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Opinion of the Month | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Charles Vaughn - What's Love Got To Do With It? By Gladys and Ewan In the interest of fairness, I should say that with the possible exception of Abby's initial yuppie
persona, there was no character quite as capable of pushing my buttons as Charles Vaughn in his original appearance. Halfway through Corn Dolly I concluded a meeting with Lorena Bobbit (American social-sexual reference, details not for the weak of stomach) was just what our Charles needed to knock some sense into him. Part of what was yanking my chain about Charles and his literal interpretation of the biblical admonition to be fruitful and
multiply was the psychic flashbacks the scenario was causing me personally. Child of the sixties that I am, I heard the argument about womens' role in communes many times. The short version went something like this: Traditional sex roles-men in the fields, women in the house-are necessary to the success of our community initially, as women aren't able to do the heavy physical labor involved in farming, building, etc. Once we're established and our
survival is assured, we can talk about more equitable gender roles... Without getting into a lengthy argument about whether this was justified, then, now or in Survivor-Land, the physical fact one comes up against is this - only the female of the species is capable of bearing children. Accepting this given, there are still several reasons why Charles Vaughn - especially initially, needed a good whack upside the head. Firstly, I'm not sure all
the women in his original community knew and understood what the score was. He'd made four women in the community pregnant: two of them were left alive and Lorraine in particular seemed quite put out at the prospect of sharing him with Isla, Abby or anybody. Even if you accept that there was a desparate need to reproduce (a conclusion called into question by the demographics in Scotland...), it's the height of lunacy not to expect there to be extreme
repercussions from such radical new sexual arrangements in a small community whose members haven't had time to re-arrange their social thinking yet. The Charles Vaughn we're presented with in Series 2 is a more mellow character, but still retains his belief that women should be bearing children whenever possible, and this does not necessarily involve "traditional" monogramous relationships. He seems more accepting of the fact that some
people are going to be monogamous for whatever reason (Greg and Jenny) - and has a strong if not exclusive relationship with Pet. (IMO, the scene in Over the Hills where Pet tells Charles she understands his urge to procreate and to go ahead, as she's apparently infertile - is one of the most moving in the series). Still, he apparently has not asked or discussed this attitude with too many of the female members of the community and it comes
to a head when Sally reveals she is pregnant by Alan; of all the women who utter opinions on the subject - Jenny, Ruth, Melanie, etc., Pet is the only one who is actually anxious to become pregnant. The others are quite firm in their opinions they'd rather not be, with Ruth going so far as to give a rousing speech in favor ofchoice, even given their circumstances. To his eternal credit, Charles points out to her child bearing wouldn't preclude her
functioning as a healer, because the whole village would be there to help raise the child. Was Charles correct in his opinion it was essential for the women of the community to bear children? Apparently not - if you take the long view. In Lights of London, the London public health doctor states a population of 500 is necessary to maintain the human species, a figure which was recently confirmed in an article in the New York Times. During
the 2nd season, the figure of l0,000 as an estimate of survivors in the whole of Britain, far more than is necessary for species survival, is given. Neither Our Heroes nor the viewers learn until the last episode that there are far more surivivors in Scotland - with the inference being possible that there are other such population pockets throughout Survivor-Land. Charles (or the script writers:)) also doesn't give a lot of weight to the quite
understandable terror a pregnant female might experience given the lack of sanitation, medical care, etc. Easy for him to say, he only has to worry about getting bit by a rabid dog, not childbed fever:) There's also the question of, for lack of a better term, "hybrid vigor" - the genetic implications of inbreeding which seem possible until travel between communities becomes more regularized. At the end of the day, I find myself still agreeing
with Ruth - that even given the situation in Survivor-Land, women shouldn't be forced into child bearing, whether by executive fiat (as in The Chosen) or by overwhelming social pressure as Charles would seem to want at White Cross. I do confess to having had occasional misgivings about this attitude in the contecxt of Survivor-Land, but also to having breathed a BIG sigh of relief when the Laird's estimate of the population north of the Tay was
so large! Gladys
Charles Vaughn - What's Love, But a Second-hand Emotion. The Guy that the Women Love to hate and Hate to Love. First in what we hope will be a series of double-headers looking at the major, the minor and the indifferent that
passed through the portals of what Gladys calls "Survivor-Land". OK, its not England, Not Scotland, very definitely NOT America. But Brits of a certain age will recognise a lot of who and what is going on in there. Survivorland is as good a term as any. Wheeesh ! Introduce poor Charles to Lorena Bobbit. Bit stiff. Or Not as the case may be. But let's put aside the old War of the Sexes for a bit and look at some of what Charlie's albiet
twisted and, yes, even emotional logic may be. The world around you is suddenly devastated. There's a good cross- section of age of those who have Survived, but, of course, as we saw Abby crying in Corn Dolly, Think about the children. Those who did live the first impact would have had little chance of keeping going. Look at it from a childs view. Food comes from Tins, Mummy puts it on the table. I don't know how the cooker works. I've asked the
neighbours for help but nobody's answering the door. The TV doesn't work any more. I'm cold. The childrens characters that we saw Survive were tough little street kids. They'd survive anyway. What's a place without kids ? Lets play Charlie Vaughn... I need a community. I recognise that we cannot survive alone. In Unity is Strength and in togetherness is Surviving. It'll start off like that Kibbutz I was on in Israel in '68, and then much like that as
people come together and look for their own space and their own privacy, be just like a village. Sure, it takes time for people to adjust, and while they do, that's the time. Because right after is the time to restart. You fall off a bike and get back on it to ride. Lets look at it purely scientifically, from Charlie's very "male" science... Those of us who have survived are superior. Its not luck. Its Genetics. Survival of the fittest.
