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Why I am no longer talking to Doctor Who fans about race
Tom Baker is my favourite Doctor; Philip Hinchcliffe is my favourite producer; Talons of Weng-Chiang my favourite story. That would have been my position this time last week; and it would be hypocritical to pretend it has changed. It's not a controversial stance. A fortnight ago it would have been about as edgy as saying that Sgt. Pepper was my favourite album or Citizen Kane my favourite movie.
Talons of Weng-Chiang was the final story of the fourteenth season of Doctor Who, first shown in 1977. It's a pastiche of Victorian pulp horror, weaving elements of Frankenstein, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Phantom of the Opera and Sherlock Holmes into a single story. Tom Baker forgoes his floppy hat in favour of a deerstalker: even the giant rat of Sumatra puts in an appearance.
The BBC are very good at historical costume drama, and Robert Holmes is the best script writer that Doctor Who ever had. The story is full of beautiful little period moments. We all remember when Litefoot the police doctor tried to explain the niceties of English tea to Leela:
-- Oh no, only one lump for ladies!
-- Then why ask me how many I wanted?
And the scene in which he and the theater owner try to remain stiff upper lipped in the face of certain death is so good it very nearly spawned a spin-off series.
--I'm not so bally brave when it comes to it.
--When it comes to it I don't suppose anybody is.
At the exact center of the story is a stage magician called Le H'sen Chang, who is the pawn of the evil Chinese god Weng Chaing, who (as is the way with these things) turns out to be a war criminal with a time machine. Chang's appearance and demeanor is based obviously and unapologetically on Fu Manchu, and the story draws heavily on pulp cliches about sinister Limehouse Chinamen. Naturally, Chang is played by a white British actor in yellow make up.
Doctor Who Magazine has, for a number of years, carried a feature called Time Team in which a group of younger fans give their first impressions of older episodes. The original feature ran for over a decade, and reviewed every episode of the classic series from Unearthly Child to Survival. The magazine recently relaunched the column with a panel of twelve viewers under the age of 22: people who grew up with the post-2005 version of the show. In the new feature, the panel comment on a selection of thematically linked episodes from different eras. In the most recent issue, they looked at three pseudo-historical stories: The Time Warrior (Jon Pertwee in medieval England), Thin Ice (Peter Capaldi in 19th century London) and the first episode of Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Time Team isn't about in-depth criticism: it's about first reactions. "OMG Linx looks like a potato!" and all that that entails. But it's intelligent and nuanced: they are neither saying "har-har wasn't old days TV awful" nor are they annotating sacred texts. When they look at the Time Warrior, they really like the character of Sarah-Jane but feel she is reduced too quickly to a damsel in distress. Some of them feel that the Third Doctor is sexist towards her, but some of them feel that he doesn't really mean it.
Their response to the first episode of Talons of Weng-Chiang is about as uncontroversial as anything can possibly be. They think that it is a really good story, but that it is ever so slightly incredibly racist. They say things like: "I was really engaged. It felt exciting like a detective story. It's just the racist stuff that's like, no." and "The music, the atmosphere, every shot is just beautiful" and "...It portrays a race of people from the real world as villains...based on derogatory stereotypes... Yeah, not good."
So. Millennials watch Old Who and come to pretty much the same conclusion that Grumpy Old Fans reached decades ago. Great story, shame about the racism. Nothing more to say.
But Marcus Hearn, editor of Doctor Who Magazine has a great deal more to say. He uses his editorial to set the young folks straight. This strikes me as a curious editorial procedure—hiring a young, diverse panel to offer a fresh take on Doctor Who and then warning the readers not to pay too much attention to them. But it's none of my business how Hearn runs his magazine.
Hearn thinks that the panelists were wrong to find a TV show in which a white man yellows up to play Fu Manchu a teeny weeny bit racist.
His reasons are as follows:
1: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because it was made a long time ago.
2: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because it was not intended to be racist.
3: Talons of Weng-Chiang is not racist because the director, producer and writer were not racists.
4: Talons of Weng-Chiang was not racist because it was a pastiche of the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu Movies.
5: Talons of Weng-Chiang was not racist because it was made a long time ago. Again.
Is Talons of Weng-Chiang racist?
This is the wrong question to be asking. Of course Talons of Weng-Chiang is racist: any idiot can see that. You might as well ask "Was the Aztecs filmed in black and white?" or "Did Nicholas Parsons appear in the Curse of Fenric."
This is the wrong question to be asking. Of course Talons of Weng-Chiang is racist: any idiot can see that. You might as well ask "Was the Aztecs filmed in black and white?" or "Did Nicholas Parsons appear in the Curse of Fenric."
The right question to be asking is "Was racism the only thing about it? Does racism obliterate everything else in the story? Is there anything to talk about apart from the most obvious thing?"
