Resisting The White Alien Temporal Perspective: Colonial Nerd Revisionism In Dr. Who Episode “Rosa”

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RND/ to generally consider why the dr. who episode “Rosa” induces cringe in viewers: possibly that, under the benevolent christian guise of meek and mild pseudo-multiculturism, the good Doctor was simply (ideologically / symbolically) whitespaining [1] rewriting black history [2] – in short, ‘wokewashing’

“Operation Rosa Parks”.. We have to make sure we keep history [3] in [officially / culturally sanctioned] Order™
– Dr. Who on history as another mere project to be managed

KING (to Chris): How the fuck you get over here man, you look like you
educated..

CHRIS: I volunteered

KING: You WHAT? Say ‘gain

CHRIS: Yeah, I dropped out of college and told ’em I wanted infantry, combat, and Nam..

CRAWFORD: You volunteered for this sh1t man?

KING: You a crazy flocker, givin’ up college man

CHRIS: Didn’t make much sense. Wasn’t learning anything.. And why should just the poor kids go to the war – and the college kids get away with it

KING: Sheeit, gotta be rich [/pale] in the first place to think like that. Everybody know the poor always being fucked by the rich. Always have, always will

– Scene from Platoon, 1986 Oliver Stone

to imagine the modern dr. who as badly written, (white) nerd fanfiction [4] cringe; a few ideas to philosophically ponder about the possible sources of its particular off smell

  • take star trek, lost in space, babylon 5 [5] etc – and shove em up yer arts
  • the warning ray bradbury’s classic “a delicate sound of thunder”; don’t trample over history
  • h.g well’s [6] morlocks as racist symbols for ignorant black savages who don’t understand the “faith in the essential decency of the white man’s (time traveling) culture” (thanks, dr. gonzo)
  • ‘historically’: sci fi as (/only for) those who self-identify as ‘white’ (“white-fi”?) [7]
  • dr. who as a ‘walien’ (white alien) who acts from a privileged (seemingly more spiritually advanced and morally knowledgeable) perspective
  • time seen from such a white-fi perspective; unstable, capricious, instantly accessible (understandable) and eminently hackable (and therefore automatically a-good-thing) [8]
  • white-fi from a non-white perspective: exactly the same – and therefore precisely to be resisted, since such a perspective is enforced from outside (seemingly outside history); it invades, colonises and violently overwrites (sorry, delicately ‘corrects’ or helps out) black historical time, at will – without consequence
  • dr. who from the perspective of trilby tipping neckbearded misogynerd fanbois; not only is dr. who a (shock horror) woman – but now also arrives with a preachy (/female!) [9] view of (oh-so-racist!) black history shoved down sore red necks *sound of tiny violin being played in lab background*
  • irony gland remove detection: since the good doctor’s perspective is necessarily female and limited, wtf are nerds complaining about anyway
  • what might sci fi for people of color [10] consist of – even more dr. flocking who? (associated new term: referring to cyberspace as z_ ‘interblack’)

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Reference Links

  1. Whitespaining
  2. Reinvisioning Justice
  3. Herstory
  4. Nerd Culture
  5. White People Sci Fi
  6. H.G. Well’s Eugenics
  7. Hugo Awards & Sad Puppies
  8. Technoimperialism
  9. Sci-Fi womanhood
  10. Black Sci-Fi

// how to play big science