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American Reacts to The IT Crowd (#16) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-16 09:08:56
Edited:
2021-05-16 09:09:02
Imported:
2022-05

Content

https://dai.ly/x81ay13


Password is iran

Comments

Alex P

So (and apologies for the essay) my thoughts are: Douglas is clearly a character with dubious morals, and is always shown to be very selfish. In general the audience is expected to know this, so we could conclude that Douglas's behaviour/attitude after he learns that April is a trans woman should be interpreted by the audience as part of his character defect rather than as a reasonable reaction that anyone would have. However, in contrast to the rohypnol scene, here there are no other characters showing any opposing views or clearly indicating that Douglas's behaviour is inappropriate. Is the joke that Douglas is a terrible person? Is the joke that being in a relationship with a trans person is in some way bad? I obviously can't know what was going through Linehan's head when he wrote this, but it is pretty much played as a straight line, not a ridiculous one. Maybe we could compare this to the scene in Father Ted with the priest who collects nazi paraphernalia. There is no real way you could watch that as a neo-nazi and think "yeah this reinforces my view that nazi-ism is great" - Ted is there to provide the voice of reason and clearly show that this is not ok to be a nazi. Before I rewatched this with you, I was leaning towards the joke being that Douglas is a dick, but now I think it's not clearly enough played that way. So, even if we give the benefit of the doubt and assume that it wasn't intended as a "well of course being in a relationship with a trans person is ridiculous" anti-trans joke, in my opinion it is too easy to intepret it that way, and to view the episode as being anti-trans, and therefore can be used by transphobes to reinforce and propagate their views. I think the montage where Douglas and April are doing a bunch of stereotypically "manly" things (chugging pints, arm wrestling etc) is a bit crass. The joke there is basically "hurr durr she's a man". I guess that probably applies to the fight scene too. Overall I don't think that this episode would be produced unchanged today. It's been, what 13 years since this episode first aired, and attitudes towards trans people have progressed remarkably in that time. Language has changed - "I used to be a man, there's no other way to say it" ... well yes there is now, you say "I am a trans woman". I am also pretty sure all the talk of hormone therapy and surgery would not be included nowadays - everything would be handled more delicately, if it was touched on at all. Probably if this episode was to be produced today, they would lose the Douglas/April subplot, and engineer some other way for Douglas to get into a fight. Finally, at the end Douglas does seem upset that he and April have broken up - as he said, it seemed to be the only relationship he had truly ever enjoyed. (Now that is a joke that is definitely at Douglas's expense.) This could be seen a a redeeming feature (both of Douglas and the subplot as a whole). But does he get back with her? Nope. That could have been their out - Douglas realises what he's missing and gets her back, looking beyond the trans issue. I don't think you could even argue that it would break forward continuity, since there barely is any - Denholm Reynholm dying really being the only major example I can think of. So yeah I guess maybe I have talked myself into agreeing that maybe pulling it was the right decision. Which is interesting because an hour ago I thought it was fine!

Ged_UK

I think that's a very fair summary!