Torchwood Sins and Virtues Prologue: Justice in Torchwood

[crabby_lioness]

Torchwood Sins and Virtues Prologue:  Justice in Torchwood

I'm going to post about the various sins and virtues of the Torchwood characters, starting with Owen.  It didn't take me long to realize I first needed to post about justice in Torchwood.

There's more than one system of justice in the world.  Anthropologists sometimes distinguish between "village justice" and "imperial justice".  Village justice is used in relatively small, isolated villages.  Imperial justice is used when  the area is part of a larger empire.  In village justice the emphasis is on restoring harmony within the group as quickly as possible.  In Imperial justice the emphasis is on demonstrating the Law of the Empire (and by extension the Power of the Emperor.)

In village justice a criminal is punished by paying their debt to the group in front of the group.  In Imperial justice a criminal is punished by the Empire demonstrating it's power to take them far away and punish them somewhere out of sight.  In village justice the worst punishment possible is exile, banishment from the village.  In Imperial justice the worst punishment possible is death.  The villagers fear exile as a fate worse than death.

Torchwood 3 works on village justice, not on Imperial justice.  It is "outside the government" so relying on the government for justice would be allowing another party a toehold into their affairs.  The emphasis is on getting back to normal as quickly as possible.   The criminal is not sent away to be punished, but must work out their punishment by serving the group in front of the group.  And the most feared punishment, the one that terrifies Suzie, Ianto, Gwen, and Owen, is not death but exile.

No one who works for Torchwood fears death that much.  They face death every day.  But the thought of being banished from the Team almost drives Suzie into hysterics in Everything Changes.  Ianto shows no fear of dying in Cyberwoman, but voluntarily shows up to work out his punishment afterwards, an act which Jack accepts.  In the End of Days Owen fears exile far worse than death or Weevils.

In Combat, when Gwen is told to spend more time with Rhys, she reacts as if she is being punished by the group.  Jack obviously doesn't intend it to be a punishment.  He's trying to help her.  But Gwen has already assimilated the values of the group and takes is as if it were a punishment, for banishment is the worst punishment of all in the village.

Of course part of this is retcon.   With banishment comes losing their memories, and that's something to fear.  But Suzie wasn't afraid of retcon in Everything Changes.  She was reacting to leaving the group, not losing her memories.  And Gwen didn't even know that exile = retcon when she clearly suffered from her time spent away from the Team in Combat.

The reason I spell this out is because some people have said that there is no justice in Torchwood, that no one is ever punished for their crimes.  That is incorrect.  They are punished according to a village justice system.  But people who have only seen Imperial justice, and who only recognize Imperial justice, sometimes miss what's going down.

Comments

[hellenebright.livejournal.com]

But that's different to "village justice". "Village justice" works over the long term by consensus, not by the will of the headman - if the village does not agree with the punishment, the whole system breaks down. As (for example) has happened recently on Pitcairn, where up till recently the sexual abuse of young girls by older men was considered acceptable, until a young girl was raped by a visiting New Zealander. The elders considered the case and sent the young man away, but this prompted a number of other young women to complain of abuse.

None of Jack's team agreed with his decision about Jasmine - I don't think they believed his explanation (at least that was how it appeared to me) - but they had no-one else to turn to, and and organisation that doesn't work by consensus.

If anything, TW3 is more like a robber barony, with Jack as the robber baron whose word is law.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I would say that consensus was exactly how TW3 worked in S1. On several occassions (Day One, Small Worlds, Countrycide, Combat) the Team takes a moment to look at each other before making their decision. In Small Worlds the Team didn't agree about Jasmine, but none of them could come up with a better idea. They still shunned Jack afterwards.

In EoD we see the consensus break down. Not only does the Team disagree with Jack as they did in Small Worlds, this time they think they have a workable alternative. Even then, they are willing to accept Jack's plan instead of their own until he tells them flat out he doesn't have one. It's only when the Jack fails to act as the deaths start mounting that they turn against him.

[hellenebright.livejournal.com]

I don't think small worlds represents a consensus, although I agree with you that they couldn't think of anything else to do.

I don't think the consensus broke down in EoD - I think what we were seeing was a classic paradigm shift. No-one believed in the old paradigm (Jack) any more, it was time to get a new one.

I think that is different to village justice, where the headman only rules with the consent of his tribe. I think it is closer to robber barony (or any other form of tyranny) where the leader remains the leader for as long as he is *strong* enough to do so. Jack showed weakness in EoD, and the pride replaced him.

We're obviously looking at the same set of events, but putting different interpretations on them, which is interesting in itself. Given that the cast couldn't understand why Owen shot Jack, and had to take itself off for a long discussion before they could come back and play those scenes, I think that the possibility that there is one consistent theme being played out over the whole series is perhaps overoptimistic.

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

"I think that is different to village justice, where the headman only rules with the consent of his tribe. I think it is closer to robber barony (or any other form of tyranny) where the leader remains the leader for as long as he is *strong* enough to do so."

I'm not sure that a "robber barony" isn't an extreme & in the long term self-destructive form of a village system. In both the village & robber barony, there is no higher authority than the headman/chief elder, or else the higher authority is too remote to be very relevant in local matters--the latter situation was the case during the European conquest/colonization of the Americas. To some extent, even the robber barony is governed by consensus, even if it's only that the "baron's" people will go along with him because he'll kill anyone who doesn't. & the village headman must be "strong", ie, able to convince his people that he can cope with any situation that arises & make the correct decisions, otherwise he'll be replaced one way or another.

I agree that it's probably too much to believe there was a consistent theme running through the series; actually, it seemed to me that the writers were floundering at times.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I think there was a definite theme, but I don't think they were consistent in the way they put it across. Things weren't that random, except for the final episode.

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

They had a major ongoing *plot*, but as for *theme*, I don't think so.