I have watched Talons of Weng-Chiang five times at the very least, and enjoyed it every time. I remember watching it (many years ago now) with a college science fiction society, and overhearing people who were not fans saying that they could hardly believe just how good it was...much too good to be a Doctor Who story. (And also the rat.)
What was going on? I can only think of three possibilities.
1: We enjoyed Talons of Weng-Chiang because it was racist. We were like the man who claims to like fine art but really goes to galleries because it gives him a pretext to look at ladies boobies. We may have said "Ha-ha what a tellingly droll piece of dialogue" but what we were really thinking was "Hurrah! At last we can all get together and have a jolly good laugh at the Chinks!"
2: We enjoyed it despite its being racist. We were prepared to forgive or overlook the racist caricatures because the story was so overwhelmingly fun and well made. In some jurisdictions "redeeming artistic importance" can be a defense against a criminal charge of indecency.
3: We didn't notice that it was racist. We just took it for granted that melodramas contain evil men with yellow faces and long mustaches who can't say their Rs, in much the same way that we took it for granted that space operas included mad scientists with Russio/German accents who say "Nuzzink in ze vurld can stop me now!"
We liked it because it was racist; we liked it despite it being racist; and we didn't notice it was racist. There are, logically, no other options.
And all three positions are, quite obviously, racist. It is racist to not care that something racist is racist; and it is certainly racist to not notice that something racist is racist. If anything, option 3 "It didn't occur to us that there was anything racist about it" is rather less forgivable than "Hooray! We get to dis the Ching-Chongs".
There is a fourth position, which probably no-one reading this blog would take but which people have taken with me in the past: that Weng-Chiang belongs to a special category of art that has to be experienced in a state of mystical passivity. You must not think about it and you certainly must not articulate your thoughts. You must merely let it wash over you. "Get over yourself, Andrew. This is just a TV programme, a bit of popular entertainment. Stop analyzing it." The more fanatical a Doctor Who fan a person is the more likely they are to invoke the "this is just a bit of ephemeral rubbish" defense.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did have a Golly-Wog when I was a child.
And two things are true. I loved my Golly, and I never particularly associated him with the black children in my class, of whom there weren't any. I never gave him de funny Camp Town races doo dah voice when I role played with him. Well, hardly ever. My parents were card carrying liberal Guardian reading CND badge wearing lefties. They would have been mortified if anyone had suggested that buying a Golly-Wog for their little boy was in the least bit racist.
And there is the whole problem.
And there is the whole problem.
We are too willing to limit the definition of "racism" to "being personally bigoted", "being directly horrible to individual people of colour." I have struggled with this myself, particularly over gender issues. I have been far too willing to say "It's true he doesn't think you should be allowed to get married, but he himself is not homophobic."
The least bigoted family you can imagine go to the least bigoted toy shop you can imagine and buy a doll that their child plays with in an entirely non bigoted way. No-one sees themselves as being racist.
No-one is being racist.
And yet the doll is a fucking grinning blackface caricature.
I loved my Golly. I still have him somewhere.
Let us have a look at the Editor's Defense of the Indefensible.
"If you were making Talons of Weng-Chiang today you'd certainly do it differently."
If you were making Marco Polo today, you'd certainly do it differently. You wouldn't cast an English actor (Martin Miller) as Kubla Kahn, and you certainly wouldn't use elastoplast to give him slitty eyes. But there is nothing particularly wrong with the portrayal of Kahn: it's the whole idea of casting white actors in Asian roles we have trouble with. Fix that and you've fixed the story.
If you were making Tomb of the Cybermen today you'd certainly do it differently. You wouldn't make Toberman such a dreadful stereotype. There is really no need for the person who nobly lays down his life in the final episode to be a strong, loyal mute. And even if there is, he could just as well have been a strong, loyal, Caucasian mute.
If you were making Talons of Weng-Chiang today, you'd certainly cast a Chinese actor as Le H'sen Chang. But if the yellow face make-up was the only problem, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We could all just say "Yes, I know! It was a theatrical convention in those days!! What ever were we thinking!!!" and move on.
But it isn't just the make-up. The sinophobia -- Limehouse opium dens, martial arts, the Tong, sinister laundries, kidnapped white women, funny voices, exotic temples -- run through the story like the word "racist" through a stick of racist rock. It is a major part of the aesthetic. It is -- whisper it softly -- one of the things we like about the story. The cod Chinese aesthetic is one of the things we are talking about when we talk about how superlatively well done it all is. And that isn't something that can be fixed. No one imagines we could say "Oh, let's remake Weng-Chiang, but this time make him, I don't know, Swiss." In Marco Polo and Tomb of the Cybermen, the racism is a bug. In Weng-Chiang it is very much a feature.
"1976, when this serial began production, was a very long time ago."
This is the only thing in the editorial which I wholeheartedly agree with.
