News just in: RTD has balls; Ianto gone for good

[filthgoblin]

terraswrath just sent me a link to this interview with RTD about the outcry over Ianto's death in Torchwood.

Can I just say upfront that the following article and my own thoughts might contain views that are marginal and controversial in this fandom? KTHX. However it seems that I'm backed up by the big man in this instance. And he is big. Believe me. I've sat next to him ;)

I have been calmly and politely standing my ground against some fans who are raging that the death of Iantos shows Torchwood to be "heteronormative". In my gut I didn't believe this to be true, but I don't like to go off half-cocked on something so I went off and did some research and this only reinforced my view. Rhys and Gwen are a heterosexual couple. They were behaving in what one could consider a normal way in spite of, one could strongly argue, very abnormal circumstances. But that doesn't make the show heteronormative. The term has been used to suggest that RTD never gives a gay couple [read: Jack/Ianto] a happy ending, but apart from Gwen and Rhys he hasn't given ANY couple a happy ending. No-one generally comes off well in a Torchwood relationship, but given the number of same-gender canon pairings in the show and the way those have been portrayed I don't think it could be argued that non-heterosexual lifestyles are given a marginal viewpoint or that there is any suggestion anywhere that they are considered to be less valid. Folks seemed more surprised that Tosh got it on with another human being than the fact that she got it on with Mary specifically. No-one batted an eyelid at the fact that Jack and Capt. John were so clearly lovers. The throw-away lines from Gwen in Day 1 that she expects Jack and Ianto to be together, wherever they are, makes me think that their relationship was very much accepted as the norm at the Hub. Furthermore, the series has certainly left its fair share of heterosexual pairings in its wake - Gwen and Owen, Owen and Suzie, Owen and Diane, Tosh and Tommy, Ianto and Lisa.

Those who stand by the heteronormative argument and have discussed this with me have asserted their view that when you total up the bodycount at the end of the seasons to date, the fact that the only remaining relationship is Gwen and Rhys [effectively making it "Straights 1 : Gays 0"] means that the show IS heteronormative. However, I honestly don't see a huge bias favouring opposite sex attraction when looking at all the relationships in the round and I think that boiling the normative nature of a show that's spanned three series down to a straightforward head-count at the end of one story arc seems a little simplistic in the context of a show full of pretty complex relationships.

I don't personally understand the attraction of Ianto as a character, but I do understand his fans are hurting and feel the show has let them down in some way, leaving them them grieving for someone they had cared about deeply. But I'm annoyed that some are choosing to use what I considered to be flawed sociological reasoning to get angry about this rather than accepting that joy and tragedy both form part of well-executed drama and congratulating the writers for doing such a good job of getting them so invested. The fact that the bodycount totalled one fewer straight couple in the context of the whole series does not make the whole show heteronormative. Also, as a side issue, I'm horrified by the number of people who seem to sneer at Gwen for getting the happy ending and seem to want her to suffer in some way in order to even the score. Being homo-positive but a raving misogynist is okay to some, apparently.

I know I'm on the losing side of this argument due to sheer numbers. I just wanted to get that out of my system. And now I've gotten it off my chest, I'd better get back to work.

Comments

[sweetsyren.livejournal.com]

I don't get their argument at all. Torchwood peeps baffle me anyway.

I loved Ianto and I was SAD when he died but theres a part of me that thinks the show was better for it. I thought it was honest and genuine and right that he should die. I'm glad they didn't retcon it. I'm glad again that they had the balls to do it in the first place. Sure it was hard to watch and made me cry like a little girl but it was brave and I won't lambast the writer/s for that. RTD did what he thought was right for the characters and the show in general. Whether that is proven out in the long run remains to be seen, but as it stands now, i'm glad he did it.

TW fandom has the most skewed perspectives sometimes. I'm glad I don't actively participate there cos i'm sure I wouldn't last long. I like Gwen and am glad she got a happy ending and I think what Jack did was right and i'm glad he ran because it was honest. <---- That little thing right there would have just signed my Request for Flaming.

