“Great temperamental disabilities” - An examination of rationality vs emotionality in Doctor Who

“There is also a temperamental difference in men and women which makes an equal footing in political life all but impossible. Whatever she may have had in the past, whatever she may be going to have in the future, at the present moment she has great temperamental disabilities. [...] She lacks nervous stability. [...] A woman’s sympathies are quicker, more easily roused, more dominant than a man’s; she is sensitive and emotional in a way that differs from his way.” (Duffield Goodwin, 91-92)


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This introductory quote might be over a hundred years old and its language might sound archaic in parts, its sentiments, however, still survive today. Not only in Christian fundamentalist or right-wing circles that seek to return to the “””good old times””” but also in so-called sceptic internet communities (some of which are explicitly or implicitly right-wing). The latter sometimes proclaim to not ascribe either rationality or emotionality to gender but nevertheless put a heightened emphasis on rationality and reason and dismiss emotion as unhelpful in the best and harmful in the worst cases. And the belief that women just naturally are more emotional than men is still widespread, one only has to look at what happens whenever a woman runs for office. It’s a belief that is often propagated in media as well, which is why this analysis is fruitful.


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Because I liked doing the last one so much, have another post that remixes parts of my master's thesis. This time on the topic of male-coded rationality vs female-coded emotionality and how Doctor Who (or more precisely the renewal since 2005) values or devalues each. Again, it will contain different extracts of my thesis and combine them with new thoughts. Enjoy!


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There are a variety of alien representations in science fiction. To categorize different types of aliens, Carl Malmgren formulates the following typology: the other can be other-as-enemy, other-as-self, or other-as-other (18 and 26). The alien depictions relevant for the following discussion are most clearly recognizable as others-as-self. In relation to otherness, it is possible to see aspects of the self clearer that would otherwise be less obvious and “to explore the nature of selfhood from the vantage point of alterity” (Malmgren 16). In this way, the audience can relate to an alien creature better and it allows the show to make statements about humanity, in this case human emotionality.

Before we get into the specific case, let’s take a look at Nu Who’s stance on emotionality in general.

First off, the Doctor, who in all regenerations except the last is presented as a man, is a rational being. Cordone and Cordone examine the Doctor across regenerations and they emphasize the Doctor’s vital character traits, which are, according to them, a certain disregard for others’ opinions, heightened confidence in one’s ability and decision-making (12), heightened sense of importance (10), and most importantly superior intelligence (9). These traits are, according to them, immutable and ensure that the audience recognizes the Doctor as the same character across incarnations. The Doctor has an outward aversion to violence and tendency to solve conflicts with reasoning instead of aggression. This focus on rationality, however, goes hand in hand with a decreased emotionality. Lorna Jowett, for example, postulates that “his alien nature is most often identified in relation to emotion” or lack thereof (15). He is often portrayed as cold and detached and in his focus on the big picture sometimes disregards the smaller concerns of the people around him.

It is, here, important to note that at least from time to time this detachment is not portrayed as positive. While the Doctor’s superior intelligence, experience and reasoning abilities most often save the day, the show makes the point of sporadically emphasizing that individual people, their emotions and their fates, matter. When the Doctor kills the children of the empress of Racnoss in “The Runaway Bride”, it is significant that even though the empress has been consistently portrayed as a monstrous villain who needs to be defeated and has caused her personally harm, Donna is seen empathizing with the empress’ pain and being perturbed at the Doctor’s seeming unaffectedness.

The companions, who are largely female, thus fulfill the dual role of being an audience surrogate and simultaneously tempering the Doctor’s worst impulses and keeping him from becoming “too alien and distant” (Jowett 17). They provide an emotional center and a contrast to the Doctor’s rationality.

It is, furthermore, important to note that with her regeneration into a woman, the Doctor’s rationality is toned down and she is, for example, more prone to listen to those around her and accept others’ judgments than her predecessors were and is more emotionally available and expressive. Personally, I welcome these changes, however, they are emblematic of the show’s connection of rationality with men or those perceived to be men and emotionality with women or those perceived to be women.

This is true for the Master as well. When she regenerates into a woman, quite a few of her behaviors change. Despite the fact that her femininity can be seen as a parodic exaggeration of typical womanhood, her arc in season 10 emphasizes the inherent changes. They become especially apparent when she interacts with her former male regeneration. The Master’s line “Her? It’s a Cyberman now. Becoming a woman is one thing, but have you got empathy?” (“The Doctor Falls” 24:16) spoken with derision lampshades the change in personality from one regeneration to another. The Master, here, equates womanhood with a heightened emotionality. However, this connection is not only done in-universe by a villainous character, whose judgments the audience knows not to trust, but the show itself implies that Missy’s willingness to seek a form of redemption and ally herself with the Doctor is due to her changing gender. Even though it is lampshaded here, the show, nevertheless, constructs womanhood as inherently more emotional and empathetic.

