“Henry Van Statten: ‘Exactly! I wanted to touch the stars!’

The Doctor: ‘You just want to drag the stars down and stick them underground beneath tons of sand and dirt and label them. You’re about as far from the stars as you can get. And you took her down with you.’”

– “Doctor Who” Season 1 Episode 6 “Dalek” (2005)

In many different ways, popular culture presents us with ideals epitomizing the habit of collecting. From the Pokemon games’ motto of “Gotta Catch’em All!” to the genres we love to read about and watch, it seems as if the companies behind those pastimes try their hardest to push our loves into consumerist obsessions. One example of this corporate control can be seen through my personal favorite Sci-Fi TV show “Doctor Who.”

The episode from which the opening quote is from provides a basis for a discussion on this type of collecting. In this episode, the Doctor and his companion, Rose Tyler, encounter eccentric American billionaire Henry Van Statten and his collection of extraterrestrial artifacts housed in an underground bunker beneath Utah in 2012. However, what they are not yet aware of is that Van Statten has recently acquired a new “exhibit”, one of the Doctor’s oldest enemies: a Dalek.

The episode’s majority encapsulates the Doctor and his interactions with Van Statten regarding his collection of alien artifacts and the danger which he has stupidly brought upon himself and the world. When the Dalek frees itself from its chains, it goes on a rampage, ironically enough so that many fans call the episode “When the Exhibits Strike Back!”

The point to extrapolate from this episode in discussion is how the collecting done by Van Statten begins to emulate how devoted fans of the show may go to wit’s end in order to begin possessing the show. What this means is that for this fandom base, or any other, there are those who will not stop until they have every piece of memorabilia related to it that they can possibly own. And even more so, the BBC America corporation decides to use these types of people in order to make serious bank, selling everything from keychains and board games to DVDs and character cardboard cutouts.

All of this is done to give the shows fans more of what they want: to become more a part of the show. To those fans, each object which they possess, whether it be an actual prop used in the show or simply souvenirs, is not just another thing they have but an intrinsic piece connecting them and the show as well as displaying their love of the show. As Knox stated, “The collector plucks the desired object out of the economic circuit, an act of selection that ‘rescues’ it from being a mere commodity, making it transcendent…” (Knox p. 287-288). It is in this manner through which we are made to be consumer collectors for the profit of companies.

 

Additional Readings (And Viewings):

“Doctor Who” Season 1 Episode 6 “Dalek” (Can be found on Netflix or streamed online)

Knox, S. (2003). The Serial Killer as Collector. Acts of Possession: Collecting in America. L. Dilworth. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press: 286-302.

https://www.bbcdoctorwhoshop.com/en/?gclid=CL2h8N3z5MQCFQMQ7AodBRQA5A

– If you’re interested, look around at how much some of the            souvenirs are as well as any of the TV memorabilia.

Bibliography:

http://www.chakoteya.net/doctorwho/27-6.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/04_april/21/who2.shtml

Lt. James Granger: “You want to go into a war zone with some architects and artists and tell our boys what they can and cannot blow up.”
Lt. Frank Stokes: “That’s right.”

-Matt Damon to George Clooney, “Monument’s Men” (2014)

What is it like to be told what you can and cannot destroy in the heat of battle? If you are a soldier fighting for your life, chances are that the little voice in your head will probably not be saying, “Don’t destroy that because it is important to the people who live here.”

However, for those indigenous peoples, the items or places which those warring forces are taking and/or obliterating are the sources of their identities. To take and destroy something of that great importance to a particular group of people is the equal to committing genocide, attempting to wipe the traces of those individuals off of the face of the earth. As a former history teacher of mine once said, “To destroy one’s identity is to break one’s spirit. Exterminating any remaining traces of that person or group’s history is a monster’s victory.”

This is where UNESCO has been attempting to intervene and protect the places and objects symbolically linked to cultures across the world. In 1954, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was convened and today has been signed by more than 100 State parties with a majority of its signatories adopting the First (1954) and Second (1999) Protocols of the Convention.

Still, what is there to say about those who have not signed or agreed to the convention’s protocols? After all, those not involved are not bound by those same rules, resulting in ferocious and monstrous offensives designed to demoralize or dehumanize some group of people. For example, the 2001 destruction of the Buddhas in the Bamiyan Provence of Afghanistan by the Taliban struck a devastating blow against the local community. The idols were there ever since the Fourth Century A.D. and now there is nothing left but the hollowed-out caverns where the statues used to stand.

It is these types of attacks which strike at the very core of the intended targets, not to mention the shock felt all across the world in response. However, coming back around to the beginning of this article, if you were a soldier in a situation where your life depended on the destruction of a piece of someone’s identity, what would you do?

This is a call for the reevaluation of rules and precedents like the Hague Convention. How can some be restricted to protect precious cultural properties while others have unrestricted power to destroy such properties? Repatriation is a whole lot more than just giving back what has been wrongly taken as it now has been stretched to involve how to protect what is still left standing. And, hopefully, new protection rules can help prevent future cultural extinctions in the human race.

 

Bibliography and Further Reading Links

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/arts/design/27conn.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1423587679-tmdkuekbMgpRPlP1k4aB7Q

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/60th_anniversary_of_the_hague_convention_on_the_protection_of_cultural_property_in_the_event_of_armed_conflict/#.VNo6k_nF9Dx

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

http://www.archaeological.org/news/hca/3137

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/science/archaeology/2001-03-22-afghan-buddhas.htm

Picture 1:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Distinctive_marking_of_cultural_property_in_Austria-from_Flickr_141273020.jpg

Picture 2: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Destruction_of_Buddhas_March_21_2001.jpg