans who liked COE and the fact is, that those fans who are screaming about homophobia are a minority. They just tend to SCREAM a lot. 😉
2. Ianto didn’t die because he was gay, he died because he was the most important person for JACK.
3. Actually, that would go for Willow/Tara too. Tara didn’t die because she was gay, she died so that Willow could go completely mental dark-side. 😉
4. The story COE had to show that Jack had to sacrifice everything he had to save the world, to show that some choices destroy your life – that’s what a hero is.
Compared to the government who were willing to sacrifice those furthest away from them and their families…
5. The Who-universe has a lot of characters that are obviously bisexual or omni-sexual if you like, so I don’t think that an evil character being LGBT can be avoided.
That would be impossible, if every good character was LGBT and every evil character would be straight and it doesn’t fit in with what I’ve seen at all.
6. How many evil people have been straight in DrWho/TW? How many straight ppl have died?
It’s stupid to blame these two shows for this because, to me, both shows show that most people are bisexual.
7. I see Ianto as gay/bisexual right from the start. To view him as a straight man seems ridiculous to me.
8. It almost annoys me that som fans are accusing the writers of being homophobic when it’s so obvious that those fans only watch Torchwood because they think Ianto/Jack is hot…
Fine, you want a gay soap opera? Watch something else. Torchwood was supposed to be a scifi-show and when it finally got a GREAT story delivered with such excellence – it’s not appreciated. 😛
Some fans think that Ianto was the most important character in Torchwood, which to me just is ridiculous because not even I who liked him can pretend that. 😉
He was the person Jack loved, in that way he’s important, but not for Torchwood in general.
On the other hand, I’ve always hated Gwen and could never see her as the core of Torchwood. I always thought Tosh was more the heart of Torchwood…
So, to summarize – Ianto didn’t die because he’s gay (despite his gayness being underlined throughout CoE in a way the previous 26 episodes of TW didn’t for him or any other character), he died because he’s the hero’s love interest and that’s how drama works. Different cliché, same result. All the fans who are reacting negatively to this are over-emotional fangirls mourning the loss of their slash couple. The Whoniverse isn’t homophobic or heteronormative because it DOES have gay characters, it just doesn’t happen to have any happy gay characters except two elderly lesbians in one episode of DW who are really just window-dressing. But that’s just a coincidence. There are lots of unhappy straight and bi people and most of them are dead too. It’s another coincidence that such happy endings as exist in the Whoniverse are for straight people. What this episode does to Captain Jack as a hero and a beloved character in children’s TV isn’t homophobic either – Jack doesn’t suffer endless loss and pain and self-loathing because he’s not-het, he suffers because that’s the kind of flawed antihero he is. Have I got that right?
I didn’t think it was homophobic but seeing how Gwen got off with so much less pain, I do think it was a little too heteronormative. (But Gwen’s characterization has been a sore point with me for a while; different discussion.)
Actually, I’m less upset that Ianto died, than I am with Jack’s extreme emotional constipation wrt the relationship. It never struck me (except from the captain’s blog) that Jack had real feelings for Ianto. I hope I wasn’t supposed to think that from the (very) occasional kiss? He not only didn’t “make eyes” at Ianto as he did with Gwen, but he was barely even kind to Ianto. Jack spent much more time holding him at a distance. I got an “he’s just not that into you” feeling. I definitely see how Owen would characterize Ianto as a “part time shag.” That’s how Jack treated him on the whole, I think.
So: I wish that we had gotten to explore an actual relationship between the two men. I think that is more the tragedy… Unlike the panel, I didn’t think we got to see everything that this relationship could be. We got to see Ianto into a relationship with Jack, and Jack doing who the hell knows what. (Not that they had to pick out wallpaper. Bleh. But this appeared to be too one-way to be called a “relationship.”) When Jack fell apart after Ianto died, the thought that struck me was, why is this affecting him so much? That’s a bummer! It wasn’t (to me) believable and that took away from the CoE story.
I can’t post this yet, as my blog is a Torchwood Spoiler free zone until the 20th, but as soon as the episode in question airs I will.
Interesting. Though I do have to say that if the decision was to excise LGBT content would we not have seen the critical moment dramatized so beautifully.
So, what of that?
And, btw, it certainly doesn’t prevent Jack from meeting another guy.
Or girl.
He IS pansexual, after all.
Thank you very much for this discussion, both here and in the podcast itself.