McDunnah comments that “the trap lies first in ascribing essential characteristics to certain genders at all, and then in assuming that any exhibition of those characteristics is necessarily attributable to gender”. While he is right in his appeal to separate personality attributes and gender, especially considering the lack of applicability of a gender binary to humans, it is a reality that mainstream society, including the writers and producers of the show, does ascribe certain characteristics to certain genders. Popular media products like Doctor Who, here, help enforce these stereotypes.

An example of this can be found in the episodes “The Hungry Earth” and “Cold Blood”. The Doctor, Matt Smith at this point, and his companions Amy and Rory travel to the British countryside where a drill has been driven deep into the earth and woken up the slumbering Silurians. The Silurians that wake are the exclusively female warrior class, aggressive and determined, as well as the male king and a male scientist. This characterization can be seen as a role-reversal, with the women filling traditionally masculine roles and adopting traditionally masculine characteristics. While the king and the scientist do still fill traditionally masculine roles, they exhibit through their kindness and willingness to empathize, more traditionally female attributes. It is, however, also possible to interpret these episodes as a criticism of female emotionality. Especially throughout the episode “Cold Blood”, Silurians are used as an other-as-self construction. Their similarities to humans are emphasized, and humans and Silurians attempt to find common ground in a negotiation. The Doctor explicitly rejects the categorization of the Silurians as villains and says that they are “not monsters, not evil. Well, only as evil as you are” (“Hungry Earth” 35:39).

The female Silurians that have lines in these episodes, Restac and Alaya, are presented as hateful, aggressive, and irrational. Alaya, for example, insults her human captors, refuses to assist in peace talks, and finally baits them into killing her specifically so that the peace the Doctor is trying to broker will fail. Restac is focused on fighting and intends to kill all of humanity so that the Silurians might once again rule the Earth. She is shown to be irrational and needlessly violent when she repeatedly ignores orders from the king and willingly breathes in lethal fumes to shoot and kill a random human in retribution. Despite being portrayed as wise and calmer, it is implied in “A Good Man Goes to War” that the Doctor’s Silurian friend and recurring character Vastra was almost feral before the Doctor convinced her to change her ways (19:54). The male Silurians, a scientist, and the king, in contrast, are portrayed as rational, reasonable, and compromising, for which Restac attacks them, which is accompanied by war-like music underlining her aggression.

As the female Silurians are presented as irrationally angry, their behavior is mirrored in the human woman who ends up killing Alaya. She has strict instructions not to harm their prisoner, and her actions are presented as ultimately senseless and driven by grief, anger, and fear. In a mirror to the king and the scientist, two human men remain on the surface and function as a moderating presence. The women’s emotionality, Silurian and human, is contrasted with the men’s rationality and depicted as lacking. This is reinforced by Silurians as a whole not being depicted as antagonists, and the only antagonistic characters are female.

It comes down to the concerns of Mrs. Duffield Goodwin over a hundred years ago. Women’s emotionality might be a “great source of strength in her own place in the world” (92), which might be in the home or at a man’s side keeping him from becoming too detached, but “it will be her greatest danger and greatest source of weakness in the political life” (92). Her words might be old, her convictions, however, endure.


Episodes mentioned:


“A Good Man Goes to War.” Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Hoar, season 6, episode 7, BBC, 2011.
“Cold Blood.” Doctor Who, written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Ashley Way, season 5, episode 9, BBC, 2010.
“The Doctor Falls.” Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Rachel Talalay, season 10, episode 12, BBC, 2017.
“The Hungry Earth.” Doctor Who, written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Ashley Way, season 5, episode 8, BBC, 2010.
“The Runaway Bride.” Doctor Who, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Euros Lyn, Special, BBC, 2006.

Sources:

Cordone, John and Michelle Cordone. “Who is the Doctor?: The Meta-Narrative of Doctor Who.” Ruminations, Peregrinations, and Regenerations: A Critical Approach to Doctor Who, edited by Christopher J. Hansen, Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2010, pp. 8-21.
Jowett, Lorna. Dancing with the Doctor: Dimensions of Gender in the Doctor Who Universe. I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Malmgren, Carl D. “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993, pp. 15-33.
McDunnah, Michael G. “Doctor He, She, or They? Changing Gender, and Language, in Doctor Who: Celebrating the Power of Speculative Fiction to Challenge Our Preconceptions.” Conscious Style Guide, 16 Jan. 2019.

Other sources:

Grace Duffield Goodwin. Anti-Suffrage: 10 Good Reasons. Duffield, 1912.

