“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)


***

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!


***

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

Books I haven't yet read

I'm making this list primarily to remind myself not to buy anymore books before I finished the ones I still have lying around. There are so many books on my "to read" list, fascinating stories and worlds I can't wait to explore, these will have to be read first though. And I'll tell you all about them.

• Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling 
• This is a German novel but I have included it and not the other German novels I also haven't read yet because people tell me there's a good English translation out as well. And Marc-Uwe Kling is just very funny. He's best known for episodic tales about co-habitating with a talking communist kangaroo (yes, it is exactly as absurd and political as it sounds). Qualityland is a completely unrelated novel about a capitalist dystopia and I'm looking forward to finding out how his writing style and one of my favorite genres interact with each other.

• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• I bought this novel to read on vacation but alas I never did and it is still sitting on my bedside table today. Why this novel? Netflix recommended the movie to me and it looked so visually interesting and atmospheric that I was immediately intrigued. Now that I have the novel I feel I need to read that one first before I can watch the movie, so I have done neither at this point. I only know that a group of scientists enter a strange zone that no one ever came back from and that no one knows much of anything about. I'm looking forward to reading the descriptions of the world the characters encounter.

•  The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edited by Carmen Maria Machado and John Joseph Adams
• As I've told you before I love these short story collections. I have absolutely no idea what tales await me but in this case that is exactly what I want. I'm looking forward to discovering new favorites and authors I have never heard of before.

• Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
• I love Becky Chambers' other novels taking place in this world (The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit), so it is no surprise that I'd buy the third one. She has created a beautifully creative and fascinating science fiction universe that I love to live in for the duration of her novels. This one tells the stories of a couple of humans and their lives aboard the fleet of ships that carried humans away from their dying homeplace and into the stars and I'm looking forward to falling in love with these new characters and to explore this novel's themes. 

• Wool by Hugh Howey
• I read the sequel to Wool, Shift, on vacation once while believing it was a stand-alone. Somehow I missed the two in Roman numerals on its cover. I had no problem following the plot and in fact suspect I discovered the backstory of the world that you are not yet meant to know when reading book number one. I liked Shift enough to want to read Wool but since it's a pretty dark post-apocalypse, where humanity lives in underground silos, I haven't been in the mood since and it just sits on my shelf. I'm looking forward to finding out what the first expression of that world should have been.

• The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
• I love the movie. I was a child when I first watched it and too young to understand why my parents were crying. In university the movie was on a watchlist for a lecture and this time I understood. Rewatching the movie made me want to read the novel it is based on, the story about a Maori girl who grows up wanting to prove herself to her grand-father, the chief of her tribe. I'm looking forward to experiencing the beautifully moving story in its  original form.

• The Silent Stars Go By by Dan Abnett
• Every fall I see this novel sitting on my shelf and tell myself, "this Christmas, I'll finally read it". But I never do. It's a Doctor Who novel about 11, Amy and Rory turning up to help a colony in trouble. It is very clearly winter and Christmas-themed, which is why it would feel weird to read at any other time of the year and which is why I haven't read it yet. I'm looking forward to a fun, heart-warming seasonal story. Hopefully this Christmas.

 Maybe one of these books interests you as well. Or not. I might talk a bit more about one of these books (if I ever get around to reading them that is).

Satori over and out

Thoughts about things I saw: The Magicians

moviepilot.de

I like The Magicians. At its best it’s a wonderful mix of fantastical and wacky and serious and dramatic. At worst its tone shifts are abrupt and jarring. I enjoy the characters and the magic and the incorporation of the fairytale not-Narnia that is both deconstructed and played completely straight.

One of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, scenes of the show is the coronation of season 2 episode 1. As it happens, one of the ragtag group of magic college students is destined to be the high king of this fairytale land. For him to be recognized, however, he needs a crown, as do the three co-rulers he gets to pick. The crowning isn’t supposed to be an opulent affair, instead they travel to an old man by the ocean who guards the crowns.

Quentin, who is arguably the protagonist and who lives with depression, is the one to earnestly believe in the magical world and insists that they don’t just put the crowns on but crown each other. And it’s… it’s so very good. All these people are fucked-up and broken in their own ways and they made mistakes and treated each other badly. The coronation scene is so emotional because it is so genuine and earnest, full of true emotion and honest intentions.

