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Duplicity and Darkness: Human Nature, According to Fargo

Spoilers for season 1 of Fargo.

“This is a true story.” The first episode of Fargo begins with these words, superimposed over a sweeping landscape whose few signs of civilization — a thin road, a telephone line — are overwhelmed by the wintry wilderness and shrouded by the night. The lights of some unknown city glimmer just over the horizon, barely visible. As the words fade — “true” the last one to disappear — and the haunting orchestration swells, a single car appears, dwarfed by the nature around it but inexorably driving towards its goal. Its headlights might seem like the light at the end of the tunnel, but its driver is far from a civilized presence here to illuminate the night.

This is our villain, Lorne Malvo, a coldblooded contract killer who leaves chaos in his wake wherever he goes. Malvo is no man, but an apex predator, a wolf, a comparison he himself enjoys making. He’s skilled at putting on a charming face when he wants to, whether playing a harmless pastor, a caddish dentist, or a quippy wanderer. Yet, the wolf lingers beneath, unsettling all who glimpse his true nature. Like the series itself, which is in fact completely fictional, this dissonance between exterior presentation and interior reality creates a sense of narrative distrust and suspense. Fargo itself is predatory in the way it preys on audiences’ fascination with truth. Nothing is what it seems, which makes Malvo and the show alike all the more dangerous and unpredictable.

Malvo’s duplicity and underlying malevolence are mirrored by the setting of Fargo. Most of the season takes place in the Minnesota cities of Bemidji and Duluth, whose wholesome, friendly Midwestern façade and pristine, snow–covered landscapes are undermined by the dysfunction which lies beneath. Fargo’s “antihero,” hapless insurance salesman Lester Nygaard, is similarly deceptive. A broken washing machine’s brutal thumping is our first sight and sound of the Nygaard household, before the camera tilts up from the basement to Lester and his wife Pearl in the kitchen, and it immediately foregrounds the dysfunction of their marriage and Lester’s capacity for malevolence — hidden underneath the floorboards, but violently pulsing, ready to explode.

Fargo presents a rather bleak outlook on human nature and fate. Frequent establishing shots of the Minnesotan wilderness signal that this is the animal kingdom, for all that its characters live in towns and work 9–to–5s. The camera often crouches animalistically behind objects, whether they be snowdrifts or steering wheels, giving the impression of a stalking predator or cowering prey. In the world of the show, doing good is often a pointless quest in futility and one chance encounter can loose the raw, animal savagery lurking beneath a veneer of civilized humanity. Lester and Malvo meet entirely by chance in the hospital and by the end of the pilot, Malvo’s sinister encouragement has driven Lester to kill his nagging, domineering wife, bashing her head in with a hammer after a fight. And so begins Lester’s move up the food chain. He is now both predator and prey, and struggles with this dual existence for the rest of the season.

At times, Lester is cold and calculating, tampering with crime scenes, evading the police, and eventually pinning Pearl’s murder on his brother. But he sometimes reverts to a bumbling coward who can never quite shake off the suspicions of Deputy Molly Solverson, the hero to Lester’s antihero and Malvo’s villain. Throughout the season, Lester wears a bright orange puffy coat, the lurid color resembling that worn by hunters to avoid shooting each other. It simultaneously marks him as both hunter and hunted, a predator and a sitting duck, with no hope of blending in with the stark, muted color palette.

By the season finale, Lester has seemingly transformed from failed salesman to successful alpha male. Following a one–year time skip in episode 8, he’s remarried to the adoring Linda, started his own insurance shop with a slick, masculine façade, and wears sharp blazers and dark–colored turtlenecks. But his past is inescapable and Malvo soon returns to Bemidji to murder Lester, setting in motion a sequence of events that ends in both their deaths. After Lester injures him with a bear trap, Malvo crawls away to his rented cabin to recover and is shot dead by a former police officer, Gus Grimly, who has been lying in wait there. Gus had previously tried to have Malvo arrested, only to have Malvo threaten his daughter Greta. His triumph over Malvo is a triumph of family man over callous killer, of law and order over a vicious predator. Yet Malvo dies as he lived, sowing mistrust and suspense. Neither his severely injured leg nor Gus’s initial hail of bullets are enough to do him in and it takes two bullets to the face to exterminate his threat once and for all.

Malvo’s death also unearths the truth of Pearl’s murder, sending Lester on the run. He dies two weeks later, after running onto the thin ice of a lake in Glacier National Park. In contrast to Minnesota’s flat open landscapes, Montana’s mountainous wilderness is claustrophobic, closing in on him. In truth, he has been on thin ice this whole season and his fall — shortsighted, self–inflicted, and accidental — is a thematically appropriate conclusion to his story. The natural swallows the human, in a trope oft–employed by the Coen brothers (creators of the 1996 movie the series is based on), warning the audience that compromising morality is a slippery slope.

Fargo’s ruthless message about the fragility of humanity is strengthened rather than softened by its seemingly paradoxical happy ending. In a nod to the original film, the show’s last shot frames a pregnant police chief, this time Molly Solverson, her husband Gus (the officer who defeated Malvo), and Gus’s daughter Greta. The only family to survive the season with every member alive, the camera lingers on them curled up together on the couch, watching TV — a happy family, a slice of Americana, a reassurance that at least some good guys have a happily ever after.

Barry and Using Cinematography to Bring the Stage to Life (Cristina)

Spoilers for Season 1 of HBO's Barry. 

While there are a lot of similarities between theater and film as art forms, one significant difference is the camera's ability to move around a space, which adds a unique element to film's form of visual storytelling. As HBO's Barry follows its titular character, a hitman seeking to become an actor in LA, the show finds increasingly interesting ways to portray stage performances.

In the pilot episode, Barry follows his mark, Ryan Madison, to an acting class where he accidentally gets pulled into the class to perform a scene. As the scene begins, the camera cuts between a series of shots covering the stage from all angles. One angle shows Ryan, head-on from Barry's point of view on the stage across from him. One angle shows Barry head-on, another has Barry looking out onto the audience, taking in the whole stage while Ryan does his monologue for the scene. When Barry finally reads his one line from the script he's been given, the camera enters a long shot, showing the full stage from the theater audience's point of view. From within the audience, it's impossible to deny that Barry is a bad actor. But a few shots later, when their scene ends and the class applauds, the camera enters another long shot, this time taking in the entire audience from the stage and Barry's point of view. While the praise is in no way for his one rotely-delivered line, the shot puts us in Barry's head for this pivotal moment, the inciting incident of the entire series, as he decides to pursue a career in acting.

Throughout the rest of the season, the show continues to take great care with how it frames every exercise and performance within the class. All the while Barry tries to navigate a budding gang war as he ties up all the loose ends from his time as a hitman. These two plots are balanced, the acting class preparing for a Shakespeare showcase, Barry being forced into a plan to kill rival gang leader Cristobal Cifuentes, until Episode Seven, "Loud, Fast and Keep Going".

After the hit on Cristobal goes wrong and to avoid getting turned into the police, Barry makes the difficult decision to kill his friend, Chris. Because of the way his plans have unraveled he's late to the showcase, arriving seconds before he and his scene partner, Sally, are supposed to go on. Once again, Barry has only one line, while Sally will be giving Macbeth's most famous soliloquy from Act 5, Scene 5. 

As Sally begins her monologue, the camera stays with Barry backstage as he breaks down, reflecting on his decision to kill Chris and imagining how his wife and child will have to take the news. When we return to Sally on stage from a similar long shot as the scene in the pilot, she and the audience wait for Barry to come on stage to deliver his line. 

The camera cuts closer, showing Sally as she looks off stage and sees what the audience can't, Barry doubled over in his grief. When he turns and starts to walk towards the stage we find ourselves in his point of view, the camera moving from backstage, centered on Sally. Although we're with Barry in the framing of the shot, we like Sally have no idea what Barry is about to do. Once he steps onto the stage, we see Barry again, in a medium shot from where Sally is standing at center stage. Crying, he delivers his line ("My lord, the Queen is dead.") a clear channeling of his grief from Chris's murder. A following show contains both Sally and Barry before Barry walks back off stage, still crying, leaving Sally, who we then see in a close up as she delivers her monologue ("She should have died hereafter...") in a deeply nuanced way, almost tearing up, clearly transformed by Barry's addition to the scene.

In these brief moments, the cinematography is able to communicate the show's philosophy about acting as a means to channel emotions. Aside from being visually compelling, the decisions the camera makes show the movement of Barry's grief and regret from where he is off stage, to his performance and over to Sally, who's removed from Barry's emotional state but is able to embody and convey it in her monologue through the power of the stage. All of these intricate nuances are captured through the camera's ability to move around in the space.

Familial Sacrifice in Succession (Eric)

HBO’s comedy-drama series Succession features a host of selfish people making morally dubious decisions. Character actions are often related to personal standing within the global media conglomerate at the center of the show, Waystar Royco. In the Season 2 finale, titled “This Is Not for Tears,” the disregard for ethical concerns by many players in the company has led to a crisis. Someone of prominent position within the company will have to take the fall for decades of mishandled sexual abuse and wrongful death cases at Waystar Royco. As the patriarch of the Roy family and CEO of Waystar Royco, Logan Roy decides that it’s his own son Kendall who’s to be sacrificed. But in a twist ending, it’s Kendall who lands the last punch of the season when he places the guilt for the coverup squarely on his father’s shoulders. The dialogue at the climax of the episode sets up the possibility for this twist ending, and it also hints at some of the philosophy behind the two main characters of the show, Logan and Kendall.

The season finale takes place on a yacht. While supposedly a mini-vacation away from the congressional hearings that the family and company has been dealing with, the break effectively serves as a conference to debate who will be sacrificed for the company. Logan Roy rules both his family and his company with a Machiavellian fist, and in regards to his business dealings, this manifests itself in total disregard for the wellbeing of others. In the penultimate episode of Season 2, Logan’s brother equates him to Hitler in terms of the scale of human suffering he’s caused through his cutthroat capitalism. This sentiment is echoed throughout the finale, as the center of the crisis specifically involved the victims of Waystar Royco.

In the finale, Logan calls his son into a private room on the yacht to tell him personally why he’s been chosen as the scapegoat. He explains how the Incas, in times of crisis, used to sacrifice a child to the Sun. The implication here is that, if the situation called for it, Logan might literally sacrifice Kendall to make things right. While the present situation calls only for Kendall’s figurative death, Logan is reestablished in this scene as a brutal go-getter, someone wouldn’t hesitate to kill given the right circumstances. Kendall proceeds to ask his dad if he ever believed Kendall could one day take the reins as CEO, to which Logan replies, “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer.” Importantly, part of the trouble Waystar finds itself in concerns the death and possible murders of migrant sex workers on the company’s cruise ships; during the coverup, these individuals were documented as NRPI: No Real Person Involved. The value of human life is not something that Logan Roy concerns himself with. Directly prior to their conversation, images are shown of the massive yacht towering over some local Mediterranean fishermen, a reminder of the distance between the Roys and the people they exploit.

Ultimately, Kendall does prove to possess the killer instinct necessary to survive in his dangerous environment. Kendall’s world is one in which his own father is willing to send him to prison for the good of the corporation, and he’s given the choice to either accept this fate or fight back. In the press conference at the end of the episode, Kendall shocks everyone by throwing his father under the bus. Logan Roy watches on the television, and in the final seconds of the season, we watch as his face turns into an almost imperceptible smile, a smile that seems to express a reluctant pride in his son for having finally learned how to kill.

 

Bob Belcher and Modern Fatherhood (Yaejin)

Bob Belcher of Fox's Bob's Burgers stands out as a man and a father. Although facing constant financial instability, he is content flipping burgers and cooking up punny names for them. His wife, Linda, also works behind the counter of the family restaurant while their three children, Tina, Gene, and Louise, help out after school. The premise is simple and the characters are realistic, but each episode is packed with such personality. The wild chemistry between the characters is partially attributed to the show's recording style; the voice actors record their lines together, allowing natural ad-libs and improvisation. In a chaotic household, Bob contributes as a guiding force. 

The Belcher make up a conventional nuclear family. Bob, Linda, and their three kids live above the burger restaurant. The children attend public school. Because there is nothing particularly unique or extravagant about his lifestyle, Bob is sort of an everyman. The content of his petty arguments with Jimmy Pesto, the handsome owner of the popular Italian restaurant across the street, is specific to them, but the antagonistic chemistry is very relatable. Your Jimmy Pesto could be the boy kicking your seat from behind during homeroom or the co-worker who sharpens his pencils whenever you are calling clients. As a man with very typical demographics, Bob Belcher could be your mailman, but with an especially lovable personality.  He gives his recipe ingredients voices and character; he has an odd adoration for patty-cake in Stomp style. He just has a fantastic disposition and he embodies an appealingly progressive kind of masculinity. 

He is flattered when a younger, attractive male butcher hits on him, mistakenly reading Bob's frequent turkey purchases as flirting. There is no comedic rush to prove his manliness, and he never engages in put-down humor to poke fun at the misunderstanding. Pleased with the compliment, Bob finishes the scene as the man he was before he walked into the deli. 

The word "father" has many traditional connotations. A father may be expected to be the head of the household and support the family. Fathers can be depicted as stern, hardworking, and stoic, adjectives that do describe Bob's own father. Bob is a more emotionally accessible, compassionate parental figure.

The hardships he faced growing up in his father's house drive him to give Tina, Gene, and Louise cheerier childhoods. Bob is more than a provider-protector; he is an empathetic guide.  He shares few common interests with his son Gene, but they attempt some coerced father-son bonding time, throwing a baseball back and forth in an American classic.  Ultimately, they're both too unathletic to enjoy catch, but their bond is affirmed as Bob supports Gene’s passion for cheerleading, cross-dressing, and music.  And when Tina feels insecure about her hairy legs, Bob takes her to a waxing salon and gets his legs waxed to help overcome her fear of the pain.  He fills in any role to support his kids regardless of how these roles are conventionally divided by gender.  Not only is Bob Belcher an awesome role model, he is a terrific father, redefining the role for his children and also for himself.

Web Therapy: Surprisingly Deep (Nita)

A friend recently recommended that I watch Web Therapy, an improvised comedy web series starring Lisa Kudrow. Kudrow plays Dr. Fiona Wallice, a narcissistic therapist who has created a new form of online therapy (web therapy) that consists of 3-minute online sessions. Her philosophy is that the traditional 50-minute sessions are unnecessary, since they allow people to explore too many irrelevant experiences and feelings. She believes 3 minutes is sufficient for breakthroughs. Fiona also strives to build her own franchise and tapes the sessions in hopes of attracting investors.

After my friend explained the premise of the series to me, I knew I had to watch it. So far I’ve seen three episodes, and I have not been disappointed. Though the episodes are lighthearted and ridiculous, they are also surprisingly insightful. Through dark comedy, the satirical web series touches on a variety of topics such as self-absorbed culture, the negative ramifications of technology, and marital/family issues. Essentially, the series is about failed human interaction and comically explores how technology contributes to this.

In the very first scene of the series, Fiona is showing her husband Kip what a typical web therapy session would entail by giving him a session. Kip is clearly unhappy with Fiona, as she moved some of his personal belongings to decorate the room she conducts sessions in. The entire series is shot from the perspective of Fiona’s computer screen, so all we see are Fiona and Kip in individual video chat boxes. They are visually separated from each other and contained within the virtual bounds of the iChat boxes. As the scene progresses and Fiona starts to roleplay a therapy session with Kip, Kip tries to look over at Fiona when answering her questions (since they are sitting in the same room). However, Fiona scolds Kip when he tries to do so and forces him to look at her through the webcam. The rest of the scene consists of Kip and Fiona bringing up issues they have with each other, revealing how bad their marriage is. This illustrates the lack of intimacy between Fiona and Kip, while conveying that technology may be acting as a barrier and fostering this decrease in human connection.

In episode 3, a similar failure in human connection is demonstrated by Fiona’s poor relationship with her mother. Fiona talks to her mother via video chat – a technological barrier once again – and it is clear that they have not talked to each other for a while. Fiona’s mother is cold, and the two’s interaction reveals that the mother wants Fiona to pay her back tuition money (even though she is clearly very wealthy and is just greedy). The mother is self-absorbed, a common theme within the series as Fiona is also a narcissist. This raises the question of how modern culture fosters narcissism. The series addresses how self-promotion is becoming more prominent within today’s society, given the Internet and social media. Through Fiona’s relationship with her mother, the series also shows how this self-absorption hinders human relationships and ultimately leads to isolation.

Episode 2 explores the extent of Fiona’s narcissism. From looking at herself in the video chat instead of her clients, to using her clients for the purpose of furthering her own business, Fiona is the epitome of how self-promotion and self-obsession leads to loss of humanity. For instance, in episode 2 Fiona holds a session with a couple who are having relationship issues. During the session, the couple get into a heated argument and start talking about their feelings towards each other. Fiona, clearly annoyed that the two are getting “bogged down” by discussing feelings, stops the conversation. She then asks whether the man received the release to record the sessions so that she can show investors. It’s a hilarious scene, but also has serious implications. Fiona exemplifies how self-interest prevents effective communication with others and hinders human connection. Since all of Fiona’s energy is going towards ensuring her personal success, she is unable to listen to others and be empathetic.

Web Therapy is a very ironic series. Therapy is essentially about human connection; however, the series repeatedly portrays failed human relationships. This is because Fiona strips the most essential part of therapy sessions (time) in hopes of increasing efficiency. This addresses a growing issue in our industrialized society: choosing quantity over quality. Though cutting down duration of therapy sessions from 50 minutes to 3 minutes may be efficient in terms of saving time, the quality of the sessions is clearly lost. The series does a great job of comically highlighting how our technological society encourages self-interest and discourages intimate human connection, which ultimately leads to the loss of quality relationships.

Mr. Monk and the Three Pies (Yaejin)

Monk, a comedy-drama series which aired from 2002-2009, features detective Adrian Monk and his nurse, Sharona Fleming, solving cases in San Francisco. Following his wife's murder, Monk has suffered from a mental breakdown as his orderly tendencies developed into Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(OCD).  Having lost his badge as a homicide detective for the San Francisco Police Department, he was unable to function for years until the police captain hired a nurse for him. Through their budding rapport, Monk has reentered civilization and been hired as a police consultant for unusual cases. His OCD maintains a consistent presence in his professional work: as he describes it, it is both "a gift and a curse." In this post, I will analyze the impact of his OCD in his professional domain and his interpersonal relationships. 

Because the illness is unique to each individual's experience, I will be specific about Monk's obsessions and compulsions. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder breaks down into two parts. The first aspect of OCD is the all consuming, recurring thoughts that cannot be turned off. For Monk, it is a constant need for cleanliness, order, and evenness. In one episode of the series, the police captain is kicked out of his home by his wife and taken in by Monk. In the middle of the night, Captain Stottlemeyer uses the bathroom for a few minutes and Monk spends an hour and a half cleaning it afterwards. The irrational order in his head is displayed when Monk acts as Fleming's caddie while observing a suspect. She wants a 3-wood golf club, and he insists that she use a 1 first. Then, 2 before 3 despite his knowing how golf is played. His demand for evenness also trumps a loss in finance. At a bar, he orders a $20 glass of alcohol so the remaining amount in the bottle is even with the adjacent water bottle. As a teetotaler, he offers the drink to another customer who immediately orders some water. Monk pays another $20 to even out the drinks. These are examples of the obsessive thoughts that distract Monk from acting rationally. 

The second part of OCD is the specific behavior that these thoughts drive. Regardless of the environment, Monk will try to fix anything that he deems to be disorderly. Even in a crime scene, Monk tries to tidy up, picking up a fallen vase and straightening stacks of books. He spends twenty minutes directing Fleming's parking so it is perfectly parallel to the sidewalk.  In Mexico, he refuses to drink anything other than his favorite brand of water despite serious dehydration. As an umpire for a children's baseball game, he brushes the dirt off of home plate before he resumes the game. His dry cleaner begs him to take his laundry elsewhere when he threatens to leave because he is unhappy with the way she sewed a button. His incredible pickiness forces her to charge him double for each shirt because his clothes require that much more attention. Eventually, she just puts out an "OPEN" sign that includes "EXCEPT MR. MONK." His behavior isolates him from the people in his life who see him as a brilliant but crazy man. 

As I have expounded on Monk's OCD symptoms, I want to clarify why they are also a gift. While he is extreme, his meticulousness finds key clues that tens of officers miss while going through the crime scene. Because he is so consumed by order, he notices when theories do not align with the criminal's actions. He realizes when pieces do not fit, and he seeks to understand why even if everyone else considers the case closed. Unlike Captain Stottlemeyer who can accept an appropriate suspect, Monk fixates on details that rule the suspect out, regardless of how minute the detail may be. Despite his nickname as the "defective detective," Monk is a widely respected detective whose judgment the police captain and San Francisco's mayor wholly trust. 

The title of this post refers to the eleventh episode of Monk's second season. In this episode, Fleming and the show's audience are introduced to Ambrose, Monk's secret brother. This is the first peek into Monk's childhood. Ambrose has severe agoraphobia and has not left their childhood home for thirty-two years. He saves the mail in filing cabinets in case their father comes back and wants to read the mail. Ambrose prepares their father's favorite dish for dinner, hoping today is the day he finally comes home. Their mother numbered the mugs so that they would always be put back in the same, correct order. Their family photograph is comprised of four stoic figures spaced evenly apart. While this episode only provided glimpses, I wanted to highlight the first look at an explanation for Monk's OCD symptoms. 

Marvel's Daredevil and the Long Take Fight Scene (Cristina)

There's been a lot of debate recently about the artistic validity of the widely popular Marvel superhero movies. While I view the Marvel franchise as a subgenre of film, whose entries hold a wide variety of quality, one thing that can't be denied is the cinematic quality of Marvel's first Netflix series, Daredevil, whose third and final season was released on just over a year ago. While there's much to be analyzed in the show's mise en scene, character development, and overall pacing, nothing displays its dedication to visual storytelling more than its use of the continuous long take action sequence, a visual choice that impacts the emotional effectiveness of the scene to varying degrees of success. These extended takes celebrate the main character's special limitations and skills. The "Daredevil" of the series, Matt Murdock, has been blind since childhood and developed compensatory strengths in his other senses. In each season's long take he navigates both challenging physical environments and numerous adversaries. 

The least successful of these long takes is in Season 2 at the end of Episode 3. Matt must fight his way down the floors of an apartment building through the ranks of an Irish gang. While a technically impressive, with perfectly timed fight choreography and camera movement, the fight provides little challenge for Matt physically, and is unattached to the emotions of his previous scenes in which he confronts both his antagonists and his own morality. The gang members continue to arrive in the fight at staggered intervals like pre-programmed video game enemies triggered into action as Matt moves within a certain range. The long take stops before the fight is even fully over, and Matt's fight with the last few opponents unfolds over several shots.

Season 3 offers a more successful long take, spanning 10 minutes and 43 seconds. Here Matt fights his way out of a prison where both prisoners and corrupt guards have been tasked by antagonist Wilson Fisk to kill him. As the take continues to drag on, the shot's length communicates the exhaustion of the situation. The prison itself is a sprawling maze of hallways and at any turn another fight awaits Matt. Distinguishing this scene from the Season 2 scene are its many moments without action, where the shot continues unrelentingly, focusing on Matt as he drags himself back to his feet and keeps moving. In the middle of the scene, Matt has a conversation with one prisoner who divulges critical information about Fisk. Even in this exchange of dialogue, the shot pans between characters without cutting, reminding the audience that even in this moment of reprieve the chaos of the prison continues and Matt is still a long way from escape. The motions of the camera place us fully in Matt's perspective, staggering with him as he pushes through the last few hallways, and panning wildly as he takes in the chaos. The shot only ends once he climbs back into the cab he arrived in so long ago and slowly fades to black with Matt and the viewer, slumped and exhausted.

However, it's hard to say if the show would have attempted these scenes if it hadn't been for the wild success of its first extended take in Season 1 Episode 2. In the episode, Matt has relentlessly pursued a group of human traffickers who have kidnapped a young boy. He has lost many fights, is still recovering from injuries, and has been pushed to several physical and moral limits in his attempt to rescue the child. The shot begins before Matt arrives, tracking up and down the single hallway once, establishing the two rooms of traffickers and the boy locked in a room at the back of the hall. It's only when the camera returns to the entrance of the hallway that Matt appears. The shot remains moving up and down the hall even as Matt falls in and out of the rooms in his fight. Like in season 3, the length of the take communicates Matt's exhaustion. Every moment without action sees Matt leaning up against any flat surface to catch his breath. Unlike the other two fight scenes, this one is the final scene of the episode. It's a culmination of Matt's emotional journey throughout the entire episode and communicates to the audience the length he is willing to go to save this one child. The scene doesn't end when the action does but continues to Matt finally reaching the back room of the hall and the boy inside, tracking back to start of the hallway as he carries the boy out, exhausted and breathing heavy, but triumphant. 

When the Camellia Blooms (Yaejin)

    In search of fresh small-screen content, I delved into a realm I have not touched since 2016: Korean dramas. Unlike American television shows, which, if successful, might extend over years, Korean dramas are packed into single seasons with sixteen to twenty-four episodes. The one I chose, When the Camellia Blooms features Dong-baek, a single mom, adjusting to a new town, Ongsan. 

    Initially, my interest lay in the portrayal of single mothers, who in Korea are still socially stigmatized. But in the end, I was charmed by the girl power displayed in the show. There is no self-righteous moralizing message. Every character has grave personality flaws, regardless of gender. Sexism is rampantly apparent. However, ultimately, each person makes a decision for him or herself; people pave their own lives. This is the first time I have seen such true equality in the agency exercised by all characters. This is partly due to the drama’s setting. 

    While most landmarks and cities mentioned in the series actually exist, Ongsan is a fictional town. Located in South Korea, it is rural, known primarily for its marinated crabs. Several blocks and alleys make up the entire perimeter of the town. Because of its size, the community is extremely close-knit. It is almost like a clan; everyone knows each other through some connection. The bookkeeper is the uncle of the butcher’s wife’s second cousin’s best friend from middle school: this is completely made-up but it is an example of just how random each connection is. As one person says, you cannot dent a stone pot at home and expect no one to know about it. As nosy as everyone is, when a random neighbor shows up for dinner, the family puts an extra pair of chopsticks on the table. 

    Adding to its flavor, Ongsan is matriarchal. Run by mothers and grandmothers, restaurants are the greatest source of revenue for this town. Recipes are passed on to daughters or daughter-in-laws, which continues this tradition of power. While the governor and politicians are primarily male, women hold more direct power over the townspeople.  A widow with three adult sons rules the streets of Ongsan; none of the other women can face up to her wisdom and experience. The most educated person is a divorce lawyer, an alumna of the top university in South Korea; she has incredible connections beyond the town. 

