Gatefail 2009 (or, A Primer on Stories that Scream)

On Monday, August 10, Spoiler TV posted a leaked casting call for the fall 2009 SyFy series Stargate: Universe. The call, for a guest role in Sabotage, the tentatively-scheduled sixteenth episode of the season, read:

[ELEANOR PERRY] (35-40) and quite attractive. A brilliant scientist who happens to be a quadriplegic. Affected since childhood, her disability has rendered her body physically useless. However, after being brought on board the Destiny as the only person who may be able to save the ship and her crew from certain annihilation, she is given temporary powers that enable her to walk again and to finally experience intimacy.sptv050769..Strong guest lead. NAMES PREFERRED. ACTRESS MUST BE PHYSICALLY THIN. (THINK CALISTA FLOCKHART).

Thus began GateFail 2009.

Initial criticisms of the casting call focused on its presumptions about disability – that disability rendered a person's body "useless"; that a disability was something that needed to be fixed; and that people with disabilities could not expect to have fulfilling sex lives (or, implicitly, to be considered desirable at all). The fear that any storyline involving such components would reinforce stereotypes about disabled people among SGU's viewership was realized in fan reactions from some quarters – user PG15 posted to the fansite Gateworld that Perry's disability was a "tragic circumstance," and he looked forward to the way in which the show "solves it not with normal stuff." Stargate: Universe, he argued, was set to provide "yet another archetype for us to play with." User SGFerrit further suggested that the storyline "should be something very special for this lady, I can't wait to see this."

Very quickly, initial criticisms became complicated by the question of exactly how Perry would end up on the Destiny (a ship lost in space). Fan consensus, not only on Gateworld but at other sites such as Television Without Pity, was that the writers would make use of a long-range communication device on board the ship – a piece of alien technology that would allow someone on the Destiny to body-swap with someone back on Earth. Such a body-swap would explain Perry's "temporary powers that enable her to walk again," but raised the question of whether this would also be how she "finally experience[d] intimacy." In addition, actress Ming-Na, who plays Camile Wray on SGU, twittered as early as Sunday, August 7 that she had "Just read 'Sabotage.' Wow. SGU is really challenging my acting chops! I LOVE our writers! Can't wait 2 work on this episode! Xoxo." Fans began to suspect that Wray and Perry were the body-swapees. This had particularly disturbing implications, as Wray's character was gay – would Perry experience straight or lesbian sex in Wray's body? Would consent be sought and gained?

On August 13 the implications of the casting call became more clear, as eight pages of the Sabotage script began to make the rounds of the blogosphere. Those pages, released as audition sides, confirmed that:

1) Eleanor Perry would swap bodies with Camile Wray.

2) Perry would pursue straight sexual encounters, in Wray's body, with men aboard the Destiny - first Eli Wallace, and then Nicholas Rush. After an initial kiss, Wallace would decline to pursue things further, as he didn't believe "Wray . . . would want to [have sex] with me." Rush would not share Wallace's qualms – the script called for him to kiss Perry and strip Wray's body down to her "undergarments."

3) The intimacy that Perry would "finally" experience was, indeed, sex – Perry confessed to never having kissed anyone, had sex, or drunk alcohol in her lifetime. She spoke of a "list" of firsts she would like to achieve before she had to go back to Earth, and believed she had about a week on ship.

4) Perry appeared to walk around in Wray's body without incident, so the observation raised by numerous critics - that motor control is learned, and Perry would not know how to move her new body, at least at first – appeared to have been hand-waved.

The combined evidence of the casting call and audition sides suggested that the writers of Stargate: Universe intended to air a storyline which maligned people with disabilities, overwrote a character's canonical lesbianism with heterosexual sex, reiterated the old trope of Asian and Asian-descended women being sexual playthings for white men, and – without a scene in which Perry asked Wray for consent to use her body for sexual purposes – condoned rape. Outraged, critics pushed their objections to the storyline beyond the confines of fansites, alerting After Ellen, Shakesville, The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Media Dis'n'Dat, and Feministe. (Sci-fi news site i09 and Gateworld also covered the story.) Critics texted @stargatecommand to communicate their objections directly to MGM, and similarly contacted Craig Engler at @SyFy, prompting a three tweet response on August 14:

Thanks to those of you who sent me a note about the casting call for the Stargate Universe episode Sabotage. Please see my next two tweets: We're very sensitive to the issues raised by the description of the character Eleanor Perry.
We're working with the Stargate producers to address this & ensure that this character is handled sympathetically and responsibly.

