Torchwood: Children of Earth was something of a disappointment, but that’s not worth a blog post (or at least, my opinion of it isn’t worth a blog post). What may be worth a blog post (you be the judge) is how uncomfortably British the miniseries is, particularly in portrayal of its lead character, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). (I won’t spend too much time summarizing the plot. See the Wikipedia page for a full episode-by-episode plot summary.)

Let’s start with all the ways Children of Earth is affirmatively British (from the perspective of this American science fiction fan, anyway). Like other Torchwood stories, Children of Earth hinges on the interaction between elected officials, civil servants, and quasi-governmental governmental officials (like Torchwood Cardiff). The elected officials, particularly Prime Minister Brian Green (Nicholas Farrell), are almost laughably self-serving caricatures; the civil servants, in the words of one exemplar in the miniseries, “the cockroaches of government,” are dedicated to consistent if morally gray service to Queen and Country; and the quasi-governmental officials are necessary for the darkest needs of the State but ultimately expendable. Civil servants are also expendable, but only to especially cynical elected officials. The civil servants, moreover, become the most interesting and quintessentially British aspect of the series. A long-time bureaucrat in the Home Office, John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi), protects a terrible secret—that the British government surrendered 12 childrent to the 456 in 1965—for decades. When the 456 return, he demands that the previous exchange be taken off the record to protect the Prime Minister and his country’s reputation. Frobisher is then tapped to negotiate with the 456, because the government does not want blood on its hands again. When the 456 demand 10% of the world’s children for their horrifying drug trade (children are morphine to this race), Frobisher is tasked with implementing the plan. And finally, the Prime Minister demands that Frobisher sacrifice his own 2 daughters for the sake of encouraging other parents to do likewise. Frobisher takes a terrible via media, killing his daughters, wife, and self rather than allow his family to be used as political pawns or his children as living drugs.

I spend so long on Frobisher because he is (simplistically, a critic might say) compared in Children of Earth to Captain Jack who, in the miniseries’ climax, uses (and thereby kills) his grandson as a weapon against the 456. That the weapon works in expelling the 456 is not especially important—Captain Jack’s use of his grandson, against the will of his daughter, is supposed to make us uncomfortable. We’re supposed to think of him as morally gray, sincerely working for good but able to do evil when the stakes are high enough. There is a sense in which this is British and unamerican, namely in the sense that Captain Jack is willing to sacrifice the individual for the good of society. Individual liberty is more valued in American than Britain or Europe generally, perhaps because this country was never forced to sacrifice its land and entire generations to its national defense. I think the writers of Children of Earth intend Captain Jack to be a synecdoche for the perpetual national debate between promotion of individual and corporate liberty and security. But they miss the mark.

I read Captain Jack, especially in Children of Earth, as an awkward parody of American rugged individualism. Of course, the character is deliberately constructed as such—the bisexual (tending toward gay) kickass action hero who can cry is most certainly a playful rebuke to John Wayne, Bruce Willis, et al. In many episodes, this works especially well; “Captain Jack Harkness” from season 1 of Torchwood is among the finest TV episodes in the science fiction genre because of this rebuking play on the action hero. Children of Earth, however, shows the limitations of the character, particularly in how he has developed over the past 2 Torchwood seasons. Which is to say, he hasn’t really developed at all. At the series’s worst, Torchwood is driven by Captain Jack’s melodramatic shifts between weakness and brutality, sacrificial kindness and blunt cruelty. The reason that Children of Earth is so overwrought is that these shifts occur minutes apart in nearly all the episodes. This is exemplified by the miniseries’ climax, during which he goes from demanding the government fight back, to weakly resigning to the demands of the 456, to heroically pursuing a way to destroy the aliens, to coldly sacrificing his grandson. I think we are supposed to respect the consistency of the Brit Frobisher and experience discomfort toward the quasi-American Captain Jack, but I just ended up exhausted by the melodrama.

