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 11th,
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 5th,
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 11th 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.
