Jack Harkness: In Your Century, Defying Your Labels
In 2005, the cult classic Doctor Who was revived. Produced by the BBC, the show originally ran for twenty six seasons between 1963 and 1989. With its revival, Doctor Who is now the longest running science fiction series in the world (Orthia 208). Doctor Who chronicles the adventures of the Doctor—an alien from a race known as the Time Lords, who travels through time and space in a ship known as the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). The Doctor travels with companions, usually human, who he usually plucks out of their lives to take off to see the universe. Inevitably, this touristy gallivanting leads the Doctor and his companions into some situation where some injustice must be fought or wrong righted or evil defeated, as the Doctor saves the day before he and his companions fly off to their new adventure. From within the context of the show, producers and writers have presented political and cultural commentary on relevant social issues such as rampant consumerism, the dangers of uncritical thinking, decolonialism, war and the dangers of a social construction of utopia (Charles 455).
Since its revival, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies has taken on the role of auteur, exercising a degree of control which puts the direction of the first four seasons of Doctor Who on a par with the shows of Joss Whedon for conscious creative direction (Hills 26). This is evident in the consistency of its vision and messaging, but is, perhaps, even more evident in its spin-off—Torchwood. While Doctor Who was originally conceptualized for children and has remained a family series, in 2006, Davies launched Torchwood which deals with darker, more adult themes (Needham 153). The Doctor may roam the universe and all of time seeking to protect those in need, but the team on Torchwood is, usually, firmly earth-bound. Their mission is to defend Earth from alien threats. The show positions the 21st century as the time when “everything changes,” and Torchwood stands ready to do whatever must be done to protect Earth through those changes.
These are the sorts of stories which Russell T. Davies looks to tell, but one element of his cultural commentary has been on queer issues. I use the word “commentary” here warily, however, because Davies’ has been accused of pushing an agenda in his work—a gay agenda. Openly gay, himself, Davies’ disputes these claims, but he does not deny that his narrative openly and happily presents a plethora of sexualities and options for character relations and identification. What Davies disputes, is the idea that this constitutes an “agenda” which suggests “an outmoded approach to sexuality as an ‘issue’” (Hills 34). Instead, Davies sees his work as representative of the progressive way he would like the world to be—to him, that means a world where people are equal and sexuality, race, gender and religion are not something which need to be defended, because they are non-issues.
Davies’ characters’ sexuality are not issues within the narrative, they are “an almost throwaway, unimportant point” (Hills 34). Within Davies’ narratives—queer is ordinary, normal. While Davies can argue that this is a non-agenda, because he is making sexuality a non-issue, the very act of doing so is a radical step for a television show. Still, Davies insists that his inclusion of varying sexualities in varying configurations is non-didactic. He wants the sexuality of his characters to be read in a progressive fashion as a non-issue. As much as challenging right-wing prejudice, Davies also launches his “non-issue” in the face of left-wing clichés which encompass the burden of representation—the idea that images of sexuality in narratives must work to counter societal prejudice (Hills 36).
Despite Davies non-agenda, his making of sexuality a non-issue, (or perhaps because of it), the normalcy with which he treats queer identities feels radical and even more subversive than if it were made an issue. Moments of queerness have raised their head in Doctor Who since the beginning in the 1960s, but the blatantly normal inundation of queer characters and scenarios in Davies’ Doctor Who and Torchwood is impressive—even more so when you consider the epic worldwide success of the franchise under Davies’ reinvention. The main character of Torchwood Captain Jack Harkness is an omnisexual action hero from the 51st century and has been celebrated by many within the LGBT community. Torchwood has received numerous accolades for its representation of sexuality. Two examples of this: John Barrowman, who plays Jack, has been named Entertainer of the Year by the UK based LGB rights organization Stonewall, and US based Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) nominated Torchwood in the category Outstanding Drama Series (Amy-Chinn 64-65).
Even the show’s detractors admit that Torchwood is important in the discussion of LGBT representation in the media. Many mainstream viewers might not watch a “queer” show by choice, but given Davies’ decision to make the sexuality of characters in the world of Doctor Who and Torchwood incidental to their main mission of defending the Earth from alien incursions, the series is easily defined as a science fiction and action show, not a “queer” show. The inclusion of alternate sexualities in the narratives thus exposes viewers to new ideas and new ways of thinking about sexuality, which research has shown generally leads to normalization and acceptance of minority subjective positions (Holz Ivory 187). Beyond the exposure to mainstream of queer lives, media representations of queer characters “can help LGB individuals explore the range of identity positions available, and media attitudes can help in making decisions on whether it is safe to come out to family and friends” (Amy-Chinn 65).
However, not everyone is happy with Torchwood’s representation of sexuality. In particular, critics have claimed that the show does not go far enough, and that Jack’s sexuality has been undermined for political and commercial reasons which undermine the radical credentials the show purports to have. One critic in particular has focused on the show’s depiction of bisexuality and the narrative turns the presentation of Jack’s sexuality takes to become more palatable to a mainstream audience. In her article, “GLAAD to be Torchwood? Bisexuality and the BBC,” Dee Amy-Chinn argues that as Torchwood gained popularity and shifted from the more permissive BBC Three to the more mainstream BBC One, the “scope for characters to explore their bi potential is restricted, and normativity progressively reasserts its privileged position. In the end, the show bows to forces that militate against true visibility for non-normative sexualities” (Amy-Chinn 64).
While Amy-Chinn’s article raises valid points for examination and consideration, she completely neglects alternate interpretations of both the text and possible motivations, fails to examine the larger scope of the narrative and in so doing ignores textual instances which invalidate her position, and attributes to network and politicized pressure storytelling turns supported by the text deeming the seeming shifts in characters’ sexualities to be a “failure” on the part of Torchwood and the BBC. The crux or Amy-Chinn’s dissatisfaction seems to lie with a perceived failure on the part of the BBC to use Torchwood as a vehicle for the “radical representation of minority sexual identities” (Amy-Chinn 76). Provocatively, she asks and concludes:
If…the BBC does not bring these identities into the wider broadcast arena, then who will? Given that LGB individuals can seek out programming that meets their needs in terms of representation and identification, what matters more than ever is not simply what gets broadcast, but also where it is broadcast. Normalization requires representation in the mainstream where it can be encountered by everyone—not just at the fringes where it is seen only by those predisposed who seek it out…Torchwood offers the ideal vehicle through which to foreground the BBC’s commitment to representing all those who fund public broadcasting in the UK. Torchwood began life with the claim that the 21st century is when “everything changes.” It still has time to deliver on that promise (76-77).
Admittedly, this is a compelling argument, rhetorically. However, Amy-Chinn’s ultimate disappointment in Torchwood seems to be that Davies did not make sexuality an issue, or that his representation of bisexuality, in particular, did not meet her standards for representation. Of course, Davies has clearly stated that he wants to avoid just this sort of debate—to make Jack’s sexuality (and those of Davies’ other characters) a non-issue so that it does not have to carry the burden of such representation. Jack is not a token bisexual character whose job it is to represent bisexuals to the world. Given some of what Amy-Chinn objects to in the narrative, she seems to have a very specific notion of what bisexuality should look like, and some of her arguments raise the worrisome specter of biphobia and damaging stereotypes about bisexuals. Davies is an artist, a creator, and dictating to him that his queer characters are not queer enough, or accusing him of altering the queerness of characters to satisfy the suits at the BBC seems like one of those very troubling “this is how you should be doing queerness” arguments.
Since the majority of Amy-Chinn’s argument seems focused on the representation of Jack’s sexuality that, too, is where I am going to focus in this paper. While this paper is not meant to be solely a response to Amy-Chinn’s essay, I use her arguments as a jumping off point and a frame for my own exploration of Jack as a queer character. Since Jack was originally a character on Doctor Who, and has made several appearances on the show since Torchwood start, inextricably tying the two shows together in a cohesive paradigm of a universe, I will also be considering the representation of Jack’s sexuality on Doctor Who. Given Amy-Chinn’s underlying argument that the failure to “properly” represent bisexuality has been due to a programming shift in time and channel, this seems doubly important because Doctor Who airs on BBC One (the channel Amy-Chinn blames for the failure in minority sexuality representation) at a pre-watershed time (as it is meant for children).
In the spirit of responding to the points raised by Amy-Chinn, I begin this essay with an evaluation of her argument, assessing the validity of her points, highlighting areas where she has overlooked critical pieces of the narrative or influences upon it, indicating the points where she makes dangerous assumptions. Within this I provide a detailed examination of the presentation and narrative arc of Jack’s sexuality, which I feel Amy-Chinn over-simplifies. Finally, where Amy-Chinn sees failure of representation on the part of the BBC, I provide alternate sources of interpretation and representation of Jack’s sexuality and emotional journey. Ultimately, I argue that while Amy-Chinn is undoubtedly correct that minority sexualities deserve representation and identification, to force such representation and identification upon another’s creative work with no regard for the artistry involved is a repressive position from which to argue and ultimately ineffective. There is a difference between a radical story which is not the precise radical you wanted and one that is “doing it wrong” or “failing in its promise.”
Radical Representation: The Problem with Labels
Amy-Chinn’s argument is a singular one, but it can be broken down into two main, if highly interconnected, parts:
1) By presenting a character who is omnisexual, Torchwood had the opportunity to question the binary of the sexuality narrative – that people are either gay or straight, but ultimately, the show only flirts with this concept and ultimately presents bisexuality as alien and privileges normativity and the gay/straight binary instead.
2) The sexualities of the show’s characters shift as the show migrates from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One, muting sexual flexibility and sexual openness as the show airs on more and more mainstream channels. This shift to the mainstream was the reason for the normativity inculcated into the show.
Bisexuality as alien
Amy-Chinn argues that while Torchwood may have content which seems to validate minority sexualities on the surface, but that ultimately these indicators of minority sexuality are explained away as the result of alien influence (76). In the first season of the show, all five of the main characters—Jack, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato (Tosh) and Gwen Cooper–engage in, or reference, both opposite-sex and same-sex encounters. In the pilot episode, “Everything Changes,” Owen breaks the rule to not take alien tech outside of the Torchwood base. Owen chooses an alien pheromone spray which makes him sexually irresistible. When his irresistibility to a woman draws the attention of her irate boyfriend, Owen uses the pheromone spray on the boyfriend as well. They kiss, on-screen, and the three of them head somewhere more private for a threesome. In “Day One,” Gwen is seduced by a girl who is infected by an alien parasite that needs orgasmic energy to survive. Later in season one, Toshiko engages in a lesbian fling with, yes, an alien (“Greeks Bearing Gifts”). Jack and Ianto, in the meantime, share a kiss in episode four and have an established—if casual—sexual relationship by the eighth episode of the season, with fandom interpretation setting it a few episodes earlier (which is validated by flirtation in the pilot episode and extreme amounts of sexual tension in the flashback in the second season to when Ianto joined the team) (“Cyberwoman;” “They Keep Killing Suzie”).
