Is That Hope?

I have to confess: for the past couple of weeks, I’ve wrapped myself in the entertainment equivalent of comfort food. I’m re-reading books I’ve already read, because I know how they turn out. I’m watching English detective series because (though the English do reality far better than Americans, who for a long time seemed enmired in the Disney version of life) I know it will all come right, if not precisely the way I wanted it to. I’m taking these trips down Memory Lane because there’s just nothing hopeful to grasp onto when I open the news: this year has only gone from bad to worse, and my familiar, Panic, has taken up permanent residence on my doorstep.

So it’s with some pleasure that I turned to re-watch Waking the Dead, a BBC police procedural series I enjoyed several years ago, about a cold case squad operating in London. And it’s a good show. The forensics are portrayed reasonably accurately, the characters are all well-acted, the storylines convoluted enough to satisfy any mystery lover.

But I didn’t finish watching the series this time around, and a thought came into my head: they couldn’t have done this show now.

The pilot episode aired in 2000, a mere 20 years ago, and yet the show has not aged particularly well. The characters are all fairly predictable (the squad has the requisite father-figure, mother-figure, angry impetuous son, less-angry-but-just-as-impetuous daughter, and scholar-aunt), which, while not particularly challenging or innovative, isn’t enough to make me turn it off.

But where it offers the equivalent of fingernails on blackboards (do any of you remember blackboards?) is in two areas: misogyny and racism. And while it’s irritating to watch, it occurred to me that this is hope. This is the hope I’ve been looking for and not finding in the news.

Because they couldn’t have done this show now.

The head of the cold-case squad is Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Boyd, a hard-edged guy who spends half his onscreen time either yelling at or otherwise chastising someone. He is impatient and often insulting, never apologizes, mansplains in excruciating and repetitious detail (especially to the women), even overtly mocks people; in return, he expects forgiveness, obedience, acceptance, and even approval of his excesses from those around him. It makes for some exciting scenes for sure, but even within the first season, it’s starting to feel uncomfortable. With a few exceptions, everyone shrugs his behavior away with a “Boyd-will-be-Boyd” attitude, an eyeroll, once in a while a slammed door. He solves his cases, yeah; but working for him today? It would be considered a toxic environment of harassment.

Earlier I mentioned the person taking the son role in this surrogate family: Detective Inspector Spencer Jordan. Spencer is the epitome of the classic “angry young Black man” trope, and it’s more than time to banish that one to the archives forever. He challenges Boyd, but not on any of the latter’s bad behavior; instead, it’s an almost tribal testing of boundaries and challenges to authority from an up-and-coming member of the group. Spencer is the first to distrust anyone, wears a perpetual scowl, reacts emotionally (the predominant emotion being anger), and doesn’t seem to have much of a life or a personality beyond the façade.

So the series offers misogyny, racist tropes, and a toxic environment. Why didn’t this bother me before?

I think there are a number of reasons. I think the series was in line with most other detective shows of the time—while more and more women and people of color were in the early aughts emerging on TV and in novels as leaders and authorities, the entertainment industry was slow to emerge from the tropes that had served it so well for so many years. And once you get accustomed to seeing or hearing something, once it’s part of your environment for long enough, you no longer think about it critically. I think that’s part of it.

I think, too, that the storylines were so terrific they allowed me to filter out the noise—in Boyd’s case, literally—because I enjoyed the plot twists. I was able to focus on what I wanted to get out of it despite other elements being present.

I think that so much of the stuff I’m reacting against in the news—the greed, the racism, the violence, the cruelty, the pain—is stuff we’ve been encouraged to see as background noise, like Boyd’s bombastic manner and Spencer’s simmering rage. I think that if 2020 has done anything, it’s taught us that the subtext is as important as the text, and possibly even more so. A great storyline doesn’t compensate for a female character being demeaned or a Black character being trivialized.

And that’s hope, isn’t it? Hope that we’ve made some progress. That the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement are accomplishing something—if not yet reaching their goals, they are at least offering a path forward. We’re entering a world in which women don’t have to put up with Boyd and where Spencer can be a full three-dimensional character, and it’s time our entertainment caught up with that world.

Because I don’t know about you, but that’s where I want to live.