Also in the article I spotted this:

Question: But it's a risky thing to kill off such a popular character.
DAVIES: Absolutely. There’s a risk that some people won’t come back to watch now that Ianto’s gone. I thank them for watching the show and I recommend they go watch Supernatural, because those boys are beautiful. And don’t tell me they’re brothers. [Laughs] Not in my mind.

RTD SHIPS WINCEST! I'm dead from laff.

[filthgoblin.livejournal.com]

Honey, trust me when I tell you that the best place to be is a million miles away from the majority of this fandom. It's fine to dislike a character in a show, and I've disliked many in different series, but how far some people take Gwen hating just makes me shudder. The community antigwenallies has as its description an invite to "all those who hate the Torchwood 'ho". Um, what? If there were to be someone labelled as a 'ho in that series, wouldn't it be the not-at-all monogamous, strictly polyamorous Jack and not Gwen? The level of misogyny demonstrated by some in the fandom is quite chilling.

I agree with you that CoE was honest. I also think it was good writing precisely because it has provoked such emotions amongst the fans. And I also laughed very hard at some parts of the article, particularly the bit about the fandom wank about homosexuality being like children picking up building blocks and waving them around in the air because they don't know what to do with them. But yes, the fact that he ships Wincest in SPN [even though I've never watched it] is win :D

[sweetsyren.livejournal.com]

That fandom has a serious lack of perspective. The whole Jack making eyes at Gwen...what does that make Jack? The subject of a "ho"'s interferance into Jack/Ianto's tru luff omg? I don't think so. If they're going to tar and feather people then at least realise that theres more than one person that could apply for the position of sticky and fluffy.

Lol that bit made me giggle too. I may hate Rusty with a passion for what he did to Donna but I love him as a writer that makes no apologies for his artistic vision. That's a good thing. He should never apologise for something just because a couple of fans get on their loud hailers.

[baka-sensei.livejournal.com]

Lurking lurrrking... hahaha, I noticed you'd written some FAB Being Human fic, and I just got into the fandom- so I will be reading and commenting on that stuff. Then I saw that you had a Torchwood tag, and me being a HUGE Torchwood fan, I just had to click.

I just wanted to say I agree with you pretty much completely. If ANYONE has a right to kill off a gay character, it's Russel T Davies, who has Queer As Folk at the top of a list of many many gay-positive and gay-friendly television shows (not to mention the fact that the man is gay himself). The people who are screaming "heteronormative!" in the fandom just make me sad, because they haven't done any research, or they take a very simplistic and frankly, falsely dichotomous view. Quite honestly, the fact that Jack is an openly omnisexual character, and that the Jack/Ianto relationship was as clearly defined as it was on the show, with kissing and cuddles and discussions of FEELINGS, those two aspects are alone enough to pretty much destroy any argument of heteronormativity. The relationship between Jack and Ianto was developed and treated like any normal relationship, in spite of the fact that they are both men.

Now, that said, I must admit I am one of the people who was very upset and pissed off with Ianto's death. Part of it is the fact that as a bisexual woman, I was sad to see one of the very very few realistic representations of a bisexual character be taken away from a relatively popular tv show. The larger reason I felt upset though, was that RTD and the other writers seemed to (and have since admitted) that the only thing Ianto's death was supposed to accomplish in the plot was to damage Jack so that he could kill Stephen, successfully reducing the death of my favorite character on the show into nothing more than a plot device.

Add on to that the fact that it was a WEAK plot device at best; I mean, we've got two supposed alien fighters whose only plan in battling a pretty much unknown alien threat is to roll in there, guns held high and say, "HEY! STOP IT OR WE'LL TELL ON YOU!" seemingly without considering the idea that the aliens might respond with anything other than, "Whoops! Sorry, our bad. We'll just leave you guys be." There was no contingency plan, Ianto was simply there to go, "Yeah, what he said," when Jack delivers the threat. Additionally, they KNEW these aliens lived in poisonous gas, KNEW they were capable of creating anti-viruses and viruses, and yet didn't think to bring gas-masks? I'm not even a member of an alien fighting organization, and that would've been one of the FIRST things on my list.

