alice

Succession (Jesse Armstrong, 2018-2023)

We get a lot of info in the show about Rimmer’s family and even his extended family. We know what kind of people they were, he talks a lot about them, they get seen in multiple flashbacks etc.

Lister - mother, mentioned once, no detailed info. Father, mentioned twice, no detailed info. Stepfather, mentioned once, no detailed info. Grandmother, one photo, mentioned a few times, some info about what she was like but never named. None of them ever seen in flashback.

Rimmer talks constantly about his experiences at school, multiple flashbacks shown, yet it’s S7 before we get any real info from Lister about his time in the orphanage (some of which regarding the neglect they suffered was also cut out of the episode).

This isn’t a post about the Cat so I don’t want to derail too much, but it’s worth noting that his backstory is nigh-nonexistent. He may as well have popped up fully formed with no experiences to shape him. Kryten has his time on the Nova 5 plus the inherent depth of concept that being a service robot comes with in sci-fi, Kochanski has a vacillating but relatively cohesive positionality and even Holly has some degree of background, but any opportunity to focus on the Cat’s upbringing or mindset has been swept aside or actively scrapped by the writers in favour of other characters. He’s also the one who things happen to either first or last, depending on which gets him out of the way quickest (ie last in Camille so his relationship preferences aren’t dwelt on; first after Lister, the other Black character, to be fed on by the Polymorph). The way he dresses, talks and performs physically is pure spectacle for the white viewer to be amazed by, and is never interrogated from his perspective. That someone could relate to him is seemingly considered inconceivable.

But more to the point — Lister. He certainly has more interiority than the Cat, but the amount of time the show spends being interested in what he’s like beyond his external habits and expression still pales in comparison with how much time is dedicated to penetrating the depths of Rimmer’s mind. He’s just kind of… alive. In fact, I would argue, the majority of incidents during which some information about Lister’s life (outwith what white characters see of it) is revealed are in fact in service to the depths of Rimmer’s mind.

To use the example here of Lister losing his virginity, the anecdote is relayed in response to Rimmer’s potentially emasculating answer to the same question, and for Rimmer to respond to. Despite the seriousness of the implications, and despite dalliances with older women taken as evidence of manhood being an issue that affects Black boys disproportionately due to adultification, the joke as told exists to make Rimmer feel inadequate and then recover by putting Lister down. The primary thing it’s designed to convey about Lister is that — look at him! — he obviously wouldn’t be given a golf club membership, so it says something about Rimmer’s expectations that Rimmer can’t conceive of a person unable to play golf regularly. It also communicates that Lister, who had sex at twelve, is so inherently virile by comparison it causes Rimmer some introspection (also racial stereotyping when it recurs, as it does). Both of these notions place the focus on Rimmer’s feelings as opposed to Lister’s when it comes to telling his own story.

Looking over the show as a whole, Lister’s backstory typically becomes relevant when:

1. It’s compared and contrasted with Rimmer’s — a white character’s — backstory, for the purpose of making Rimmer feel better or worse about himself

2. It’s being reacted to by Rimmer, for the purpose of noting how Rimmer interacts with those of a different class to himself

3. It’s explicitly brought up by Lister for the purpose of providing Rimmer with the opportunity to learn something about himself, or feel better about himself

4. Once or twice, to show class solidarity with Kryten’s marginalised experiences as a mechanoid — again, a character played by a white actor

From an in-universe perspective, Lister simply doesn’t offer much information about himself unless it’s funny or kind to do so, which is valid. But in terms of white writers choosing when to make their Black character’s backstory relevant, it’s almost exclusively done in service of a white character’s emotions, or in service of a joke focused on the white character’s reaction (an exception might be Duct Soup, where he tells his sex anecdote to the Cat, but it’s still in response to a demonstration of Kochanski’s priorities). This is frustrating to watch as a racialised viewer. A lot of the classist or personal insults Rimmer flings at Lister have disturbing racial overtones when viewed in the context of a white person saying them to his biracial Black colleague, but the onus is consistently on Lister to show genuine depth as a person through the act of coddling Rimmer by deploying personal stories for his benefit.

This doesn’t happen to the characters with white actors, who we learn about for the purpose of learning about them.

It’s in line with the myriad of other ways in which Rimmer feels like the writers writing what they know (everyone’s met a white git) and Lister feels like them riffing on something they don’t quite know how to riff on. Perhaps they don’t know how to riff on it respectfully, and so have opted to simply opt out, or perhaps they just don’t expect the white audience to care. The Cat has it worse, of course, being largely comprised of a list of stereotypes and parodies of Black celebrities they don’t seem to know anything about, but Lister’s a victim of it too. For example, the fictional musicians he likes are of nebulous genre, whereas Rimmer’s favourites are real highly specific genres on which the writers are aware of how to dunk. Lister likes a fictional sports team who’re barely detailed, whereas Rimmer’s icons and heroes are real historical figures people of his demographic today might idolise. Episodes will often pivot from focusing on Lister at the start to being about Rimmer’s psyche by the end. One could explain this away as Rimmer being a person we’ve all met while Lister is the person we are, but if that’s purely the case, where are Lister’s relatable life experiences?

