e_Paper, Sunday, July 23, 2017

14
SUNDAY, JULY 23, 2017
DT
Opinion
Who is selling
out, exactly?
The new Doctor Who is a woman.
So what?
• Syed Raiyan Nuri Reza
The BBC declared
the person to play
the Doctor’s 13th
reincarnation, and I was
duly reminded that I am quite the
sorry excuse of a Whovian with an
awful lot to catch up on.
And while I make a mental note
to pick up the Doctor Who series
from the second season -- [gulps]
fellow Whovians, I can explain -- I
was taken aback at some of the
reactions online.
They, those behind the said
surprising reactions, threw a bit
of a tantrum over the fact that the
iconic fictional character -- a time
travelling alien with regeneration
ability that confers it near
immortality as it can reincarnate
itself with new bodies -- is, for
the first time, to be played by an
actress.
BBC is a pinko propaganda
machine, they hollered. And the
casting decision was yet another
PC sell-out move, they raged on.
Say, the casting decision was
indeed politically and socially
motivated. So what, I retort?
It is but the utmost naivety to
assume fiction is conceived of in
a vacuum. Their creation draws
from the social, economic, and
political trends. Their themes and
setting reflect the beliefs (or a lack
thereof) of their creators. And
reality itself is refracted in the lens
of fiction.
Orwell’s acclaimed novels
1984 and Animal Farm come to
And are we to forget the
very British James Bond series?
Written in post-war United
Kingdom where Britain still had
an empire to its name, the series
had unsurprisingly pro-imperial
undertones.
Of course, to say nothing of CS
Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia,
which promoted Christianity and
is suffused with religious allegory.
And even with my superficial
degree of familiarity with the
authors’ lives, I can discern their
personal background smudged in
between the lines of their work.
Orwell had his brush with death
and communism at the Spanish
Civil war.
Ian Fleming served for British
intelligence. And CS Lewis
rediscovered religion in his 30s
after renouncing his Christian faith
in adolescence.
See the connections, right?
Now, I will leave it to you
to dig a bit deeper onto who is
running the show at Doctor Who
and put two and two together.
Instead, I will tell you this. In our
increasingly polarising political
and social atmosphere, we need to
grow up.
In our escapades within fiction,
we should not angrily switch
channels when we see the very
humdrum concerns of our lives
that we are trying to leave behind
stare right back at us. That’s not
how it works. Fiction is drawn
from facts and real life.
Let us remember that the script
writers, producers, and directors
BBC is a pinko propaganda machine, they
hollered. And the casting decision was yet
another PC sell-out move, they raged on
Some people don’t like the idea of Doctor Who in heels
REUTERS
mind in this regard. The former a
dystopian narrative and the other
a cautionary tale, both literary
reactions to the totalitarian
regime of Soviet Union and rise of
communism.
are creatures of flesh and blood
and hormones and entitled to their
viewpoints and can incorporate
them in their work all they like.
Provided they do so gracefully
and intelligently and still give
us worthy plot with memorable
characters, making our moments
of entertainment worthwhile.
Yet if the whiff of social and
political activism proves too much,
if any is there in the first place,
instead of incoherent rambling just
articulate an intelligent opinion.
And sure, who am I to stop
you from balling up your fists and
ranting under your breath against
the politically correct invasion
of pop culture. But it does make
me wonder: Who exactly is the
snowflake here again? •
Syed Raiyan Nuri Reza is a freelance
contributor writing from Iran.