![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Police and Class
Mar. 20th, 2010 01:41 amI been thinking on police and detective fiction, and I have reached a confusion. What class are police? Holmes the detective was a professional like Watson the doctor, middle class think work. But what about police officers in uniform? I'm thinking of the ways different sorts of police work are portrayed in the first episode of Torchwood. We have Gwen and Andy, who have the job of wandering around and persuading people to not hit each other and probably getting hit a bit, and then we have all those crime scene officers and the detectives in suits, and Gwen makes tea for those. It don't seem like they're the same job, and Gwen is trying to get in to the suits and offices bit from her outside walking bit. But is that a class difference?
If class meant anything in the first place that would be easier to figure out. It's a stupid label game. People made it up to describe things it don't rightly fit anyway. And now it means a whole bunch of different things.
But I'm thinking within Torchwood, we've got the doctor and the tech, who do think work, and we've got the secretary sort of, and where do secretaries fit anyway? And then we've got Gwen, and Jack. Jack's an officer so he's boss people management middle class. But when class meant people who inherited titles bossing around people who didn't Jack wouldn't be officer class, he'd be the other sort. And then getting the job would be like Sharpe and a whole big Thing.
Is Jack an actual officer? He said he worked his way up through the ranks. There's the slight problem of him being a great big liar though.
Is uniform:suits as officer:enlisted ?
... not that I understand that either.
The thing is in Children of Earth class is a Huge Great Thing, and you can draw lines, and different households are clearly on different bits of an economic ladder and have different amounts of bossing people around power. So is class always a Huge Great Thing in Torchwood?
... it's British, so British cultural studies would say YES, on account of it always is.
So it would really, really help if I understood the sodding thing.
I should get the sociology books out again and look it up some more.
See this is why I tend to stick to gender and maybe some sexuality stuff and possibly ethnicity if it's being easy and possibly disability if it's a bit I know. Sometimes the class stuff is real loud and easy too. I think this is why we study old stuff a lot.
If class meant anything in the first place that would be easier to figure out. It's a stupid label game. People made it up to describe things it don't rightly fit anyway. And now it means a whole bunch of different things.
But I'm thinking within Torchwood, we've got the doctor and the tech, who do think work, and we've got the secretary sort of, and where do secretaries fit anyway? And then we've got Gwen, and Jack. Jack's an officer so he's boss people management middle class. But when class meant people who inherited titles bossing around people who didn't Jack wouldn't be officer class, he'd be the other sort. And then getting the job would be like Sharpe and a whole big Thing.
Is Jack an actual officer? He said he worked his way up through the ranks. There's the slight problem of him being a great big liar though.
Is uniform:suits as officer:enlisted ?
... not that I understand that either.
The thing is in Children of Earth class is a Huge Great Thing, and you can draw lines, and different households are clearly on different bits of an economic ladder and have different amounts of bossing people around power. So is class always a Huge Great Thing in Torchwood?
... it's British, so British cultural studies would say YES, on account of it always is.
So it would really, really help if I understood the sodding thing.
I should get the sociology books out again and look it up some more.
See this is why I tend to stick to gender and maybe some sexuality stuff and possibly ethnicity if it's being easy and possibly disability if it's a bit I know. Sometimes the class stuff is real loud and easy too. I think this is why we study old stuff a lot.