As I was thinking about Jack’s loss of Ianto and it’s dramatic weight, the only similar example in the Who universe I could come up with was the Doctor’s loss of Rose at the end of Season two, a heterosexual relationship.
As it’s been said before, happy conflict free situations make for bad drama. The only person who has exceeded Jack in terms of being tortured by the writers is the Doctor himself. One of the main ways they have tortured them is not just by causing them to endure adverse situations, but also by hurting the ones close to them. No companion of the Doctor’s has emerged unscathed in the new series. It’s not because the writers hate gay folk, or time lords, or companions, it’s because it’s in extreme situations that the true nature of characters are revealed. And when that happens, it’s good drama.
First let me say it was a very fascinating, and a very bold podcast to put out. It was an interesting and informative listen, and I thank you all for participating.
I think the point was reached about 20 minutes in by one of the participants that if a hetero character had died there wouldn’t be this fuss.
But because it was a gay (?) character the “community”, which seem to me to have very itchy trigger fingers reacted strongly to it.
My apologies if it comes across as homophobic (my god all those new terms in this show – I think that’s another scene of the community wanting to apply too many labels to things that perhaps don’t really exist… but anyway) but the community in some respects does look for fights.
To me the best way to champion same-sex relationships/plot lines in TV series and film is to just let it happen organically. Don’t fight for it. Don’t wave the placards when something apparently goes wrong with a gay character.
Just let it happen.
And slightly tangentially – it might be something that will never happen. Not that I am saying it shouldn’t, but in the long run it just may not pan out that way. Things change, attitudes change. The world changes. Trying to promote something artificialy will always fail.
But anyway.
One thing I wanted to mention – all this talk of Ianto dying and nobody seems to be concerned by the conversation he had with his ex-wife a few eps before that. You remember the one, it went kinda like “I am not gay, I just fancy Captain Jack A LOT”.
To me that seemed to set back the communities agenda far more than any nonsense about “oooh, they only killed him cause he was gay”.
They kill Ianto because as you rightly said, he was pretty much the only character left who would make such an impact by passing. He wouldn’t have left Earth if Ianto was still there I would think. Torchwood would soldier on.
Anyway, I have rambled enough. Great show guys and gals.
Trev.
The WhoCast
@Inigo I’ve only talked to a couple of people who’d watched Doctor Who but not Torchwood before Children of Earth, neither commented on Ianto looking like a standard coming out story but there was consensus that Jack comes across as a complete jerk who doesn’t deserve Ianto and that the death scene seems heartless.
I don’t think you’d think Jack didn’t have feelings for Ianto having seen/heard the whole of Torchwood, so that was the basis for considering Children of Earth as its own stand alone entity.
Most of what I wanted to say appears to have been said already by others who no doubt worded it better than I could have – I loved the podcast, I found the discussion fascinating and relevant, I lament the fact that there wasn’t a whole lot of divergence of opinions but understand that it couldn’t be helped, and I appreciate Nat in particular’s broad knowledge and effort to rationalise the opinions of others.
One thing I did want to take issue with was the representation of what another commentor calls “over-emotional fan-girls”. I really hate pointing fingers, and don’t mean to offend, but there was a lack of sympathy towards the Ianto/Janto fangirls and fanboys that I found slightly annoying.
I do not in the slightest hold the idea that CoE was homophobic; but I was upset by Ianto’s death. Not to say that I didn’t understand why they did it, because it did have narrative value. While I believe that Jack running away from not just Gwen, but Ianto too, at the end would have been even more powerful, I do value the way Ianto’s death clearly affected Jack. Really, what I’m basing this on would probably be seen as a small nitpick to some, but has caused much grief in the circles I move in: RTD and JB mentioned at a panel before CoE aired that ‘Janto’ fans would be really happy with their story in CoE.
The term “betrayal” has been bandied about quite a lot, and if anything I think it would be applicable here. While it was great to have their relationship developed, it still met an abrupt end that many people have trouble accepting, for purely emotional reasons. There was a lot of talk in the podcast about saying “and then she woke up” – using fan works to change the ending. As comforting as that can be, at the end of the day canon is canon, and those who get emotionally invested in their characters and ships react to it as such.
(Which of course, for some people, leads to overreaction, and finding silly reasons to target the writers for killing Ianto.)
