Echoes from the Past: The Motif of Fear in Post-9/11 TV Dramas of Now (ABC's Revenge) and Then (NBC's Heores)

This past week I watched the season finale of one of my guilty pleasure:  ABC’s Revenge (2011-present).  Besides for being a delightfully soapy primetime melodrama it aligns with my research interest occasionally flirting with the classification of post-9/11 drama.  (For more on this, see my previous post).  While watching this closing episode (which was had moments of tear-jerking and cliff-hanging), I was struck with a moment of déjà vu.

Near the close of the episode (SPOILER ALERT), the patriarch of the principal “bad” family, Conrad Grayson, reveals that he has once again been indoctrinated into the so-called “Initiative” (a group of corporate evil-doers who have previously participated in domestic terror).  While his complacency is no surprise (as the family has been involved with them in the past), his eager willingness to join forces and his ability to seemingly justify their acts is.  This moment of dialogue highlights the fear motif that I see present in much of 9/11 televisual drama and, moreover, is oddly similar to another post-9/11 television drama that I’ve studied, NBC’s Heroes (2006-2010). 

To provide a bit of context, in this scene Conrad’s wife, Victoria, is confronting him after he has just been elected Governor (due to some shady campaign stunts).  In this conversation Conrad admits to having allowed a bomb to explode on a city block and refers back to their role in another domestic terror act, the bombing of a commercial flight years prior:

Victoria:  You knew about that bomb and positioned campaign head quarters so you could be a first responder.  You’ve been with the Initiative all along.

Conrad:  There is no Initiative, dear.  There never was; not really.  There’s simply a consortium of savvy business persons who have perfected the art of profiting off of other people’s fear.  You see when catastrophe strikes, the public spends money – lots of it.  And if one were able to anticipate such disasters, they’d stand to make a fortune.  And, of course, predicting these acts of God is impossible unless, of course, one decides to play god.  On the heels of flight 187 the FAA granted billions in securities contracts… The stocks to those companies quadrupled and those who were in the know collected handsomely.  So, when I was tipped off about the inevitability of recent events, I opted in.  (“The Truth” 2.2)

 It was Conrad’s line about “profiting off of other people’s fears” that really transported me back to my days of watching Heroes.  The main premise of Heroes revolved around a plot where seemingly ordinary individuals realize they have extraordinary (super) powers.  Throughout the first season of this series these main characters begin a physical odyssey that forces their paths to cross with those of the other “heroes” and a spiritual odyssey that forces them to come to terms with the responsibility that comes along with their special talents/abilities.  The event that they are drawn together to prevent is also a heavy handed allusion to 9/11.

 

 

The first mention of this pending disaster within the show comes in the form of Isaac’s painting on the floor of his art studio – a vision of a New York cityscape in flames (“Don’t Look Back” 1.2).  This disaster finally becomes “reality” toward the end of the season when, “in ‘Five years Gone,’ Heroes presents an alternative future vision not only of the characters’ world but also of the series itself.  In terms of the season’s story line, the episode reveals a dystopia that is yet to come” (Porter, Lavery, and Robson 2007, 149).   

 

 

 

The echoes of 9/11 are not all that subtle, as Porter, Lavery, and Robson (2007, 149) note:  “Rather than opaquely addressed, references to terrorism are hammered home.  After the introduction of the Linderman Act, Homeland Security is called upon to clamp down on attackers ‘acting against America’s interests.’”  In this episode, as the president speaks to a sober crowd  in the ruins of the city, beneath a banner reading “America Remembers,” the scene is reminiscent of memorials stationed at Ground Zero years after September 11^th.

 

 

This episode highlights our fascination with the theme of the “do-over”.  Viewers are shown this post-explosion scene in order to hope (along with the main characters) that it can still be prevented.  Television scholars suggest that “a deeper reason” behind our love of this theme

 

might be that since 9/11, we are perhaps collectively foreseeing a terrible future and shuddering at the view.  Now the kaleidoscope turns into a mirror, and in “Five Years Gone” we are suddenly looking at a distorted image of ourselves, at what we could become in the aftermath of 9/11.  Viewers experience a shock of recognition when President Nathan Petrelli (actually Sylar) appears in front of a devastated New York landscape to speak inspirational platitudes designed to unite Americans and prevent another disaster.  The scene is a slightly twisted reflection of ceremonies upon the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001. (Porter, Lavery, & Robson 2007, 162-163)

The timing of this episode is important. In it the characters are viewing a future five years in the future – one that if they could go back in time just five years, they could change.  If they could go back in time (and some do have this power) and alter events, an explosion would not hit New York and forever change the world.  And when viewers are watching this episode full of longing to re-write the past, it is not unimportantly five years after the attacks of September 11^th, 2001.

   
However, it is not necessarily the images of this fictionalized ground zero that is so chilling, but rather the rationalization given within the narrative for allowing it to come to be.  (And here comes the connection to Revenge).  It is a justification grounded in fear.  In “.07%,” Daniel Linderman, one of the key “villains,” offers this justification to up-and-coming politician, Nathan Petrelli, for allowing the explosion to occur: “I said people needed hope but they trust fear.  This tragedy will be a catalyst for good, for change.  Out of the ashes, humans will find a common goal.  A united sense of hope couched in a united sense of fear.  And it is your destiny Nathan to be the leader who uses this event to rally a city, a nation, a world” (1.19).   When Nathan objects to the plan, stating that half of New York will be lost, Linderman states that it will amount to only a .07% decrease in the total world population – an acceptable loss (“.07%” 1.19).  The importance here is again the amplification, the manipulation, of fear.

This idea of capitalizing on fear surfaces one episode later when Claire speaks to Sylar, the principle bad guy of season one, as he disguised as Nathan:  “You made everyone afraid of us” (“Five Years Gone” 1.20).   He responds, “I made everyone aware of us, fear is just a natural response” (“Five Years Gone” 1.20).  Again fear is stressed but this time the focus is the fear that arises out of a societal structure founded upon the binary of us versus them, as they are now living in a world where “normal” humans are terrified of the “heroes” because of their special powers.

Now there are obviously some slight differences between the two programs.  In Revenge, the Initiative wants to create fear in order to profit financially off of it.  In Heroes, the Company (their version of the Initiative, headed by Daniel Linderman), wants to use fear to gain political power.  While Conrad Grayson doesn’t mask his own selfish desires for participating in this manipulation of fear, Daniel Linderman attempts to justify this fear provocation by saying it will also unite the nation.  (This, clearly, cries out for a post-9/11 reading).

It interests me that these programs, and others, are exploring this theme of fear manipulation through fictional narratives.  I would argue (and do often) that we live in a time period where such fear modulation is present all the time   (For a great article on this see Brian Massumi’s “Fear, the SpectrumSaid” on the Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded terror alert system).  Our news networks profit off of this perpetual state of fear that we are in and do little to reduce it.  Certain politicians, if we listen closely to their rhetoric, don’t sound all that different than these ambitious fictional characters.  Heroes may have been a (at times silly) fantasy program about super heroes and Revenge may be basically a primetime soap opera about betrayal, but both are providing some interesting social commentary is you watch carefully enough.