Black Hat Brigade: Episode 18
Nov. 19th, 2015 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastSetting: Inside UNIT base in London. Kate Stewart stands before one box, she looks down at the two buttons, one labeled "Truth" and the other labeled "Consequences". The Zygon currently in the form of Clara Ozgood looks down at a different box, with two similarly labeled buttons.
The Doctor: You're just one more mean person.
A blue vortex opens, interrupting the scene. Wind blows about, whipping in people's eyes.
The vortex ejects a black-maned lion with a scar over one eye. The lion hits the opposite wall and lands to the ground with a thud.
Scar: The Sliders portal is not a pleasant means of travel.
Next, the portal ejects a Mouse, wearing a black hat and a belt that holsters a rapier. The Mouse turns, mid-air, to brace his feet against the opposite wall and, using the energy of the momentum, backflip over to land on the table between the two boxes.
Reepicheep: I will give it the advantage of a dramatic entry.
A woman in a 50s era black business dress slides from the portal to land to her feet gently.
Susan Pevensie: It's all a matter of inertia management.
The Doctor: Well, that's surprising. But, we were in the middle of finishing off quite the terrorism analogy, here.
Susan: Yes, and you were off to quite the good start. It's quite the good thing that I'm here to make sure you don't make a collosal pig's ear of the whole ordeal.
The Doctor: I think we're doing pretty well, something pretty true-to-life.
Susan: To some degree. This episode started out with some good potential for moral complexity. You gave the terrorist analogs a valid motivation, the desire to be themselves. But, here you are ignoring that there's any specific motivation at all. I'm not going to claim that the motivation is always valid, but non-existent beyond "someone was mean to you"?
Scar: We suspended disbelief that heartbeat alone could be used, by the untrained, as nigh-infallible lie detection, when the science itself has been fully debunked.
Reepicheep: A well written and well-acted scene will merit accepting that kind of sloppy science on occasion.
Both Clara and Zygon-Clara: Thank you.
Scar: At least nobody suggested that the moon was an egg.
Susan: But, to establish a specific and legitimate grievance and then erase it in favor of "somebody was mean to you". Do you honestly believe that's all there is to it?
The Doctor: That's how it goes, time and time again.
Susan: In point of fact, that is quite not how it goes.
Scar: It's about perceptions of deserved reality contrasted with perceptions of experienced reality. The slave revolt of Spartacus, for instance, weren't about people being angry that, once upon a time, someone had been mean to them. There was ongoing injustice that the slaves had no legal means of addressing and a need to address somehow.
Reepicheep: And, terrorist acts, such as those committed by the KKK or Neo Nazis were about a belief that they were racially due privilege and a perception that they were being oppressed or transgressed upon. Niether perception matched reality, but you can't really call it a response to people having once been cruel.
Scar: By alternative, the Civil Rights cause was able to act without such tactics because it had an option for addressing injustices without violence.
The Doctor: Are you honestly claiming that terrorism can be a legitimate course of action?
Susan: If you would kindly explain the just and right alternative of Spartacus's rebellion? Or the just and right alternative to the French Resistance's violence and sabotage?
The Doctor: Those weren't terrorism.
Susan: I know that we like to apply the term only to those we want to identify as "bad guys", and not even all of them. But, stripped of moral judgment, terrorism is about the application of violence in order to use fear of same to make people do what you want.
Susan: Such examples, of course, should include not only some people we might want to easily identify as "other" but also Dylan Roof and Timothy McVeigh. In fact, full understanding of terrorism would require, for this analogy, that the Zygons have been the victims of far more acts of terror than they could possibly have managed to kill in this two-part episode.
Zygon Clara: Certainly worthy of a more respectful description than "someone was mean to you".
The Doctor: You're coming dangerously close to making the terrorists, the ones who committed the attacks of 9/11 and, less than a week after this episode, the attacks Paris the good guys.
Zygon Clara: No, because we're much better analogs to Syrian refugees, who may have had as many as one member in there, more likely having been framed for the job specifically to deny the refugees any safe harbor outside of joining ISIS. And, that's not a good analogy. Refugees, generally, have pathways to citizenship in their host-countries. We're denied even the right to publicly acknowledge our existence or any means of negotiating for improved conditions.