"And you can't judge the past by the standards of the present."
Yes you can.
Really, you can.
Watch me.
"In 1952, Alan Turing was tried in a criminal court and given libido suppressing drugs as a punishment for being gay. This was wrong."
"In 1900 in the UK, women were not allowed to vote in elections. This was wrong."
"Until 1954 black children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children in some parts of America. This was wrong."
That wasn't so difficult, was it?
"I'm sure that nobody involved with the production of Talons intended to cause offence to any viewers or the ethnic minority represented by the characters in the serial. And the intention behind the work is to me a crucial factor."
Talking about the "intention" of a work is incredibly problematic. It locates the work's meaning outside of the text, in the subjectivity of a person called "the author" who may not even be alive. Talons of Weng-Chiang is a thing; it exists; anyone who can be bothered to put a DVD in the toaster can watch it; and anyone who has watched it may have an opinion about it. The "intentions" of the writer and the producer are a matter of conjecture.
Marcus Hearne is sure that Robert Holmes, Philip Hinchcliffe and David Maloney were not racists. I am sure he is right. But in 1977 they consciously and freely decided to make a Fu Manchu pastiche.
The poisonous content of the story doesn't magically go away because "some of my best friends are Chinese". The poisonous content of the story doesn't magically go away because Robert Holmes sat at his typewriter in 1976 and intended really really hard for his story not to offend anyone. If you don't think the content is poisonous, then by all means show us how we are mistaken. Show us that you've looked at the episode more carefully than we have and spotted stuff that we've missed. Be the better critic. But don't appeal to some nebulous idea about what may or may not have been in a dead writer's mind forty years ago.
"In many key respects Talons was inspired by the penny-dreadful booklets that caused a sensation in Victorian England. The spirit of these lurid stories endured in Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu and elsewhere. Robert Holmes would almost certainly have been familiar with the films based on that criminal master-mind... He was banking on the fact that his audience were too... Quite understandably, many of these films have been locked in a section of the archive marked 'problematic' making it harder for a young, modern audience to appreciate what Holmes pastiche was attempting to subvert..."
"In many key respects Talons was inspired by the penny-dreadful booklets that caused a sensation in Victorian England. The spirit of these lurid stories endured in Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu and elsewhere. Robert Holmes would almost certainly have been familiar with the films based on that criminal master-mind... He was banking on the fact that his audience were too... Quite understandably, many of these films have been locked in a section of the archive marked 'problematic' making it harder for a young, modern audience to appreciate what Holmes pastiche was attempting to subvert..."
This, on the other hand, is an actual concrete argument. Let's not worry about the scare quotes around "problematic" or ask whether Sax Rohmer's pulps really had anything to do with the penny dreadfuls of fifty years earlier. Let's see if the argument stands up. If it does, then I am wrong, the time team are wrong, Elisabeth Sandifer is wrong and we can all watch our favourite story with a clear conscience.
Here is Talons of Weng-Chiang, the Case for the Defence
1: Robert Holmes based the sinophobic tropes in Talons of Weng-Chiang on the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies.
2: The BBC had shown The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, The Face of Fu Manchu and the Brides of Fu Manchu (in that order) over three consecutive Wednesdays in 1975.
3: The audience who watched Talons of Weng-Chiang in 1977 can therefore be assumed to have recognized the source of Holmes' tropes.
4: Modern audiences are unlikely to have seen the Fu Manchu movies, so they can be assumed to be unfamiliar with these tropes.
5: You have to be familiar with the Fu Manchu tropes in order to access the true meaning of Talons of Weng-Chiang.
6: Therefore modern audiences cannot access the original meaning of the story.
7: Those with knowledge of the Fu Manchu movies would have been able to perceive that Robert Holmes was subverting racist tropes, rather than presenting them uncritically. Those without that knowledge are unable to perceive that element of subversion.
I agree that context makes a difference. I agree that lack of context can lead to misunderstanding. I remember seeing An Unearthly Child for the very first time at Panopticon 2 in 1978 and being Totally Blown Away by it. Jeremy Bentham introduced it, asking us to pretend that we had no idea who Susan Foreman was or why her grandfather was so reclusive, and that Police Boxes were so common that we walked past one every day without noticing it. And that's a perfectly useful piece of context-setting. As useful as your GCSE teacher gently explaining that, yes, when Pygmalion was written "bloody" was regarded as a really dirty word. If someone were stupid enough to say "An Unearthly Child is a waste of space because everyone knows the mysterious Police Box is really a TARDIS from the planet Gallifrey" I would certainly write an editorial in my magazine setting them straight.
On the other hand, the original context is never recoverable. You can't watch An Unearthly Child in ignorance of the fact that the Police Box is bigger-on-the-inside; and you do, in fact know whose daddy Darth Vader is. I myself have said that modern audiences can't possibly understand the impact that Star Wars had when it first came out -- how strange and different it was -- and that's true. But if the only authentic experience is that of the first night audience, then the true meaning of most books and movies and TV shows is lost forever and there is no point talking about them.
