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.

[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.