Detailed Contents
Listing

Dare to be different

With a little help from Torchwood, Captain Jack and the BBC’s The Making of Me, Anthony Howard tells us why different equals good. This article first appeared on the Torchwood.tv blog, and  The Making of Me first went out on BBC1 on 24 July.

For all that he’s ever done to help and abide by me, I respect my father – but I still think he’s wrong. You see, he takes the point of view that anything that is different is automatically wrong. He grew up in early-1960s Birmingham, a city at a time rife with racism and prejudice. Guess it informed the man he grew up to be, somebody who quite willingly shouts slur like “Paki” or “terrorist” at any passing Asian man or woman just because – well, they aren’t like him.

He’s also got a lot of venom for homosexuals. Every time he’s “sure” that a gay man or lesbian woman is near, without exception, he’ll make a comment – usually jokey in tone – to try to intimidate them, or unsettle them, or cause upset. Just because they’re different, and he can.

It’s unsettling watching him do it; and, until recently, I never dared to have the courage to tell him to stop doing it, because “stop” invokes a lot of power – and my dad intimidates me so much, because he’s my dad and that’s a very dad thing to do, that I never dared realise that inside me I had that power to say one little word: “Stop.”

Thoughts and outbursts

He won’t change, my dad. As long as he lives, he’ll still have those thoughts inside him – even if, after recent outbursts on my part, he never airs them in front of me again. People like that don’t change; they can’t, because it’s in their nature.

It’s one of the reasons why a show like Torchwood connects with me so greatly. Sure, I think it’s dramatically flawed, and the characters sometimes don’t connect or resonate with the audience as much as they could do. But I respect that the show has balls. And not just teeny-weeny things: we’re talking mega-sized testes. What other primetime show, now cut down for a family audience, would dare show sexuality so freely, and with immense fun?

Sure, we have Queer as Folk and Six Feet Under and The L Word, but they don’t quite click with a mainstream audience, especially a British one, now do they?

I respect Torchwood for the way it simply puts two fingers up at the established idea of popular homophobia and has a general sexually liberated philosophy. We need more shows like that if people like my dad are to understand that they’re wrong – and, more importantly, why they’re wrong.

It’s a reason why I’m not too sure about The Making of Me, which shows John Barrowman exploring the reasons behind homosexuality – more specifically, what makes people gay. To be honest, the programme makes me a little uneasy, because it’s another of those shows that separate straight from gay, its main agenda being to show audiences that gay means different from you or me.

Shows like Torchwood are needed to demonstrate to the world that that’s simply not true – to be gay or lesbian is a mere sexual orientation. To take away human rights based upon that (or any other prejudice) is simply wrong.

John Barrowman himself, in the Guardian recently, praised the ability of Captain Jack Harkness (his Torchwood and Doctor Who character) to promote sexual equality:

“I was doing a signing at a convention and this father brought his son over and he said, ‘Do you want Captain Jack’s autograph?’ and the kid said, ‘Yeah, Dad, I don’t care if he likes boys, he’s still my hero.’ And I thought, ‘That’s why I’m doing this.’ ”

Barrowman added:

“I’d love to be a hero and that’s why I love playing him, because he is a hero. But then, funnily enough, people have written to me and said I am their ‘hero’ because of standing up for what I believe in.”

You may/may not be the biggest Torchwood fan around, or may be a casual viewer who’s stumbled across this site by mistake, but learn something from this wonderful cheeky and irrelevant show of ours – different = good. Next time somebody tells you differently, shut them up. In the nicest possible way. They deserve it.

So, here goes.

Dad, you’re wrong – just like so many others.

Look at Torchwood, for example. It’s flawed as hell and a little directionless much of the time; but it got one thing right. This is the twenty-first century, and it’s time that things changed.