That afternoon also brought a statement from Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, executive producers of the Stargate franchise:

Recently, a casting breakdown was released to agents for a upcoming character in our television show, Stargate Universe. The character, Doctor Eleanor Perry, is a brilliant scientist at the top of her field, who also happens to be a quadriplegic. As part of a science fiction conceit that is core to our series, Perry's consciousness is temporarily exchanged with one our series main characters, Camile Wray, who is a lesbian. In the course of the story, Perry has the experience of being able bodied for the first time since she was a child. At the same time, Wray, temporarily encumbered by Perry's physical disability, experiences the unconditional love of her life partner. The language of the breakdown was insensitive and inaccurate, and we sincerely apologize to those who may have been offended. The audition pages that have been under scrutiny were from an early draft and released out of context. It is our desire and intention to portray both characters with dignity and respect, while remaining mindful of the ethical issues we're raising.

Critics were not appeased – the statement was buried on the forums at Gateworld, a site notoriously friendly to the producers of the franchise, in a thread no one but fans could easily find. The statement also apologized only for issues of wording in the original casting call, and deflected other criticisms by insisting the script pages in circulation were not a final draft. This non-apology was reiterated on August 15 by Stargate producer Joe Mallozzi, who wrote "I can assure you that the material being cited does a poor job of reflecting the character or story developments as they will appear in the episode – as will become readily apparent once Sabotage finally airs." This theme was picked up by Darren Sumner, owner and operator of Gateworld, who on August 17 posted an editorial defending the Stargate producers. "It's not fair," Sumner argued, "for viewers to draw conclusions or pass judgment based on" casting calls or audition sides:

Unlike a production photo or a clip from a trailer, a character’s description in casting documents may finally bear little similarity to the character as she is depicted on screen. Script pages are also usually from early drafts, and can be rewritten. Or tweaked on set by the actors and director. Or filmed, then cut. (Television is a long, creative process involving contributions from hundreds of people.) It’s an early look at what might be, followed by months of refining by everyone involved.

But this argument missed the critics' point. Critics were not suggesting that draft scripts were final documents, nor casting calls the last word on any given character. Rather, critics sought to hold the producers of Stargate accountable for the fact that by the point the casting call and audition sides were released there had been a story pitched, a story spun, and a story gone through early edits. The pages revealed what was acceptable at that stage - a sex-driven Perry, a story of miraculous healing, the 'straightening' of a gay character, and a situation of (at best) dubious consent. What was telling was that if, indeed, the public was never meant to see these things, the Stargate producers and their associates felt safe writing and editing sexist, homophobic, racist, and ableist narratives that relied on old tropes about the magical "fixing" of disability and the dispensability of women's bodies (particularly the bodies of non-white women) among themselves. Critics argued that whom the producers revealed themselves to be in private were who they were in public, and that the existence of the audition sides at all pointed to a series of deeply thoughtless acts at best, outright prejudice at worst.

This perspective was further reinforced by the opinions shared by several defenders of the Stargate franchise on the issue of rape. (Or as user Brian Skinn articulated at John Scalzi's blog: "what are the real-world implications of this discussion in terms of people’s views of ‘body ownership’, etc.? What do our reactions to this depiction, albeit fictional, of an inappropriate expression of sexuality tell us about how we view sexuality and sexual expression in our own lives?") An early and persistent criticism of Sabotage was that if the episode lacked a scene in which Perry sought Wray's permission to use her body for any kind of sexual liaison, the sex would constitute rape (many of the critics articulating this argument were survivors of sexual assault themselves). In contrast, user SGFerit on the Gateworld forums argued it would only be rape "if she found out," further asking, "why are people so angry? This show is 'Darker' and 'Edgier'. What did people expect? Butterflies and puppies? Sh*t is going to go down on this show, and it's not going to be pretty. That's life. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Don't b*tch about the heat and try to get the temperature turned down, because some people might like it!" Later in the same thread, MechThor argued, "Camile is not even aware that her body is being used in that way, and her mind, her personality, the thing that makes her, her is not even there when it happens. Can it really be viewed as if 'she' is being raped?" On livejournal, an anonymous commenter to one post on the issue compared rape to joining a fraternity, and argued, "Even though it is her body having sex, she knows that she won't have any memories of the sex occurring and by the time she swaps back into her body, any physical evidence of the sex will have disappeared..." – trying to suggest that Wray would not care what Perry had done. It was this variety of commentary on the episode that so profoundly disturbed critics, and which suggested that the episode Sabotage had already reinforced misogynistic attitudes among its viewership.

Contrary to the belief of the producers' defenders, there is little, as critics have pointed out, new or 'edgy' about the proposed Sabotage storyline. While body-swap technology may not be an everyday occurrence in the real world, creating situations in which women are sexually vulnerable, making Asian and Asian-descended women the locus of male sexual fantasy, and treating people with disabilities as though they are less than fully-realized human beings is all too repetitive and ordinary. Making a white, male character sexually vulnerable to another man would be new (and avoiding homophobic hysteria while doing so would be vital and refreshing); writing a female genius with a disability who saves the day without needing to be healed in order to do so would be entirely unexpected; writing a lesbian character whose sexual choices are absolutely respected by her co-workers would be practically revolutionary. Note that, in contradiction to the arguments made by some defenders of the show, none of these alternatives require the characters to be likeable in order to break out of racist, homophobic, sexist, and ableist tropes – the only requirement is to think of women as something other than victims of their physicality, men as something other than individuals owed sexual congress as a matter of existence, and non-white persons something other than vehicles for white folk to learn something about themselves.

