urban myths in action

[hth]

Here's the question I have. Why is all of fandom so convinced that Carson has some kind of totally sick, maladjusted obsession with his mother? I'm curious.

My memory is perhaps not what it used to be, but here's what I recall knowing about Carson and his mom:

1) In "Rising," we see them smiling lovingly at each other as she serves him dinner. This does not seem terribly odd to me, given that he knows he may never see her again and she must at least know he's going incommunicado for a while. It seems normal enough to me, for close relatives who are enjoying their last moments together before being apart indefinitely.

2) In "Letters to Pegasus," Ford sits him down with a camera and tells him it's his turn to record a message. ACTUAL DIALOGUE:

Carson: What shall I say?
Ford: Uh, "I miss you?" "I wish you were here?"
Carson: I wish who was here?
Ford: I don't know, who do you wish was here?
Carson: Nobody! I wish *I* wasn't bloody here!
Ford: Doc, I got a lot of people I gotta get through.
Carson: All right. Uh...I suppose I could say hello to my mother.

I'm saying, for someone who's obsessed with her, it doesn't seem to occur very quickly to him that he should seize this one last opportunity to contact her. Maybe he's only pretending not to be thinking about her from the very beginning, but what reason would he have to do that?

3) I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing, but in a nutshell, Carson tries to record a rather bland, greeting-card kind of message, Ford rags on him for it, and he bursts out that he doesn't want to "go all emotional" and get her upset. He calls her "as sweet a soul as you'd ever meet" and a few other affectionate things and seems to feel responsible for her. When Ford prods him to be more emotional, he loses it, says "I miss you terribly," and starts to cry. I imagine this is where people are getting the mama's boy thing, and I wouldn't necessarily dispute that Carson is a mama's boy. He appears to be her only child, and she his only parent. She's pretty old; he believes her health isn't great; he's not likely to see her again. I don't know that it's so strange that he feels protective of her or that he's in a sentimental mood about her. I'm not saying he's not being a little intense about her; I'm just saying it doesn't strike me as pathological. I'd be a lot more of a mess if I were taping a message for one of my parents under equivalent circumstances.

4) In the second take, once he's gotten control of his fear (remember, they all think they're in their last week of life during this episode), he records a message reassuring her and giving her medical advice. He ends with "And Mum? I do love you," in a sweetly awkward way that implies to me that he doesn't come out and say that very often. Carson's probably one of those guys who says things like "Keep up with your prescription" and intends them to be understood as meaning "I love you."

I feel vaguely as if I may be forgetting another reference to Carson's mother, so if I am, feel free to remind me. But just looking at these brief scenes, and factoring in the immense loneliness everyone in Atlantis must feel at that point, a year away from any contact with their loved ones and under incomprehensible stress, he seems *appropriately* emotional about an old woman he won't be able to take care of ever again.

The thing that wigs me out, I guess, is that he's the only character we see in "Letters from Pegasus" who actually cries, instead of bearing his pain in a noble and manly way, and I wonder if the readiness of fans to label his feelings as disturbed or badly socialized in some way comes from that. Are we really still so John Wayne in this culture that we don't know how to deal with a person who's afraid for his life, who loves and misses his own mother, who's stressed and helpless and feels like a failure, and responds by crying? Are we so conditioned by the expectations of television, where heroes bear up and soldier through, that we see someone reacting to genuine and legitimate like a real person would and immediately start asking ourselves what's wrong with him? Or is this just one of those weird fandom groupthink situations, where somebody said it once and everyone assumed that if it was said, it has to be true? Or are my standards for "weird about his mom" just really, really high after having gotten used to pop fandom, where *everyone* is weird about his mom?

ETA: Somehow, this turned into a big, honking referendum on whether or not Carson is a dick. I mean, carry on, say whatever it is you need to say, but I would just like to stress that I wrote this particular post neither to praise nor to bury Carson. My feelings about his characterization overall and/or "his" medical ethics (quotation marks because it's not like he's cooking this shit up under the floorboards where all the other deeply ethical characters on the show haven't yet noticed it) are a whole different post, which will probably not be forthcoming any time soon.

Comments

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, you just made me like Carson.

Damn you.