    This is where Dong-baek raises her toddler son for six years. Infamous as the Princess Diana of Ongsan, she receives unwanted male attention, stirring the cattiness of her neighbors. Although she runs a successful bar that pays for her son’s tutors and baseball lessons, the townspeople refer to her as a bargirl. Instead of using honorifics, which is expected when speaking to adults in Korean culture, everyone speaks to her using language intended for close friends and children.

    Despite the consistent disrespect and her shy personality, Dong-baek will defend herself. Some highlights include when she informs her wealthy landlord that the price of alcohol does not include the right to her smile, and when she asks the neighborhood women why she should be ashamed of raising her son alone. She is neither holier-than-thou nor a withering, subservient wallflower. She is not a caricature: she is an honest hard worker who speaks up when necessary and cries when overwhelmed. She is often strong and sometimes vulnerable, but she is never weak. She is the feminist character I have been waiting for. 

    

The Haunting Of Hill House and Non-Linear Narratives on Screen (Cristina)

Now that we're deep in the month of October and fully in the Halloween season, I find myself returning to my favorite ghostly pieces of media. Among them is the 2018 Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House, an adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel, which follows the five Crain siblings (Steve, Shirly, Theo, Luke, and Nell) through two different timelines: the summer their mother died when they were children and the days surrounding Nell's suicide in the present. The show hops nonchronologically between these two timelines, showing various events at Hill House, the haunted mansion where they lived as children, and [narrating] the prelude and aftermath of Nell's death.

Most impressive is how the show visually transitions over the timelines, tying each sequence together through some physical, sonic, or thematic connection. In one scene, young Theo pushes through a door and reveals adult Theo opening a fridge in Shirley's kitchen. As a child, Luke hears the ghostly sounds of dogs barking outside his window in Hill House and in the present-day Luke listens to another group of dogs while sitting in a park. Shirley, the mortician, prepares Nell's body for her wake before the scene transitions to Nell's wedding where Shirley helps her apply her makeup.

Aside from being visually compelling and creating a flow to each hour-long episode, the inescapable connection between the past and the present is one of the show's driving themes. In the first episode, Steve explains his understanding of the supernatural: "A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But, in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see." 

For the Crain family, ghosts are memories. They are haunted (sometimes literally) by their pasts, which we fade in and out of. For example, Shirley in the present day is haunted by a male ghost, sitting and raising a glass to her. Deep into the season, it's revealed that Shirley met the man at a conference and had an affair with him. Her guilt literally haunts her with his image. 

Furthermore, while telling the story non-linearly, the first five episodes are organized around the five siblings from oldest to youngest. Each sibling is given an episode documenting their chilling experiences in Hill House and their reactions to Nell's death. Dividing the story like this not only allows for some spectacular character development, but it also raises the question of perspective. Our understanding of each scene changes depending on whose story we're following and what context we're allowed.

In episode one, Steve's episode, Steve returns to his apartment to find a sick-looking Luke presumably robbing Steve for drug money. However, when we reach episode four, from Luke's perspective, we see the scene again with the understanding that Luke is trying to procure some money to help his friend from rehab get off the streets. In one haunting scene from Steve's point of view, he hides in his room with his father while something turns the doorknob on the other side. The scene takes on a new context, when in episode nine we follow their mother Liv and discover that she is on the other side of the door, crazed after the house has been slowly eating away at her sanity.

Each moment and each line is meticulous, carefully building mystery and intrigue, but ultimately fitting together neatly when the audience is able to reflect on the full timeline, slotting each scene into its perfect place with new understanding. 

In the final episode, the remaining Crain siblings return to Hill House and see Nell as a ghost, who says, "Everything's been out of order. Time, I mean. I thought for so long that time was like a line, that our moments were laid out like dominoes, and that they fell, one into another... But I was wrong. It's not like that at all. Our moments fall around us like rain. Or snow. Or confetti." And ultimately this is how we see the Crains and their story, like confetti, flowing in and around their lives through time, through sounds and motions and ideas, each memory slowly settling around us.

The Office: The YouTube Edition (Yaejin)

    Originally created to be a video-sharing platform, YouTube.com is currently the second most visited website globally according to the Visual Capitalist. Shows produced by prominent television networks such as ABC, NBC, and CBS are now also promoted on the site, capitalizing on its massive audience. Networks release teaser clips to promote their series as well as upload highlights. Among the multitude of channels that serve this purpose, that for the American adaptation of The Office truly shines.

    The Office US uploads content three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. These are not just clips, but are complication videos devoted to individual characters: “Best of Pam/Ryan/Darryl/etc.” They include slices from throughout the show’s nine seasons and attract millions of views. Watching a character grow through the years can leave even non-fans with a peculiar fondness for them. While showcasing the most iconic moments, these small features leave you wanting to see more.

    There are videos dedicated to rivalries, bloopers, and inside jokes. The people behind the YouTube channel feel like genuine fans themselves. Some videos are dedicated to popular conspiracy theories, catering to the imagination of its audience. The creators encourage viewers to actively engage by upvoting or leaving comments.  A month-long tournament to determine the most loved character resulted in an April Fool’s prank. Every day of March, the channel polled the audience, pitting two characters against each other to see who was favored, narrowing to an ultimate showdown. However, the prank resulted the choice of an insignificant character whose picture is shown in only one episode, as its winner.  The tournament required daily participation from both channel and audience, which displays their synergy. The channel really understands its fans, tailoring the prank to their humor. 

    Not only are the creators accessible through YouTube, the comment section supports direct conversation among fans. Anyone with a Google account can write, upvote or downvote, and reply to comments. Because the most popular opinions are at the top, the comment section is a quick way to gather perspective. While most are rather silly, some comments can be insightful. Over six thousand viewers agreed with one in particular by Daniel Rios: “A part of growing up is realizing that Karen really didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that she wasn’t Pam...” In The Office, Jim starts dating Karen after Pam initially rejects him. 

    Yes, while some characters are written to be hated, Karen is friendly, hardworking, and fun. These qualities are usually appreciated, but some people justify their adoration for Pam as a reason to dislike Karen. For so many to share this irrational reasoning conveys their emotional investment in The Office. This show has convinced its audience that these characters exist in some other world. Although Karen is fictitious, real people react emotionally to her. 

    Although it should elicit reaction, great script writing helps its audience reflect and grow with the story. That thousands were able to recognize their own growth through the show struck me. The character relationships must be engaging yet realistic for the audience to dislike someone who disrupts this environment. However, they must also be nuanced enough for people to reflect on their biases. Attracted by the ongoing popularity of the YouTube channel and convinced by the conversation generated, I started watching The Office myself.

The Good Place and Redefining the Sitcom (Cristina)

Despite critical acclaim and decent ratings, this past Thursday marked the final season premiere of NBC's The Good Place. Where many sitcoms of similar success find themselves running for upwards of six seasons, ending the series after just four was the choice of the creator Michael Schur to preserve the show's narrative integrity, continuing its tradition of subversive television storytelling.

The Good Place stars Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, an Arizona deadbeat who dies and finds herself in an afterlife neighborhood in the titular Good Place, a non-denominational heaven. The only problem: she has ended up in the Good Place by accident, mistaken for a different Eleanor Shellstrop who dedicated her life to helping others. Slowly her presence and less-than-savory personality begin to have dire physical consequences on the environment around her.

While slightly more fantastical, the show situates itself like most modern network sitcoms, centering around a group of diverse personality types in a unifying location. Where Friends has Central Perk and the apartments, The Office has the office, Parks and Rec has the parks department, The Good Place has the neighborhood. As its first season starts up, the groundwork established, the episodes remain mostly episodic, following Eleanor and her allies as they help her avoid detection and teach her to fit in by becoming a better person.

However, a mere seven episodes in, the show begins making bold narrative choices. Season 1 Episode 7, "The Eternal Shriek", follows another antic filled day. This time Eleanor and her friends must murder the pseudo-robot neighborhood guide, Janet, in order to keep Eleanor from being discovered. Just when they escape the day unscathed, seeing her friends wracked with guilt for their actions and stress over maintaining their lies, Eleanor announces to the entire neighborhood that her placement in the Good Place was a mistake.

This pivotal turning point completely changes the structure of the show from an episodic comedy to a plot-driven adventure. For the back half of the season, every episode pushes the plot forward as stakes increase. It becomes necessary for the audience to watch every episode in order to understand what's going on. 

Situational comedies have a long and noble history on broadcast television. A hallmark of the genre is repetition, the necessity to return all characters and relationships to their starting point at the end of every episode, no matter what has been accomplished by the plot, to preserve established dynamics and tensions. For example, a 'will-they-won't-they' dynamic holds two characters with romantic potential right at the edge of a relationship for as long as possible to continue to use the tension of the situation. Missing an episode or tuning in to a later season should have little effect on the audience's ability to enjoy the show.

The Good Place rejects the sitcom's repetitive nature. The characters begin to change drastically, most notably Eleanor who genuinely becomes a better person as the show progresses and whose actions as a good person disrupt any possibility that the situation can exist in perpetuity. Where the conceit of the show depends on Eleanor's selfish actions jeopardizing her position in the Good Place, her learned honesty and selfless actions disrupt the status quo of the show's world.  

The season one finale ushers in a plot twist of monumental proportions, redefining the entire season and establishing that the content of the show will never be the same. The Good Place is self-aware of its changing nature as it moves from a mere subversion of the genre into a meta-commentary. The final scenes see our main characters have their memories wiped, literally reverted to their states at the beginning of season one because their character development was a threat to the sustained existence of their neighborhood. 

Season two and three become even more plot-heavy and dedicated to worldbuilding, the midpoint of season two seeing the characters abandon the neighborhood altogether and go on a sprawling adventure through all corners of the afterlife and then the real world. And every time the characters grow, internally and in their relationships with each other, some magical force will inevitably revert them back to their 'default' state, until they inevitably grow into their better selves. 

As we approach the finale, it's impossible to say where the story and characters will end up. By deliberately choosing its end, I have no doubt The Good Place's conclusion will be as narratively satisfying as the previous three seasons. 

 

LOVE DEATH & ROBOTS: What is Female Agency When the Female Body is Gone? Part 2 (Katie)

Two weeks ago I discussed the autonomy and survivability of women in the world of “SONNIE’S EDGE.” I’ve returned to discuss another episode in the action-packed anthology, one which puts a similar but new spin on the way women survive: “GOOD HUNTING.” As a story about a Chinese demon hunter, the colonization of Hong Kong, and the disappearance of old, natural magic in the world, there’s a lot to unpack. Spoilers ahead for the whole episode!

The first quarter of the episode opens with young son Liang, accompanying his father on a hunt to kill a húlijīng—a nine-tailed fox. Allegedly, the húlijīng has enchanted a merchant’s son, and the family hired Liang’s father, the demon hunter, to kill the húlijīng and get rid of the enchantment.

The father and son camp underneath the enchanted son’s bedroom window. His moans for the húlijīng ring out over the courtyard. Finally, the húlijīng comes. While Liang’s father and the húlijīng skirmish, Liang is momentarily entranced by the beauty of the húlijīng, and narrowly manages to throw dog’s piss over her body in time. The piss prevents the húlijīng from transforming completely into her fox form, leaving her in a half-fox, half-human state.

Liang’s father tracks the húlijīng to her den at a nearby temple. While they split up to scout for their quarry, Liang discovers one of the fox spirit’s hiding daughters: Yan. She is young, beautiful, and talks to him in her naked, snow-white fox form, emphatically inhuman. Liang is all eyes, even as he cowers, even as she leaps from rock to rock. And in a single argument, she changes Liang’s worldview.

YAN

Why are you hunting us? We did nothing to you.

LIANG

Your mother bewitched the merchant’s son. We were hired to save him.

YAN

Bewitched? He’s the one who wouldn’t leave her alone.

LIANG

That’s not true.

YAN

Once a man has set his heart on a huli jing, she can hear him, no matter how far apart they are. All that moaning and crying, she has to go to him every night just to keep him quiet.

LIANG

No, she lures men and feeds on them for her evil magic.

YAN

A man can fall in love with a huli jing just like he can with a human woman.

LIANG

It’s not the same!

YAN

Not the same? I saw how you looked at me. [4:26 - 5:12]

Immediately after this talk, Yan witnesses the graphic death of her own mother at the hands of Liang’s father.

The opening of “GOOD HUNTING” tells us immediately that this will be a subversive story. Here, the female húlijīng are not the evil, demonic witch-figures that men would paint them as; Yan is as sympathetic as she is inhuman. This is the first argument that “GOOD HUNTING” will make about the agency and power of women: the beauty of a húlijīng is a not a weapon used against men, but men will oppress her for it all the same. They will resent the way they feel about a beautiful húlijīng, and they will blame the feminine fox spirits to absolve themselves.

As the episode reaches its halfway point, Liang’s father passes away. Now a grown young man, Liang lives in a modernizing village: the first trains travel through the countryside, and the colonizing presence of the British Empire looms large over natives’ shoulders. For their last meeting in a long time, Liang and Yan commiserate about the state of the dying earth around them. Yan speculates that the magic is disappearing from the earth due to “iron roads” and “machines that breathe smoke” (6:46). As the magic leaves, so does her ability to change into her “true form” (6:52). Soon, she may lose the ability altogether.

The steampunk twist that “GOOD HUNTING” takes, a sharp veer from its fantastical origins, is another message about female oppression. It is, after all, mother nature that begins to be exploited and mutilated for arrogant white men. All the (literally) magical beauty of the earth, including that of the húlijīng, is slowly suffocated once ambitious men enter the picture.

Years pass. The episode continues to tell the story of Liang. He finds himself extremely skilled at engineering, specifically that of automata; even as a much-hated minority in Hong Kong, he makes himself useful to the British and has a decent living. On a chance encounter, he bumps into Yan. He rescues her from a group of overly eager British men who seek to have their way with her.

As they catch up, Yan tells Liang she has been permanently stuck in her human form: “no claws, no sharp teeth. I can’t even run very fast. All I have is my beauty. Now, I live by the very thing you accused my mother of: I bewitch men for money” (9:05). She laments the lack of power and control she has over her life in Hong Kong: “I dream of hunting in this jungle of metal and asphalt. I imagine my true form leaping from beam to ledge to terrace roof until I am at the top of this island. Until I can growl in the faces of all the men who believe they can own me” (9:40).

The story that Yan presents is that of a loss of agency. When Yan grew up, she had both her human and fox form. Now, she is chained to her human form, and she is forced to use her beauty to survive. This is in direct contrast with how Yan and her mother were treated in China, where they were wrongly hunted for being too beautiful. The world of men has declawed the húlijīng. Not only did men take away her ability to transform into a being with sharp teeth and claws, they made safe the one thing they feared most about a húlijīng: her beauty. Yan’s beauty is now merely a tool for getting by, a plaything for rich, white, colonial masters.

So far, in every aspect of storytelling, “GOOD HUNTING” has depicted a universe in which women are hardy and survivable, but terribly oppressed. Unfortunately, things only get worse for Yan from here.

Yan’s long-time client, the Governor, was only sexually attracted to machines. Naturally, the Governor decided to drug Yan and strap her to an operating table. By the time they were finished, Yan was entirely a machine. The ultimate fantasy for men who lived and profited off automata.

Yan’s non-consensual body swap, and the complete and total murder of her autonomy, needs no explaining. But “GOOD HUNTING” is not without hope. Far from it.

When Yan comes to Liang and tells her his story, she reveals that she escaped the Governor by killing him. One night, she told him no, and it enraged him. He struck her. She struck back and realized how much strength she had gained with her metal limbs: “A terrible thing had been done to me. But I could also be terrible” (12:38).

Yan reassures Liang that she does not want to reverse what has been done to her body. She wants to make the best of it. How? By using what automata parts existed in her, and changing them to become something else entirely.

At the end of the episode, Liang has successfully changed Yan’s machine body—originally made for man’s sexual pleasure and subjugation—into one that, with the right amount of coal and fuel, transforms into a lithe, agile, and beautiful nine-tailed fox. Shimmering under moonlight and padding gracefully on the balcony of Liang’s house, the automata-fox-form of Yan is graceful, dangerous, and dazzlingly powerful. From then on, Yan does what she promised she would do: growl in the faces of all the men who believe they can own her.

While the storyline of “GOOD HUNTING” is filled with hardship and oppression for both Liang and Yan, Yan’s story is ultimately optimistic—boldly, emphatically, and rebelliously optimistic. When Yan lost control and ownership of her entire body, she managed to make the best of it and, with the help of another oppressed party, become something closer to her original self. Even though she has been through hell, she persevered, and she was rewarded for it in the end.

But it’s true: Yan suffered terribly for being a beautiful woman, both as a child and an adult, and both in a rural village filled with magic, and a modernized world filled with steam-run automata. Yan had to lose all of her organic body in order to gain the ability to transform into her fox-form—to gain power—again.

Like “SONNIE’S EDGE,” “GOOD HUNTING” also seems to think that the only way for a woman to achieve anything close to true power is to not be a (biological) woman at all. And even then, there is something bleak and grim about that power. For Sonnie, it is having to fight for her life every time she enters that ring. For Yan, it is the complete loss of her actual body and true form before she could return to her fox form again. While women in these sci-fi worlds can survive through oppressive hells, it is entirely unclear whether what lays on the other side was better than what spawned those hells.

There’s still more I want to talk about. Why do Yan’s story and Sonnie’s story feel so similar? What does it mean that all the women in these sci-fi settings seem to get treated with ultra-violence? Why do increasing amounts of modern stories tell us that, when high-tech finds a throne in the world, oppressed groups get jailed into the low life? But these questions must be saved for another time.

Works cited in this text:

“GOOD HUNTING.” LOVE DEATH & ROBOTS. Netflix. March 15, 2019. Netflix.

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS: What is Female Agency When the Female Body is Gone? (Katie)

I cannot lie: I love a good sci-fi story. When LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS released on Netflix, I made quick work of binging the animated anthology. The first episode I saw (although Netflix has apparently randomized episode orders for this series) was “Sonnie’s Edge,” which had me thrilled and shocked in multiple ways throughout its 17-minute duration. One of the questions the episode asks, at least in my opinion, is what female agency, victimization, or empowerment means when the female body no longer exists.

There are spoilers ahead in my discussion of the short’s plot and implications, and I’m also including a trigger warning for rape due to the episode’s nature. (Seriously, there will unfortunately be a lot of talk about rape in this post.)

Now, onto the plot of “Sonnie’s Edge.” In a futuristic and dystopian society where prize fighters compete in death matches for money, we follow a day in the life of one female “pilot” who is exceptionally skilled at controlling her “beastie.” The beasties are the gladiators in the arena; they are bioengineered monsters made for killing.

As the opening sequence cuts to introduce our main characters, a few things immediately stand out. A notably female-presenting companion, Ivrina, and a noticeably male-presenting companion, Wes, walk in with Sonnie—who looks androgynous, if not far more ambiguous in terms of gender presentation. Her name, “Sonnie,” also evokes a more masculine aura to her character, even though her slimmer and curvier frame denotes some presence of conventional femininity.

The first conflict Sonnie faces is with a rich and corrupt man, Dicko (great naming right there), who wants to rig the next prize fight. He will pay her hundreds of thousands for her to voluntarily lose the next round. When Sonnie tells him to screw off, Ivrina steps in to further defend her from the old man. It is in the exchange between Ivrina and Dicko that we learn of Sonnie’s backstory—and this is a noticeably exposition-y bit of dialogue. When I say noticeably exposition-y, I mean that anyone versed in a little bit of writing will realize just how shoehorned the dialogue feels.

Here’s my transcription of the bit of dialogue, taken from Netflix subtitles, plus screen directions.

IVRINA

[Exhales angrily] Fucking men. It’s cunts like you that fucked her up to begin with.

Bodyguards approach Ivrina threateningly.

IVRINA

[Sighs] Fuck. A year ago, Sonnie got snatched by an estate gang, and when they was done using her, they started cutting, slicing their marks into her flesh. Can you imagine that kind of pain, that kind of humiliation carved into her skin? A lifelong reminder of that day. So when Sonnie steps into the pit, she’s not fighting for pride or status and certainly not for your fucking money. She’s carving up the men who did this to her. [3:30 - 4:11]

See what I mean? At least to me, the dialogue felt like someone writing a background inspired by some erotic fantasy. It was put in purely for the benefit of the watcher, and it was done in a quick and dirty way that seemed to want to titillate or horrify rather than offer meaningful explanation. The exposition appears much like other incidents of rapes of female characters in media nowadays, many of which seem to be written in for no other reason than the shock factor.

I was unimpressed with this bit of writing, but the ending of “Sonnie’s Edge” actually did an impressive thematic reversal on this blatant—and even almost disrespectful—telling of Sonnie’s past.

Later, when Sonnie is having a discreet conversation with Dicko’s female consort, they flirt and talk about Sonnie’s past. (Their conversation is more like foreplay than anything else, with kisses and soft touches included.) Here’s the relevant excerpt:

DICKO’S CONSORT

But that night, the gang, the…

SONNIE

Rape. Yeah. It’s not that. They can’t see past it. No one can. But it ain’t what gives me my edge. Angry little girl, out for revenge. Dicko believes that shit…

Dicko’s consort lightly tugs one strap of Sonnie’s shirt off a shoulder.

SONNIE

… ‘cause he wants to. They all do.

Dicko’s consort slides her dress straps off her shoulders.

DICKO’S CONSORT

[Slowly raising her skirt] Everyone sees what they want to see.  [12:50 - 13:33]

I felt like “Sonnie’s Edge” was calling many of the audience members out, myself included. Once we heard Sonnie’s shocking backstory within the first five minutes of the episode, all we could think about was her history.

Not to mention the fight scene between Sonnie’s beastie, Khanivore, and her male opponent’s beastie, Turboraptor. There’s plenty of forced, penetrative imagery between the beasties that’s rendered a lot more noticeable once you remember Sonnie’s apparent origins—definitely an intended effect.

We only saw Sonnie in light of her rape. We all saw what we wanted to see, even if the episode does reinforce seeing Sonnie in this specific light.

But there’s more to discuss. The twist ending to “Sonnie’s Edge” includes more violence to the female body. It turns out that Dicko’s consort is a bioengineered servant made to execute Dicko’s commands, and she penetrates Sonnie’s skull with Wolverine-like claws from her knuckles right after a kiss. Dicko comes out of the shadows to gloat.

Sonnie is dropped to the floor, and her skull is bashed in by Dicko’s foot. When Sonnie’s voice does not falter, and she does not die, it’s revealed that Sonnie was Khanivore the entire time. Khanivore then kills both Dicko and his consort.

While the explicit logistics aren’t made clear, the gist of the reveal is as follows: Sonnie’s original body was lost after the gang attack; Ivrina and Wes linked her consciousness with Khanivore’s, and Sonnie lives solely in Khanivore. Her human body is just a bioengineered puppet from her uploaded brain, and when she is fighting in the pit as a beastie, she is fighting for her life. That is her “edge.”

There is a lot of complexity to this short episode’s plot. The episode seems to take on a feminist role at the surface, with Sonnie being a character like Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The episode also makes a big deal out of Sonnie being the only female pilot in the beastie ring.

But what about the writing itself? The writers wanted everyone in the audience to think about Sonnie’s rape origin story in every minute of the episode, up till the very end. Much like Sonnie says, we can’t see past it. References to the rape in imagery and small plot points keep the origin story fresh in our minds; clearly, writers want us to be thinking about Sonnie’s rape, even if only as a blind to the real twist.

I found myself asking this question by the end of the episode: if Sonnie survived the rape not as a human woman, but an uploaded consciousness linked to a beastie who literally fights to live, which is better?

As a beastie, Sonnie has unlimited power at her hands. Physically, she is superior to all the beasties in the ring so far; she is mentioned to being on a 17-count win streak. She is obviously superior to every human; she’s a bioengineered monster made for killing. But she has limited autonomy and limited friendship with even her closest apparent friends, Ivrina and Wes. Khanivore, or Sonnie, has to keep fighting in the pit to make a living, and she has an added stake of needing to stay alive while in the pit—unlike every other pilot, her consciousness is directly tied to her beastie’s. Additionally, the implication of Ivrina and Wes finding Sonnie’s broken body and uploading her consciousness into Khanivore means that, at worst, they only saved her as a means of profit, or, at best, out of a desperate lack of other measures.

The picture that “Sonnie’s Edge” paints of female power and agency, then, is bleak. Sonnie, even in her most powerful form as Khanivore, is still subjugated to other forces—whether or not the female body is still intact. These other forces can include the violence of men, or the oppressive difficulty of surviving in a dystopian society. This message is also reinforced in the character of Dicko’s consort. She is completely without autonomy: every one of her acts is in service to Dicko, regardless of her physical superiority to him. (She is a more subtle and organic-looking, but she can be a killing machine, too, as evidenced by her Wolverine-like claws.) There seems to be no hope: Sonnie was raped and apparently nearly killed by men as a human, and when she became Khanivore, her new physical powers were restricted only to the pit, where she faces a greater loss than her opponent if she loses.

Might we be able to say, then, that “Sonnie’s Edge” at least views female endurance and survivability with optimism? Even if there’s no autonomy for characters like Sonnie or Dicko’s consort, even if the only source of happiness for many characters is achieving violence against an opponent, can we at least say that the women in Sonnie’s world can stick through anything to see another day?

Yes, although the optimism is laced with grit. Sonnie’s “edge” is the real, omnipresent fear of losing her life in the ring. She claims she’s always afraid in her conversation with Dicko’s consort, and by the end of the episode, she openly cites her fear as the thing that keeps her alive. It’s admirable, how indomitable Sonnie’s will to live is, even if it may be depressing that she needs the fear to begin with.

Then the question becomes why the framing of Sonnie's backstory needed such a specific blind. Do women in the world of "Sonnie's Edge" require a digestible, plausible backstory in order to go unnoticed by men and the rest of society? Perhaps; Sonnie states that she keeps her story so that men like Dicko can believe it. But it doesn't keep her safe; what keeps her safe is the secret that she no longer has a human body. And that argument is even more bleak: the only way to stay safe as a woman in Sonnie's world is to not be a woman.

All in all, “Sonnie’s Edge” is a visually stunning science fiction piece that falls comfortably into the grim and cynical subgenre of cyberpunk. Besides the thrilling colors, fight sequences, and beautiful animation, I think it plays with storytelling expectations in interesting ways... even if the rape as a red herring may not have been totally necessary or respectful. That’s a question I’ll have to tackle another time.

Works cited in this text:

“SONNIE’S EDGE.” LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Netflix. March 15, 2019. Netflix.

