Fictionalizing Ferguson: Recent Televisual Attempts to Work through Racial Injustice & Police Brutality

As someone who has spent over a decade analyzing the ways in which television attempts to work through cultural anxieties – specifically those that surfaced post-9/11 – I was not surprised when the new televisual trend of 2015 seemed to be spawning stand-alone episodes devoted to racial conflict.  The “ripped from the headlines” approach that many primetime dramas take made it inevitable that we were about to see a whole lot of fictionalizations (good and bad) of the tragedies that unfolded in Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island, Cleveland, and too many other cities to list.  As inevitable as it may have been, my cynicism meter spiked especially high when the first of these aired in January of this past year and it’s taken me nearly all of 2015 to decide just how I feel about the social commentary these (mostly well intentioned?) writers, producers, and networks are attempting.  Three early examples of such efforts include special episodes of The Good Wife & Scandal – which have been referred to by media critics as each program’s respective “Ferguson episode” – and ABC’s new show, American Crime, a gritty new crime anthology/mini-series which unflinchingly tackled racial conflict as its first season’s focus. 

The least well received of these was the first to air:  Season 6, Episode 12 of The Good Wife, an episode titled “The Debate,” was broadcast on January 11^th, 2015. It began by projecting disclaimers across two static screens (noting that the "episode was written and filmed prior to the grand jury in Ferguson and Staten Island" and that "all mentions of 'Ferguson' are in reference to the events in August, 2014, after the shooting death of Michael Brown").  The episode then moved directly on to camera-phone footage of a black character, Cole Willis, being shot and killed by two mall police officers.  The faux-footage, as media critic Simon Howell notes, is “very Eric Garner-esque” and, therefore, carries with it some of the same emotional resonance. 

The focus of the episode is Alicia Florrick's (Julianna Margulies) televised debate for the Cook County State's Attorney election against opponent Frank Prady (David Hyde Pierce).  The debate is interrupted within minutes when the jury comes back with a not-guilty verdict exonerating the police officers involved in the murder showcased in the opening scenes.  A protest takes place, police arrive in riot gear, politicians squabble about how to manage the situation, and the fictional dialogue is punctuated with a lot of references to how this could be "another Ferguson" or (how the situation could go "Full Ferguson") if not handled correctly. 

Media critics found plenty of things to criticize within this episode, such as a string of scenes that unfold in the hotel kitchen (where the debate had been held): "Prady and Alicia run into each other and start free-style debate about the  issues in the justice sytem that make tragedies like this one commonplace. Slowly a  group of young men of color (hotel workers) slowly drift in and act as a Greek  chorus, pointing out how ridiculous it is seeing two white people who are running for office arguing about how more people of color need to hold political offices."

                      

                               

Writing for Vulture, Laura Hoffman states that the critique works to some to acknowledge the fact that this story is coming from a television show with an overwhelmingly white cast and creative team).  However, other critics have argued the scene is an "embarrassing moment of 'white- splaining' (especially coming from a show that is usually more nuanced when it comes to political matters).” While the kitchen scene received the most attention by critics, the ending has also been criticized as being overly “tidy” as it closes with Alicia’s husband, the Governor, Peter Florrick, arriving at the scene of the protest with the victim’s widow, both of them urging the crowd to remain peaceful – and, of course, they do.  (This is a relatively common trope for episodes such as these. CSI: New York's finale, “Today is Life,” which predates Ferguson, airing on February 22, 2013, featured a story line wherein a police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man suspected of having robbed a jewelry store and it was, similarly, his tear-streaked fiance who helped tame the crowd of protesters.)

  

                                         

Some have suggested that perhaps it was just “too soon” to have an episode like this, but others have argued the flaws were all in how the episode was executed. The episode spent only a fraction of the time really delving into race doing so as it bounced between other melodramatic story lines. But some critics did think it had its moment of worthy critique, for example, showing that canned political statements do little to improve real world racial justice. 

Compared to The Good Wife episode, Shonda Rhimes’s attempt to respond to current race-related events though Scandal was better received. The Season 4, episode titled “The Lawn Chair” aired on March 5^th, 2015 -- the week that the damning report on the Ferguson Police Department was publicly released. In a way that mirrored parallel events, the fictional episode “presented a story that seemed directly inspired by the killing of Michael Brown.” In the episode, Olivia was hired by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department to help control the optics, and curb community outrage, after a black 17-year-old was shot and killed by a white cop just blocks away from the Capitol. Within minutes of Olivia’s arrival, the dead boy's father the dead enters the crime scene, shotgun in hand, demanding to see the cop who shot his son.  As the plot unfolds, Olivia finds herself in conflict with both the police who’d hired her, and a neighborhood activist, Marcus, who condemned her for being on the wrong side of the issue, causing her to confront her own privilege.

                              

   

                              

   

 Ultimately the events of the murder are revealed: Brandon Parker, the murdered teenager, was stopped by Officer Newton while walking home because he matched the description of a suspect accused of stealing a cellphone.  The officer fired his weapon when Brandon reached toward his pocket.  At first the officer plays up his remorse, but as the storyline continues Olivia reveals that the he has planted evidence at the crime scene – a knife by the body to make the accidental shooting seem more justified.  In reality, Brandon was not reaching for a knife but a receipt to show the officer that he had just legally purchased a cellphone.  Newton was eventually arrested but not before delivering a blatantly racist rant in front of his shocked squad room: “[you people are] taught to question me, to disobey me… and somehow I’m the animal.”

