I mentioned how I started to watch this show back in March.
Since then, there’s been a couple of great blog breakdowns on the show that you can find; I personally relate to LucyVee of ‘Write Here, Write Now‘ who says:
As far as I was concerned, it was OBVIOUS Sam Tyler was in a coma; not only did the phones give it away I thought, I was raised on an 80s/90s diet of Thomas Covenant, Labyrinth, Quantum Leap etc where people would enter other worlds thanks to accidents, invitations from goblin kings, time portals and so it goes on.
My own blog entry on the show prompted the following comment in the comment box (I love you readers, have I mentioned that? Unless, of course, you try to pimp your books or spam with links and then you can just go get puppet-cancer):
what I’m not enjoying is the way she dresses- yes it is very 80s but no self-respecting female police officer would have been seen dead dressed like that- this was the time when female officers were trying to prove they were as good – if not better than, male officers – none of the ones I know would have gone around dressed as a tart, showing her bra strap off and wearing that much makeup- that was not the way to get taken seriously back then.
Thanks “Psychodiva”! Now that I’ve finished the whole lot, I’ve got a few theories about how the show justifies the dress-sense and the style.
Uh, it doesn’t justify it very well. Darn.
After reading some work on portrayals of women, such as that reported on Jezebel; which draws on young women, hyper-sexualization and dress-sense in a few research papers, it does concern me somewhat (although the show is clearly not targeted at children). One site I mentioned in a previous blogpost is Commercial Free Childhood, which recently have a campaign against Abercrombie & Fitch:
Thongs for 10-year-olds that say “eye candy.” Shirts with slogans like “Who needs brains when you have these?” and “Do I make you look fat?”. Ads touting group sex to sell clothing to teens and preteens. When it comes to sexualizing children, Abercrombie & Fitch is among the worst corporate offenders.
I’m also reminded of the ongoing efforts to address cat-calling, with surveys like the one done by Rutgers University in 2006 and 2007 of 550 women – who ranged in age from 15 to 64 in the international online component and from 18 to 24 in the Rutgers survey of women from central New Jersey – that were ‘asked about their experiences with street harassment and how it “encourages women to look at themselves as body parts instead of as full, whole, intelligent human beings” and can cause women to fear for their safety’.
In addition, Emily May of hollabackNYC.blogspot.com says “I think sites like ours can help women see that they’re not alone, that it happens to women in all walks of life by men in all walks of life, and that it’s not okay.”
In the end, what I see as being endorsed in Ashes to Ashes is a reflection of how ‘culture contributes to what is the norm’ – as demonstrated in a upcoming US study on ‘Perceived Experiences with Sexism Among Adolescent Girls’:
Teenage girls of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds still experience sexism and sexual harassment – but cultural factors may control whether they perceive sexism as an environmental problem or as evidence of their own shortcomings…
Brown and Leaper note that it is important for girls to be able to identify sexism and sexual harassment as environmental factors, lest they attribute negative experiences to their own faults and suffer erosion of self-esteem. Frequent sexual harassment may lead girls to expect and accept demeaning behaviors in heterosexual romantic relationships, and sexist remarks.
DI Alex Drake doesn’t need to dress the way she does, in much the same way no child should need to dress in an overtly sexualized way to be ‘cool’. In the first episode, it she’s thrown together a few items from the original ‘tart’ costume that she wore whilst undercover, as her options are limited: she finds the wardrobe in her borrowed flat is full of men’s shirts. In the ‘present time’, she’s without a dash of make-up and in a professional suit for the few scenes we see her in, before she gets shot.
Alex then asks Shaz to ‘get me a change of clothes; I’d like to get out of red before Chris DeBurgh writes a song about me’. Is Shaz then responsible for buying the range of white silk parachute jumpsuits, Flashdance-inspired off-the-shoulder numbers, tight jeans and white-leather jacket? She’s certainly never out of high heels for much of the series, although I struggle to remember an episode where she’s ever running after a suspect as opposed to just watching the male cast pursue suspects or riding shotgun in the car.
Essentially from the first episode on, she indeed dresses in a fairly revealing fashion – or at least more suited to going to a disco than investigating crimes. I would probably argue that bra-straps showing is what you would kind of expect to happen if you’re wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt… but no. You wouldn’t expect that style when in a professional office situation and certainly not in the police-force, even in the 1980s.
I would argue that what other weak justification there could be for her adopting such dress-sense (or better, a wry playing up to the role that the time and situation appears to have for her) is due to Alex Drake’s refusal to accept what is happening to her. Why should she take it seriously? Why shouldn’t she dress in an ironic, fun or aggressively and overtly sexualized way? It’s not real!
