More Equal Than Others
I've just finished watching the BBC Alba crime drama An t-Eilean (The Island) and enjoyed the realistic portrayal of island characters and the stunning scenery of the Scottish Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. My Gaelic has been so poor for so long that I'd be rated as a "false beginner" but I could recognise enough to relate it to the English subtitles and I felt the typical ebb and flow of bilingualism - that I've personally experienced in other places with other languages - was particularly well done. The other island crime show I've been watching is the lighthearted Death in Paradise, filmed on lovely Guadeloupe, a whodunnit as formulaic as Murder She Wrote. Fictional Sainte Marie - annoyingly mispronounced by the monoglot English characters as "San Maree" (when both English and French pronunciations should sound the "t") - seems quite as deadly as the famous fictional villages of St Mary Mead or Midsomer.
Apart from, quite different, stunning scenery, the two shows don't appear at first sight to have a lot in common. The Hebridean 4-parter is not exactly dreich (think Taggart in rain-soaked Glasgow or Rebus in chilly Edinburgh) but it's certainly heavy and ends with a Free Kirk funeral - whereas most of the episodes of the many seasons of the Caribbean deadly paradise end up with the jolly police squad clinking large glasses of island rum in a bar on the beach.
It's not the plot but the Death in Paradise protagonist/ An t-Eilean antagonist that show the commonality. The former role is taken up by a succession of men, either English or based there; the latter is a laird, untypical as he's both Scottish and a Gaelic speaker but seemingly a typical CEO and powerful paterfamilias. Let's take one at a time.
Created by Robert Thorogood initially as "Cop in the Caribbean", the protagonist is first played by Ben Miller as the nipped-in town mouse finding himself having to operate as a detective inspector from an open plan wee wooden bungalow while sharing a beach shack with a lizard. Initially irked by the sun, the sand, the food, the creole and the culture, he's the fussy middle-class Brit (or rather Englishman) abroad that Australians characterise as a "whinging POM". It's not stated but his character seems to be on the autistic spectrum and is certainly both obsessive and intuitively discerns patterns.
So we have two interwoven threads here: a comic fish-out-of-water tale and a twist in the tale as a typically devalued character proves his (or her, as in Legally Blonde) value. Had the character been female, critics might have just enjoyed the (rather stereotypical) humour and appreciated the narrative of the marginalised taking centre stage. But, guilty of the original sin of being male, almost all of the actors playing the changing protagonist are also White. Therefore the entire premise is condemned as colonialism. The DI who arrives from the post-imperial centre to the margin is a White Saviour and therefore oppressive and despicable.
I'm not going to argue about that other than to say that those anglo-centric metropolitan critics may have a valid postcolonial point to make but are also in danger of dismissing informal communication, friendship networks, old-fashioned policing (rather than reliance on technology) and any dialect other than English Standard English as primitive.
Jumping back to the first show, that's not a mistake made in An t-Eilean by the English DCI (whose unhighlighted sub-continental ethnicity functions simply as a sign of cosmopolitan distance from the local culture). He realises he needs the help of the island-born Family Liaison Officer and, rather touchingly at the end thanks her with a shy and fairly well pronounced tapadh leat.
The Hebridean protagonist's youth and gender fit into a established trope that is now almost impossible to escape, (especially on Netflix): mildly marginalised young woman (White or Mixed-Race with European features) beats all the boys (in hotter climes mostly shown shirtless with chiselled abs) by using some unforeseen or uncanny (often magical) ability. In this case it's not her insider status, as almost everyone in the community thinks she left after smashing up the sculptures of a local artist, but her linguistic ability and lesbian relationship that gives her an in with the family - even and especially after being chucked off the case for snogging a suspect.
The almost is the exception that proves the rule: her dad, despite having the twin character flaws of being old and male, is abject in his apologies to her (for not telepathically knowing what happened when she ran away) and even though he's actually a Christian minister he has the redeeming features of not going on about it, of accepting his daughter's lesbianism, and of being a pathetic alcoholic. So that's alright then.
Because - while an earnest light-skinned female Guardian writer (taking a break from writing about going's on in the Love Island hot tub) is outraged by young "Black" (Mixed-Race Caribbeans tend to say "Brown") female characters calling an (even slightly) older White man (who's their boss) "sir" - the portrayal of all of the White protagonists in Death in Paradise is similarly prejudiced.
After Ben Miller's obessive DI, gangly Kris Marshall adopts exactly the same formula, while being embarrassingly clumsy with women and small ornaments, and failing to either locate or use a notebook (as opposed to a the back of an envelope or a napkin) for a tedious number of episodes. Charmer Ardal O'Hanlon gets a bit of a break but only because he's Irish (White Englishman are inherently fascist but the Irish are all ethnic and quaint) and his DI has suffered a tragedy which puts him out of the dating game - until an overweight and overwhelming menopausal world traveller toys with him for a while then gets annoyed when he at last shows some agency. Also, he hugs men, dances with them and openly admires their beauty. So, metrosexual then. That's fine.