Many praised the episode.  Sophie Gilbert writing for The Atlantic, called the episode “a lesson in how to thoughtfully model fiction around real-life tragedy.”  Despite the fact that “the timing of the episode was eerie:  days after the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death coupled with the release of the Ferguson report,” many critics commended Scandal for its attempt to “tackle police brutality and institutionalized racism.”

Like with The Good Wife, some criticized Scandal for its overly optimistic ending.  In the end, Olivia and her team save the day and despite the fact that he disturbed a crime scene (firearm in hand), the grieving father is not arrested.  Instead he is personally escorted to the White House where he cries on the president’s shoulder.  Aisha Harris criticized this lack of realism and the way the program didn’t push itself far enough.  In an article for Slate, she asks:  

Why did Brandon have to be a standup kid in the end, who didn’t steal a cellphone? And why did Officer Newton have to be an undoubtedly dirty cop? Most cases of this nature are not so easily defined—racism and prejudice are often much more covert than that.  When Michael  Brown, Eric Garner, and many other unarmed people of color are killed by the police, the first thing many defenders will say is that they were “asking for it” by robbing a corner store or selling loose cigarettes, or, oh I don’t know, carrying around a fake gun in an open and carry state. Such viewpoints allow people to avoid empathy and see people of color as less than. 

Writing for Paste Magazine, Shannon Houston spoke out along similar lines: “Scandal did not need to give its huge audience an imaginary world where justice is served because, unfortunately, many people believe that such a world is the America we live in. If you’re going to make a 'race' episode, why support those delusions?” But other critics were more forgiving.  Michael Arceneaux, of VH1, wrote:  “I feel like we needed to see this lie this week.  It’s a fantasy, but it’s great that we were allowed to see a place where Black lives, grief, and anger matter.”  

Since some of the criticism that was launched at these shows stems from the fact that one episode simply isn’t enough to cover such complex issues, it’s not surprising that ABC’s American Crime – a program that devoted an entire season to race relations – was more uniformly well received (with critics saying it portrayed a “more nuanced portrait of race”).  American Crime premiered the same day as Scandal’s “Lawn Chair” episode.  Like the other shows, American Crime was influenced by recent events, a fact that creator John Ridley, who won an Oscar for the screenplay for 12 Years a Slave, noted: "The sad reality is that, unfortunately, these events remain cyclical in our country. It was never our desire to exploit any of these things, and it's not my desire to just merely say things. I really want people to feel things, to reexamine the world around them." 

                    

     

 American Crime is structured similarly to  films such as Crash and Babel, where a number of seemingly disconnected stories and characters come together in a single event. In this case, it's the horrific assault of a white couple living in the bedroom community of Modesto, California — an attack that leaves the husband, military veteran Matt Skokie, dead, and his wife, Gwen, a former beauty queen, in critical condition.  The suspects arrested and charged with the crime are all minorities and so it prompts a critical examination of race and prejudice (between and within racial groups).

While all three programs likely shared Ridley’s goal of trying to get audiences to “feel things” – specifically things related to racial inequality – American Crime was unique in that its overall aesthetic seemed devoted to this goal.  The show’s very filmic audio-visual techniques often reinforced the social critique it was trying to unfold – and it was, indeed, felt (at least by me). 

One visual motif that appears throughout the season is one of division (as can be seen in these screen shots below). Unlike traditional television staging, characters were often placed so that barriers existed between them and other characters, or so that even when they existed as the only character on screen, they were not centrally located, showing an imbalance or isolation. 

                                        

    

      

Another common element was the use of the extreme close up when two people were in dialogue.  In traditional shots both parties of a conversation would be visible, but throughout the show, entire conversations would be shot with only one speaker visible.  Moreover, the audio editing was purposely uneven so that dialogue was often out of sync with the visual of the actor speaking the lines.  The show often strategically used blurring, showing only certain characters in a shot clearly. The results of all of these stylized techniques was a reinforced attention to themes like othering, segregation, and breakdown in communication. 

                                     

 

                                     

 

The 2015 episodes related to contemporary race relations and police brutality did not end with these three shows. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit aired an episode, “Community Policing,” on October 14, 2015 that was similar in some ways to Scandal’s episode (and was met with similar controversy) and Madam Secretary aired an episode (“So You Say You Want a Revolution”) similar to The Good Wife (although slightly better executed) on November 15, 2015 wherein a #BlackLivesMatter related story line acted as a frame for a primary story line unfolding in the show.  So it’s obvious this televisual trend isn’t going anywhere but why might that be important or problematic?

Fictionalizations of domestic tragedies like the murder of Michael Brown or Eric Garner (or too many others to list here), are not easy to tell.  And so most television shows won’t tell these stories (or tell them well). In comparing these shows to the ones I usually study – fictionalizations inspired by the September 11^th attacks – it’s obvious that these episodes related to racial conflict are fictionalizing something that is actually much more real and present than the terrorist-themed dangers presented (or allegorized) in the 9/11-related shows.  As a result, these new episodes have greater power to influence viewers. That is, these shows have the power to do good… and the power to do more damage.

