Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)
May. 6th, 2022 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishOkay, first things first: yes, it's copaganda. Gentle copaganda, the kind that foregrounds "yes, these people who are meant to defend the law are actually terrible at it and have very little desire to do so," but always with an undertone of "but they're necessary." And as the book moves to its conclusion, Vimes in particular transforms from "useless drunk" to "born Officer Of The Law."
Look. If this were a book about the Inherent Nobility of Kings [and there is indeed some British upper-classism in Lady Sybil, but I digress] it would be obviously problematic. Sure, you can gon on about how there's this huge responsibility that comes with the position and documenting a failson's rise to the occasion, a la Henry IV. But ultimately you're talking around the fact that historically most of the people that have that responsibility ignore it and get straight on with the self-gratification and oppression.
And in 2022 that lands a lot differently for me than it did in 1992, when I read this (and have literally no memory of it apart from the existence of Carrot and CMOT Dibbler). It even lands differently than it would have circa 2014 when I mainlined five seasons of The Wire, which I don't think I could do today despite it a) being absolutely amazingly good and b) at least trying to show the cops in a less than heroic light.
Without strict controls, cops are no less an authoritarian system than any monarchy, and the history of policing is a history of a lack of enforcement of those controls. Pratchett thankfully steers away from all the "he's a loose cannon but he gets results!" tropes, so it remains readable, but it's still a little uncomfortable.
And, I mean. Apart from that the book's quite good. You get the start of what I assume is Vimes's character arc, and I'm interested to see where he goes. You get Carrot being an Upright Citizen And Officer with no understanding of nuance, played for laughs but generally not at his expense.
Every drop of worldbuilding about the underpinnings of Discworld magic makes me happy. This time it's dragons, both the small kind that tend to blow themselves up and the huge kind that used to be around but aren't anymore, unless someone manages to call them back.
Best part, though would be Vetinari's cynicism clashing with Vimes's humanism. I am so glad that there's a counterpoint to Vetinari: I like him, I enjoy spending book-time with him ("Don't let me detain you"). I am also relieved that Discworld's viewpoint characters tend to believe that people are fundamentally /people/: not bad, not heroic, just getting along from day to day. I hope (and expect) to see Pratchett dig into that some more.
Look. If this were a book about the Inherent Nobility of Kings [and there is indeed some British upper-classism in Lady Sybil, but I digress] it would be obviously problematic. Sure, you can gon on about how there's this huge responsibility that comes with the position and documenting a failson's rise to the occasion, a la Henry IV. But ultimately you're talking around the fact that historically most of the people that have that responsibility ignore it and get straight on with the self-gratification and oppression.
And in 2022 that lands a lot differently for me than it did in 1992, when I read this (and have literally no memory of it apart from the existence of Carrot and CMOT Dibbler). It even lands differently than it would have circa 2014 when I mainlined five seasons of The Wire, which I don't think I could do today despite it a) being absolutely amazingly good and b) at least trying to show the cops in a less than heroic light.
Without strict controls, cops are no less an authoritarian system than any monarchy, and the history of policing is a history of a lack of enforcement of those controls. Pratchett thankfully steers away from all the "he's a loose cannon but he gets results!" tropes, so it remains readable, but it's still a little uncomfortable.
And, I mean. Apart from that the book's quite good. You get the start of what I assume is Vimes's character arc, and I'm interested to see where he goes. You get Carrot being an Upright Citizen And Officer with no understanding of nuance, played for laughs but generally not at his expense.
Every drop of worldbuilding about the underpinnings of Discworld magic makes me happy. This time it's dragons, both the small kind that tend to blow themselves up and the huge kind that used to be around but aren't anymore, unless someone manages to call them back.
Best part, though would be Vetinari's cynicism clashing with Vimes's humanism. I am so glad that there's a counterpoint to Vetinari: I like him, I enjoy spending book-time with him ("Don't let me detain you"). I am also relieved that Discworld's viewpoint characters tend to believe that people are fundamentally /people/: not bad, not heroic, just getting along from day to day. I hope (and expect) to see Pratchett dig into that some more.
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Date: 2022-05-07 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-09 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-07 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-09 10:24 pm (UTC)Although Charlie's note below (re Peelian Principles, which sent me down a rabbit-hole of 'UK policing is not nearly the shitshow that US/CA policing is') is also worth bearing in mind.
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Date: 2022-05-07 10:30 am (UTC)I will note that Terry was leaning very heavily into the Peelian Principles, which I gather are almost unknown in the US (they're the set of principles defined by Sir Robert Peel that underpin ethical policing: mostly observed in the breach, alas, but they're a very useful reference point, and Sam Vimes is a textbook Peelian constable).
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Date: 2022-05-09 10:23 pm (UTC)I expect I can use that as a frame for reading the rest of the Watch books. (It's not like I'd stop reading them, but I'd be grumbling under my breath the whole time. Now it'll be only like a quarter of the time.) So, thank you.