Today I want to talk about two things, one concrete and one abstract. The first is a simple show I very much enjoy, because it challenges me to think, even if it doesn't do so on purpose. The second is much more complex, but is perhaps a reflection of the first. Today, we are going to talk of Men and Daleks.
When one thinks of Doctor Who, one of the first phrases that comes to mind is the perennial favorite of the Doctor's nemeses "EXTERMINATE". The Daleks are, for better or for worse, one of the opponents that have come to define the Doctor. They are the eternal threat. The enemies that are the antithesis to the Doctor, and who are always hanging at the edge of space, threatening everything that is not Dalek. Or, so, at least, the Doctor will have us believe.
Terrifying Monsters?
Even though it tends to be glazed over, the Doctor is very much an unreliable narrator. We understand the Daleks as a threat, not because we've seen them be actively hostile, but because the Doctor has told us that the Daleks are evil. This is coming from a man who was willing to sacrifice his current companion to assure himself the genocide of the Dalek race, a man who has in the past committed genocide for "the greater good". Perhaps we should give his claims more scrutiny than "yep, that sounds good, it's the Doctor!". Again, this is a timelord who will happily tell you that he lies and manipulates for "the greater good". I can already hear his supporters protesting my claims, contesting that the Doctor is in fact, not unreliable, but let us analyze the evidence at hand.
We encounter the Daleks well into their war with the Doctor. We are told, time and time again, that the Daleks can only feel hatred, and their actions would certainly seem to reflect that. Their cold compassionless extermination of those in their way, their seeming lack of hesitation at enslaving humanity. But this also disregards large swathes of evidence. Take Remembrance of the Daleks where we see two different Dalek factions embroiled in ideological war with each other, surely a finely tuned engine of hate would show more internal agreement. After all, if the Doctor is to be believed, these abominations consider the Dalek form to be sacred. In fact, their entire ideological discussion of the perfect form, and their schism over Davros shows a theological bent in the Daleks that hints at a much deeper intellect and culture than the almost locust like plague that the Doctor portrays the Daleks as.
The Cult of Skaro, with its innovating ideas and deeper understanding of their enemies, hints even further at the fact that the viewer tends to gloss over, that the Daleks are intelligent, and capable of learning. That perhaps what we are dealing with is not a culture of pure hatred and destruction, but rather one that is much more alien. Because the doctor is focused on the threat they present and his hatred of the Daleks, he cannot, and by extension, we are denied, the possibility of seeing that the Daleks may not be *just* a culture of hate. They may be embroiled in what they perceive as a war for survival, but that is perhaps the consequence of a race created in the very crucibles of war. As we learned, a war so destructive that it made the timelords themselves lose their sanity. Is it impossible then, for us to consider that the Doctor may not have given us the best representation of a more complex race, a race that he and his people have been battling for ages. A race that, from what we are shown are a threat, but all we are shown is the Daleks at war. Because the Daleks are at war with the Doctor, because all we see are their clashes, we get a skewed impression. As we would if we only saw the Doctor at his worst, if instead of seeing him saving people, we saw him only when he had to commit whole races to extinction, our judgement would be equally skewed.
Reading this, one might think that this is an over analysis of a simple show. One meant to be mindless. But this is an exercise, one that seeks to illustrate something very important. To demonize is human. Every generation has it's Daleks, and consciously or subconsciously, every nation, every family tends to paint an inhuman portrait of their enemies. The Greeks described the Persians as devils and held them to be inhuman enemies. The most recent and visceral example is how the Americans portrayed the Japanese during world war two. Just looking at propaganda and popular media, it was clear that the Japanese were sly and treacherous enemies, inhuman, capable of only feeling hatred. Sound familiar? Its the arguments of someone who cares more to spur hatred, to "do what is necessary" than to comprehend the enemy. Because to understand is to acknowledge that the enemy may have a point of reason, to accept that perhaps they may be deserving of mercy.
Terrifying Monsters?
It is part of the human condition to divide. Them and Us. The Clan and the Enemy. Safety and Threats. What is different is a threat. While it is understood that sometimes, even often times, differing goals make peace or even acceptance between groups impossible, what we cannot afford to do is lose sight of our horizons. Be persuaded, for even a second, that your opponent is not human and you will have lost a spec of your humanity, and any chance of triumphing without paying a great cost. Even worse, is when you allow someone else to make the decision for you. When you allow something as deceptive as an ad, or a story to shape how you see things. This is why, we must always analyze what we read, interpret what we see, and discern the intent behind it. This is why, we must always think upon even the most mindless of shows, and give our assessment. Because if we do not think, we become sheep, and sheep are easily taught to hate. So, now I ask you to think carefully. Who are the Daleks of our generation? Are they a nation? A people? A social class? Or something entirely different?
