Death in Fiction
Nov. 5th, 2009 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clodia_risaWhat turned into an almost organized essay. Torchwood-centric, but a lot of musing on why characters die in fiction, with a lot of references to other shows.
Although RTD never directly says that Ianto was killed for the plot, he does say that Torchwood is a serious show; an adult show. The stakes are high and whatnot. I have started reading interpretations of CoE and of RTD's comments, and they interpret him as saying that Ianto was killed because it was too serious a story for everyone to live happily ever after. And given the nature of Children of Earth, I have to agree to some extent. There had to be real sacrifice and pain in that story for it to make sense thematically. I think that simply killing Stephen might not have been enough - Harkness has too many scars already. He can run away or brood his way into normalcy. Killing Ianto (as, of course, no one would kill Gwen) is the easiest way of maintaining the level of intensity and pain throughout the series. Even when Torchwood wins, they have lost too. As if seeing and knowing what the governments of the world can do to save their own skins isn't enough. As if terrorizing and nearly sacrificing children isn't enough. I was sick to my stomach during the last two episodes, and Ianto living would not have alleviated that. But back to my main point: Ianto was killed for the plot.
When did Torchwood become a plot-driven show?
Torchwood, like so many episodic shows before it, has always seemed to me to be character driven. What will these five whacky kids get into now? Instead of Gwen, Ianto, Jack, Tosh, and Owen substitute Mulder/Scully, Buffy/Scoobettes, Mal/River/Firefly. (Please note that the backslashes do not imply pairings in the previous sentence. Except for Mulder and Scully.) Yes - each of these had individual plots, and sometimes an overarching plot with fascinating questions that need answering when they show is suddenly cut with only a season under its belt. Fox. But the appeal was the characters and their reactions to the situation. Sometimes characters have to die because their arch has brought them to that point (See nearly every death in BSG). Sometimes characters have to die because their actors want to move on (Kal Penn from House). And sometimes the plot demands that a character death thrown in here would be the perfect accent - like a sprig of parsley on a plate. Only by this character death will we be able to understand the plot in its complexity and brilliance.
And sometimes the death is needed. Joyce's death in season 5 of Buffy not only moved the plot forward in limiting Buffy's decisions and making her life suck even more, but hit the audience under the belt. No one was expecting it. And there are times where it really is unrealistic for every single member of the cast to be unharmed. If you go out with a full platoon in a WWII film and then manage to bring them all back alive, then the writers are either making you out to be a superhero or the writers have just lost the majority of the audience. I know that I got irritated in Dead Man's Chest when all of the main characters survived the cannibal island while all of the secondary characters fell down a cliff and died.So stupid. It lacked subtlety. So please do not interpret me as saying that plot-driven death is bad writing. It isn't always the cheapest way to lend your story emotional weight. Hell, Dumbledore's death was predicted practically from his first appearance, but I still found it intelligent, emotional, and logical.
What I dislike is the writers assuming that unless they torture one of the characters onscreen, that the audience is not going to get how bad the situation/the enemy is. I did not need to see John Frobisher's anguish when the Prime Minister forced the sacrifice of his kids to understand that taking children away from their parents without consent and giving them to aliens was a bad thing. In fact, I was angry at Frobisher for his emotions because he didn't seem to care until his kids were threatened. It made him less sympathetic. I hope that's what the writers were trying to do. But I will give the writers credit for that scene and Frobisher's death scene: purely character driven. That excuse for a PM would have put Frobisher in that situation, and Frobisher could only react the way he did. Good job, writers.
Yes, writers, I take it more seriously when the characters I love are threatened. And I know that you'll never permanently hurt Jack Harkness, just put more scars on his soul. And you wouldn't dare touch Gwen. So you had to kill Ianto, because otherwise you wouldn't have gotten a big enough emotional reaction out of us. I would like to point out that I adore Ianto and despise Frobisher, but I started crying so much that I scared my cat away at Frobisher's death scene, and simply wept quietly at Ianto's.
I've had a hard time figuring out how to wrap up this essay. I'm not pleased with the choice to kill Ianto. Nor was I pleased with the choice to kill Tosh or Owen. I didn't like the deaths in Firefly and Angel, but I'm still watching Dollhouse. If there happens to be another season of Torchwood, I'll watch it. Just because I'm not furious doesn't mean that I like the decision. I do think that the decision to kill Ianto was an interesting one, especially given the direction of the show pre-CoE. At least there is fandom.