Now I have to bring up the Doctor (warning: I’m referring only to Doctors 9 and 10). It’s not entirely fair to critique Captain Jack by saying he’s not as good or fun or interesting a character as the Doctor, because the latter has had 40 years to develop and the former only 2 years plus 1 miniseries. I do think it’s fair, however, to use the Doctor as a barometer for evaluating whether Captain Jack is at all an effective character. My criteria are debatable, but I think the question is primarily settled by reference to the characters’ national identifications: the Doctor is quintessentially, comfortably British, and Captain Jack (as stated above) is an awkward parody of American action heroes. There is a place for parodies of pop culture, but I find myself drawn to Doctor Who precisely because the character is so well-defined and therefore both compelling and surprising. I agree with Toby Hadoke: the Doctor’s Britishness is defined by his refusal to use blunt instruments (guns, for example) to make arguments. I would add to that, the Doctor understands the need for sacrifice and its resulting sorrow, but he never gives up his principles as a matter of principle (as Captain Jack does ad nauseum). Instead, we find the Doctor making poor choices and learning from them: “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood,” for example, ends with a character’s accusation that the Doctor’s chosen hiding place cost the lives of several innocents, innocents that went unconsidered when he chose to endanger them by his presence. Though his actions are humanly inconsistent, they are characteristically consistent, that is, in terms of the pre-established limitations and expectations of the character. Captain Jack, by comparison, is melodramatically inconsistent, predictably tearing at our heart strings but rarely asking us to think. Not never, but rarely.

I haven’t renounced Torchwood, and I do hope it returns. It’s fun to watch, but it’s not great science fiction. It will be forgotten one day as an interesting but limited experiment alongside the high science fiction giant, Doctor Who. And Children of Earth is further evidence that I’m right in my prediction.

One of the key turning-points in anthropological scholarship was the shift from voyeuristic accounts of primitive savages to taking native practices seriously (eg, Howard Bell Wright’s The Shepherd of the Hills v. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God). I say this because I know it is true, and I want you to know that I know it’s true. But I can’t help but feel toward TBN the way Wright felt toward the Ozark folk culture: it may be beautiful in places, but it’s got a long way to go before I’ll call it sophisticated.

Put somewhat less offensively, my attitude is similar to that of A.J. Jacobs toward snakehandlers in The Year of Living Biblically. After visiting a church centered around this practice, Jacob observes:

I wish Jimmy [the snakehandling pastor] would stop handling snakes. My college antrhopology professors would be appalled. . . .But I still have my risk-reward mind-set, and here the risk to Jimmy’s life cannot outweight the reward of transcendence. . . .I want Jimmy to find transcendence through dancing or hymn singing or Sufi spinning. Anything. (299)

My experience of TBN is not unlike Jacobs’s experience of snakehandling: in isolated spurts, as a detached and critical outsider. The network has been on my mind an awful lot recently, too, because of a couple books I’ve read: Jim and Casper Go to Church by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper and Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television by Nadia Bolz-Weber (the latter, incidentally, sports an endorsement by Jacobs on my edition).

These books both have interesting gimmicks, but they are not equally endowed with quality prose. Henderson and Casper (respectively, a leader in the Christian house church movement and an atheist family man), well, go to churches across the United States and write their honest impressions of each. Bolz-Weber watches 24 hours of TBN with a diverse cloud of witnesses in her living room—and it really is diverse, from conservative Church of Christ congregants to gay rights advocates to lapsed Jewish atheists. They’re answering different questions: one asks how Christians are perceived by outsiders and the other asks whether “Christian media” (or, as Bolz-Weber renders it, “the Christian-industrial complex”) contributes anything positive at all to the world. They cover some of the same ground—both books examine the Dream Center and Joel Osteen. As alluded to before, one is clearly a better book than the other. Henderson and Casper really have a rapport, but their transcribed conversations are almost always a little excruciating to read. It’s as if they’re trying to be chatty and to “keep it real” (yes, dear reader, they do utter that phrase to each other), but it hardly ever works. Bolz-Weber, however, is witty and direct and authentic. Her book bears all the marks of a careful revision to make the words just sing.*

Both books were helpful in helping me figure out my stance toward TBN. I’ve usually regarded it, looking down my nose of course, as below me. I thought I could ignore it as simply unsophisticated. But here’s the rub: that’s not what a responsible Christian should do. TBN is theologically unsophisticated and, as demonstrated by Henderson and Casper when they visit Lakewood and throughout Bolz-Weber’s account, oriented toward building and expanding its (and its presenters’) richesse. It is also an essential mover and shaper of ideas about Jesus for millions of people in the United States and around the world. For many people, it is the public face of evangelicalism in particular and Christianity in general. And as Bolz-Weber states,