Amy-Chinn devalues the experiences of Owen, Gwen and Toshiko as not being truly bisexual. While she has a point in relation to Gwen’s encounter, which was truly under alien influence, it is important to note that Gwen never protests her own sexual orientation, and , beyond Gwen’s silence, the moment allows for a conversation which frames both Jack and Davies’ perspective on sexuality and is, perhaps, something to which Amy-Chinn should have paid attention. Toshiko and Jack view Gwen’s kiss with the alien on the security monitor. Jack looks amused, Tosh appalled. Sputtering and trying to understand, Tosh exclaims, “I thought she said she had a boyfriend!”
Jack looks at her, gives her a smile and shakes his head. “You people and your silly little labels” (“Day One”).
Dismissing Owen’s threesome with the woman and her boyfriend, Amy-Chinn states that this is the only time we see Owen taking interest in men and otherwise he is portrayed as a promiscuous heterosexual (69). The kiss and sexual encounter she dismisses as nothing more than a potential indication of the show’s willingness to be edgy and provocative, and since the pheromones were an alien element, the bisexuality is even more devalued. I think that this is giving both the show and Owen too little credit, and also fails to acknowledge later evidences that Owen is at least willing to engage in further same-sex encounters.
First, the alien pheromones worked on the boyfriend, not Owen, so the choice to use them and sleep with the man was not the result of alien influence on Owen. Secondly, since Owen chose to have sex with another man, that indicates more than the show’s willingness to be edgy—it indicates Owen’s willingness to be open to same-sex experiences. The conceit that bisexuals must always be perfectly poised between opposite and same-sex attraction is nothing more than that—a conceit. Owen’s heterosexual promiscuity does not alter the fact that the presentation of the majority of “heterosexual” men cheerfully going off to have a same-sex encounter when not in some way inclined that way just does not happen. In a media landscape saturated with “I love you, but not in a gay way” messages, even if Owen does tend to lean more toward the straight side of the fence, his openness – without hesitation – is radical. Secondly, contrary to Amy-Chinn’s assertion, Owen exhibits interest in same-sex encounters at least twice more in the series.
When the world seems in danger of ending, Owen thinks that he, Ianto and Gwen should get naked for one last go before the end. There’s no privileging Gwen over Ianto, despite the fact that Gwen is someone with whom he has had an affair—in fact, it is upon Ianto that his gaze mainly rests (“Sleeper”). This could be argued to be a throwaway comment, but in a world where sexuality is constructed to not be an issue, and throwaway comments consistently give crucial character information, it is a comment with significance. Even more tellingly, when Owen is relieved of his duty for medical reasons and relegated to making the coffee (which used to be Ianto’s job) until they can finish testing him, he gets into an altercation with Ianto, telling the other man that he bet Ianto was loving this, that it was like he’d won. Ianto replies that he did not know they were in competition, to which Owen says, “Oh, come on. Even Tosh had more of a life than you used to, and now you’re always out on missions, you’re shagging Jack, and I’m stuck here making the coffee” (“A Day in the Death”). Why would a man without any interest in men list Ianto’s same-sex relationship with Jack as something that Ianto has “won”?
Likewise, though Toshiko’s same-sex encounter is with an alien, she is not under any alien influence as to her sexuality. Mary, the alien, offers her an artifact which allows her to hear the thoughts of her coworkers. Through it, Toshiko learns that Owen and Gwen are having an affair and that they think she is sweet but out of it and not very socially aware. Hurt, Toshiko withdraws and Mary offers a sympathetic ear. An ear turns into drinks which turns into sex. Amy-Chinn argues that this encounter is due to alien influence and out of step with Toshiko’s usual sexual orientation. However, while inadvisable sex can certainly result from isolation and emotional hurt, it rarely does so with someone of your non-preferred sex. Perhaps, like Owen, Toshiko generally leans toward heterosexual practices, but the attraction to Mary is present before she overhears Gwen and Owen’s thoughts, and if she is embarrassed in the aftermath, we see in later sexual encounters that shy and a bit embarrassed is Toshiko’s usual reaction to being naked with someone—not just with a girl (“Greeks Bearing Gifts;” “Combat”).
While acknowledging that Ianto and Jack present better instances of bisexuality, Amy-Chinn still ultimately dismisses Torchwood’s handling of them as inadequate for her goals of normalization of marginalized sexualities. The others she sees as a failed promise of the subversion of fixed identity, but, as demonstrated, her evidence of this supposed failure is weak (72). With her analysis and dismissal of Ianto and Jack as proper representation of marginalized sexualities, it becomes difficult to know what would satisfy her unstated requirements.
As mentioned before, Jack is presented as omnisexual from the start—not the start of Torchwood, but the start of Doctor Who. This consistency with his identity and the channels it appears in is something I will discuss further in the next section. Before interrogating Jack’s status (and supposed failure) as a person with a liberated sexuality, I would like to address Ianto. Ianto is presented as flirty with Jack from the opening of the series, but his sexuality is established, and then reestablished, as heterosexual. As such, his three season engagement in a same-sex relationship seems to be a strong marker for the potential of fluid sexuality.
Ianto’s girlfriend and his love for her make an appearance in “Cyberwoman,” and a great deal of Ianto’s motivations for joining Torchwood and putting himself in Jack’s way are revealed—he is trying to save his girlfriend from conversion into a cybernetic monster. Her humanity is already gone, however, and ultimately, after she nearly kills him and the rest of his team, and when she is about to kill him again, the team arrives and kills her, leaving Ianto with nothing much left. The breach of trust in the episode between he and Jack is devastating, but soon (within episodes, soon—the actual time frame in linear time for the characters is unclear) after he is seen to have embarked on a sexual relationship with Jack (“They Keep Killing Suzie”). There is some discontinuity in these episodes, as they were meant to air in a different order, which can explain the timing of things a bit.
Ianto and Jack’s relationship begins as casual and non-exclusive. Owen dismisses Ianto as Jack’s “part time shag,” and when one of Jack’s previous lovers comes to town, he dubs Ianto “eye candy.” Jack certainly seems far less engaged in the relationship throughout, but by the twelfth episode of the first season, “Captain Jack Harkness,” Ianto can be seen to be establishing a deep commitment to Jack. Jack, however, is less committed. He finds himself in a doomed romance across time, telling the man he falls for there that there is “no one” for him—while Ianto is working desperately to save Jack and get him home. When the Doctor stops in Cardiff, and Jack realizes he is there, he abandons his team without a word, running after the Doctor for whom he as waited over a century and a half (“End of Days”). That “adventure” goes wrong and ends up in Jack having to live a year being tortured while the world burns under the feet of a mad Time Lord. At the end, a paradox is able to be undone and the year becomes “the year that never was,” for everyone save a few, including Jack and the Doctor. Remembering what he went through, and decisions he made about what was important to him, Jack declines the Doctor’s offer to travel with him again and returns home to his team, including Ianto.
From this point, Jack and Ianto begin a halting dance toward a more committed relationship, occasionally sidetracked by others Jack cares for. Ianto stays true through it all. However, once the relationship is established and Ianto finds himself questioned about it by his family, he denies a transition to a homosexual identity. When his sister asks if he’s “gone bender” and then is hurt when he will not talk to her, Ianto attempts to put his feelings for Jack into words. “He is very handsome…It’s weird. It’s just different. It’s not men. It’s just…him. It’s only him.” The “only him” comment carries the weight of a tradition of one true loves behind it (which feeds into a great deal of fandom love for this pairing), in a lot of ways—not it’s “only him” as in “I’m not sleeping around,” but it’s “only him” for me, ever (“Children of Earth – Day One”).
Instead of analyzing this discourse as evidence of the fluidity of sexuality which she is seeking, or as evidence of the emotional, affective attachment which, for many people, does attach and lead to sexual relationships, Amy-Chinn sees, once again, evidence of alien influence. Because Ianto once commented that Jack smelled really good, and Jack mentioned it was his 51st century pheromones, Amy-Chinn concludes that Ianto’s fluid sexuality could well be just another instance of external alien influence which tempers the idea of bisexuality being a natural part of the human condition and eliminates insecurity in heterosexual men that they might suddenly be prone to same-sex desire (75). If Owen’s toss-off comments cannot be construed as indicative of sexual fluidity, then how can Jack’s be construed as exerting alien influence so great as to overcome a straight man’s aversion to same-sex sexual encounters?
Perhaps Ianto did find Jack smelling good a bit of an odd sensation, an awakened thrill of desire. But if Jack’s pheromones were so powerful, then everyone would be falling in love with him and under his “alien influence.” And even if the pheromones were a spark that set Jack apart in the attraction phase, there is nothing indicative in the course of their relationship from which to assume that Ianto’s feelings did not grow from fleeting physical attraction to a smell to something deeper. If Jack had the ability to influence sexuality and emotions just by how he smelled, the narrative would certainly have explored it sooner and in more depth.
It seems as if Amy-Chinn is grasping at any straws possible to negate the narrative as presented as having any emotional or sexual validity. Ianto, an ostensibly straight man struggling with sexual identity, being willing to transgress his known world of desire to engage in a same-sex relationship on broadcast television should be something to consider a queer victory. It is transgressive, it is subversive, it negates the idea of a stable sexual identity more than any other within the show. But instead of accepting this, Amy-Chinn dismisses it as pheromones.
Even Jack, the omnisexual whose sexual fluidity goes so far beyond bisexual as to see not just no lines of desire around gender and sex, but none around species, as well, is not a good enough “bisexual.” Instead of examining the construction of bisexuality and how a fluid identity can, by definition never present in a stabilized format, Amy-Chinn questions the depth of Jack’s relationships, past and present, and makes judgments on his bisexuality based on the number of men and women he mentions having relationships with. His developing relationship with Ianto, rather than his casual, non-exclusive catting around that’s alluded to in Season 1, is seen as a betrayal of fluid sexuality for homonormativity (72).
Amy-Chinn argues that Torchwood’s credentials as being a LGB positive show come from representation of Jack, the “only character for whom bisexuality is genuinely the default position and who repeatedly and through choice embarks on relationships with men and women” (71). She then goes on to complain that it is not until episode twelve of season one that we actually get a relationship storyline that focuses on two men…never mind the relationship that has been brewing between Jack and Ianto for the past eleven episodes, or Jack’s concurrent flirtations with women. Is the Jack and Ianto flirtation explicit? Yes. Does it take up an entire arc or episode? No. Do any relationships take up an entire episode? No.