Generally speaking, many of the tragic remediations we are served (on a global or domestic scale) act as wish fulfillment giving us the type of positive dramatic dénouement we wish we had received in reality.  In studying this practice in 9/11-themed narratives for over a decade I’ve debated about whether viewing these shows could be seen as therapeutic or problematic or both. With this new trend of programming dealing with very current, very real racial issues, I’m even more invested in considering the consequences of such programming.  

In many respects, 9/11 is an event completed.  Sure, the larger threat of terrorism is ever-present, but the event of 9/11, while still reverberating in our cultural operations, is one that has reached a sort of tentative closure.  But unlike 9/11, Ferguson (serving as a representation of systemic racial injustice in the U.S. more broadly) is still very much an event-in-progress.  Despite individual rulings and reports, Ferguson is not over.  It’s not over because unlike 9/11 which stands as an isolated incident of sorts, the events surrounding Ferguson are very much linked to a string of similar, cyclical incidents.

So I’m left with many questions concerning these narratives that attempt to remediate (or fictionalize) our domestic tragedies-in-progress.  I wonder:  what does it mean to repurpose a cultural tragedy that is still in motion?  What kind of affectual power does this give to these parallel, fictional narratives?  Can they heal, influence the cultural climate, refine public sentiment? As television scholars have questioned before concerning fictional exploration of other social issues, does watching these narratives actually act to defuse activist impulses rather than stimulate them?  Ever the bad television scholar, these are questions I’m going to leave unanswered here as I may need still another year to ponder them.  

Everyone Prefers a Badass over a Housewife: The Walking Dead’s Social Commentary on Femininity & Maternity

It’s no secret that contemporary television is gutsier than it once was.  It pushes limits, pushes boundaries, and pushes buttons all with the hopes of increasing viewership.  As a result we have less predictable programming – shows that are more filmic in nature and packed full of gratuitous sex and violence in ways that would have shocked viewers even a decade ago.  Despite the reconfigured televisual landscape, in which not much is taboo, some plots are still avoided for fear that they’ll be met with negative viewer reactions: for example, the murder of children. 

Set in a zombie apocalypse, AMC’s The Walking Dead gets away with killing off almost everyone, including children.  But in 2014 the show featured a controversial episode that featured the death of children not by hordes of zombies or villainous humans, but by one of  its central characters:  Carol Peletier.  One would expect massive outcry against a female character who assassinated a child, but her popularity actually increased in the following seasons (which found her again threatening the well-being of a child).  It left me wondering what to make of fan’s celebration of Carol’s transformation into a take-no-prisoners badass character.

Like many fans of The Walking Dead, I’ve been fascinated by the character development of Carol for years and the ways in which the show uses her to carry out its post-9/11 gender commentary.  (For more on this see my previous post.)  As she progresses from the role of the emotional woman (an abused wife and mourning mother) to that of the hardened female (an exiled group leader and child killer at various intervals), she eventually pays the price for deviating from expected (gendered) behavior, and then – surprisingly – transcends such punishment.   The reactions from fans and critics to the season four episode “The Grove,” which debuted on March 17, 2014 – the episode wherein Carol, a surrogate mother figure of sorts, decided to kill the child she was tasked with caring for – is quite interesting.  One might assume that the emotional reactions viewers had to this plot twist would reveal that various societal expectations for women are so ingrained in our culture that even female characters in post-apocalyptic programs about hordes of zombies are expected to conform to them.  However, the fan commentary concerning this character actually reveals the opposite.  For example, the vast majority of the tweets about Carol that posted during and after this episode have celebrates her deviance from traditional gender norms.  This leaves me to believe that, despite its hyperbolic plots and gratuitous gore, the violent landscape of the zombie narrative might actually be an ideal space in which to interrogate conceptions of femininity more broadly, and maternity more specifically.

Carol’s transformation from a meek housewife to a rebellious leader, of course, makes her later transgressions involving children all the more interesting.  It's also interesting how the show shifts in terms of it treatment of Carol as her characterization becomes less and less feminine. For example, when Carol first acts in way that evokes a sense of masculine power and autonomy, she is punished for it (although later in the show such acts are applauded).

This is seen most clearly in season three when Carol begins training the children of her community in survival tactics, causing some characters to question her position as a role model. This season also finds Carol making the call to kill two fellow survivors who were infected by a plague that threatened to wipe out the entire group.  Despite the fact that the group’s leader, Rick, had made morally questionable, unilateral decisions on behalf of the community, he casts Carol out as a punishment for her action. In this example, Carol, who grows away from her status as “emotional woman” and into a symbolic stand in for the “rational man,” making the cold and calculating - but logical - call to protect the group, is punished for not behaving according to social norms. 

This sexist plot development was completely in line with the show’s gender bias, as many have noted the program’s problem with patriarchy.  For example, one critic applied the comic book writer, Gail Simone’s notion of “fridging” to the show.  She coined the phrase “women in refrigerators” to refer to the array of female characters who were “depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator” in popular comics.  Since, feminist comic book fans have adopted the term “fridging” to note the pointless death of a female character in order to fuel a male character’s pain and narrative action. This happens repeatedly on The Walking Dead.  Along these lines, Sara Century, a media reviewer for Bitch Media, notes the shows problematic portrayals of weak women, asking:  “Does someone want to do a tally of how many women in The Walking Dead attempt suicide, go insane, or give up their authority by deferring to men? Because every single female character does at least one of those things. Just giving you a head's up.”  In a piece for Dame Magazine, Laura Bogart analyzed the show’s lack of gender complexity, analyzing the ways in which the show undoes even its strongest female characters. For example,

[The] formidable female warrior, Michonne, is treated like a dreadlocked, katana-wielding Man With No Name—until a rather bland, predictable attempt to humanize, or, rather, feminize her. Of course, [viewers discover she lost] a young child in the apocalypse. Of course, after the loss of her child, she ceases to feel like a person. Of course, the only way for her to heal is to bond with the hero’s baby daughter.