While maintaining that the properity gospel, the rapture, and Christian Zionism (all TBN fare) are up there with the selling of indulgences and the existence of purgatory as the stinkiest Christian ideas in history, I still must admit that God’s redeeming work in the world does not happen only when we get all the theology and method right. (5) 

Bolz-Weber says, essentially, that God is working through TBN, and it’s a claim that Henderson employs throughout Jim and Casper Go to Church when Casper raises a particularly good question about seemingly bad Christian practices. People are being served, imperfectly, but they are being served nonetheless. I can buy that.

The problem that this admission raises, however, is that TBN is popular among people who feel disconnected from the world. Bolz-Weber constantly wonders about the shut-ins who give their SSA checks and inheritences to TBN, and these people have stayed in my mind. Why are they tithing to TBN? Because they have no other place to tithe. No other place that they identify with so completely that they want to give monetarily. I know—I’m overgeneralizing. It would be naive to say that most or even a third of committed TBN viewers-supporters do not belong to some church. It would be even more naive to say that these viewers-supporters do not tithe to their own church. These people exist, but I’m not concerned with them at the moment. There are a great deal of people who are actually alone, untouched by the church except through TBN. And Christians have a responsibility to ask why. Why are people being abandoned by the church in the world to be sucked dry by the church of the airwaves?

The perceived benefit from giving to and consuming TBN still remains a powerful counterargument. Why worry? There’s some good in what the network does. I can accept that. But my mind instinctively reverts to the Jacobsonian position: I wish they would stop watching TBN. And I wish the rest of us would find them and provide a real, full-Gospel alternative.

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*She also has the best one-sentence explanation of Jean Baudrillard’s term, “simulacrum,” that I’ve ever heard. I didn’t think that was possible.

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Bolz-Weber, Nadia. Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television. New York: Seabury, 2008.

Henderson, Jim and Matt Casper. Jim and Casper Go to Church. Carol Stream, IL: Barna-Tyndale, 2007.

Jacobs, A.J. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally As Possible. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

I remember the first time I read Shakespeare.  It was Romeo and Juliet, in junior high, in the wake of the awful Baz Luhrman adaptation.  Over the years, I have grown to hate the perception of the play as romance (it is, after all, a tragedy), but the experience was valuable nonetheless–it was the first time I noticed artificial dialogue.  That is not to say unrealistic dialogue or awkward dialogue, but dialogue that noticeably differs from regular speech patterns to make an artistic point.

I think we’re mostly used to realistic dialogue, which is itself a misnomer because all speech is (or should be) condensed and enhanced when it is translated into an artistic medium.  Stephen King and Elmore Leonard are authors that come to mind–they take speech patterns of a group of people (say, Mainers and crime bosses) and imitate them effectively in novel form.  The effect is to make the characters believable as regular people; the characters are artistic creations, yes, but we generally need some connection with them.

Artificial dialogue is much more difficult.  Few people spoke like Shakespeare’s characters, even the clowns, but they’re never flat or unrealistic.  Prospero’s rage and Romeo’s damned love* are completely believable within the space of the plays.  The artificial dialogue, with its brilliant turns of phrase and poetic rhythm, succeeds in probing the deepest parts of our selves, the parts of our selves  that we hide in what we say to others.  Artificial dialogue is almost always** more effective at probing the human self than realistic dialogue, but is significantly harder to pull off.  Most of the time, the result is hopeless pretense.

I’ve lately been noticing artificial dialogue in my reading and viewing.  I’ve been reading Douglas Coupland’s first novel, Generation X (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1991) and I recently saw John August’s directorial debut, The Nines.  I haven’t finished Coupland’s novel, but the first third or so epitomizes the ideas of the generation he’s examining without actually mimicking its speech patterns.  A great deal of it is realistic, but much of it is not:

Well, Dag.  I see a farmer in Russian, and he’s driving a tractor in a wheat field, but the sunlight’s ogne bad on him–like the fadedness of a black-and-white picture in an old Life magazine.  And another strange phnomenon has happened, too: rather than sunbeams, the sun has begun to project the odor of old Life magazines instead, and the odor is killing the crops. (7)

What amazes me about passages like this is that Coupland maintains a tension between showing the spirit of the generation (narratives, impressions, doubts) without the pretense and hesitation of the generation’s actual speech patterns.  His characters’ speeches to each other are highly poetic and deeply insightful, but only because they don’t actually represent reality.