[logovo.livejournal.com]

I don't get the fannish dislike of Carson that I see in my f-list. I always thought that I was missing something, cus to me he seemed OK, if a little of a handwringer by the end S2.

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

Aww, Carson. I would also be a lot more of a mess if I were sending a message to a parent in similar circumstances.

Does anyone else on the show even have a mom?

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is a lovely wrap-up of this part of Carson. He is more emotional, but he has learned how to distance himself from it in the role that he's in. And that scene in LfP breaks through all that reserve... Lovely.

[darkseaglass.livejournal.com]

I think what it comes down to is the implication. They can only show us so much about each character. What they choose is therefore weighted. Those incidents in and of themselves aren't that charged, but since they're all we see of Carson's life prior, they seem to mean more in such a limited context.

[girly-curl-3.livejournal.com]

I could not agree with you more. Nobody else even has a mom that we've seen!

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Well, I have made jokes about Carson and his mom before (maybe not in my LJ) but that's mostly because... I don't like Carson. ^_^

I mean, I totally do like the *idea* of Carson, I like that he's not the typical butch aggressive space explorer guy bludgeoning people with his gun or his intellect, and I like the way he acts around Teyla, and I like the way he trades history references with John, and the way he honestly seems to *care* for Rodney... actually, I feel like he honestly does care about all the people around him. But... still! *Something* about him has just always rubbed me the wrong way. I think it might actually be that his accent in the first couple of episodes sounds kind of forced to me, and it just makes the back of my neck cringe all up. I don't know!

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I loathe Carson because I know a good deal about medical ethics. As far as I'm concerned, he's "Mengele Lite".

Aside from his professional behavior, I really want to like Carson. I love his friendship with Rodney, I love the way having the gene scares the bejeezus out of him (and I can see how his willingness to monkey with everyone else's genes might come from his feeling that his own genes are "unnatural"), I love his accent.

I do see Carson as mama's boy.

The goodbye scene in "Rising" with his mom feeding him gives me a real "Irish mama's boy" vibe. They're not *sharing a meal*, she's *still taking care of him*. Yes, it's a brief scene, but it's meant to be emblematic.

I'd have to re-watch the "toe fungus" scene in Letters from Pegasus to be specific about why that, too, rings the "mama's boy" bell.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

You know, I forgot about the "toe fungus" part. I think maybe that's the flashpoint for the "Carson + mom = weird" meme.

Like... I love my mom and everything, and it really gets to me when she gets sick or is feeling bad, BUT STILL, I don't really want to get up close and personal with her toe fungus. (Like, if both her arms were broken and I was the only one who could apply toe cream, I guess I would have to, but otherwise, I don't want to hear about it in detail, thanks.)

I think there's something just a little... boundary-pushing about being your mom's toe fungus doctor. That's too close! I mean, is it a *life threatening* toe fungus that Carson really feels like he has to be involved in because he would never be able to forgive himself if it spread to her brain and killed her, or is he just that up close and personal with mom's toes?

[justabi.livejournal.com]

I love that he may never get to see her again and what he wants to talk to her about is foot fungus. That just cracks me up. I don't think he's weird about his mom, I just think he's the only one with really strong family attachments that got chosen to go. Seems like for a mission to somewhere you most likely won't come back from, you'd want to chose people who wouldn't, well, wouldn't be missed that much.

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

Well, we haven't got any other points of characterization for him. He's just taking up space, saying bullshit, and the few times he actually says something interesting, it's about his mum.

I dislike Carson for the same reason I dislike Lana: That's he's moderately good-looking is the extent of his characterization and personality, but yet somehow, he's a regular. WTF. Why him and not Cadman or Zelenka or Bates, someone with a pulse?

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's not true. Carson has a personality. He's (understandably) whiny about danger, he's well-read enough to trade Churchill references with John, he's incredibly charmed by strong women, he can be snippy at times but usually isn't, and he doesn't like to think about the possible consequences of his actions.

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

He still hits me in the Lana place.

I don't like the Lana place.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

At least Lana never tried to commit genocide. (Well, not yet, anyway. We don't know how this thing with Zod is going to turn out!)

[logovo.livejournal.com]

I think there's something just a little... boundary-pushing about being your mom's toe fungus doctor.

. . . and then I just lost here at the office.

*blushes bright red*

[logovo.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Lana? Ick! That is some serious dislike.

