Be True to Your Soap–It’s Better Than That Other Crap

So I gather today is the day that ABC tosses aside decades of soap history and replaces it with a rag-tag crew of people talking about things that 20 other shows are already talking about. Of course, it’s about the money, not the conversation, and ABC will save tons of it even if this foray into boredom is a relative failure. Goodbye Erica Kane and All My Children, hello chat show creatively named The Chew (get it? They talk while they eat food–The Chew!).

But I hope it’s a complete failure–the kind that makes the suits (mostly male) reevaluate their choice to dismiss and disenfranchise generations of (mostly female) viewers, albeit in dwindling numbers.

Soaps ain’t Shakespeare. We all are well aware. Even at their best, they’re not the best thing on TV (General Hospital will never be Mad Men). But their narratives allow viewers and creators alike a unique opportunity to participate in lived stories over time. Even The Simpsons can’t compete with the longevity of a single soap. Perhaps most significantly, soap opera is a genre aimed specifically at women. There’s been a load of discussion about whether this is a good or bad thing throughout the years; however, it is nonetheless the case. In a media landscape where women are treated as a second-class audience, soaps add a for-better-or-worse alternative to perpetually pandering to men.

Now, of course, we can go back and forth regarding whether soaps are simply a ghetto for “women’s stories” filtered through the male gaze–and I think that’s a pretty valid argument. But we cannot dismiss that they, with their interwoven narratives and elephantesque memories, play a significant role in the history of ecriture feminine…whatever that means. Furthermore, we cannot deny the impact of the stories and families and valid discussions of topics like HIV/AIDS, sexuality, and rape (sometimes bungled horribly, see re: Luke and Laura; and sometimes handled deftly with the benefit of long-term impact that we could never get out of a mere season of TV). What’s more, these stories create a framework over time–a way to consider how these discussions change. While a ripped-from-the-headlines episode of a show like Law and Order seems ridiculously outdated within six months of its original airdate, soap stories build over decades, revisiting and re-imagining their own histories in order to change with the times. Characters and narratives evolve. Of course, an argument can be made that, where women’s issues are concerned, soaps can be downright reactionary, but the discussion is happening in more or less real time. We can reject the soap approach to women–that aforementioned male gaze–but we cannot negate the movement of this discussion through time and space. Soaps provide a benchmark with which to measure progress, even if they often lag behind in progressing.

Luke and Laura's Wedding in 1981 drew 30 million viewers

Lastly, we rarely give soaps their due when it comes to the way they’ve influenced prime time TV. Some viewers simply balk at the melodrama of the woman-who-was-shot-by-her-husband-with-a-bullet-that-was-meant-for-her-lover-while-giving-birth-to-their-child (yeah, this happened), but they forget to look at the tapestry–the design behind the drama. The mega-popularity of Luke and Laura on General Hospital in the early 80′s infiltrated TV at all levels, and, by the end of the decade, TV had transformed from A/B story one-offs (picture the A-Team and the freeze frame ending) to complex worlds in which viewers are trusted to follow a dozen characters over multiple seasons (ergo Mad Men). The pedigree that brings us The Chew is far less prestigious.

In fact, The Chew and its ilk, overtly striving for a female audience, take a step backward from soaps. They make no effort to legitimize women as intelligent viewers; rather, they asks far less of them in the way of participation, memory, and interaction. There is no narrative–topics are fleeting. Of course, I haven’t watched The Chew, but I’ve watched The View, which is insipid to the point of being offensive, and, since ABC is positioning this new show as more fun and less hard work for the audience, I’m guessing it’s an intellectual coma zone.

In light of all this daytime navel-gazing, I for one want to see the remaining soaps pull through this low period. As troubling as soap operas can be, I do not necessarily wish to live in a TV world without them. Sadly, however, this seems more and more inevitable. If and when the end does come, I think–on the balance–the media landscape for women viewers will be a less interesting place. Perhaps soap operas do add to a sort of media ghetto into which “women’s stories” are deprioritized by a male hegemony, but their absence will not create space for new, dynamic stories aimed at women. Their loss will just leave a void.

Luke with Luke and Laura's offspring, aptly named Lucky and Lulu

A Not Completely Ungrateful Letter to the Members of the Academy

Dear Emmy Voters,

I’d be a total moron to look a gift horse in the mouth. You honored Margo Martindale, who, more than any other performer this year, earned the statue you gave her. You didn’t allow affection for Steve Carrell (I mean who doesn’t love Steve Carrell? He’s delightful!) to overshadow the strength of Jim Parsons’s work on Big Bang Theory even though he won last year (really, all this shows is that, even in a crowded field of talented guys, his work rises above).

Lastly, you–gasp!–honored television’s most human show with two significant awards: one for writing, and one for acting.

So here goes: gift horse, mouth.

Maybe last year would have been a better time to give Friday Night Lights its due, providing an Emmy-fueled boost into its fifth season, perhaps driving it forward to a sixth. Again, I’m not complaining. Not too much. I’m just sayin’.

Because the truth is, the world is a better place when Coach, Mrs. Coach, and the Dillon Lions/Panthers are in it.

Your friend,

Mr. F.

Torchwood Is Totally Queer

Over the course of the past month, Chereth and I have watched every episode of Torchwood. It started innocently enough with a geeky summer Dr. Who fling. But once we met Cpt. Jack Harkness, a handsome, polyamorous immortal friend of the Doctor’s, we wanted more more more. This led us to the darker, dirtier, deeper spin-off.