Considering the show’s general treatment of women, when Carol was punished for not towing the gender line, it wasn’t a surprise.  What was surprising, though, was what happened when she returned from exile.

Carol’s ejection from the group is not permanent and when she returns, I would argue the patriarchal center of the show begins to shift.  In season four she reunites with part of the community after they have all been forced (once again) on the run.  She ends up joining one other adult survivor (Tyreese) who has ended up traveling with two sibling girls (Lizzie and Mika), and an infant (Judith, Rick’s daughter).  Despite, having progressed far from her original matronly characterization, these episodes in which she travels with this set forces her back into playing the role of maternal stand in for the children she is protecting.  Her role as surrogate mother to this trio of girls is terminated in the season four episode “The Grove,” which aired on March 16^th, 2014.

An oversimplified summary of the episode would be as follows:  Carol and Tyreese find temporary shelter in an idyllic cottage in the woods.  Carol works to continue developing survival skills in the two sisters:  the gentle Mika is resistant to killing anything (she refuses to shoot a deer, commenting that they could just eat peaches instead) and the troubled Lizzie (who suffers from an unspecified emotional disorder) refuses to believe that the walkers are not human (the opening scene of the episode foreshadows a moment wherein she attempts to play tag with attacking walker).  Even after a group of zombies attack them and they are all forced to defend themselves, Lizzie holds fast to her belief that the walkers are not necessarily dangerous.  So sure is she of her world view that she decides to stab her younger sister to death in order to prove to the adults that Mika could change and not be a threat.  Viewers are only privy to the aftermath of this violent act as they discover this incident just as Carol and Tyreese do, returning to the property to find Lizzie in front her sister’s dead body, still holding a knife with baby Judith in reach and apparently next for the kill.  They manage to lure Lizzie away from the scene, Carol is forced to stab Mika in the head to prevent the change Lizzie so desperately wanted to witness, and a decision is made.  Carol tells Tyreese that Lizzie can’t be around other people and then she takes the girl outside to the field, tells her to “look at the flowers,” raises a gun to the back of her head and kills her.

Fan reaction to the episode pretty consistent:  those live tweeting the episode noted how shocking, sad, and horrifying the episode was but when Carol’s role in Lizzie’s death was specifically mentioned, most voiced sympathy for the difficult situation she was placed in.  For example, one twitter user wrote “Did not see that coming but so good & love Carol even more.” Another wrote:  “those poor girls, but I’d do the same as Carol.”  And others celebrated Carol’s survivalist instincts, seeming less phased by the death of the children:  “She plays no games. Carol will take out any threat at any age.” 

While normally a scene involving a woman killing a child would evoke massive negative reactions (likely directed at the female character), the fans of The Walking Dead – either because they are already have an abnormally high tolerance for violence or because the post-apocalyptic setting recalibrates moral compasses – did not produce an onslaught of blaming tweets. In fact, the line “look at the flowers” instead became a recurrent hashtag associated with Carol in the two seasons to follow, used to not signify a horribly sad incident but instead to celebrate Carol’s status as a badass.

The program continue to put Carol in situations that showed her acting against so-called normal maternal impulses.  In Season Five the reunited group finds shelter within the previously mentioned gated community just outside of Alexandria.  Carol re-invents herself as a domesticized, den mother, baking casseroles and cookies, and sporting knit sweaters and floral shirts.  The show makes it quite clear that this feminine persona is an intelligent masquerade, intended to make the residents underestimate her.   As Century notes, Carol’s performance points out “how gender is something we do – it’s a performative activity that we have to continuously work at because it’s as socially constructed idea. Carol performs this weak embodiment of women in order to be able to sneak around the community and do as she wishes.  At one point Carol even remarks to Rick, ‘You know what’s great about this place? I get to be invisible again.’ Carol challenges the innateness of gender by not only being an extremely strong, capable survivor, but also by masquerading as the opposite kind of woman she has become now.”  And, surprisingly, fans embrace her character evolution whole-heartedly, even when she threatens to kill another child in a less justified encounter (while dressed like “mommy knows best”). 

A young boy, Sam, discovers Carol breaking into the gun repository, revealing her façade.  In a moment of chilling dialogue, Carol threatens the boy, detailing what she will do to him if he tells anyone what he’s seen:

If you [tell], one morning you will wake up and you won’t be in your bed.  You will be         the walls, far, far away tied to a tree.  You will scream and scream because you will be so afraid and no one will come to help because no one will hear you.  Well, something will hear you. The monsters will come… they will tear you apart and eat you all up while you are still alive.  All while you can still feel it.  Then afterwards your mom will never know what happened to you.   Or you can promise not ever to tell anyone what you saw here and then nothing will happen and you will get cookies, lots of cookies.  I know what I think you should do.  (“Forget” 5.13).

In many ways this scene is more disturbing than the one wherein Carol is forced to kill Lizzie, but, yet again, no fan outrage surfaced in the Twitterverse.  In fact, fans jokingly posted tweets like:  “You’re not her first kid, Sam. Watch yourself #Lookattheflowers.” 