Alas, the show never really delivers and the four of them never rule together. (Two of them do and it’s very good, but not what was promised by that scene.) The show makes a bit of a habit on not delivering on wonderful concepts and premises and it makes me sad because, damn, the potential is there, you just have to follow through.

"Devour what she likes" - On abject female hunger

Imagine a hungry woman. Hungry for what? Power? Love? Respect? Food? Does it even matter? The image is the same.

"Oh man", my friend told me, her tone elated, when we came out of a screening of Ocean's 8, "did you see that? They were eating constantly! And not even just tiny bits of salad! But, you know, actual food." We nodded along and agreed with her, just happy in that moment, but later I thought, how weird, how strange it is that we find it remarkable that women in a movie were shown eating.

***

Women’s appetites are often demonized, that is hardly a hot take. From media analysis, over poetry and art to political and feminist writings, a lot of women from different walks of lives have written on the subject. It isn’t just a media studies thing, far from it, it is a social justice issue as well, translated and refracted and spread through media.

Nevertheless, I want to share with you a part of my master’s thesis that deals with exactly that topic. I’ll be using excerpts from my thesis as well as additional sources, quotes and thoughts. Enjoy:

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First off, some context. Women in society are often marked as other. Aliens in media are representative of the other, often of a specific type of human other. The construction of female aliens, therefore, makes symbolic statements about human womanhood. The alien woman discussed in the following is the Empress of Racnoss, the clear antagonist of the Doctor Who episode “The Runaway Bride”. She follows the other-as-enemy distinction, as Carl Malmgren formulates it (18). Using this strategy, the human other, for whom the alien is a stand-in, is dehumanized and presented as an enemy whose defeat is desirable. The other in science fiction, therefore, can be employed as a tool to reinforce desired societal norms. Norms that in Christian cultures often go back to the Bible, as Nina Coomes confirms when she observes that the hungry woman as the ultimate sinner is inextricably connected with Eve and her desire to know and to want and to eat.

The first look at the Empress of Racnoss, portrayed by Sarah Parish, shows her spider-like legs and her red lips and sharp teeth through which she hisses “I’ll eat you up” (28:18) when she sees the Doctor, mixing sexually suggestive language with animalistic intentions, the impression of which is strengthened due to the camera’s close-up focus on her mouth. Because the audience does not see her full face or body, she remains mysterious and monstrous – she is reduced to parts of her that seem threatening – and is, consequently, denied personhood. The empress is from the beginning onwards connected with hunger and desire, both visually and through dialog, and this hunger is also clearly characterized as threatening and abject.

Additionally, the Doctor proclaims the Racnoss to be aggressive omnivores, an statement confirmed through the visual focus on the alien mouth, marking the species as evil and, therefore, preemptively justifying any action taken against them. The Doctor’s description combined with the looks and staging of the empress serves to further dehumanize and alienate her. In combination with her earlier assessment of the Doctor, her “various appetites, be they procreative, literal, or carnal” and her “biological drives” (Rowson 93) are linked to her gender and presented as a threat, positioning a female focus on the body to be destructive. To hunger for anything while being female is to ask too much. It doesn’t matter if this appetite is for attention, sex, power or nourishment, it “always overreaches”, as Jess Zimmerman says in her examination of her own relationship to hunger, literal and emotional, “because it is not supposed to exist”.

It is, furthermore, notable that the alien mother is depicted without a husband or father of the children, centering her desire to procreate on her womanhood, and presenting her as different from the nuclear family ideal of heterosexual mainstream culture. This is how the depiction of the empress falls in line with a horror trope Cynthia Freeland calls “queen bugs” (70). The queen bugs combine “the primitive instinctual drive to reproduce with a tendency to dominate the male of the species” (Freeland 70). The empress being portrayed as a spider-like creature even implies that she consumed the father of the children as some spiders do. Her desire to procreate is, consequently, connected with her literal hunger and made fully her own. It can’t be excused as someone else’s in the same way eating alone in public forces you to own your hunger as Laura Maw describes.

In her evaluation of Alien (1979), Lynda Zwinger concludes that it insists “on a border between representations of the nurturing mother necessary to the middle-class bourgeois dominant culture and the transgressive power maternity might achieve if left to its own (supposed) desires” (74). This assessment can be applied to the empress as well, especially considering that her visual design is in part reminiscent of the xenomorph queen’s. Like the famous alien, the empress’ desire to consume and procreate and her obvious power to do so if not stopped, transgresses accepted boundaries and thus becomes a threat.

