On Sat, 3 Feb 2001 06:48:45 -0000, Neil Faulkner wrote:
Well, since Natasa has cited me as a part-time Marxist critic, I suppose
I
ought to rise to the challenge...
The only thing missing from Deliverance is the pith helmets, because this episode is little more than a sad pastiche of Rider Haggard with
pretensions
to being science fiction. Our stalwart bunch of middle-class Home
Counties
adventurers find themselves ditched on a planet consigned to quaint
notions
of barbarism through the magically convenient means of 'a war' at some unspecified point in the past. Almost from the start we're told that whatever society there was has undergone a 'reversion to primitive', and
it
isn't long before we're comfortably assured that primitive means
dangerous.
The planet itself is dangerous, what with all that radioactivity.
Despite which, there are some local primitives still knocking around.
First
off, we have a bunch of men (plural), who are aggressive, inarticulate,
and
unaccountably hostile. What better excuse could you need for shooting
them
with impunity? Well, just in case, the script has one to offer - they
like
to steal our women. We don't see Jenna get abducted, but surely she wouldn't have gone off with them of her own accord? Heaven forbid! They don't actually do anything with her beyond sticking her in a tent, thus sparing all and sundry the anguish of singing Here Comes The Night.
As well as the men, we also have a Woman (singular), who is young,
passive,
demure, extremely well spoken and has somehow managed to keep all her
teeth
white. She instantly throws herself at the feet of our sturdy white
giants
and hails them as the saviours of her people, singling out Avon as
'Lord'.
Vila and Gan presumably come from Another Place.
From this we can deduce that the representation of the sexes on Cephlon
is
indeed of a very primitive kind, unsullied by any problematic
complications
like cultural awareness, ideological consciousness or a sense of historicity.
Meegat has a minor problem that needs sorting out, and since it permits
Avon
and his chums a chance to flaunt their technological knowhow (they come
from
civilisation, after all) this must obviously take precedence over other matter (like, say, rescuing Jenna). Fortunately it doesn't take too
long,
because decent chaps like these are hardly going to be flummoxed by a
stack
of antique hardware. The fact that it's hardware of any kind is way
beyond
Meegat's comprehension, because she's primitive, and primitive people
have
no concept for such things. Nor do they feel any compulsion to try and understand what's going on, even if it's intimately tied up with their entire purpose in life.
And then it's off to rescue Jenna, or at least see if there's anything
left
of her (they could be cannibals, you know).
Meanwhile, Blake and Cally are up against a genuinely serious adversary. This is Ensor, who is of a bit of a decent chap himself, just a bit misguided. But he's technologically savvy (insisting that the course to Aristo is confirmed by the ship's computer, putting the energiser on his
gun
to automatic) and hence a genuine threat. Cephlon's brutish thugs might
go
down with a single whack of a big stick (and they don't stand up too well
to
fisticuffs either), but Blake and Cally are essentially helpless against
one
of their own kind. Only the toll of his injuries saves them.
What we have here, then, is a pernicious piece of colonialist nostalgia, wistfully dreaming of the good old days when the sun never set on the Empire. It is glib propaganda for armchair adventurers who need to be reassured that civilisation amounts to supremacy and that technological sophistication is the only kind worth a damn. Ultimately, it endorses a self-granted mandate to invade the lives of so-called inferior peoples, prove one's superiority and promptly walk out again without care or consideration for the consequences.
If you enjoyed this episode, may I also recommend Triumph of the Will and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. They should be right up your
street.
Whew. Didn't know I still had it in me...
Neil
Please no-one upset Neil again, I've had enough of this with my dissertation. Flippant, offhand comments please, hopefully I'll actually read all the posts - eventually.
M.
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