“A subconscious construct sustained by severe cranial trauma…. this is a full-sensory hallucination… no, no, this happened to him, it can’t happen to me. The mind, fashions conduits to the real world… I need to know if I’m in hospital, I need to know if Molly knows where I am… I’m unconscious and I need reviving.”
In short, she doesn’t take it at all seriously much of the time – ‘stop wiggling your fingers every time you say my name‘, snarls Gene, as she turns him into a construct complete with quote marks. ‘I must constantly analyze… where does that leave me?’ she asks, as she ends up writing DEAD on the whiteboard.
Therefore perhaps she fights against the sexism and prejudice by laughing at it, dismissing its power over her and focusing her main efforts on solving why she is there, rather than the image she is forced into? Maybe when faced with the coffee-room full of James Bond and ‘tennis girl scratching‘ posters, perhaps she feels directing her efforts towards getting home to the year 2000 is going to have more success than reversing the laddish culture?
Interesting to note the comment it makes about the logical extension of feminism in Episode Four, where charmingly dopey Chris, when faced by ‘wimmins-libbers’ is argued into being so pro-feminist that he can’t even buy Shaz a chocolate bar because ‘I’d be patronizing you… what I’d be saying by getting it for you is that you’re not able to get your own independent chocolate. You’re a woman!’
Alex, like Sam in Life On Mars, stands aside wincing as the ‘boys’ punch suspects after a high-speed chase in Episode Three – ‘just because I’m stuck here, doesn’t mean I have to like it‘. Yet unlike Sam, the violence doesn’t give her the same nightmares. She just continually returns to her parents, to the unsolved mystery and the ghastly Bowie-esque Pierrot’s shouting. During that same episode, she makes a firm statement about gender prejudice during a rape investigation:
Alex: They say it’s difficult for rape victims to be believed – I wonder why? … It’s not about sex, it’s about control, power and revenge.
Gene: Maybe tell me about it some other time, when I’m in a coma, when I’m dead??
So, uh, sometimes she takes it seriously and sometimes not? Confused…
Alex’s upper-class accent, vocabulary and education never escapes a snide comment – ‘Is this la-di-da posh bollocks meant to impress me?’, often contrasting her implicitly to the placidly cheerful Shaz Granger, who practically melts into the background when compared to Alex’s flashy ensemble and assertive interpretations of crime scenarios.
All of this boils down to my saying – sure. Alex Drake’s character is indeed professional, articulate, intelligent, witting and confident enough to take on even the most misogynistic stock characters that appear in the show… but the costuming is a distraction. It really is. And makes for mixed messages.
I did note how when she gets smashed and has a one-night stand, that it leads Gene to be disappointed in her; how that indicates that she’s lost some self-respect by taking on the attitude that ‘this 80s time-period isn’t real’. I did wince at how she brusquely allowed ‘her arse to get stamped’ even with the ‘up-yours-this-means-nothing’ attitude to the tradition (although her mother’s appearance makes a great point about even taking it on your own terms doesn’t make it any more acceptable).
I also liked the point made by the conclusion of the series that sexual freedom has ramifications in terms of endangering trust and love for both women and men – and those related to them. How far do you push it before someone snaps and says ‘this hurts me when you selfishly think of your own desires first – and now I’ll choose the ultimate selfishness in return’? If you haven’t seen the show for yourself, I’ll leave that as the closest I’ll get to a spoiler!
But as ‘Psychodiva’ says at the start – no, professional women don’t need to dress like that to prove anything. To choose to dress like that is distracting in that context and does tend to dilute the overall message about respecting the person underneath.
I also have a concern about how it appears to lead to other women being judged as ‘why not you too if you are a woman in the same league‘ or ‘you are less deserving of our attention because you don’t dress like that‘. Is it hurting other women’s chances of being taken seriously unless they ‘get with the tartchick look’?
I’ll continue to watch out for Season Two, although I know that ‘What Not To Wear‘ is a modern show and Trinny and Suzannah won’t turn up to tell Alex that being powerful and confident doesn’t require such costumes!
By the way, the ‘Write Here, Write Now‘ blog has a nice little interview by one of the ATA writers, Mark Greig:
Who would win in a fight, Alex Drake or Sam Tyler?
Alex. Not only is she smarter, she’d smack Sam senseless whilst he was still discussing what the rules of engagement should be, and does Gene really have to be the referee?
Keep fighting, Alex.
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