Torchwood is an adventure, science fiction show, not a romance novel. The relationships, the sex, are secondary. For that reason, among others, “Captain Jack Harkness” stands out. It is the only episode until “Children of the Earth – Day One” which breaks Davies’ non-agenda and makes queerness a central plot issue. It is a moment of insight into Jack—who he was before Doctor Who, the things he privileges, the people who move him, the ways he has changed. And, yes, it involves Jack meeting the man whose name he took when he needed a clean identity—the “original” Jack Harkness—and focuses on two men falling in love in the course of an evening, able to share no more than one dance and one kiss (though that kiss ranks as one of the longest gay kisses on television in the world), before time and duty tear them apart (Needham 154). The transgressive nature of their relationship is due to the temporal shift. Time—queer time—is not linear, and they have wrapped their lives into overlapping layers, able only to live in the now and present with no hope of futurity (Halberstam 2). Had they met in the 21st century, they could have loved and lived happily ever after, or at least happily until the original Jack’s death. If queer time is a time which challenges normative time, because it exists outside those definitions of a normal lifetime, then all of Jack’s time is queer—because as an immortal, he himself exists outside any definition of a normal lifetime (Halberstam 2).
Amy-Chinn claims this temporal rift renders the problematic because the romance is doomed and thus, it seems, not LGB positive. Her argument is not clear here, and it seems almost as if she is debating the queerness of the encounter, despite both the same sex nature and the existence within queer time. Instead of focusing on this, and the queerness of the encounter, Amy-Chinn moves on to find fault with the military framing of it and the characters. The import placed by gay neoliberalism of the right to access conservative institutions like marriage and the military troubles her, and the fact that military service becomes a marker of citizenship as it challenges the notion of gay men as weak and effeminate upsets her. Jack’s leaving the original Jack behind because of duty is not seen as an abiding character trait he has carried with him since the Doctor changed his life, but a nod to conservative values to make gayness palatable. Even when she is trying to see the queerness in the text, somehow she must find fault and see it as not LGB positive (72).
But if a doomed romance is not LGB positive (or is it not LGB positive because it is framed within World War II—which is a narrative throwback to our introduction to Jack which was in that same time period in Doctor Who?), then surely a successful one would be? No. That Jack and Ianto begin to move from casual sex to an emotionally engaged, monogamous relationship over the course of three seasons is the privileging of normativity—homonormativity, perhaps, but normativity nonetheless (73). Amy-Chinn goes so far as to label Jack and Ianto no longer queer (74). Through heroic service in protecting the country and a monogamous sexual relationship, Jack and Ianto have moved from being “polluted homosexuals” to “good gays,” holding up ideals where sex is part of love, relationships and family—they are respectable, and thus…they have failed sexual fluidity (73).
On the other hand, Jack’s marriage to a woman, his enduring connection for decades to a woman he loved, the child he had with another woman he loved and his continued involvement in his daughter’s life—these are indicators of qualitatively different relationships than those he has with men, which Amy-Chinn classifies as short lived and casual. Jack’s emotional commitment to women is culturally approved and thus problematic, but the fact that his emotional commitment has been to women in that cultural approval is the problematic component, it seems for Amy-Chinn (72). But, likewise, Jack’s emotional commitment to Ianto (which completely disproves the statement about his male relationships being short-lived and casual) is problematic because it, too, aims toward normativity (73). But the casualness of his relationship with men, the lack of emotional commitment is problematic because it conforms to traditional gay stereotypes of casual promiscuity and meaningless sex (72).
I am forced to sort through all of those statements and ask: what wouldn’t be problematic to Ms. Amy-Chinn? Jack having an emotional commitment to Ianto and sleeping around for fun? Emotionally committed polyamory? While neither of these, or other, sexual choices are wrong for consenting adults—is privileging them and devaluing people actually falling in love simply to spite normativity somehow not problematic? Does the self-regulation of the queer community ideally include telling people how they must love? The way, I don’t know, the heteronormative community has done for thousands of years?
I do not have the answer. More problematic to Amy-Chinn’s argument—neither does she. The doomed relationship existing within queer time is not good enough (71). The committed monogamous relationship is not good enough (74). The casual on again/off again relationship is not good enough (72). The openness to diverse sexual experience is not good enough (69). The introducing one’s gay lover to ones daughter and grandson is not good enough (73). Cradling a picture of one’s long-lost wife after a romantic slow dance with one’s gay lover is not good enough (“Something Borrowed”). Returning to the stars, to a rootless, lost, wandering, casual sex existence after an attempt at monogamy dies is not good enough (“The End of Time”). After complaining about the normativity of Jack an Ianto’s monogamy, Amy-Chinn turns around and mourns Ianto’s death before Torchwood could give us “finally” a “same-sex relationship of substance and depth” (74). In one breath, we are told that Jack and Ianto’s development into a “good gay” couple was a privileging of normativity and thus wrong; in the next we are told that Torchwood privileges Jack’s relationships with women over men…despite the only significant romantic relationship he has for the entire span of the show being with another man (75). What does Amy-Chinn think would be proper representation of minority sexualities on the BBC? And for that matter—whose minority sexualities?
Bisexuals do not all come in the same flavor, though she seems convince there is some standard we should meet. Not all queers are polyamorous. Not all bisexuals are, either. Not all straights are monogamous. Is heterosexual polyamory queer and a positive representation of LGB lives? Is falling in love with one person who is your same sex not? To be bisexual, do you always have to be sleeping with people of both genders at the same time? Don’t these “requirements” sound exactly like the allegations that get leveled at bisexuals by both the queer and straight communities—incapable of commitment, untrustworthy, fickle, confused? Isn’t turning that kind of limiting labeling on our community problematic, too?
Amy-Chinn’s analysis of Torchwood’s failure to “properly” represent bisexuality is flawed from the beginning by the very idea of a “proper” bisexuality existing, and further flawed by the lack of any attempt to even define what she thinks such a proper bisexuality would look like. Her argument is dismissive of both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, casual sex, committed sex, happily ever after, doomed romance, amicable partings. Beyond that, however, in constructing her argument, she fails to consider vital components of characterization, especially in Jack, and extratextual (outside of Torchwood, but still within the narrative unity) narrative evidence and factors. Most importantly: the Doctor.
The Doctor is the single most defining influence in Jack’s life. When Jack met him, he was a con artist looking to make a quick buck profiteering in a war. He had no commitments, had no ties, had no home. He moved through time and space, looking to make a quick buck, sleeping his way across the universe with anything pretty enough to catch his eye (“The Empty Child;” “The Doctor Dances”). The Doctor pushed him to be better, and Jack rose to meet the challenge, ultimately being willing to lay down his life for a bunch of people he had never met. As he leaves to go fight his presumed final battle, Jack laughs, kisses the Doctor and tells him, “Doctor…I wish I’d never met you. I was much better off as a coward” (“The Parting of the Ways”). But when he is brought back to life and finds himself facing eternity, Jack does not go off on another bender. He does not revert to his old ways. He spends the next century and a half in the one place he knows he might find the Doctor, working to help people, to live by the code the Doctor taught him. And when he has a chance to be reunited with him—Jack gives up everything to go chasing the Doctor to the end of the universe. Only after they go through Hell does Jack recognize what he has in Torchwood and return to his team—changed again by his time with the Doctor.
But Amy-Chinn never once mentions the Doctor or the influence he had on Jack’s choices, Jack’s life, and Jack’s love.
This failure to take into account any of the moments from Doctor Who leads to an emptiness in comprehension of Torchwood. Jack’s entire life is defined by the events that happen on Doctor Who. They affect all of his interactions on Torchwood. Without the Doctor, without the events of Doctor Who, Jack is not Jack, and even if an analysis is focused on the presentation of sexuality on Torchwood, an understanding of character sexuality cannot be gleaned from watching a narrative without all the facts.
It is this same failure to take into account the presentation of Jack’s sexuality within the framework of Doctor Who that defeats the second part of Amy-Chinn’s argument—that the normative progression of the Jack/Ianto relationship from casual sex to committed monogamy privileging the future of the world’s children—was brought about by the migration of Torchwood from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One.
Mainstream Presentation of Alternate Sexualities
The political half of Amy-Chinn’s argument about the failure of the BBC to “represent all those who fund public broadcasting in the UK” (meaning including those identifying as minority sexualities) is that the bisexuality and queerness inherent in Season 1 of Torchwood was gradually elided and masked as Torchwood gained in mainstream popularity and transferred from the narrowcast, alternative geared station of BBC Three to the more broadcast, mainstream BBC One:
During the course of the show’s story arc, Ianto’s casual affair with Jack—allowable on youth-oriented BBC Three—develops more romantic overtones to accommodate a broader BBC Two (and, in particular, a prewatershed) audience. By the start of the Children of Earth mini-series—when the framework for permission is that of mainstream BBC One which attracts older viewers with a broad socioeconomic demographic—the two are established as a couple (73).
Amy-Chinn is correct that Season 1 of Torchwood aired on BBC Three and contained a lot more casual sex from all the participants with little emotional growth. And Season 2, airing on BBC Two saw Gwen getting engaged and Tosh and Owen dancing around feelings they might have for one another, and Jack dismissing old loves and actually asking Ianto out on a date and acknowledging their relationship to others. And, yes, Children of Earth aired on BBC One, and Jack and Ianto were struggling with defining themselves as a couple and what that meant for their future, though before they had an answer for that, Ianto was dead.
It is possible there even was a mainstreaming reason for the change, or a shift toward wider demographic appeal, but Amy-Chinn offers no real evidence of that, just timing and coincidental speculation. Of course, timing can be something that can be examined as evidence, but not when it is the only evidence and there are several other, far more likely, reasons for shifts in behavior.
For one thing, characters grow and relationships change. This is a standard narrative expectation of storytelling. If everyone kept doing the same thing they were doing in season one, people would begin to lose interest by season three. Television viewing requires level of engagement and investment from the audience, and to gain that, narratives must touch on experience, intimacy, emotion: things which are familiar to their audience and also private. There is an affective context to this viewing, an emotional connection, and it is often through this intense emotion that queer temporality often operates (Needham 154). Audience members who are looking for an emotional experience want characters to have emotional experiences. For better or worse, these experiences usually involve other people. And when you emotionally connect with other people, your relationships with them start to deepen.
Beyond the narrative standards, the specific plot and events the characters have lived through have to be considered. Jack died at the end of Season 1, and though he eventually revived, it took much longer than it normally did, leaving his team dealing with guilt and sorrow and uncertainty (“End of Days”). His death was in large part their fault for disobeying his direct order and bringing something monstrous into the world, so their grief became multi-layered. He died saving the world, possibly the universe, and that was on them, as well—they almost ended the world. When Jack did revive, no sooner had he reconciled with his team than the Doctor—for whom Jack had been waiting for a century and a half—arrived, and Jack disappeared.