Absurdist horror and the horrifically absurd - A case study of Welcome to Night Vale

Recently, I got back into reading more. I’m commuting to work by train and have the time now, which I use to either stare blankly out of the window, nap, or read. Therefore, I finally managed to finish the Welcome to Night Vale novel It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. It has given me the idea to write an analysis of a specific technique they use to create suspense and unease. To do that I will use an excerpt not from this novel but the one preceding it, simply called Welcome to Night Vale.

 

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. In it, the radio show host Cecil Baldwin (voiced by a man of the same name) talks about the going-ons in the fictive small desert community of Night Vale. These goings-on are almost always surreal, absurd, and often border on eldritch horror. They are told, however, in such a way that they are naturally intertwined with the everyday life of the town and mundane and unremarkable to the residents, and therefore, while novel to the listeners, not a source of horror. That horror comes from the characters reactions to these occurences. If something is normal absurd or scary absurd depends solely on how it is treated in-universe.

The excerpt of chapter 9 (p. 75-81) of the Welcome to Night Vale novel discussed in the following is a perfect example to demonstrate this strategy in action.

In the novel perpetual nineteen-year-old pawnshop owner Jackie Fierro receives a mysterious paper she cannot let go of and attempts to investigate the man who gave it to her; a search which slowly unravels her life. Mind you, the fact that Jackie does not grow older isn’t presented as unusual (in the beginning), time works different in Night Vale after all. Neither are her strange business practices considered worrisome - she buys abstract concepts for example and it requires an intricate ritual. The little slip of paper in her hand, however, is. To distract herself, Jackie visits her mother in chapter 9, only to find that the house she lives in seems sterile and Jackie can’t shake the feeling of unfamiliarity.  

“She looked around the kitchen trying to guess which drawer held the silverware, the surest sign of kitchen familiarity, and she hadn’t a clue.

[…]

Jackie tried another drawer. It was full of an opaque, fatty liquid, simmering from some invisible heat source.” (p. 77-78)

Now, searching for the silverware drawer in your mother’s kitchen and instead finding a drawer full of a mysterious pulsating liquid would in any other story be cause for alarm. It’s a grotesque image, the strangeness of which can in already tense situations elicit horror. That is, however, not the case here, as the following lines prove.

““No,” Jackie told herself. She hadn’t been looking for the hot milk drawer. The silverware drawer. If she knew where that was, then she knew the house. If she didn’t, then.” (p. 78)

The strange liquid isn’t the problem. Jackie casually refers to it as hot milk in a way that suggests that having such a drawer is not only not unusual but expected, something everyone has in their kitchen in Night Vale. The novelty is only for the reader and therefore accepted as a part of the quirky fictional world. While the discovery of the boiling liquid in the drawer does add to the horror, it’s not because the liquid is an alarming find, but because it is NOT the silverware Jackie is searching for and therefore proof that she does not know the kitchen or the house.

The first drawer Jackie tries is full of towels. Regular kitchen towels the readers might store in their kitchens as well. The tension and unease in that case is the same as with the hot milk drawer later.

There’s this technique called defamiliarization, a term coined by Viktor Shklovsky, which refers to making unfamiliar everyday objects and concepts. It can be used in art, poetry, and literature to focus the reader’s/audience’s perception on the artistic language, to elicit unease and subtle horror, or for comical purposes. Nathan W Pyle’s comics about blue aliens are an example of the latter. The aliens call, for example, a ‘hug’ a ‘mutual limb enclosure’, a ‘candle’ a ‘primitive light source’ and a ‘tan’ ‘star damage’.

What WTNV does, is almost the opposite. They take concepts that are unfamiliar and frightening and normalize them in description. Through their POV-character’s narrative perspective objects and occurrences that at first seem strange, and possibly unsettling, are turned mundane, which makes it immediately obvious when something strange is in fact grounds for terror.

Jackie not knowing where the silverware drawer is could very easily be mundane in-universe. It would, for example, not be out of the realm of possibility that drawers in Night Vale’s kitchens just switch from time to time or maybe the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home changes them to keep you on your toes. Because neither Jackie nor her mother offer up a casual explanation for Jackie’s lack of familiarity with the drawers, it becomes unsettling. In fact, not only does no one offer up an explanation, Jackie’s mother insists that she should be familiar with the house and ignores Jackie’s protests that are getting increasingly more agitated (p. 78-79).

In conclusion, WTNV, the podcast as well as the novels, despite being set in a fully surrealist world in which eldritch horrors are abundant, manages to easily distinguish estrangement that is part of the worldbuilding and estrangement that is the source of horror by using the narrative perspective and tone shifts.

Satori over and out