Read an Extract

Cazeaux, C. (2010). „Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder‟, in P. Smithka and C. Lewis (eds), Doctor Who and Philosophy, Chicago: Open Court, 313–24. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder Clive Cazeaux The Daleks are beautiful, aren‟t they? Their casings, I mean. Not the squid-like creatures inside. It‟s their shape, their combination of forms: lines, curves, domes, the semi-spherical head, and the way they glide. And the sound of the voice: while I wouldn‟t go so far as to call it “beautiful”, it nevertheless has a beauty to it. It is striking; it embodies their character, and does the job perfectly of telling us “here is an alien life form.” Isn‟t beauty applicable only to a narrow range of things: people, animals, landscapes, and certain works of art? Can it be applied to a monster from a science- fiction television series? An over-sized, elaborate pepper-pot, with a few grills, slats, and semi-spheres? Beauty – that delight or pleasure we experience when looking at an artwork or a person or listening to a piece of music – is a complex phenomenon. It has occupied philosophy since Pythagoras and the pre-Socratic philosophers. Because perceptual delight stands out against the routine flow of experience, it poses a challenge to theories of experience. A phrase which frequently comes to mind when talking of beauty is that it lies “in the eye of the beholder,” which is taken to mean that beauty is subjective; what one person finds pleasing, another may not. If we take this approach, then I am on safe ground: I can call the Daleks beautiful because what I find pleasing is down to me. But this is just one particular historical understanding of beauty from the eighteenth century when taste as something which discerning people might possess comes into being as a concept. If we return to the time of Pythagoras though, beauty is not a subjective idea but a facet of the numerical structure of the universe. If we move towards the present day, the question of whether beauty is subjective or objective is in actual fact part of a revolution in eighteenth century philosophy, initiated by Immanuel Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 2 Kant, which requires us to consider that mind and reality are linked in a fundamental way, with beauty being one of the experiences where this link is evident. Part of this debate includes the idea that any judgment of beauty has both a subjective and an objective component. In calling something “beautiful”, I am not just expressing an opinion, not just making a casual remark which I am happy for my friend to disregard. Calling something “beautiful” is an expression of passion, and I want my claim to hold for everyone. I find the Daleks beautiful, and I want the rest of the world to agree with me. My interest is in the philosophical issues thrown up by the idea that the Daleks are beautiful. What philosophy can do is get to grips with the ideas responsible for a conceptual problem or knot. It also has a history of theories regarding the nature of beauty. The two combined will take the seemingly odd notion of the beauty of the Daleks and show that it draws on and implicates some of philosophy‟s central ideas, ideas that are not just to do with beauty but with the nature of reality itself. I won‟t reach a final, conclusive answer as regards whether or not the Daleks are beautiful. This is due to the complex and contested nature of beauty, and the nature of philosophy. But I shall demonstrate how the idea of the beautiful Dalek forces us to examine the definition of beauty, and the place beauty occupies in the history of Western metaphysics. I shall also show that this is a territory where the Daleks and Doctor Who are very much at home. Earth versus Skaro If we are to get to grips (or should that be “suckers‟) with the beauty of the Daleks, then we need to address the fact that they occupy two worlds: the Who universe, and our world. Why? Because it affects how we assess their alleged beauty. In the Who universe, the Daleks took refuge in 1930s New York, fought (each other) for the Hand of Omega in London in 1963, and attempted to invade Earth in the year 2150. For the beings who share this universe and know the Daleks or know of them, they are feared. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 3 Cross a Dalek and you will die. Why am I pointing this out? Because in the Who universe, the Daleks are not creatures of beauty. Even on the two occasions when a Dalek becomes an exhibit – in “The Space Museum” (1965) and in “Dalek” (2005) – it is because of its scientific curiosity-value and not for its appearance. When Van Statten introduces the ninth Doctor to the “Metaltron,” as he has named the Dalek, at no point does he describe it as beautiful. He is more interested in it as a creature, as something with which he might communicate. When I call the Daleks “beautiful,” I am not speaking from the perspective of the Who universe; I am not regarding them as real creatures. I am viewing them from the point of view of the everyday world in which Doctor Who is a television programme and the Daleks are a race of fictional beings created as enemies for the Doctor by Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick in 1963. They are only real to the extent that they appear on television screens, photographs, posters, pencil cases, duvets, etc. There is a genuine philosophical reason for making the point. A key distinction in modern aesthetics is between beauty in art and beauty in nature. There is a big difference between seeing beauty in a human-made object, such as a painting, and seeing it in the natural world, as in the case of an animal or a range of mountains. In our terms, this is the difference between seeing the Dalek as a “work of art” by Nation and Cusick (in our world) and seeing it as a part of Skaro‟s natural environment (in the Who universe). The difference is due to the fact that modern aesthetics explains beauty in terms of the relationship between the human mind and the world. Immanuel Kant, the founder of modern aesthetics (at the end of the eighteenth century), argues that the perception of beauty in nature is higher than the perception of beauty in art because beauty, as he understands it, is about our becoming aware of the fit between the human mind and reality. But with beauty in art, our experience of it is indirect, due to the fact that what we perceive has been mediated by human design; that is to say, it has not come directly from nature. Georg Hegel, Kant‟s critic, has an entirely different world-view, and one which leads him to argue the opposite. Hegel asserts that mind and reality are not just interconnected but actually one and the same thing. Life is the process whereby we come to realize this. Beauty, for Hegel, is our becoming aware of this oneness through Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 4 the recognition of thought in matter.1 On this basis, beauty in art is higher than beauty in nature because art involves perceiving ideas through sensory form, for example, through clay, paint, or sound, whereas nature simply involves the perception of matter. The embodiment of evil What this disagreement shows is that competing theories and values are at stake when assessing natural and human-made objects of beauty. Because beauty is seen as something involving the relation between mind and world, it becomes significant whether or not an object of beauty is natural or something which is the product of a mind. I am looking at the Dalek primarily as a human artefact, a “work of art.” If I were to conduct this study from the point of view of a member of the Who universe, I would be talking about natural beauty, the beauty of another creature, and a specific set of questions would arise. Although Kant places nature higher than art, he also warns against “dependent” beauty, where something is admired for being a perfect example of a particular form. So I might be sitting having a coffee with a friend, and we see a Dalek glide by. I might exclaim “Wow, that is one good-looking Dalek,” if I thought it was a particularly fine specimen. This would be a limited form of beauty for Kant, since beauty which is dependent on a template, on a concept of what something should look like, is not free to experience the purposive fit between the human mind and reality. The same point covers the fact that the Daleks are in Davros-designed casings. I might say to the Dalek (at my peril), “Nice bumps! Where did you get them?”. But as far as Kant is concerned, this beauty is limited, is “dependent”, because the Daleks‟ casings have been designed with a purpose: to make the creatures inside the supreme beings in terms of survival and power over others. Hegel‟s take on the situation would be somewhat muted. Following his claim that beauty is the perception of thought manifest in matter comes the idea that the perfect 1 Georg Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures in Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975; original 1835).

Load more