While his team was struggling to maintain things in Torchwood without him, trying to find him, frantic about his whereabouts, Jack was traveling to the end of the universe. There he was reunited with the Doctor only to find that the Doctor had not just left him for dead, all those years ago, but had actively run away from him, because Jack’s revival from death was wrong, his immortality was wrong, and just looking at Jack hurt the Doctor (“Utopia”). Finding out that the man he idolized, the man who was, undoubtedly, the love of his life couldn’t even stand to look at him shattered something in Jack (“The End of Days;” “The Sound of Drums;” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”). The thing he had been holding on for was ripped away.
Before he could recover from that, the Master, a mad Time Lord, had wiped out most of Earth’s population and imprisoned both Jack and the Doctor. For the next year, he tortured and killed Jack repeatedly, just so Jack would revive and the Master could do it all over again. He lived in chains, enslaved, in pain, all with the focus to find a plan to save them all and save the world—which he was able to help do. Time paradoxes allowed the Doctor to put the world back right, with very few the wise (including Jack’s team), but those memories were ones he could not escape (“The Sound of Drums;” “The Last of the Time Lords”).
Though his relationship with the Doctor was healed, Jack had changed. He couldn’t go off gallivanting around the stars, even with the love of his life. He needed to do something, be responsible, take care of those he’d claimed—his team. He returned to Torchwood, only to be greeted by an ex-lover come to town to cause more than a bit of trouble. Is it any wonder that once that was resolved, that after a year of torture and uncertainty, Jack found himself aching for something that felt real and true and was solid that he could hang on to? Is it any surprise he didn’t just go back to wanting to sleep his way through the population of Cardiff? Could his transition to a more limited curling up and in around friends and loved ones and looking for a space and a family have to do with the trauma he suffered more than a channel switch? And when Season two brought all of the team even more losses of loved ones, is it hard to believe that human nature would not make them cling all the tighter to what was left? (“Exit Wounds”)
None of these plot elements or consideration of characterization or natural reactions are addressed, let alone considered in Amy-Chinn’s dismissal. Only the production and presentation of sexuality matters, not the overarching narrative. But even if we consider just that—the presentation of sexuality on a mainstream channel, Amy-Chinn’s argument that Jack’s bisexuality was too transgressive and had to be toned down into homonormativity before it could be aired on BBC One is more than a little problematic, because, once again, she fails to consider Doctor Who, and that failure decimates her argument.
Because Doctor Who airs, and has aired since its revival, on BBC One. Not only that, but Doctor Who airs at a prewatershed time (when the children can still watch, given its family-show status). And Jack Harkness–in all his queer, transgressive, campy, far less angsty, far more sexually undefined glory–made his entrance into the world not on Torchwood, but on Doctor Who.
Jack did not suddenly become bisexual when he made his appearance on Torchwood. No, the alternate, minority sexuality of Captain Jack Harkness was established and maintained in his first appearances on Doctor Who. Within his first minute on screen, Jack: checks out Rose Tyler’s ass, comments on its excellence, understands that the man (Algy) talking to him while he checks out Rose is not surprised to think Jack’s comment is about him, corrects Algy’s assumption about whose ass he was referring to, but swats Algy’s ass and compliments it on his way out to rescue Rose (“The Empty Child” – clip available to view here: http://youtu.be/MYkCdnZi_x4 ).
A few people have argued that Jack’s sexuality on Doctor Who is ambiguous and subtextual, coded as “pansexual” in sci-fi terms so that it lacks the blatant in your face force of Torchwood (Hills 36). There is validity in this argument, in that the sexual aspect of it is more coded. Jack’s sexuality, however, is both verbally and visually represented in Doctor Who. He kisses both the Doctor and Rose in “Parting of the Ways” and both Gwen and Ianto in “The Stolen Earth.” Verbally, Jack uses witty dialogue and flirts with everyone—male, female, alien (Hills 36). Children might not read anything sexual into the verbal or visual play, but that does not disguise Jack’s sexuality from mainstream viewers, just children too young to understand what a guy complimenting another guy’s ass might mean. Most adults, even in the mainstream, are more than capable of understanding Jack’s sexuality. There may be no actual sex on the screen, but while other characters have a lot of sex on Torchwood, but for one episode, Jack’s all continues to be verbal innuendo about off-screen activities—exactly as it is in Doctor Who.
To claim, then, that this off-screen nature makes Jack’s sexuality subtextual rather than the text just not portraying explicit sexual acts is incredibly disingenuous. If BBC One were concerned about representing bisexuality to its mainstream audience, it would not have allowed verbal and visual cues that are so easily understood by the viewer—to call them coded is almost laughable. If viewers were unclear if Jack was just comfortable with himself in the first scene, there is little to no doubt which way—or, rather, ways—Jack swings by the end of the next episode.
Rose, the Doctor and Jack need to get into a military camp, but Algy (of the nice ass) is guarding it. Rose, being young and blond and used to men’s ways, says she expects “go distract the guard” is in her future. Jack laughs and says that he’s gotten to know Algy pretty well over the last few months and Rose isn’t his type—he’ll go distract him. Rose is bemused, not sure what to do with a guy so hot, who’s been flirting with her, who’s going to go flirt with another guy. If viewers share her confusion, the Doctor is happy to clear it up:
Doctor: Relax. He’s a 51st century guy. He’s just a bit more flexible when it comes to…dancing. (a metaphor for sex that has been used the whole episode)
Rose: How flexible?
Doctor: Well, by his time, you lot have spread out across half the galaxy.Rose: Meaning?
Doctor: So many species, so little time.
Rose: What? That’s what we do when we get out there. That’s our mission. We seek new life and…and…
Doctor: Dance. (“The Doctor Dances”)
Anyone who has not now gathered that Jack’s sexuality is flexible is being deliberately blind. Beyond just establishing bisexuality, this exchange actually establishes Jack’s omisexuality—that he does not discriminate either on gender or species
These moments continue throughout Jack’s tenure on Doctor Who. While waiting for what he thinks is inevitable death, Jack reminisces about the last time he was waiting to die. That time he, “ordered four hypervodkas for breakfast and woke up the next morning with [his] executioners” who were a “lovely couple.” When Rose and the Doctor save him at the last minute, they are dancing around the TARDIS. The Doctor puts on new music and asks Rose if she would like to dance. She tells him she thinks Jack would like to have this dance. The Doctor laughs and replies, “I’m sure he would, Rose, I’m absolutely certain. But who with?” (“The Doctor Dances”). Given Jack’s only two options are Rose and the Doctor, the question clearly indicates the Doctor recognizes Jack’s fluid sexuality.
Even Jack’s love for the Doctor is clearly expressed in canon. The Doctor is trying to explain how a perception filter works—not rendering you invisible, but just keeping people from really noticing you. “I know…I know what it’s like. It’s like when you fancy someone and they don’t even know you exist.” The Doctor beams at Martha and Jack, pleased with his analogy and wanders off. Martha looks after him longingly—her unrequited heterosexual desire for him has been clearly established by this time. Jack watches her watching the Doctor, then looks after the Doctor with a sigh. Jacks comment: “You, too, huh?” (“The Sound of Drums”).
To call any of this subtext or make the argument that somehow Jack’s sexuality was any less clearly fluid on Doctor Who than it is on Torchwood is fallacious. The actual graphic sexual commentary and the occasional nudity was missing, yes, but not the sexuality itself. There is a difference between non-sexually explicit television and television which elides a sexuality. Just because people are not naked on my television does not mean they are non-sexual creatures. It just means the show is not selling sex. The lack of actual sex is not what Amy-Chinn objects to, anyway. It is the kind of sex, the representation of desire she claims BBC One forced Torchwood to change.
But if the representation of fluid sexual desire for Jack Harkness began on BBC One, her argument does not stand. If Jack as a queer character was established on BBC One, then arguing that he was made less queer by being made explicitly gay because of a return to that channel is weak and ineffective. And if BBC One did not cause the imagined change in the representation of sexuality, we must look for another explanation of the progression of the text. Like maybe nothing changed about the characters’ sexualities. Maybe they exist within a human world that recognizes the complexities of desire and that people do not fit into neat little boxes. Worse than the attempt to force someone into a binary position in a fluid world is the negation of the very fluidity you claim to be seeking. To say there is only one way of being bisexual and demand its representation is harmful to those you say you are trying to help by seeing them represented.
Torchwood has been a powerful enabling show for a lot of queer youth. Jack Harkness is an action hero, a larger than life character who is handsome and charismatic and not someone anyone would ever dream of bullying—and he’s queer. He does not try to define that queerness. He does not try to put labels on sexuality or emotion. Such things are for the small-minded, underdeveloped, not enlightened world. People don’t fit in boxes. We are contradictory. We are messy. We have things we want and things we need and we try on identities and we are always figuring things out. That’s what being fluid means. There are damaging, stereotypical ways that devalue people when they are perpetuated, but those are not the images that Torchwood espouses.
Perhaps the sexuality of the characters is not as liberated as some might feel their own to be—it does not make them any less valid, nor does it fail to represent the desires and experiences of a large amount of people. And it carries those desires and experiences into the mainstream to provide representation for those many people. Amy-Chinn is right—we need representation in the media, people need to know there are others out there like them. But until that representation can be defined, to say that a show that has done more to normalize multiple subject positions than almost any other so far “fails” because it does not match an undefined position is a faulty and potentially harmful argument which deserves refutation.
Works Cited
Amy-Chinn, Dee. “GLAAD to Be Torchwood? Bisexuality and the BBC.” Journal of Bisexuality 12.1 (2012): 63-79. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
“Captain Jack Harkness.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 1 Jan. 2007.
Charles, Alec. “War Without End?: Utopia, The Family, And The Post-9/11 World In Russell T. Davies’s “Doctor Who..” Science Fiction Studies 35.3 (2008): 450-465. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
“Children of Earth – Day One.” Torchwood. BBC One. 6 July 2009.
“Combat.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 24 Dec. 2006.
“Cyberwoman.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 5 Nov. 2006.
Davis, Glyn and Gary Needham, eds. Queer TV. London: Routledge, 2008. Kindle.
“A Day in the Death.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 27 Feb. 2008.
“Day One.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 22 Oct. 2006.
“The Doctor Dances.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 28 May 2005.
“The Empty Child.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 21 May 2005.
“End of Days.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 1 Jan. 2007.
“The End of Time.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 25 Dec. 2009.
“Everything Changes.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 22 Oct. 2006.
“Exit Wounds.” Torchwood. BBC Two. 4 April 2008.
“Greeks Bearing Gifts.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 26 Nov. 2006.
Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Print.
Hills, Matt. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty-First Century. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Print.
Holz Ivory, Adrienne, Rhonda Gibson, and James D. Ivory. “Gendered Relationships On Television: Portrayals Of Same-Sex And Heterosexual Couples.” Mass Communication & Society 12.2 (2009): 170-192. Web. 11 Nov. 2012.
