Editorial
Although the Daleks’ plan for world domination in Doctor Who was thwarted by their obvious inability to go up and down stairs, it wasn’t always clear to viewers that the Tardis also had a fault. It is now obvious, however, that it had a constricting glass ceiling to be smashed. Yet the news that the 13th regeneration of Doctor Who will be female has caused such an international fuss you’d think few had ever heard the Dalek injunction: Resistance is futile. Technically, this is not simply a “girls can do anything” affirmation but a blow for LGBT visibility. As Doctor Who’s creators remind us, the time-travelling doctor has no gender. “He” is an alien from Gallifrey, whose till-now time “lord” manifestation reflects the series’ having debuted in the 1960s, when fictional heroes were almost always blokes. The star of 60s TV’s Lassie “regenerated” numerous times – and “she” was most often a laddie.
Still, the fact it’s such a big story that “Woman Takes Job Traditionally Reserved for Men” in a larky kidult TV series such as Doctor Who underlines that gender equality remains a work in progress. One step forward: the kick-ass new Wonder Woman franchise. Ten steps back: the shaming BBC revelation that most of its male stars are paid much more than its female stars, even though they’re doing the same work.
Although the BBC faces a serious – and justified – legal challenge over its gender salary disparity, most of the Doctor Who backlash was in fun. “E-Mas-Cu-Late!” shouted a pink-tinted Dalek meme. Would the new doctor waste precious time rummaging through her handbag for the sonic screwdriver?; would she hygge the Tardis with throws and cushions?
Doctor Who’s status as a venerable institution also raised the red-herring question: need we redress other historical fictional imbalances? A Mr Marple who solves murders while perhaps tinkering with old carburettors in lieu of knitting? Or a Shirley Holmes, a Jacqueline Clouseau, a Horatia Hornblower or a Jane Biggles? Jane Bond could happily romance a succession of scantily clad men with salaciously punned names.
Or maybe not. What’s happened here is that the makers of a popular TV franchise have moved with the times because the backstory of Doctor Who’s fictional world allowed it.
The wider issue is less gender equality and more the power of popular culture to reflect us as we change. Gender equality is lamentably slow-dawning in many human endeavours, but TV, films and books help normalise desirable social trends.
Still, there’s plenty of evidence that you can’t force popular culture to a timetable. Feminist Anita Sarkeesian, campaigning to persuade digital-game designers to stop objectifying and stereotyping female characters, still cops horrifying levels of misogyny, with little significant change in the depictions. Most female games characters are either highly sexualised or disempowered – depictions that add no known value to the skill level or ingenuity of the games concerned. Still, a lucrative market endures for these antediluvian, demeaning pictorials and narratives, since so many gamers resist being reasoned, shamed or browbeaten out of consuming them.
Then there’s history itself, which defies rewriting. The international blockbuster Game of Thrones is widely criticised for its violence – albeit meted out in a nearly gender-balanced ratio. But the cod-medieval-riffing fantasy was inspired by historical events such as the Wars of the Roses, which were conspicuously and pitilessly violent.
Had Mad Men tried to sanitise the past, its 60s New York advertising honchos neither smoking nor treating women as handmaidens, it would have been inauthentic, and a flop.
Another reason we can’t scrub the entertainment world of gender stereotyping holus-bolus is that women are at it too. Women’s magazines constantly marginalise males in favour of females for covers and feature spreads. Here, women sell. Men don’t. The Duchess of Cambridge gets far more coverage on a weekly basis than Prince William, and even 20 years after Diana’s death, we still see exponentially more of her than of Charles, our next king.
While influential institutions such as the BBC so comprehensively fail to practise what they preach on gender equality, further progress will be halting. But at least Doctor Who has struck a blow. For every disgruntled man tuning out, at least two previously disengaged women will tune in. Affirmative!
The fact a female Doctor Who is such a big story underlines that gender equality remains a work in progress.