I love Doctor Who, although I haven't got around to watching much of it recently. From the little I've seen of the recent series though, it hasn't looked great - and my partner has assured me that both the writing and acting is pretty poor under the current show runner.
Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that the current actor playing the Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is the first woman to take on this role since the show started in 1963. I don't personally have much of a problem with the Doctor being played by a woman, I don't think it has to be a negative - however, there are two counterpoints to this. The first is that the casting isn't a particularly feminist victory - Doctor Who was always a forward-thinking and feminist show with some great examination of gender roles (I even co-present The Man Who Never Would, the pacifist feminist Doctor Who podcast). The second, slightly more relevant point, is that it's fine to disagree with me on this. There are plenty of quite legitimate reasons to object to a woman playing the Doctor - for example, in this article Karen Walsh argues that prior to Whittaker's tenure, the Doctor was the only male superhero to defeat his enemies with words and intellect rather than physical strength, and how in this way he was a challenge to the culture of male violence and rape. I don't fully agree with everything that Walsh says, but she makes many valid points and proves that as a feminist, you can object to a female Doctor. Even if you don't have a strong moral reason for your view, even if it's just that you've always viewed the character as being male and don't want it to change, I may not personally agree but I don't think that view makes someone sexist. If you were sexist, you wouldn't enjoy a programme like Doctor Who in the first place, which has always had a huge number of amazing female characters.
However, try to express a view like this in any context, and you are very likely to be accused of sexism, no matter how eloquently you explain the reasons for your conclusion. It even goes beyond discussions of the Doctor's gender - I'm in a Doctor Who fan group on Facebook, and ANY criticism of the current writing the show, even if it doesn't reference the Doctor's gender at all, is very frequently met with sexism allegations. This attitude has seeped into the actual show - as much as I have no personal gripe with a woman playing the Doctor, it should be presented as completely normal, not referenced at every opportunity. The Doctor's companion Graham, played by Bradley Walsh, is still frequently mistaken for the Doctor by other characters (including by Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), a hugely open-minded and gender-fluid sort of person for whom this reaction is totally out of character). The plot lines are constantly written with a mind to the idea that 'anyone could be the Doctor' - for instance, the most recent series featured a black female Doctor, played by Jo Martin, who was apparently a Doctor before the 1963 First Doctor. To me, this casting decision is actually pretty insulting to black people - it says that theoretically the Doctor could be black, but in reality never has been onscreen apart from in this one-off guest appearance. There's no progressive point making that statement. If you want a black Doctor, cast a black Doctor; don't try to retcon one into the backstory. But this kind of approach from the writers says something about what they're going for: they are so worried about being accused of sexism that they are trying to prove the show's progressiveness, which had always been there, to an extent that it actually goes around the opposite way and comes close to making the show quite offensive. It shouldn't need to do that - to be progressive, you don't need to be preachy about what you're doing, you just need to lead by example.
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Every Christmas, there is considerable discussion about the lyrics to the popular Christmas song 'Fairytale of New York' based on the fact that it contains the line 'You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot'. There are calls for the word 'faggot' to be censored, and counter-calls from media controversialists calling the people asking for this 'lefty snowflakes'.
The first time I came across the word 'fag' being used towards someone in a homophobic way, it was in a novel I was reading online when I was about 14. My reaction as a British boy was 'Aha! So this story is set in England a while back, and the character is a public schoolboy who is a slave to the older boys'. That was what 'fag' meant, wasn't it? As I continued reading, I came to recognise that it was actually a derogatory term for a gay man. When I later realised that it's a shortened form of 'faggot', I thought, 'LOL! That's a meatball. What a stupid insult.' My point being that the words 'fag' and 'faggot' both have numerous meanings throughout the English-speaking world. Neither of them are especially common as homophobic insults here in the UK, although they have slipped into the vocabulary through US TV shows. The most common usage of either of them in the UK is when someone says that they're 'going out for a fag', which means a cigarette.
In the context of the song 'Fairytale of New York', it refers to someone being lazy, which is an old Irish usage of the word. There's quite a strong viewpoint amongst many on the left that irrespective of what it meant originally, the fact that the word can cause homophobic offence is reason enough to censor it. There are arguments that the word can be triggering, that homophobic idiots love the excuse to say it and that people may just not understand what it means in context. I, though, struggle with this logic. Quite apart from the fact that I find it pretty insulting to suggest that the meaning of US slang is more important than the meaning of Irish slang, I do not understand why homophobic people should be allowed to determine the way in which language changes. To use a fair comparison, I have to choose a word that I've never heard used offensively, but whose make-up sounds as though it could cause offence. I choose the word 'twitcher', which is a non-insulting slang term for a birdwatcher. If I theoretically decided to shout 'TWITCHER!' at members of a marginalised group to bully them, would this taint the word forever? Would birdwatchers then have to stop using this term, even though they were using it first? I would say that in that instance, I'd have stolen a perfectly good word and hijacked it, and that the only way to stand against that would actually be to continue using it in other contexts. Truthfully, this is the most effective way to silence a bigot - to use their offensive terms frequently enough in other contexts that they sound ludicrous as an insult. I'm LGBTQ+, and vehemently anti-smoking; if someone called me a fag, I would say, 'Don't call me that, I don't like smoking.'
I'd also add that even if it were used in a homophobic context within the song, is that really so terrible? The song tells a story, and the character who sings that term is not meant to be likeable. I've heard the word as a homophobic insult on TV programmes that are shown before the watershed; if it was a song featuring a homophobe, would that necessarily be a bad thing? It doesn't mean that the person singing it would use the term in regular conversation.
