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konstantintreplev · 1 year ago

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‘Inspector Morse is Dead (Alive/Eternal/Cursed/Lucky/Alone/Loved/Hated/etc.)!’

In part on the Multiplicity of the Morseverse Canon

(Alternatively: Damn you Dexter and Russ and everyone else)

This is how we see Morse in the final moments of Inspector Morse: an obscure corpse all alone in a morgue, after an episode that, frankly, feels like watching our favorite grouchy pompous detective (never chief) inspector making an unbearably slow walk toward the light at the end of the tunnel, only going slow because he can’t work up the energy to go quickly any longer (the days of Shaun Evans’s Morse running like he’s a tall Tom Cruise long gone along with uh… Thursday [oops, did I just invoke him? more on that later]). John Thaw plays Morse’s slow demise, decades in the making, beautifully, clearly ready to fondly let go of a character that would come to define him for the rest of his life and legacy (Thaw would die a little over a year after “The Remorseful Day” aired).

That’s it: that’s all they wrote.

Or was it?

We’ll get to Colin Dexter’s manuscript of The Remorseful Day in a bit -- what I want to bring into view is a point of canon that lives in the margins: the deleted scene. In independent research for a PhD I may very well undertake, I did some research on the IM script archive held at BFI’s archive in the middle of nowhere, where they give you fire evacuation instructions if their vaults of nitrate decide to go flooey.

There, Kevin Whately (our beloved Robbie Lewis, the man who defined a shapeless role so that Dexter started actively changing the book canon Lewis he’d established to match his on-screen persona) donated all of his scripts for IM. (Except for “The Wench is Dead,” I believe.) It’s a treasure trove. And in the back of the script for “The Remorseful Day” is a final scene for Robbie they absolutely shot (the call sheet is included too), and it pushes back on the large perception that Morse was ‘alone’ in his final days. (I mean, ignoring all evidence that show canon Strange is clearly worried for his old friend, Robbie is devastated [howling to a culprit ‘Inspector Morse is dead!’ isn’t procedure, but it is Morsian), Robbie kept a close eye on Morse during his recovery after “The Wench is Dead,” even buying him music (!!).)

Still, this cut scene implies someone mourned the guy, not just for his brilliance, but for his ridiculousness and pompousness too.

LEWIS, blank, apparently composed, stares at MORSE. Or what was MORSE. LEWIS bends close to the body. He kisses the forehead. Then straightens up, and whispers as one might to someone sleeping. LEWIS: Goodbye, sir. ‘Parsifal’ continuing. LEWIS strides along the corridor towards the exit. Still composed. ‘Parsifal’ continuing. LEWIS arrives at his car, opens the door, climbs in. ‘Parsifal’ continuing. LEWIS picks up the ‘Parsifal’ cassette from the centre console. As he does, a flash of irritation… LEWIS: K-napper-t-s-bloody-busch. … before his face crumples. He starts the car before his tears come. ‘Parsifal’ continuing…. Oxford city scape. High and wide over the dreaming spires as the sun rises. END.

Russ Lewis isn’t the only Morseverse script writer sitting on a delicious pile of deleted scenes and epic, concise prose, huh?

“The Remorseful Day” was written/adapted by Stephen Churchett, who worked with Thaw closely on Kavanaugh QC; this was the only IM episode he’d ever write, although he continued on to Lewis, writing multiple episodes, and perhaps it’s the fact that he places Robbie at the center of the final scene that ended with it being cut… this is Morse’s story, after all, and I’m sure all involved ultimately believed that.

Except, maybe for his inventor himself. See, “The Remorseful Day” changes a lot from Dexter’s final Morse book, which is less march towards the light and more conspiracy-fueled romp to an early grave. In Dexter’s text, Morse is protecting Strange’s affair with the victim from coming out (and around the time Mrs. Strange [Dexter probably never knew what they were intending for Sara Vickers’ bright-eyed Joan Thursday on Endeavour] dies suddenly from cancer). Morse takes the fall for Strange, or he would, but his death ensures that Strange is going to keep his legacy secure… even to the extent of letting Robbie on to the plot Morse hatched. The 'Epilogue' is an entirely Lewis + Strange affair, with the memory of Morse only really invading at the last minute.