Presenting the Racnoss as conquerors and omnivores has the effect of categorizing the empress’ appetite as abject because its satiation would be to the detriment of innocent human lives. It has, additionally, the effect of denying the validity of any of the empress’ desires since they are, as the Doctor and the narrative clarified, monstrous and destructive in nature. Her drive for procreation, however, the desire to see her decimated species alive again, is one the Doctor - and the audience - should be able to at the very least relate to.

There is a compelling comparison to be made to Donna, whose exaggerated desire for companionship is ridiculed and ultimately the source of her suffering. As Jess Zimmerman notes, to want something for yourself as a woman, is to be seen as ‘attention-seeking’. Donna’s wanting is purposefully designed to be over-the-top, to be mocked and made the butt of a joke, something to laugh at, because how dare she actively pursue love.

It is significant here, 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. Even though the music takes on triumphant notes, the camera shows the scene in a Dutch angle, adding a sense of unease. Donna’s empathy for what is essentially a grieving mother links them in their womanhood.

In the end, the Doctor kills the Racnoss children with water and therefore puts an end to her procreative desire. The empress herself escapes by teleporting to her ship and vows revenge but is promptly killed by Earth’s military; her female abjection is thusly thoroughly defeated by male forces. Her excessive overreaching hunger could only be stopped by not allowing her to continue. Because a female creature whose appetite becomes uncontrollable is a monster like no other.

***

Sources from my thesis (I’m only citing them this academically because of the master’s thesis excerpts, don’t expect that for future posts):

“The Runaway Bride.” Doctor Who, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Euros Lyn, Special, BBC, 2006.

Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press, 2000.
Malmgren, Carl D. “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993, pp. 15-33.
Rowson, Emily V. Impossible Girls and Tin Dogs: Constructions of the Gendered Body in Doctor Who. 2017. University of Northumbria, PhD dissertation.
Zwinger, Lynda. “Blood Relations: Feminist Theory Meets the Uncanny Alien Bug Mother.” Hypatia, vol. 7, no. 2, 1992, pp. 74-90.


Extra sources:

Coomes, Nina. “On Eve’s Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women.” Catapult, 15. Jul. 2019, https://catapult.co/stories/on-eves-temptation-and-the-monsters-we-make-of-hungry-women-nina-coomes

Maw, Laura. “There’s Nothing Scarier Than a Hungry Woman.” Electric Literature, 17. Oct. 2019, https://electricliterature.com/theres-nothing-scarier-than-a-hungry-woman/
(The title quote is from this essay.)

Zimmerman, Jess. “Hunger Makes Me.” Hazlitt Magazine, 7. Jul. 2016, https://hazlitt.net/feature/hunger-makes-me

Z Nation and the glories of "trash TV"

When I wrote the other comparative post, the one about The Witcher and Game of Thrones, I made sure to tell you that it wasn't meant to elevate one over the other. Here it definitely is.

So, disclaimer: I will complain about what I didn’t like about TWD, if you don’t want to read that, turn back now.

Lately I rewatched some The Walking Dead and I realized that even in my most negative assessments I have given it too much credit in the past. Even the few "good" episodes per season, aren't really all that entertaining to begin with. What had happened instead was that I tried to justify my six-season long loyalty to the show by insisting that from time to time it was actually good and enjoyable, when the only thing I really enjoyed where the characters.

Of course, you have to credit TWD with the reinvention of the zombie apocalypse genre or at least with its re-popularization. Z Nation wouldn't exist were it not for TWD. TWD, however, does not exhaust the potentiality of the genre and instead reiterates the same narrative elements over and over again in an attempt to stay serious quality TV.

 Z Nation is different from the get go. Produced by the people that made Sharknado it was already conceptualized as more trashy, which granted it the freedom to play with the genre and its tropes. It is in no way meant to be realistic and combines over-the-top gory moments with ridiculous happenstances like a giant wheel of cheese rolling down the countryside smashing zombies along the way.

It is often self-referential and employs meta-humor that explicitly lampshades conventions of the genre (they also call zombies zombies). Nevertheless, it isn’t a comedy. It has its comedic elements sure and its comic relief but the main story is a dramatic one. Instead of the goal of the protagonists being survival, however, as it is in TWD (after season 1), they have the clearly defined mission of getting a man, whose blood might be the only chance at a vaccine/cure, to a lab. This goal makes the characters in Z Nation more proactive, as they are moving towards something, while the survivors in TWD mostly just react to threats to their safety. It also allows for story progression in a way TWD does not.