Zygon Clara: There are parts that break the analogy.
Susan: No analogy is perfect, so you'd have to be more of an analogy for an element of the refugee experience, wherein refugees are deemed acceptable only when so invisible that host nations are free to believe they don't even exist.
Zygon: And, for many a people of any stripe out of the total privilege set, whether that's religious minorities, ethnic minorities, people who's sexual orientation isn't the socially privileged, that's just not a livable option. We want what most people want, the right to walk down the street, being who we are, and not to have that cost us our lives or freedom. That's not that much to want, but a great deal to be denied.
Susan: And, there we have the problem. You have a population of Zygons who cannot negotiate for an essential element of life, if not, strictly speaking, of survival, the ability to be one's self.
Reepicheep: Doctor, you've changed shape several times, sometimes better done than others. But, you've always been a white, male human, usually with an English accent. You've acted eccentric, but never so alien to those around you in England so as to be hated or feared merely for existing.
Reepicheep: You've played games with humans, presented yourself as the fool so as to be underestimated by foes. You've never had to play such games for long, for the entirety of a life, to keep people from seeing you as a threat to all they believe.
Scar: You are in that enviable position of being able to see the institutional and cultural injustices as wrongs, but not actually be victim of the unfairness. You are, in fact, a Time Lord, which is still established as a high cultural rank in Galifrey.
Scar: So, it's all well and good for you to claim to understand. But, all you see is one kind of cruelty or another.
Susan: If anybody has the right to minimize the cruelties and travails of being a minority that must remain invisible in order to remain alive, Doctor, that is not you.
Zygon Clara: So, the only right thing to do is for Zygons to be granted open citizenship, for me to win.
Susan: The former, yes, the latter, no.
Zygon Clara: What?
Scar: You seriously believe that you can kill so many and simply... what... change faces in order to cozplay as the woman Doctor we should have had by now? I'm afraid not. As unfair as the conditions are that merit actions, actions still have consequences. People are dead, you have murdered them, both human and Zygon.
Reepicheep: To be equal citizens is to be just that, equal under the law and equally punished.
Susan: Indeed. You and your compatriots will have to face prison time, some of you will never see freedom again. That's justice, the same justice that will now protect your fellow Zygons along with other citizens.
The Doctor: You're just one more mean person.
A blue vortex opens, interrupting the scene. Wind blows about, whipping in people's eyes.
The vortex ejects a black-maned lion with a scar over one eye. The lion hits the opposite wall and lands to the ground with a thud.
Scar: The Sliders portal is not a pleasant means of travel.
Next, the portal ejects a Mouse, wearing a black hat and a belt that holsters a rapier. The Mouse turns, mid-air, to brace his feet against the opposite wall and, using the energy of the momentum, backflip over to land on the table between the two boxes.
Reepicheep: I will give it the advantage of a dramatic entry.
A woman in a 50s era black business dress slides from the portal to land to her feet gently.
Susan Pevensie: It's all a matter of inertia management.
The Doctor: Well, that's surprising. But, we were in the middle of finishing off quite the terrorism analogy, here.
Susan: Yes, and you were off to quite the good start. It's quite the good thing that I'm here to make sure you don't make a collosal pig's ear of the whole ordeal.
The Doctor: I think we're doing pretty well, something pretty true-to-life.
Susan: To some degree. This episode started out with some good potential for moral complexity. You gave the terrorist analogs a valid motivation, the desire to be themselves. But, here you are ignoring that there's any specific motivation at all. I'm not going to claim that the motivation is always valid, but non-existent beyond "someone was mean to you"?
Scar: We suspended disbelief that heartbeat alone could be used, by the untrained, as nigh-infallible lie detection, when the science itself has been fully debunked.
Reepicheep: A well written and well-acted scene will merit accepting that kind of sloppy science on occasion.
Both Clara and Zygon-Clara: Thank you.
Scar: At least nobody suggested that the moon was an egg.
Susan: But, to establish a specific and legitimate grievance and then erase it in favor of "somebody was mean to you". Do you honestly believe that's all there is to it?
The Doctor: That's how it goes, time and time again.
Susan: In point of fact, that is quite not how it goes.