In the end the Alexandria residents benefit from the faux housewife in their midst as when their walls are breeched by violent infiltrators, it is Carol who saves the day, trading in one costume for another (stripping off her matronly attire, donning the clothing of a deceased assassin, smearing blood across her face (copying their distasteful war paint), systematically killing the invaders off one by one, shattering the illusion she has crafted for herself in order to save many community members.

Perhaps viewers embrace Carol because of her very divergence from the conventional portrayals of television mothers.  After all, Carol’s character becomes “richer, more complex and formidable when she isliberated from parenting.”  Bogart writes:

Carol’s transformation from battered wife to one-woman assault squad is … radical: She is only able to become her better, stronger self after her child is killed by zombies… Nothing in her characterization now is expressly tied to her identity as a mother.

Perhaps fans don’t balk when Carol shoots a young girl or threatens to feed a young boy to the zombies because women living in post-apocalyptic settings “are exempt from the expectations of unfailing, uncomplaining maternal devotion, because in the hells they inhabit, there are no PTA bake sales that demand slaved-over cupcakes.” What this means is that such narratives provide opportunities for critiques of motherhood that may be resisted in other settings.  Bogart writes:

One of the primary appeals of horror-based entertainment like The Walking Dead… is that it offers us catharsis; the chance to see our most brutal … impulses enacted onscreen. It makes sense, then, that [shows like this] would feature characters that can embody and express attitudes towards motherhood that most women could never feel truly safe admitting. After all, motherhood is often referred to as the toughest job on the planet; but it may be the only job where any random internet commenter or nosy-pants in the grocery store thinks that she or he qualifies as a supervisor, full of ‘constructive criticism’ and ‘helpful feedback.’ And women who fall short of the maternal ideal (or, worst of all, opt out of having children altogether) are made into monsters. This makes women like Carol so essential: They can blast those monsters back to oblivion.

The decades following 9/11 have been ripe with hyperbolic rhetoric concerning the supposed crisis facing masculinity in the 21^st century and conservative calls to put “family values” back at the center of the national fiber.  As media products always have a reciprocal relationship to the cultural climates that spawn them, it is not difficult to read The Walking Dead as attempting to work through the cultural anxieties fixated on women on mothers.  While certain genres like dystopia and science fiction are always ideal spaces for doing such work (and providing cultural commentary on social issues more generally), perhaps the zombie narrative is particularly primed to be a site where debates concerning femininity and maternity are battled out.  After all, by nature such plots draw attention to the body, subtly attending to debates concerning what qualifies as “life” and focusing explicitly on the actual invasion and transformation of human bodies.   If we can look through the dramatized plots and aestheticized violence, programs like The Walking Dead may actually reveal important cultural sentiments – and potential correctives – concerning expectations for contemporary women.

Grey’s Anatomy Diminishing Feminist Impact: A Discussion of How the Death of Derek Shepherd will Undermine Meredith’s Recent Character Growth

Despite a leak that revealed that Patrick Dempsey (Dr. Derek Shepherd) was leaving Grey’s Anatomy before his recently renewed two-year contract expired, millions of viewers were shocked yesterday as the iconic “McDreamy” was killed off in an episode the network advertised as “the most shocking yet.”  Of course, I’ve been studying television too long to have been shocked in the least.

Unlike the sudden departure of Josh Charles (Will Gardner) on The Good Wife last year, Grey’s Anatomy laid out all the tell-tale signs that a major cast member was about to depart its program.  When Will was written off of CBS’s hit show last year in similar circumstances (with over a year left on his contract as well), it was an extremely sudden plot move that almost no viewer could have predicted.  ABC’s medical drama, on the other hand, reunited its central couple – Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and Derek Shepherd (Mer-Der) – in a set of rushed episodes spending a noticeable amount of screen time on their over-the-top happiness.  (Meredith, known for being “dark and twisty” rather than sappy and sentimental even waxed on about how “blessed” she felt).  These episodes featured a heavy dose of flashbacks chronicling the characters’ relationship from the start of the show (the classic sign of a forthcoming death).  And since complete happiness does not make for an interesting plot, the revelation that the long term couple was even contemplating expanding their family further suggested that a tragic event was soon to be coming their way.  This is melodrama after all.

Shonda Rhimes returned to her writing post on this program to craft this episode – her first since the season eight finale where other major cast members were written off the show – and in terms of a fitting exit for a character and actor who helped make the show, it is probably a success.  While parts of this episode were quite contrived (of course Derek would die a tragic death after single-handedly rescuing four people from a horrible car crash), they were in line with what viewers arguably want for an exiting central cast member.  (Who could ever forget Charlie’s heroic underwater death on Lost?)  The episode carefully used a few moments of misdirection to allow viewers who were slowly realizing as the episode stretched on that they were likely watching their last Grey’s episode featuring Derek to hope that maybe this was just a tease.  After years of ferry boat accidents, hospital shootings, bomb threats, and plan crashes, viewers have been trained to expect a happy resolution after a traumatic tease.  Not this time.    But these moments of misdirection were relatively successful.  Even I felt their pull.  When the little girl Derek saved from the car crash just happens to find him in the ER, urges him to stay alive in a poignant scene (quoting him through tears, saying it was “a great day to save lives”), and reveals to the doctors his first name and the fact that he was a surgeon, my inner fan thought:  “yes, now they’ll contact his hospital where competent doctors will fly to the scene to save his life.”  And then even after the episode had made it pretty clear that Derek’s chances of surviving his injury were non-existent, the show provided viewers with a 30-second fake out as Meredith imagined reuniting with Derek in a hospital as the police officers tried to inform her of the real circumstances she was about to face.

