Scattered thoughts are all I'm good for
Oct. 28th, 2010 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyBetween marking and freelance work—let's be honest, I was utterly procrastinating, long past the point of being productive—I finally caught up with the latest season of Sarah Jane Adventures. And found myself relating to children's TV far more than I should.
The thing is, activists on telly are usually portrayed as either one-note earnest martyrs for the cause (not that we don't know people like that, am I right?) or laughable strawpeople, and the latest SJA episode was most decidedly Not That. And despite it being not the best episode ever in terms of narrative, it hit home for me emotionally in a way that I feel the need to babble about.
SJA, for those of you who don't watch it, is a Doctor Who spin-off about Sarah Jane Smith, former companion of the Fourth Doctor, now a 60-something investigative journalist who kicks a great deal of alien ass. After waiting around, single and lonely, for years after the Doctor left her, she ends up with an adoptive son, some neighbourhood kids who befriend her, and an impressive array of alien technology to assist her in saving the Earth when the Doctor is otherwise occupied. It's a cute show, well-written, with an interesting and ethnically diverse cast. Being aimed at children, it's less dark than either of its sister shows, and frequently resolves conflicts through ways other than "bad guy dies horribly."
There's something problematic in the premise, which is for me what makes the show particularly interesting. The Doctor tends to pick up companions, primarily women, during his travels. These characters are the viewer's surrogate. When the actors want to move on, he leaves them—or sometimes they leave him. The recent series have grappled with the idea of those who don't want to be left behind and can no longer find meaning or happiness at home. Sarah Jane is one of those characters—much as she tries to make a life for herself on Earth, it's emphasized how lonely she's been, that she never married, and that despite her attempts to create meaning, she never found anything that compared to her travels through space and time.
It's a profoundly sad concept for a children's show when you think about it.
So the episode in question is "The Death of the Doctor" (spoiler: it's a misleading title), otherwise known the Episode Where Jo Grant shows up. I didn't watch many of the Third Doctor episodes (blah blah stranded on Earth, UNIT, kinda boring), so mostly I gather that she was ditzy and kind of useless. She's fantastic in the episode, though. She's now a grandmother (she drags one grandson, Santiago, along to the Doctor's "funeral"), who spends her time travelling the world and protesting, chaining herself to old-growth trees and fighting corporations. Again, kind of an unusual character to see on TV (all activists are either young, or middle-aged drugged-out ex-hippies, dontcha know?).
Without doubt, she's had quite the life, and part of the tension comes from Sarah Jane, who has done great if completely unacknowledged things, being envious of Jo's ability to fight the (terrestrial) man and have a family, while Jo is envious of Sarah Jane's continued involvement with the otherworldly, and in particular, the Doctor. Both are remarkable women, and what I loved about the episode was that while it was all about how they were forced to make sacrifices in order to do what was right, this was portrayed as sad, but not tragic. Santiago remarks at one point that his life is incredible, but his family is never together, as everyone is off fighting their individual struggles. But this doesn't make Jo a failure as a mother, for prioritizing activism over family. If anything, it seems that her family has followed in her footsteps and, while they aren't 100% happy, they still consider it all worthwhile.
The ending of the show is bittersweet—everyone has moved on, everyone must part ways eventually—but upbeat. Sarah Jane talks about the several former companions that she's looked up, and how everyone is fighting for indigenous rights, or creating vaccines for diseases, or running charities. In a fictional universe where transcending the human is considered the ultimate gift, something to which nothing else can compare (yeah, DW is full of Broken Aesops, but that's a rant for another day), it's a hugely progressive, humanist message. One which, as I am currently hitting the wall of Failure to Balance Work, Activism, and Life, was exactly what I needed to hear last night.
I guess why I relate to these women so much is that activism opens the entire universe to the tiny, insignificant human being. It's not travelling through time and space, but it's about being hyper-aware of the hidden, the secret, the monumental. You can't have your eyes opened and then go back to living a normal life. Or, you can, but it's hard, and it makes everyday living difficult and painful and a wrestle with one's conscience. If one takes travelling on the TARDIS as a parallel to the transcendence of the selfish life that activism forces upon you, one sees two of many paths to aging. Jo keep struggling, to the point of exhaustion, to the point of alienation from family, on the largest scale possible. Sarah Jane—much like I'm doing these days—confines her struggle to the local. While she may face galactic threats, her adventures typically take place on a neighbourhood level. Jo is the perpetual activist, the dotty Raging Granny we see at demos whom we love but don't always like; Sarah is the teacher and social worker (and journalist) who maintains radical credentials despite having to compromise. Neither are wholly satisfied, both see something to envy in the other. But both are compelled to keep fighting.
The other thing I enjoyed yesterday was the latest installment of Slacktivist's Left Behind reviews. I mean, the posts are always good, but the comments are the big exception to Don't Read the Comments. People have started writing fanfiction. Or, anti-fanfiction, I guess. Basically, ficlets that are Left Behind if it were any good at all: fleshing out stereotypical side characters, calculating a functional resistance, what the disappearances would look like from a Muslim point of view (then, later, a Norse pagan point of view and a Cthulhu-cultist's point of view. The latter had me in stitches.). It's really enjoyable fiction that I want to see made into an actual novel.