I suppose that when you say that a movie is racist, or sexist or dirty it is fair to compare it with the background levels of racism, sexism and smut in the culture around it. The original Star Trek is much more racist than the background levels of racism in our present day culture and certainly today's TV. There is only one black character, and all she does is answer the phone! But as we all know, the original Star Trek was much less racist then the background levels of racism in the 1960s: most TV shows didn't have any people of colour in them at all.
But is that really the best we can do? Talons is more racist than anything which would be shown on TV today but it was less racist than the background levels of racism on TV in the 1970s? (The Fu Manchu films continued to be shown until 1983; and notoriously the BBC only dropped it's black-face minstrel show in 1978) The Young People are wrong to say "Whoah! A white dude playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese guy! Not cool!" What they ought to have said was "Gosh! A white chappie playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! But it's obviously based on those movies I watched on BBC 2 last year! And the white chappie in those films played an even more incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! So that's all right then!"
But is that really the best we can do? Talons is more racist than anything which would be shown on TV today but it was less racist than the background levels of racism on TV in the 1970s? (The Fu Manchu films continued to be shown until 1983; and notoriously the BBC only dropped it's black-face minstrel show in 1978) The Young People are wrong to say "Whoah! A white dude playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese guy! Not cool!" What they ought to have said was "Gosh! A white chappie playing an incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! But it's obviously based on those movies I watched on BBC 2 last year! And the white chappie in those films played an even more incredibly racist caricature of a Chinese fellow! So that's all right then!"
I am not convinced. Are you convinced?
This leaves us with one more possibility. The people who knew the mystical code-tropes would have understood that Robert Holmes was not merely copying the racist imagery from the Christopher Lee movies. He was subverting it.
Fine word, "subverting". Taking an idea and turning it on its head. Making a film where the Sheriff of Nottingham was an honest policeman and Robin Hood was a terrorist; producing a panto where Cinderella leaves the prince and runs away with Dandini. Trying to read Hamlet on the assumption that the prince is really bonkers and the ghost only exists in his head.
So there is the defense, and its a good one. Talons of Weng-Chiang subverts the racist cliches of Fu Manchu. We start out with racist ideas about devil doctors who kidnap white women, but only in order to show how silly those ideas are. It turns out that everyone has been very silly and unfair and jumped to the wrong conclusions about the Chinese community and everyone comes to a better understanding of the difference between European and Asian culture and sits down to fish and chips and chop suey together....
Er... No. It is perfectly true that Chang becomes slightly less two dimensional as the story moves on; and that he is allowed a sympathetic death scene. (Did I mention that Robert Holmes is a very good writer?) But the whole cod-Chinese aesthetic of the story is never remotely challenged or repudiated and sympathetic characters say some pretty racist stuff without the Doctor challenging them. (This is all covered in great and good-natured detail in Kate Orman's essay.) One villain turns out not to be quite so villainous after all -- you don't need any esoteric knowledge of old Christopher Lee movies to understand that. But one repentant bad guy doesn't wipe out a story full of anti-Chinese cliches.
I was going to conclude with a brief survey of the twitter storm which has blown up around this issue, but I don't really have the heart. It was utterly, utterly predictable. Abuse towards the Time Team panel for being young; accusations of insincerity -- oh, they didn't really care about race or diversity but were just virtue signalling. All the usual whataboutery, oh, but if only yellow people can play yellow roles then we'll have to censure the Time Warrior because Kevin Lindsay isn't really a Sontaran. People who experience the claim "this is racist" as a personal attack on them and jolly well swear to go away and watch some Charlie Chan films just to show us. And unbelievably nasty, attacks on people who defended the original article and took exception to the editorial. Actually, I think that Elisabeth Sandifer possibly maybe sort of overstepped the mark in saying that Marcus Hearn should resign or be fired. But nothing justifies the kind of abuse she was subjected to. Fandom is an all or nothing world. Once someone is on the wrong side of a particular issue, they are sad, failing writers who have never done or said anything worth while in their lives. (It's a very Trumpian tactic.) It wasn't orchestrated; it was people blurting because they felt that a TV show they once liked was being taken away from them. We are still several months from a DoctorWhoGate. But it has the same effect. It drives people off social media. I don't know how I would write a review of Season 11 in the present climate. I wouldn't be talking about whether I liked a TV show or not. I'd be aligning myself with one or other side in a surrogate culture war. And I'd be at risk of people shouting at me. Which ever side I took. It's not fun any more.
Talons of Weng-Chiang is incredibly racist. Talons of Weng-Chiang is my favourite Doctor Who story. I loved my Gollywog. Why are we still even talking about this?