Overall, I just felt the way they got Ianto into the situation where he died was sloppy writing with an "ends-justify-the-means" mentality- that if they could deliver a poignant death scene that was very dramatic and depressing, then it wouldn't matter how they got to that death scene in the first place. Though it was a very beautiful and well done death scene, how he got there wasn't believable. I call bullshit.

Now that it's done, I've pretty much accepted Ianto's not coming back. I would still want him back, but I'm 99.99% sure that's never gonna happen. It makes me even angrier that a lot of the people who want him back like me make the rest of us sound like idiots because they wave the heteronormative flag. There are actually quite a few intelligent and respectful fans out there raising money for charity and signing petitions in Ianto's name to show their appreciation for the character and to express their desire to have Ianto back as they are people who spend money on the DVDs and merchandise, but they're getting drowned out by the 15 year olds who just watch the show for the "ZOMG! Pretty slash!" and not for the actual character relationships or substance.

[baka-sensei.livejournal.com]

I just felt like the best way Jack's character could be further explored would be through his relationship with Ianto, and now that's not going to happen. The writers have a right to do what they want with their storyline- I just think it wasn't so much "art" as it was "shock value for the sake of shock value." And if I do continue to watch Torchwood, I'm certainly not going to be getting attached to any of the characters they'll introduce and probably kill off in the future. You keep killing off characters, and the drama involved in killing them off is lost. Everyone becomes a red-shirt that none of the fans care about. I only hope they've got some pretty phenomenal plot-lines in mind for series 4, because without them, I'm not going to stay interested.

[filthgoblin.livejournal.com]

Blimey. I don't think I ever received a comment before that bust the word limit, let alone from someone I never met before!

I agree with what you say about death being overused in Torchwood and it losing its value. Jack's being killed no longer holds any shock or in fact value to my mind. Even scattering him to the four winds in little tiny pieces and seeing him lacking most of his flesh didn't shock me any more.

However, the argument that killing Ianto hurt Jack so deeply that he would then kill Stephen doesn't hold water for me, I'm afraid. That would suggest that Ianto, a man he'd known for a couple of years and only really gotten to know in recent times, meant more to Jack than his own grandson. Also, I am a fairly lone voice in the fandom [or not so much in the fandom these days, to be honest] in thinking that Jack didn't really feel all that much for Ianto anyway. To my mind Jack mostly exhibited libidinous behaviour towards Ianto rather than affectionate, and in CoE not even much of that. He brushes off Ianto's seeking discussion on the status of their relationship, looks perplexed rather than pleased that Ianto wants to comfort him after he's died [again], there are still a lot of fundamental things about Jack's life he chooses not to share with Ianto, and he even passes up the opportunity of a bunk-up in favour of a plate of beans on toast.

I wasn't invested in the character like many were. I understand that those who were invested in it, or saw something different in the relationship to what I saw, are hurt and upset. But I think we're in agreement that some people should grow up and stop using terms they don't really understand to justify their upset at the loss of a character they loved or just the loss of mansex on telly.

[baka-sensei.livejournal.com]

Hahaha- sorry about the rant, I just felt the necessity to get it out of my system, and it was late, and I stumbled upon an articulate though marginalized view point within the fandom, and I'm all about people who hold their own opinions. Especially in fandom, because there is SOOOOO much lemming-mentality... I can't even begin to tell you.

HI! I'm Maria and I'm a fandom addict. *is chagrined* Probably should've introduced myself earlier.

Also, I completely agree with most of what you say about the argument that killing Ianto hurt Jack deeply enough for him to kill Stephen. It's a really dumb argument for the writers to use to justify why they felt killing Ianto was necessary, and just makes his death that much more pointless. I'm of the personal opinion that Jack probably would have sacrificed Stephen REGARDLESS, since he's certainly shown in the past that he's a big picture kind of guy, and capable of making horrible sacrifices at the expense of innocent people (Season 1, episode 5, anyone?).