Humanizing Animals: How Nature Documentaries Tell Stories (Katie)

Imagine you’re on location in the Namib Desert in Africa. The sun is melting your skin, and you’ve only got a few hours every day to shoot, with the heat being what it is. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in the Arctic Circle, following polar bears by boat in frigid temperatures. It is impossible, of course, to hand a script to any of your subjects and ask them to follow your directions. Therefore, if you need to film a dramatic fight over territory between two alpha males, or record a father bringing long-sought food home to his hungry family, how can you get the perfect footage for your ideal narrative in time?

The probable answer to that question is you don’t.

The key to making nature documentary storylines coherent and compelling lies in post-production—in particular editing and sound design. To demonstrate the power of editing in creating a meaningful storyline—especially in regards to non-human characters—I will be discussing the well-known nature documentary by BBC, Planet Earth II. By analyzing a scene from its pilot, “Islands,” we can determine how certain shots can be stitched together to create a smooth and intricate storyline.

One of the narratives in “Islands” is that of the marine iguanas’. In this segment, newly-hatched marine iguanas find themselves far away from their adult guardians basking by the coast. In order to join their brethren, they must travel across the inlands they woke up in—and avoid every predator lying in wait for them.

How do elements of traditional editing and frame-crafting impact our feelings and get us to invest in the small, scaly characters on-screen? Even if we completely disregard David Attenborough’s engaging voiceovers, which tell us all we need to know, every story element is in the shots for us to recognize.

Our very first introduction to a newly-hatched marine iguana brings us to an extreme close-up of dark, shifting gravel and large, blinking eyes. This closeness immediately identifies us with the critter. As the camera slowly withdraws and cuts to further close-ups, we hear nothing but shaking gravel as the iguana pulls its body out of the sand. (Yes, every sound effect is probably foley, but that is almost certainly for our benefit.) The iguana takes slow first steps, and no one comes to accompany it in its journey to the shoreline. As shots pull even further back, we get establishing shots of the iguana and its environment. Now we can tell how small the iguana really is. All these moments accumulate to present the total solitude of this iguana… and it is a threatening solitude, as our iguana walks from right of frame past a large corpse of another iguana.

Here is a particularly magical edit: a parallel cut shows the adult iguanas basking in the shoreline, snorting water from their nostrils and looking in the direction of the camera. It is almost as if they are watching the small iguana make its way to them, or as if the small iguana is thinking of getting to its brethren by the shore. This small cut, potentially even a cut made to hide a lack of any other proper transition footage, brings an emotional relationship between our iguana and his community. The cut brings motivation to the iguana.

This new depth to our iguana makes the next cut more alarming, as we see a long shot with the iguana slowly moving to the left of the frame… followed by a trio of racer snakes emerging from the right of the frame. When our iguana realizes he is being hunted, he sprints (on two legs) for his life. Now, the sudden sound of a harsh drumbeat and a high-tempo, high-intensity soundtrack add to the skyrocketing tension.

Establishing shots show snakes pouring from every crack in the black, sharp rocks that line the micro-landscape, and they even capture the small form of our iguana leaping up rocks to escape his slithering predators. In a matter of seconds, the establishing shots continuously characterize both the iguana as small and precious—the “underdog” of our story—and the landscape as menacing and unknowable, with either total silence and deceptive solitude, or distressing music and swarms of snakes emerging out of hiding.

In the end, this particular marine iguana makes it out alive, according to Planet Earth II’s story. We see a victorious close-up of our iguana atop a rock, and a reverse long shot of several snakes slithering on the gravel below. The threat is vanquished for our first marine iguana.

Now that we have seen what editing can do for a short and simple animal narrative, we can look at the more famous chase between one marine iguana and a mass of racer snakes, which takes place shortly after our first iguana scene in “Islands.” This two-minute section is arguably the most tense of all iguana and snake chases in the episode.

The scene begins with some very clever cuts. We see a close-up of a hatchling hiding in the sand, his wide eyes blinking—and then a reverse shot shows a close-up of several racer snakes wrapped around the unmoving body of another iguana hatchling. The cut back to our hatchling has him jerking back, as if in fear. Even if we have no way to know if the iguana was really reacting to seeing other iguanas being captured, the cut serves its purpose magnificently well. We now understand that this hatchling is watching and learning, somehow… and that it feels fear, and a desire to live.

Thus begins that spectacular chase. Our iguana pulls himself slowly out of the sand, walking backwards to keep his gaze on something. An eyeline match cut shows the snakes continuing to wrap themselves around another iguana, and our iguana moves carefully away. This lets us project onto our iguana a careful awareness of his surroundings, whether it was truly there to begin with or not.

Further cuts change our point of view. We see the iguana from the snakes’ side of things; our foreground is in focus with the bodies of slithering snakes, and behind a rock, the heads of snakes peek out to watch the moving iguana in the background. These shots further establish just how hunted the iguana is—and then, a snake lunges for him.

Here is where the soundtrack really puts in work. There is intense, thrilling string music to accompany our iguana sprinting across sand and rock, with cuts focusing on establishing continuous action as the snake lunges for the iguana. As our iguana leaps over a boulder and lands on sand, losing the snake, silence ensues. Then, one soft step of his foot upon the gravel, and strings blare out once more to a cut of several snakes’ heads perking up at the sound.

A close-up of the iguana shows him looking around. Various eyeline matches show snakes waiting for their chance at him. (Again, this is clever editing; shots of the iguana looking around could have been recorded at any time, but they were noticed and used for this perfect moment of suspense in the chase storyline.) The soundtrack is slow and suspenseful, using an ambient noise to create tension during this downtime. It is akin to what a horror film soundtrack may sound like: David Attenborough tells us in this moment that, if the hatchling can keep its nerve and stay still, it can remain undetected from the circling snake—a classic hiding-from-the-monster scenario.

But as the snake slithers over the iguana, the latter knows it has to run. It sprints off to the sound of fast, heavy-hitting music, and several long takes follow the iguana’s sprint towards the shore, showing off with remarkable horror the myriad of snakes that emerge from the landscape to add themselves to the chase. This island is characterized as a place of trials for our iguana, and the coastline with his community as the light at the end of the tunnel. It is both literally and figuratively true that our iguana hopes to ascend, as safety lies in the top of the rocks by the shore.

As the chase comes to a climactic end, sound continues to put in work—perhaps even more work than the cutting itself. The iguana runs into the jaws of several snakes, and as silence ensues, it seems all is lost. But quietly, the iguana shakes his way out of the constrictions, and continues sprinting to the sound of a full orchestra behind him.

As the camera cuts close to the iguana and views his journey from a low-angle point of view up a wall of black rocks, we see snakes lunging for him and falling against the stone, unsuccessful in their hunt. The slow-mo applied to these cuts ups the ante even further. The soundtrack reaches a tense climax with the visuals, and the two elements work together to create an intense and distressing narrative. The resolution comes with relieving silence once our iguana joins his community by the coast, atop the large seashore rocks.

But what does it mean, really, that I can describe a nature documentary with traditional shooting and framing terms? Why does it matter that a lizard can seem like a human character in a horror movie, running from an innumerable amount of foes, and fighting against nearly impossible odds? I believe that the power of post-production, especially editing and sound design, can make any inanimate object or inhuman character feel human and relatable. With footage that could have been cobbled together from various different locations and times of day, editors of Planet Earth II excelled at creating a coherent, tense narrative with a notable arc of action and resolution using merely framing, shot relationships, and relevant soundtracks. Thanks to human films and their soundtracks, we recognize the cues to feel or project when certain cuts and sounds come to our senses; Planet Earth II was able to take advantage of our inherent reads on these cuts and use them to create a brilliant narrative based on non-human creatures.

The too long; didn’t read of this article may certainly be this: given the correct sound design and cutting, any animal can be personified and humanly relatable; any storyline can be projected upon any creature or object with the right techniques. If there’s a will, there’s a way, thanks to the magic of post-production.

Works cited in this text:

“Islands.” Planet Earth II. BBC Earth. November 6, 2016. Netflix; Television. 20:43 - 26:25.

Mr. Robot and The Governance of Consumerism (Katie)

Mr. Robot, a critically acclaimed drama thriller television series authored by Sam Esmail, focuses on the lonely and troubled Elliot Alderson. Elliot is introduced to us as an eccentric cybersecurity engineer, and he becomes an enigmatic vigilante hacker as time goes on, one whose motives are unclear even to us. To complement its labyrinthine narrative, Mr. Robot has a distinct visual style which reinforces the isolation and oppression every character faces, and this artistic approach will be the main focus of my discussion. (However, there is no need to fear for spoilers—I will only be analyzing the first episode of the series.)

Within the show, one of the main antagonizing forces is society itself; Esmail demonstrates how consumerist culture can drive people apart from one another, especially in Elliot’s case.

Consider the following exchange from Mr. Robot’s pilot, "eps1.0_hellofriend.mov,” in which Elliot delivers a fervent speech on the evils of our modern world to his therapist:

                                 KRISTA
What is is about society that disappoints you so much?

                                 ELLIOT
Oh, I don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought that Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all of our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.  Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new. We all know why we do this. Not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we’re cowards. Fuck society.

                                 KRISTA (O.S.)
                               (echoing)
Elliot.
                                 (beat)
Elliot. You’re not saying anything. What’s wrong?

                                 ELLIOT
                         (smiling slightly)
Nothing.

(0:12:15 - 0:13:26, formatting and emphases mine.)

In this exchange, Elliot’s estrangement from those he should communicate honestly with is already made clear, and his anger is directed explicitly towards society. Throughout the scene, Krista and Elliot are practically never in the same frame. The only time we see them together is in an establishing shot, one which pits Krista and Elliot on opposite sides of the office, with Elliot’s completely black outfit contrasting heavily with the cream-colored sofa and curtains. However, his outfit is only one aspect which makes Elliot seem out of place. The rest of the time, the two are always in their own close-ups, making both characters seem as visually in their separate headspaces as they are mentally—this being coupled with disorienting cuts to different close-up angles of their faces.

Elliot’s frequent voiceover of his thoughts over this scene only further cement his distance from his therapist, and his monologue on society’s evils is intercut with real-life footage of factory workers, fallen celebrities, and social media feeds. Elliot is not tied down to the visuals of his therapist’s office—that is, not tied down to Krista. It can be said that everything we see and hear about Elliot in the first fifteen minutes of the series has to do with his pained and total aloneness.

Esmail continues to showcase his startling visuals throughout the episode. Later on, when the company Elliot’s cybersecurity firm protects, E-Corp, visits Elliot’s workplace for a briefing on a recent hack, our protagonist meets Tyrell Wellick. Tyrell is a pivotal character later in the season, and the way he is introduced is rife with importance. Our first clear visual of Tyrell places him in a low depth of field close-up, his visage in the far right quarter of the frame as the rest of the shot hovers out of focus. To be clear, when I write “far right quarter,” I mean it:

Elliot’s reaction shot to Tyrell is not unlike this one.

(The actual shots themselves were not included due to copyright reasons.)

Elliot and Tyrell are opposing forces. Both of them occupy spaces in which they are as far as possible from one another, showing their mutual isolation in the world they will eventually unite to combat against. However, even their aforementioned eventual unity is hinted at in these shots. Every background figure and object is out of focus, and Elliot and Tyrell can only clearly see one another. They are destined for a special bond, even if they are both first totally alone when they are introduced to one another. Their future is also foreshadowed in their dialogue; when Elliot’s mental voiceover starts to think an incredulous sentence about Tyrell, Tyrell finishes it for him in open speech. This unites their identities for a single moment. Incidentally, Tyrell finishing Elliot’s sentence also leads to them being in the same frame together for just a second, before extremely distanced close-ups take over once more. (This style of framing is so common in Mr. Robot that Saturday Night Live (SNL) has even remarked on it in a parody of Mr. Robot.)

Esmail’s decisions to frame characters in these ways can be seen in other interactions and scenes of the first episode—as well as for the rest of the series. So far, we have discussed how these visuals portray characters in relation to each other, but Esmail also portrays characters in relation to bodiless presences or omnipresent forces in the world. One of the most telling displays of an abstract force becoming a menacing presence in relation to Elliot comes at the end of the pilot episode.

Elliot is going through a triumphant moment. He strides through Times Square—the setting of Mr. Robot being New York City—as something he has worked for finally comes to fruition. (A spoiler coming for the end of the first episode, now.) A huge first step in his grand plan as an official vigilante hacker is completed when Terry Colby, the CEO of an all-powerful corporation suspected of committing inhumane crimes for profit, is arrested due to Elliot’s hacking.

When we see Times Square with Elliot, nearly every building with a screen is reporting the news, and beneath the gargantuan, towering skyscrapers, Elliot walks into the center of the frame. He changes from being a small figure at the side of the screen into being the dominant visual in its center. The camera even slides into a low-angle position. A huge screen takes up the majority of the background behind Elliot, and the screen displays a news report on Colby’s arrest. It looks like Elliot is in control, and he is, both in the narrative and in the frame.

Elliot slowly pulls down his hood, turns his face up to the light of the screens, and looks around. But there is a subtle shift in the visuals. As he turns, the camera cuts to a different shot of Times Square. Elliot is now level with the camera, and the glaring ads of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola cut off Elliot at both sides of the frame. We can see now that it was only due to our perspective that every building appeared to be broadcasting the news of Colby’s arrest. Even the wide, massive screen that had taken up the majority of the last shot—the screen that reported Elliot’s victory—has become dwarfed by the innumerable amount of advertisements still present in Times Square. Now that the crowd of tourists and city folk is visible, we can see that all of them are indifferent to Elliot’s heroic act.

As the final insult to injury, the camera returns to the first shot of Times Square, where Elliot is seen from a low-angle camera and beneath the enormous screen that reports on Colby’s arrest. That is the shot where he was in control. Elliot throws up his hands and smiles in the genuine joy… and finds out that he has no control at all. Not in the frame, and not in the narrative, because ominous men in black approach the blissful Elliot from behind and threaten him into getting into their car. As this happens, the camera also cuts back to being level with Elliot; this is the Elliot that is bombarded by advertisements. The camera even breaks the 180-degree rule as the men in black accost him, cutting between different men in black circling him, and Elliot has no choice but to comply with his white-collar captors. This disorienting sequence shows how Elliot, even when believing himself to have power, actually has none when combating the force of society.

It is almost as if no act of justice can stop the force of consumerism, the slave-driver that is capitalism; it is almost as if no amount of saving the people from corporate greed will save them from themselves. Elliot tries to be a hero, and he is punished for it. But those are stories for the rest of Mr. Robot to tackle, especially with the neurotic and complicated Elliot as its protagonist. If not for the compelling, twisting, and achingly incisive narrative, one could very easily watch the show simply for its beautiful and dynamic shots, which tell stories and explain relationships without a single spoken word.

 

Works cited in this text:

“eps1.0_hellofriend.mov.” Mr. Robot. USA Network. June 24, 2015. Amazon Prime; Television.

Flawed People Searching for the Perfect Answer: Vice in HBO’s True Detective (Season 1) (Katherine P.)

            The current rise of more cinematically produced shows on outlets such as Netflix and HBO, demonstrates that film is not the only medium worth a closer look. Perhaps no show captures the characteristic filmic magic more than HBO’s series True Detective.  The serial nature of the show allows for both plot and character development in a way that traditional film does not.

            True Detective recounts a self-contained saga of a seemingly bizarre series of murders from the perspective of the nominal detectives. Season 1 garnered critical acclaim for its photographically detailed characters and compelling mystery. The setting is Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, and State homicide detectives Martin “Marty” Hart and Rustin “Rust” Cohle have been assigned to investigate the murder of Dora Lange. It is the labyrinthine nature of this case, and the pursuit of the truth that expose Marty and Rust’s inner demons. 

            Marty is first depicted as the quintessential family man. He appears to have the picture-perfect life, a beautiful wife, and two lovely daughters. However, it becomes substantially clear this is not the case.

            Marty is weak to his lustful urges. The first few episodes display his extramarital affair with his coworker, Lisa. His uncontained desire and libido consume him, and the balance of his “ideal” home life is threatened by his own infidelity. The vice of lust is ever-present as a thematic and visual motif. Marty’s lust, and the violence caused by such carnality is paralleled through the nature of the homicides. The homicide victims are women. The sexual deviancy and perverse way in which they are displayed post-mortem speaks to the inherent vehemence and objectification of the female form through the male gaze. Marty, in his lust, concurrently, or perhaps, coincidentally, has fits of intense rage caused by his lack of control. To him, his sexual exploits and the women who he has them with are merely things to reassure his masculinity and domination. He is prideful he can juggle his adultery with his home life. However, when it is clear this feat is too much, he reacts violently. Marty’s flaws are caused by his lack of emotional stability, and this unbalance is reflected in the many women he courts, but it rings most true in his wife, Maggie.

            Of the women in Marty’s life, no one mirrors his vices more than Maggie. She is, like Marty, only superficially the ideal wife. Her role in the marriage is that of the stereotypical caregiver; she appears to manage the housework and the children quite well. But, when it comes to her relationship with Marty, she is justifiably neurotic and abrasive. Marty’s violence spurs on her anger, and the tumult becomes more and more unstable. Upon confirming Marty’s cheating, Maggie responds through wrongfully mirroring Marty’s sin and has a one night stand with Marty’s partner in the case, Rust. The fact that she reacts as such reveals she is just as warped as Marty is. This parallel is one thematic crux of the show, that of the impression of the male vice echoed on the female, and vice versa.

            Unlike Marty, Rust’s pitfalls do not stem from his home life, but rather his work and especially this case. Rust has no family. He once had a wife and daughter, similar to Marty, but an accident that killed his daughter broke up his marriage. If Marty’s story is how he lost it all, Rust’s tells a tale of an already broken man trying to find meaning through dedication to his work.

            Rust is seen as a gifted detective. His keen insights and persistence make him one of the best in the Louisiana State Police. His tenacity eventually leads him to instability at work. He becomes too invested in the case, overstepping boundaries set by his boss and breaking the limitations set by the Louisiana State Police. Endurance and resolution are not normally intrinsically seen as faults, but the authoritative and restrictive head officers paint Rust as an overzealous, borderline insane detective that has crossed the line one too many times. While it is true that in the hunt for an answer, one can be blind to what’s pertinent, the show illustrates through Rust that the wild chase for the truth is the only way to enlightenment and eventual self-realization. In the fervent quest for an answer, Rust is let off from the case, but in his rogue state, he is freed from the authoritative chains that weighed him down. Yet, Rust’s perseverance is still maliciously paralleled through the murders, albeit in a different fashion than Marty’s vice is echoed. The devotion and ardor Rust has for this case is compared to the mindset of the murderers. Both parties are equally dedicated to their craft, and both have an almost contumacious approach to what they do. This connection is used to demonize Rust. Despite the show illustrating Rust in that light, his motivations are resonant, so we are made to root for him even with his apparent officious nature and short-sighted goals.

            Rust is shown to be socially closed off. The interactions such as sexual or platonic relationships that plague his partner, Marty, are minimized and are almost absent. Scarred from the pain of losing his daughter and wife, Rust believes those types of human relations are unnecessary and that most will end in inevitable collapse. His distrust of interpersonal relations and the people involved in them do add to his value as a detective, but it is ultimately not a generally accepted mindset. When Maggie tries to set him up with her friend, Laurie, Rust is initially skeptical. In spite of his initial doubts, he does go into a relationship with Laurie. But, it is short-lived. Once it became clear to Laurie that Rust’s heart wasn’t in the relationship, rather in the ongoing homicide case, she and Rust break up. Rust’s tunnel vision is set solely on the goal of finding the perpetrator, and even if he tries his life has afforded no room for anything or anyone else. His ambitions prove to be too much for other people to handle.

            While Marty and Rust both have vastly different circumstantial flaws, they are a complex and captivating spin on the time-honored detective trope, and their show is considered by some to be a landmark of cinematic television. Hopefully, this new wave of profound and filmic works continues to produce creations as standout as True Detective.  At the end, solving the murder is secondary to the feelings, good or bad, that we develop for Marty and Rust, and at the end of series, we are left genuinely wondering what will become of these characters after the job is done. 

Almost Like It Never Happened: Violence Contained By Film (Jin)

The moment we capture an event or person on film, they become unreal to us. They’ve become possessable objects, something to be replayed and thus controlled. Through this ownership, the spectator retains the power to watch without being held accountable for what is taking place on the screen. When the film is that of a real act of violence, the power dynamic becomes particularly apparent: though the spectator may sympathize with the people on the screen, he or she typically feels no sense of direct responsibility. What is happening on the screen remains on the screen. The film is a separate world altogether, one which can be turned off and forgotten, or even replayed again and again until it has lost its ability to shock. How many times have we watched bleeding victims and decimated cities on the news? It may be an evocative sight but not a lasting one.

Benny, the fourteen year old protagonist in Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video, is the archetype of someone lost in an illusionary, dream-world of the seen and the controlled. Born into a wealthy family obsessed with career and social reputation, he himself is lost in delusion, albeit one composed of television screens. Just as his parents’ are trapped in their fear of losing face to their coworkers and friends, Benny is trapped in a self-imposed, psychological landscape of his bedroom which feeds his obsession with videos. There is a video constantly playing in the background while he quietly works at his desk, along with a second television screen showing a live feed of his apartment building’s exterior and his own bedroom’s interior. It is a life of relentless observation, one in which Benny plays the role of stoic, cold spectator.

 

The extent of his psychotic containment reaches its peak when Benny invites a girl over to his home to watch a video he’d recorded of a pig being slaughtered at a relative’s farm. Their sparse dialogue alone reveals a sort of naivety and a disconnect between violence in reality and on film. When asked by the girl, “have you ever seen a dead person – a real one, I mean,” Benny replies, “No. I once saw a TV program about the tricks they use in action films. It’s all ketchup and plastic.” He remains unaware that actions in reality, unlike on video, have real consequences, and when he eventually discharges a slaughtering gun, the same one used in the pig video, on the girl’s chest, he is taken aback by the girl’s agonizing screams.

Proceeding the girl’s death, the greatest moment of horror is when we realize that, despite having murdered a human being, Benny still remains locked in his internal world. The real physical action of violence fail to raise any real emotional response from Benny, and like how the murder scene is shown solely on his television screen rather than being shown in real time, Benny has internalized the incident as an “unreal” event isolated within the video tape. Even when Benny’s parents discover his son’s crime, they show a similar lack of emotive response and immediately begin strategizing how to save their reputation. It becomes increasingly apparent that the absence of consequence is more noticeable than the absence of a life itself. The dead girl remains a stranger, and though she mentioned having a large family, nothing is to be known about the impact of her death. In fact, it is as though Benny’s murder tape carries a higher value than the girl herself and is almost more “real” due to its ability to prove the murder had occurred. Later on, the video tape is the only object capable of bearing any real consequence, by acting as legal evidence and resulting in the family’s arrest. Preceding this, however, the family remain in a strange limbo, spending a whole week vacationing in Egypt.

The loss of a human life could hardly be felt as “real,” when there are absolutely no repercussions against the murderer: how is it possible to dictate one’s actions as being real, if they hold no visible effect? The emotionless psychological vacuum of Benny’s mind is therefore all the more terrifying than any real physical damage he can cause. Ultimately, it is this lack of emotional and social consequence that is felt as being “more violent” than the actual murder itself.

It's Tough Out There for a Broad (Madison)

Well, folks, this is it. As I am posting this, the final week of classes is winding to a close; exams are being prepped for, parties are being thrown, summer plans solidified. Spring Fair has come and gone; the library is packed with students in the throes of an end-of-semester panic; your timelines are undoubtedly inundated with invitations to oddly-themed a cappella concerts. This spring--the last of my undergraduate career--has been marked by a series of bittersweet benchmarks I can’t help but notice as they pass (far too quickly) by.

 

 

Oh, I found myself thinking the other afternoon, I just skipped the last lecture of the last science course I ever plan on taking (Sorry, Professor Rawlins). And after wrapping up a class on American Women Poets, I was struck by the realization that I might never again have cause to be in room 138 in Gilman hall (and that, drafty as it is, I’ll miss it). I learned, just today, the trick to getting free drinks from the vending machines in Hodson, only to remember that I won’t have time to test out the method.

I am forced, in confronting these Lasts (and the capital L feels proper, here), to turn, also, ahead: if these are the things that I am leaving, what am I heading toward? On the one hand, the answer to this question is simple: I’ll be making my way to grad school in Iowa City (home to an amazing bookstore, plenty of cornfields, and a natural history museum which features a replica of a 10-foot-tall prehistoric sloth). Still, on the other, I have no idea what the next few years will look like.

 

For the first time, I’ll be paying for my own insurance. For the first time, I’ll be more than a two-hour drive away from my mother’s house. For the first time, I’ll be living in a place that is very unlike my hometown (a bit of relevant trivia: the population of Philadelphia is 1.3 million; in Baltimore, it is 623,000; and in Iowa City, the population hovers around a miniscule 73,000).

As I often do when I am forced to forge into unknown territory, I turned to television for answers (answers, of course, that come with a heaping side of escapist fantasy). There are plenty of movies and shows, these days, that explore what it means to be a young woman trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in the world (however you might feel about Lena Dunham, her Girls did pave the way for the moment we find ourselves in now, in which a plethora of lovably-struggling femme millennials fill our screens).

 

I’ve sampled many of them: 2 Broke Girls is a bust for me, feeling somehow stale and forced; New Girl is charming, silly, and consistently entertaining, even if its glory days are somewhat behind it; Jane the Virgin has its appeal, even if it borrows a bit too much from the telenovela to help me navigate my own, admittedly more mundane, life. On the silver screen, Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), Tiny Furniture (another Dunham offering, this one from 2010), and Adventureland (Mottola, 2009) are worth a watch (Legally Blonde, too, qualifies as a post-college film, in my view!)*

Still, among all these offerings, one show has become my far-and-away favorite, the one I watch over and over again, the one that makes me feel entertained, reassured, and vaguely aroused (a joke), and the one I binged (again) in preparation to leave the Johns Hopkins nest: Broad City.

 

The Comedy Central hit began as a web series in 2009, when Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the show's creators, stars, and writers, met in New York City while taking classes with the Upright Citizens Brigade; it made its way (with the help of one Amy Poehler) onto television in 2014. It has run for three seasons, with a fourth and fifth upcoming (not soon enough, of course; season 4 isn’t scheduled to run until this August--I am in agony).

In part, my love of the show comes from my identification with Abbi Jacobson. Both she and her character (also named Abbi) grew up on the Philadelphia Main Line, ten minutes away from my childhood home. She went to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for her undergraduate degree, which, as most of you know, is only a very short bus ride away from the Homewood campus. She’s not good at public speaking and hopes that her career as an artist will “blow up any day now!” In my preemptively-nostalgic, pre-graduation phase, this is enough to make us soul sisters. Watching her navigate what everyone tells me is the hellscape of your young twenties gives me particular comfort, as if I’d sent a body double ahead of me to test the waters; she seems like she’s doing well--maybe I can, too. 