Due to TWD’s insistence on “realism” and the differing structure - the protagonists in TWD often stay in one place while in Z Nation they are constantly on the move and cover a lot of ground between episodes - the possible narrative beats are limited and it shows, when the ‘temporary sanctuary overrun by enemies and/or zombies’ is still the main source of conflict 8 seasons in. Z Nation on the other hand not only starts 3 years into the apocalypse already (a good choice, in my opinion, as it makes the chaos and decay of the world that much more believable), it also features a variety of absurd apocalypse inhabitants and scenarios.

The group, among others, meets a fanatic zombie media enthusiast, a Mexican drug cartel, people growing weed from zombie-infested plants, a Mad-Max-esque caravan, and post-apocalyptic bounty hunters. They have to stop a nuclear power plant from melting down, escape a zombienado, deal with an anthrax infection, and a half-zombie baby. And that’s only in the first two seasons.

Despite the show’s obvious “trash TV” nature and usually fast pace, it does not lack genuine drama moments. One of my gripes with TWD is that a lot of the dramatic potential is lost because characters constantly have extended fake deep conversations about it. Z Nation doesn’t attempt to cram as much meaningful-sounding dialog into its episodes and instead focuses on the novel action (for the most part). In this way, however, dramatic scenes are allowed to stand for themselves.

At one point, for example, the group finds themselves in Roswell, where people gathered that believe that aliens are going to come and rescue them from the apocalypse. One woman, so they say, was contacted by the aliens and soon, the aliens would take them all away. Over the course of the episode the group goes investigating in the military base and finds out that it wasn’t in fact aliens but one man with high tech equipment. The woman is with them when they find out, but still goes back to her people and keeps the belief alive because she recognized that hope to them is more important than the truth. None of this is spelled out or explicitly mentioned and this is exactly why it has the impact it does.

In conclusion, Z Nation’s categorization as “trash TV” allows it the freedom to be creative and combined with the narrative drive it is, to me, very much enjoyable.

Satori over and out

See also Nadine Dannenberg’s article “‘Is This a Chick Thing Now?’ The Feminism of Z Nation between Quality and Trash TV” in Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Widely decried “overused” filmmaking things I actually like

I spend a good amount of my life concerned with media. Consuming it, analyzing it, reading about it, creatively engaging with it. In that process, I've also read and listened to others’ opinions on movies and how they are made. There are certain things in filmmaking, be it tropes, camerawork, or aspects of post-production, that are widely decried as overused - or just bad. I want to use this space here to share with you some of these things that I actually sincerely enjoy:

Star Trek 2009 (syfy.de)

- lens-flares: dammit but I love the light reflecting off of surfaces and shining brightly into the camera. It gives everything an otherworldly feel. It’s very sci-fi to me and I think lens-flare aficionado JJ Abrams put it into words well: “The reason I wanted to do [lens flares] was I love the idea that the future that they were in was so bright that it couldn’t be contained and it just sort of broke through.” 

- this action scene is just noise: How often have I heard that an action scene in a movie is meaningless because it’s just noise and nothing else and while that might be true, I tend to still enjoy it. It’s cinemasins’ “explosions! running! excitement!” sin but fully genuine.

300

- slow motion, especially slow motion fight scenes: I just can’t help but think that slo-mo shots are stylish and cool, no matter how often they appear in a movie. Slo-mo makes fighting especially look very sleek and I love that.

- person in the foreground doesn’t notice fight in the background: That’s just a little fun thing to do. Whenever I see it in a movie or show I just think it’s a joy.

Kingsman

- fun songs during fight scenes: No matter how often I hear a joyful song playing during a fight scene, I will always enjoy it greatly. I’m thinking Freebird in Kingsman, Istanbul in The Umbrella Academy, or I’m Just a Girl in Captain Marvel. I like fight scenes and seeing someone kick ass to a cheery tune is just great.

- narration: I know it’s ‘show don’t tell’. But sometimes I like to be told. Sometimes I just like to be explicitly told what’s going on.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m currently forgetting. This post kind of fits with the theme of the “Good films don’t have to be good” post. These things are used for a reason and even if they are seemingly overused, they can still spark joy in your heart.

Satori over and out