“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Torchwood. BBC Two. 15 Jan. 2008.
“The Last of the Time Lords.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 30 June 2007.
LaValley, Al. “The Great Escape.” Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian and Queer Essays on Popular Culture. Eds. Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. 61-70. Print.
Needham, Gary. “Scheduling normativity: television, the family and queer temporality.” Glyn and Needham 143-158.
Orthia, Lindy A. “Sociopathetic Abscess” Or “Yawning Chasm”? The Absent Postcolonial Transition In Doctor Who.” Journal Of Commonwealth Literature 45.2 (2010): 207-225. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
“The Parting of the Ways.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 18 June 2005.
“Sleeper.” Torchwood. BBC Two. 23 Jan 2008.
“Something Borrowed.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 5 March 2008.
“The Sound of Drums.” Doctor Who. BBC One. 23 June 2007.
“They Keep Killing Suzie.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 3 Dec. 2006.
Wright, Robin Redmon. “Narratives From Popular Culture: Critical Implications For Adult Education.” New Directions For Adult & Continuing Education 126 (2010): 49-62. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
Charity Fowler
Theorizing Sexuality
Final Paper
December 10, 2012
Jack Harkness: In Your Century, Defying Your Labels
(fan art by user cscottd on LiveJournal)
In 2005, the cult classic Doctor Who was revived. Produced by the BBC, the show originally ran for twenty six seasons between 1963 and 1989. With its revival, Doctor Who is now the longest running science fiction series in the world (Orthia 208). Doctor Who chronicles the adventures of the Doctor—an alien from a race known as the Time Lords, who travels through time and space in a ship known as the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). The Doctor travels with companions, usually human, who he usually plucks out of their lives to take off to see the universe. Inevitably, this touristy gallivanting leads the Doctor and his companions into some situation where some injustice must be fought or wrong righted or evil defeated, as the Doctor saves the day before he and his companions fly off to their new adventure. From within the context of the show, producers and writers have presented political and cultural commentary on relevant social issues such as rampant consumerism, the dangers of uncritical thinking, decolonialism, war and the dangers of a social construction of utopia (Charles 455).
Since its revival, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies has taken on the role of auteur, exercising a degree of control which puts the direction of the first four seasons of Doctor Who on a par with the shows of Joss Whedon for conscious creative direction (Hills 26). This is evident in the consistency of its vision and messaging, but is, perhaps, even more evident in its spin-off—Torchwood. While Doctor Who was originally conceptualized for children and has remained a family series, in 2006, Davies launched Torchwood which deals with darker, more adult themes (Needham 153). The Doctor may roam the universe and all of time seeking to protect those in need, but the team on Torchwood is, usually, firmly earth-bound. Their mission is to defend Earth from alien threats. The show positions the 21st century as the time when “everything changes,” and Torchwood stands ready to do whatever must be done to protect Earth through those changes.
These are the sorts of stories which Russell T. Davies looks to tell, but one element of his cultural commentary has been on queer issues. I use the word “commentary” here warily, however, because Davies’ has been accused of pushing an agenda in his work—a gay agenda. Openly gay, himself, Davies’ disputes these claims, but he does not deny that his narrative openly and happily presents a plethora of sexualities and options for character relations and identification. What Davies disputes, is the idea that this constitutes an “agenda” which suggests “an outmoded approach to sexuality as an ‘issue’” (Hills 34). Instead, Davies sees his work as representative of the progressive way he would like the world to be—to him, that means a world where people are equal and sexuality, race, gender and religion are not something which need to be defended, because they are non-issues.
Davies’ characters’ sexuality are not issues within the narrative, they are “an almost throwaway, unimportant point” (Hills 34). Within Davies’ narratives—queer is ordinary, normal. While Davies can argue that this is a non-agenda, because he is making sexuality a non-issue, the very act of doing so is a radical step for a television show. Still, Davies insists that his inclusion of varying sexualities in varying configurations is non-didactic. He wants the sexuality of his characters to be read in a progressive fashion as a non-issue. As much as challenging right-wing prejudice, Davies also launches his “non-issue” in the face of left-wing clichés which encompass the burden of representation—the idea that images of sexuality in narratives must work to counter societal prejudice (Hills 36).
Despite Davies non-agenda, his making of sexuality a non-issue, (or perhaps because of it), the normalcy with which he treats queer identities feels radical and even more subversive than if it were made an issue. Moments of queerness have raised their head in Doctor Who since the beginning in the 1960s, but the blatantly normal inundation of queer characters and scenarios in Davies’ Doctor Who and Torchwood is impressive—even more so when you consider the epic worldwide success of the franchise under Davies’ reinvention. The main character of Torchwood Captain Jack Harkness is an omnisexual action hero from the 51st century and has been celebrated by many within the LGBT community. Torchwood has received numerous accolades for its representation of sexuality. Two examples of this: John Barrowman, who plays Jack, has been named Entertainer of the Year by the UK based LGB rights organization Stonewall, and US based Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) nominated Torchwood in the category Outstanding Drama Series (Amy-Chinn 64-65).
Even the show’s detractors admit that Torchwood is important in the discussion of LGBT representation in the media. Many mainstream viewers might not watch a “queer” show by choice, but given Davies’ decision to make the sexuality of characters in the world of Doctor Who and Torchwood incidental to their main mission of defending the Earth from alien incursions, the series is easily defined as a science fiction and action show, not a “queer” show. The inclusion of alternate sexualities in the narratives thus exposes viewers to new ideas and new ways of thinking about sexuality, which research has shown generally leads to normalization and acceptance of minority subjective positions (Holz Ivory 187). Beyond the exposure to mainstream of queer lives, media representations of queer characters “can help LGB individuals explore the range of identity positions available, and media attitudes can help in making decisions on whether it is safe to come out to family and friends” (Amy-Chinn 65).
However, not everyone is happy with Torchwood’s representation of sexuality. In particular, critics have claimed that the show does not go far enough, and that Jack’s sexuality has been undermined for political and commercial reasons which undermine the radical credentials the show purports to have. One critic in particular has focused on the show’s depiction of bisexuality and the narrative turns the presentation of Jack’s sexuality takes to become more palatable to a mainstream audience. In her article, “GLAAD to be Torchwood? Bisexuality and the BBC,” Dee Amy-Chinn argues that as Torchwood gained popularity and shifted from the more permissive BBC Three to the more mainstream BBC One, the “scope for characters to explore their bi potential is restricted, and normativity progressively reasserts its privileged position. In the end, the show bows to forces that militate against true visibility for non-normative sexualities” (Amy-Chinn 64).
While Amy-Chinn’s article raises valid points for examination and consideration, she completely neglects alternate interpretations of both the text and possible motivations, fails to examine the larger scope of the narrative and in so doing ignores textual instances which invalidate her position, and attributes to network and politicized pressure storytelling turns supported by the text deeming the seeming shifts in characters’ sexualities to be a “failure” on the part of Torchwood and the BBC. The crux or Amy-Chinn’s dissatisfaction seems to lie with a perceived failure on the part of the BBC to use Torchwood as a vehicle for the “radical representation of minority sexual identities” (Amy-Chinn 76). Provocatively, she asks and concludes:
If…the BBC does not bring these identities into the wider broadcast arena, then who will? Given that LGB individuals can seek out programming that meets their needs in terms of representation and identification, what matters more than ever is not simply what gets broadcast, but also where it is broadcast. Normalization requires representation in the mainstream where it can be encountered by everyone—not just at the fringes where it is seen only by those predisposed who seek it out…Torchwood offers the ideal vehicle through which to foreground the BBC’s commitment to representing all those who fund public broadcasting in the UK. Torchwood began life with the claim that the 21st century is when “everything changes.” It still has time to deliver on that promise (76-77).
Admittedly, this is a compelling argument, rhetorically. However, Amy-Chinn’s ultimate disappointment in Torchwood seems to be that Davies did not make sexuality an issue, or that his representation of bisexuality, in particular, did not meet her standards for representation. Of course, Davies has clearly stated that he wants to avoid just this sort of debate—to make Jack’s sexuality (and those of Davies’ other characters) a non-issue so that it does not have to carry the burden of such representation. Jack is not a token bisexual character whose job it is to represent bisexuals to the world. Given some of what Amy-Chinn objects to in the narrative, she seems to have a very specific notion of what bisexuality should look like, and some of her arguments raise the worrisome specter of biphobia and damaging stereotypes about bisexuals. Davies is an artist, a creator, and dictating to him that his queer characters are not queer enough, or accusing him of altering the queerness of characters to satisfy the suits at the BBC seems like one of those very troubling “this is how you should be doing queerness” arguments.
Since the majority of Amy-Chinn’s argument seems focused on the representation of Jack’s sexuality that, too, is where I am going to focus in this paper. While this paper is not meant to be solely a response to Amy-Chinn’s essay, I use her arguments as a jumping off point and a frame for my own exploration of Jack as a queer character. Since Jack was originally a character on Doctor Who, and has made several appearances on the show since Torchwood start, inextricably tying the two shows together in a cohesive paradigm of a universe, I will also be considering the representation of Jack’s sexuality on Doctor Who. Given Amy-Chinn’s underlying argument that the failure to “properly” represent bisexuality has been due to a programming shift in time and channel, this seems doubly important because Doctor Who airs on BBC One (the channel Amy-Chinn blames for the failure in minority sexuality representation) at a pre-watershed time (as it is meant for children).
In the spirit of responding to the points raised by Amy-Chinn, I begin this essay with an evaluation of her argument, assessing the validity of her points, highlighting areas where she has overlooked critical pieces of the narrative or influences upon it, indicating the points where she makes dangerous assumptions. Within this I provide a detailed examination of the presentation and narrative arc of Jack’s sexuality, which I feel Amy-Chinn over-simplifies. Finally, where Amy-Chinn sees failure of representation on the part of the BBC, I provide alternate sources of interpretation and representation of Jack’s sexuality and emotional journey. Ultimately, I argue that while Amy-Chinn is undoubtedly correct that minority sexualities deserve representation and identification, to force such representation and identification upon another’s creative work with no regard for the artistry involved is a repressive position from which to argue and ultimately ineffective. There is a difference between a radical story which is not the precise radical you wanted and one that is “doing it wrong” or “failing in its promise.”
Radical Representation: The Problem with Labels
Amy-Chinn’s argument is a singular one, but it can be broken down into two main, if highly interconnected, parts:
1) By presenting a character who is omnisexual, Torchwood had the opportunity to question the binary of the sexuality narrative – that people are either gay or straight, but ultimately, the show only flirts with this concept and ultimately presents bisexuality as alien and privileges normativity and the gay/straight binary instead.
2) The sexualities of the show’s characters shift as the show migrates from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One, muting sexual flexibility and sexual openness as the show airs on more and more mainstream channels. This shift to the mainstream was the reason for the normativity inculcated into the show.