What I guess I am long-windedly trying to say is that while abusing the writers and making claims of homophobia is certainly an extreme reaction, and not something I condone in any sense, people at both ends of the intensity spectrum are having to deal with the death of a favourite character and ship, on a show with a small cast. To an extent, the insanity of the fandom of late is understandable. Writers may view themselves as artists, but their audiences take that art very personally, and I think a lot of people feel that at least the CoE writers forgot that for a moment.
The ‘fridging the queer’ trope doesn’t work for Greek mythology. Pederasty was a common practice amongst greek soldiers. An experienced soldier took a young man under his wing, trained him as a soldier, and outfitted him for military service. During this process they developed an intimate, loving relationship. It was perfectly accepted, and killing Patrolclus worked because Achilles loved him not because Achilles loved a man.
Thanks for a really interesting discussion.
I’m a straight Brit but could I point to Brothers & Sisters as an example of an American show with a character who “just happens” to be gay? Kevin is a well-rounded character with flaws as well as good points who is struggling just as much as the rest of his siblings with his father’s legacy and who has a number of relationships of varying seriousness before settling down with Scotty.
From reading lj i get the impression that a lot of people wanted Jack and Ianto to have this kind of story arc, but given that Torchwood isn’t actually a soap, it was never going to happen.
As a non-fanboy, non-fangirl, not “emotionally overwrought” intellectual, scientist, and sci-fi writer, I’m rather diappointed that the three speakers selected all had the same point of view, and seemed to be fairly eager to dismiss the idea that CoE trotted out the same old homophobic tropes we’ve been seeing for decades. The trouble is, there is no real denying that that exact thing happened, whether RTD intended this or not. Judging from this track record, he has a blind spot a mile wide to seeing this issue because he often repeats this in his work (along with several other themes including a disdain for love and happiness, a penchant for ensuring no happy endings, and a athiestic POV). I gave a quick read through the lengthy rebuttals to the original topic, but I’m sorry, but most do not wash for me, and it has nothing to do with ‘fandom’ and ’emotional responses’ which seem to be a convenient way of dismissing an opinion to the contrary. If I can find the time to relisten to the podcast and read in detail some of the comments, I’ll clarify, but for now, sorry, I’m not seeing anything here that absolves the writers of their burden of judging their audience or understanding their tropes and thematic content when writing.
RTD has said a few words about the Ianto backlash:
http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/07/backlash-shmacklash-thats-torchwood-creator-russell-t-davies-reaction-to-the-outcry-over-the-death-of-gareth-david-lloyds.html
In particular:
“Question: One of my readers wondered if you were under pressure to de-gay Torchwood and that’s why you killed him off.
DAVIES: I think you can forget about people picking up gay rights as an issue. It’s rather like children picking up nursery blocks and waving them in the air but having no idea what it entails. We’re talking about issues in my entire life here, not just one small television program. If they did research they’d go and look at the history of gay and lesbian characters that I have put on screen. They should simply grow up, do some research, and stop riding on a bandwagon that they actually don’t know anything about.”
It’s blunt, but I agree.
Well, that would be because it *is* simplistic – and that’s why many people are seeing it. Look at the facts of the last two episodes (deconstruct the plot lines ofr the cast and Ianto) of what happened: 1) all queers were either killed, or killed and punished, while the heterosexual cast memeber(s) are fine; 2) man settles into a gay relationship comes out, and is prompltly killed. Simple, straighforward, and two of the most dislike homophobic tropes. I don’t need a literature search to call a spade a spade. It’s plain as day to anyone that looks, and you’ve not addressed this at all. (And the ‘research’ you request isn’t particularly relevant to this arguement. Just look at the facts, please.)
I disagree Tarc, but I think I’ve already said everything I want to say on this, so I leave it at that. I’ve gone into much more detail about what I think in my previous comments, above. If carried on, I would just repeat myself and we wouldn’t agree, so that seems a bit pointless.
For another perspective though, here’s an article I just read:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/24/757421/-Yearning-for-Ianto:-TorchwoodRedefining-Sci-Fi,-Gothic-Horror-and-Gay-Romance
Tarc
One last response. You’ve come up with absolutely no facts only unsupported and simplistic assertions.
The core issue: killing LGBT characters does not make you homophobic. You haven’t said any more than it does and that’s both simplistic and arrant nonsense.
My previous points on this have been relevant and do address the core issue. I didn’t make that last post because your assertions scared me off but because you are quite clearly not amenable to reason or argument.
