the Dress Question from the Terror Camp Keynote

(I'm sure somebody else has already transcribed this part of the Keynote, but I wanted to have it on my blog, so I went ahead and did it just in case.)

Q: The Terror is a show that revolves around questions of identity, and few characters exhibit this theme more perfectly than James Fitzjames. In the run-up to Carnivale, we see him contemplate a costume he later discards in favour of his Britannia costume. Was the scene of him contemplating the original dress meant to draw attention to the fact that there are two transgressions happening in his final costume, one of gender and one of nationality - as he himself admits, he's not even fully English - thereby making his costume not only gender drag but also nationality drag?

A: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean - yes. I'll - I have a simple answer, and then a more complex answer. The simple answer is that men often dressed up as women on, on these ships. It was just a - it was - I think it's, you know, from a Shakespearean tradition, right, of actors performing both genders.

But - we made a special point of putting Fitzjames in that dress, because it seemed like, this was a man who... had finally, in that moment, gotten what he had wanted from the beginning, which is full command, right, and I think - as happens in our lives, when we achieve the presumed goal, other goals that we didn't even know were built into our identities come cluttering in. Do you know what I mean? Finally demanding attention from us. And I think Fitzjames had been performing 'Fitzjames' his entire adult life, and I think when he was finally Fitzjames, Commander Fitzjames, with a capital F, in charge of a whole expedition, I think that's when probably his greatest moment of fatigue at performing happened, do you know what I mean? And so, we tried to make sure that everything after that moment was about him opening doors to parts of himself, parts of his identity, parts of - you know, every aspect of who that - who he is, just opening things up, and creating the mess that he had been so afraid of and so vigilant about for so long. If that answers the question.

having watched now nearly 6 seasons of DS9 and read some interviews with alexander siddig, especially the ones where he mentions how the producers were unhappy with julian’s unpopularity as a character and tried to “fix” that by throwing in the genetic-enhancement storyline and moulding him into DS9′s version of data (which failed, because siddig refused to play along, for good reason) the obvious conclusion is that a team of white american (largely male) writers were utterly unprepared to write for the kind of masculinity siddig embodies and brings to the screen through his portrayal of julian. DS9 is a show with a rich range of masculinities, which is what makes it so interesting to me despite the very low number of female characters. with sisko you get an imposing but also gentle black southern masculinity, o’brien is the down-to-earth irish soldier, odo is the gruff constable - all of these are familiar masculinities to white american writers to some degree, and what’s unfamiliar to them gets filled in by the actors, such as brooks making the conscious decision to play sisko as a soft, sensual man who has no qualms about expressing emotional and physical affection to his son and father.

but with julian - you can just tell they’re throwing shit at the wall hoping it sticks, trying to translate his masculinity for a white american audience. so we get fuckboy relentlessly pursuing jadzia and later getting with ezri (sigh), james bond fanboy, augment with improbable math skills, british history fanboy with miles o’brien - and none of them really seem to fit, right? because julian isn’t just a british man, he’s a brown british man. he’s not just british, but also arab and african. and he’s not just any kind of brown british man, but one with a posh london accent who’s a brilliant doctor who’s also very - shall we say metrosexual in his gestures and general affect. all of this means that no, you can’t just slot julian into any of the familiar british masculine tropes listed above, because his race and class and affect interrupt that translation. from a viewing perspective, this makes the character seem odd, awkward, embarrassing and sometimes creepy - because siddig is having to act his way around these tropes without addressing the racial element in the room.

in julian’s character we get a brown british man of arab/african heritage wanting to escape into james bond and british soldier fantasies, who pursues but is absolutely terrible with women, is awkward and self-involved, and has flashes where you get to see how lonely and alienated he is. the writers could have, if they had addressed siddig’s race and nationality, leaned into that. instead of asking us to buy julian’s affectations at face value, they could have explored why he fantasizes about white imperial masculinities, why he’s unsuccessful with women, why he’s lonely, why he’s ashamed of his success but also desperate to succeed. the dissonances in julian’s character make sense if you acknowledge that his race and gender has its own unique registry that’s different from sisko and o’brien. 

it’s also unsurprising that julian’s character comes alive the strongest when he’s paired with another version of Unfamiliar Masculinity: garak. it’s why their scenes together, and especially episodes like “the wire” and “our man bashir” resonate so strongly. garak’s presence helps harmonize and focus julian’s character by calling attention to the fact that both of them are embodying Outsider Masculinities. but of course, the garashir connection worked until its erotic subtext started to become too obvious, so they shut that down and spent the next few seasons trying to shuttle julian’s character back and forth between British Soldier, Heartthrob and Augment, none of which really work, which is why julian ends the series looking and feeling incomplete, even hollowed out a little.