Bisexuality as alien
Amy-Chinn argues that while Torchwood may have content which seems to validate minority sexualities on the surface, but that ultimately these indicators of minority sexuality are explained away as the result of alien influence (76). In the first season of the show, all five of the main characters—Jack, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato (Tosh) and Gwen Cooper–engage in, or reference, both opposite-sex and same-sex encounters. In the pilot episode, “Everything Changes,” Owen breaks the rule to not take alien tech outside of the Torchwood base. Owen chooses an alien pheromone spray which makes him sexually irresistible. When his irresistibility to a woman draws the attention of her irate boyfriend, Owen uses the pheromone spray on the boyfriend as well. They kiss, on-screen, and the three of them head somewhere more private for a threesome. In “Day One,” Gwen is seduced by a girl who is infected by an alien parasite that needs orgasmic energy to survive. Later in season one, Toshiko engages in a lesbian fling with, yes, an alien (“Greeks Bearing Gifts”). Jack and Ianto, in the meantime, share a kiss in episode four and have an established—if casual—sexual relationship by the eighth episode of the season, with fandom interpretation setting it a few episodes earlier (which is validated by flirtation in the pilot episode and extreme amounts of sexual tension in the flashback in the second season to when Ianto joined the team) (“Cyberwoman;” “They Keep Killing Suzie”).
Amy-Chinn devalues the experiences of Owen, Gwen and Toshiko as not being truly bisexual. While she has a point in relation to Gwen’s encounter, which was truly under alien influence, it is important to note that Gwen never protests her own sexual orientation, and , beyond Gwen’s silence, the moment allows for a conversation which frames both Jack and Davies’ perspective on sexuality and is, perhaps, something to which Amy-Chinn should have paid attention. Toshiko and Jack view Gwen’s kiss with the alien on the security monitor. Jack looks amused, Tosh appalled. Sputtering and trying to understand, Tosh exclaims, “I thought she said she had a boyfriend!”
Jack looks at her, gives her a smile and shakes his head. “You people and your silly little labels” (“Day One”).
Dismissing Owen’s threesome with the woman and her boyfriend, Amy-Chinn states that this is the only time we see Owen taking interest in men and otherwise he is portrayed as a promiscuous heterosexual (69). The kiss and sexual encounter she dismisses as nothing more than a potential indication of the show’s willingness to be edgy and provocative, and since the pheromones were an alien element, the bisexuality is even more devalued. I think that this is giving both the show and Owen too little credit, and also fails to acknowledge later evidences that Owen is at least willing to engage in further same-sex encounters.
First, the alien pheromones worked on the boyfriend, not Owen, so the choice to use them and sleep with the man was not the result of alien influence on Owen. Secondly, since Owen chose to have sex with another man, that indicates more than the show’s willingness to be edgy—it indicates Owen’s willingness to be open to same-sex experiences. The conceit that bisexuals must always be perfectly poised between opposite and same-sex attraction is nothing more than that—a conceit. Owen’s heterosexual promiscuity does not alter the fact that the presentation of the majority of “heterosexual” men cheerfully going off to have a same-sex encounter when not in some way inclined that way just does not happen. In a media landscape saturated with “I love you, but not in a gay way” messages, even if Owen does tend to lean more toward the straight side of the fence, his openness – without hesitation – is radical. Secondly, contrary to Amy-Chinn’s assertion, Owen exhibits interest in same-sex encounters at least twice more in the series.
When the world seems in danger of ending, Owen thinks that he, Ianto and Gwen should get naked for one last go before the end. There’s no privileging Gwen over Ianto, despite the fact that Gwen is someone with whom he has had an affair—in fact, it is upon Ianto that his gaze mainly rests (“Sleeper”). This could be argued to be a throwaway comment, but in a world where sexuality is constructed to not be an issue, and throwaway comments consistently give crucial character information, it is a comment with significance. Even more tellingly, when Owen is relieved of his duty for medical reasons and relegated to making the coffee (which used to be Ianto’s job) until they can finish testing him, he gets into an altercation with Ianto, telling the other man that he bet Ianto was loving this, that it was like he’d won. Ianto replies that he did not know they were in competition, to which Owen says, “Oh, come on. Even Tosh had more of a life than you used to, and now you’re always out on missions, you’re shagging Jack, and I’m stuck here making the coffee” (“A Day in the Death”). Why would a man without any interest in men list Ianto’s same-sex relationship with Jack as something that Ianto has “won”?
Likewise, though Toshiko’s same-sex encounter is with an alien, she is not under any alien influence as to her sexuality. Mary, the alien, offers her an artifact which allows her to hear the thoughts of her coworkers. Through it, Toshiko learns that Owen and Gwen are having an affair and that they think she is sweet but out of it and not very socially aware. Hurt, Toshiko withdraws and Mary offers a sympathetic ear. An ear turns into drinks which turns into sex. Amy-Chinn argues that this encounter is due to alien influence and out of step with Toshiko’s usual sexual orientation. However, while inadvisable sex can certainly result from isolation and emotional hurt, it rarely does so with someone of your non-preferred sex. Perhaps, like Owen, Toshiko generally leans toward heterosexual practices, but the attraction to Mary is present before she overhears Gwen and Owen’s thoughts, and if she is embarrassed in the aftermath, we see in later sexual encounters that shy and a bit embarrassed is Toshiko’s usual reaction to being naked with someone—not just with a girl (“Greeks Bearing Gifts;” “Combat”).
While acknowledging that Ianto and Jack present better instances of bisexuality, Amy-Chinn still ultimately dismisses Torchwood’s handling of them as inadequate for her goals of normalization of marginalized sexualities. The others she sees as a failed promise of the subversion of fixed identity, but, as demonstrated, her evidence of this supposed failure is weak (72). With her analysis and dismissal of Ianto and Jack as proper representation of marginalized sexualities, it becomes difficult to know what would satisfy her unstated requirements.
As mentioned before, Jack is presented as omnisexual from the start—not the start of Torchwood, but the start of Doctor Who. This consistency with his identity and the channels it appears in is something I will discuss further in the next section. Before interrogating Jack’s status (and supposed failure) as a person with a liberated sexuality, I would like to address Ianto. Ianto is presented as flirty with Jack from the opening of the series, but his sexuality is established, and then reestablished, as heterosexual. As such, his three season engagement in a same-sex relationship seems to be a strong marker for the potential of fluid sexuality.
Ianto’s girlfriend and his love for her make an appearance in “Cyberwoman,” and a great deal of Ianto’s motivations for joining Torchwood and putting himself in Jack’s way are revealed—he is trying to save his girlfriend from conversion into a cybernetic monster. Her humanity is already gone, however, and ultimately, after she nearly kills him and the rest of his team, and when she is about to kill him again, the team arrives and kills her, leaving Ianto with nothing much left. The breach of trust in the episode between he and Jack is devastating, but soon (within episodes, soon—the actual time frame in linear time for the characters is unclear) after he is seen to have embarked on a sexual relationship with Jack (“They Keep Killing Suzie”). There is some discontinuity in these episodes, as they were meant to air in a different order, which can explain the timing of things a bit.
Ianto and Jack’s relationship begins as casual and non-exclusive. Owen dismisses Ianto as Jack’s “part time shag,” and when one of Jack’s previous lovers comes to town, he dubs Ianto “eye candy.” Jack certainly seems far less engaged in the relationship throughout, but by the twelfth episode of the first season, “Captain Jack Harkness,” Ianto can be seen to be establishing a deep commitment to Jack. Jack, however, is less committed. He finds himself in a doomed romance across time, telling the man he falls for there that there is “no one” for him—while Ianto is working desperately to save Jack and get him home. When the Doctor stops in Cardiff, and Jack realizes he is there, he abandons his team without a word, running after the Doctor for whom he as waited over a century and a half (“End of Days”). That “adventure” goes wrong and ends up in Jack having to live a year being tortured while the world burns under the feet of a mad Time Lord. At the end, a paradox is able to be undone and the year becomes “the year that never was,” for everyone save a few, including Jack and the Doctor. Remembering what he went through, and decisions he made about what was important to him, Jack declines the Doctor’s offer to travel with him again and returns home to his team, including Ianto.
From this point, Jack and Ianto begin a halting dance toward a more committed relationship, occasionally sidetracked by others Jack cares for. Ianto stays true through it all. However, once the relationship is established and Ianto finds himself questioned about it by his family, he denies a transition to a homosexual identity. When his sister asks if he’s “gone bender” and then is hurt when he will not talk to her, Ianto attempts to put his feelings for Jack into words. “He is very handsome…It’s weird. It’s just different. It’s not men. It’s just…him. It’s only him.” The “only him” comment carries the weight of a tradition of one true loves behind it (which feeds into a great deal of fandom love for this pairing), in a lot of ways—not it’s “only him” as in “I’m not sleeping around,” but it’s “only him” for me, ever (“Children of Earth – Day One”).
Instead of analyzing this discourse as evidence of the fluidity of sexuality which she is seeking, or as evidence of the emotional, affective attachment which, for many people, does attach and lead to sexual relationships, Amy-Chinn sees, once again, evidence of alien influence. Because Ianto once commented that Jack smelled really good, and Jack mentioned it was his 51st century pheromones, Amy-Chinn concludes that Ianto’s fluid sexuality could well be just another instance of external alien influence which tempers the idea of bisexuality being a natural part of the human condition and eliminates insecurity in heterosexual men that they might suddenly be prone to same-sex desire (75). If Owen’s toss-off comments cannot be construed as indicative of sexual fluidity, then how can Jack’s be construed as exerting alien influence so great as to overcome a straight man’s aversion to same-sex sexual encounters?
Perhaps Ianto did find Jack smelling good a bit of an odd sensation, an awakened thrill of desire. But if Jack’s pheromones were so powerful, then everyone would be falling in love with him and under his “alien influence.” And even if the pheromones were a spark that set Jack apart in the attraction phase, there is nothing indicative in the course of their relationship from which to assume that Ianto’s feelings did not grow from fleeting physical attraction to a smell to something deeper. If Jack had the ability to influence sexuality and emotions just by how he smelled, the narrative would certainly have explored it sooner and in more depth.
It seems as if Amy-Chinn is grasping at any straws possible to negate the narrative as presented as having any emotional or sexual validity. Ianto, an ostensibly straight man struggling with sexual identity, being willing to transgress his known world of desire to engage in a same-sex relationship on broadcast television should be something to consider a queer victory. It is transgressive, it is subversive, it negates the idea of a stable sexual identity more than any other within the show. But instead of accepting this, Amy-Chinn dismisses it as pheromones.