This all becomes incredibly frustrating to me personally when the character they’ve built is a biracial person with experience of the British care system who was adopted into a possibly all-white working-class family. Non-white children are disproportionately overrepresented in Britain’s care system, and children of mixed race number most highly among these. Black children in particular are 8% more likely to be in care than their white counterparts, and less likely to be adopted than children in care of other races. Adoptees may also find their relationship to class differs from their non-adopted counterparts, which has an intrinsic racial component. As a racialised person living in Britain, these things aren’t distant statistics. I’ve been “looked-after” as it’s called and subsequently worked within care myself, and have witnessed firsthand how big a deal transracial adoption is, how much it affects one’s sense of self — especially when coupled with class, which the show is about. No matter how much the Red Dwarf production team pat themselves on the back for not bringing race up even once, it’s impossible to decouple race from class, even for comedy. Being Black in the care system affects you! Being biracial in working-class spaces affects you! How do orphanages work in the future; how does adoption work in the future? Have the disproportionate racial statistics changed over time? Why did Lister’s adoptive family choose him? What was it like finding out he was adopted if he didn’t know, and how did his race affect him if he was visibly not related to his family? These are questions the show would be interested in at least vaguely gesturing at an answer to if it had any interest in who Lister is beyond his contrast to Rimmer. Sure, the show is set in the future in space where race doesn’t matter, but the writers aren’t in space and the audience sure as hell aren’t in space. It clearly affects the actors’ performances as well, even though they’re onboard for not mentioning race onscreen. And y’know what, it’s possible the show wouldn’t even have known how to cast a biracial child for believable flashbacks! They’d have completely failed at casting the baby in Ouroboros if it weren’t for the one other Black guy present happening to notice.

It’s been bugging me especially since I read the novels. In print, Lister goes oddly… under-described… and even stretches of writing ostensibly from his perspective in the first two omit key details that leave it feeling like it’s the white characters whose mindsets are simply easier to write from. The urge to distance the reader from Lister’s mind leads to things like us learning about Frankenstein when she’s found out, even though the book’s been following Lister for months during which the presence of a new cat ought to have been felt, for example. Or learning about what he looks like from a recruitment agent who’s referring to him as “the object”… Maybe I’m simply spoiled by my immediate previous experience with a television novelisation being DS9’s Far Beyond the Stars novel (ie one of the finest depictions of Blackness in sci-fi ever), but like, do better.

Thing about Lister is that the only reason he is mixed race is because Charles is mixed race and they REALLY liked his performance (enough to overlook that he's a Scouser lmao), that's it. The script itself was not written with that in mind. They found Charles because Jackson wanted to check if the joke about Cat being black might be insensitive. Cat is black purely for that joke as well. Meaning, you're right - I don't think they know how to write anything on that not superficially so they just. Don't.

Genuinely though, growing up mixed race in Liverpool isn't an easy thing, much less being an orphan at that, much less being an orphan in Aigburth, right? Like, that's why Charles suggested Aigburth for his backstory? Because it's near Toxteth? And he had a tough ass childhood on the streets in and out of the system pretty much after his nan passed, but that's kinda about as much as they get into it?

And Cat is full on not meant to really HAVE a proper backstory (I think it lines up into an interesting character unintentionally like that, guy has basically grown up with the only person who's left there with him LITERALLY UNABLE TO SEE HIM SINCE HE'S BLIND, and he just. Never brings any of that up later. Or his brother. Who left him on the ship. Never talks about his shit kinda guy), he's supposed to be a human version of a cat. That's it, that's the gag, they simply don't think on that further.

An INTERESTING thing, imo, is that as far as series 1 at least, right, if we take it in a vacuum, we learn more about Lister as a person than about Rimmer. Lister's the one who's showing Cat his family pictures two/four episodes in (Future Echoes was meant to come in later in the og line up, bear with me). Lister's the one who has a dream of going somewhere and starting a business and a family and shares that. Lister's the one with lots of personal trinkets in their shared room, with pictures and posters and a vibrant personality. Lister's shown having Jim and Bexley and growing old, Lister has his continuous subplot about the relationship with Kris, Lister finds out he accidentally became a God to a whole new kind of sentient people. We literally get nothing on Rimmer up until Me². He worked in JMC way too long, he had a single one night stand, he wants to be a real middle class boy so bad and his actual working class standing is something that he feels horrible shame about. Pretty much every single episode up to Me2 he's just there to be a hardass and a conflict driver whose personality is his job. Then we get to learn he might not be on great terms with his family in the end, and that's it (although okay there's that line about his dad in Future Echoes again which is kinda wild without general context).