This is most evident in the radio-play style pieces that Paul McGann did with Big Finish productions. They're really wonderful, and I'd highly recommend them.
They go into a remarkable amount of depth on the relationship between McGann's doctor and Davors, especially when you start to see the extent to which McGann would be responsible for the collapse of the timelords, and Davros for the relatively untennable position of the daleks.
GMarshal, thank you for a very astute and disicerning analysis.
I completely agree with what you are saying, I perceive very clearly that the drive to demonize the other is at the core of the problems faced by the human race. Perhaps less agreeably I see this as having a Psych-analytic origin.
This is certainly not to understate the economic, biological and environmental challenges faced by the human race, but this is by far the greatest challenge we must overcome. But how can we expect to overcome these when we routinely disregard the other for what it is and paint our image on its surface. How can we overcome these REAL challenges when this demonization is part of our human subjectivity.
On November 20 2012 00:49 Probe1 wrote: The Dutch.
Please elaborate on this sir probe
Yes, please elaborate. And i believe that for certain countries it is the U.S. That are the bad guys, and for the U.S. and also Europe the muslims are the enemy. It is all just a matter of perspective.
The problem with this kind of argument is that when both sides realize its existence, it becomes vigorously meta.
This is the way some people try to rationalize support for modern-day communists as an "alternative" to the current government. They try to portray communsists as an enemy of "Dalekisation" (no, they do not actually use the Doctor reference. people who are involved in this have no way of knowing what Daleks are) - that they are acutally only being painted as the paramount of evil by those nasty corrupt right-winged power-hungry... Daleks! I am eagerly awaiting the moment when the anti-communist realize they are being Dalekised back.
You see? Highly meta! Happens all the time. Given enough iterations, noone has any idea who started polarising and exagerating first and what is the actual truth burried under several rounds of namecalling. Not that it actually matters, because both sides are already completely different now.
There is in fact a well worn psychological path in creating the "us" vs "them" argument. Part of any major conflict lies in men killing other men. According to some, this is a difficult proposition, because we are not wired to easily kill other people. In order to facilitate the ability of soldiers to fight, a certain amount of dehumanization occurs. (This is why WWII propaganda posters often show outrageous features, such as the one you include.) This also gives rise to a lot of various epithets that become used in conflicts - that's not a human being, like you, doing a job like yours, with maybe a family and kids... that's just some <insert highly offensive noun here> that's a threat.
TL; dr - it's easier to shoot someone if you can't or won't empathize with them.
As far as Daleks go... they were asking for it. Stealing the jelly babies... (totally plausible, because Time Lords live a life which ties history into knots and then chucks it in the bin.)
I loved this blog post, and while I don't agree (we frequently see Daleks attempting to invade earth and exterminate wholesale a race which was, with the exception of Rose, generally uninvolved in the death of their race) I think it's really important to examine this notion, and you have made an excellent social observation using the medium of science fiction.
Which, I think, is how we know that Dr. Who is good science fiction.
The Korea/Japan Dokdo dispute and China/Japan islands dispute are the examples closest to home for me. Ordinary people get so angry about something which makes absolutely zero difference to their daily lives, and fall so easily into an us-vs-them mentality. And as we saw with the recent protests in China, it can easily turn into violence against innocent people.
This is why nationalism is bullshit, because it precludes discussion about any of the real issues and discourages people from thinking critically, in the same way that religion does. You can't even begin to argue or suggest a different viewpoint with someone because merely doing so provokes such a strong emotional and defensive reaction.
But as we all know, every government needs their two minutes hate, no matter how much they might talk about "building strong and friendly relations" in diplomatic circles.
I think Probe may have been referring to Civ 4. My roommate is always complaining about how OP and difficult to deal with the Dutch faction is in game play. Very well written article though, it takes a refreshing view of the Doctor from what could very well be everyone else's point of view in the universe. Maybe the Doctor did go insane in the Time War, which is why he has such a bizarre fetish for humans.
Nah I just wanted to screw with Nyovne. I read the blog and thought it was quite good but couldn't pass up the chance to write an extremely pithy response to what merited a complicated explanation. I figured if I wrote Terran Players it'd be too predictable and if I wrote Mongolians no one would bite. So it popped into my head that I hadn't tempted Nyo in at least 30 minutes and I had a quota to keep up.
Or maybe, sometimes, I feel like I should serve as the foil to SirJolt. For every eloquent response he makes, I want to immediately follow with the equivalent of me riding a lawn mower painted with an American flag while waving an actual American flag in one hand while pouring cheap American beer down my face with the other. And there would be an explosion behind me. With chicks.
The Dutch are vonderful.