 

Of course, the appeal of Broad City is much deeper than hometown pride. The show is hilarious; in one episode, Ilana becomes latched onto a garbage truck after trying to wear an industrial chain as a belt; in another, the duo is kicked off of a plane when their MacGyver’d tampon is confused for a bomb. It’s also oddly sweet; it’s clear that Ilana would do anything for her best friend Abbi, including grilling potential one-night-stands about their sexual health, mothering her after the removal of her wisdom teeth, and spending hours tracking down a stolen cell phone.

 

And for all its fluffiness, the show is smart, too, with a feminist sensibility that is always present but never pedantic: the leads are two Jewish women who share a friendship that would make even the best bromance movies jealous, and who talk frankly and frequently about their active sex lives—and not in an I-had-another-steamy-affair way, in an I-just-peed-out-a-condom/I'm-looking-at-my-labia-in-a-Topshop-dressing-room/a-guy-asked-me-to-peg-him kind of way.

It matters to me, too, that Ilana is bisexual, and shows no signs of being killed off. Her liaisons with women are never fetishized, or even addressed as unusual. There is no moment of coming out, no older, predatory lesbian seducing her, and no sense that her friendship with a straight girl is strange or suspect (admittedly, one of the quirks of the pair’s friendship is Ilana’s oft professed love for Abbi—this, though, feels more like a running gag than a comment on the impossibility of friendship between queer and straight women). It is the kind of representation one seldom gets, as a bisexual woman. To see oneself rendered likably and fully on screen, not tokenized or tortured, is an opportunity that is hard to come by; even as Broad City makes me laugh, it gives me the chance to feel real, to take a delight in my queerness that can be otherwise difficult to maintain in the current political climate both at home and abroad. 

Beyond all this, Broad City has a surrealist bent that allows it to stand out amongst other shows of its ilk. The use of non-diegetic sound, fantasy sequences, and absurdist humor make each episode a surprising one: you’re never sure when a giant Bingo Bronson (a stuffed blue cartoon toy) might make an appearance, or when a piece of particularly shocking news will be accompanied by the sounds of a bomb detonating (complete with aftershock and ringing in the ears). It is equally likely that the girls will find themselves at a swanky rooftop cocktail party as in a subway car filled with Hasidic Jewish men or human fecal matter.

 

There is something about this show that defies description; it's difficult to explain why it feels like the suitable topic for my final CinemAddicts post. After all, what can I tell you I’ve learned from watching Broad City? I’m still scared to leave my friends and Baltimore behind; I’m not any closer to understanding how to do my taxes; and it’s true, it isn’t my dream to work as a cleaner in a fitness center or as a temp at a failing startup, so there isn’t much in the way of inspiration to be found in that arena. I suppose, though, I have learned some things: how to sneak an offending BM out of a toilet and into a trash shoot if the power is out and the man I’m crushing on is stopping by for a visit; that “for every ten pounds a man loses, he gains a visual inch”; a recipe for a s’more made with marijuana.

 

I can see, as I’m writing it, how insufficient this list may seem. What I did not include on it, for fear of being sentimental, but what I hope I've made clear throughout this post, is this: Broad City allows me to imagine myself, one, or two, or five years down the line, living a wonderful life. Ok, Abbi and Ilana are messy; ok, they don’t have dream jobs; ok, they live with crummy roommates. But their friendship—the most convincing and compelling female friendship on TV today, in my opinion—is not only enough to sustain the show, but to sustain them through all of the absurd drama of their not-yet-figured-out lives.

So, I’ll finish this Last—my last post on this blog—with a question. Do we have any readers in Iowa City? I’m looking for an Ilana to my Abbi. After all, I hear it’s tough out there for a broad.

 
*I’d like to recognize that this list is hugely incomplete, and (for the most part) only presents a selection of white, straight, middle-to-upper class stories. If you have any recommendations that escape these pitfalls, I’d love to tune in!

My first time with "The Bachelor" (Madison)

April is the month for trickery; national poetry month; and, according to Eliot, the cruelest month. It has always seemed a mistake, then, that Valentine’s Day doesn’t fall during these first few weeks of spring; April feels designed for love and love’s vicissitudes. Sudden storms thunder in the morning, then peter out in time for the birds to chitter at the receding sun by dinnertime. Heavy coats are tucked into storage, then brought back out again as a wintry afternoon inserts itself in a week of 60-degree weather. Cherry trees blossom so suddenly that, in a blink, whole streets are covered in a flowery snow.  

And now that I’m in my twenties, I’m even more aware of spring’s potential for romance. My happily-coupled friends spend evenings discussing their post-graduation plans to buy houses and host engagement parties. Even the advertisers on my podcasts seem in the mood for love; a chipper woman from Match.com implores me to try the site that “leads to the most second dates!”

For the terminally single, the season of the birds and the bees can start to lose its luster quickly. A truly cynical girl might, on a warm, weekday evening, even find herself turning to the truly absurd for comfort: the latest season of The Bachelor. This show is bafflingly popular among my female friends, especially the younger ones, but I myself had never seen it until I began writing this blog post.

It is hard to escape the cultural zeitgeist that is The Bachelor, it’s true; I’ve watched a close cousin of the show, I Wanna Marry Harry, which saw twenty-odd American women competing for the heart of a Prince Harry look-alike (the fact that their suitor was not actual royalty was hidden from them until the final episode), and have partaken in the parody series Burning Love. Lately, as a salvo to the show itself, I started watching Unreal, a Lifetime series (I know, but stay with me) about the dramatic lives of the producers of a Bachelor-type program.  

It feels difficult to write anything truly novel about this sort of show; everyone knows that the world of reality TV is highly contrived, oversexed, and nakedly misogynistic (or, at the very least, post-feminist, relying as it does on a divorce of individual narrative from social context). There are hundreds of blogs poking fun at the poor suckers who really think they can find true love on cable. But as I watched my first episode of The Bachelor (Nick flew one of his darlings to Finland, first class), I didn’t want to laugh. Scoff, sure—the bachelor’s self-assured smile, his stilted conversations (one romantic dinner was filled with chatter about whether or not an iron or a steamer is better for getting wrinkles out of clothes), and the very fact of his having dated up to 29 women at a single time, made the whole premise difficult to take seriously.

But I didn’t find the episode hilarious. The women all seemed so sincere, so ready to love a near stranger; an invisible hand behind the camera was clearly prompting them to confess deep feelings to their suitor, and several tearfully admitted to having fallen in love with the scruffy-but-personable Nick. Watching them I felt, uncomfortably, that I understood where they were coming from. After all, I’m trying to date, and have an intimate knowledge of how truly terrible it is (a memorable one-liner from the Tinder-sphere: “You want to be my cardio this evening? It’s cutting season.”) If you’re going to couple-up in the modern age, why not get a few months’ vacation in a mansion as well?

And, though the environment is obviously staged for the screen, the fairy-tale effect is never quite punctured; despite myself, the sweeping orchestral score and the lights of cabin windows glittering on a fjord made me quickly invested in the (thin) narrative (the Southern belle has never had an orgasm, and can’t figure out how to tell her beau). It is easy to believe that the pair are sharing an intimate exchange over dinner when one is distracted by candlelight, by the stylish fair-isle sweaters, and impeccable makeup.

This is partly what drove me to watch Unreal; one always suspects that the contestants’ every move is choreographed to maximize interest, that the editing is, at best, misleading and at worst malicious, and that the results are predetermined, and watching these suspicions unfold in a Lifetime drama is undoubtedly satisfying. One gets to feel not only that they were too clever to have been duped by reality TV, but also that they are no longer complicit in reality TV’s bullying and, therefore, can indulge in the drama without doing harm to any real people.

And it’s true, Unreal is as dramatic as any afternoon soap; 6 episodes in and the main character has already been blackmailed, her boss has nearly died of a heart attack, a contestant was outed on national TV, and a girl has jumped off of the roof. Watching the self-serving behind-the-scenes world of reality TV production is entertaining, if slightly nausea-inducing. But, still, it can’t quite compare to what I felt watching the real deal.  

Even with the glitz and the glamour attendant to The Bachelor, there is something searingly genuine about it. If the impulse to display one’s love life to an audience of millions is foreign to me, if the contestants seem chillingly like American standards of beauty personified, if the much-discussed “Fantasy Suite” smacks a bit of coercive sex, the overwhelming desire to be close to another person (any person, even a person who wears too many turtlenecks and makes you wait in the cold while he sips whiskey with the host) is so… normal. It is so much like the April afternoons I spend here, in Baltimore, downloading a dating app for the fourth time (even though I swore after I deleted it last time that I was done for good), that I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at the people on my screen. In this season of love, I’m not that unlike them. The Bachelor might have won itself another fan.

My first, and favorite, female superhero (Madison)

The superhero is having a moment. Some readers of this blog might say that this particular moment is lasting a little too long; one can’t throw a stone without hitting a spandex suited savior these days, on both the big screen and the small (e.g. The Avengers, Supergirl, Batman vs. Superman, Daredevil, to name just a few). The genre is well on its way to feeling stale, and has long been plagued by (rightful) accusations of sexism (where, where, where is our Black Widow movie?!) and racism (the whitewashing of Asian characters has been particularly relevant of late, with Doctor Strange and Ghost in the Shell emerging on the scene). And one has to wonder; does Hollywood have anything new to offer us?

Yet, for all of this, we keep tuning in (the season 1 finale of Supergirl garnered 6.1 million viewers; The Avengers grossed $1.52 billion at the box office). I’ll admit, I love a good superhero flick; if I’m cynical of Hollywood’s heroes, I’m also under their sway (I was one of the 6.1 million watching Supergirl).

So, when I found myself without anything to watch, I turned to what might be one of the foundations of today’s obsession, and the first superhero I remember from my childhood; Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is different than the heroes we see on screen today; indeed, some might not call her a superhero at all (where is her costume? Where are the spaceships, the ray guns?) But when I was a kid, she was TV’s woman of steel. I was born too late for Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman, and the more fully rendered heroines of recent media—Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch—were a long time coming. Buffy (whose show ran from 1997-2003) was part of the cultural landscape I grew up in, and made a space for complex female heroes like Jessica Jones to fill in the years following.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I was both too young and too cowardly to really follow the show when it was playing (I was only two when it premiered; I was frightened by an episode of Hey Arnold that featured a cartoon vampire). But Buffy was a presence in my life; my best friend in middle and high school watched it obsessively, and I recall many a sleepover spent with my head under the covers, cowering from the demons on screen. And when, a week ago, I asked a friend what series I should start watching she said, without hesitating, “Buffy. You’re a feminist; it’s basically required.”

Even beginning my viewing as a woman in 2017 who has watched (dare I say endured) a surfeit of superheroes, I’m captivated by Buffy Summers. In a week I’ve seen 26 episodes, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule. I have been thinking about what makes Buffy such a cultural cornerstone. It’s not the special effects (the 90’s era CGI is quaint at best, painful at worst, making the monsters less threatening than they might be), nor, admittedly, the show’s sense of pace; the episodes often introduce seemingly apocalyptic obstacles, worry over them for thirty-five minutes, then wrap them up with two minutes of hand-to-hand combat, sending their heroes back into the halls of Sunnydale High to reflect on their latest sweethearts or homework assignments. A sense of suspense is often noticeably lacking (particularly when one doesn’t have to wait a week between episodes, a fault of my own consumption rather than of Joss Whedon’s direction).

Yet there is something compelling about the fast-talking, stake yielding Buffy (played with panache by Sarah Michelle Gellar) that is worth watching, even if one has wearied of world-savers. Part of the appeal is that the stakes (hah) feel real, here, in a way that they don’t in the sanitized world of Disney’s Marvel universe or the CW’s National City. The violence, while often aimed at monsters we know to be less-than-human, is almost always shown rather than implied. The heroine even, at times, takes a perverse pleasure in causing pain (Season 2, Episode 11 sees Buffy giving a vamp a protracted beating after having walked in on her mother making out with a slimy new boyfriend; she enthusiastically slices into a 7-foot-tall praying mantis long after it is dead Season 1, Episode 4).

When a villain is killed, they are not whisked off-screen; they are stabbed to death in front of us. It’s true that they dissolve into ash, bloodless, but the camera takes a fierce joy in the moment a ghoul is staked. Each fight scene is the delaying of that gratifying moment when our heroine snaps some sign post in half and plunges it into her enemy’s chest.

The self-conscious sexualization of the protagonist also makes this series an interesting watch. Buffy has undoubtedly become a feminist icon—and Whedon intended her to be, wanting to subvert the trope of the blonde slasher-film victim—but she is also a conventionally attractive (slim, white) woman performing roundhouse kicks in high heeled boots and mini-skirts. That is, she performs normative femininity while embodying a masculinized form of power (namely, physical strength and a preternatural ability to kick ass); this is no witch, that icon of feminine power, nor is her gift one of shapeshifting or laser vision. What she does is go blow for blow in fist fights with the undead. It’s an emphatically physical power, perhaps more masculinized even than Superman’s—after all, Buffy isn’t immune to bullets, and she can’t fly. She’s super merely by merit of her grit and her ability to square up. And she does it all with a fresh coat of lip gloss to boot.

If Buffy smacks of a man’s fantasy girl it’s because, in a sense, she is. Her creator, Joss Whedon, is quoted by Patricia Pender in her book I’m Buffy and You’re History as saying, “I definitely think a woman kicking ass is extraordinarily sexy, always… if I wasn’t compelled on a very base level by that archetype I wouldn’t have created that character.” And it can’t be ignored that some of the combat has erotic undertones; Buffy is repeatedly choked, tied up, threatened with sharp teeth against her exposed, lily-white neck.

This is one of the more uncomfortable parts of watching the slayer: after all, she’s just a girl. More of a girl, even, than our modern Supergirl (today’s Kara Zor-El comes with an office job and well-furnished loft). Buffy is sixteen at the series’ beginning, a sophomore in high school. The pleasure viewers take in watching her lithe fighter’s form is complicated by the fact of her youth; and when she starts dating a 250-year-old vampire, we naturally feel a little strange about it.

Yet her girlishness is also part of the series’ appeal; Buffy’s charm lies how relatable the eponymous lead is. She isn’t the sunny, saccharine Supergirl, nor is she the brooding, tortured Batman; she’s more or less an average sixteen-year-old. She is unaccountably moody sometimes; she gets jealous when her best friend starts hanging out with someone new; she bickers with her mother. For the first time, with the advent of the Slayer, a typical teenage girl is cast as super. It is enough for Buffy to be just who she is, and occasionally kill a vamp or two. The series developed a cult following, and retains its place in the cultural lexicon, because it allows teenage girls to see themselves on screen and in power.

And I know I’m only scratching the surface; soon, I’m told, there will be lesbian witches, advice on leaving an abusive relationship, and a guide through the grieving process. But halfway through season 2, I’m already sold. If the superhero is having a moment, let it linger. And if you’re disenchanted by the current offerings, I suggest taking a look behind you; Buffy won’t disappoint.

A Fortunate Decision (Tori)

I know it’s always a bad idea to start watching a new TV show during the semester, particularly during a week riddled with midterms and essays.  Yet recently I started watching Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and I’m immensely grateful I made that unfortunate decision.  

The show, based on the popular children’s books of the same name, follows the trials of three siblings: Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire.   After the death of their parents, they are taken in by the malicious Count Olaf—a man driven by greed as he attempts to usurp the Baudelaire fortune left to Violet when she comes of age.  I remember reading the first book in elementary school and then trying to check out the other 12 all at the same time because I was so eager to find out what would happen next to the three orphans.  So, of course, I was very interested in the Netflix television series when it was announced, and it did not let me down.  The show manages to be both hilarious and heinous simultaneously.  This juxtaposition is best seen through Neil Patrick Harris’ characterization of Count Olaf.  He is ridiculous and theatrical at some points and abusive and frightening at others.  The way this show is able to blend the scary and the silly is masterful. 

The show’s premise isn’t out of the ordinary: three children, mistreated by adults in their lives, must prevail in the face of adversity.  It reminds me of a Matilda vs. Miss Trunchbull or Annie vs. Miss Hannigan story; we are not strangers to the theme of children vs. oppressive adults in literature and film.  Yet I would argue that this show is still extraordinary due to the narrative and visual choices made to bring the series' pages to life.

The books themselves are narrated by their author, “Lemony Snicket,” who sets up the story at the very beginning and is consistently appearing and reappearing, offering everything from warnings to anecdotes to vocabulary lessons.  This feature poses the difficult and extremely important question of how to handle Lemony Snicket’s presence onscreen.  The decision made was to cast an actor as Lemony Snicket who would make frequent appearances onscreen in order to incorporate Snicket’s clever quips seamlessly throughout the episode.  Thus, like Lemony Snicket’s narration in the novels, he commences the story and is consistently popping up.  Using Lemony Snicket in this way, rather than employing some other technique like a voiceover narrator, was the only way to portray this function of the novel really accurately.  A voiceover, though it would function similarly, would take away from Lemony Snicket’s character by making him seem omniscient.  While that choice works for many films and TV shows, it is crucial to A Series of Unfortunate Events that Snicket is not just an all-knowing, nameless, invisible voice but a subjective character with thoughts, ideas, and motives. 

The design elements are just as key to the success of the show as the choice to portray Lemony Snicket as a narrator.  The design of the show is almost cartoon-like; for example, the contrast between Justice Strauss’ bright, colorful, welcoming, immaculate home that is the embodiment of good and Count Olaf’s dark, crumbling, haunted mansion that is the embodiment of evil right across the street could not be more stark.  In a show devoted to the power of children, this design is perfect because it gives the viewer a sense of unrestrained childlike wonder in which extremities are not avoided and something like a house can feel truly good or evil.            

As an English major and a life-long lover of reading, I sometimes get nervous when novels are adapted for the screen.  It can be frustrating to see a world you’ve envisioned in such detail in your head come to life in a way you did not imagine; then that film-world is what you see in your head every time you come back to the novel.  I was concerned about all of this when watching A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I shouldn’t have been.  Through the narrative and visual choices made, the world of the Netflix series was just what I imagined the Baudelaires' world would look like in my mind when reading the books in third grade.  So, maybe, in retrospect, I should have waited to start watching this show and avoided the late nights it spurred.  However, this is one of those shows that’s worth it.

Darkness and Allusion in "Over the Garden Wall" (Elizabeth)

It is rare that one can recommend an animated television show without needing to throw in a caveat. There are plenty of gems out there, but all too often cartoons are either insultingly childish, full of shock value humor, or just simply keep going long after they should have ended. “Over the Garden Wall” does not suffer from any of those problems. It is a new kind of endeavor for Cartoon Network, a short miniseries that is deceptively deep and dark in tone, telling the story of two brothers who are lost in a mysterious woods trying to find their way home. One of its main themes is that nothing is as it first appears, and this holds true for the miniseries itself. It is child friendly, as anything on at primetime Cartoon Network will be, but its tight, twisting plot and mature themes ensure that most children wouldn’t be able to scratch the surface of its depth.

One of the strongest ways that this manifests is in the constant allusions and stylistic and tonal references that the series has. The man alone in a manor who thinks he loves a ghost and fears he may be mad hearkens back to Poe, the two witch sisters have designs that call to mind the work of Hayao Miyazaki, and Greg’s dream of going to heaven is a clear homage to the oldest theatrical cartoons. It draws many of its locations and episodic plots from older American culture and folklore from a purposefully indefinable era. Even the obligatory out-of-place modern jokes and references Wirt and Greg make turn out to be foreshadowing the eventual twist, that they’re working their way through the limbo of the dead who haven’t let go.

One of the strongest and most thematically resonant parallels is to Dante’s Inferno. From the name of their treacherous but good-hearted guide, Beatrice, to the fact that Wirt is a poet whose official role in the Unknown is “pilgrim,” the foreshadowing about the true nature of the woods is much clearer to those who’ve read the classics. This lets the writers add a creepy layer of symbolism that children watching wouldn’t be able to grasp—the Beast, a clear Satan analogue, attempts to get travelers to give in to despair, which will cause them to turn into trees. In The Inferno, becoming a tree in hell is the punishment for suicide. It gives the viewer the same sense that it gives the boys in the story—wandering through a mysterious past and trying to make sense of the memories and legacies of those who are gone.

Even the darkest of implications can hardly measure up to some of the explicit action of the plot, especially the woodsman who unknowingly burns lost souls to ashes. This can be quite powerful—but it can also work against itself. Some of the trappings of child-friendliness don’t quite work out for a story as dark as this—the, dark, detailed backgrounds and monsters of the Unknown clash against the cartoony stylization of the humans, the songs not sung by the bullfrog tend to be rather jarring, and there are a few times where it feels the need to explain things that it could have more elegantly left to implication. However, this is exactly the sort of deep, mature, unique project that animation needs to get taken more seriously as a medium.

The Horror of 1960s America (Josh)

American Horror Story Asylum plays a master game of deception. While the narrative deceives the audience that they are going to witness a story about aliens and monsters set in an insane asylum, the show runners instead tell a tale where the supernatural elements are not the frightening element. In fact, the supernatural elements often only exist within the story as a savior against the horrors of the natural world.

    During one the first sequences in the story, the creators carefully frame the world as a place where people are more of a threat than any kind of supernatural being. The image the audience sees after Kit Walker, one of the protagonists of the series, pumps up gas into a customer’s car in a 1960’s town is of human evil. The customer complains to Kit about the price of gas while we see a child in the backseat pointing a fake gun at Kit. It is of course, a child at play, but they are explicitly starting with this image to establish man as violent and cruel. The first supernatural element of the series occurs shortly as alien invaders kidnap Kit’s wife. The audience only sees bright, blinding light. At first, one may interpret this as a terrifying image, but the white is far more reminiscent of a heavenly body versus one from traditional views of hell. The aliens later in the series become saviors of major characters, saving them from death, and creating children who have the ability to heal. This image is different than the ones presented when we first see Briarcliff, the church run insane asylum that serves as the setting for the majority of the story. 

    The first shot we see of Briarcliff in the series is a looming low angle from the outside. The old building looks terrifying and consumes the frame. As we are led inside, we hear screams of the patient. The light in Briarcliff is dim with only streaks of light coming from the outside forming harsh, unforgiving shadows. The common room is mostly grey with only a record that repeats a “comforting” song on repeat incessantly. Outside the patient dormitories are hanging fluorescent lights that barely illuminate the space, but flicker incessantly. These are all horrors created by man, not by any supernatural force.

     Lana Winters is an ambitious investigative journalist who originally enters Briarcliff in order to expose the institution and to interview, Kit, convicted of murdering his wife. Soon, in a horrific turn, Sister Jude, the ambitious nun who is the head o the facility, convinces Lana’s life partner to commit Lana into the asylum so she can be treated for her homosexuality. Sister Jude, as she exposes Lana’s fate, is shot from a low angle, exposing her power, while the high angle reverse of Lana shows a powerless victim. She is imprisoned by shackles around her skull and is bruised from the fight that led her to the asylum. The horror in this shot is one of purely human creation.

    In American Horror Story Asylum, the supernatural elements can come to the aid of the humans trapped in the world of the 1960’s. In the second half of the story, Sister Jude, through a turn of events, becomes a prisoner in her own institution. The institution has changed however. No longer run by the Church, Briarcliff is a state run institution featuring the overcrowding and violence associated with state mental health facilities of the time. The show creators use an interesting cinematic trick however to make this transition palatable for Sister Jude. Almost immediately after the audience learns that Briarcliff becomes a state institution, Sister Jude gains an enemy, the angel of death. The angel of death had previously functioned as a frightening dream for Sister Jude. She had large black wings and always offered Sister Jude a way out of her suffering. Now, the angel of death was appearing in the form of a new inmate in Briarcliff who would torture Jude. This distraction though, keeps Jude unaware of the changes happening to her and to the institution. Instead of dwelling on the overcrowding of the institution, the shots of the other inmates only occur in the background of Sister Jude’s conversation with her nemesis. There is no dwelling on the surroundings. Eventually, when Sister Jude attacks the angel of death, now her roommate, we see the reality of her situation. She had actually attacked another innocent women, and in a terrifying scene in the office of the  head of Briarcliff, we learn that years have passed without her knowledge. This scene is shot with wide-angle close-ups that distort reality. The light comes harshly from the side. In addition, the cross carved in the ceiling has begun to fade. Everything has changed and the angel of death was keeping Sister Jude in blissful ignorance of her world. At the end of her life, after she is freed from Briarcliff, Sister Jude gladly welcomes the kiss of the angel of death to bring her sweet relief.

     The most terrifying events within American Horror Story Asylum all base themselves on the realities of the 1960’s. Lana Winters, shot from a bird’s eye view in harsh light, must attempt a coat hanger abortion to save herself from giving birth to a child of rape. Later, newsreels expose the misery of state run institutions using a sepia toned image that creates the impression of being in that time. This same trope is used as the show uses the same color scheme to show the interaction between a husband and his now docile wife who he had lobotomized because of her memories of the Holocaust. As Sister Jude looks into Lana Winter’s eyes and warns her of the dangers of being a strong, independent woman in 1960’s society, and then warns her not to look in the face of evil, the camera moves directly into Lana’s face. The human being is capable of all evil. In the real world, there were no supernatural elements to save characters from the real life horrors presented in American Horror Story. The true horror of the story then is that these characters would never have been saved in the real world.

Sex, Politics and the Second Act (Taylor)

I’ll begin my final blog post for CinemAddicts with a hopefully not too gratuitous personal update: I have recently committed to a masters program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. As such, I was hoping to review a political show set in Georgetown in order to get my mind right for my educational second act. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one, but the Georgetown connection that I did end up finding is perhaps even better: The Good Wife, which centers on protagonist Alicia Florrick, a tough as nails defense attorney, mother of two teenage children, wife of a corrupt Chicago politician, and a graduate of Georgetown's law school. 

The CBS hour-long drama focuses on the life of Alicia Florrick in the aftermath of a very public sex and corruption scandal that implicates her husband Peter, a former Cook County state’s attorney. In order to provide for her children, Alicia must return to her old job as a litigator after taking 13 years off to be a stay-at-home mom.

The series starts the way that all well written and exciting narratives should start- in medias res. The very first moments of the pilot episode are heart racing. Alicia and her husband Peter stand in front of a mass of flashbulbs. At the podium, Peter admits to sexual misconduct but denies political wrongdoing. Alicia stands behind him, humiliated and ashen faced. From a writing standpoint, it’s a bold and attention grabbing first move, but certainly isn’t one that we haven’t seen before.

In fact, thanks to politicians like Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Jonathan Edwards and Bill Clinton, (among many, many others,) there is an extensive Wikipedia page devoted to listing political sex scandals in American federal politics. The list is formatted chronologically, and begins in 1796, going all the way to present day. It seems like as long as humans engage in both sex and politics, the two will periodically mix to produce disastrous results. And lost in the fray of gossip, media chaos and political drama, you can typically find a blindsided spouse who is left to pick up the pieces of a marriage, a family, and most egregiously, the political career of a philandering partner.