Darren Sumner's editorial further argued that "Depiction Does Not Mean Endorsement":

Have we forgotten the value of the science fiction genre and dramatic story-telling as a whole? Good television asks hard questions, and sci-fi in particular is good about studying the human condition and engaging tough issues.

But while certain incarnations of science-fiction may be good at "studying the human condition and engaging tough issues," Sumner's claim on behalf of the entire genre dramatically overstates his case. Even a cursory examination of recent trends in sci-fi pinpoints numerous problematics. As Race Fail demonstrated through the early months of this year, the science fiction community has enormous difficulty dealing with issues of race and racism – if critics and fans can get writers to admit that racism exists at all. Sadly, it isn't necessary to go back that far to prove the point – The Mammoth Book of Mind-Blowing SciFi, released in August, contained no stories by non-white authors or women. Warehouse 13, a SyFy offering, began its season by wholly misrepresenting Aztec history and culture, before following up with an episode in which several hundred different American Indian nations were conflated into one monolithic, feather-encapsulated idea of "Native American." Dollhouse, one of the few recent sci-fi offerings centered on women, required significant effort to be read as anti-rape rather than titillation (according to supporters of the show). In tandem, The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled, a show that no matter its merits or defects, was at the very least one of the few sci-fi shows in recent memory to pass the Bechdel Test.

Perhaps most pointedly considering the issues at hand, the Stargate franchise itself has consistently failed to engage tough issues (it's one thing to pose difficult questions; it's quite another to answer them well). In Stargate Atlantis, the most recent franchise offering, rape was played for laughs; genetic modification of another species portrayed as entirely fair in war; starvation shrugged off as though it were not torture; SG1 and SGA's two lead, male, non-white characters placed in a ring-fight with each other largely for the entertainment of white onlookers; and the show's first all-female team penned just in time to feature in an episode laden with horror tropes, in which the only (ret-conned) lesbian character on the show became a monster's victim. In perhaps the crowning achievement of all of these episodes came Inquisition, a show in which SGA-1 was called to answer for the unabashedly imperial actions of the expedition, but evaded the charges under the premise that everyone in Pegasus was corrupt. Serious consideration of the charge did not take place, leaving many viewers with no confidence that the Stargate writers were capable of treating contentious issues with thoughtfulness or sensitivity toward human rights. (Commenters at Gateworld have noted numerous other instances of rape and cultural insensitivity in the franchise – their goal was to undermine the idea that Sabotage was particularly problematic, but their evidence of the Stargate writers' continued failure to engage thoughtfully with the "tough issues" is welcome.)

Perhaps the Stargate producers did not intend to endorse tropes that made characters increasingly disposable – or subject to harm – by reference to their race, gender, and sexuality, but intent means little when measured against reality. The episodes above tell very specific stories about women and their bodies, and about non-white men and theirs. The ethics at play – the use of torture, the refusal to deal with colonialism – were not handled with respect. Add these to all the other depictions of men and women, race and culture, gender and sexuality in the genre as a whole and it becomes clear that the vast majority of sci-fi does not champion progressivism (as many of the commenters at John Scalzi's blog have argued with eloquent passion). Instead sci-fi too often reveals itself as a genre that titillates, and which is still, overwhelmingly, geared to the straight, white male gaze.

In its final iteration, Gatefail is not about a single episode of a particular sci-fi show, but rather about the genre's continued resistance to anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, and anti-ableist critiques. It reflects the refusal of writers and producers to consider the limits of their own worldview, and the real-world damage their stories can do. It reflects the defensiveness of many sci-fi consumers, who would prefer to be left undisturbed to enjoy fantasies that enable their sense of power and privilege, than to consider that their escapism traps others. It reflects the attempts of many who enjoy the premise of sci-fi to insist that the genre live up to its promise, and cease to rely on old, worn tropes to "entertain." It also reflects the hope of many that, in the words of Catherynne M. Valente during RaceFail 2009, stories be respected:

Stories are important. Stories, in fact, are life. They are what is left of our unique experience in this world. They speak--no. They scream. And when an author sits down and constructs a completely imaginary world in their heads, if people like me, people like us, do not exist in it, or exist only to be ridden like animals or raped or murdered or humilated or destroyed so that an audience can acheive catharsis via symbolic annihilation of our lives, bodies, and souls, well, certainly, we can sit down and look at the floor and say: yes, you're right, that is what we deserve. Or we can stand up. We can scream back. We can band together. We can demand our right to exist, to take part in humanity, to learn, to grow, to evolve, to self-examine. We can tell our stories, to anyone who will listen, to the campfire, to our lovers, to coffee shops, to strangers, to publishers' skyscrapers in New York, to the heavens, to the earth. Yes, you're fucking well right we can.