Doctor Who Made Me Cry

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with writer Richard Curtis for many years now. I mean this quite literally, by the way. I either love what he writes or I hate it. I grew up with Blackadder and love the show unconditionally. I am aware, however, that the first series, written by Curtis alone, was nowhere near as good as the subsequent three series, during which he collaborated with Ben Elton. On the other hand, I actively hate Curtis’s movies, with Love Actually representing the epitome of all that irritates me about him; boring, predictable, emotion-by-numbers, with an almost cartoon vision of Britain designed to appeal to American preconceptions. Blah!

So, when I discovered that Curtis had written this week’s episode of Doctor Who, I was eye-rollingly under whelmed. I expected a brief and vexing hiccup in what has been, for me, the best season since the show returned in 2005. After David Tennant and producer Russell T. Davis had exhausted my patience to the point where I had all but given up on a show I’ve been watching since I was born, along came Matt Smith and Steven Moffat to bring me back into the fold. I was sure I could endure a dose of Curtis candy just this once. As it turns out, that candy will come in useful. I can sprinkle it on the humble pie I’m about to eat. Vincent and The Doctor was, if memory serves, the first Doctor Who episode that made me weep like a child.

The Doctor and Amy are visiting the Van Gogh paintings in the Musée d'Orsay, when the Doctor notices a strange face in the window of a church, in a painting Van Gogh did during the last year of his life. They travel back to 1890 Provence to meet him and discover the identity of the strange face. They find Van Gogh an outcast in the town; broke, eccentric, unappreciated, tormented by his depression, and the only person in the town who is able to see the monster which is killing the inhabitants. Tony Curran does a great job of portraying the energy and mood swings of the mentally ill painter, and the episode handles the topic itself with a lot of respect. The monster itself is a bit lame, but it doesn’t matter because, for once, it isn’t about the monster at all, but the man. The monster is defeated, there is a great little scene where we see the night sky as Van Gogh does, but it is the final scene that really did me in. The Doctor takes the artist to the Musée d'Orsay in 2010, to show him what his work will mean for generations to come, and as Van Gogh broke down in tears, I couldn’t help but join in. Beautiful.

Now, I don’t know how much of this was down to the writing of Richard Curtis, the performance of Tony Curran, or simply the themes that resonated in me because I am me. But at least, if I make it and someday meet Richard Curtis, I won’t have to tell him that the last thing he wrote that I loved was screened in 1989.

Generation Me

It’s official, the numbers are in and the conclusions have been verified. People are getting meaner. According to new research in the US, we now know that students today are 40% less empathetic than their counterparts of 20 years ago.

The study, conducted at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, was focused on an accumulation of tests on empathy from almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years. “We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,” said researcher Sara Konrath, who conducted the study. “Many people see the current group of college students, sometimes called 'Generation Me', as one of the most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history.”

Konrath and her colleagues have their own theories as to the cause of this gradual decline in, let’s be blunt, giving a shit about anyone else. “The increase in exposure to media during this time period could be one factor. In terms of media content, this generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others.”

U-M graduate student Edward O'Brien also believes that rise of social networking, and our pervasive celebrity culture could be an influence. “The ease of having 'friends' online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don't feel like responding to others' problems, a behaviour that could carry over offline,” he said. “Add in the hypercompetitive atmosphere and inflated expectations of success, borne of celebrity reality shows, and you have a social environment that works against slowing down and listening to someone who needs a bit of sympathy. Students today may be so busy worrying about themselves and their own issues that they don't have time to spend empathizing with others, or at least perceive such time to be limited.”

I think it’s both fascinating, and sad, to contemplate that social networking, a system that was surely devised to bring people together, has in fact had the opposite effect. But is it really so surprising? It’s a well established fact that saturation leads to detachment, and to see the minutiae of everyone’s day to day life, in the constant stream that sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace present, must eventually leave one blocked and blinded. Information overload, as they say. I’m not convinced this is a phenomenon restricted purely to students. I mean, have you been on Facebook lately? I’ve seen a variety of people, of all ages, sizes and intellectual capacity, whose sole purpose on Facebook is to scream about themselves as loudly, and as often, as possible.

I’m in the supermarket. Stuck at the station! I hate my job. I’m going to work out now. Down the pub with mates. I’m so lonely. Watching Eastenders. Does anyone know where I can buy cheap DVDs? He let me down again. Driving test today! I can’t sleep. Out with the kids. Thank God it’s Friday. Garden looks lovely! I want chocolate. Voted for John on X-Factor. I can’t take much more. The risotto was a disaster. Last day of school, yay! So much for the sunshine. Is there anybody out there?

Did any of the above cause an emotional response? Do the important messages simply get lost in the noise? Or do we hear it so often, a million voices screaming for attention, that we no longer care?

Does this celebrity culture of ours make us colder somehow? Do reality TV shows bring out the worst in us and reinforce it? The shelves are packed with gossip magazines, few of which seem to celebrate anything other than this week’s fall from grace. There is a disturbing trend toward rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. We create a new star every week and then tear them down at the first opportunity, jeering and then gawping at the wreckage like bystanders at a road accident. And reality TV shows can sometimes seem like the 21st century equivalent of Victorian freak shows, parading an endless line of the deluded, the desperate and the exceptional for our enjoyment; be that laughter, ridicule, horror or joy. Do we revel too much in the failures of others? Is empathy being eroded by entertainment?

Empathy is a wonderful thing, born of the human capacity for imagination. The ability to imagine oneself experiencing the trials and torments of another person is one of the prominent foundations for compassion. And through compassion, one hopes, action. Without compassion, or imagination, what are we but dumb animals?

I’ve always resisted the common urge to decry the times we live in, the oft heard assertion that things are getting worse. That’s not to say that I disagree. I simply wonder if it’s really true, or just an easy perception to fall into. Are people really greedier, more violent, ruder, more selfish, more indulgent or more intolerant than they used to be? Is Britain today really a more unpleasant place than Victorian Britain, with its workhouses, poverty, freak shows and class chasms? Or has an ever more vigilant media state, and 24 hour access to both information and misinformation, made us that much more aware of things that have always been there?

Or is it really the case, as the findings of Sara Konrath suggest, that it is Generation Me, and not Generation Meek, who will, one day soon, inherit the earth?