What made the episode touching was not these semi-manipulative moves, but the horrible irony of Derek’s passing:  a world-renown brain surgeon dies because he lands at a hospital unprepared to deal with traumatic injuries.  He dies because doctors make the wrong call and fail to order a CT scan that would have saved his life.  All of this is revealed to viewers through the show’s classic voiceover that usually only frames the start and end of episodes.  Throughout the last half of the episode viewers hear Derek’s internal thoughts – since he is conscious but not able to speak – as he recounts his injuries, comments on the medical staff’s decisions, and ultimately predicts his impending death.  There was something incredibly sad about the idea that someone would be fully aware of how to save themselves, but could be unable to do so. 

The scenes that follow are equally as sad as Meredith, with her two children in tow, has to make the decision to take Derek off of life support.  While this part of the episode was sullied for me by the interruption wherein Meredith has to give a stern pep talk to the doctor who didn’t fight hard enough to save Derek’s life – telling her to be better, that her husband was “her one,” the patient that would haunt her and ensure that she did better in the future – the final scene where she has to stand by not as a doctor, but as a wife, and watch as Derek slips away, was very moving.   During this scene The Fray’s “How to Save a Life,” played and viewers with any long-term affiliation with the show surely remembered that this song was used as the promotional lead in to the 2006 season of Grey’s Anatomy which featured a prominent Meredith-Derek cliffhanger resolution.    As the song played, scenes of Derek being taken off the life support were juxtaposed with more flashbacks of their life together.  For a moment, especially when Meredith told Derek it was okay to let go, I did momentarily think that this episode could bring tears to my eyes.  But they didn’t come.  (Perhaps I’m saving them until next week when the rest of the staff at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital learns of Derek’s sudden passing?)

So, why write about this character send off?  It’s just another big star, hyped up exit episode, right?  Well, yes… and no.  My problems with this episode have nothing to do with the episode itself but rather how this choice to write Derek off the show in such a tragic way is going to affect the recent characterization of Meredith.

Last year I praised Grey’s for its final episode featuring Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh).  Like many critics, I read this episode as solidifying the idea that the true love story of the show had been the friendship between the two female best friends – Cristina and Meredith – who had been each other’s “person” throughout ten seasons, many plot twists, and plenty of men who existed as their backdrop.  (In a recap of yesterday’s episode one writer referred to Derek as Meredith’s “true person” and I rolled my eyes.)  Cristina’s closing advice to Meredith was to not stand in Derek’s shadow and give up her life and career to follow in his ambition.  This scene set up for a terrific 11^th season where I expected the show to tackle this important issue:  how women often have to put their own career aspirations aside in order to support their husbands’ (especially when in the same field).  Consequently, I was disappointed when this season started and – at first – it didn’t reveal a realistic plot wherein the couple separated, divorced, or struggled to maintain a long distance relationship.  The season started, instead, with Derek choosing his family over his prestigious appointment by the White House and resenting Meredith for it.  But then the narrative shifted again and Derek did, indeed, take the job and the couple attempted to have a long distance relationship.  After four months of fuming, I was happy.  Here was the realism I wanted.

I liked what this plot move did for Meredith.  It showed her increasing bond with Alex and her efforts to begin building a relationship with her half-sister.  It showed her loneliness and insecurity and fear of losing her marriage, while also showing her ability to exist and thrive without him in Seattle at her side.  In fact, during his four month absence, she went on an unprecedented “streak” that gained her the attention of all the residents as she approached the 90-patient mark without a single death.  When Derek returned and it looked like things were going to return back to normal for the central couple, I wasn’t necessarily devastated – as these are the ebbs and flow of serial television – and I was at least comforted with one exchange they had during their reunion.  Derek told Meredith that he couldn’t live without her, buy in return she said the following: “I can live without you; I just don’t want to.”  For me that was a moment of dialog that seemed to align perfectly with the third-wave feminist movement and the notion of feminism as the independent, personalized choices that strong women make that fit their own particular life circumstances. 

So that’s where we were.  And then Derek died.  Now I’m left asking what’s next.  It will be impossible for the show to portray Meredith as anything less than a grieving wife for quite some time and that will undoubtedly unravel any feminist-tinged characterization I saw in the works this season.  It doesn’t preclude some terrific moments to come for the character as she struggles to be a single mother and a doctor now completely free of the shadow of her hot shot husband.  And it opens up the possibility that (eventually) the show will write in a prospective love interest giving Meredith her first new romantic relationship in almost nearly a decade, which will be good for the show as a melodrama.    The show doesn’t have to die with Derek, but I do worry about the feminist utility that it used to have.

Recently I’ve been struggling with what I want from network primetime dramas.  As a media critic I am well aware that we often have to watch our favorite television shows and films as if we suffered from dissociative identity disorder.  Like many, I have learned to toggle between consuming popular culture with the critical eye of an academic to turning off my scholarly switch so that I can simply be awash in it.  I realize, as problematic as it is, that I simultaneously want a television show to dazzle me with over-the-top narrative feats and stylistics and deliver me the realistic social commentary I feel we need.  It’s impossible to do all of this all of the time. 