And its while those of us who are left still have some kind of "residue" of modern life in us that we should be looking to have kids. While the women are still healthy and have some of the ruddy health of our civilisation left in them. When they're not going to be as liable to colds and flus and bugs. Because two or three years down the line that'll all be gone. A chest infection now , Year One or Year Two post - ooops may be overcomable. But
when there's no antibiotics, no protien - rich foods from tins left, when their bodies are racked from work in the fields and the biological demands a baby makes are more likely to kill them... No, now's the time for it. Spread the gene, Survival of the Fittest. Droit de seigneur. And of course, physically, mentally, there's nobody fitter than old Charlie Boy until Greg turns up... In some ways it is lunacy not to expect social repercussions from the
Brave New Order. But Charlie knows that. What he's banking on is that the emotional shock of surviving and then the bigger relief of finding Him, there, organised and ready to go will put that to the back of the mind. After all, hasn't everybody been on that Kibbutz in Israel in 68 ?... Hasn't everybody read Brave New World ?... Can't they see just how downright simple and Logical this Surviving lark would be.... ? Lets USE what we have and what we
can gather in the here and now to give the Next Generation at least a fighting chance and that's the task appointed to Our Generation. Charlie gets his come-uppance almost straight away. Maybe it is his fault for insisting on instant communal living. The lesson that he learns and carries on to White Cross is Isolation. But he chooses to keep going and try again. Why doesn't he throw it all in and go off on the wander with Greg and Abby and Jenny ?
Because he wouldn't be top dog. Because they seem to have no purpose. And above anything else he would always have the sight of Abby just in front of him and never in touching distance. She's told him where to get off already and he can't cope with that. Also, logically, he knows that Greg may be the only trained civil engineer left in the world and he hates that. Because Greg WOULD have all of the answers in the end... The Charles Vaughn that we see in
Series 2 has had much of the idealism knocked off him. He's buried his people, he's moved on. Around and about the place its probably much like Greg, Jenny and Abby. He's seen a lot of different people with a lot of different ways of Surviving. Maybe he's picked up a lesson or two here and there? Maybe some of the realities of Human Life have struck home. Yes, he seems more accepting of "other" lifestyles, but he still knows that he's right.
We have to get the population going again. He's sat down and worked out his figures again like he did in Corn Dolly. 1 in 50,000, or 10,000 people across the whole of Britain. Attrition is already thinning them down past a non-existant birth replacement rate. When does the whole thing become just too biologically much and its time to sit down and give in ? Not while Charlie can propogate his superior genome... We never really see the
"development" of White Cross. Was Charlie the driving force or did he just happen along and take things over. Apart from that point, how come a community would suddenly "give up" four of its members off on what we ultimately know is a wild goose chase... Charlie's going along with Jenny just to keep an eye on her... sure thing ? And are the White Cross community either that desparate to get rid of Charles or that desparate to get
the moderating and always-right intellect of Greg back that they are prepared to let 10% of the fit, healthy adult population chase round? Lets put the emotion and the battle of the sexes aside for a moment. Gladys asks was Charlie right to expect the females to fulfill the biological function and get on with child-bearing? I'll say that he was. Because for that first generation after the Sickness, time was already running out. Their resources may
have seemed infinite at first but in reality they were already into double-overtime. He knew, instinctively, that in the first years the attrition rate would be terrible and so to overcome that you needed numbers. This wasn't about Woman's Lib anymore. It wasn't about equality of gender roles. It boiled down to Survival of the Species and when it comes to that you need as large a gene pool to draw from so that Natural Selection can wend its happy way.
Here's the other thing... there must have been a whole lot of sex going on. Who's to say that one of the side effects of the Sickness wasn't some kind of decreased fertility. Low male sperm counts, low female egg production. Go Forth and Multiply, we had to know and had to find out. At the end of the day, its an interesting thought-experiment. Greg's done his reproductive duty and has gone off to conquer the world. And as we all know, Charlie was
always Second Best compared to Greg. Is this desire for Children at the community just some deep inner need for HIM, as it looks like Pet isn't about to start producing. When, at Sally's pregnancy feast, he announces that "It's not just Alan's Child, it's your's, Hubert, and It's mine..." is it that that he's really searching for ? Nobody said that the female of the species had the monopoly on "needing" children... So, maybe
this'll encourage a few more of you to write. These are of course just my opinions. I'm a white, male, middle-class scientist. Maybe I see things a bit differently. Maybe you do. Maybe the stories of the Survivors will make us examine those views in a different light? Ewen McPherson
Replies Ewan, doesn't your "survival of the fittest" argument merely illustrate how misused this term has become? Supposing it was actually a genetic immunity, it may have meant you didn't die of the sickness, but it hardly selected those who were best equipped to survive afterwards (dare I mention Jenny...?). Greig | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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