I hesitate to be that guy when I’m new to this fandom, but it’s (unintentional) racism. The lack of background info on Lister is part of a wider issue within the show: neither of the Black characters are treated as if they have as much interiority as those played by white actors, nor are they treated as if the audience will be able to see their interiority. Even when Lister is surface-level relatable, who both Black characters are is external to the intended viewer; their funny habits are always observed, gawked at, but never fully fleshed out.
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.
I’m incredibly sorry for the no-holds-barred wall of text on what’s otherwise a short and pleasant exchange, I’ve just been holding this in for a while.
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
janainaart
yousharknotpass