Even Jack, the omnisexual whose sexual fluidity goes so far beyond bisexual as to see not just no lines of desire around gender and sex, but none around species, as well, is not a good enough “bisexual.” Instead of examining the construction of bisexuality and how a fluid identity can, by definition never present in a stabilized format, Amy-Chinn questions the depth of Jack’s relationships, past and present, and makes judgments on his bisexuality based on the number of men and women he mentions having relationships with. His developing relationship with Ianto, rather than his casual, non-exclusive catting around that’s alluded to in Season 1, is seen as a betrayal of fluid sexuality for homonormativity (72).
Amy-Chinn argues that Torchwood’s credentials as being a LGB positive show come from representation of Jack, the “only character for whom bisexuality is genuinely the default position and who repeatedly and through choice embarks on relationships with men and women” (71). She then goes on to complain that it is not until episode twelve of season one that we actually get a relationship storyline that focuses on two men…never mind the relationship that has been brewing between Jack and Ianto for the past eleven episodes, or Jack’s concurrent flirtations with women. Is the Jack and Ianto flirtation explicit? Yes. Does it take up an entire arc or episode? No. Do any relationships take up an entire episode? No.
Torchwood is an adventure, science fiction show, not a romance novel. The relationships, the sex, are secondary. For that reason, among others, “Captain Jack Harkness” stands out. It is the only episode until “Children of the Earth – Day One” which breaks Davies’ non-agenda and makes queerness a central plot issue. It is a moment of insight into Jack—who he was before Doctor Who, the things he privileges, the people who move him, the ways he has changed. And, yes, it involves Jack meeting the man whose name he took when he needed a clean identity—the “original” Jack Harkness—and focuses on two men falling in love in the course of an evening, able to share no more than one dance and one kiss (though that kiss ranks as one of the longest gay kisses on television in the world), before time and duty tear them apart (Needham 154). The transgressive nature of their relationship is due to the temporal shift. Time—queer time—is not linear, and they have wrapped their lives into overlapping layers, able only to live in the now and present with no hope of futurity (Halberstam 2). Had they met in the 21st century, they could have loved and lived happily ever after, or at least happily until the original Jack’s death. If queer time is a time which challenges normative time, because it exists outside those definitions of a normal lifetime, then all of Jack’s time is queer—because as an immortal, he himself exists outside any definition of a normal lifetime (Halberstam 2).
Amy-Chinn claims this temporal rift renders the problematic because the romance is doomed and thus, it seems, not LGB positive. Her argument is not clear here, and it seems almost as if she is debating the queerness of the encounter, despite both the same sex nature and the existence within queer time. Instead of focusing on this, and the queerness of the encounter, Amy-Chinn moves on to find fault with the military framing of it and the characters. The import placed by gay neoliberalism of the right to access conservative institutions like marriage and the military troubles her, and the fact that military service becomes a marker of citizenship as it challenges the notion of gay men as weak and effeminate upsets her. Jack’s leaving the original Jack behind because of duty is not seen as an abiding character trait he has carried with him since the Doctor changed his life, but a nod to conservative values to make gayness palatable. Even when she is trying to see the queerness in the text, somehow she must find fault and see it as not LGB positive (72).
But if a doomed romance is not LGB positive (or is it not LGB positive because it is framed within World War II—which is a narrative throwback to our introduction to Jack which was in that same time period in Doctor Who?), then surely a successful one would be? No. That Jack and Ianto begin to move from casual sex to an emotionally engaged, monogamous relationship over the course of three seasons is the privileging of normativity—homonormativity, perhaps, but normativity nonetheless (73). Amy-Chinn goes so far as to label Jack and Ianto no longer queer (74). Through heroic service in protecting the country and a monogamous sexual relationship, Jack and Ianto have moved from being “polluted homosexuals” to “good gays,” holding up ideals where sex is part of love, relationships and family—they are respectable, and thus…they have failed sexual fluidity (73).
On the other hand, Jack’s marriage to a woman, his enduring connection for decades to a woman he loved, the child he had with another woman he loved and his continued involvement in his daughter’s life—these are indicators of qualitatively different relationships than those he has with men, which Amy-Chinn classifies as short lived and casual. Jack’s emotional commitment to women is culturally approved and thus problematic, but the fact that his emotional commitment has been to women in that cultural approval is the problematic component, it seems for Amy-Chinn (72). But, likewise, Jack’s emotional commitment to Ianto (which completely disproves the statement about his male relationships being short-lived and casual) is problematic because it, too, aims toward normativity (73). But the casualness of his relationship with men, the lack of emotional commitment is problematic because it conforms to traditional gay stereotypes of casual promiscuity and meaningless sex (72).
I am forced to sort through all of those statements and ask: what wouldn’t be problematic to Ms. Amy-Chinn? Jack having an emotional commitment to Ianto and sleeping around for fun? Emotionally committed polyamory? While neither of these, or other, sexual choices are wrong for consenting adults—is privileging them and devaluing people actually falling in love simply to spite normativity somehow not problematic? Does the self-regulation of the queer community ideally include telling people how they must love? The way, I don’t know, the heteronormative community has done for thousands of years?
I do not have the answer. More problematic to Amy-Chinn’s argument—neither does she. The doomed relationship existing within queer time is not good enough (71). The committed monogamous relationship is not good enough (74). The casual on again/off again relationship is not good enough (72). The openness to diverse sexual experience is not good enough (69). The introducing one’s gay lover to ones daughter and grandson is not good enough (73). Cradling a picture of one’s long-lost wife after a romantic slow dance with one’s gay lover is not good enough (“Something Borrowed”). Returning to the stars, to a rootless, lost, wandering, casual sex existence after an attempt at monogamy dies is not good enough (“The End of Time”). After complaining about the normativity of Jack an Ianto’s monogamy, Amy-Chinn turns around and mourns Ianto’s death before Torchwood could give us “finally” a “same-sex relationship of substance and depth” (74). In one breath, we are told that Jack and Ianto’s development into a “good gay” couple was a privileging of normativity and thus wrong; in the next we are told that Torchwood privileges Jack’s relationships with women over men…despite the only significant romantic relationship he has for the entire span of the show being with another man (75). What does Amy-Chinn think would be proper representation of minority sexualities on the BBC? And for that matter—whose minority sexualities?
Bisexuals do not all come in the same flavor, though she seems convince there is some standard we should meet. Not all queers are polyamorous. Not all bisexuals are, either. Not all straights are monogamous. Is heterosexual polyamory queer and a positive representation of LGB lives? Is falling in love with one person who is your same sex not? To be bisexual, do you always have to be sleeping with people of both genders at the same time? Don’t these “requirements” sound exactly like the allegations that get leveled at bisexuals by both the queer and straight communities—incapable of commitment, untrustworthy, fickle, confused? Isn’t turning that kind of limiting labeling on our community problematic, too?
Amy-Chinn’s analysis of Torchwood’s failure to “properly” represent bisexuality is flawed from the beginning by the very idea of a “proper” bisexuality existing, and further flawed by the lack of any attempt to even define what she thinks such a proper bisexuality would look like. Her argument is dismissive of both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, casual sex, committed sex, happily ever after, doomed romance, amicable partings. Beyond that, however, in constructing her argument, she fails to consider vital components of characterization, especially in Jack, and extratextual (outside of Torchwood, but still within the narrative unity) narrative evidence and factors. Most importantly: the Doctor.
The Doctor is the single most defining influence in Jack’s life. When Jack met him, he was a con artist looking to make a quick buck profiteering in a war. He had no commitments, had no ties, had no home. He moved through time and space, looking to make a quick buck, sleeping his way across the universe with anything pretty enough to catch his eye (“The Empty Child;” “The Doctor Dances”). The Doctor pushed him to be better, and Jack rose to meet the challenge, ultimately being willing to lay down his life for a bunch of people he had never met. As he leaves to go fight his presumed final battle, Jack laughs, kisses the Doctor and tells him, “Doctor…I wish I’d never met you. I was much better off as a coward” (“The Parting of the Ways”). But when he is brought back to life and finds himself facing eternity, Jack does not go off on another bender. He does not revert to his old ways. He spends the next century and a half in the one place he knows he might find the Doctor, working to help people, to live by the code the Doctor taught him. And when he has a chance to be reunited with him—Jack gives up everything to go chasing the Doctor to the end of the universe. Only after they go through Hell does Jack recognize what he has in Torchwood and return to his team—changed again by his time with the Doctor.
But Amy-Chinn never once mentions the Doctor or the influence he had on Jack’s choices, Jack’s life, and Jack’s love.
This failure to take into account any of the moments from Doctor Who leads to an emptiness in comprehension of Torchwood. Jack’s entire life is defined by the events that happen on Doctor Who. They affect all of his interactions on Torchwood. Without the Doctor, without the events of Doctor Who, Jack is not Jack, and even if an analysis is focused on the presentation of sexuality on Torchwood, an understanding of character sexuality cannot be gleaned from watching a narrative without all the facts.
It is this same failure to take into account the presentation of Jack’s sexuality within the framework of Doctor Who that defeats the second part of Amy-Chinn’s argument—that the normative progression of the Jack/Ianto relationship from casual sex to committed monogamy privileging the future of the world’s children—was brought about by the migration of Torchwood from BBC Three to BBC Two to BBC One.
Mainstream Presentation of Alternate Sexualities
The political half of Amy-Chinn’s argument about the failure of the BBC to “represent all those who fund public broadcasting in the UK” (meaning including those identifying as minority sexualities) is that the bisexuality and queerness inherent in Season 1 of Torchwood was gradually elided and masked as Torchwood gained in mainstream popularity and transferred from the narrowcast, alternative geared station of BBC Three to the more broadcast, mainstream BBC One:
During the course of the show’s story arc, Ianto’s casual affair with Jack—allowable on youth-oriented BBC Three—develops more romantic overtones to accommodate a broader BBC Two (and, in particular, a prewatershed) audience. By the start of the Children of Earth mini-series—when the framework for permission is that of mainstream BBC One which attracts older viewers with a broad socioeconomic demographic—the two are established as a couple (73).
Amy-Chinn is correct that Season 1 of Torchwood aired on BBC Three and contained a lot more casual sex from all the participants with little emotional growth. And Season 2, airing on BBC Two saw Gwen getting engaged and Tosh and Owen dancing around feelings they might have for one another, and Jack dismissing old loves and actually asking Ianto out on a date and acknowledging their relationship to others. And, yes, Children of Earth aired on BBC One, and Jack and Ianto were struggling with defining themselves as a couple and what that meant for their future, though before they had an answer for that, Ianto was dead.
It is possible there even was a mainstreaming reason for the change, or a shift toward wider demographic appeal, but Amy-Chinn offers no real evidence of that, just timing and coincidental speculation. Of course, timing can be something that can be examined as evidence, but not when it is the only evidence and there are several other, far more likely, reasons for shifts in behavior.