===1===
This is a comment I left on James Moran’s blog about this:
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“Of all the people to survive, he’s not the one you would have chosen, is he? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies that would make you a monster.” – Mr Copper, Voyage of the Damned.
Captain Jack is neither evil nor dead. Ianto is not dead because he was in a gay relationship. The universe does not sit in moral judgement of people, bad things happen to good people and vice versa. If Captain Jack had had a girlfriend she would have died in the same way as Ianto did. There was a storytelling reason for doing it – you may not like it, but that’s the only reason.
Also, to simply make a character simply evil is bad drama – regardless of their sexuality. Bad drama in the service of homophobia is even worse, but that doesn’t mean that LGBT characters can’t have moral complexity or failings. Making a character simply good is equally bad drama, regardless of a the worthiness of the cause it is apparently supporting. Moving away from dramatic truth and towards propaganda always damages the cause you’re trying to advance.
If, as some of the more conspiracy-oriented postings here and elsewhere have suggested, the idea was to “de-gay” the show for BBC1, then Ianto would have been written out on Day One (or even before), not placed in the emotional centre of the story. Just look at Russell T Davies’ history in mainstream TV (which includes introducing Captain Jack on BBC1 in a family slot) to see what arrant nonsense this is.
As has already been said, drama tends to be about crisis, so happy relationships and people are few and far between regardless of sexuality. Also people tend to die, especially in thrillers (see also Spooks).
Off the top of my head, though, here are three happy, not-dead, not-evil, not-hetrosexual couples: the Cassini “sisters” in Gridlock, the private detectives in Jekyll and Maxxie and James in Skins. Also, I’d say that Ian Gallagher is one of the more well-adjusted (and non-evil, non-dead) characters in Shameless – not currently in a relationship, but he is only twenty.
Last of all, the success of Doctor Who and Torchwood has brought a number of happy, successful gay men (and their stable relationships) into the spotlght: including John Barrowman, Russell T Davies and Mark Gatiss.
This whole dead/evil gay thing is overly simplistic and only applies (if at all) to bad, propagandist drama which is mainly, thankfully, in the past (I’d accept that The Celluloid Closet has some valid points about this). You can’t just trot out the trope every time an LGBT character dies, that’s just a lazy knee-jerk reaction. If you’re trying to make a point about the portrayal of LGBT characters in drama you need a much more thoughtful anaylsis, not just “thou shalt not kill the gays”.
You also have to be honest about your personal attachments to a character and your feelings about their death and what extent they may be leading you to an erroneous conclusion about the cultural impact of that death. I think some comments are confusing this and, in the emotion of the moment, are unwittingly accusing the writers reinforcing homophobia – not understanding how offensive such a simplistic conclusion is.
None of this is to belittle how hurt some people are feeling at the moment. I just think you should be a bit more thoughtful in your critical analysis – and maybe the best way to start would be to give it some time so that you can detach the analysis from your emotional response. Especially if you’re planning to comment here, on the blog of someone who is closely involved and who cannot help but take ill-thought out remarks personally.
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Plus, from an earlier comment:
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Ianto didn’t die because he was gay, he died because shit happens – and it happens tenfold if you’re a member of Torchwood. The fate of characters isn’t a moral punishment – there’s no deity of fiction handing out lessons.
The line: “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” from The Importance of Being Earnest is a piss-take of just that kind of thinking.
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===2===
In Torchwood fictional universe terms, Ianto dies because he’s in a building where a deadly virus is released. He goes to that building partly because he’s a member of the team and partly because he encourages Jack to make a stand, wanting to believe that he can be a better man than he was in 1965. That’s an entirely believable thing for a lover to do, regardless of the genders or sexuality involved. There’s nothing to suggest that we’re being shown a universe where LGBT people take unnecessary risks as a result of their sexuality.
Everyone in the building dies, so there’s no hint that different sexualities are affected differently by the virus. The virus is released by the 456 in response to Jack’s confronting them, there’s no sense that the event was caused by fate or God or some other mysterious force as a moral punishment for Ianto’s sexuality. So, in terms of the fictional universe, Ianto clearly didn’t die as a result of not being heterosexual.