I am one of those fans who likes to think that Ianto did mean something to Jack; more than just a casual screw, but that's just the way I read their relationship... it's one that, though shaky, isn't simply a convenience (it's kind of the OPPOSITE of a convenience, if you really think about it). I would say that Ianto definitely cares more for Jack than Jack ever did for him, but all those inequalities are part of what makes it so interesting to me. I think Jack cares about Ianto as much as he can, him being immortal and messed in the head and all.

We should just punch all the silly fans in the face with our sexy rhetoric. They won't know what hit 'em. :D

[filthgoblin.livejournal.com]

Your rants are welcome here. As long as everyone stays polite, all are welcome to express views. It's very refreshing to discuss issues related to this fandom with someone who doesn't necessarily agree with me but doesn't screech me for being a homophobe, or call me just plain mental. And yes, I have had people in the fandom question my sanity because of my views.

I don't see what you see in Jack and Ianto's relationship, but that doesn't mean that either of us is right or wrong. It's all open to interpretation. And yes. I thrust our logical discourse in the faces of shrieking fanbrats until they shit rainbows ;)

[baka-sensei.livejournal.com]

...Seriously? People have called you a crazy homophobe? *flails* I just... GAH! What the hell is wrong with everyone? I guess that's the thing I don't understand about fandom- the trolling and the insults. I mean, I get really invested in characters (which you kind of have to if you're a fanfic writer or someone who really cares about a show) but never once have I felt the urge to be insulting or angry towards someone who was not insulting or angry towards me first. If someone just says, "Hey, this is what I think," how can you get mad? Everyone is allowed to have their own opinion. If they're not actively oppressing you or trying to harm you, how can someone saying their piece upset you? If anything it should encourage you to communicate with them, ESPECIALLY if they disagree with you. Shouting insults just comes across as lazy, IMO.

As far as the Jack/Ianto relationship goes, it's all very possible that I see what I want to see. There've been many articles/opinion blogs I've read where the person holds a point of view closer to yours than to mine, and I've had to admit that that reading of the relationship makes sense as well. That's what comes when you're dealing with the subjective reading of subtext and an actor's performance to inform you- nothing is overtly stated and you can read the same piece of evidence 20 different ways. Even when things ARE overtly stated in lines, they can be rationalized differently, or you could argue they come from a different emotion on the character's part, or the character could be outright LYING... That's what makes shows so interesting, though! :D

[filthgoblin.livejournal.com]

I agree that this is what makes the shows interesting. No one person's view is the right one. I don't claim to be correct about my interpretation of relationships because it's just that. An interpretation. What I will continue to state that I'm right about is the fact that this show in particular is demonstrably not homophobic or heteronormative because I have researched the terms, the tropes of both and can state evidence to illustrate why neither are applicable.

So there.

If it's alright, I'm gonna add you as a friend. It's nice to have someone around that I can chat about these issues with intelligently.

[baka-sensei.livejournal.com]

Yay! New lj friends! Of course it is alright to add me. I shall add you back. It's especially nice to have friends whose opinions differ from yours- I learn so much more about stuff when I'm not just preaching to the choir. :D

I feel like people throw the terms homophobic and heteronormative around in the same way that people will call Obama a fascist and a socialist in the same breath. They don't really know what the terms mean, they are just using them as a word synonymous with "bad" that makes them sound smart (or at least they THINK it makes them sound smart). When you question those people further, it turns out that they have no idea of what the term actually means. Honestly, if you have a strong opinion about something, you should know your reasons for having such a strong opinion so that you can articulate your argument. If you can't articulate your reasons, why did you have a strong opinion in the first place?

But then, I'm a philosophy major and I guess the whole, "Know your argument forwards and backwards" is just kind of ingrained. It surprises me how much of the population feels totally justified in acting on a gut reaction or emotion without first analyzing why they feel that way. Or how many people will have an opinion on a topic they have little to no knowledge of just so that they can have an opinion. What happened to everyone that they suddenly think it's not okay to just say, "I'm not sure," or "I don't know," when faced with a question on an issue instead of bullshitting some sort of opinion? It's just sloppy and makes me despair for humanity.

[filthgoblin.livejournal.com]

You and I may have different views on some issues, but seem to have the same approach to addressing them. I'm going to enjoy having you around :)