The thing is, activists on telly are usually portrayed as either one-note earnest martyrs for the cause (not that we don't know people like that, am I right?) or laughable strawpeople, and the latest SJA episode was most decidedly Not That. And despite it being not the best episode ever in terms of narrative, it hit home for me emotionally in a way that I feel the need to babble about.
SJA, for those of you who don't watch it, is a Doctor Who spin-off about Sarah Jane Smith, former companion of the Fourth Doctor, now a 60-something investigative journalist who kicks a great deal of alien ass. After waiting around, single and lonely, for years after the Doctor left her, she ends up with an adoptive son, some neighbourhood kids who befriend her, and an impressive array of alien technology to assist her in saving the Earth when the Doctor is otherwise occupied. It's a cute show, well-written, with an interesting and ethnically diverse cast. Being aimed at children, it's less dark than either of its sister shows, and frequently resolves conflicts through ways other than "bad guy dies horribly."
There's something problematic in the premise, which is for me what makes the show particularly interesting. The Doctor tends to pick up companions, primarily women, during his travels. These characters are the viewer's surrogate. When the actors want to move on, he leaves them—or sometimes they leave him. The recent series have grappled with the idea of those who don't want to be left behind and can no longer find meaning or happiness at home. Sarah Jane is one of those characters—much as she tries to make a life for herself on Earth, it's emphasized how lonely she's been, that she never married, and that despite her attempts to create meaning, she never found anything that compared to her travels through space and time.
It's a profoundly sad concept for a children's show when you think about it.
So the episode in question is "The Death of the Doctor" (spoiler: it's a misleading title), otherwise known the Episode Where Jo Grant shows up. I didn't watch many of the Third Doctor episodes (blah blah stranded on Earth, UNIT, kinda boring), so mostly I gather that she was ditzy and kind of useless. She's fantastic in the episode, though. She's now a grandmother (she drags one grandson, Santiago, along to the Doctor's "funeral"), who spends her time travelling the world and protesting, chaining herself to old-growth trees and fighting corporations. Again, kind of an unusual character to see on TV (all activists are either young, or middle-aged drugged-out ex-hippies, dontcha know?).
Without doubt, she's had quite the life, and part of the tension comes from Sarah Jane, who has done great if completely unacknowledged things, being envious of Jo's ability to fight the (terrestrial) man and have a family, while Jo is envious of Sarah Jane's continued involvement with the otherworldly, and in particular, the Doctor. Both are remarkable women, and what I loved about the episode was that while it was all about how they were forced to make sacrifices in order to do what was right, this was portrayed as sad, but not tragic. Santiago remarks at one point that his life is incredible, but his family is never together, as everyone is off fighting their individual struggles. But this doesn't make Jo a failure as a mother, for prioritizing activism over family. If anything, it seems that her family has followed in her footsteps and, while they aren't 100% happy, they still consider it all worthwhile.
The ending of the show is bittersweet—everyone has moved on, everyone must part ways eventually—but upbeat. Sarah Jane talks about the several former companions that she's looked up, and how everyone is fighting for indigenous rights, or creating vaccines for diseases, or running charities. In a fictional universe where transcending the human is considered the ultimate gift, something to which nothing else can compare (yeah, DW is full of Broken Aesops, but that's a rant for another day), it's a hugely progressive, humanist message. One which, as I am currently hitting the wall of Failure to Balance Work, Activism, and Life, was exactly what I needed to hear last night.
I guess why I relate to these women so much is that activism opens the entire universe to the tiny, insignificant human being. It's not travelling through time and space, but it's about being hyper-aware of the hidden, the secret, the monumental. You can't have your eyes opened and then go back to living a normal life. Or, you can, but it's hard, and it makes everyday living difficult and painful and a wrestle with one's conscience. If one takes travelling on the TARDIS as a parallel to the transcendence of the selfish life that activism forces upon you, one sees two of many paths to aging. Jo keep struggling, to the point of exhaustion, to the point of alienation from family, on the largest scale possible. Sarah Jane—much like I'm doing these days—confines her struggle to the local. While she may face galactic threats, her adventures typically take place on a neighbourhood level. Jo is the perpetual activist, the dotty Raging Granny we see at demos whom we love but don't always like; Sarah is the teacher and social worker (and journalist) who maintains radical credentials despite having to compromise. Neither are wholly satisfied, both see something to envy in the other. But both are compelled to keep fighting.
The other thing I enjoyed yesterday was the latest installment of Slacktivist's Left Behind reviews. I mean, the posts are always good, but the comments are the big exception to Don't Read the Comments. People have started writing fanfiction. Or, anti-fanfiction, I guess. Basically, ficlets that are Left Behind if it were any good at all: fleshing out stereotypical side characters, calculating a functional resistance, what the disappearances would look like from a Muslim point of view (then, later, a Norse pagan point of view and a Cthulhu-cultist's point of view. The latter had me in stitches.). It's really enjoyable fiction that I want to see made into an actual novel.