I'll take a second shot and give a real answer this time. The first and strongest response to "our" would undoubtedly be Muslims. We all remember how anyone Arabic looking was treated in the last decade. In some ways, they still are mistreated, stereotyped and looked at with suspicion that would be called racism if it were any other group. I'll focus on the next question by directing it towards racism because it is easily identifiable while other bias can be more vague to recognize.
To answer the "me" question.. that's harder to answer. There's the easily digestible racist that wears a white hood and shouts WHITE POWER at rallies. He admits and embraces the idea that he is racist and makes it part of his ethos. Not many people admit to being that kind of racist and are right to say so.
But many of us are racist. I'll assume when driving through French Town that if some black guy that walks up to my car at a red light probably isn't going to be good news. Is it because of where he lives? Yes. Is it also because he's black? Partially.. yes. It takes a lot for me to admit that. It's not how I portray myself in my 'mental image'. If the same situation happened outside of the ghetto I wouldn't feel the least bit apprehensive. But does this make African Americans in impoverished areas my Daleks? Not really. My prudence that is sometimes based on stereotypes and sometimes grievously wrong doesn't mean I hate or distrust all African Americans. I'm not dehumanizing them as a race, I'm wary of where they live.
Then who are my Daleks? I don't know. I would like to imagine myself, in that mental image, that I don't single out any group or race or gender or nationality but I also know better than to trust myself if I think I'm perfect. The answer to "Me" is I don't know but I don't want to view anyone as dehumanized as a dalek.
Some of this is just wandering exposition and I guess I could edit it down and try to produce some coherent thoughts but I think it's best if I just hit update instead. I'll conclude by reiterating that we dehumanize Arabs and Persians or other Middle Eastern people as a nation more than any other group.
On November 20 2012 12:32 Probe1 wrote: Nah I just wanted to screw with Nyovne. I read the blog and thought it was quite good but couldn't pass up the chance to write an extremely pithy response to what merited a complicated explanation. I figured if I wrote Terran Players it'd be too predictable and if I wrote Mongolians no one would bite. So it popped into my head that I hadn't tempted Nyo in at least 30 minutes and I had a quota to keep up.
Or maybe, sometimes, I feel like I should serve as the foil to SirJolt. For every eloquent response he makes, I want to immediately follow with the equivalent of me riding a lawn mower painted with an American flag while waving an actual American flag in one hand while pouring cheap American beer down my face with the other. And there would be an explosion behind me. With chicks.
i haven't seen much original who, and not in a long time; from watching new who, it doesn't feel like we're looking at it from the POV of an unreliable narrator (doctor) but from a neutral observor; since the doctor is around the commentating is pro-doctor, that doesn't make the POV non-neutral, just the exposition. so if we treat what occurs as firsthand observation, the daleks are openly xenocidal.
The doctor certainly hates and demonizes the daleks, but they're also definitely fairly bad people from what we've seen of their actions; he also didn't want to kill the daleks who actually reformed (though really only 2 had, one by losing part of his dna, the other through extreme exposure to time stream).
Just cuz ur paranoid doesn't mean people aren't really out to get you; and just because you're demonizing people doesn't mean they aren't really bad people; e.g. al-qaeda
while you raise good points; i feel it's a bit of a stretch to use it on daleks.
On November 20 2012 15:06 zlefin wrote: i haven't seen much original who, and not in a long time; from watching new who, it doesn't feel like we're looking at it from the POV of an unreliable narrator (doctor) but from a neutral observor; since the doctor is around the commentating is pro-doctor, that doesn't make the POV non-neutral, just the exposition. so if we treat what occurs as firsthand observation, the daleks are openly xenocidal.
The doctor certainly hates and demonizes the daleks, but they're also definitely fairly bad people from what we've seen of their actions; he also didn't want to kill the daleks who actually reformed (though really only 2 had, one by losing part of his dna, the other through extreme exposure to time stream).
Just cuz ur paranoid doesn't mean people aren't really out to get you; and just because you're demonizing people doesn't mean they aren't really bad people; e.g. al-qaeda
while you raise good points; i feel it's a bit of a stretch to use it on daleks.
Consider that the daleks are involved in a war with the last time lord, a man who's not hesitated to kill them without compassion in the past. A man who belongs to the same race that has, time and time again destroyed entire species and cultures "for the greater good". No doubt that the Daleks are not exactly peace seeking, but they are a product of the time war, and are also on the edge of extinction. We've seen the Daleks only at their worst, never at their best.
Not that I disagree, the daleks have shown to be callous and uncaring, but not to the extent the doctor insists on.
It happens all the time, in almost every war. Like hell a government would ever want you knowing your nations enemies are human. The numero uno example of dehumanization I can think of is Hitler, but more recently? Maybe Kim Jong Il, or Osama Bin Laden.
EPT
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