Yes it was clear. ‘You’re saying that all Morse did was to save you… and save Mrs. Strange…’ ‘It would have broken her to pieces,’ said Strange very quietly. ‘And me. Would have broken both of us to pieces.’ ‘She never knew?’ ‘Never had the faintest idea. Thanks to Morse.’ […] ‘…He certainly didn’t give two monkeys what I thought of him, at least most of the time. In fact, the only person he did want to think well of him was you, Lewis…’ ...And after looking around him [Lewis] as guiltily as Morse must have done in the Summertown newsagent's [looking at girlie magazines], for a little while, in his desolation, he wept silently.

(TRD, Epilogue)

Look, Colin Dexter may have described women like the old creepy horndog he was, but he laid the groundwork for all of Morse’s rich homosocial/erotic relationships with nearly every male colleague he ever let himself care for from that point on. (And also established a basic respect in Morse for Mrs. Strange… a woman Dexter had had him describe earlier as a ‘bully’.)

Now, Shaun Evans (lovely guy, seemingly, should stop taking so many roles that are just awful characters) has never seen Inspector Morse the show (or so he claims), but he did read the books, and he’s definitely hinted that the end of Endeavour is more tied up with them than it is with the show that preceded his. (And, in a way, if Inspector Morse is the Greek/Roman tragicomic adaptation of the prose and Morse’s ‘history’, Endeavour is the Shakespearean history version… a whole lot of liberties taken with the ‘facts,’ but the spirit of the man is there, the original man, somehow entwined with Thaw’s take on him too, because Thaw also read the books, and they were a huge factor in him taking on the role.)

Hated this moment when I first saw it because my mind flashed to ‘oh god Snape,’ but then I watched “TRD,” and I read TRD and holy shit, new version of “Exeunt” unlocked.

In the end, all adaptations of Morse dovetail into that original finale for Morse; the one Dexter intended, the one implied by Endeavour and revised by Inspector Morse.

Morse wasn’t alone when he died: he kept Strange’s reputation intact, Robbie mourned him vividly, he ensured Mrs. Strange/Joan’s vision of her beloved, solid husband stayed just as solid as her image of her dad did, and he kept his promise to the man who set him on his path, Fred Thursday… he did look after Jim and Joan Strange.

Always.

Morse wasn’t alone in death, either: Dexter has Mrs. Strange and Max DeBryn precede him in death, and while it’s clear Morse doesn’t really believe in anything coming after on a logical level, surely there’s a part of him that believes in some place for woeful figures such as himself.

Morse has many near brushes with death -- some in the line of duty, some by his own hand, and none is as potent as the one in the graveyard at the end of “Exeunt” (although Thaw’s Morse describing his suicidality as a teen because of his emotional torture at the hands of Gwen Morse is a close second).

It’s an infuriating moment, really. Morse has Thursday’s gun; he’s in a church yard, one that looks eerily similar to the one where Joan has her wedding; and the gun goes off. But Morse can’t actually die, and he certainly can’t kill himself. That would be breaking his promise to Thursday, for that matter. Can’t watch over the newlyweds if he dies during their first year of matrimony.

I’m of the mind it’s a fantasy, the final fantasy of a boy-man, along the lines of his unreal kiss with Joan a bit earlier in the episode… much like he’ll never commit to Joan (never could), he’ll never commit to offing himself, because as Thaw’s Morse observes in “Cherubim and Seraphim,” he realized he was too brilliant to go out that way. That it is with the gun Thursday gave him is the icing on the cake -- not a vindictive act against the man, merely using the tool he was given as it was intended to be used… to inflict pain. The whole scene is edited weirdly, frankly; it’s subtle, and it definitely could’ve been telegraphed more, but one of the few failings of Endeavour as a show was an insistence on subtleties that were SO subtle, they might as well have been coming through a cable transmitting Internet on the floor of the ocean.

As someone who finds himself similar to Morse in a helluva lot of ways, though, I recognize the romantic fantasizing about suicide in a spot of Significance, with an object of Significance, before the grim realization that you are who you are, and you weren’t left behind because of that… you pulled yourself away, actually, because of who you are. You leave the graveyard, you bury the gun, maybe, you go to choir practice, and you pass your older self in his shiny red Jag he loves so much. Your part of the story is over; ‘Is that it?’ you ask, and you are told, ‘That’s it.’ And you begin to become a different person… not better, not worse, but different. (If Shaun Evans ever ages to look like John Thaw, I’ll eat one of my Thursday-styled hats.)