[mikou.livejournal.com]

The things you miss when you hang out on the fringes of a fandom.

I always liked Carson and the references to his mother were a big reason why. Maybe a little mama boyish, but I thought it was very sweet and caring.

I later developed some serious issues with his medical ethics (his are very shaky) but never thought the mother/son relationship was problematic.

[grey853.livejournal.com]

I'm really surprised at the anti-Carson thing. I guess I have a more limited reading of SGA than others. I mainly read McShep or Ronon/Rodney. I like Carson as a character, but I don't like him with Rodney for some reason even though I see that they seem to have a strong friendship.

I, too, have issues with his medical ethics, but I also have serious ethical problems with Weir. I try to put them in context with the situation, but it still pretty iffy to me.

Still, if I let ethics get in the way of enjoying a character, I'd have a lot more trouble with Rodney than I do. So, it's all a matter of how much can I suspend my issues in order to enjoy the show or the fanfic and, as it turns out, that's quite a bit.

And, back to Carson, I really don't see him anything like whiny Ms. LanaThang, or I'd give up watching the show like I did SV. That's right, I did watch SV for the first season, but after that it went to het hell, with Lana being the center of attention. Lana to me is evil, the perfect example of every prissy princess I ever hated.

Carson seems to have a close relationship to his mom and I don't mind that. I like seeing that he cares about her despite being in the Pegasus galaxy. I like that he seems really caring with the other people in the show and that he's got a great sense of humor. I don't understand why they'd dislike him or think his loving his mom was anything but natural.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just remembered hth_the_first *likes* Lana. ^_^ Now I feel kind of bad about making fun of her in this thread!

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

To step aside from the character issues a moment, the reason Carson is a regular is that his actor has great chemistry with the rest of the cast...even thought I don't think we see a lot of that on-screen. My belief is that next year, Carson will be playing the buffon a lot more, as the Rodney fans became so upset at having him in that role.

So, I think we're in an 'ask again at the break' place with what Carson's characterization is like. I just have a gut level feeling that it's going to be different this year.

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

There's a thought!

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

I seeeee. Liking the *person* not the *work* is the same reason they let Bill Willingham write so many of the Batman books, with disastrous results.

I really hope they give me something to change my opinion. I don't enjoy disliking a regular.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

You know, I like that he loves his mum. I like that he has human relationships (unlike most of the other characters). I like that he jokes with Rodney and seems like a really concerned doctor.

What I don't like is his complete lack of medical ethics. He scares me in his ability to experiment on people so... unthinkingly.

[feisteey.livejournal.com]

Why do people think Carson has no medical ethics? Because he developed the wraith retro virus? I don't agree, he stated that he believed that the wraith were in an unnatural state and that by curing them he would be "saving" them as well as humanity. Personally I think that's pretty noble - though unfortunately completely misguided. As a doctor his first concern is detecting "sickness" and "curing/eradicating" it.

Elizabeth on the other hand should have been extremely concerned with the larger implications of what he proposed to do, and the fact that she okay-ed the experiment is what makes me uncomfortable. And as a side note: since the lines of communication are open with earth did SGC approve the test as well?

After the experiment with Michael failed, Carson seemed honestly reluctant to continue, but Weir and Sheppard were determined to make it work. If any ones ethics should be in question it's theirs, they were not looking to "save" the wraith, they just wanted to save themselves.

[mikou.livejournal.com]

What gives Carson the authority to declare the Wraith as unnatural? They followed a different evolutionary path than humans. There's nothing wrong with them. The only problem with them is that we (humans) are their food source. That's doesn't make being a Wraith a disease to be cured; it makes them our natural enemy and what Carson is doing is using medicine as an act of war against another species.

To pursue this, Carson, a doctor whose life calling it is to heal, forced this "cure" on a Wraith prisoner. That's a far cry from offering to help a wounded Wraith, as he did in "Duet".

As Michael said, it wasn't about helping the Wraith; it was about helping humans.

It may be necessary for self-defense, but that doesn't make it noble.

(Disclaimer: I don't love the Wraith, but I do wish the show dealt with the moral ethics of this particular form of genocide. Also wish that the Wraith were 3-dimensional beings intead of cardboard cutout villains.)

Sorry. Didn't mean to rant and veer off topic.