Klansman - A small rant

[empty-mirrors.livejournal.com]

After ancaster's post yesterday about the holding hands scene in Rogue, I simply had to watch the ep again and, since Klansman was on the same disc, I decided to watch that as well. Or at least I tried to. I already knew this was far from being my fav ep - despite the wonderful 'Bodie, you half Irish son of a bitch,' line and the tears in Doyle's eyes - and I've decided to try putting my thoughts into words. Please excuse if they're a little incoherent but I'm 11 days into quitting the cigarettes and words are not currently my friends.




Okay, first up, and needing to be acknowledged before we can get any deeper into characterisation and such, is the fact that Klansman is an 'after school Special' episode of The Professionals. It has a very obvious agenda. Actually that agenda is an interesting one, though that's nearly swamped by the way the promulgation of that agenda supersedes everything else. That alone is enough to make all the hackles on my neck stand up. Agendas I can live with - every programme has one - but to handle it so badly is unforgivable. Not even In the Public Interest shoves its agenda quite so clumsily in your face as Klansman. It would have been less subtle to smack the audience with a wet haddock. Granted, it is a product of its time, but, I would argue, a lousy product.

For example, the use of Black Town. Black Town?! I ask you, please? This is just poor writing and does the verbal equivalent of jumping up and down and waving a large flag saying 'issue!' What was wrong with using a real area of London? The show had done it before and didn't flinch from doing it later. Using 'Black Town' rather than, say, Brixton, makes the whole thing generic rather than specific, simultaneously shoving the issue up the audiences' nose whilst ducking the actuality of the problems faced by various immigrant and non-white communities in the 1970's.

Plus it just sounds tacky.

So, we have an episode that is hell bent on telling us about the evils and stupidity of racism - not a bad thing in itself, though I think most people would agree, poorly handled in this specific case. But the really unforgivable part of this episode for me is the completely out of character behaviour it forces on Bodie.

Now, let me get one thing clear… I have no problem with Bodie being depicted as racist as such. I do not believe that these guys are without flaws. They're human, and racism, like sexism, homophobia and any other form of prejudice, is the result of culture and society. Bodie and Doyle are as likely to have been racist as anyone else in that era and, in fact, they both demonstrate what we would regard as a lack of sensitivity - even overt racism - in other episodes. (Takeaway, for one. Rogue for another. And in The Female Factor, Doyle makes an assumption about a black man driving an expensive car that these days would see him up on a disciplinary!) But the lads hail from a world which boasted the likes of Jim Davidson doing his Chalky White skits on TV, and consequently, like most people of their class and generation, both Bodie and Doyle happily and even-handily insult just about anyone, regardless of sex, colour or creed.

No, it's not the racism itself that annoys the hell out of me, but the nature of it.

Bodie has a background in Africa. And, as a mercenary fighting in Angola and Biafra, he would have fought both against and alongside black soldiers, and witnessed atrocities on all sides. This inevitably would have had an impact on the nature of his racism, perhaps by making it more personal? It's a lot more difficult to hate generically when you know people individually. Or perhaps he might have gone the other route, his racism taking on the arrogantly casual edge found in South Africa at the time. The sort demonstrated by Van Neikerk in Slushfund. Both are as offensive as what we saw on Klansman, but both would have been more in character than what we were actually given.

Because the attitudes Bodie displays in Klansman, are stereotypically blinkered British working class - the lawyer has a car that's better than Bodie can afford, has a house that's better than Bodie can afford. How dare he when he's just a 'spade'? Bodie's is the jealous reaction of someone who resents incomers who are successful, a position I cannot fathom him taking at any price. He is not some downtrodden plebeian. He's been round the block more than a few times and by now, knows exactly what's what. He might be as rude as hell to someone, but he'd do it from a deliberate position, not a generic one. His would be the hatred of the copper for the drug pusher, not the National Front member for the 'Paki' in the corner shop.

Added to this is the complete incompatibility of Bodie's attitude in Klansman to that in previous episodes. Stakeout, for example, explores similar themes of racism and white power, but nowhere during that episode does Bodie express anything approaching his words in Klansman.

Then, at the end of the episode, he completely reverses his stance. These 'deep and heartfelt beliefs' that he'd expresses so vehemently, despite the censure of both his boss and his partner, suddenly vanish, and he's walking out with the black nurse. To me, that makes the betrayal of Bodie's character twofold. Not only do the writers falsely represent him, making him out to be something he isn't, but then they make him shallow to boot!

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

The ending I found especially nonsensical. People just don't change that fast. And, as you said, he had never shown that sort of inclination before. The casual racism of the time, yes, but not the virulent rants he expressed in this episode.

Besides, his sleeping with a black woman wouldn't mean that much anyway. Slave owners did it all the time.

[franciskerst.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with both your views on the matter; the ending being especially exasperating by it's heavy "purposefulness" (is it a word?), meaninglessness (by excess of meaningfulness)and total artificiality; it makes me cringe each time I watch this ep. Moreover I feel horripilated by the annoying insistence of the black nurse to hold Bodie's hand, while he doesn't ask her for anything of the sort and even looks frankly uncooperative. Being myself extremely adverse to any unnecessary physical touching, I can imagine my reaction in such an unpleasant situation; I'd have been sorely tempted to smack her with anything at hand, whatever her skin colour!