In terms of what the writers were intending, we’re quickly into the realms of speculation. However, it seems to me that story is about making a stand or compromising. Jack compromised in the past and now he makes a stand – and loses the closest thing to him. Then, in the end, he compromises once more, at great personal cost. The death of Ianto seems to me to be an integral part of the this story, which Jack is in the centre of, having to make the choices. Gwen and Rhys are peripheral to this which is why they survive, and Frobisher is a parallel version, which is why he and his family die. There are plausible storytelling reasons why Ianto dies when he does – the alternative explanation being that Russell T Davies chose to make the show more hetero-normative. Which seems more likely to you? In short then, it seems unlikely that the writers killed Ianto because he was gay.
So all we’re left with is the apparent unintentional effect of the death of Ianto on the audience. Here we’re even further into the realms of speculation. My guess is that audiences in general don’t see tragedies as demeaning to their central characters or assume that death is punishment for some moral transgression. The “fridge the queer” trope strikes me as a valid starting point for criticism when a character is introduced simply to explore a “gay storyline” and then removed once that storyline is over – ie they only exist in terms of their sexuality. I don’t see this as the case in Children of Earth, even if you take it in isolation from the rest of Torchwood (and I disagree with Nat’s assessment here) as Ianto is a key member of the cast and his relationship with Jack is more of a love story than an exploration of issues around his sexuality – although there is a bit of this in the conversation he has with his sister. So, honestly, I can’t see any viewer drawing the conclusion that Ianto’s sexuality got him killed or that all non-heterosexuals are doomed to unhappiness from watching Torchwood.
In terms of how much positive attention Torchwood gives to non-heterosexuals, if the series ends here then I’d say that it has done a lot better than most TV shows. If the series continues and becomes dominated by heterosexual relationships then the death of Ianto will look like a turning point and it will be plausible to say that he was, in effect, “fridged” (regardless of the intentions of the authors). However, that hasn’t happened yet – and I don’t think that it will.
In terms of happiness in the Whoniverse, there’s a reason why the lesbian couple in Gridlock are minor characters – it’s because happy couples are quite dull. Most of the time, we don’t know much about the sexuality of the characters anyway, it’s not made an issue. On the whole Doctor Who and Torchwood are about having adventures in time and space, not settling down in a relationship (or even using sexuality of any sort as the main aspect of a story) and so we simply don’t know about the love lives of most of the people we meet. In post-2005 Who we have the guiding hand of Russell T Davies, who is far more interested in misery and suffering than happiness anyway, for all characters, regardless of sexuality. In 1963-89 Who we’re talking about a different television age – and basically LGBT characters are invisible. In new-Who terms though, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find the idea that non-heterosexual behaviour causes unhappiness or that people are being punished for their sexuality.
As for Jack’s suffering, some of it is inevitable because he is immortal. Most of it in Children of Earth results from the hard choices he has to make, which are part of the central theme of the story. In many ways he is similar to the Doctor in this respect. I honestly think it is reaching to try and connect his suffering to his sexuality.
===3===
As I’ve just said in reply to Hope, I think the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer as much is because the story isn’t really about her. The main theme is making a stand or compromising in the face of a huge threat. The main subjects of the this theme are Jack and Frobisher. This puts Jack and Ianto’s relationship right at the centre of things.
Gwen’s story is a peripheral one that sheds some light on things – and she is linked in by being pregnant when the story is about children. Mainly though, she is just doing a lot of the heavy lifting of the plot. Her most relevant dramatic moment is when she doesn’t want to have the baby and just the way she expresses this is sufficient. Her dying or losing the baby or Rhys dying doesn’t really add anything to the central theme of the story.
Honestly, this persistent idea that what happens to character reflects the validity of the their sexual choices is striking me as more and more nonsensical. Also the idea that all characters have to suffer equally to make this good drama is absurd.
As for Jack and Ianto, I thought it was a proper, reciprocal relationship – especially in Children of Earth. I believed in it and didn’t need to see more (especially since Torchwood is mainly about the adventures). I felt Jack’s pain when he died. So, it worked for me.
At the risk of going on to long but to refute the allegation of being tangental here are the relevant posts one more time:
It’s all very well to say an acronym is ‘Well known’ but that really depends on the circles in which you move. I’m not a hip person whose lifestyle is based around a metropolis, like most people around the globe. I don’t have any friends who know what it stands for either. While, yes, I can look it up, podcasts for many are listened to ‘on the go’ where access to the Internet is not readily available. I was just trying to say that reeling off acronyms, like jargon, is not useful to those not in the know.
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