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.