Malcolm Tucker's violent swearing has penetrated my soul and now here I am trying to cope... my creations | #malcolmtuckah | this is a sideblog | i follow from my main @staggeringlyswagstrawberry
I wonder how Armando Iannucci feels about Malcolm Tucker being a comfort character for some people (like myself).
Like, I get the whole "you weren't supposed to like him" thing and "Peter Capaldi did such a good job that people wanted to see more of him" but I'm not just talking about Malcolm Tucker being liked or enjoyed, I'm talking specifically about him being a comfort character, as is defined below:
This is kind of the opposite of the intent here, isn't it? Malcolm Tucker is so evil, toxic and potentially violent that seeing him should make the audience recoil. His mere presence should make you feel stressed, when he suddenly shows up your brain should go "oh shit".
And yet, here I am, two days sick, burning up with fever, feeling like a train running me over might be considered an improvement on my physical and mental state at this point and all I can find comfort in is cutting up my favourite Malcolm Tucker lines from the entire show together - for no reason except that seeing him makes me feel calm and collected.
I haven't managed to decipher what it is about Malcolm that brings me comfort. I don't think it's just because he has Peter Capaldi's face. There are other characters Capaldi has played that I disliked immensely and even if I leave those aside, it wouldn't explain why Malcolm is more of a comfort character for me than even the Doctor is (honestly, I'm not lying).
It might partly be the swearing, I think I find great enjoyment in the wittiness and the creativity of the swearing, as a person who also swears a lot and considers it a form of strong expression. It might be that his anger and toxicity are so overblown, so extravagant, that I can't actually take them seriously. Like Malcolm breaking into a sweary rant feels akin to someone breaking into song in a musical. You just sit back and enjoy it aesthetically.
It might even be that he embodies a certain inevitability of things going to shit. Armando Iannucci said something along the lines of "in every episode, something goes a bit wrong and then Malcolm shows up and makes it even worse". That's very accurate! NOTHING goes right in that show. For four seasons and two specials it's just disaster after disaster in which "success" is usually just "the minister wasn't fired today" and Malcolm is often at the center of it all, making everyone miserable and everything ten times worse.
He's the opposite of a comfort character, really. A comfort character shows up and makes you feel that "it's going to be alright". For example, the Doctor is a good comfort character, because nine times out of ten, he beats the monsters and keeps everyone safe. Malcolm shows up, you know nothing is going to be alright and it's probably going to be a lot worse than has been implied so far - and that can be comforting, too, because it's not about the outcome being good or bad, it's about it being predictable. And, as I grow older, I find myself enjoying a predictably shitty outcome, because life does actually suck so, so bad sometimes and I can't always be confronted by narratives in which things end well, they often exhaust me. Sometimes, I just want to see things go to shit, I want to experience second hand anger and frustration, I want to look at a catastrophe in the eye and laugh about it.
I'm not sure I've got it, to be honest, I think there's more to why I like Malcolm so much and why the more he shouts and screams the more I feel a calmness washing over me. My own anger issues probably have something to do with it. I don't know. I'll keep thinking about it.
Synopsis: A new teacher at Roundview has to deal with her first Parent's Night. She meets a man that has quite the large amount of baggage and gossip around him.
a/n: a fic! From me?? Nah son. Thats crazy. Multi-chapter love for this man coming tho. Slowly. One day. Love you alllllllll.
Parent’s Night, the bane of any teacher’s existence. Truly a hell on Earth, between those parents that thought your job was just to babysit and those that were willfully ignorant about their children’s behavior in school, you couldn’t take it.
At least those were miles better than the ones that took their children’s academic prowess as a mark of their own success.
The student who’s father was coming in now, the mother eloped with some German man, was named Sid. Your heart went out to him. Really. His home life was in shambles. Said father was recently in hospital for something about his heart.
Local gossip mills and the teacher’s lounge still shattered with the grips of poor Sid’s tragic, dramatic home life.
You’d be a bit more supportive if it was only that; his home life.
Sid seemed to be intent on dragging everyone else in the school with him, however. Hopeless, truly.
What a time to get into teaching!
The man wobbled in, he wasn’t unattractive. The mother was insane for running off. You marked the whole explosive thing as probably personality-based. That’s why people cheated in mostly. Personality and boredom. Usually, appearances had seldom to do with cheating. Super models got cheated on all the time…
Maybe he inherited his father’s personality?
You suddenly didn’t fault the mother.
His eyes seemed perpetually wet as he sat down across from you. They were lovely. Not quite blue, not quite green, grey and gold flecks throughout, rimmed with an exhausted red line. The sudden locked contact of them shot through your core. Framed with lush, arched brows and pretty little lashes…
“My wee boy, how’s he been?” The man; Mark, according to your records asked. It was earnest. “I’ve been trying my best to get his grades up.” He swallowed as you caught a glimpse of the scar from surgery under his wrinkled, wrongly-buttoned shirt.