I’ll blog about The Nines later on.  Any other examples you can think of?

*Note: Not Romeo’s sincere, mature love but his damned love–damned from the start because he’s still a boy infatuated with the pretty women around him.  Juliet is much the same.  I’d even be willing to make the case that the impulse driving them together is primarily sexual and only secondarily emotional.  “Star-crossed lovers” is a deeply ironic phrase, and it is a misreading to interpret it as straightforward (as is supposed by the popular culture markers surrounding the play).

**I would make an exception for cultures in which people generally say what they mean.  Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book I have recently fallen in love with, uses highly realistic yet brilliantly poetic dialogue because the culture she’s examining airs its anxieties out loud.

I was driving to the store, running your typical Saturday afternoon errands, thinking about the prospect of moving.  Well,  it’s not really a prospect,  it’s a reality. We are moving in late August to Austin.  Don’t get  me wrong,  I am glad I am moving to a land of flip flops, used books and small, privately-owned coffee shops (take that Starbucks!),  but I am annoyed that I’ll have to get to know the area and find a decent place to shop.

Shopping, you say? Mr. Refuge for the Literate cares about shopping? I had thought he was a poor bohemian who likes books in a freakish sort of way, but definitely not a shopper.  Well, this is not Mr. Refuge for the Literate writing–this is his wife, writing a guest post*.

Out of the blue, I said out loud, "A good dollar store is hard to find."  Tim laughed.  I then went on to explain to him the differences in dollar stores.  You must be thinking right now that we must be some poor trailer trash people, but I assure you, we are not.  Tim reads too much to be trailer trash.  The reason I like shopping at dollar stores, is because you get the same damn things–but for less.  Sure, part of the reason why dollar stores are able to offer such low prices is because they don’t pay their workers nearly enough, but hey, at least it’s not Wal Mart.

That’s another reason I shop at dollar stores–I hate Wal Mart.  Every time I have gone there, the alarm goes off when I exit.  I have asked and apparently the reason the alarm goes off is because I carry a cell phone.  Do they mean to imply that they are not advanced enough to put alarms on that will not go off if you have a cell phone?  Or is it that their primary patrons don’t carry cell phones with them?  Besides, what kind of scum shops at an establishment where they have to check your receipt at the door to make sure you did not steal anything?  But I digress.

On to dollar stores.   I actually used to refuse to shop there–until I became a poor college student who went on to marry an academic.  I realized that there was no point in paying $3.95 for a box of dishwashing soap I could get for a dollar at the dollar store (department of redundancy department, yes I know).  Thus, I started getting my cleaning supplies there.  I am sad at the fact that when we move, I will have to locate a good dollar store where to get my cleaning supplies.  Tim still does not understand the fact that there are differences between dollar stores.  Thus, I offer you my treatise on dollar stores.

1) Selectivity of items depends solely on location.  Better items will be found at dollar stores located in suburbs.  Furthermore, dollar stores located in suburbs tend to be bigger and cleaner.  Sure, we can debate on the socio-economic implications of why this is a truth of our society, but I am not here to debate on such topic.  I am here to talk about dollar stores.  So…  When I used to live near Little Mexico, the dollar stores were sub-par at best.  Now that we live out in the ‘burbs, the dollar store is actually a safe place in which to shop.  Thus, if you live near a ‘burb, shop there.  Sure, we can discuss the possibility that the amount of money it would take you to drive to a ‘burb would offset the cost of shopping at a dollar store, but then you would be deprived of the elation of knowing you saved $2.50 for a three pack of paper towels.

2) Follow the Targets.  Best dollar stores are located near Targets.  Don’t ask me, I don’t know why.  But it’s the truth, the best dollar stores are located near Targets.  Better yet, find a dollar store, near a Target, in the ‘burbs.  Now that’s some superior dollar store shopping!

