Torchwood: Captain Jack's sexuality...

[fajrdrako]

becky_h initiated an interesting discussion about how Captain Jack is not a slut on torch_wood yesterday, and while I've only read part of the commentary so far (and plan to return to read more) I wanted to first voice a few thoughts of my own about the subject.

And let me start by saying it's okay if he is a slut. I have liked many heroes who were promiscuous, some of them even bisexual and promiscuous, and I love them all the more for it. And that's what I thought I was getting with Captain Jack. We had all sorts of reasons to think so. The Captain Jack we met in Doctor Who was flirty and sexy and introduced as seductive from the beginning, with both Algy and Rose. Even in "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways", after he's been with the Doctor and Rose for a while, he's a exerting his charm towards those around him, and the Doctor accuses him of flirting.

Then we get the advance publicity for Torchwood. Lots and lots of talk about 'omnisexual' Captain Jack. The producers say he'll go for anyone with a postal code. John Barrowman says he'll go with anyone with a hole. Lots of talk about his general sexiness, his bottom, hints of graphic sex and/or nudity.

The truth is, it isn't hard to have more graphic sex than you get in Doctor Who.

So then we get Torchwood and Captain Jack's flirtation is notched down a peg. Over the course of the first half dozen episodes, he talks about kissing alien life forms, having had a twin acrobat boyfriend, having a long list of past lovers.... But in the present, what? He kisses an alien to keep her alive. He kisses Ianto when he's half-conscious. (Nice moment, though.) He is sweet and loving to an old woman he'd had an affair with when she was seventeen. He cuddles Gwen a little in the gun room, but when she kissed him in "Day One", he didn't even kiss back. The only time he flirts with Gwen at all, is when he thinks she won't remember afterwards. When Gwen shows interest and curiosity in him, and possibly more, he sends her home to Rhys, telling her not to mess up the relationship she has with distractions.

And really, in a show where sex is an ongoing theme, it was soon pretty clear that everyone was getting some except Jack. We see him sleeping alone, obsessing over his work, apparently spending all his time at the Hub. The only lovers he mentions are past history.

And more and more we see his sense of compassion - towards Tosh, Gwen, John Ellis, Jasmine and her mother. By the end of "End of Days" we see his capacity to love everyone on his team. And yes, we know he has sex with Ianto - presumably on more than one occasion - but what we see is the warmth and the human connection, and it's Ianto who propositions Jack, not the other way round - Jack is, in fact, surprised when he does.

And for the original Jack... Attracted from the first moment he saw him, our Jack backs off, and keeps sending the other Jack back to Nancy. What we see between them is more romance than sex. Jack isn't chasing after Jack for his body. Jack is weeping because Jack will die and he can't save him.

So it's more and more clear that Captain Jack isn't all about sex, like we might have expected. He's all about love. He cares.

I like that.

He's also obviously very sensuous, and would probably be having sex with any number of people if it didn't bother him so much to lose them afterwards. I like it that his capacity for love is not equated with monogamy.

I was surprised when he criticised Gwen for her infidelity to Rhys, but it made sense when you look at it from his point of view: he didn't want Gwen to hurt or break that relationship. He saw the love there, and saw its value, and didn't want it lost - or worse, thrown away through carelessness.

Comments

part 2

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure yet that I agree he's being shown with 'multiple desires at the same time', since I would argue that we see his love for Estelle (in the past) as being both heterosexual and one-on-one. Moreover I don't think his love for the original Captain Jack - where we see the entirety of the relationship - was mixed with any other person or feelings at the same time. Jack may have been concerned about Tosh at the time, but his feelings were all solidly focussed on Jack.

That being said, we get this sense of double-love and double-vision repeated enough that it's an important theme, and I would say that its most important aspect is in his relationship (not necessarily sexual) with the Doctor and Rose. He cares for them both; he kisses them both; he dies for them both.

This may be a sort of clash and conflict of themes. On the one hand, we have the television trope of not tying the hero down as half of a couple, which takes no regard to orientation, and leads to the girlfriend-of-the-week pattern we remember from Captain Kirk in Star Trek. On the other hand, we have a hero whose omnisexuality is a thematic point they aren't about to drop.

is this just the old bisexuality cliche (they can't ever be satisfied with one person, because then they wouldn't be actualizing their "whole" sexuality)?

I don't think that's it - good heavens, I hope not! I think the show is too smart for that. I suspect it's an attempt to cover all the angles with one character - and there are a lot of angles. I do suspect it is also deliberately polyamorous: Jack can and does love more than one person at a time, including a wide spectrum of love.

I just haven't quite put my finger on it yet.

In an interesting point. Please let me know any more insights you come across - I've been wrestling with it too, and haven't sorted it out enough in my head to post about it yet. I have other points in my head about Jack 'loving the alien' that I'll think through and post (I hope) shortly.

Thanks for the link! I'll read it as soon as possible. (Things suddenly got busy here at work, drat...)