At a conference last month I spoke about how I struggled with the ways in which melodramatic narratives seem to systematically undermine feminist characters and plots.  At the end of my talk I humorously noted that perhaps I wasn’t really calling for perfect feminist characters (as if such a thing existed) because that probably would result in very boring television.  So as I write this essay, I am again pondering what my exact call to action might be.  Do I really wish that Grey’s would have just written Derek off in a low-key divorce storyline that wouldn’t have made for good TV?  Maybe not.   And if not, what does that mean I do want?  If I’m not calling for shows to attempt to broadcast unwavering feminist messages, then can I be satisfied when they present flawed (sometimes-) feminist characters and the occasional (mostly-) feminist storyline?  Is it perhaps better to subtly embed social commentary that aligns with the women’s movement into mainstream texts so that it is more easily palatable?  Or does it get diluted by the surrounding narrative content when we do this?  

We watch contemporary television programs today across a variety of screens and these programs are literally “screening” feminism in every sense of the verb.  Some shows conceal the work that still needs to be done in terms of feminism – projecting utopic depictions of worlds where women have gained as much prestigious and success as men, worlds where sexual double standards and pay gaps are rarely addressed.  Through sexualized storylines the feminist qualities of star characters are often hidden, eclipsed, and veiled due to the often heteronormative, patriarchal romance prerequisite plots of primetime melodrama.  But, aligned with the other definition of “to screen,” contemporary television programs also broadcast feminism load and clear, airing plots that explore women’s issues, showing characters who (although not always consistently) embody what it means to be a feminist in the 21^st century.  Perhaps I can want nothing more of television than for it to do at least both types of this screening.  Or, maybe, all I really want is for viewers to know that this dueling screening of feminism is happening as they watch their favorite shows on their television sets, laptops, and smartphones so that they can be aware of how they might be affected by the conflicting messages we receive.

Horror on the Small Screen: More Thoughts on The Walking Dead’s Post-9/11 Political Critiques

When I hear the term “horror” in any contemporary 21^st century context I can’t help but think of what is arguably the most “horrific” real event that occurred on American soil in recent history:  the attacks of 9/11.  The main trajectory of my research, in fact, stems on tracing how 9/11 sparked various narrative trends across genre & media – with a specific focus often on television.  And while I don’t tend to focus on horror specifically, there is an element of the horrific in all the televisual genres and programs that I find intricately tied to the terrorist attacks (or more often, our responses to them).

In my work I argue that 9/11 was framed as a trauma to be seen (in order to be felt) and that television has long been the medium in charge of controlling feelings through the art of “seeing” specifically constructed imagery.  So, for example, to many Americans, 9/11 unfolded in front of their eyes much like a Hollywood blockbuster film – almost too spectacular to believe.  Indeed, many survivors utilized the simile it felt “like a movie” to explain the experience.  As Susan Sontag notes, “‘it felt like a movie’ seems to have displaced the way survivors of a catastrophe used to express the short-term unassimilability of what they had gone through:  ‘It felt like a dream.’”   So it’s not really surprising that the American public turned to the realm of visual culture/media to “replay” the event dominating their own memories almost continuously throughout the past 13 years.   Marc Redfield argues, the phrase itself, “‘it was like a movie’ conjures up not just an excess of event over believability, but a sense that this event is to be mediated, that it would have no sense, perhaps would not even have occurred, if it were not being recorded and transmitted.”  In this explanation it would seem that the media was needed – it was the only way that people could move from disbelief (that which they could not comprehend and some could not physically see) to belief (that which they could only comprehend through repeat seeing).  In my readings of televiusal narratives that proliferate after 9/11 I propose that a very similar process is at work; through their mediation of fictionalized scenarios they present trauma in order to do away with it, hence becoming a sort of emotional security blanket for viewers existing in an unstable post-9/11 world.

Certain stylistic changes can be seen on television during this time (a move to more filmic aesthetics is among them).  But also, a shift toward more (to borrow from a Grey’s Anatomy phrase) “darky and twisty” fear-based programs.  The 21^st century saw a rapid rise of genres (or genre blends) on television that were not as prevalent before:  dystopia, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  Like the trends noted for Hollywood horror films, television of the past decade and a half has increasingly featured programs that break with break old televisual commandments by ending routinely killing off major characters and often failing to offer the pre-requisite happy ending at a season or series end. While fictional television used to be the medium that provided a sense of predictability and comfort, the programming of the past decade or so has disallowed viewers to settle into any safe assumptions about how their narratives will unfold. 

There are a few consistent post-9/11 themes that have remained prevalent on television throughout the past decade and a half:

·         Salvation/Rescue Motifs – from political/terrorist peril (24, Alias, The Blacklist, Person of Interest, Madam Secretary, State of Affairs), from technology gone awry (Revolution, Fringe), from alien invasion (The Event, V)

·         Revenge/Vengeance/Vigilante Justice Motifs – Revenge, Dexter

·         The Do-Over/Resurrection Motif – time travel/shifting, vampire, zombies, rebirth, cloning (Lost, Heroes, True Blood, Resurrection, Forever, Zero Hour)

·         The Dark Side of Humanity – shows that about serial killers and cults (The Following, Cult) and I

       jokingly include here, politicians (ala Scandal & House of Cards).

