![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mni(and as the subtitle of this journal* suggests, peeves and passions will get stuck there, between my ears)
This is also a follow-up, on what I started to express here, regarding the punditosphere's reaction to Barack Obama's recent speech on race relations in America, but now with the added (and shiny) context of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ionlylurkhere's musings, with backup from parrotfish, attitudes toward science and knowledge in New Who (contains "sorta spoilers for all transmitted DW and Torchwood to date depending how you look at it").**
Does anyone on my f'list remember the NBC TV series The Pretender (originally aired 1996-2000)? Did any of you watch it?
At the time, I watched it semi-regularly, though my motivation was horrid fascination, rather than squee. The hero was a freakishly intelligent (as in able to learn anything at all, even medicine, or law, or a dozen foreign languages after only a few hours' study) man who had been kidnapped by a secret government agency, so that he could betrained brainwashed into being a sort of living weapon, or something (I found that part of the plot confusing, personally).
He escaped, naturally, and spent the four years that the series aired assuming a different identity and saving the poor and helpless along the way, by being just the doctor, or lawyer, or auto mechanic, or priest that that person needed, right at the nick of time. Meanwhile, he was constantly being chased by the Agency Baddies, while trying to clear his mind of the brainwashing he'd been subjected to, so he could remember who he truly was.
And even though it didn't strike a deep enough chord with the American public to avoid cancellation before its full story arc played out, it still scared me with its reflection of America's deep-seated fear of intellectualism. Yes, the hero was a Good Guy, and his super intellegence gave him almost God-like powers. But he was The Exception within the special society of exceptions. You don't need to scratch more than a nanometer below the surface to reach the subtext: Extraordinary intelligence is dangerous -- because it gives a person power that the rest of us will never understand.
Also, that super intelligence seemed to come from nowhere, or from God (or perhaps, Satan); the hero, Jarod, and the other children raised by The Agency, were simply born super-intelligent. The only training they had was in how to use it. The learning process itself, and figuring things out, and using past experience to understand the present was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the children were trained by being completely removed from the experience of the "real world," kept secreted away under some crystal dome, or underground labyrinth, or something.
Of course, my understanding of this subtext may have been colored by the fact that my aide at the time was terrified of going into the library with me. She would drop me off at the front door, and then wait for me, outside in the van (once, she even drove off to do errands, and left me waiting there for an hour or so). And during The Pretender's final season, of course, presidential candidate Al Gore's intellectualism was ruthlessly mocked by The Press, while Bush's "folksy" ways were celebrated as the best thing since bottled barbecue sauce...
(And then, after Bush became president, he came up with "No Child Left Behind," where the teaching of critical thinking skills was replaced with teaching of how to mark off the right answers in a multiple choice test -- again, the process of learning is removed from the equation... And we wonder why we're falling behind other nations in innovation and engineering)
And now, I'm seeing that same script beginning to play out between Obama vs. Clinton ("Yes, he's drawing the bigger crowds, but he's still appealing 'only' to the college-educated types; the working-class are yet to be convinced"), andwhen if he's the nominee, I bet that argument will be made between him and McCain, too...
:::Sigh:::
*For those of you who see your friends' LJ pages in your own style, that subtitle is: The songs that are stuck in my head.
**For those who wish to avoid spoilers, and/or don't want to read the whole post, his point is this: In Old Who, knowledge and the scientific mode of thought is a Good Thing, and it's an Even Better Thing when it's shared; it's a thing to make you happy. But in Russell T. Davies' Who, knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, Best Kept in the Priviledged Hands of the Special People, and even then, the Knowledge breaks them.
This is also a follow-up, on what I started to express here, regarding the punditosphere's reaction to Barack Obama's recent speech on race relations in America, but now with the added (and shiny) context of
ionlylurkhere's musings, with backup from parrotfish, attitudes toward science and knowledge in New Who (contains "sorta spoilers for all transmitted DW and Torchwood to date depending how you look at it").**Does anyone on my f'list remember the NBC TV series The Pretender (originally aired 1996-2000)? Did any of you watch it?
At the time, I watched it semi-regularly, though my motivation was horrid fascination, rather than squee. The hero was a freakishly intelligent (as in able to learn anything at all, even medicine, or law, or a dozen foreign languages after only a few hours' study) man who had been kidnapped by a secret government agency, so that he could be
He escaped, naturally, and spent the four years that the series aired assuming a different identity and saving the poor and helpless along the way, by being just the doctor, or lawyer, or auto mechanic, or priest that that person needed, right at the nick of time. Meanwhile, he was constantly being chased by the Agency Baddies, while trying to clear his mind of the brainwashing he'd been subjected to, so he could remember who he truly was.
And even though it didn't strike a deep enough chord with the American public to avoid cancellation before its full story arc played out, it still scared me with its reflection of America's deep-seated fear of intellectualism. Yes, the hero was a Good Guy, and his super intellegence gave him almost God-like powers. But he was The Exception within the special society of exceptions. You don't need to scratch more than a nanometer below the surface to reach the subtext: Extraordinary intelligence is dangerous -- because it gives a person power that the rest of us will never understand.