3) Beware of Dollar General stores!  These are not dollar stores! These are stores where "most everything" is a dollar.  Which really means that most everything is $2.99 or so.  You’d think that people would figure it out by the use of the word "general" in the store’s name, but you’d be surprised.  Besides, their selection is not as good.  You will mostly find things that were in vogue five years ago–insofar as something in a grocery store can be "in vogue."  Seriously, my sister and I have found stuff that is that old.  By the way, my sister likes Dollar General stores, I like Dollar Tree stores.  It causes commotion every Christmas time at dinner.  We don’t like to mention it.   In any case, Dollar  Tree stores is where you want to go.

 Thus, my treatise on dollar stores concludes.  But this will not take away the fact that I still have to locate a good dollar store when we move.  Moreover, this post will probably not enlighten my husband in the ways of dollar store shopping.  But I hope that it  might have enlightened some of you–or at least made you chuckle once.

*Do not worry, he is still alive and well. Actually reading a book at the moment**.

 ** I thought a Refuge for the Literate post would not be complete without footnotes.  They are used almost religiously around here, and I would not want to dissapoint you.

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Currently, groups like the American Family Association are up in arms over an upcoming episode of Will and Grace in a manner they find offensive.  The AFA and other like-minded organizations are declaring victory over NBC after the network pulled its controversial and short-lived program, The Book of Daniel.  I’d like to put in my two cents on this issue.

–We should all remember that others have just as much right to blaspheme as Christians have to call out blasphemy.

–Declaring victory does little good, especially when the evidence is not particularly favorable to the  claim.  The Book of Daniel was released in January and scheduled on Friday nights–clearly, NBC did not have much faith in its continuance.  Had the controversy caused curious eyes to watch the show, then NBC would have continued it.  NBC’s decision was economic, not political–letters matter little, viewers matter much.  Thus, declaring that Christian protests were "instrumental" in the show’s cancellation makes protesters sound arrogant.

–Conspiracy theories do less good than declarations of victory.  The head of the AFA said in a press release that NBC is "smarting from the Book of Daniel defeat they suffered, and this is their way to get even."  If NBC is announcing the show this past week, then it was probably in the docket for at least a month.  The offending joke (and, not to mention, Britney Spears’s guest appearance) was probably put together months ago.  Crafting conspiracy theories only makes the AFA and associated groups look paranoid and irrational.

–Politics is perception (The American President–rent it sometime).  Consider the current fiasco in the Arab world over a five-month-old Danish editorial cartoon.  Arab leaders are using an offensive–but protected–cartoon as an excuse to incite violent protests.  Meanwhile, many in the West are beginning to say some nasty things about Muslims because of how their leaders are representing that faith.  I’m not saying that the current fuss over Will and Grace is as irrational or dangerous as the current fuss over the Danish cartoon–far from it.  I’m just saying that all should be aware that no group makes inroads into the mass culture by ignoring how the mass culture perceives that group.

–Responses to offensive art should be prompt, grassroots efforts.  It is acceptable, for example, to boycott the network, send letters to network and advertiser contacts, and encourage one’s entire address list to do the same.  Such actions must be restrained, though.  All rhetoric must be peaceful, for the reasons discussed above.

–Education is far more effective than anger.  When the US government was accused of desecrating the Qu’ran, the Council on American-Islamic Relations gave free away thousands of copies of the Muslim holy book.  Currently, they’re promoting stories from the Islamic tradition of Muhammad turning the other cheek in an attempt to assuage the anger being hurled by many Muslims at the West.  They criticize, but they also educate–which, in the end, will bring far more people to their side than anger, however righteous it may be.

In summary, I don’t think Christian groups have to submit to attacks on religion by the mass culture.  I would love for them to join the conversation our country is trying to have on morality, but I want the conversation to be civil.  In my opinion, the joke on Will and Grace is just as insensitive and juvenile as the Danish cartoon that portrays Muhammed as a terrorist.  What that tells me is that many in the mass media are still immature in their understanding of Christianity; they need to be educated, not shut down.  Maybe they can’t be convinced, and maybe they will always be so immature.  Christian groups cannot stoop down to that low level, though.  They have a higher calling, after all.

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