You swallowed back. He seemed gravely concerned, with genuine love for Sid bubbling forward. The way he asked seemed so gut-wrenchingly genuine and paternal concern that broached towards reverent.
Definitely not inherited personality faults from him, you walked back your previous guess.
“Not good, his grades continue to slip. He keeps moping about some girl named Cassie. I keep telling the school councilor to get involved. He seems unreachable.” You went for brutal honesty. A man who was briefly declared dead would appreciate that, right?
He let a few choice words. It felt well-suited. Duly earned.
You felt for him truly…
Leaning forward, you laid out a sympathetic hand on the man…
“He’s nearly catatonic. It might not be a matter of skills.” You reasoned. “He has gone a through a lot…maybe try to get him in for a psych eval?” You tried to give seasoned advice and speak from what little experience you had.
He sighed.
“Just tell me what to do.” Mark resigned himself into a self-conscious slouch. “He has to do better in life than me or even his grandfather did.” He seemed content to all but hover above the surface of the desk.
Definitely not personality-based cheating, you thought as you rolled back your previous observation. Unless this was a new personality based on his health scare and Sid driving him to his limit.
Oh well, so much for gossip-based psychology!
You put a caring, cautious hand on his shoulder. (Bony, yet firm you remarked.) He was close to breaking into tears. It wasn’t fair.
“He’s already got a good support system in you and what the school administration can provide. Get him the mental health care he needs. It may not be a perfect fix, but it’ll help.” You felt yourself rubbing soothing circles into this near-perfect stranger’s upper back.
His back felt almost muscular. Thin, oddly spaced out. But firm. Just like his shoulders.
It wasn’t all that bad to touch.
Something overtook you as you produced a post-it and wrote your number down. It was a bad, possibly sideways move. Definitely not in the teacher’s handbook.
You shook yourself. You just didn’t want to see this man fall into disarray further because of his son. The boy was this close to falling through the cracks completely. People usually inherited their mental health struggles from their parents…
Nothing else. Clearly not a sudden desire to see this man again.
“Why don’t we meet up outside for a coffee and we can discuss this somewhere cheerier?” You slid it forward. “Ring me on there and we’ll chat, hopefully somewhere with outdoor seating.” You laughed a small laugh as of to diffuse the situation and show your metaphorical belly.
“Aye. That’ll do.” He took the post-it and slid it into his jeans pocket.
“I know you cannae waste all your time on me. You’ve got parents queuing up for miles.” He said as he got up and shuffled clumsily to the door.
You went back to your notes about said meeting as some other kid’s parents trotted in.
“Let’s take a mini-break,” Clara suggested, in a tone that was more command than suggestion. “I found this little place in the countryside. With a pool. We could get out of the heat, enjoy a little added privacy.”
Malcolm leaned forward, “Spend every minute with one punter or another fucking asking me where I am? When will I be swooping back in to clean up their messes? It’s a fucking nice thought but…”
“Well, I’ve already booked it so you might as well pack a bag.”
Malcolm opened his mouth to protest when Clara spoke again.
“Sadly my bag was too small to fit a single pair of knickers in it. But I suppose I’ll just have to do without….”
Malcolm’s mouth snapped shut. He cleared his throat. “I guess I’ll go fucking pack, then.”
That’s what this all about for you, isn’t it? Does it never occur to you that your poisonous male obsession with conflict is making people despise politics?
So I got massively distracted and decided to do something utterly pointless: in The Thick of It S03E06, we get a ton of shots of newspapers and also one really neat shot of the BBC News website, above. The biggest fake bit is obvious–the video of Nicola Murray saying the PM is the right man for the job or whatever–but there is, I think, another fake bit mixed in with some real bits. Two article titles seem barely readable to me in the Other Top Stories section on the right side of the page:
The second one is a little easier to read imo, and says, “Tories rebuff spending cut attack.” This is an actual article, dated 10 June 2009, so we can roughly place the episode (and all other articles?) to that time frame as well.
The first one is, I think, “[name] plan to reform UK politics,” also dated 10 June 2009. Which is also a real article, except in Real Life the name in question is Gordon Brown. I don’t think the name in the TTOI mock up is “Brown,” because the third letter looks a bit like a Y and the first letter looks a bit like a T, so I’m guessing the in-universe PM’s name is actually Taylor. (Unless maybe that says “Tories plan,” which would be kind of hilarious.)
On the one hand, I sort of want to try and pick apart more headlines to tie back to their real-life versions, but on the other hand, I’m not sure I can. I think I can read “school rebuilds over-optimistic” and “Matthews faces new charges” (which I think may be a 2008 case that I can’t find a link to), but beyond that I’m not sure. I think the “Taylor (?) plan to reform UK politics” might be the only fake headline in the mix, however, outside of the Nicola Murray video.
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