For one thing, characters grow and relationships change. This is a standard narrative expectation of storytelling. If everyone kept doing the same thing they were doing in season one, people would begin to lose interest by season three. Television viewing requires level of engagement and investment from the audience, and to gain that, narratives must touch on experience, intimacy, emotion: things which are familiar to their audience and also private. There is an affective context to this viewing, an emotional connection, and it is often through this intense emotion that queer temporality often operates (Needham 154). Audience members who are looking for an emotional experience want characters to have emotional experiences. For better or worse, these experiences usually involve other people. And when you emotionally connect with other people, your relationships with them start to deepen.
Beyond the narrative standards, the specific plot and events the characters have lived through have to be considered. Jack died at the end of Season 1, and though he eventually revived, it took much longer than it normally did, leaving his team dealing with guilt and sorrow and uncertainty (“End of Days”). His death was in large part their fault for disobeying his direct order and bringing something monstrous into the world, so their grief became multi-layered. He died saving the world, possibly the universe, and that was on them, as well—they almost ended the world. When Jack did revive, no sooner had he reconciled with his team than the Doctor—for whom Jack had been waiting for a century and a half—arrived, and Jack disappeared.
While his team was struggling to maintain things in Torchwood without him, trying to find him, frantic about his whereabouts, Jack was traveling to the end of the universe. There he was reunited with the Doctor only to find that the Doctor had not just left him for dead, all those years ago, but had actively run away from him, because Jack’s revival from death was wrong, his immortality was wrong, and just looking at Jack hurt the Doctor (“Utopia”). Finding out that the man he idolized, the man who was, undoubtedly, the love of his life couldn’t even stand to look at him shattered something in Jack (“The End of Days;” “The Sound of Drums;” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”). The thing he had been holding on for was ripped away.
Before he could recover from that, the Master, a mad Time Lord, had wiped out most of Earth’s population and imprisoned both Jack and the Doctor. For the next year, he tortured and killed Jack repeatedly, just so Jack would revive and the Master could do it all over again. He lived in chains, enslaved, in pain, all with the focus to find a plan to save them all and save the world—which he was able to help do. Time paradoxes allowed the Doctor to put the world back right, with very few the wise (including Jack’s team), but those memories were ones he could not escape (“The Sound of Drums;” “The Last of the Time Lords”).
Though his relationship with the Doctor was healed, Jack had changed. He couldn’t go off gallivanting around the stars, even with the love of his life. He needed to do something, be responsible, take care of those he’d claimed—his team. He returned to Torchwood, only to be greeted by an ex-lover come to town to cause more than a bit of trouble. Is it any wonder that once that was resolved, that after a year of torture and uncertainty, Jack found himself aching for something that felt real and true and was solid that he could hang on to? Is it any surprise he didn’t just go back to wanting to sleep his way through the population of Cardiff? Could his transition to a more limited curling up and in around friends and loved ones and looking for a space and a family have to do with the trauma he suffered more than a channel switch? And when Season two brought all of the team even more losses of loved ones, is it hard to believe that human nature would not make them cling all the tighter to what was left? (“Exit Wounds”)
None of these plot elements or consideration of characterization or natural reactions are addressed, let alone considered in Amy-Chinn’s dismissal. Only the production and presentation of sexuality matters, not the overarching narrative. But even if we consider just that—the presentation of sexuality on a mainstream channel, Amy-Chinn’s argument that Jack’s bisexuality was too transgressive and had to be toned down into homonormativity before it could be aired on BBC One is more than a little problematic, because, once again, she fails to consider Doctor Who, and that failure decimates her argument.
Because Doctor Who airs, and has aired since its revival, on BBC One. Not only that, but Doctor Who airs at a prewatershed time (when the children can still watch, given its family-show status). And Jack Harkness–in all his queer, transgressive, campy, far less angsty, far more sexually undefined glory–made his entrance into the world not on Torchwood, but on Doctor Who.
Jack did not suddenly become bisexual when he made his appearance on Torchwood. No, the alternate, minority sexuality of Captain Jack Harkness was established and maintained in his first appearances on Doctor Who. Within his first minute on screen, Jack: checks out Rose Tyler’s ass, comments on its excellence, understands that the man (Algy) talking to him while he checks out Rose is not surprised to think Jack’s comment is about him, corrects Algy’s assumption about whose ass he was referring to, but swats Algy’s ass and compliments it on his way out to rescue Rose (“The Empty Child” – clip available to view here: http://youtu.be/MYkCdnZi_x4 ).
A few people have argued that Jack’s sexuality on Doctor Who is ambiguous and subtextual, coded as “pansexual” in sci-fi terms so that it lacks the blatant in your face force of Torchwood (Hills 36). There is validity in this argument, in that the sexual aspect of it is more coded. Jack’s sexuality, however, is both verbally and visually represented in Doctor Who. He kisses both the Doctor and Rose in “Parting of the Ways” and both Gwen and Ianto in “The Stolen Earth.” Verbally, Jack uses witty dialogue and flirts with everyone—male, female, alien (Hills 36). Children might not read anything sexual into the verbal or visual play, but that does not disguise Jack’s sexuality from mainstream viewers, just children too young to understand what a guy complimenting another guy’s ass might mean. Most adults, even in the mainstream, are more than capable of understanding Jack’s sexuality. There may be no actual sex on the screen, but while other characters have a lot of sex on Torchwood, but for one episode, Jack’s all continues to be verbal innuendo about off-screen activities—exactly as it is in Doctor Who.
To claim, then, that this off-screen nature makes Jack’s sexuality subtextual rather than the text just not portraying explicit sexual acts is incredibly disingenuous. If BBC One were concerned about representing bisexuality to its mainstream audience, it would not have allowed verbal and visual cues that are so easily understood by the viewer—to call them coded is almost laughable. If viewers were unclear if Jack was just comfortable with himself in the first scene, there is little to no doubt which way—or, rather, ways—Jack swings by the end of the next episode.
Rose, the Doctor and Jack need to get into a military camp, but Algy (of the nice ass) is guarding it. Rose, being young and blond and used to men’s ways, says she expects “go distract the guard” is in her future. Jack laughs and says that he’s gotten to know Algy pretty well over the last few months and Rose isn’t his type—he’ll go distract him. Rose is bemused, not sure what to do with a guy so hot, who’s been flirting with her, who’s going to go flirt with another guy. If viewers share her confusion, the Doctor is happy to clear it up:
Doctor: Relax. He’s a 51st century guy. He’s just a bit more flexible when it comes to…dancing. (a metaphor for sex that has been used the whole episode)
Rose: How flexible?
Doctor: Well, by his time, you lot have spread out across half the galaxy.
Rose: Meaning?
Doctor: So many species, so little time.
Rose: What? That’s what we do when we get out there. That’s our mission. We seek new life and…and…
Doctor: Dance. (“The Doctor Dances”)
Anyone who has not now gathered that Jack’s sexuality is flexible is being deliberately blind. Beyond just establishing bisexuality, this exchange actually establishes Jack’s omisexuality—that he does not discriminate either on gender or species
These moments continue throughout Jack’s tenure on Doctor Who. While waiting for what he thinks is inevitable death, Jack reminisces about the last time he was waiting to die. That time he, “ordered four hypervodkas for breakfast and woke up the next morning with [his] executioners” who were a “lovely couple.” When Rose and the Doctor save him at the last minute, they are dancing around the TARDIS. The Doctor puts on new music and asks Rose if she would like to dance. She tells him she thinks Jack would like to have this dance. The Doctor laughs and replies, “I’m sure he would, Rose, I’m absolutely certain. But who with?” (“The Doctor Dances”). Given Jack’s only two options are Rose and the Doctor, the question clearly indicates the Doctor recognizes Jack’s fluid sexuality.
Even Jack’s love for the Doctor is clearly expressed in canon. The Doctor is trying to explain how a perception filter works—not rendering you invisible, but just keeping people from really noticing you. “I know…I know what it’s like. It’s like when you fancy someone and they don’t even know you exist.” The Doctor beams at Martha and Jack, pleased with his analogy and wanders off. Martha looks after him longingly—her unrequited heterosexual desire for him has been clearly established by this time. Jack watches her watching the Doctor, then looks after the Doctor with a sigh. Jacks comment: “You, too, huh?” (“The Sound of Drums”).
To call any of this subtext or make the argument that somehow Jack’s sexuality was any less clearly fluid on Doctor Who than it is on Torchwood is fallacious. The actual graphic sexual commentary and the occasional nudity was missing, yes, but not the sexuality itself. There is a difference between non-sexually explicit television and television which elides a sexuality. Just because people are not naked on my television does not mean they are non-sexual creatures. It just means the show is not selling sex. The lack of actual sex is not what Amy-Chinn objects to, anyway. It is the kind of sex, the representation of desire she claims BBC One forced Torchwood to change.
But if the representation of fluid sexual desire for Jack Harkness began on BBC One, her argument does not stand. If Jack as a queer character was established on BBC One, then arguing that he was made less queer by being made explicitly gay because of a return to that channel is weak and ineffective. And if BBC One did not cause the imagined change in the representation of sexuality, we must look for another explanation of the progression of the text. Like maybe nothing changed about the characters’ sexualities. Maybe they exist within a human world that recognizes the complexities of desire and that people do not fit into neat little boxes. Worse than the attempt to force someone into a binary position in a fluid world is the negation of the very fluidity you claim to be seeking. To say there is only one way of being bisexual and demand its representation is harmful to those you say you are trying to help by seeing them represented.
Torchwood has been a powerful enabling show for a lot of queer youth. Jack Harkness is an action hero, a larger than life character who is handsome and charismatic and not someone anyone would ever dream of bullying—and he’s queer. He does not try to define that queerness. He does not try to put labels on sexuality or emotion. Such things are for the small-minded, underdeveloped, not enlightened world. People don’t fit in boxes. We are contradictory. We are messy. We have things we want and things we need and we try on identities and we are always figuring things out. That’s what being fluid means. There are damaging, stereotypical ways that devalue people when they are perpetuated, but those are not the images that Torchwood espouses.
Perhaps the sexuality of the characters is not as liberated as some might feel their own to be—it does not make them any less valid, nor does it fail to represent the desires and experiences of a large amount of people. And it carries those desires and experiences into the mainstream to provide representation for those many people. Amy-Chinn is right—we need representation in the media, people need to know there are others out there like them. But until that representation can be defined, to say that a show that has done more to normalize multiple subject positions than almost any other so far “fails” because it does not match an undefined position is a faulty and potentially harmful argument which deserves refutation.
Works Cited
Amy-Chinn, Dee. “GLAAD to Be Torchwood? Bisexuality and the BBC.” Journal of Bisexuality 12.1 (2012): 63-79. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
“Captain Jack Harkness.” Torchwood. BBC Three. 1 Jan. 2007.
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