And that’s what is so fascinating about The Good Wife. It begins where, for the most part, media attention ends; life after the sheen of tawdry bedroom intrigue fades. The show follows Alicia and her fundamentally corrupt but deeply charismatic husband Peter, as they orchestrate a comeback, a return to normalcy, and ultimately, a second act.

Thematically, I really enjoy the attention that this show is paying to reinvention. In America, you can create a second life and purpose for yourself despite where you have come from or what you have done in the past. Alicia begins the show by evolving out of the necessity of scandal, but by the third season, she’s evolving for internal reasons- she sees the horizon of her potential, and she’s going for it.

The Good Wife has also succeeded in evenhandedly portraying political corruption and moral ambiguities. Typically, shows will idolize or satirize political conduct, but rarely do they portray characters as realistically flawed as Peter, Will (one of the partners of the law firm and another graduate of Georgetown,) and even Alicia. Television has lately been fixated on the antihero, and the main characters on The Good Wife almost seem like less extreme versions of Walter White. Alicia is a defense attorney after all, and the writers do not shy away from conveying the moral ambiguities of that job, or any other for that matter- politician, parent, litigator or spouse.

Watch The Good Wife. Don’t be turned off by its network location. It may not be HBO, but it is on par with any cable show in storytelling, acting and production. On the surface it may be a procedural, but the writers have found a way to blend procedural format with elegant, longstanding plot lines and dynamic, emotionally complex characters. And I’m not just saying that because I have to support my fellow (albeit fictional) Hoyas.

 

Spin-off is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: the Evolution of a Young Norman Bates in the TV series Bates Motel (Helen)

(image licesensed for use in accordance with WikiMedia Commons)

 

    A year ago A&E launched their ambitious television adaptation of film’s most notorious killer, Norman Bates. Fifty-three years after the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic thriller Psycho (1960), the concept of the television prequel was met with mixed reviews. The beloved film already suffered three sequels and one truly awful shot-for-shot remake, starring none other than Vince Vaughn. When I had first heard about this television adaptation I was reluctant to watch another ham-fisted attempt at tapping into the original thrill of unraveling the mystery of the Bates Motel. What these sequels failed to do was to get at the heart of what made Psycho interesting: Who/or what made Norman Bates kill? The real terror of the film that lingered long after the credits was not the murder, but the maddening question of the interrogation. Why?

 

    The series begins with a seventeen year old Norman Bates and his young attractive mother Norma, leaving their home in Arizona and Norman’s recently deceased father, for the sleepy town of White Pine Bay and the newly branded Bates Motel. The setting remains intentionally ambiguous in time in the beginning of the pilot, toying with our sensibilities opening on a black and white film on Norman’s television and later transitioning to Norma’s vintage Mercedes. Although it becomes a clear that it's a modern adaptation as soon as Norman takes out his IPhone at the bus stop. This was my first pause for concern. A modern adaptation that was also a prequel for Psycho seemed unnecessarily complex, and perhaps a forced attempt to distance this story from the inspiration. The show similarly has a love-hate relationship with references to the Hitchcock classic. From similar shot compositions, hiding the first casualty of the show behind the shower curtain, to an otherwise pointless dialogue about taxidermy, there seems to be a conflict between a transparent appreciation for the original film and the audience expectation for not-so-subtle homage. Although, that is a somewhat forgettable aside given the very uncomfortable and distasteful sexual assault that occurs between Norma and the disgruntled previous owner of the motel in the pilot. Norman is shaped in part by witnessing the event as well as participating in the murder and subsequent cover up. While I understand the intention of this story arc which drives the first season, the scene in question was one of the most horrific things I've seen on cable television.

 

    The storyline takes a very distinct turn from the film in the second episode when Norman’s older estranged brother Dylan is introduced. His abrupt hatred for his mother seems fairly unbelievable at first, but the complexity of his character and the tension between him and Norman builds as the show progresses.  The first episode struggles with its identity but it comes into its own by the third and develops into a Twin Peaks-esque thriller beyond the coupling of the Bates family to a greater mystery of a seemingly white-picket town with very dark secrets. The general idea of the show seems to be that Anthony Hopkins’ “Norman” as we know and love was not just a product of an overbearing mother and a violent sexual perversion, but of an entire community that indulges in a hidden sex trade among other transgressions. Violence towards young women is not an original motif in murder mysteries on television by any means, but it does add a logical stepping-stone to Norman's progression into the madness that is Norman Bates. Although a secret Chinese sex slave trade in a seaside Oregon town seems somewhat unbelievable, the frightening resonance of sex and violence within the walls of the Bates Motel works surprisingly well with Norman's story arc.

 

    The greatest strength of the series is the strange and often Oedipal relationship between Norman and his mother. While this is the main explanation given for Norman’s behavior in the film, the way it plays out in the series is wonderfully surprising at times. She is controlling and alluring, but also very warm and oddly reasonable most of the time. Perhaps, I like Norman, am easily manipulated by her charms, but I found myself never feeling entirely pulled out of the show by her behavior. Also the uncomfortable sexual chemistry between Norman and his mother is very subdued, which makes it almost creepier. Every time Norma dismissingly utters, "Norman, I'm your mother" in response to a mildly tense interaction between the two of them it makes me shudder. The show straddles the line between a closeness between mother and son that have suffered a mutual trauma, and a protective and possessive behavior mixed with a displaced sexual tension that both fascinates and repulses. The lurid town of White Pine Bay and its cast of unsavory characters ultimately pale in comparison to the engrossing Bates family drama in the center of it all.

The Bates Motel is finishing up its second season with the season finale premiering on A&E on May 5th, 2014.

 

 

Tanner '88 (Taylor)

   

 

 I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this haven’t watched or heard of Tanner ‘88. I hadn’t heard of it myself before doing research for this blog. So my goal with this post is to convince you in no uncertain terms to WATCH TANNER 88. Right now. Or as soon as possible. Or over summer vacation. Or whenever you can get your hands on a Hulu Plus account.

    Tanner ’88 is a one season political mockumentary directed by Robert Altman. First broadcast by HBO during the early stages of the 1988 U.S. presidential election, it goes on the campaign trail with former Michigan U.S. representative Jack Tanner, during his bid to secure the Democratic party’s nomination for President of the United States.

    Tanner is an unknown liberal Democrat who struggles to find a voice and make a name for himself during the early stages of the democratic primaries, until his campaign manager, T.J. Cavanaugh, uses an unscripted but passionate hotel-room speech caught on camera to produce an advertising campaign focusing on Tanner’s authenticity. After the success of the ads, which use the slogan, “For Real,” Tanner takes the lead in the polls and begins competing with two high profile, (real life) candidates: Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis.

    So what is it exactly that makes Tanner ’88 amazing? For one thing, it provides striking commentary about the artificiality of modern political campaigns, and the truly backbreaking effort involved in taking an obscure politician from low-level public figure to 1600 Penn. For another thing, it’s hilarious.

    Tanner is marketed as an honest, authentic, “what you see is what you get” candidate. His campaign slogan, “For Real,” is slapped on posters, stickers and television ads. However, viewers also get to see all of the focus groups, image consultations, and strategy work that are meant to shape him into a candidate that could actually get elected. Midway through the series, Tanner wearily says, “I feel like I’m becoming an innocent bystander in my own campaign.”

    The show also refreshingly depicts something that isn’t typically covered on television: the political campaign. This might at first seem like dull subject matter, but in the unglamorous, bus-touring world of primary elections, you really get a glimpse into the heart of politics. Because at this stage in the game, the work isn’t always fun and odds are that a candidate is not going to win. Every single campaign is a bootstrap operation and a level playing field at the beginning, with both seasoned politicos and still-green unknowns traveling all over the country, trying to get a leg up on the competition.

    Furthermore, with its faux-documentary style, Tanner 88 really gets at what it means to produce excellent political comedy and satire. A few weeks back on the blog, we discussed the satirical shortcomings of Veep. But it wasn’t until I watched Tanner ’88 that I realized exactly what Veep was missing; Tanner and Veep have many of the same absurd political foils- (image issues, groveling politicians, harebrained staffers, etc) but the verisimilitude of Tanner 88 really raises the stakes and gives the satire more bite. Jokes are the funniest when they’re making fun of real life. And Tanner 88 feels so real that it even fooled Bob Dole.

    In fact, while campaigning in New Hampshire in 1988, Republican candidate Bob Dole ran into an unfamiliar Democratic candidate who was walking around with his daughter and a camera crew. Dole did not recognize the candidate, but because there were cameras around, he greeted the man like an old friend, pretending to know him and wishing him luck before walking away. Unfortunately for Bob Dole, the unknown democratic candidate was Jack Tanner, and Dole had unwittingly earned himself a cameo on the show’s pilot episode.

     It’s this kind of near magic moment that makes Tanner feel like a modern political comedy, despite the scrunchies, pantsuits, obsessive Reagan references (and a young Joe Biden,) that would otherwise make it feel hopelessly dated. 

      Conceptually, it feels like The Office or Parks and Rec, with its guerilla documentary shooting style and deadpan commentary. And all of the political issues being made fun of in 1988 are still very relevant today. The modern election process tends to force candidates to become absurd caricatures of themselves.

       The downside of Tanner 88 is that it only ran for one season. We should have more shows depicting the saga involved with getting someone to the Oval Office. Too often we have a tendency to hide the blood, sweat, and tears that went into major accomplishments; the 110 pound starlet feigning an aversion to the gym and boasting a diet heavy in pizza.  The Dean’s List Johns Hopkins student self-consciously downplaying hours spent in the library before acing a midterm exam.

       Sometimes in life, as in presidential campaigns, you have to spend some time in the trenches in order to win the war. And if you can’t laugh at yourself while you’re doing it, well then, I think I’ve got some House of Cards episodes left on my DVR with your name on them.

 

The Post 9/11 Homeland (Taylor)

    It has been over twelve years since the towers fell on 9/11. But while the consequences of that terrible day have profoundly permeated and altered the American psyche, they have yet to be satisfyingly addressed by one of our most prominent cultural barometers: the television series. That is, until Showtime’s hour-long drama Homeland aired in 2011.

            Homeland takes place ten years post 9/11. It centers on Carrie Mathison, a young but brilliant CIA operative living with bipolar disorder and an acute sense of guilt over her failure to prevent the attack. Her investigations primarily concern Sgt. Nicholas Brody, a POW held captive for eight years in Iraq by members of Al Qaeda.  Carrie and her mentor, agent Saul Berenson, fear that Brody has been turned into an anti-American terrorist during his time in captivity.

            In my opinion, this show finds tremendous strength in its depiction of post 9/11 consciousness and the very real psychological strains put on those who are, in some way or another, living through the war on terror.  (Which, unfortunately, is everyone.)

            During the first season, Sgt. Brody struggles to integrate himself into family life after spending eight years in a dark hole as a prisoner of war. This storyline brings to light a problem that oftentimes is swept under the rug. Namely that for many soldiers, their most difficult battle begins once the war is over. The VA estimates that in America, a veteran dies of suicide every eighty minutes. Many more veterans live out the remainder of their lives in painful psychological turmoil, as Sgt. Brody does on Homeland. Tragically, the families who’ve endured the horror of having their loved ones returned home from a warzone in a box are not always the only ones who lose a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a child to war.

            Another poignant thematic pillar of Homeland is the depiction of America as a surveillance state. In this aspect, Homeland has been all but clairvoyant in its virtual prediction of the Edward Snowden/NSA revelations. The plot points and tone of the show do much to capture the current national dialogue of privacy rights and the moral ambiguities associated with domestic spying in the interest of “homeland security.” In fact, Carrie’s incredibly invasive surveillance of the Brody family induces borderline repulsion as she secretly watches his most private encounters, from a first dinner at home with children who barely know him, to several failed attempts at making love to his wife. The writers have successfully captured the complexity of this very real dilemma by at once evoking feelings of indignation and paranoia, while also causing viewers to root for Carrie’s continued surveillance so that the perceived “bad guy” might be caught.

    However, for all of Homeland’s successes, there are a growing number of unanswered questions, absurd plot twists, and factual errors that should be cleaned up in the writers room in anticipation of the upcoming fourth season. First of all, who exactly is Carrie, within the construct of her supposed job at the CIA? Homeland has taken a liberty that many spy shows and movies have taken before it, blending together the role of a hands-on operative and the role of a desk analyst in order to speed up the action. This combination isn’t necessarily a problem. Combining the position of operative and analyst makes for more interesting television, and I’m sure there are some real-life examples of jack-of-all-trades agency employees. But going into the second season, if the writers were to pare down her position, it might help to give the runaway train-like plot some much needed structure and focus. If she’s going to be an operative, then send her to Turkey, eliminate some of the emotional drama that has been clogging up the plot in the last season and a half, and let her (and the rest of us) see some action in a dynamic foreign sphere.

    Furthermore, I think the biggest overall failure of Homeland based on the last three seasons is a lack of research during the creation/pilot phase of the show. There are some big factual errors that have unfortunately, been written into the very fabric of the show.

    First is the mental illness factor, and the rabbit hole of emotional drama (including dating a known terrorist) that it has led her down. Although it is a massive part of her character now, it is highly unlikely and borderline impossible that the CIA would allow someone with severe mental illness and a tendency to go rogue to handle such a sensitive case. In fact, she probably wouldn’t even have landed a job at Langley in the first place, because the CIA makes all prospective employees go through a mental health evaluation. Additionally, because the problem is taking place inside the country, it’s actually outside of the CIA’s jurisdiction and would likely be handled by the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. Perhaps these are subtle errors, but I think they take away from the credibility that such a topically relevant and thematically important show deserves. 

    Right now these problems are big ones, but they can absolutely be fixed. Moving Carrie’s activities to the CIA base in Turkey, (which was hinted at during the Season 3 finale,) would put the narrative back in the clear in terms of agency jurisdiction. And although mental illness has been written into her character already, taking away some of Carrie’s erratic behavior and emotional drama would seriously help restore Homeland’s initial credibility. Ironically, it seems as though the writers of Homeland may not be following some of the CIA’s cardinal rules: stay focused, do your research and don’t start dating known terrorists. 

Political Satire and Veep (Taylor)

   

     It’s spring break here at Hopkins, so I’ve decided to lighten up with a little bit of political satire in the form of Veep, an HBO half hour comedy series created by Armando Iannucci and inspired by his previous political satire, the British comedy show, In The Thick of It.

    Veep, which premiered in April, 2012 with an eight-episode first season, followed by a ten- episode second season, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, a harried and blisteringly foul-mouthed fictional Vice President of the United States. Veep has garnered lots of acclaim for its humorously critical take on the current state of affairs in our nation’s capitol, receiving several Screen Actors Guild and Critics' Choice awards as well as two Emmy nominations.

    One of the first smart observations made by the show is that in politics, there is no real work-life balance. The lion’s share of scenes take place in Meyer’s offices, and staff members must lie and exaggerate their way into time off.  Her Director of Communications, Mike McLintock, lies about having a dog in order to go home at a reasonable hour every day and even keeps a fake photo of the dog in his wallet as “proof.”

    The show has also made a humorous habit out of lampooning the absurdity of lobby interests and politicians’ tendencies to grovel for approval from big business leaders. During the pilot episode, the Veep finds herself in a hilarious pickle involving her motion to replace plastic utensils with eco-friendly cornstarch ones in all federal buildings. Before she can implement the utensil shift, the “plastics lobby” catches wind of it and chaos ensues. Support for Meyer’s initiative evaporates, and seconds before she is meant to give a speech on her cornstarch aspirations, she receives an unofficial gag-order from the White House.

    “We can’t talk about utensils. Utensils are politicized,” McLintock says urgently.

    “That’s the entire speech, O.K.?” Meyer says frantically, “What’s left here? I have ‘Hello,’ and I have…prepositions.”

    As a Hopkins student, I would be remiss if I didn’t also highlight another episode during the first season, when Vice President Meyer participates in a publicity outing at a frozen yogurt store in order to meet and mingle with ordinary people and show her support for local business owners (with a reporter and photographer present, of course.) The shooting location of the D.C. frozen yogurt store is none other than Dominion Ice Cream on North Charles Street in Baltimore, across from Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus. The  Charles Commons Dormitory can be seen in the background of many shots. Much of this episode is concerned with her staff members deciding what flavor of frozen yogurt the Veep should eat in order to convey the right message. They conclude that mint chocolate chip conveys freshness, trust and traditional values, while a swirled flavor promotes racial diversity and willingness to cross the aisle.

    Other jokes include an ongoing off-camera presence of the President as a constant obstacle. During every single episode, Meyer’s enters her office and optimistically asks her staff if the President has called. The answer is always no. During another episode, Vice President Meyer and her college-aged daughter decide to adopt a dog, but are thwarted when the President’s staff hears about it, because the FLOTUS has, herself planned to adopt a dog.

    “The first dog, or FDOTUS, has been planned for weeks. We certainly can’t have your canine overshadowing the FDOTUS,” says Jonah, White House liaison to the Vice President.

    Overall, Veep is an enjoyable watch, with enough satisfying one-liners and guilty-pleasure crudity to hold attention. It is not, however, the kind of satire that satisfies on an emotional level. Truly great satire is meant to vindicate; to speak truth to power and to redden the cheeks of establishment. It’s humor, to be sure, but it’s humor grounded in realism, intelligence, and in the best cases, indignation and rage. Ricky Gervais did it with The Office, Tina Fey did it with 30 Rock, and Stephen Colbert continues to do it on The Colbert Report. So what’s falling short with Veep?

    It pokes fun at the bureaucratic political process, highlights the historical impotency of the Vice Presidency, and uses the basic ineptitude of politicians as a springboard for plot, but it is  a political satire lacking  heart and teeth. The problem with Veep is that it’s lightheartedly cynical when it needs to be angry. But it’s spring break, so this week let’s take a break from being angry, and lighten up with Veep.

    The 3^rd season of Veep is set to premier on April 6^th, with the tagline, “Boldly running for president. Proudly standing for everything.”

 

It's Not, But It Can Be (Taylor)

The Newsroom is not the best show on television, but it can be.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom depicts the lives of journalists at a fictional major news outlet called Atlantis Cable News, (ACN). Most episodes center around the production of its flagship broadcast, News Night, hosted by republican pundit Will McAvoy.

I watched both seasons in two days and absolutely loved it, but found that critics hated it.The New Yorker said it was “artificially intelligent.” Huffington Post and Salon said that the female characters are ditsy, hysterical, and borderline sexist. The Daily Beast said the plot was too “soapy.” I was shocked. But upon reflection, all of those criticisms seemed pretty accurate. Taking a second look, I realized that The Newsroom is a compelling hot mess, with the compelling aspect being the spot-on commentary on the changing, flawed, and endangered state of American journalism.

The Newsroom finds its strength and voice in making poignant observations about how party politics, snark, ire, spin and innuendo have taken the place of actual news on cable television. The unfortunate reality of news today is that it’s rare to flip to a cable news channel and find anything other than a flashy arena for the right and left to duke it out in the obvious interest of ratings and party loyalties.

The Newsroom is both a cautionary tale and an idealistic fantasy about the state of the industry, and what it could become if anchors, producers and network heads refused to be enslaved by ratings, in bed with advertisers and on the leash of “corporate.”

The first episode opens with popular news anchor Will McAvoy participating in a Journalism School panel and responding to a student question, “Why is America the greatest country in the world?” He answers with a rousing stream of conscience. “We used to be, but we’re not anymore.” He recalls America’s history of major news events illustrating, in his opinion, how far we’ve fallen in science,  education,  technology,  political ideology, and ultimately, the world. Meanwhile in the back of the auditorium, Will’s executive producer and love interest MacKenzie McHale is holding up cue cards that read, “It’s Not. But It Can Be,” in response to the student’s question. It’s a provocative bit of television, and a running start out of the gate for the hour-long show.

Sorkin has found smart and compelling ways to address other major issues with the media industry through the lens of News Night plotlines. He takes on sensationalism, and the practice of using “tragedy porn” such as the Casey Anthony trial as viewer bait to spike ratings.

The Newsroom takes on the issue of party-politics, portraying “liberal” and “conservative” news networks as the dangerous slippery slopes that they are. Will McAvoy is known as a conservative republican anchor, so when he takes on the Tea Party, he is chastised by a network executive who fears that ACN’s republican viewership will not want to hear any anti-right sentiment. I think this storyline accurately points out the inherent problem of networks catering to the perceived sensibilities of their viewers, while viewers form sensibilities based on what they’re watching on TV, making for a stagnant and vicious cycle of political disinformation.

In one episode, Will loses the chance to host a republican debate because party leaders feel as though he will be too harsh on candidates. This brings up issues of whether or not journalists are still able to be working members of the 4^th estate, or whether party politics and network interests have reduced news anchors and reporters to the position of right or left lapdogs. Additionally, The Newsroom addresses the fact that the Internet has made the necessary timeline for breaking news much faster, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. 

Finally, and perhaps most compellingly, The Newsroom makes the case for reporters being advocates for, and allies of, the viewers, the readers and the voters, rather than the politicians, the executives and the moneymen. In the first season, an executive explains why Will makes a good anchor. He says, “He was a prosecutor. Before he was an anchor, before he was a reporter, before he was a speechwriter, he was a prosecutor. He graduated college at 19, law school at 21, and signed up for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office where he racked up a 94% conviction record. And the newsroom turned into a courtroom, because I made the decision that American voters need a fucking lawyer.”

I hope that for the 3^rd and final season of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin ignores all of the bad reviews, the noise, and the network pressure and does what his characters have been trying to do for two seasons already: create a show that’s worthy of being called the best. 

The Sexual Politics of Borgen and Commander In Chief (Taylor)

By now, political tv shows have covered it all. A renaissance of political television has touched on subjects like media culture, race relations, partisanship and globalization. But there is one subject that remains woefully underrepresented in the fictional world of the American White House: that is, the fairer sex as the leader of the free world.

  I suppose it makes sense that the glass ceiling of real life, present day political power structure is naturally reflected in those of their on-screen female character counterparts. Indeed, America remains one of the final democratic countries in the world without a single female leader to boast of. And in the case of both real life politics and television, that isn’t to say we haven’t tried.

 In 1985, ABC dipped their toe into feminist waters with a 30-minute sitcom called Hail to the Chief. The show, cancelled after 7 episodes, depicted a woman’s attempt at balancing the demands of the presidency with the obligations of family life. ABC made a second attempt in 2005, with an hour-long drama titled Commander In Chief.

 Commander In Chief focused on the administration of Mackenzie Allen, where   Allen ascends to the Presidency after the sitting president dies due to a cerebral aneurysm. The show dealt with issues of sexism in politics, and explored the likely triumphs and pitfalls of a woman undertaking the presidency. However, despite its best efforts, Commander In Chief fell flat with both critics and audiences and was also cancelled after just one season.  

 Since then, no American television network has taken on the main premise of a female president. Interestingly however, we can look to Europe and our friends in Denmark to fill this thematic void.  Enter Borgen.

 Borgen is a Danish one-hour drama series that tells the story of charismatic politician Birgitte Nyborg who unexpectedly becomes the first female Prime Minister of Denmark.

 Ostensibly, Borgen and Commander in Chief contain many similarities in premise. Like CIC and its protagonist President Mackenzie Allen, Borgen navigates the world of coalition politics wherein Birgitte copes with the pressures and demands of life in office as a woman. Both protagonists superimpose a strong maternal image, each having a family that is swept along on the wild ride created by the often-impossible conflicts between the roles of mother, wife, and World Leader. Both “First Gentlemen,” Rod Calloway (CIC), and Phillip Christensen (Borgen) are intelligent and capable former career men who struggle to adjust to the role of stay-at-home parent. Both Mackenzie and Birgitte’s children struggle to adjust to their new roles as the children of chronically occupied, famous, politically powerful moms.  

 However, despite all of these plot similarities, there is one significant difference between the two shows: Borgen has enjoyed massive success, winning many awards, enjoying a large viewership, and becoming a hit in both Denmark and the UK, while CIC has not.

 So what has elevated Borgen to critical acclaim and commercial success, leaving Commander in Chief in the dust? It may be that European sentiments and acceptance toward women in positions of power are different from those in the US, but I personally think it all comes down to the writing. In fact, Denmark’s first female Prime Minister was elected in 2011, two seasons into Borgen. Compared to Borgen’s complex depiction of politics and female leadership, the problem is that CIC seems to fall flat.

 The main focus on CIC is not the presidency, but rather the effect that it has on a family. And although this could be a valid angle to take, the simplistic characters- the emasculated “First Gentleman” father, the sullen teenagers, the wide-eyed ten-year old- seem gimmicky against the backdrop of a shallow and half-baked political landscape. Furthermore, CIC’s political oversimplification lessens both the challenges, and the possible solutions and outcomes, giving viewers a less cathartic final payoff.

 Another possible issue with CIC is its lack of realistic villains. Mackenzie Allen’s main antagonist is meant to be Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton.  From the outset, Templeton’s character, a sexist caricature, is reprehensible beyond belief. Eighteen minutes into the pilot, he makes a menopause joke, and by the end of the first episode, he says,  

“She’s a woman. And it’s so easy to deal with women once you remember that they aren’t men.”

I worry that the inclusion of these borderline cartoonish bad guys in a groundbreaking show about the first woman president risks propagating the caricature; generalizing, and stereotyping the subject matter as a whole.

 In sharp contrast to CIC, Borgen’s success seems related to the more serious depiction of Brigitte and the rest of the characters as anything but caricature cartoons. Everyone has their attributes and flaws, including Birgitte, who is prone to making mistakes and needing advice from her staff members, who are mostly men. It’s a teamwork setup, instead of CIC’s us against them scenario that would never play out in real world politics.

The writers also take great care toward not over acknowledging the obviousness that their protagonist is a female prime minister, to the show’s benefit.

Another strength of Borgen is that it refuses to be a one trick pony. During the pilot, the main plot point is that the first female Prime Minister has been elected to Denmark. It is acknowledged as groundbreaking, but isn’t fetishized or treated with too much overt attention.

When it is referenced, it is done so in a subtle way; quietly referencing the pressures put on females in any walk of life, not just the Prime Ministry. As Birgitte prepares for a television interview for example, she becomes distressed because she has gained too much weight due to the stress of the election and none of her clothes fit.

 Gradually, the subject matter rises above the basic novelty of a female prime minister, and the show blossoms into a complex landscape of politics, compromise, ambition, family values, and yes, even feminism. Another main character that helps to accomplish this development is Katrine Fønsmark, a beautiful young news anchor in Denmark. As the episodes progress, Birgitte and Katrine are set up as polar characters in both career moves and life decisions. Early in the first season, we see Katrine go through an abortion because she feels too much pressure to pursue her career; while Birgitte does everything she possibly can to put her family first despite her new role in Denmark. By the end of the first season, Birgitte has made a long list of personal compromises while Katrine quits her job in order to maintain journalistic integrity and have a life she is proud of.