ETA: Or Ianto could have been killed just to torment Jack. And we all know and love the fridging thegirlboyfriend trope, right?
Although RTD never directly says that Ianto was killed for the plot, he does say that Torchwood is a serious show; an adult show. The stakes are high and whatnot. I have started reading interpretations of CoE and of RTD's comments, and they interpret him as saying that Ianto was killed because it was too serious a story for everyone to live happily ever after. And given the nature of Children of Earth, I have to agree to some extent. There had to be real sacrifice and pain in that story for it to make sense thematically. I think that simply killing Stephen might not have been enough - Harkness has too many scars already. He can run away or brood his way into normalcy. Killing Ianto (as, of course, no one would kill Gwen) is the easiest way of maintaining the level of intensity and pain throughout the series. Even when Torchwood wins, they have lost too. As if seeing and knowing what the governments of the world can do to save their own skins isn't enough. As if terrorizing and nearly sacrificing children isn't enough. I was sick to my stomach during the last two episodes, and Ianto living would not have alleviated that. But back to my main point: Ianto was killed for the plot.
When did Torchwood become a plot-driven show?
Torchwood, like so many episodic shows before it, has always seemed to me to be character driven. What will these five whacky kids get into now? Instead of Gwen, Ianto, Jack, Tosh, and Owen substitute Mulder/Scully, Buffy/Scoobettes, Mal/River/Firefly. (Please note that the backslashes do not imply pairings in the previous sentence. Except for Mulder and Scully.) Yes - each of these had individual plots, and sometimes an overarching plot with fascinating questions that need answering when they show is suddenly cut with only a season under its belt. Fox. But the appeal was the characters and their reactions to the situation. Sometimes characters have to die because their arch has brought them to that point (See nearly every death in BSG). Sometimes characters have to die because their actors want to move on (Kal Penn from House). And sometimes the plot demands that a character death thrown in here would be the perfect accent - like a sprig of parsley on a plate. Only by this character death will we be able to understand the plot in its complexity and brilliance.
And sometimes the death is needed. Joyce's death in season 5 of Buffy not only moved the plot forward in limiting Buffy's decisions and making her life suck even more, but hit the audience under the belt. No one was expecting it. And there are times where it really is unrealistic for every single member of the cast to be unharmed. If you go out with a full platoon in a WWII film and then manage to bring them all back alive, then the writers are either making you out to be a superhero or the writers have just lost the majority of the audience. I know that I got irritated in Dead Man's Chest when all of the main characters survived the cannibal island while all of the secondary characters fell down a cliff and died.
What I dislike is the writers assuming that unless they torture one of the characters onscreen, that the audience is not going to get how bad the situation/the enemy is. I did not need to see John Frobisher's anguish when the Prime Minister forced the sacrifice of his kids to understand that taking children away from their parents without consent and giving them to aliens was a bad thing. In fact, I was angry at Frobisher for his emotions because he didn't seem to care until his kids were threatened. It made him less sympathetic. I hope that's what the writers were trying to do. But I will give the writers credit for that scene and Frobisher's death scene: purely character driven. That excuse for a PM would have put Frobisher in that situation, and Frobisher could only react the way he did. Good job, writers.
Yes, writers, I take it more seriously when the characters I love are threatened. And I know that you'll never permanently hurt Jack Harkness, just put more scars on his soul. And you wouldn't dare touch Gwen. So you had to kill Ianto, because otherwise you wouldn't have gotten a big enough emotional reaction out of us. I would like to point out that I adore Ianto and despise Frobisher, but I started crying so much that I scared my cat away at Frobisher's death scene, and simply wept quietly at Ianto's.
I've had a hard time figuring out how to wrap up this essay. I'm not pleased with the choice to kill Ianto. Nor was I pleased with the choice to kill Tosh or Owen. I didn't like the deaths in Firefly and Angel, but I'm still watching Dollhouse. If there happens to be another season of Torchwood, I'll watch it. Just because I'm not furious doesn't mean that I like the decision. I do think that the decision to kill Ianto was an interesting one, especially given the direction of the show pre-CoE. At least there is fandom.
ETA: Or Ianto could have been killed just to torment Jack. And we all know and love the fridging the