Scar: It's about perceptions of deserved reality contrasted with perceptions of experienced reality. The slave revolt of Spartacus, for instance, weren't about people being angry that, once upon a time, someone had been mean to them. There was ongoing injustice that the slaves had no legal means of addressing and a need to address somehow.
Reepicheep: And, terrorist acts, such as those committed by the KKK or Neo Nazis were about a belief that they were racially due privilege and a perception that they were being oppressed or transgressed upon. Niether perception matched reality, but you can't really call it a response to people having once been cruel.
Scar: By alternative, the Civil Rights cause was able to act without such tactics because it had an option for addressing injustices without violence.
The Doctor: Are you honestly claiming that terrorism can be a legitimate course of action?
Susan: If you would kindly explain the just and right alternative of Spartacus's rebellion? Or the just and right alternative to the French Resistance's violence and sabotage?
The Doctor: Those weren't terrorism.
Susan: I know that we like to apply the term only to those we want to identify as "bad guys", and not even all of them. But, stripped of moral judgment, terrorism is about the application of violence in order to use fear of same to make people do what you want.
Susan: Such examples, of course, should include not only some people we might want to easily identify as "other" but also Dylan Roof and Timothy McVeigh. In fact, full understanding of terrorism would require, for this analogy, that the Zygons have been the victims of far more acts of terror than they could possibly have managed to kill in this two-part episode.
Zygon Clara: Certainly worthy of a more respectful description than "someone was mean to you".
The Doctor: You're coming dangerously close to making the terrorists, the ones who committed the attacks of 9/11 and, less than a week after this episode, the attacks Paris the good guys.
Zygon Clara: No, because we're much better analogs to Syrian refugees, who may have had as many as one member in there, more likely having been framed for the job specifically to deny the refugees any safe harbor outside of joining ISIS. And, that's not a good analogy. Refugees, generally, have pathways to citizenship in their host-countries. We're denied even the right to publicly acknowledge our existence or any means of negotiating for improved conditions.
Zygon Clara: There are parts that break the analogy.
Susan: No analogy is perfect, so you'd have to be more of an analogy for an element of the refugee experience, wherein refugees are deemed acceptable only when so invisible that host nations are free to believe they don't even exist.
Zygon: And, for many a people of any stripe out of the total privilege set, whether that's religious minorities, ethnic minorities, people who's sexual orientation isn't the socially privileged, that's just not a livable option. We want what most people want, the right to walk down the street, being who we are, and not to have that cost us our lives or freedom. That's not that much to want, but a great deal to be denied.
Susan: And, there we have the problem. You have a population of Zygons who cannot negotiate for an essential element of life, if not, strictly speaking, of survival, the ability to be one's self.
Reepicheep: Doctor, you've changed shape several times, sometimes better done than others. But, you've always been a white, male human, usually with an English accent. You've acted eccentric, but never so alien to those around you in England so as to be hated or feared merely for existing.
Reepicheep: You've played games with humans, presented yourself as the fool so as to be underestimated by foes. You've never had to play such games for long, for the entirety of a life, to keep people from seeing you as a threat to all they believe.
Scar: You are in that enviable position of being able to see the institutional and cultural injustices as wrongs, but not actually be victim of the unfairness. You are, in fact, a Time Lord, which is still established as a high cultural rank in Galifrey.
Scar: So, it's all well and good for you to claim to understand. But, all you see is one kind of cruelty or another.
Susan: If anybody has the right to minimize the cruelties and travails of being a minority that must remain invisible in order to remain alive, Doctor, that is not you.
Zygon Clara: So, the only right thing to do is for Zygons to be granted open citizenship, for me to win.
Susan: The former, yes, the latter, no.
Zygon Clara: What?
Scar: You seriously believe that you can kill so many and simply... what... change faces in order to cozplay as the woman Doctor we should have had by now? I'm afraid not. As unfair as the conditions are that merit actions, actions still have consequences. People are dead, you have murdered them, both human and Zygon.
Reepicheep: To be equal citizens is to be just that, equal under the law and equally punished.
Susan: Indeed. You and your compatriots will have to face prison time, some of you will never see freedom again. That's justice, the same justice that will now protect your fellow Zygons along with other citizens.