 During the last episode of season 1, Kasper is shown jogging around Borgen while he listens to Kennedy’s inaugural address, known for the line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He is looking to this for inspiration for a speech he is writing for Birgitte. The choice of the Kennedy inaugural address is of course ironic. On the cusp of divorce and the deterioration of her family, Birgitte has done everything for Denmark.

But I think this choice of speech is symbolic on another level as well. Later on in the episode, Kasper is talking a secretary through the 3-stage rocket that is Kennedy’s repeated use of the phrase, “Ask not…” He explains that the rhythm and repetition make you feel something not just in your head, but also in your gut and your heart too.

And I believe that is where Borgen finds success. It is a rocket among airplanes; dynamic, complex, emotional, and ultimately explosive. It is the kind of political television that America needs, and hopefully soon we’ll get it. American rights to the series were purchased by NBC in 2011, and Borgen creator Adam Price told the Press Association that “It’s in consideration at HBO and it’s actually BBC Worldwide who is going to produce it.”

Although I look forward to America’s answer to Borgen, I am concerned that already, the remake has fallen into the old pratfalls of America’s former attempts at depicting the female president.

“It will be the story of a political widow,” Price told the Daily Telegraph of its Anglo-Saxon remake, “She was married to a politician who dies, and it is her story of trying to follow in his footsteps.”

To this I would caution that females in politics and television, as well as the viewers at home, are tired of women following in the footsteps of shoes that likely do not fit them. The time has come for them to lead.

 

 

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde Go To Washington- Idealism and Cynicism in Politics, The West Wing and House of Cards (Taylor)

    I was watching the State of the Union on Tuesday night and got to thinking, what is it about politics that evokes the best and worst in humanity? No other human endeavor produces more greed, ire, and dishonesty, but also compassion, dedication, and hope for the future. Politics in America represent the quintessential Jekyll and Hyde paradox.

    Few things portray and contrast this paradox more readily than two popular and oppositely oriented political dramas: Aaron Sorkin’s network juggernaut The West Wing (1999- 2006), and Beau Willimon’s new Netflix series House of Cards.

    The West Wing takes place primarily within the White House and depicts the fictional Democratic Presidency of Josiah Bartlett and his senior staff members as they navigate the complicated world of political crises and disputes, public opinion, ethical dilemmas, and personal dramas.

     During each episode, the characters, (along with viewers at home) are presented with moral dilemmas relating to pressing contemporary domestic and world issues.  During the hour, the fearless leader and his hardworking staff think through these difficult problems  using facts, moral code, analysis, and gut-level intuition, only to emerge successfully from each challenge with their moral integrity intact. 

    The West Wing’s liberally idealistic White House is a chalice of heroism, morality, intelligence, and sense of duty. The message, slightly left of center in reality, was ostensibly unpartisan, whereby episode after episode, President Bartlett and his senior staff members considered all sides of an issue, both right and left, before making a decision.  When partisan divides were addressed in Sorkin’s rose tinted White House, it was with an endearing sense of transparency.  In a scene from season one of TWW, Donna Moss, assistant to deputy White House chief of staff Josh Lyman, asks why the President won’t return a budget surplus back to constituents. She says that she wants to buy a DVD player. She promises to buy American. Josh lets her know in no uncertain terms that it’s never going to happen. Why?

 “We don’t trust you,” Josh says.

“Why not?” Donna asks.

“We’re Democrats,” he replies. “You shouldn’t have voted for us.”

    Seven years later with House of Cards, we are presented with an entirely different depiction of the inner-workings of DC power circles. Narrated by House Majority Whip and South Carolina congressman Francis Underwood, the show revolves around the shady congressman, his cold-as-ice wife Claire, and an ambitious, cutthroat, up and coming young reporter name Zoe Barnes. Each of the main characters is primarily concerned with climbing the DC power ladder at the expense of everyone around them.

     It is clear that HOC lacks the warm and alluring appeal of the West Wing from the outset. The first episode begins with a cold opening, darkness, and the visceral sound of a dog being hit by a car. Underwood runs out of his DC brownstone, into the street where the injured dog lies. Crouching over the dog, he addresses the camera directly.

“Moments like this require someone who will act,” he says as he begins to suffocate the dog, “someone to do the unpleasant thing. The necessary thing,”

 The dog dies.

“There. No more pain.” Underwood says. He turns around and walks back into the house. This is just a taste of the utilitarian ruthlessness to come from Congressman Underwood.

    Another strong contrast between House of Cards and the West Wing is in HOC's harsh depiction of the media. In TWW, the press is largely portrayed in terms of in-house reporters who have personal and positive relationships with senior staff members, whereas the HOC media world cuts a more isolated, dissident figure within the offices of fictional newspaper the Washington Herald. Yellow fluorescent lighting casts harshly onto tired looking, rumpled reporters as they fight among themselves and vie for a leg up on their own power ladder.

    Finally, while patriarchal figure President Bartlett is revered for his age and wisdom, HOC seems to touch on clashing themes of aging and irrelevance. During an early episode in the first season, Claire finds herself ordering a coffee from an older woman who cannot operate the electronic cash register. Claire displays mild disgust as a younger woman steps in to take over.

    Later in the same episode, an insane man tries to storm the congressional office building, and police handcuff him to a light post. The man begins to scream in frustration. Exiting the building, Frank Underwood notices the man and approaches, crouching in front of him on the ground. Frank says, “Nobody can hear you. Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this.”

    The man begins to cry, perhaps overwhelmed by the futility of his actions. The message seems to be that individuals don’t actually have a voice in the greater scheme of human existence. That is…unless they occupy a desk on Capital Hill.

     So, despite all of this political doom and gloom, why does watching HOC seem like such a cathartic, (albeit cynical) experience?

    In a show-to-show comparison, the contrast appears to be between the idealistic greater good verses the cynical personal agenda. Optimistically, we all want to imagine that our government is being driven by the Lincoln ideal , “of the people, by the people, for the people”. 

      Honestly, I am a bit of a cynic, but even I find myself searching for hope in politics every once in a while. In fact, last Tuesday during the State of the Union, something that President Obama said got me a little teary-eyed: 

 “The America we want for our kids – a rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us – none of it is easy. But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow – I know it’s within our reach.

Believe it.”

      Seemingly ripped from the pages of a Sorkin script, our President had me, hook, line and sinker. But then the next day I woke up to seemingly scathing fact-checking reports from AP, HuffPost…you name it.

 “False promises!”

 “Stretching the facts!”

“Not without support from congress!”

“No real action!”

 Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde again.

     Ultimately, the historical success of the idealistically minded drama The West Wing seems to indicate that there are still Americans who want to believe in the political idealism of a rising utopian America. 

    However, the growing popularity of Willimon’s political dystopia, House Of Cards seems to represent the other, more cynical portion of America’s constituents, who would perhaps answer Obama’s plea for faith with  “Mr. President, we will believe it…when we see it.”  Too much of our day to day reality seems to align with House of Cards, and much less with The West Wing.

 

                                                                                                              

The Sovereignty of Technology and Mankind’s Oppression in Gen Urobuchi’s Psycho-Pass (Yasmine)

   Imagine a world where your thoughts and emotions were no longer your own under the watchful eye of a tyrannical system—a world in which the state of your mental health could be enough to label you a criminal for life. Such is the world illustrated in the anime crime-thriller TV series Psycho-Pass. In this futuristic setting crime prevention has become more heavy-handed and exact with the advancement of a technological system called Sybil, a super-computer that acts as judge and executioner for people who demonstrate the psychological potential for crime. To appease the machine’s algorithm, citizens anxiously groom their personalities, avoiding stress and negative experiences—essentially becoming slaves to the oppressive technology. Men and women in the Criminal Investigation Bureau (WPSCIB), tasked with protecting the safety of civilians, regard the system like an omnipotent god, obliging the Sibyl System’s judgment even when it means the incarceration or annihilation of civilians who have not yet committed a crime but display a high criminal potential. Instead of merely serving as a tool to maintain peace and promote national wellness the technology’s authority supersedes human institutions of law, undermines the human experience, and denies the potential for growth.

    The prevalence and power of technology makes itself evident when we first become acquainted with the high-tech Japanese city. With a gritty noir style the opening scene of episode one paints a bleak picture of the nighttime cityscape with high contrast lighting and cuts to ominous back alleys. An areal view reveals a mass of moving cars followed by a shot of robot drones monitoring the streets for potential criminals. By contrast, the initial lack of human presence illustrates the dominance of technology. When crowds of people eventually do appear huddled around a crime scene, a downpour of rain obscures their facial expressions conveying a lack of individuality. Hiding behind holograms of large child-faced dolls, the security drones display their authority, successfully blocking the crowd away from the crime scene. The line of robots forming a barrier in front of the unorganized crowd of dazed humans denotes the efficiency and repressive nature of the robots while also signifying the powerlessness of the people who comply with the robots’ commands. The composition demonstrates that like caged cattle the people are fenced in, repressed as they are pushed to the edge of the frame by the holograms towering over them. The arrival of the protagonist and newly appointed Crime Investigator, Akane Tsunemori further elucidates this point as she rushes into the scene before bowing to the robot—an apology as well as a sign of submission. In the absence of a legal system, Sybil reigns supreme.

    As the show progresses, it becomes clear that in order to maintain a safe and ideal society the officers of the law have become tools of technology, relinquishing their own judgment in favor of the Sybil System's black and white system of justice. If the computer judges someone to be a latent criminal, no matter how upstanding their lives, it orders the removal of that individual from society by either lethal or non-lethal means.  The Sybil System exacts this power through Enforcers, latent criminals forced to apprehend other latent criminals, and Investigators like Tsunemori who keep the Enforcers in check. Arriving to the crime scene in a paddy wagon and kept on a tight leash like prisoners, the Enforcers are regarded as subhuman and “bankrupt of moral character” despite appearing normal—a consequence of the Sybil computer’s tyranny.

 

The Dominator--Weapon of The Sybil System from "Psycho-Pass"

 The computer demonstrates a lack of moral bias that although standardized, can hardly be called just. Having outlawed real guns and deeming human beings (even police officers) too unpredictable and irrational, the Sybil System leaves no room for human error. Instead Enforcers and Investigators wield weapons called Dominators, which have a direct connection to the Sibyl system and only fire when the Sybil system decides an individual is a threat. As its name suggests, the Dominator denotes technology’s dominion over human willpower, rationality, and choice. It becomes apparent that the Sybil system substitutes cold logic for human compassion when the Dominator decides a rape victim’s crime coefficient is a potential threat, ordering Tsunemori and her colleagues to kill the woman in the same way they killed her attacker. Tsunemori, the most empathetic character in the series, appears trapped in a tight frame, which restricts her movement as she watches her peers mindlessly obey Sibyl’s commands. While the police officers can choose whether or not to pull the trigger, not doing so is a violation of societal norms and the nature of their work, and therefore a criminal offense. Consequently, the inability to decide the fate of those they aim to protect and the stigma against utilizing their own moral judgment hinders the Crime Investigation Bureau from exacting justice. As the series progresses Tsunemori must reconcile her compassion and earnest desire to protect innocent lives with a system she knows is a necessary evil.  

 

Related articles

A world without crime, stress, freewill or dream: discussion and review of Psycho-Pass

Psycho-Pass: dystopian contradictions

Attack On Titan: The Preservation and Destruction of Social Order (Yasmine)

A society is typically formed by a group of individuals interconnected by shared values, norms, and culture.  Members of a society maintain social order by reinforcing established customs to keep its members in check and ensure stability.  In the emotionally charged Japanese anime, Attack on Titan, humanity struggles to keep its society in tact as humanoid giants called Titans relentlessly devour humans, forcing mankind to hide behind fifty-meter walls to save themselves from extinction. In the beginning of the series, the idealistic protagonist, Eren Yeager dreams of a free life outside the walls, contradicting the mores of his society which prefers a life of containment to certain death.  The barriers which humans have erected to escape annihilation become both a sanctuary and a prison for the kingdom, signifying society’s propensity toward social constraint and fear of that which disrupts social order.

The three walls: Wall Maria, Rose, and Sina exemplify the way in which societies rely on social structure for stability and containment of its members. The story’s narrator explains that since its creation not a single Titan has been able to infiltrate Wall Maria, thus inspiring social tranquility.  With its immense height and enduring structure made of solid stone, the one-hundred-year-old wall epitomizes permanence and security. An aerial view of the Zhiganshina District enclosed in Wall Maria reveals a somewhat medieval society with an organized collection of homes and markets.  The carefree social interactions amongst the townspeople, the trading of goods in the market, presence of families, children playing, and a laid back police force give evidence to the sense of peace and stability humanity experiences within the walls.  In contrast, the outside world and the Titans who rampage in it are equated with chaos and cultural genocide.

The Titans’ place on the fringe of society, their incomprehensibly monstrous behavior, as well as their unorthodox appearance makes them the antithesis of civilization and societal control. Though the Titans resemble bipedal humanoids, their gargantuan size, nudity, and deformity immediately sets them apart from the civilized humans inside the walls. Despite shambling about aimlessly in groups, the Titans do not conform to any preconception of a uniformly functioning community. The Titans’ zeal for devouring people and wiping out humanity for no discernable reason makes them a hideous blight on human progress and a potential disruption of social order. Since Titans do not need to consume people to sustain their own existence, humanity assumes the Titans’ singular motivation is the eradication of human life and culture. With Titans possessing neither a complex language system, nor a means of governing themselves their actions are unpredictable and symbolically anarchistic. In this sense Titans are more than just a threat to human lives; the terror they instill jeopardizes the social glue that keeps society from falling apart.  The Titans’ resemblance to humans makes their murderous actions more disturbing, suggesting that without social control and stability the illusion of peace would falter and humanity would succumb to an existence of endless conflict and violence amongst its own members. To spare society from the Titans’ negative influence, humanity heavily guards what is left of its customs, placing an exaggerated emphasis on the necessity for containment within the walls to keep curious members from the lawless world beyond.

Although the three walls surrounding this human civilization safeguard the communities from the uncivilized outside world, they also imprison them, limiting their perceptions. The dynamics of the insular kingdom demonstrate how the walls are heavily embedded within the social structure of humanity’s sequestered survivors. A priest travels the districts of Wall Rose shouting praises and personifying the wall as though it were a savior and a god, exhibiting the wall’s influence on the citizens’ religious and cultural life. It becomes evident that any mention of life beyond the wall is considered culturally taboo when Eren’s friend Armin expresses a desire for humanity to explore territories outside the wall and is consequently harassed by a group who accuses him of heresy. This shaming ritual and other methods of social correction: such as ridicule and shunning perpetuate an isolationist mentality, a fear of change, and a dangerously irrational optimism. As Eren says, humanity’s fear of the outside world has made it like “ignorant cattle” merely “surviving” but unable to live or control the terms of its existence.  Like cattle the inhabitants of Wall Maria were unprepared for the slaughter.

The sudden appearance of the first 60-meter “Colossal Titan” looming menacingly over the wall literally paralyzes society, as citizens of Wall Maria stand still and helpless beneath the Titan’s powerful gaze.  With a mighty kick, the Colossal Titan breaks the barrier, instantly mangling the carefully constructed society. As citizens scramble to escape the horde of Titans, homes, families, and social order are destroyed as Wall Maria crumbles. This indicates humanity's lack of control, the inevitability of change, and society’s need to adapt to it. Once again humans must flee the Titans; the “humiliation of being kept in a cage” intensifies as they retreat to the more confining inner walls, desperately seeking structure which, like Wall Maria, has fallen apart almost beyond repair. In order to save themselves, the people must learn to accept and face the threat of the Titans head on if they ever hope to reclaim what they have lost. 

Defiance - An Adventure in Transmedia (Sophie)

Transmedia, specifically transmedia storytelling is the art of telling a single story or exploring a single world across different media. It is closely associated with the idea of a story world, a more abstract concept referring to a single narrative world that exists across different works of narrative art.

 

In the summer of 2011, Syfy announced an upcoming transmedia collaboration with gaming company Trion Worlds. The result is a two-part project that premiered this year in April with a long-form TV science-fiction political action drama and a corresponding multi-platform MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game).

 

    This is the background of the world they share. In the year 2046, arks carrying survivors of a dying alien solar system carrying an entire ecosystem arrive on Earth, causing war and a complete restructuring of the planet’s surface, society, and biosphere. The show takes place after this, in a town called Defiance, following the myriad political and social struggles resulting from the mix of alien and human cultures and agendas. To some degree, the show relies on tried-and-true plot tropes, such as Romeo and Juliet-style love stories, cultural and spiritual tensions, and classic science fiction elements like alien-on-alien battles, spacecrafts, blue glowy things, and futuristic energy weapons which account for most of Syfy’s budget on the show.

 

    The goal of the project was to extensively link the shared world of the game and the show. They take place in the same area at the same time, and the two branches of the project promise future crossovers, ranging from the ability of the player’s character in the game to appear in the show to large scale players’ actions influencing the show’s narrative future. At the moment, however, the crossover is limited to similar storylines and characters and timed missions in the game that must be completed by the next episode’s airing. The two development teams both made concessions for such a project to become a reality. While, for example, the gaming team thought the alien races known as “Voltan” should bring with them flying car technology, Syfy’s television crew told them that was right-out too expensive.

 

    Meanwhile, Syfy’s conceptual team thought horses or similar pack animals would fit the setting. The logistical team for the video game informed them that pack animals interfere with combat in games like the one they were designing. I admit to having not played the game, but I do have exposure to both television and games of this genre – and the mutual influence is clear.

 

    The TV show brings several well-recognized actors, including Grant Bowler, (known for his previous work in Ugly Betty and True Blood,) and Julie Benz, from (Angel and Dexter). Of course, the television actors served as the live models for their digital doubles in the game. The actors, along with the visual decisions for the various races in the world, had to be decided on several years in advance than they would have been for a typical science fiction show for like this without a collaborating video game team. On the other hand, while video games can relatively easily create very non-human aliens, a TV show has more limitations, meaning Defiance’s aliens look remarkably human. The collaboration has a kind of lowest common denominator effect, where both media have to take into account the limitations of the other.

 

However, transmedia collaboration is not without its strengths. Despite several obvious archetypes and standard genre elements, the extensive world-building is obvious from the very first episode. Because the show is free to tell for of its mythology in the setting of the game, the world feels like it has even more depth. There are two complete languages for the show and game, constructed by David J. Peterson, who also worked on Dothraki, the constructed language from Game of Thrones. Though we don’t see much of some of the alien races, as not all are represented in the main cast, each has distinctive cultural characteristics, evident in their speech patterns, dress, and attitudes, even in minor roles.

 

The races are also original in that the cultures seem to have been built from the ground up, rather than borrowed from Earth cultures and pasted onto alien species, a welcome relief to a veteran viewer of the genre (though some play it a little close at times).

    The show promises a world full of conflict and tensions, some which are more television arc-worthy, others of which could easily permeate throughout the show and game worlds (such as racial tension and environmental dangers). The show has recently been renewed for a second season, hopefully bringing the promised crossovers closer to reality.

Once Upon a Time: Disney for the Ones Who Grew Up (Sophie)

I am not often a fan of giant media conglomerations, but for ABC's Once Upon a Time, I have to make an exception. The ABC network is owned by the Disney Corporation, and never has this relationship worked out better for the prime time viewer. The show was billed as a fantasy-drama based on classical fairy tales, but it takes much of it's core characters from Disney's animated features and borrows from them to an extent that would be difficult for anyone forced to navigate the "enchanted forest" that is Disney copyright law. The show is by no means made for children, and is often violent and heartbreaking. Still, it is mindful of the themes of the fairy tales (and is some cases Victorian children's stories or other story classics) it is based on. Family, the battle of good verses evil, and true love are not only paramount thematic issues, but actual forces of power, both magically and when enacted through character motivation. By keeping this fairy tale grounding, the show is free to morph the content and characters, enhance the nuance, and add complications, still while maintaining something that feels authentic at least to the versions of these stories we as viewers are most familiar with.

The result to anyone that grew up or raised children in the age of the Disney Renaissance (Late 1980's to 2000) is a show that seems like an updated, more mature version of these now classic animated films. Obviously, some things are different because of format - a television show demands a cast that is more interconnected and recurring than discrete films. It demands a new twist, a mystery or conflict that bridges the various individual stories and drives the characters, and thus the show, forward in a new way. The show accomplishes this in the form of a new curse put forward by the Evil Queen (from Snow White) to transport all the fairy tale characters to our world, oblivious to who they are, forced to live as she dictates: without their "happy endings." As the main narrative unfurls from this plot point, the show also reveals the actions of the past, in the realm of fairy tales. These stories, are focused on individual sets of characters and are paired up with relevant events in the forward flowing plot, so they are told out of order. Slowly, as the show progresses, the past gets woven together and drops hints as to the events of the future.

In this, the show succeeds wonderfully. The balance between hints that pay off and misdirections, for those readers bouncing theories around in their head, is very satisfying. The show never feels like it is fooling with you just for the sake of convolution, nor does it come off as predictable and boring. Similarly, the show doesn't become a detective puzzle that forces the viewer into hunting for clues, for those viewers who are content in letting the mysteries unfold without trying to guess which well known character might show up and what role they might play, or what betrayal or alliance might come to light next. The overall plotting, and the way the various fantasy stories interweave is done elegantly.

Unfortunately, the writing that is so stellar at the drawing board doesn't always translate into the dialogue. Some of the scenes fall into saccharine or maudlin sentiments, often at the same time sounding like generic and stilted dialogue for a scene of tension, revenge, passion, or some other standard story book fare. During scenes that take place in the fairy tale realm, the writers operate under the added complication of trying to use a kind of folktale mode of speaking. Fortunately, as season 2 progresses the kinks seem to be smoothing out.
 
Part of this fault may lie with the actors as well, especially because TV drama is a medium where the writer of each episode varies and the problems in the writing are much more apparent consistently in some characters than others. In television, the actor becomes more of a constant for the character than the writer, and they become vital in bringing the lines to life. In Once Upon a Time, it's the villains (primarily the Evil Queen Regina, played by Lana Parrilla, and Rumpelstiltskin, played by Robert Carlyle) that outshine their cast-mates.

But they have help from a story that does work hard to challenge the classical fairy tale ideas of evil, while maintaining that true good and true evil exist. It isn't moral ambiguity so much as a deep, pervading sense of sympathy. The show does not hesitate in illustrating true evil and then showing its tragic, sympathetic motivation. This is one way that Once Upon a Time updates its source material for an older audience. As adults, the flat evil-for-evil's sake villains that dominate the Disney canon don't pass for believable characters.

Another update of note the show made is to the roles and ideals of gender. Snow White is turned from the 1937 house-wife princess in distress to a survivalist-princess on the lam who rescues her prince as much as he rescues her. But it isn't just about de-feminizing her role. Snow, in her updated fairy-tale life and in her modern world is powerful as a mother, a lover, and a teacher as well as being one of the most capable fighters on the show. The core cast of Once Upon a Time is, in any given arc, at least half female, and though romance (what with the theme of true love) definitely plays a part in the show, it is far from the only driving motivation.

Briefly, no account of the show is complete without a comment on the aesthetic. As costume designer Eduardo Castro said “We didn’t want it to look like a Renaissance Faire, we wanted it to look like an Alexander McQueen show.” The costumes and styles, aside from certainly being grown up, provide insight into character, future plot points, and clues to morality and timeline. Above all else, they are exquisite.

For anyone familiar with Disney's Masterpiece Collection, Once Upon a Time is a wonderful chance to relive and re-meet childhood classics in a new, more age appropriate way. Even for those who haven't, it's a great way to get to know classic characters in an exciting, innovative way.

Evil, Inc. : The Institution in the Works of Joss Whedon (Sophie)

Before Joss Whedon's Avengers (2012) (reviewed here) rocketed him onto the main stage, he already had a core following of dedicated fans watching and analyzing his works. A lot of attention has been paid to the role of gender and language across Whedon's canon, but on the verge of a new series carrying his creator's seal, Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D., to premier on ABC, there is another repeated element that deserves examining. Since the beginning of Whedon's television career, his main characters have been pushed and pulled by shadowy unseen organizations, and pitted against not just individual villains, but also entire evil institutions.

Angel (1999-2004) begins by introducing viewers to Los Angeles' literal darker side. The show is set up as a combination of a detective noir and horror/fantasy. The head of this grim side of LA, though, isn't organized crime, it's a law firm, Wolfram & Hart, that specializes in defending and protecting the worst of the worst, which in this universe, means vampires, demons, and genocidal maniacs. Though each season of the show has it's own arc and main villain, the law firm remains as the central embodiment of evil throughout the show.

It's an obvious joke, a firm of powerful lawyers that keeps the rich richer and the poor underpowered (“Evil white folks really do have a Mecca! … Oh, I get it, I get it. You all can cater to the demon, cater to the dead man, but what about the black man!” - Charles Gunn, Episode 1.21 Blind Date). Here, they are taken to the extreme, with demonic clients and bloody rituals. But Whedon uses the idea of evil lawyers beyond the humorous gag. They become an examination of evil, (often seen as wild and animalistic or demonic) as it is enacted through something so proscribed and systematic as law. Angel, a hero on a quest for good and personal redemption, is forced to face a world where evil is institutional, and intrinsically engrained. At one point, the former head lawyer of the LA branch tells him as much:

    "Our firm has always been here in one form or another. The Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge—we were here the first time a caveman clubbed his neighbor and watched in fascination as his brains oozed out in the dirt. We're in the hearts and minds of every living human being [...] The world doesn't work in spite of evil, Angel. It works with us. It works because of us."(Holland Manners 2.15 Reprise)

Wolfram & Hart, then, is about how evil is part of civilization from the beginning, because it is part of us from the beginning. Evil lawyers are in power, but isn't evil always?

Whedon's next evil corporation never got a chance to come out of the shadows. Much of what viewers know about Firefly (2002) and Serenity's (the 2005 movie sequel) mega corporation of Blue Sun comes from piecing things together from the 14 episode show, interviews, and official merchandise. What is clear is that Blue Sun is everywhere. The logo is all over the show, on products from food and clothes, to more luxury goods, to transport vehicles. But the company reaches much farther. On some planets, they are an exclusive monopoly. The show reveals (or would, but didn't have a chance to get that far, and instead does so on DVD commentary) that they have even begun human experiments for their medical and military contracting subdivisions, which have led to horrifying results. There are clearly implied ties to the government and it is not clear whether Blue Sun and the Alliance Government are even actually separately functioning entities. Unlike Wolfram & Hart, which operates inside a system as it's necessary or ever present evil, Blue Sun is the system. Our Heroes, in this show, are rebels against this system and in 14 episodes and one movie, we only see reasons to agree with them. But in an interview, Whedon elaborated on more nuance of the main character, Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds's politics:

“Mal’s politics are very reactionary and ‘Big government is bad’ and ‘Don’t interfere with my life. And sometimes he’s wrong — because sometimes the Alliance is America, this beautiful shining light of democracy. But sometimes the Alliance is America in Vietnam: we have a lot of petty politics, we are way out of our league and we have no right to control these people. And yet! Sometimes the Alliance is America in Nazi Germany. And Mal can’t see that, because he was a Vietnamese.”