[ancastar.livejournal.com]

Klansman doesn't work for me on a number of levels, although like you I'm fond of Ray's reaction. I also like the scene with Doyle and the boy after Ray has been beaten.

I completely agree with your assessment that Bodie's sudden jump to raging racist doesn't jibe with what we've seen of him in the past (I'm not saying he couldn't have feelings in that direction, but with the exception of one other ep, which is currently escaping me, I don't recall any other reference.) It's handled very heavy handedly. The dialogue doesn't even sound like him.

I also have a huge issue with what happens to Bodie after he is wounded. Are we to assume his wound has become infected? Is that what all the thrashing about and overacting on LC's part is supposed to be in aid of (not to mention the lovely red eye shadow)? I don't mean to pick on Lew, who I enjoy, find effective most of the time and often brilliant when the material allows him to employ his own natural charm. But the whole Bodie raving thing really didn't work for me. And we didn't get any shots of Ray holding a bedside vigil. Talk about a missed opportunity!

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

Yes, Klansman is clunkingly horrible even without the whole racism thing. Seeing as they had a whole gang of white supremacists taking centre stage it makes no sense to me that they then gave Bodie this particular role as well. No wonder they never got it on air.

But actually, what makes my teeth grind the most is the whole hospital set-up, as ancastar says above. I mean, it's not like we would have expected ER in those days, but the absent-minded wandering up the corridor with a critically-wounded Bodie is so annoying. He's just been stabbed twice for Pete's sake! And there's clearly no medical technology, never mind any pain relief, at the hospital ... a few swabs is about the best they can do! No wonder Bodie's raving *g* And why on earth? There are grains of reality in every other hospital scene, and Doyle gets the full treatment in DIAG. So irritating, and yes ... what a missed trick.

I like Doyle shouting at Cowley best *g*

Hands up who wants to do a re-write ...

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

Not even In the Public Interest shoves its agenda quite so clumsily in your face as Klansman. It would have been less subtle to smack the audience with a wet haddock. Granted, it is a product of its time, but, I would argue, a lousy product.

Oh, please, rant away! 'Klansmen annoys the hell out of me for 'what might have been' reasons and I simply can't go along with the view that it's a "ground-breaking" episode, even for its time. Unless you were living somewhere completely isolated & never watched anything but the most white-bread of shows...

For example, the use of Black Town.
Must admit I always grin a little at this - the place I work is in the Sydney suburb of - Blacktown! And yes, named because, way back when, the area was populated by Aboriginal people. Very ethnically diverse today.

No, it's not the racism itself that annoys the hell out of me, but the nature of it....the attitudes Bodie displays in Klansman, are stereotypically blinkered British working class

Thanks for that interesting thought - a swing and a miss from Brian Clemens, who I read as a bit pompous and self-righteous in RL (there you go, that's my bias coming out). It doesn't surprise me a great deal that he didn't have the sensitivity or the diligence to produce a more nuanced coverage of the issues & character attitudes.

[eveningblue.livejournal.com]

I agree I agree I agree. Watching this ep makes me cringe. To me, the worst thing is the ending. It's just...insulting, to viewers and to Bodie. I mean, come on, he never realized there were black doctors out there who could Help Him Someday? Or that some black women are hot? The whole turnaround is so ridiculous, so unconvincing. I actually wouldn't have minded so much if they'd stuck with Bodie as racist; the ending is just an awful copout.

Don't they both assume in "Female Factor" that a black guy with a fancy car must be a pimp? And there's another episode in which Bodie calls a black man a "spade," and Cowley reprimands him for it. So they must've meant Bodie to be, on some level, racist. To have him all "reformed" at the end of "Klansmen" strains credulity.

[heliophile-oxon.livejournal.com]

Very good points. I agree that it makes absolutely no sense to use Bodie in this way (and didn't I read somewhere that LC wasn't too crazy about it either?) because of the inconsistency; you are particuarly right to point out that while either or both of them could and probably would have been casually racist - in tune with the prevailing attitudes of the day - Bodie is not likely to have been this kind of racist given his personal background in Africa. It would have been infinitely more interesting to have one or both of them wavering in this regard, perhaps made more consciously aware of their own racist assumptions precisely because of their encounter with the supremacists - and that would have done a much better job, IMO, of fulfilling any after-school-special purpose they may have been aiming at with this episode. As you say, this smacks of lazy writing - which stings when one has a certain engagement with the show and its characters; how could they let them down like that! Although I realise that screenwriting must be very different from writing fiction, I often think that there are some writers in the fandom who could genuinely have given these people a run for their money. What a missed opportunity.

[ereini0n.livejournal.com]

Something I was thinking about for some time: though Doyle is acting all people-loving and liberal in Klansmen, he was not so pure in "Look After Annie":

Stanley: What kind of a joke is this? Do you know who you're dealing with?
Doyle: I know who we might have been dealing with. Three corpses. One black, two white.

He could've easily said "one male,two female", or classify them by any other difference, but he chose to mention color, comes to show he might be also thinking about people in terms of race...