We are the 99%... But We Sure Do Like Watching the Other 1% on TV: How Televisual History Could Have Predicted the Popularity of ABC's "Revenge" & NBC's "Deception"

 As a television historian of sorts, I’m prone to watching for patterns and I’m obsessed with reading all programming as a way to understand the time period from which it stems.  I find genre trends interesting (e.g. the popularity of sitcoms in the 80s and 90s and their near extinction in the early 00s… thanks to the competing presence of reality television).  But more fascinating to me are the narrative trends evident in television shows because they often reveal the values and/or concerns of a certain era (e.g. the role-reversal sitcoms like Who’s the Boss, Charles in Charge, My Two Dads, & Full House certainly contained messages that aligned with the conservative, feminist-backlash time that was the 1980s).  So when NBC launched its new drama, Deception, last month, it conjured up thoughts I had already had about the timely popularity of ABC’s Revenge (2011-present).  I read these programs, which demonize the rich in delightfully delicious ways, as tapping into contemporary socio-political concerns (i.e. the “We are the 99%”/Occupy Wall Street movement).    Looking at similar programming from past eras indicates that this genre, the primetime soap opera, is often primed to reveal cultural concerns about the economic climate. (One possible example from the past, which I’ll expand on later, would be the popularity of shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, & Falcon Crest during and after the economic recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s).

 

For those unfamiliar with these new melodramas, here is a brief for each synopsis:

 

 Revenge (which at first glance seems like a very traditional story of, duh, revenge – the tale of a young woman who seeks to avenge her father’s death by destroying all who contributed to it) subtly taps into some post-9/11 concerns.  The main character’s father, David Clarke, was wrongly sentenced to prison for treason after being accused of funneling funds to a terrorist group responsible for blowing up a commercial flight.  While the motifs of terrorism and plane hijacking certainly point to the events of 9/11, the show’s overarching focus on the corrupt nature of the corporate world and social elite also tap into contemporary concerns about the economic climate and finance industry. 

 

 

Deception (2013-present) also portrays the upper class in an unfavorable light.  While its critique is often more grounded in the celebrity status of undeserving elites, the business corruption is highlighted in one of the show’s major plots:  a corporation’s willingness to launch an unsafe pharmaceutical substitute for chemo therapy. The show starts off with the death of Vivian Bowers, the eldest daughter of the rich and famous Bowers family (think of this family as the fictional equivalent of, say, the Kardashians).  As the police suspect one of her family members was responsible for her death, Vivian’s childhood best friend, Joanna Locasto, is brought in as an undercover detective to solve the crime.  She quickly uncovers (in just the first two episodes alone) much more:  secret pregnancies, mistaken parental identity, business corruption, blackmail, etc. 

 

Both programs showcase main characters who are determined to bring down the central family (Revenge’s Grayson family and Deception’s Bowers family), but they both seemingly get sidetracked from time-to-time by their own emotions.  (These shows are, after all, melodramas).  Revenge’s Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke (Emily VanCamp) spends the first season in a strategic love affair with Daniel Grayson – one that occasionally appeared to be the real deal and left viewers wondering if she would be able to fulfill her mission.  Deception’s Joanna (Meagan Good) seems to run the risk of being seduced not only by a man (the youngest son of the Bowers family, a childhood love interest), but also by the lifestyle of the rich and famous. 

 

That these programs are being pitched and produced (and seem to be popular) at this cultural moment is interesting being that it is a time when much of America holds the upper class in contempt.  So do we viewers watch these shows because we want to see the rich depicted in despicable ways? 

 

The argument could be made that we have always had a fascination with the rich and famous… and this would be true.  (There are a great many more escapist televisual depictions of upper, or at least upper-middle, class families on television than there are of those focused on lower class ones).  And if we want to look at melodrama in particular, or soaps more specifically, this seems to be even more the case.  But while soaps (daytime and primetime alike) have long included tangential storylines that feature shady upper class families and unethical corporate maneuverings, Revenge and Deception place these at the center of their narratives.  So it’s hard not to these shows as being “products of their times.”

 

But, as stated earlier, this is not necessarily new and perhaps the primetime soap opera is an ideal site to carry out critiques linked to the economic landscape.  Like Revenge and Deception, Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing were all launched during an economic recession, products of an economic climate that favored the upper class over the middle class.  It could be argued that these shows reflect their cultural time periods and possibly act as a sort of “wish fulfillment” for the middle class viewers watching them.  However, the shows of the 80s hit peak popularity once the recession was over.  Because of this it becomes a bit harder to read them as shows that allow the “have-nots” of the real world to hate on the “haves” of the fictional telescape.

 

In terms of the programs from the 1980s, their narrative excess could be seen as symbolizing the temporary economic excess that the middle of that decade provided before the proverbial bubble burst.  Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing were quite popular during most of Reagan’s tenure.  Reagan’s trickle-down economics, his tax cuts favoring the upper class, during this time period are now often accused of pushing the federal budget into a deficit and leading the nation into a spending spree of their own.  During this time debt tripled from 900 billion dollars to 2.8 trillion dollars.   However, during his actual presidency, most Americans experienced temporary economic prosperity (or the illusion of it):  real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years and a loss of $1500 per year in the post-Reagan years, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency, and the productivity rate was higher during his years in office.  However, all of this positive momentum leading away from the 1982 recession came to a halt on Monday, October 19^th, 1987 – a day often referred to in financial circles as Black Monday – when stock markets around the world crashed.  The result in the United States was that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 508 points.  The effects of this market turn would be felt for the remainder of Reagan’s time in office and for most of his successor, George H. Bush’s, presidential reign.

 

Although it would be a bit presumptuous to claim that this economic turn prompted changes in the television industry, the economic shift certainly seemed to manifest itself in these primetime melodramas centered around glamour and glitz as the ratings on many of these programs began to steadily decline in the years following the trouble on Wall Street.  Dynasty, the most extravagant of all, met its demise in 1989 with each of the other night time soaps following nearly a year apart:  Falcon Crest in 1990, Dallas in 1991 and Knots Landing in 1993.

 

So what does this mean for the future of Revenge and Deception?  Can we still love them when we’re not the angry 99%?  The history of the genre says:  sure we can… but only if the economic tides don’t turn yet again.  And, of course, it could be I’m reading too much into these shows.  (Surprise, surprise).  Maybe Revenge and Deception are going to cement their place in the primetime network lineups because America loves female avengers and detectives, glimpses into the worlds of the fictional elite, and complex melodramatic plotlines.  But maybe, just maybe, these programs will stick around because they do help audiences work through (and displace) emotions lingering the decade after 9/11 and the country’s subsequent economic collapse.  If this is the case then these programs are continuing the soap’s history of social critique but with a quite different focus.  And for that reason (and because, let’s be honest, I love to loathe the fictional rich), I’ll continue tuning in.