Morse never gets over Thursday (true) (and that’s a whole ‘nother essay), but a lot of people never get over a person like a Thursday in their lives. It doesn’t mean they can’t live on, still, with the knowledge that there’s a possibility of a timeline where their fates entangled once more, or many, many timelines. This happens in fanfic (my own, and others), and in all the retellings of Morse and Thursday, and Morse and Joan, and Morse and Strange, and Morse and Robbie that will exist, probably, well into the distant future. (Do I write original novels where Morse keeps inserting himself, blended with some other factor? Yes, unfortunately. Morsian brain ulcer. Damn you, Colin Dexter!)

Morse wasn’t alone when he died; he was loved. He was difficult, yes; he was troubled, too. He was cursed, and he was incredibly lucky.

Inspector Morse is dead, that’s true, Robbie.

But the fact that we commemorate this day at all, over two decades after his death, is proof that he’s not just alive… he’s eternal.

#inspector morse #endeavour morse #endeavour itv #colin dexter #john thaw #shaun evans #happy death day you son of a perfectly nice quaker lady #mine #i wrote over 1.5k for this lol #Spotify

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queerism1969 · 4 months ago

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Notable transgender people from history

Here's the list I put together for when people on non-trans subreddits claim we didn't exist until recently:

Ashurbanipal (669-631BCE) - King of the Neo-Assryian empire, who according to Diodorus Siculus is reported to have dressed, behaved, and socialized as a woman.

Elagabalus (204-222) - Roman Emperor who preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, presented as a woman, called herself her lover's queen and wife, and offered vast sums of money to any doctor able to make her anatomically female.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1286-1328) - French Jewish philosopher who wrote poetry about longing to be a woman.

Eleanor Rykener (14th century) - trans woman in London who was questioned under charges of sex work

[Thomas(ine) Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall) - (1603-unknown) - English servant in colonial Virginia who alternated between presenting as a woman and presenting as a man, before a court ruled that they were both a man and a woman simultaneously, and were required to wear both men's and women's clothing simultaneously.

Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810) - French diplomat, spy, freemason, and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War, who transitioned at the age of 49 and lived the remaining 33 years of her life as a woman.

Public Universal Friend (1752-1819) - Quaker religious leader in revolutionary era America who identified and lived as androgynous and genderless.

Surgeon James Barry (1789-1865) - Trans man and military surgeon in the British army.

Berel - a Jewish trans man who transitioned in a shtetel in Ukraine in the 1800's, and whose story was shared with the Jewish Daily Forward in a 1930 letter to the editor by Yeshaye Kotofsky, a Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn who knew Berel

Mary Jones (1803-unknown) - trans woman in New York whose 1836 trial for stealing a man's wallet received much public attention

Albert Cashier (1843-1915) - Trans man who served in the US Civil War.

Harry Allen (1882-1922) - Trans man who was the subject of sensationalistic newspaper coverage for his string of petty crimes.

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) - socialite, chef and hostess in Oxnard California, whose family and doctors supported her transition at a young age.

Lili Elbe (1882-1931) - Trans woman who underwent surgery in 1930 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran one of the first dedicated medical facilities for trans patients.

Karl M. Baer (1885-1956) - Trans man who underwent reconstructive surgery (the details of which are not known) in 1906, and was legally recognized as male in Germany in 1907.

Dr. Alan Hart (1890-1962) - Groundbreaking radiologist who pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and in 1917 he became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the US.

[Louise Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Lawrence_(activist)) (1912–1976) - trans activist, artist, writer and lecturer, who transitioned in the early 1940's. She struck up a correspondence with the groundbreaking sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey as he worked to understand sex and gender in a more expansive way. She wrote up life histories of her acquaintances for Kinsey, encouraged peers to do interviews with him, and sent him a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, personal correspondences, etc.

Dr. Michael Dillon (1915-1962) - British physician who updated his birth certificate to Male in the early 1940's, and in 1946 became the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.

Reed Erickson (1917-1992) - trans man whose philanthropic work contributed millions of dollars to the early LGBTQ rights movement

Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax (1916-1992) - early 20th century gospel quartet singer.

Peter Alexander (unknown, interview 1937) - trans man from New Zealand, discusses his transition in this interview from 1937

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) - The first widely known trans woman in the US in 1952, after her surgery attracted media attention.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1940-present) - Feminist, trans rights and gay rights activist who came out and started transition in the late 1950's. She was at Stonewall, was injured and taken into custody, and had her jaw broken by police while in custody. She was the first Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which works to end human rights abuses against trans/intersex/GNC people in the prison system.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer and community worker in NYC; co-founded STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer; co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera

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