Then there's the lore drop in BTL, and since then the longer the show goes, the more this kind of stays the same. Lister's backstory gets a few more glimpses in through various anecdotes, Rimmer's nightmare family gets dunked on continuously and progressively, mostly through gags of him revealing some horrifying childhood experience and not getting how fucked up it actually is. And yep, Lister also mostly reveals deeper things about his own experiences only in emotional scenes with the only other guy who regularly has crises, which is Rimmer, as a way to show support. Because he's a kind person and the bigger guy there. And because his own shit seems way less exaggerated in comparison to the behemoth that is Arnold J. Rimmer's fucked up mind™

At the end of the day I think that's kind of it. Neither Cat nor Lister are meant to be an actual exploration of issues that come with race, they plain weren't conceived with that in mind at all. At most it's an exploration of class. That is, being working class, and liking/not liking it. Like Stepford and Son was. And that was about two white guys of course. Cat is outside the class equation in the first place, he's a cat. That leaves us with guy who's bumming around and he's cool with it (less conflict) and guy who's been running himself crazy about this for years (more conflict). Who are they gonna choose to focus their funny sci-fi emotional issues plots on? The crazier guy.

(One thing I'll say on the musical tastes point though, is that rastabilly skank is a name Charles came up with himself. It's a joke obviously, but a joke from a guy who's huge into soul and funk, imo it gets a pass on vagueness. Like yeah Lister'd be into rockabilly ska reggae punk, who wouldn't?? Maybe that's just me tho lmao. Rimmer gets specific artist mentions yeah but they're intentionally lame and obscure. Who do you know who listens to Reggie Dixon's 1930s hammond performances? Like if you google that, Rimmer's gonna be in the first few results. That's definitely not patting him on the back is what I mean. You're so totally right on Cat being being a mish-mash of a list of stereotypes and parodies of Black celebrities they only vaguely know from a bare glance though)

Which, btw, on the whole it ends up being like, Lister had a bustling life before the accident, with getting into lots of funny stories, having interesting relationships and flings, just generally living, maybe not a very happy life but you get the general idea he has a LOT to share. He's been in a band, he's gone through the orphanage, he lost his virginity at 12 (as folks before me have mentioned, NOT REMOTELY OK). He's seen some shit is what I mean and at the very least they could have gone into more. Of that. In general. Like come on, how many polaroids he keeps on his wall?? I'm not even going to start on Cat and the cat society and the exploration that could go into that, better points have been made on that already.

However, these are still explanations that rely upon the characters having minds of their own rather than being tools in the hands of their creators. Rimmer may be the crazier character with more conflict and comic potential, but the writers chose to treat the character played by a white actor as if he has more potential. They chose to place Lister, the character played by a Black actor, in a position that gives him less conflict and less potential. Giving Lister problems that are less comically exaggerated than Rimmer’s was a choice the writers made. As a result of that choice, the Black character’s problems exist in order to make way for the white character’s more interesting problems, which are the plot. Additionally, a choice was made to depict the white character as obsessed with upward social mobility and the Black character as happily working class — I don’t know how to further articulate the ways in which this has its issues without merely gesturing at the way systemic racism has always functioned. I would also like to point out that the format shifting from being Lister-focused in the first series to utilising Rimmer more in subsequent series means that the format shifted to centre Rimmer once the writing could completely reflect the biracial actor who had been cast as Lister. It’s evident that the writers were not thinking consciously about race, or else they may not have made some of these choices, but neither of these characters was created in a cultural vacuum.

As you’ve noted, the Cat’s Blackness — being part of the core joke of his character — is rather sidelined by necessity, to avoid coming across worse. This doesn’t change the fact that the writers’ unwillingness to take any risks with him results in yet another Black character on TV being given far less attention than his counterparts with white actors.

I also think it’s worth interrogating the notion that it’s alright for a biracial character’s backstory to go undercooked purely because he wasn’t designed biracial to serve a particular narrative purpose. In real life, I’m of mixed heritage because the actor that plays me (me!) is of mixed heritage, not to serve a narrative purpose — but I still approach life from the perspective of a racialised person, and thus someone writing me would have to think about the whole of me in order to do me justice. Writing me as raceless, no matter how well they portrayed my class or gender or anything else about me, would be whitewashing. An intersectional approach is essential to understanding who I am, even if nobody’s discussing my race like an after-school special. On a broad societal level and on a personal level, race changes one’s relationship to class and class changes one’s relationship to race. The fact that the choice was made to treat race as irrelevant on the class-based comedy Red Dwarf also doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and is part of a wider erasure of racialised experiences from British working class history. The first series’ scripts? Sure, the creators didn’t have to deviate much from their original white-Lister premise, which the greater amount of focus on him there when compared with later series could spring from. But for 11 series after that?

quare desine dum licet pudico, ne finem facias sed irrumatus; leave off while you still can with your modesty, lest you make your end skullfucked.

i don’t want what you have, i wanna be you.

yes, you do fucking want this job. then, you’re going to have to fucking swallow this whole fucking life and let it grow inside you like a parasite. getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it fucking eats your insides alive and it stares out of your eyes and tells you what to do.  

they make me feel sick

please check out under the cut for my translations of all the catullus lines, because i think late republic roman invective shares a remarkable amount with the thick of it in terms of masculinity, obscenity, domination and homoeroticism.

"you look great!" - normal. Anyone could say this. Could be true or could just be lying to be nice. Very normal expected thing to say to someone