On the show, Torchwood is the name of a secret British alien-hunting agency, and the branch in Cardiff, Wales, monitors a time rift through which all sorts of gnarly beings slip. Pause: yes, I said Cardiff, where both Dr. Who and Torchwood are/were filmed. But the rift and the aliens and all the sci-fi hullabaloo are what make the show genre, not what make it queer.

And the fact that Torchwood is unapologetically queer–decidedly and uniquely so–is what makes it stand out from most, perhaps all, other shows on television.

There have been plenty of gay shows. Cue The L-Word. And there are shows with gay characters on them, but Torchwood is queer, not gay, and it’s queer at its core, not as a side concern or as a backdrop for humor.

The queerness of Torchwood comes right back to Cpt. Jack, who defies labels. He’s already immortal, and therefore less concerned with what people may think of him than a mere mortal might be. His affections are neither traditional nor particular: he’s been around long enough that love and loss are tied up in one big (sometimes depressing) shag fest. In one notable arc, Buffy‘s James Marsters, with his usual swagger, shows up as one of Jack’s exes, adding a certain amount of star power to Jack’s myriad escapades. Jack’s a downright slutty guy who’s lived thousands of years, so a lover must have to be pretty stand out if he doesn’t want to be forgotten.

Certainly, as Torchwood moves through its four seasons, Jack notably has more men in his bed than women, though the show never worries about defining his sexuality. He speaks of boyfriends past, and we know he was married to at least one woman, but these are accepted as tales of a life well-lived. No one dwells on what it means to be bi-sexual or gay or any other thing: Jack is just queer, and this is celebrated nonchalantly.

In comparison, American television, even the best of it, tends to define its characters’ sexuality, noting who is gay or lesbian (the most typical), bi-sexual (only occasionally), or transgender (quite rare); on this side of the pond, we love to draw attention to our own open-mindedness, betraying, of course, a sense of othering. What is so truly queer about Torchwood is its ability to exist comfortably in a queer space. Jack’s snog sessions with Torchwood’s dapper guy Friday, Ianto Jones, are not differently defined from those between Gwen (the show’s other main character) and her boyfriend/fiance/husband, Rhys. What’s more, it’s not just Jack who leaps across the traditional barriers of sexuality: all but one of the show’s central characters has at least one same-sex snog. And that’s just season one.

Quick side note: if you Google “Captain Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones” and click on the image gallery, what you will find, in addition to various photos of the two locked in sweet embrace, is a smattering of photos in which bois and girls photograph themselves dressed as Jack and Ianto, recreating iconic moments from the show. In terms of Torchwood‘s queer reach, this is thoroughly compelling. Clearly, these two are not merely identified as a gay couple (Ianto, in fact, clarifies to his sister that he’s not necessarily gay–he’s just all about Jack) but as exemplars of queerness–categorically impossible to categorize, emulated for their ability to pass through binaries rather than be defined by them.

Now back to the show.

In season four, the U.S. happens, and things get a bit gayer.

In the show’s fourth season, which just wrapped a dual run on Starz and the BBC, Jack and Gwen go stateside when everyone on earth suddenly becomes immortal–and Jack Harkness is suddenly just a man. The American influence is keenly felt when Rex, a new addition to the team played by Mekhi Phifer, drops various comments about how Jack is gay. Suddenly, Jack has to defend his sexuality through jokes–for example telling a paramedic to take good care of his “boyfriend,” Rex. While it is understandable that some vestiges of homophobia are realistic in macho American society, situations like these whittle away at the accepted universe of Torchwood in which there are aliens and rifts in time and boys who like girls who like boys who like boys who like girls. In Torchwood of old, the aliens were the Big Surprise; the queer folk were just your every day human beings. In Torchwood: Miracle Day, aliens are only a passing part of the conversation, but Jack’s gayness, as he is now portrayed as almost solely interested in men, is part of what reminds us of his difference–the last mortal, a man out of time, and gay. What once made him human–proof that he was flesh and blood though, perhaps, a bit more “innovative” (according to Ianto) than others–now is a mark of his difference. And, while Miracle Day is an interesting story, I found myself missing my Jack Harkness–one not so set apart, not so easily defined by external perceptions.

The most standout episode of Miracle Day was penned by Jane Espenson, perhaps television’s greatest ringer writer. You need love and angst and sex and blood? Bring in Buffy and Battlestar Galactica alum Espenson. She’ll up the stakes, bring the funny, and deepen the emotion. There’s really no one better, and the episode detailing the sad and chilling tale of Jack’s 1927 affair with a newly immigrated Italian man, Angelo, who struggles with his sexuality and Catholicism, really delves into the complexity of Jack’s circumstance. Ultimately, though Angelo has to confront his own upbringing and feelings of difference, it is Jack’s immortality that he cannot accept. Honestly, I was missing Jack through most of Miracle Day. His presence had diminished, his flirtatiousness muted, his queerness tokenized. This episode, the season’s 7th of 10, is the first real, complex, and messy reminder of what makes Cpt. Jack Harkness so extraordinary–and so damn human. Hint: it’s not because he shags guys.

Which all leads to this: It’s not yet clear whether Torchwood will be back for another season. I hope it is. And if it does return, I hope it gets back to Torchwood Cardiff, where being queer does not make a person any more different than being Welsh does. But, if it does not return, I hope that Torchwood takes its rightful place in TV history for changing the conversation from one of binaries–in which all people are coded as gay/not gay, minority/not minority, attractive/funny looking–to one that celebrates the great primordial stew that is humanity.