tldr; even if they’d never made garashir explicitly canon (and frankly, seeing how they write romance i’m glad they didn’t), they could have done julian’s character justice by continuing to 1) acknowledge the raced and gendered affect of his character and its specific ties to british history and 2) continuing to give him and garak more scenes 3) giving julian more scenes with young people like jake, and with benjamin sisko, or quark. to his credit, siddig does the best he can with the awkward material, and it’s (imho) this tragic dissonance between his onscreen presence and the tone-deaf writing that produces a character so compelling to explore in fanworks. but damn, when i think of what julian bashir might have been in the hands of writers who were informed and engaged with british colonial history and the masculinities it produced….

#i just. i keep getting stuck esp on what they tried to do w/ him in the first few seasons and how heavily against siddig’s grain they try to #push the character. and how on the other hand you can feel siddig constantly negotiating and resisting #this weird box they push him in where they try to make julian this repository of (Anxious) White Masculinity Aspirations and Preoccupations #that is clearly familiar to the writers but foreign to him #esp. considering sid’s own implicit awareness as an actor of the intersection between his masculinity+race and his gnc physicality #AND his tendency to choose to perform relaxed and softspoken masculinities in touch with emotions #vs his general discomfort with machismo or heavily anxious/hard masculinities #which at best he approaches with humor - but clearly with julian he wasn’t being asked to give a heavily humorous or parodic performance #like it’s insane how much the things that are compelling and feel meaningful and authentic about julian are so often #sid’s own work - times and spaces he carves out of this mold julian’s otherwise being crammed in by the writers/prod #esp. in the first few seasons. not bc they stopped trying later but bc i will concede that he gets given *something* later occasionally #gotta be honest im mostly thinking of hippocratic oath and the quickening #bc as pointed out at the same time the writers’/prod’s prepccupations with the character’s perceived heterosexuality were soaring so like… #sid had to negotiate that terrain next (tags from @bakasara )

I feel like these tags sum up my thoughts and feelings about getting to know and understand Sid better and the realizations I had about Julian after that better than I could in words

hm. i do think about how in ‘if wishes were horses’ all the characters’ imaginations conjure like… children’s storybook characters, old sports players they admire, somebody they have a crush on, space emus, idk. silly stuff. except for kira, whose imagination makes her see fire and explosion and a man crying out in agony as he burns to death and she genuinely thinks the pylon has blown up and she’s about to die before it disappears. it’s only a small moment in a very lighthearted episode but i think it’s a powerful example of early ds9 kira that shows how she’s still so traumatized and haunted by the cardassian occupation.

that moment is, among other reasons, why kira and jadzia’s conversation at the beginning of ‘the way of the warrior’ a few seasons later is so important to me, where there’s quite a direct parallel to that s1 moment.

KIRA: I guess I don’t have much of an imagination.
DAX: Of course you do. Everyone does. Didn’t you play make-believe when you were a child?
KIRA: Yeah. I used to make-believe that the Cardassians would stop killing the Bajorans and just go away.

imagination is a core part of the star trek philosophy - imagining a better future, imagining a way out of a no-win scenario, etc. but for kira, her life experiences mean imagination only has negative connotations. while other people imagine random, comparatively silly things, she imagines horrors. and as a person she tends to be quite reserved and impersonal on this front to protect herself, which is why her reply to jadzia suggesting she try to learn to use her imagination is one of my favourite moments for her character of all time.

kira’s story is so much one of recovery and opening herself back up to the world, and part of that is opening herself up to other people and trusting them. her willingness to give imagination a(nother) try here at the beginning of s4, supported by jadzia, is such a significant thing for her character. it’s such a contrast to who she was in s1, in that earlier imagination episode. choosing to be vulnerable, to take a chance, to give something a try, is so difficult for her when her whole life has forced her to become a hard, unbreakable person, someone completely entrenched in the harsh reality of their own existence. 

learning to trust and use her imagination and go out of her comfort zone to enjoy life and be happy and relaxed around others is a core part of kira’s emotional journey throughout ds9, and to me this juxtaposition of two small but significant moments seasons apart sums it all up so well.

[start id: two gifs from Star Trek DS9, both center around Kira.

The first gif is described in the first paragraph, a man on fire is running at her and it turns out to just be a figment of her imagination. In the second, she is talking to Jadzia about using her imagination, Jadzia is offscreen, “All right. I’ll give it a try.” Kira smiles as she speaks. /end id]

Honestly, Cardassians being obsessed with wall-to-wall carpeting is a brilliant bit of characterisation on the part of Star Trek’s writers. A culture that puts carpet in an airlock is a culture that has something wrong with it.