If Wolfram & Hart is about evil inherent in the system, Blue Sun is about the dangers of an unbalanced system, of one company with too much power, and people with too little voice to change that.

Dollhouse (2009-2010), unlike his two previous shows, takes us inside a corporation, a biomedical firm, Rossum, that produces the most advanced neurological treatments, and also runs an underground elite network of “houses” of programmable humans, known as dolls. From the inside of one of these Dollhouses, the show depicts several characters moral struggles with the technologies that allow for the complete rewriting of the human mind. The dolls are people who have entered into a contract of slavery to do things they cannot imagine and will not remember, in exchange for financial compensation and being cured of whatever problems they may have had (often mental illnesses) or instead of prison sentences. As the end game for Rossum is revealed, and the stakes get higher, allegiances change and justifications fall away. Rossum has a lot of elements of Blue Sun, in that they are too powerful, and too long unchecked, but it also brings in some elements of Wolfram & Hart's message. The series tells us that the technology that Rossum possessed was so powerful that it would almost inevitably end all of civilization. Why? Because people seek power and control, and now they can have it.

In his non-TV shows, Whedon cannot seem to leave the institutional evil behind him. Though the main character of Dr. Horrible is technically supposed to be evil, the “Hero,” is clearly an absolutely terrible person. In the 45 minute web musical, Whedon makes sure to mention that this hero is a “Corporate TOOL.” Cabin in the Woods, (which this blog already touched on here, [spoiler warning]) toys with a corporation that seems quite evil, and well, turns out to have a more complicated purpose.

The reason all this is important to understand in the wake of The Avengers and the anticipation to S.H.I.E.L.D., is that in the source material,  S.H.I.E.L.D. is a very large, very powerful organization. Though technically under either US or UN control, in the recent Avengers, they are shown to be largely autonomous, and occasionally even act against the advice and order of these authorities. In the block buster superhero movie, of course,  S.H.I.E.L.D. is unambiguously the good guys, coming in and saving the day. But Whedon's fear of such institutional power survived even until filming, as a cut scene from the beginning shows. This scene would have framed the whole movie with the question of whether this agency is, in fact, reckless, dangerous, and too powerful.

With a whole series, more personal creative freedom and less big name super heroes, I for one, and anxious to see where Joss Whedon plan's to take this next large institutional power in the future.

Why I Stopped Watching Doctor Who (Sam)

I have a confession to make: I hate Doctor Who as it is being run by Steven Moffat. I have loved it in the past, and because of the nature of the show, I'm sure I will love it again some day. But when Moffat became showrunner, Doctor Who lost not only the heart of what made it an interesting show, it forgot how to simply tell a good story at all.

Let me give some background for the uninformed: Doctor Who is a BBC scifi show with a long history. It's a show about an alien called the Doctor, and a human companion or two, who travel in his ship called the TARDIS, a British police call box which can disappear and reappear at any point in time and space. It first aired in 1963 and ran continuously until 1989. In 2005 it was rebooted. The reason for its longevity is simple: there is a canonical reason to replace the actor who plays the Doctor whenever the current one retires. He dies, then regenerates. He is immortal, ever-changing, ever gaining new energy. And if the show stagnates, it has the potential to regenerate as well.

Ever since its reboot, it has gained an ever-growing, rabid fanbase in the States. I counted myself one of its fans during New Who's first four seasons, while Russel T. Davies was its showrunner. The show was endlessly engaging and dynamic. Time, place, and genre could be different episode to episode. One week it could be a murder mystery, the next, a horror story set on another planet, and the next a historical drama. At the heart of the show's interest was the Doctor, with a little Sherlock Holmes, a little James Bond, and a little of his own idiosyncratic quirks – the most important of those being his love for humans and his abhorrence of violence. One of the main themes of New Who was the idea that the Doctor was a being with the power of a god and who sometimes let that get to his head – and that, in the end, it was always his human companions who kept him in check, who brought him down to earth. Both the Doctor and his companions were always better off with each other. They brought out the best in each other. And when the companions inevitably left him, the Doctor always lost something.

It seems to me that the Doctor's most valuable companion was Russel T. Davies himself, because he certainly lost something after Davies' departure. Unlike previous Doctors, the eleventh Doctor is never challenged. His genius, his ego, and most importantly, his moral superiority, are never questioned – they're taken for granted both by his companions and, by extension, the audience itself. It is telling that, for instance, the eleventh Doctor is far more violent than his predecessors, who were pacifist to a fault. Steven Moffat's run seems to have forgotten the themes of the past show and abandoned them for hero worship. So, pretty much the opposite of what the show was before. 

But I actually think this is a symptom of a larger problem, which is Steven Moffat's and his current writing team's poor understanding of what makes for an interesting story. They rely far too heavily on the Doctor's quirkiness and wittiness. Granted, he is witty, and it's fun to watch him run around the TARDIS and manically explain his solutions to various problems in time and space – so that makes for an effective crutch, at least for a while. But this doesn't make for interesting stories. Nor does throwing together a bunch of random, disconnected, "cool" ideas into one episode. The season 6 finale features a universe where all of time has collapsed into a single moment, so cars fly attached to helium balloons, Winston Churchill is Holy Roman Emperor, and a high-tech lab of sorts called Area 52 is housed inside a pyramid, where everybody wears eye patches. The episode certainly pretends to have a plot, but feels more like an excuse to have all of these things at once because it would be cool. None of it means anything. The emotion is completely unearned and all consequences are completely abstract and impersonal, or rest on clichés. 

After the second season under Moffat's helm, I'd had enough. Doctor Who is currently mid-Season 7, but I haven't seen any of it. 

Murder, Intrigue, Treason and Just a Bit of Young Love (Natasha)

    I hope no network ever sanctions a marathon of Homeland, because the one time I watched more than two episodes in a row I only narrowly avoided a heart attack.  Thrilling, investigative and unique, the Showtime series offers nothing in the way of lighthearted excitement.  An exception to this rule did emerge last week, however, in the gradual onset of romance between Dana (seventeen-year-old Morgan Saylor), daughter to the show's antihero Marine/terrorist/congressman/vice presidential hopeful Brody (Damian Lewis, mastering an American accent that completely eradicates his British appeal), and Finn (Timothée Chalamet, whose name suggests a Frenchness this boy does not exude), the son of Jamey Sheridan's Vice President/presidential hopeful Bill Walden.  Their interactions are a welcome respite from the show's thrilling intensity--mania, depression, danger, fear, secrecy, betrayal, bombs, assassination, aah!--and am I the only one who considers their relationship one of the most compelling in the show?

   Brody's duality is clearly the most important aspect of the series, but the audience is schooled in his history and his true nature episodes and episodes before his enigma is even partially explained to any character in the show.  The trials and hopes of his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and even the professional and psychological revelations to which Claire Danes's poor Carrie Mathison is subjected no longer inspire much of my excitement on the level of character development. The fact that we've been privy to all the secrets they wonder about means we know there will be a point when they are enlightened, and we can anticipate how they will feel once they know what we know; there is little opportunity in the plot for either of these women to be uncertain, excited and happy the way Dana is in her story with Finn, the way that is fun to watch.  I am looking forward to seeing the circumstances under which Brody's secrets will be revealed and what he will do once he can no longer lead a double life, but I am not eagerly awaiting the subsequent fallout between him and Jessica or the ways in which his treason may fortify Carrie's CIA career.  The reactions and behavior of these characters are predictable to a point, and the lack of joy they experience in their lives makes for somber, if interesting and complex, lives for these women.  Conversely, Dana's behavior is engaging because it is unpredictable, and her life need not be broken and byzantine to be very watchable.

    Dana's place in her family is different for each parent:  To her father she a beacon of trust and caring whom he can let in on a select few of his many secrets, a source of advice and unconditional love, but her mother considers her unruly, unsupportive, a dependable enemy in countless arguments.  Her unique position in the family, as well as in her father's estimation, saves Dana from feeling what most of the characters feel--that they don't really know who Brody is--and removes her from the drama of tracking his every lie.  Hers is the only plot line not founded completely on Brody and his life of lies, thus she is the only character who lends herself to scenes of excitement not based on danger, of romance sans incredible psychological baggage.

    Though my four-year devotion to The O.C. may suggest I will be forever entertained by melodramatic high school romance, Dana and Finn's interactions are nothing like those on the erstwhile primetime gem.  Not only are Dana and Finn played by actual teenagers rather than 24-year-old, baby fat-free hotties, but their palpable nervousness around each other and their sincere surprise at the feeling of their growing attraction is apt and relatable.  The real-life quality of this young love provides a calming interlude in a show that otherwise "goes to 11," and I'm only a little embarrassed to admit I'm equally excited for Brody's treason interrogation and whatever scenes Dana and Finn will share this week on Homeland.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

The Smaller Screen: Television and the Internet (Sophie)

Now-a-days, every film and tv show have an official website, many of them with extra content, ranging from behind the scenes photos to brand new footage or animated web series set in the same universe. More and more people are accessing films and television for the first time from their computers through web-streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, official Youtube channels, or streaming directly from network or TV show websites. Things that are not officially available are still peddled on the web, either on technically illegal streaming sites or illegal download. The fact is, the web and the computer are now integral parts of how film and television are consumed.

Then, there are the materials created explicitly for the web. The web series, or web television is technically in its late teens as a form, but changes in web speed, accessibility, and technology, such as Youtube's creation in 2005 fundamentally made the web a kind of playground for new, independent creators, especially those interested in episodic structure. Web series, as defined by Wikipedia, consist of everything from weekly news shows, to animated movie reviews, to slapstick comedies produced on low budget to newer dramas made with partnerships in Hollywood or with big name web companies.

Recently, television stations have been buying rights to shows originally made for the internet and airing them. At this point, there are far too many varied forms or web television to address at once. Low budget, episodic comedies are popular and well suited to the short run times that many web series have. Dramas are less common. Nearly all web episodes air short episodes. Very short. For dramas, which on television find it more useful to run for an hour as opposed to comedies at a half hour, the web demands an adaptation of narrative structure. On the longer end, a web show like Sanctuary (one of the highest budgeted, at 4.3 million, and with Hollywood insiders) ran eight 15-20 minute episodes before being picked up by (then) SciFi for television. On the shorter end, several mystery shows ran episodes of 90 seconds each.

H+, a new show this fall, produced by Warner Brother's Digital Distribution, their web specific developers, in partnership with Youtube, chose a median episode length of about 4 minutes per episode. From the creative team of John Cabrera (writer, known from his acting on Gilmore Girls) and Bryan Singer (producer, who worked on The Usual Suspects, along with several super hero movies), the show is on the scale of the post apocalyptic science fiction shows that the major networks keep trying out for prime time slots. With a budget of a little under 2 million, and filmed around Santiago, Chile, the plot spans decades and the entire globe. It calls on special effects for simulated many advanced technologies, as well as classically higher budget effects, like explosions, crashed cars and complex sets.

The bare bones of the plot is what happens when technologies like smart phones become even more advanced to the point of integration into the human body, and what, in an extreme case can be the fall out from that. Quoting inspiration from Lost, the story is told non-linearly, through multiple threads about the technology that slowly (by episode 24, halfway through the proposed 28 episode 255 minute run) seem to be connecting to each other through overlapping character. Every episode has a given location and time relative to “it happening,” the disaster the changes the world that is supposed to be the driving mystery.

Having followed the series through it's 2-3 episodes a week release schedule, the series comes off quite differently than it's made for TV counterparts (Revolution – J.J. Abrams similarly plotted adventure on NBC; Falling Skies – an apocalypse driven by alien invasions – produced by Steven Spielberg on TNT). The combination of short episodes and receiving those episodes as part of disjoint stories seem more like views into a world and do less to push the viewer towards wondering about the mystery. Because the series premiers on Youtube, the comments contain instant reactions. Rather than discussions of the mystery, or insightful connections or theorizing (typical, I am told, of a forum after an episode of Lost,) most of the top comments are complaints about the short format, asking for longer 15-30, even hour long episodes. The creators occasionally step in the discussion and recommend watching a bunch of the episodes at a time.

What seemed curious is that now, in 2012, the web series format is nothing new. Most of the people watching H+ watch other videos on Youtube, maybe even other series. What is it about this one? In gauging my own impressions of the format and the content, perhaps the scope and the scale of the project are just too big for such a small screen. It's only recently that we have come to expect high budget effects and global scale shooting from television. Only recently have the high tech and the post apocalyptic gotten comfortable on the small screen (though, it could be argued, that they are still trying to find their footing there.) Moving it so quickly to the web series, especially to such a short episode, the visuals and intensity feel like small clips from something out of what we have come to expect of high budget television or movies. They feel like additional information rather than the core plot. Certainly the decision to build up this universe that is already hard enough to contain on the web through non-linear slowly converging storylines adds to the frustrations.

Ultimately, H+ has still creating an engaging universe and interesting characters. Whether or not the medium or the form they used is ultimately beneficial is unclear. The web is still a new media, and certainly not one accepted at the same level as television. Budgets are lower, and it's considered an honor to be picked up by a network to be aired through “normal” means. It's future, though can only get brighter as technology improves and people rely less and less on the major networks for their programming. Already, Netflix and Hulu are creating their own content. Perhaps a program like H+ isn't so much in the wrong place, but before it's time.

Check out H+ for yourselves on their Youtube Channel.

The Limits of History (Natasha)

    I love Al Capone.  Let me rephrase:  I love Stephen Graham’s portrayal of a young Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire.  He shone particularly bright on Sunday, in the fourth episode of the third season.  Al’s five-year-old deaf son is staying home from school one morning and Al discovers the boy has a big purple bruise on his sweet little face.  He learns his son was picked on at school and is outraged that a bully would target a deaf child.  But, as his wife reminds him, all the children at their son’s school are deaf and “boys will be boys, whether they can hear each other or not.”  Al’s initial plan of action is to toughen up his kid, so that night he kneels before the child and tries to teach him how to fight.  This could easily have become a Tree of Life-type scene between a hardened father with all the wrong ideas and a boy too young and uncomfortable to spar with his dad, a scene that illustrates how completely a man can fail to understand the needs of his child; instead, it evolves into Al’s tearful realization that he has frightened rather than fortified his child.  Shocked, profoundly disappointed in himself, Al apologizes over and over in a heartbreaking tone his son cannot hear.  In an increasingly desperate embrace, he tightens the boy’s grip on him and strokes his head, utterly devastated by his misstep.  If you’re not crying just a little by now, you are much tougher than I.

    The next night, Al beats a man to death in a speakeasy for inexplicably attacking his obese, slovenly colleague the day before--the same day he learned his son was bullied.  His seemingly endless performance of intense, barehanded violence should not be easy to forgive, but when the fight is over and Al breathlessly asks the corpse, “You want to pick on people who can’t defend themselves?” he makes it impossible to forget the noble motivation behind this brutal endeavor. Regular viewers would agree this violent culmination of the storyline actually sets matters aright--after all, no one tunes in to Boardwalk to see some good, civil conflict resolution.  This show disentangles the concept of justice from its association with the legal system, which is nothing but negatively portrayed in the Prohibition-era series.  The continual, mindless murder of many characters we grow attached to is punctuated by brief but essential instances of an unlawful kind of justice that only villainous giants of history can carry out.  Given the choice to kill an enemy or merely beat him senseless, Boardwalk characters always choose "kill" and the show always gives a satisfactory explanation why.  How could we possibly forgive Al for such a horrifying act of rage?  Besides the fact that we have had to do so countless times before (he has fought his way through two whole seasons already), we understand where his rage erupted from:  The incessant pain of his son's bullying--an affront he could not rectify by any means, violent or otherwise--and his unmanageable fury at himself for scaring his son the way the bully did.

    Boardwalk's Al Capone is not the one-dimensional bootlegging titan from The Untouchables, delivering fatal blows to unsuspecting dinner guests with a baseball bat.  Rather, he is a richly illustrated, sympathetic low-life whose sole response to the world’s injustices is unconscionable yet justifiable violence.  No matter what we know of Al Capone or how keenly Robert De Niro may have rendered the barbarity of the real man, Stephen Graham suspended my disbelief for a full 56 minutes this week and depicted (perhaps invented) a veritable sweetness in the storied figure. Therein lies the key aspect of the show:  Though history greatly informs the plot, its contribution to character is very limited.  It is up to the cast to show us who these people "really" were--even if, really, it's who they weren't.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Credit for Al Capone's 1930 Miami mughsots goes to Creative Commons.

One Man Show (Natasha)

     Detective Mike Logan (Chris Noth), the handsome hothead of the early seasons of Law & Order; Detective Bobby Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio), the psychological marvel who makes Law & Order: Criminal Intent so much more than a spin-off series; The Wire's Detective Jimmy McNulty, a slutty alcoholic pushing every major drug case forward in spite of his bosses’ orders; and John Thaw’s turn as Inspector Morse, the grumpy, crush-prone sophisticate in the British series of the same name--what do all these fantastically flawed policemen have in common?  They don't hold a candle to Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, the inimitable Übermensch brought to life by Idris Elba in the BBC series Luther.  DCI Luther gives us something we've never seen before, probably something we'll never see again:  A sexy, thoughtful hammer of justice, a perfect hero for how greatly we respect and how intensely we long for his happiness.  Add that to the fact that it feels like nothing could ever hope to end him, and we put more faith in him than any other TV cop because we can depend not only on his eventual success, but his eventual survival.  He will always be around in the end, to live, to feel, to care and, most importantly for him, to fix things.

     The song in the title sequence begins, “Love is like a sin,” with mysterious, romantic strains simultaneously conveying melancholy and levity in the background. This singer and her song recall scenes of seduction, not violent crime.  Deep red, cartoonish drops of blood appear on the title cards as collages of cityscapes appear one square at a time behind dark and beautiful portraits of a thoughtful Luther. Already, we can tell this show is insanely alluring.  So is Idris Elba... so he most certainly is.

     His beautifully complex Luther is by no means the show's only three-dimensional character.  The fiercely loyal Detective Sergeant Ripley (Warren Brown), a worthy partner in his talent for detective work, is a man dedicated to the purest purpose of the police force:  To set wrongs aright.  He does all he can to protect Luther when he breaks protocol because he recognizes Luther's incisive genius and knows to trust Luther’s morality without needing to know all his secrets.  Ripley elevates himself from the role of a typical good-natured sidekick in his willingness to play dirty and his rare professional compatibility with Luther.  Then there is Alice (Ruth Wilson), the matricidal-patricidal killer in the series' first murder case who becomes an unusually intense and profound antagonist-turned-asset.  She scares the hell out of Luther's estranged wife Zoe and her new boyfriend Mark (a scrawny, effete and truly pathetic replacement for Luther) solely for the purpose of repairing the broken marriage that torments Luther more than any unavenged murder.  She eventually focuses her pathological ruthlessness exclusively at Luther's foes once she befriends the DCI.  Alice is neither a distraction nor an annoyingly hopeful love interest for Luther, but rather a very complicated evil genius with a totally believable soft spot for him.

     “Might wanna keep your hands in your pockets,” Luther cautions Ripley upon arrival at their first crime scene, “Reduces the temptation to touch anything.” We understand that he wants so badly to touch the site himself, to really inspect it, to exist in the place where the victim's life ended, as if the answer to the mystery haunted the crime scene like a ghost.  He's the kind of smart, special person you really believe should get to break protocol in order to find his criminals and quietly rip them apart in the interrogation room. Though his wife remains an unsolvable mystery to him, Luther, more than any other detective, understands the iniquitous and deceitful.  Surveying a crime scene, he frequently announces, “It’s not right,” indicating just how clearly he sees through the way each criminal wants himself and his crime to look.

     At its core, this show is an investigation of justice v. the law.  And like the DCI himself, Luther comes down firmly, unequivocally, dare I say sexily on the side of justice.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Get Your S*** Together, Girls (Natasha)

    A lot of people have been talking about her, the girl with the upper arm tattoo.  But Lena Dunham is more than just a person who should always wear sleeves; she is a very endearing woman with a pretty awful vision of the lives of young women in New York.  Her new HBO series Girls is neither terrible nor excellent; it is sometimes good and often bad.  Three episodes have aired so far, and while plot points have emerged, nothing has really happened.  Even with the issues of financial instability, job hunts, abortion, dead-end relationships and the occasional horrifying sexual partner pervading each episode, I as a viewer have not really been fazed by any of it because the eponymous girls haven't been fazed either.

    All these "not really" qualifiers point to the show's great weakness: all four girls seem to be stagnating in a muddy puddle of drab furniture, unflattering clothes and profoundly unsatisfying professional, romantic and sexual lives.  These girls are languishing in apartments they deem too impermanent and transitional to decorate; they are entertaining the whims and inappropriate behavior of their first bosses to much too great an extent; they are pseudo-pursuing or passively staying in relationships that do worse than just fail to satisfy them--they further diminish what little joie de vivre these particular girls can occasionally muster.  Yet they seem to believe they are self-possessed, independent, worthwhile young women who have inexplicably been thrown into situations they must sigh and shrug their way through.  They do not pursue opportunities, they let themselves be led. They never demand anything, never even show an interest in making their desires known.  They graduated from college, hopped in their car and followed the traffic towards the road to adulthood, but then their tire blew out.  No one can figure out how to use the jack, none of their contemporaries is stopping to help and none of the girls had the foresight, the capital or even just the autonomy to become a member of AAA.

    These girls fail to entertain me because they themselves do not actually do anything, entertaining or otherwise.  Things happen to them and they barely react, they merely acquiesce.  There is no private torture of the dependent, the confused, the hopeless; there is no public outrage of the oppressed, the overzealous, the aggressive; there is only the blank-faced displeasure of the unmotivated, the uninterested, the utterly passionless.

    It infuriates me to hear female critics call this show an affront to womankind, because I believe we should not allow these girls to represent womankind.  They certainly do not represent the kind of women who deserve immense respect and appreciation.  If you allow yourself to be sexually subjugated time and time again and continue to pursue your subjugator, that is entirely your fault.  Men, particularly awful men, do not have absolute power over how women are treated; women have to command respect and never stop.  The onus is on her to demand proper treatment--the choice is hers to discard, punish or educate the wrongdoer who treats her poorly.  We are not natural victims, and we should put no faith in women who act like they are. We don't go back to some creepy guy's apartment day after day, playing into his perverse desires and indulging in the wrongheaded but popular notion that all men are terrible.  There are countless situations in which being a woman works against you, but that is not one of them.

    On another character's note, you don't stay with the effete and overly wholesome boyfriend you can no longer stand and with whom you have terrible sex just because you have been together for four years.  To revisit the driving metaphor: you actually have to try to free your wheel from a rut, you can't just sit in your car with your head in your hands and wait out the rest of your life.  So, as I said:  Girls, get your s*** together. There are plenty of women who have.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

 

Many thanks to Lucy Bucknell for the above image and for the chance to write this blog.

The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Son on FX's Justified (Chris D)

The father-son relationship is, in some ways, the most important male relationship in existence. While it is ostensibly a nurturing bond, it is also inherently competitive. Fathers want to raise their sons to follow in their footsteps, but in doing so they make themselves obsolete. This past season of Justifiedmines this relationship in order to take its characters in new directions which are familiar, but also novel.

                This theme seems in retrospect to be an obvious one for the show to tackle, as Raylan Givens, the main character of the show, has had extremely troubled relations with his criminal father in the past. It was obvious that some form of conflict would eventually pop up between them. However, instead of taking the obvious path of bringing them together in a head on conflict, the show ended up taking the theme in a much more subtle route. Raylan and Arlo, his father, are almost never on screen together for the entire season until the very end. Instead, the theme of father and son is explored through the villain before being cast upon the more obvious subjects.

                Robert Quarles, the villain of the season, does not, upon first glance, seem to have anything to do with the theme of fathers and sons. As a fast talking drug lord come down from Detroit to tame the wilds of the Kentucky oxy trade, he seemed to embody the expansionist, a theme which is common in many Westerns. However, as the season goes on, the viewer learns that every action that he performs comes from his relationship with his father figures. He attempts to make his adopted father proud by earning money and influence through the drug trade, while at the same time reenacting the terrible things that his biological father did to him on gay men that he kidnaps and tortures throughout the season. Quarles never outgrows the shadow of either of his fathers, and ends up crashing and burning because of it. Even as he is being chased by the Marshall service through the hills of Kentucky, his first priority is to call the head of the Detroit mob, his adopted father, and say that he wants to come home.

                This theme is greatly enhanced through the performance of Neil McDonough. He plays Quarles as a cheerful smiling villain who is as funny as he is scary. He cracks jokes as he kills people, and is always polite. However, as the season goes on, it becomes more apparent that McDonough plays the character as an overgrown child. He constantly tries to show off his sleeve holster like a child with a new toy, and he struggles to be seen as better than his “father’s” biological son. All of this is done with the emotional openness of a child showing the stunted development of this man.

This issue of father and son drives Raylan as well. Timothy Oliphant plays Raylan as a very emotionally closed character as opposed to Quarles’s childlike openness. He constantly denies that he has any issues with his father, and does everything he can to ignore the issue at hand. However, Raylan’s drive to show his father that they have nothing in common is the baseline for everything that he does.

All of the troubles he has with his father come to a head in the season finale in which we are treated to a scene in which Arlo attempts to tell Raylan that he is proud of him. The scene is touching, especially owing to Timothy Oliphant’s performance as Raylan tries to pretend that he doesn’t care, but cannot stop himself from feeling glad that his father is finally acknowledging him. This only serves to set the viewer up for the crushing final moments of the season in which Raylan realizes that Arlo has killed a friend of his, thinking it was Raylan, in order to protect his adopted “son.” This realization that he has truly lost his father breaks Raylan in a way that the viewer has never seen. He isn’t angry or vengeful. He just seems defeated. His father has a new son, and he has been left with no one.

                Justified has always been about fathers and sons, even from the very beginning, but never before has it been such a central element to the plot. By exploring this tenuous male relationship, the show is able to explore the depths of its characters and bring them to their knees. It can be said that those who know us best can hurt us most, and that statement is never truer than in this past season.

Much thanks to Creative Commons and the public domain images used. Creative Commons in no way endoreses any opinions expressed in this blog. Any opinions, views, or ideas are soley of the poster.