Former semi-professional footballer Ralf Little is a real problem for the show because although not stunningly handsome he's fairly young and has a pleasant face - and a superb lean muscular physique. The solution is to make his DI as annoying and pathetic as possible. Allergic to almost everything, he's such a nerd he'd be thrown out of the school chess club for being too boring. Even when he somehow manages to shack up with a looker, it all goes so horribly wrong it's surprising he doesn't pack his bags immediately. The last DI is a Black Londoner who we're supposed to forget appeared as a local in an earlier series. It was quite forgettable, in fairness. Unfortunately, he's still male.
Meanwhile back in the Hebrides, we find out that (in common with almost every White father figure and every minister of religion, even if Black or Brown, in the Caribbean show) the antagonist old White paterfamilias on Harris is secretly despicable.
None of this is a surprise. The Sainte Marie Commissioner of Police has the good grace to be Black but the bad luck of being born male and stubbornly refusing to identify otherwise - unlike the many m-f transsexuals who pop up on this show (as on the Hallmark soufflé crime series The Aurora Teagarden Mysteries). His main function is to assert local sovereignty by constant criticism of the foreign DI but is unfortunately masculine so has to be taken down a peg by being shot, hospitalised and revealed as an absent and emotionally rubbish father. Rendering masculine men physically and emotionally subservient to women is a useful plotline (used also in Silk when the old school Cockney sparrow chambers clerk is emasculated by oestrogen, with the excuse of prostate cancer).
Misandry is so ubiquitous now that we fail to notice it. Men, after all, are all bastards whereas women are angels - with very few exceptions. In both shows, the difference in treatment of criminals depending on sex (and to some extent ethnicity) is striking: on Harris, the homicidal mother is universally exonerated as a Wronged Woman whereas at the end of the series the equally homicidal father is unburied and unmourned; on Sainte Marie, the hands of female criminals are cuffed in front of them, if at all, and they are often hugged, apologised to (for the pesky legal duty of arresting and charging a murderer) and almost all reassured that the judge will be lenient - with the understanding that he had it coming. The male murderers are handcuffed from behind and just led away - often single handedly by whichever slip of a girl happens to be the current "hyper-competent" (see above feminist postcolonial critique) sidekick of the DI whose skills include tackling muscular murderers who literally just fall at their petite feet.
On Sainte Marie, even officer training is gender-specific. Much is made of the first man's sergeant's exam but, as he's satisfactorily subservient to his wife, and Brown, he's allowed to pass. The next male candidate is unattached and still cocky so he fails while PC By The Book becomes a sergeant just by girl power. On Harris they really couldn't get away with that but the local PC, male and fat, is revealed to be (of course) in league with the evil laird. So is his female housekeeper but we skip over that.
Why am I highlighting this evident but trivial sexism on two very different crime shows? Surely it does no-one any harm and aren't women due a little bit of fictional revenge for thousands of years of patriarchy?
The problem is that this everyday misandry isn't limited to occasional instances in fiction; in post-industrial societies it's everywhere. It played a huge part in my unfair dismissal and accounts for the fact - which no University of Glasgow academic or HR agent called as a witness could explain - that in 2023/2024, of staff of that institution put through a disciplinary procedure, 72% were men. Men report similar injustice in family court.
This isn't, principally, a poor us rant about the sex war. Yes, I do think we're hard done by now in liberal societies that purport to respect equal civil rights but women have had it far worse for far longer and in many other cultures - worryingly including those currently changing our liberal demographics - they still do.
The strongest resistance to tyranny comes from the most powerful - either in number, physical strength or cultural kudos. It's no accident that those pushing for depopulation, dehumanisation and serfdom under surveillance by any means have targeted men, ministers of religion and every form of community cohesion and authority.
This insidious agenda, which includes attacking women (principally by entryism), isn't to promote the marginalised but to remove from power those who have traditionally been entrusted with their protection.
Girls aren't powerful. Not in comparison to men. The weak will not inherit the earth; they will be crushed underfoot along with all opposition.
Hold the powerful to account, certainly. Men can be pig-headed and we can miss nuances that women are sensitive to; but don't denigrate and destroy your powerful protectors.
Part of our equality is our respect for difference. That has to be mutual. Otherwise, the age-old strategy of divide and conquer will succeed.
Thanks to Kai Stachowiak for releasing his image Woman Power into the public domain.