Arguably the most popular contemporary television programs that falls into the traditional horror genre, is AMC’s The Walking Dead.  This show features an apocalyptic vision of the United States in the near future and incorporates all of the previously mentioned post-9/11 themes and then some.  I’m far from the first to read this show (or the recent zombie craze more generally) as a product of the terrorist attacks.  In his article, “Are Zombies the Guilty Conscience of Post-9/11 America,” Will Nixon suggests “that the zombie renaissance” represents American’s reactions “to 9/11 and the mess” the government made of global relations ever since the attacks.  Others argue that recent zombie narratives (much like their sister narrative, vampire tales) highlight an “us versus them” binary – a fear of a dangerous “other” lurking in the shadows.  Zombie storylines have also been read as alluding to cultural fears concerning biological warfare, epidemics, global warming, consumerism, and over dependence on technology.  And although they likely tap into all of these fears, I’m (of course) partial to the 9/11 reading.

In a previous essay I argued Walking Dead rests upon a central question that could be read as being allegorical in nature:   “where to do we go from here?”  Zombie narratives often highlight two possible ways to deal with the post-apocalyptic world:   survive or rebuild.  Storylines that focus on surviving often showcase central characters on the run doing anything possible to survive on a daily basis – even if it means a lone existence.  Storylines that focus on rebuilding highlight the importance of community, structure, and group cohesiveness; they include central characters who (sometimes) place limits on what they are willing to do to survive, which include not being willing to exist alone.  The Walking Dead showcases both of these survival mindsets throughout various characters who make the transition from lone survival to group living (e.g. Michonne & Bob) and various central conflicts that ground the individual seasons. 

As previously discussed, the third season of Walking Dead highlights these mindsets through the parallel storylines unfolding with the core group held up at the prison and the inhabitants of the gated community of Woodbury.     While the group viewers have come to know and love (Rick’s crew) hold a bit of both mindsets – they are a community of sorts, a surrogate family system – they primarily find themselves on the run playing the role of “survivor.”  They keep attempting momentary respites which could be viewed as community building (e.g. life on the farm in season two; life at the prison in season three), but these are always abandoned when their main goal must again be to simply survive.  They do have limits as to what they will do to achieve this goal, but viewers have seen these get stretched thin over time.

The Woodbury community (led by the Governor) exists as a faux utopia showing how there is a chance for “normalcy” and life after tragedy.  At least that’s what it seems like at first glance.  The setting is a seemingly normal town (quaint even, a throwback to the yesteryears), the residents seem safe and happy – no one is on the run and prior to recent events there had not been a death among them in quite some time.  But viewers quickly learn (if they didn’t guess immediately) that things aren’t quite what they seem in this happy town.  The Governor is willing to go to great extremes to ensure their safety (including murder).   But his motivation is not purely altruistic:  his scientific projects are in place because he longs to cure his infected daughter (who he had kept locked away in his living quarters) and all of his actions, arguably, really seem to be to ensure his place as a leader and a father figure to this new generation of survivors. 

Now usually those existing on the “community” side of the community/survivor continuum are portrayed as the more morally sound, after all, they have the betterment of society on their side.  It is interesting that Walking Dead flips this notion on its head.  In analyzing this particular season, I’ve asked:  Is it too much of a stretch to read the Governor, who gives his charismatic speeches about community and the future of humanity, as an allegory for George W. Bush?  Is the hypocrisy of the Woodbury leadership a metaphor for the Bush administration politics?  Can we read the staged fight scenes (with zombies whose teeth had been removed) as alluding to the smoke and mirror media spectacles of the post-9/11 era? 

As the series continues on it is obvious that the show is purposely casting post-apocalypse communities as surviving only through extreme measures and questionable moral decisions that reveal the “horrific” side of our potential human nature.  (For example, the actions that Carol took in season four – killing fellow community members who were infected with an epidemic that threatened to wipe out the entire prison and later – in one of the darkest moments I’ve yet to see on television – assassinating a child in order to save the baby she was tasked to protect).    Outside of the group, this thematic is found in season four when the morals of the “good” survivor group are contrasted with those of the “bad” residents of Terminus.  This was a community that originally attempted to act as a sanctuary for all survivors but, after having been repaid by invaders who stole, tortured, and killed them – turned just as vicious as those who inflicted such injuries upon them.  They survive by luring unsuspecting refuges into their camp only to take their positions and then literally consume them, having resorted to cannibalism to survive. 

The current season five offers yet another variation of this motif when it pits the main cast against the survivors in Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital where the medical facility exists in a sort of police state as the powers-that-be save only enough people from the local area to help sustain their existence and turn a blind eye toward the abuse of both patients and staff alike. 

The Walking Dead continually points toward the horrors of surviving at any cost, suggesting that protecting one’s community from “invaders” through any means is immoral.  That the fictional events of the show’s five seasons unfold against the backdrop of real world debates about Homeland security practices, foreign policies, and horrific accounts of the lengths our own country went through in its efforts to be safe (e.g. “enhanced interrogation techniques”) is no coincidence.  In my reading, this show, along with so many others, offers viewers a chance to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas faced by fictional countries/communities in peril in order to provide social commentary on the ways in which our real ones deal with their own conflicts.  There is something horrific about imagining a world plagued by zombies… but there’s something even more horrific about realizing that, in some ways, the world you are living in is just as horrific.