Red Dwarf: A Personal Reflection
Guess what, Tumblr! You’re actually going to get a feature-length blog courtesy of yours truly for once. I’m technically supposed to be working now, but my clients seem to have pissed off into the sunset, leaving me at a loose end. Due to the return of Red Dwarf to British telly screens, I’ve been hankering to write something about what the show means to me. So let’s use this precious time in which nobody is paying me minimum wage to do anything to talk about that.
I first encountered Red Dwarf when I was too young to know what it was about or to pick up on most of the jokes or even understand a lot of the out-there concepts that it toys with. I was just a toddler- I don’t think I could have been older tha five. I also had EPIC AUTISM, which meant most of the world was a baffling sequence of hallucinatory-feeling pseudo-experiences for me anyway. I could blither on about what this tells us about the society we humans have made (trust me, my early hyper-literal-yet-surreal impressions say a lot more about that than they do about my brain chemistry), but that’s a blog for another day. The point is, I was very young and mightily disjointed in my thinking. It’s therefore impressive that Red Dwarf mananged to latch onto me ol’ brain-tank anyway. I just responded to it intrinsically. Looking back, I remember threethings standing out: the bleak, forboding tone (astonishingly bleak, in fact, considering it’s a comedy), the sense of isoltion (Red Dwarf is three million years from Earth, remember) and the not-entirely human nature of some of the protagonists. I didn’t necessarily get the jokes, but I was fascinated by the sense that these people were alone in the vastness of space. It’s fair to say that this was my first encounter with something that later came to preoccupy me regarding sci-fi: the problem-solving and interpersonal behaviours of small groups of people in the intense isolation of space. Also, on a similar note, the idea that space is so enormous and remote that it forms an inherently isolating environment. I found (and still find) the idea of getting lost in the vastness of infinity with only a few companions a strangely alluring idea. Obviously, I didn’t have the words to express these feelings when I first saw Red Dwarf: I just knew that something about it was cool.
Anyway, fast forward more than a decade, and I picked up the series again. I can’t remember exactly how I rediscovered it- though I suspect it hinged on asking my sister “what was that sci-fi show with the humanoid cat in it?” As a considerably older, wiser me, I was able to get it as well as appreciate it. And fuck me if it wasn’t really, really funny. As well as responding intuitively to the sense of deep, oddly-compelling isolation, I was able to fall in love with the humour. Rimmer’s pedantry and Lister’s snide remarks; The Cat’s self-obsession and Kryten’s alternating literal-mindedness and passive aggression. It was a riot. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, I watched series the classic series 1-8 and just plain enjoyed it. I grew attached to the characters and learned to feel for their struggles and tribulations, too. Bear in mind that at ages 16-18, I was basically content for the first time in my life. Life had not, frankly, been a lot of laughs up until that point, so I rediscovered Red Dwarf at a point in time when I could fall for the humour without needing anything more, really. I was okay, and that meant I could appreciate it from a purely technical standpoint without ascribing additional emotional resonance to it. It’s a mark in the show’s favour that, even when being judged just as a sci-fi show and just as a comedy, it still held up and kept me hooked.
Which brings us to now. Seeing Series 11 come to fruition caused me to return to the show. Now I’m viewing to through the eyes of a rather cynical, adult… but also through the eyes of someone who is socially and politically aware. The appeal of space’s isolation now makes sense to me. On a deep, emotional level, it’s about escaping the complexities we find here on Earth. How does Doctor Manhattan put it in Watchmen? “I am tire of being caught in the tangle of their lives”. Red Dwarf’s universe is pretty bleak, but it still has a certain allure, especially considering that the central characters can still find humour in their situation. What’s more, I’m now able to appreciate the show’s underlying poltical and philosophical ideas in a way I wasn’t able to before. It’s not complicated, but it is heartfelt. The show’s central political thesis is that social class is arbitrary and that personal worth stems from basic human decency not necessarily career accomplisments or self-serving goal-attainment. It’s philosophical thesis is eve simpler: everyone is capable of decency or heroism. What’s more, one doesn’t necessarily have to transform oneself as a person to exhibit these qualities, as they can co-exist with ordinary human personality flaws and failings. Rimmer is still Rimmer, but he nonethelesss became Ace (and, in another version of himself, a working class hero). It’s fundamentally redemptive. That’s Red Dwarf’s genius, I think: combining a down-beat, pessimistic tone that emphasises the more brutal aspects of reality with an optimistic message. The world might be cruel and unfair, but you can be better than that. I’m too cynical and too realistic to feel heartened by blind, chirpy optimism, but Red Dwarf’s message still has the power to make me feel better about life. It’s optimistic but it’s not unrealistically opimistic.
So what does Red Dwarf mean to me? A lot of dispirate, seemingly-contradictory things. It’s both an escape and a reminder that I don’t have to escape. It’s a brutal portrayal of unfair circumstances (and we can all relate to that on some level), and a toolkit for rising above them. Oh, and it’s still really, really fucking funny.