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The Signifiers of Outlander 9/3/2014 5:51:57 AM
[A version of this post originally appeared on thunderalleybcp.com on August 18, 2014.]
Having watched the first couple episodes of the Outlander TV adaptation, I’m fascinated by some of the signifiers the series provides to its characters.
Mild SPOILERS ahead.
The time travel fantasy revolves around a romantic triangle among former army nurse Claire Randall and her husband Frank in the “present” (also known as 1945) and Jamie Fraser, the man Claire meets when she “falls through” time and winds up 200 years in the past.
The series communicates many things about Claire to sketch her character. She’s from a “good” family, but her parents died when she was young. She had a nomadic upbringing with her archaeologist uncle, digging in the dirt and doing other things that “genteel” girls like her normally wouldn’t. She was an army nurse on the battlefields of World War II. She was really a de facto war zone surgeon and was quite used to being covered in the blood of her patients.
Are you getting the picture? Claire is unconventional, gutsy, inquisitive and not afraid to get her hands dirty. She has intelligence, resourcefulness and grit. She’s not some hothouse flower who wilts under pressure.
The contrast between Claire’s two men is pretty striking and telegraphs who Claire “should” be with. I haven’t read Diana Gabaldon’s books, so I have no idea how this all turns out. I’m just reacting to the cues the adaptation is providing.
Frank is scholarly, sleek and tweedy. If he has rough edges, we haven’t seen them. He loves books and history. In the war, Frank was a spymaster who sent others behind enemy lines (usually to their deaths). He’s bound for a professorship at Oxford.
Jamie is physical, scruffy and somewhat wild. He’s rough-hewn, though possessed of some manners. He’s all about action. He fights on the front lines against the British soldiers and winds up covered in lots of blood (his own and that of his enemies). He’s a farmer when not being a revolutionary.
Gosh, which man is more appropriate for a forthright woman of action like Claire?
If the preceding was too subtle, I will further note that in the first episode, both Claire and Jamie were shown streaked in blood on a battlefield. The make-up artists gave them almost matching blood smears on their clavicles.
Need further context clues? Frank’s lookalike ancestor, Jack, is a vicious British soldier hunting Jamie. Within five minutes of their first encounter, Jack nearly kills and rapes Claire (in that order). In flashbacks, we see him have Jamie flogged and compel Jamie’s sister to service him to spare Jamie’s life.
Forget that all we’ve been shown of Frank indicates that he’s a decent man who loves his wife. His biggest crime is being somewhat distant after the couple’s war-time separation. His ancestral doppelganger is a nasty SOB. It’s like a proxy justification for Claire to have a romp with Jamie.
Oh, and Claire just goes ahead and lets Jamie think she’s a widow. Sure, technically, 200 years in the past her husband is “not alive” in the sense that he won’t be born for another 160 years or so. But for her, it’s been a comparatively short time since her separation from Frank.
I realize that many of these are choices that Gabaldon made for her characters and that the television producers are staying faithful to the source material. I’m also not saying that I didn’t enjoy the two episodes I’ve seen. It’s an interesting, involving story with a good cast.
TV shows necessitate a kind of shorthand. It’s a visual medium. All these details are necessary to establish the characters and their situations.
It’s just interesting that the signifiers practically scream that Claire belongs with Jamie. I’m prepared to be surprised if the cues turn out to be a smoke screen. But years of watching TV suggest they’re not.