Also, that super intelligence seemed to come from nowhere, or from God (or perhaps, Satan); the hero, Jarod, and the other children raised by The Agency, were simply born super-intelligent. The only training they had was in how to use it. The learning process itself, and figuring things out, and using past experience to understand the present was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the children were trained by being completely removed from the experience of the "real world," kept secreted away under some crystal dome, or underground labyrinth, or something.
Of course, my understanding of this subtext may have been colored by the fact that my aide at the time was terrified of going into the library with me. She would drop me off at the front door, and then wait for me, outside in the van (once, she even drove off to do errands, and left me waiting there for an hour or so). And during The Pretender's final season, of course, presidential candidate Al Gore's intellectualism was ruthlessly mocked by The Press, while Bush's "folksy" ways were celebrated as the best thing since bottled barbecue sauce...
(And then, after Bush became president, he came up with "No Child Left Behind," where the teaching of critical thinking skills was replaced with teaching of how to mark off the right answers in a multiple choice test -- again, the process of learning is removed from the equation... And we wonder why we're falling behind other nations in innovation and engineering)
And now, I'm seeing that same script beginning to play out between Obama vs. Clinton ("Yes, he's drawing the bigger crowds, but he's still appealing 'only' to the college-educated types; the working-class are yet to be convinced"), and
:::Sigh:::
*For those of you who see your friends' LJ pages in your own style, that subtitle is: The songs that are stuck in my head.
**For those who wish to avoid spoilers, and/or don't want to read the whole post, his point is this: In Old Who, knowledge and the scientific mode of thought is a Good Thing, and it's an Even Better Thing when it's shared; it's a thing to make you happy. But in Russell T. Davies' Who, knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, Best Kept in the Priviledged Hands of the Special People, and even then, the Knowledge breaks them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 10:46 pm (UTC)One of the things that I loved about Old-School Who was the portrayal of the Doctor as infinitely curious. Sure, he knew an immense amount already, but he always wanted to learn more, always knew that he did not, in fact, know everything (even though he was happy to let people think he did) and he appreciated that sense of intelligence + curiosity in others that he met. Liz Shaw and Nyssa come immediately to mind, but even when Tegan was at her most annoying, you knew Five wanted her to get it, and was thrilled for her when she finally did.
There was a spirit of discovery back in the old days that is sadly absent now, and I think that's what makes the show such a struggle for me--I want so very much to love it unconditionally, but I just can't stomach the idea of the Doctor as god. And I was furious at "The Satan Pit" for presenting a big, Devil-like baddie and never even trying to explain him away. Did they seriously want us to think that the Doctor beat the Devil? I can only assume that they did, but as was mentioned in one or the other of those two posts, Doctors 1-8 always went to great lengths to prove that there was a scientific explanation for "supernatural" events, and I found the lack of same in that episode wholly infuriating. It flies in the face of what, IMNSHO, Doctor Who should be about, in a most arrogant way.
Thank the gods for
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 11:00 pm (UTC)I weep for America. I really do.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 11:35 pm (UTC)The station was jointly founded by the boards of the Norfolk and Hampton Public Schools, and on the surface, a television drama for kids, created to promote interest in history and science, would seem to be a perfect fit. But when I moved down here, I quickly dispaired of ever seeing a DW-themed pledge drive, because this area has also been at the heart of our Military-Industrial Complex (Norfolk and Newport News Shipyards are where most of this country's nuclear subs are built, and it's also home for NATO's Atlantic Fleet), and Doctor Who is just too damned Liberal, and Anti-Military to be a good fit down here...
But then, we elected a Democratic governor twice in a row, and in 2006, we voted in Democratic Senator Jim Webb to tip the balance to 51-49 Dems in the Senate... And at the most recent primary (Feb 12), the Democrats turned out to the polls 2-1 over the Republicans. Then, WHRO put up a poll for folks to vote for their favorite British shows, for Saturday night... and Doctor Who got in. Somehow, I think the switch from Hyacinth Bucket to the Doctor really is linked to a cultural and political shift around here...
So maybe I should start singing: "Don't it turn my red state blue?..." ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 11:15 pm (UTC)As the Second Doctor said, in Tomb of the Cybermen, rubbing his hands together with glee: "I love to watch experts at work... Don't you?"
As for myself, I couldn't make it past episode 6 of S1 of NewWho ("Aliens of London: part 2," I think it was). Back then, I hadn't quite put my finger on it either, except that an hour after each episode was over, I felt empty again -- as if New Who was the intellectual and narrative equivalent of cheap Chinese takeout. And every time I contemplated the option of putting a NewWho cd in my computer's disk drive, I ended up deciding against it (sorry,
I liked "Rose;" Eccleston's Doctor was recognizible there. But I started to get turned off with "The End of The World," when Rose was left to wallow in her angst of being alone, and the Doctor gloated over Cassandra's suffering, as he watched her explode from dehydration. The Doctor that sheparded me though the pain of my own adolescence would never have been so callous.
...Thanks for letting me know about
no subject
Date: 2008-03-22 11:22 pm (UTC)