 

 

Let the Dark Knight be Dark: Maturity in Batman: The Animated Series (Chris D)

When one looks for quality television, one rarely looks as children’s animation. Often times it is derivative, uninspiring, and all around annoying. However, when the truly great shows come around, the realization is made that children are capable of handling more mature subjects without being remarkably traumatized in the slightest. One of the true greats in the aspect was the early 90s cartoon, Batman: The Animated Series. A superhero cartoon seems to be a strange place to be talking about mature content. Superheroes are the bread and butter of Saturday morning entertainment, but Batman decided to step away from the traditional method of children’s cartooning and try something different. Instead of simple “kid-friendly” villains, the show was able to mine its source material and use villains that were willing to kill an entire city just because they wanted to. This dark material should, according to many sensibilities, be extremely offsetting to kids. Instead, the show is able to find a happy medium which isn’t super violent, but at the same time won’t pull its punches when it comes to mature topics. One of the best examples of this phenomenon comes when dealing with the character of Two-Face. He is an established enough villain that the show could have easily had him simply appear and no one would think twice about it. However, the show takes the viewer through the entire emotional journey of his creation. The audience is introduced to the character of Harvey Dent, Gotham’s district attorney and best friend to the protagonist, in the first episode, and he is a recurring character throughout the series. This means that when an explosion goes off, horrifically maiming his face and cracking his personality in two, the audience is deeply invested in his character. This kind of deep emotional connection followed by such a traumatic experience gets the audience involved, but for many, it is too disturbing for children. By including it anyway, Batman proves that kids aren’t stupid when it comes to their entertainment. The show was very popular in its day and many kids watched this episode. There were no widespread reports of kids becoming traumatized by this event. Instead, they were able to take the emotional journey with the main character of losing his best friend and feeling guilty every time they have to cross paths. In short, Batman: The Animated Series didn’t try to create programming for kids. They simply tried to make the best animated show they could, but didn’t try to dumb it down for children. Instead, they expected kids to understand what was going on, and for the most part they were successful. While not every episode is as emotionally charged as the Two-Face origin, the show asks viewers, both child and adult to rise to the occasion so that the show can best the best it can possibly be.

Kenny's Power (Natasha)

    Eastbound & Down ends in three weeks.  On April 15th at 10:30 pm, the final "chapter"--not episode, chapter--of HBO's antiheroic saga of Kenny Powers will somehow just stop.  I am at once delighted to see how KP will turn failure into triumph one last time, and utterly crushed to see him drop the mic and walk off the stage forever.

    My fondest memory of Kenny dates back to the show's first season.  While employed as a middle school P.E. teacher (from my childhood experience, I cannot imagine a less respectable job) after falling from Major League Baseball grace, Kenny pops a pill of Ecstasy before chaperoning a school dance.  Sporting all black, down to his signature cowboy boots, he pushes his way into a dance circle of preteens and prepares to woo his long-lost high school girlfriend, now the middle school art teacher.  "Work, drugs," he demands.  Then he dances.  Then he throws up. But damn if those drugs didn't work just like he told them to!  I haven't seen a portly man move like that since Bluto floated up the stairs to the Dean's office in Animal House.

    This season, KP managed to sum himself up in one perfect admission when he said to his categorically apathetic college-age girlfriend, "You think I f***in' wanna hang out with my f***in' son?  Hell no, I'd much rather be doin' cocaine and watchin' the Saw DVDs in your dorm room with ya."  He's a ladies' man and a man's man; he's a lover and a fighter; in the words of Kenny Powers, Kenny Powers is "a god damn champion."

    With ambition as unstoppable as the soundtrack that accompanies him, KP has suffered through, run away from and finally returned to face a slew of potentially career- and life-ending struggles since we met him in 2009.  And why have we been with him from the very beginning?  Because he is unbelievably entertaining. He says the most ridiculous things so often and just keeps talking until there are no more boundaries for him to cross; we have no choice but to accept how beautifully hilarious he is and forget--completely--the decorum we use to direct our own speech.  He amuses, yet inspires us with perfectly serious and accidentally revealing monologues.  He endears himself to us with the occasional poignant plea for the simple human necessities of companionship and a sense of belonging. He is at once a martyr for absurd humor and a touching failure of a train wreck we are shocked to care about.  He is a figure unlike any other on television:  Always foul, often wrong but sometimes right, Kenny Powers is the low-class American wannabe who gets by, just barely, because of his heart.

    I will be very sad to say goodbye to KP, to the raucous laughs and the Schadenfreude his misfortune and mess-ups afforded.  Perhaps I'll find a new hero to follow each week, but for now I pledge allegiance to Kenny Powers.  The conclusion of his audiobook autibiography says everything I never could:

"In closing, I'd like to give big ups to God, Buddha, L. Ron, whoever.  Hell, maybe I just need to thank me.  If there's one thing I've learned through all my adventures and conquests, it's that some people are just wired for success.  I had no choice when it came to being great.  I just am great.  I'm not trying to sound cocky or full of myself, but Kenny Powers has a sneaking suspicion that no matter what comes his way, he will always be great.  Because that's just the way s*** works sometimes.  This has been based on a true story.  The motherf***in' end."

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Why Don't the Bad Guys All Look Different From Me?: Subverting Sterotypes on Homeland (Chris D)

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Showtime’s new series, Homeland, takes an enormous risk. In setting the show in the context of the contemporary War on Terror, the show could have easily ended up either completely jingoistic and/or incredibly racist. The topic of terrorism in this country is, at the moment, linked with the topic of racism towards Muslims. As Homeland seems to strive for realism, replacing Islamic radicals with a more politically correct villain would come off as hokey. The show instead attempts to subvert the viewer’s expectations creating a show that shows both sides of the conflict.

The show’s main conflict of a bipolar CIA agent, portrayed by Clare Danes, investigating a recently recovered POW, Nicholas Brody who is played by Damian Lewis, automatically removes some of the racial tension surrounding the issue by shifting the suspicion away from the Arabs and casting it onto a homespun white male. Damian Lewis is generally best known for playing Dick Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and generally gives off the impression of an upstanding American. By placing the doubt and paranoia of the War on Terror onto such an upstanding looking war hero, the show immediately throws the audience for a loop and causes them to question the way that they think about the terrorism issue.

One way that the show maintains the suspicion on Brody is by revealing that he is secretly a Muslim. This revelation draws on the slight culture of fear that permeates America especially once the question of potential terrorism is brought up. The fact that Brody worships Allah automatically draws the viewer to question his loyalty. However, the show points out the ridiculousness of this suspicion when Brody is finally confronted about this practice. He replies that he found religion while being tortured as a POW and that Islam was the only religion in the area. By pointing out that there is a perfectly viable reason for Brody to be a Muslim without it meaning that he is a terrorist, the show pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet and makes them question what they have believed up until this point.

Once actual Middle Eastern terrorists are introduced, the show continues to make the viewer question what they believe about the racial identity of terrorism. A terrorist couple is introduced, a Middle Eastern man and a white woman. The makeup of this couple plays into the concept that different races are swooping in to corrupt the fair and innocent white women. Just by being shown this couple and being told that they are terrorists, the audience generally believes that the man is the diehard terrorist and that the woman has been talked into it. However, the show inverts the dynamic, and we find out that the woman is the true believer and the man is following her out of love. He is unnerved by the concept of violence and doesn’t truly believe in the cause, but wants to make his wife happy. This inversion subverts both general gender roles as well as racial stereotypes to create an atmosphere, much like reality, in which the characters cannot be judged immediately as they appear on screen.

The show gets a lot of mileage out of subverting the audience’s expectation. This allows them to create an extremely tense environment for the show in which no one can be trusted. The people who are supposed to look like terrorists are, in fact, just people, and the most destructive act on the show was committed by the US government in their hunt for terrorists. By playing with such a controversial topic, the show brings to light a lot of what we believe in this country and proves that much of it has no bearing on reality.

 

A Pleasant Halftime Surprise (Chris D)

                While most people who watched the Superbowl last Sunday were interested in the actual football game being played, a significant portion turned in just to watch the commercials. These ads are an annual tradition in which each company attempts to be the funniest or the weirdest in order to get their product stuck in the consumer’s mind. However, viewers this year were faced with a commercial unlike all the rest.  Chrysler released a commercial, which played during half-time, which went in a completely separate direction from all the rest.

Instead of showing babies in slingshots or the cast of Star Wars enjoying Superbowl commercials (my personal favorites out of the traditional ads), this ad, directed by David Gordon Green, instead took a much more serious angle as Clint Eastwood talked to the audience about the hard economic times facing the country and Detroit in particular. The ad asks that the American people stay strong and look towards the future instead of focusing on the downsides of the present, a sentiment that feels more at home in a political ad instead of a Superbowl commercial. The ad has many similarities to Ronald Reagan’s famous “It’s Morning in America” campaign, also delivered at a time of economic downturn.

The commercial is also remarkable in that the only time Chrysler is mentioned is at the very end when their name shows up on screen. The title of the company is never spoken, instead showing images of their cars and of normal people. By shooting the commercial in this manner, the ad feels much more universal and less like an advertisement. While most of the commercials are attempting to create so much product recognition that you can’t help but remember the name of the company, Chrysler instead decided to step back and allow the ad to speak before mentioning that they had made it. This style of advertisement is, in some ways, more interesting as it causes the viewer to pay more attention in order to figure out what the ad is for.

The ad itself is very risky if only for the costs involved. For just the airtime, Chrysler had to pay $12.3 million. That is in addition to the cost of actually making a commercial, a figure which the company has yet to release. Does this commercial merit the extreme expense that it took to make it? Will it cause enough of an upswing in sales to cover the cost? My gut points towards yes if only because it reminded people of their own domestic companies. While the other car companies may make fantastic products, buying from Chrysler supports the economy of the United States, not Germany or Japan. By having the commercial narrated by Clint Eastwood, an American icon, Chrysler was able to create an atmosphere of patriotism that can be very powerful in the proper hands. In addition, by creating a commercial that was the least commercial of all of them, Chrysler is being praised by many people around the country. This, in essence, gives them more advertising space as people talk about their ad more and more.

In the end, Chrysler was able to make a very inspiring ad at a time when no one was expecting it. They surprised everyone and created something that will be remembered long after the excitement over the Ferris Bueller commercial has passed. By tapping into the American people’s sense of comradeship, they have ingrained their name into the minds of everyone who was watching at the time, a record breaking 111.3 million people. Whether they have the best intentions for the ad or just financial ones, one has to be impressed by the artisanship and individuality that the ad represents.

 

When TV Gets Spooky (Yelena)

TV shows and their Halloween episodes—it's a hallmark of the season, so long as the show isn't taking a hiatus that week to accommodate children being led door-to-door. One would think sci-fi and fantasy shows, shows that already delve into the edges of belief, would have a particularly easy time with these sorts of episode.

Well, yes and no. It's a gimmick, and when your show already has vampires, or takes place on another planet, how are you going to fit in children and masks and make it interesting?

A variety of ways, it turns out. I'm just going to run through a few of my favorites here.

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Probably the most straightforward example of this trope that I'm going to discuss is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here we've got quite a few episodes that could qualify as implicitly Halloween-themed, but the two obvious ones are “Halloween” and “Fear, Itself.”

The twist in these episodes is that, in a world of demons and vampires, the baddies stay in on Halloween. Performing evil deeds when everyone around you is dressed up all scary in order to score candy? It's cheap. And so, Halloween is meant to be a calm and relaxing night—except, of course, unless you're Buffy or one of the gang.

While not exactly scary, “Halloween” is definitely an entertaining episode with several character twists—Xander as the capable soldier, Buffy as the maiden in distress, Willow as a sexy ghost. Whatever costumes the characters put on, they become. While the plot could be more gripping, the episode is very much worth it just for the clothing and the symbolism inherent in every character change.

Then we have “Fear, Itself.” As one might guess from the title, the fear factor for this episode is greatly improved. Here, we have a college haunted house that actually appears to be haunted. The gang is split up, characters are abandoned or attacked, and a demon has been summoned. With traumatized co-eds hiding amidst the cobwebs, and characters all alone in the darkness, the episode becomes a chillingly effective success.

I'll let you, reader, find out what happens to the demon. Let's just say he goes out with a bang.

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Our next show is Castle. (While it's a bit of a stretch to describe this show as fantastical, these episodes either refer to Nathan Fillion's stint on the cult sci-fi hit Firefly or toy with the supernatural. They're also really fun.) Take season two's “Vampire Weekend,” otherwise known as vampires, goths, and ghouls, oh my! (Okay, maybe not ghouls.) This episode begins with Castle dressed as Mal, captain of the spaceship Firefly.

“Didn't you wear that, like, five years ago?” his daughter asks him.

“So?” he replies.

“So, don't you think you should move on?”

“I like it!”

The episode continues in standard fashion: a body has been found in a graveyard, a stake driven through the victim's heart. Castle and Beckett find themselves in a subculture of black clothing and synthetic fangs, and the possibility of real vampires excites Castle in a delightfully childlike manner.

Eventually, they solve the crime, and there is no immortal life involved. The journey there, however, is endlessly entertaining. Also, for those among us with an appreciation for the more Gothic side of the clothing spectrum, highly aesthetically pleasing.

More recently is the episode “Demons,” wherein Castle and Beckett investigate a murder in what appears to be a real-life haunted house, home to several murders. There are no Firefly references in this episode, but the was-or-wasn't-it-a-ghost tension works, and the banter is top-notch. Is it the best episode of Castle ever? Probably not. But it's certainly worth the price of the candy corn you'll snack on while watching.

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Perhaps my favorite example of this trope, though also the least straightforward, is the Farscape episode “Kansas.”

John Crichton is an astronaut, trapped for 3 years in a distant part of the galaxy, who finally makes it home to Earth. Problem: he makes it back several years too early, in 1986. Problem: his friends are aliens, very non-human looking aliens, though mainly with two arms and legs. Sometimes with bonus tentacles or blue skin, but still, the general shape is the same.

Solution? Visit during Halloween. Also, focus your plot on John Crichton's attempts to fix the timeline and John's familial relationships. Just make sure to have several sugar-related jokes, and have a cop investigate our jolly group for their suspiciously realistic masks and limited English skills.

Truth be told, this episode is fantastic. By far the best I've discussed here.

John's homecoming to Earth does not disappoint, and the difficult relations between John's parents (with one another, with a teenage John, and with our adult John) pull at the heartstrings. Even Chiana's short fling with a teenage John does not disappoint, or disturb too badly. Perhaps the one downside is that this episode comes late in the show and is thus the culmination of a lot of emotional drama. After all, who would want to start watching The X-Files on the day Mulder learns the Truth?

In other words, Spoilerphobes beware. Everyone else? Please choose this scare.

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Obviously this list is by no means exhaustive. While not strictly supernatural, Psych's “This Episode Sucks” is as silly as it sounds, and when Dead Like Me features children and costumes, it's a bit funny, a bit sad, and a bit horrifying.

These are some of my favorites, though, and if you're as in love with TV and Halloween as I am, they are sure to make for one awesome weekend.

Urban Indian as Exile and West Baltimore's The Wire (Shauna)

“It reflects a life that is not true for all Indians, but typical of many.”

So begins the narrative voice-over in The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961), which presents a refreshingly original portrait of American Indians, situating them in a Californian urban milieu, away from their parents and grandparents on the reservations. Over the course of this semester, I’ve looked at a variety of movies concerning peoples historically underrepresented in film art. Constructions of ethnic minorities consistently have as much to do with previous media portrayals and stereotypes as they do the real people. In that sense, films with minority characters share certain conventions of the genre picture (and indeed, many genres incorporate ethnic tropes, including the Italian of the Gangster, or the African-American servant or performer in classic Hollywood or melodrama).

It is interesting to note that 50 years after the release of The Exiles, its particular image of the urban Indian  remains radical. The level of realism is startling: I appreciate its authenticity, and its dedication to a particular subculture rarely explored by the camera lens. According to the 1990 census, 63 percent of Native Americans lived in urban regions.[1] Yet, the construct of Indian as “noble savage” or frontier warrior persists in the nation’s cultural mindset, reinforced by the canon of Western films and America’s collective foundation myth. For most of white America, the Indian is of the continent — and yet, crucially, only particular parts of the continent are recognized as his domain.

The reservation is understood as the Indian’s arena. Even if it is somewhat marred by the history of forced migration and prejudice, there is a resurgence of pride in the reservation as emanation of the Indian self. The magazine section of the Times frequently runs ads for Native American Universities: “If I stay on the Res, I’m more likely to graduate.” The reservation provides a convenient domain for historians and anthropologists to think about the Indian, for there, he is identifiable by tribe, costume, language and rituals.  The “res” simplifies Native culture, segmenting it from the mainstream, in a sense controlling for interference and cultural mingling. But once the American Indian enters the city, abandons “authentic” costume, and internalizes Euro-American constructions of private ownership and anonymity, he becomes indistinguishable, almost invisible to the untrained eye.

The transition into the dominant culture is probably partial (no one can disavow an entire life experience), and certainly gradual. Ultimately, though, urban life presents a dilemma for the American Indian, who experiences ethnic misclassification, and a sense of disconnect from his heritage. The Exiles is extraordinarily compelling in its ability to communicate the ambivalence of the urban Indian experience. Such is the sentiment expressed by Homer in The Exiles: “My people roamed all over the place…I would rather be in that time than now.” It is important that Homer distinguishes between the two systems of Indian life in terms of time and not space. 

Over a decade after the making of The Exiles, the American West Center at the University of Utah asserted the dilemma faced by the urban Indian in these terms: “The city is an alien place…[It] demands of the individual to disavow his heritage to become a truly urban citizen.”[2]

Donald Fixico frames the problem as an issue of insufficient information: “People who know very little about American Indians…have very little to base a viewpoint on about urban Indians. They have to rely on stereotypes,” which have been overwhelmingly negative. I am cognizant of the fact that there is a level to Yvonne’s attitudes and desires that I will never fully grasp. For instance, what future does she envision for her unborn child in Los Angeles? Why does she subject herself to Homer, a husband who rarely acknowledges her presence, or leaves her to live vicariously through solitary excursions to the movies? What are her motivations and aspirations as she watches her husband and Tommy walk through the alleyway after a night on Hill X with the women they picked up in a bar? There is no way to read the expression on her face with the system of equivalencies exploited by Hollywood.

 

In trying to qualify my response to the film, I repeatedly came back to The Wire. As I watched Season 1 this week, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of fondness for the characters from West Baltimore. True, I don’t belong to this particular subculture, enmeshed in urban warfare, drug addiction and drug trafficking, bombed-out low-rises, imposing high-rises, poverty and slick Roc-A-Wear and Baby Phat wardrobes, but these characters speak a dialect that’s ubiquitous in the Baltimore's schools. It’s fascinating to hear it spoken on the screen: the show’s creators captured the spontaneity, the diction, the wisdom hidden beneath the layers of archaic-sounding syntax. These actors speak the cadence I heard from the moment I entered Baltimore’s school system in August 2001. Coming from New York, I remember thinking this the strangest place. What language were these people speaking? Baltimore seemed like an island, severed from the realities I had taken for granted on 207^th Street in Manhattan: the subway, Dominicans, Asians, the populated playground, and people in general.

The general absence of human bodies in the street and the alien nature of the speech I did hear presented a weird environment for an outsider. But I guess I became accustomed to it eventually, because watching The Wire today, I felt solidarity with the West Baltimore speakers captured on film and projected on screen — however violent their language, however amoral and degenerate their behaviors. I think this supports the universally validating power of cinema: the recording of real Indians, their accents uncensored and uncorrected, lends an authentic quality and asserts the urban Indian’s realness. It recognizes a distinctive presence in the world.

 

 

 “It’s cool up there, you sing your own tribal songs….you know… anything you want to do… you know”

One of the most interesting scenes in The Exiles follows Homer and Tommy to Hill X, the spot overlooking the LA skyline where the city’s Indians gather and reenact their cultural rites and rituals, modified to fit the urban environment, the particular demographic shift of the Indian populace, and the physical remoteness of the reservation. The modified powwows serve a younger generation of reservation "exiles," integrated into the metropolis. While not particularly young in years, these men and women resemble adolescents. They enter the semi-spiritual peak of Hill X as rambunctious American teens, blasting horns and revving engines. They convalesce, chant, dance, beat the drum as Indians by night, and in the morning, abandon the Hill, returning to the mainstream. The scene they leave behind is once more ambivalent: the land is dusty and beaten flat by tires; empty bottles and refuse clutter the clearing. It becomes clear from the image of the Hill that the urban Indian presents a unique and challenging blend of identities. His values with respect to ownership, environment, and family are an ambiguous mix of two cultures that our media has, for so long, presented as irreconcilable.

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[1] Fixico, D. Lee. (2000). The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

[2] “Seattle Indian Center Plan,” February 3, 1972, in Mary Ellen Sloan, “Indians in an Urban Setting, Salt Lake County, Utah (1972),” Occupational Paper No. 2, American West Center, University of Utah, 1973, 6.

Women in Television: Lovers, Mothers, and... Oh. Take 2. (Yelena)

As I wrote last semester, Fox's Fringe is a sci-fi procedural following the investigations of the FBI Fringe unit. Made up of Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), a half-mad scientist named Walter Bishop (John Noble), and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), Walter’s genius son with a history of petty crime, the Fringe team look into crimes of the strange and fantastic. Essentially, picture a quirkier X-Files, with parallel universes rather than aliens. Each of the three seasons has thus far twisted the show in an intriguing new direction, but while season 2 seemed to be where the show found its rhythm and established Olivia as a complex character and independent agent, season 3 has since fallen into tired and unoriginal gendered tropes.

While by no means a feminist utopia, seasons 1 and 2 of Fringe establish Olivia as a pivotal actor. Take season 1's “Ability,” where she must come to terms with her own superhuman mental abilities in order to stop a bomb, or season 2's “Jacksonville,” where she must do the same in order to save a building full of people. As William Bell (Leonard Nimoy), the head of Massive Dynamic, states, Olivia is the “guardian” of our universe, a gatekeeper and protector. While this position is in many ways established by her history as the test subject of two powerful men, Bell and Walter, she nevertheless holds a key position wherein she must act, and she does so over and over. In season 2, Olivia is the only one to have heard William Bell's warnings and is thus the only one capable of acting on them. When it comes down to a a choice between catching the season's Big Bad or saving Walter, Olivia is the one who decides.

Olivia's characterization further establishes her as a multifaceted person who acts, rather than a female object merely acted upon. Yes, the show brings in a sister and a niece to feminize her. Yes, her story starts off revolving around a man. But that is not where her story remains. Olivia spends much of the first half of the second season coming to terms with injuries from a car accident and a trip across universes, a condition based not in her gender but in her humanity. Later, when a building in New York is about to be pulled to another universe, Olivia is the only one who can find it, and in order to do so, she has to confront not her past as a little girl but her past as a test subject. This is not to say that Olivia's portrayal is absent of gender essentialism. As “Brown Betty,” an episode near the end of season 2, demonstrates, the writers conceive of Olivia as someone who fights for this universe because she cares for others, with true love as one of her primary motivations. Granted, this episode is essentially a fairy tale told by a very under-the-influence Walter, but the key themes echo the character interactions in the rest of the show. Olivia starts as a girlfriend first, using her professional skills in support of that role, and at the end of season 2, she partners with other child test subjects to bring them to the parallel universe—to get Peter back to be with him. This motivator, however, while stereotypically female, remains merely a facet of Olivia's character rather than the key aspect.

For the first third of season 3, Olivia is a prisoner in the parallel universe with the alternate Olivia having taken her place in ours. Gender-wise, this season unfolds much like the previous one in that both Olivias do their jobs and do them efficiently, with family and love as aspects of their characters but not the aspects. Olivia has visions of Peter but these are to tell her that she's in the wrong universe; the alternate Olivia develops a relationship with Peter, but she does so as part of her infiltration into our universe.

And then both Olivias return home.

I titled my first blog entry here, “Lovers, mothers, and... Oh” to draw attention to the fact that, no matter what else women in television may have going for them, they are almost always eventually reduced to someone's girlfriend and/or mother.

Apparently, Olivia Dunham is no exception.

After being kidnapped, tortured, and convinced by powerful drugs that she's the other Olivia Dunham, Olivia returns to our world and has a difficult homecoming—not because of the various traumas she's endured, not because she just left a mother dead in our world, but because Peter undertook a relationship with the other Olivia. With the exception of a single episode that at least acknowledges the disconnect she feels from her own life, Olivia spends a good five episodes pining after Peter and wondering how he feels about her. Of course it's possible, even probable, that she continues to have trouble readjusting, but we never see this. We never even see her sister or niece. Remember “Ability” and “Jacksonville”? Contrast that with season 3's “6B,” where she and Peter avert a similar disaster by appealing to romantic love and loss. Now that Olivia has a vibrant romantic interest, that is all her character becomes.

Things are no better for the other Olivia. After spending two months on a stressful undercover mission in a completely different world, she comes home in love with Peter and pregnant with his child. Although this pregnancy is potentially lethal for her and she almost aborts, a kidnapping and accelerated pregnancy come together to take that choice away from her. In a climactic birthing scene, she begs another male figure in her life to do anything to save this child, including sacrifice her, and it is pure luck that both child and loving mother survive.

Even Olivia's role as protector of our universe is undercut. It doesn't actually matter what Olivia does, we learn. Rather, Peter is destined to step into a doomsday device, and the Olivia he chooses will be the one whose universe survives. From this point forward, Olivia is no longer an actor in the narrative. She is an object for Peter to take or reject, and the idea that one or both might not even want to be with him becomes unthinkable. That Olivia, after all, would destroy her universe. And with so much of the story devoted to this love triangle, it seems unlikely that the show would suddenly swerve in another direction.

There is no will here for these two women, not on a narrative level. There is a woman, lover and mother, but an independent and fully developed character? She got lost somewhere around the episode where, ironically enough, a young woman's dead body became a literal marionette for her male admirer.

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There is nothing wrong with a woman who loves her partner or a woman who has a child, and there's nothing wrong with such a storyline. When it becomes a problem is when these plotlines are taken for granted. Women want love, women want babies—the thinking goes—and so women do these things, without any attention to how this particular character might react to that situation while, simultaneously, to the other situations in her life. Such a reduction not only makes for offensive television, it makes for boring and recycled television. I've seen this plot, I know how it goes, and so have the millions of other viewers slowly trickling away from Fringe's plummeting ratings.

Over the course of the first two seasons, Olivia Dunham developed into a complex character with a life, with family, with a history, with her own personality. I miss that Olivia, rather than the one who smiles at Peter over corpses. I miss that Olivia, rather than the one who wonders not how to reconnect with her entire universe but, rather, only whether Peter loves someone else.