Again, this is an instance where one is assumed to be a homophobic prat if they raise any objection to censoring the word 'faggot' in this song. I understand why they are; I really dislike Laurence Fox and his ilk, and I find it very uncomfortable to be expressing the same view as him. However, I think it is possible to legitimately hold the view that censoring in this case isn't very helpful without being either homophobic or a wind-up merchant. But the way people react to my view on this has taken me aback. A few years ago, I actually lost someone I'd thought was a close friend over this discussion, and I was astonished to find myself cut off over a conversation about words in a pop song.
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The final example is one regarding a film being brought out by the musician Sia, which features an autistic character who is played by a non-autistic actor. This has prompted a huge backlash, and many angry online posts saying that 'autism is not a costume' and 'neurodivergent actors have to have chances to play these roles'. I had never heard of Sia prior to about a week ago, but having seen the way she has behaved over this issue, I certainly won't be supporting her or watching her film when it comes out. Stating that a neurodivergent person wouldn't be able to cope with the filming process and telling neurodivergent actors on social media that 'maybe you're just a bad actor' is not cool, and makes an assumption that neurodivergent people aren't able to do a decent job at acting. I do not support Sia in this.
But... I do not believe that neurodivergent characters necessarily must always be played by neurodivergent actors, for the complete opposite reason of thinking they can't cope or can't act. Quite the contrary - I believe that a neurodivergent actor is just as capable of stepping into a character's shoes as a neurotypical actor would be, and therefore should be given the same opportunities. In actual fact, this idea that 'neurodivergent character must = neurodivergent actor' is pretty harmful to neurodivergent actors. It degrades their skills, implies that they are only capable of playing roles exactly like them and given that there are fewer neurodivergent roles than there are neurotypical roles, poses a tangible threat to their careers. A few years ago there was a similar discussion going on about LGBTQ+ characters, and whether they should be played by LGBTQ+ actors. I'm an LGBTQ+ actor; I've played LGBTQ+ roles, I've played heterosexual roles, and I haven't found my own sexual orientation remotely relevant to either.
The most common counterpoint to this that is given back to me is that we don't live in a fair world, and that even though LGBTQ+ actors and neurodiverse actors are capable of playing parts different to them, in reality they are very rarely given them. This is true, and is a serious problem - but what I don't see is why the producers even need to know this information about someone auditioning. I've auditioned for many parts, and I don't tend to talk very much about my own personal life at auditions. I also audition many people for my own projects, and I don't ask these questions either - they aren't at all relevant to how well someone can play the role. Like everyone, I have unconscious biases - and therefore, the fairest way to prevent these biases from coming out is to deny myself any knowledge of anything that may provoke it. Another counterpoint I get is 'But if you've been through it, you'll understand it and be able to play it better.' Firstly, I don't think this is always true; having this in common with a character doesn't mean you'll be remotely like them, your experiences really depend on where you are from and what sort of people you grew up with. But more importantly, on the occasions that this is true, it will surely be obvious when you're auditioning for a part? We don't think like this when casting any other types of roles. We don't think, 'For this film about a war veteran suffering from PTSD, we need an actor who is a war veteran who suffers from PTSD... where can we find one of them?'
I'm not a big fan of celebrity culture. When I watch a film, I don't think I need to know anything about how the actor playing the main character lives when they're at home. Why does anyone need to know that if we don't know the actor personally? But this is again, a viewpoint that you cannot express without being accused of ableism. I'd argue that it's the opposite of ableism - it's asking for equal treatment and the avoidance of pigeonholing.
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So there we are. Three different complex topics, three different controversial views, three different accusations - sexism, homophobia, ableism. Are any of these views sexist, homophobic or ableist? My opinion is that all of them have a strong case for standing up against sexism, homophobia and ableism (I don't actually fully agree with the Doctor Who one, but I can see why people do.)
My question is, why is it that we've got to such a point in society that the moment someone says anything controversial, we immediately assume that they're being offensive? I wouldn't feel qualified to go into detail about the precise reasons, but I think it's a combination of a few different things. As media has moved more online and onto social media, I feel that many news articles are perhaps slightly less analytical than perhaps they once were; there's more of an emphasis on manufacturing a sense of outrage, without exploring the reasons for it. The ideas have to be clear in a headline, so that someone scrolling can get the basic picture without bothering to read the whole thing - therefore, the sides are portrayed as far more black-and-white than they actually are (and all of the above subjects have additional elements making them even more complex that I didn't even bother to go into for this blog).
As someone working in the creative industry, the last topic is quite a personal one to me, but the first two I'm not hugely bothered about - I've got my opinion, it doesn't matter that much to me what others think. But by talking about these quite small topics, it makes me realise how hostile we're becoming to alternative points of view on the left. It's why we struggle to achieve political success a lot of the time - the right is less moralistic than us, the right can let go of differences and pull together and be united whilst the considerably larger left is still fighting amongst itself. And there is no more obvious example than of Brexit. There are left-wing people who voted Remain, there are left-wing people who voted Leave; I voted Remain, but there were good reasons for voting for both, and our failure to discuss and accept our differing reasons for this has led to Brexit being orchestrated by a radically right-wing Government that will not benefit any of us.
We are meant to be on the same side - and truthfully, I think that the vast majority of the public would be on the same side if our points were clearer and less divisive. If we wish that to happen, we must stop accusing one another of things on spurious evidence and listen to what each other are actually saying.
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