Why One Week of Television Almost Made me Change Professions: The Shocking Deaths of The Walking Dead, Scandal, & The Good Wife

I’m only now recovering from the television programming that ran from March 16^th to March 23^rd and even now I’m not quite sure I can articulate how much the three episodes of my favorite television programs unnerved me.  If you’re not caught up to at least those dates, do not read on [SPOILERS]. 

A weekly dose of death is somewhat expected on The Walking Dead.  And violence is not exactly uncommon on Scandal.  But The Good Wife is usually pretty tame in that regard.  If I had to pick shows off my DVR queue that I think are pretty safe (and not prone to launch me into a deep depression), Good Wife usually ranks near the top.  Not so much last week.  At the end of the March 23^rd episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” the show killed off one of its main characters, Will Gardner (Josh Charles).  For those following the behind-the-scenes gossip (and I was not one those people), this might have been less shocking as Charles was one of the only actors who had not been secured into a six-year contract – his contract expired this season.  But regardless, the finality of his exit was unexpected, after all he’s the “Gardner” of Lockhart/Gardner (the firm that originated as the prime focus of the show) and he’s a third of the love triangle that drives one of the major subplots of the show.  As someone who studies narrative arches on television shows, in retrospect, this shocking episode was deliberately set up for by the episode that preceded it where Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) reminisced on her re-entry into law and, hence, her relationship with Will.  The scenes leading up to his shocking death further set up for his departure.  Although they had been sworn enemies for most of the season, Alicia and Will arrived at a sort of truce and she went out of her way to show professional courtesy to him when the father of his murder victim (the one who would ultimately kill him) was seeking a second opinion on the case.  In their last exchange, Alicia called him the better attorney and he agreed with a smile, to which she retorted that he was the more humble too.  The comic banter and friendly exchange resurrected the old image of the two of them and gave viewers one last glimpse of the couple’s chemistry – the sexual tension and friendship that drove the show for so many seasons.  And then they killed him.   Besides for being sad at the loss of a character I really enjoyed, I’m sad because I think without the prerequisite “will they/won’t they” storyline that was Alicia and Will, the show may be off the air within two seasons… but time will tell. 

The March 20^th episode of Scandal wasn’t as shocking.  The “death” had come at the end of the prior week only we didn’t know which of the relatively important minor characters was going to be written off the show.  (Although since the “shot” took place off camera I’m sure many viewers were hoping we weren’t actually going to experience a death but rather the good ole’ televisual fake out).   In “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” viewers learn that the character who dies was James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky), Cyrus’s husband and the President’s Press Secretary.  I have so much to say about this episode and the way in which this show might be a Post-post-9/11 in the ways in which it blatantly critiques the extremes the United States will go to in the name of homeland security (or in this case, the perseverance of “The Republic”).  So I’m going to save most of that for another post.  But what I will say was while this episode didn’t shock me, it depressed me.  Of the three depressing episodes full of death and darkness, this was the one that actually brought me to tears.  The episode built slowly around the mourning of Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry).  As the plot unfolded in its normal fast pace, Cyrus was slowly remembering his relationship with James and his struggles to come to terms first with his own sexuality and later with his public acknowledgment of his partnership.  Just as viewers get to witness Cyrus’s first moment of acceptance – in which he finally grants James’s wish to attend a presidential ball – happily dancing with him despite unaccepting onlookers – this happy narrative moment is juxtaposed with Cyrus’s emotional unraveling.  Until this point he had dealt with James’s death as he does almost everything, with business-like precision and nerves of steel.  But on the podium in front of the media, he crumples and it was his explosion into tears that sparked my own. 

While these episodes were sad, The Walking Dead episode, “The Grove,” which preceded them in the week, was downright disturbing. This season has been an anomaly of sorts.  At the heart of each season has been a temporary moment of utopia featuring a safe haven where the survivors formed a community of sorts:  first on the outskirts of Atlanta in the camp, then on the farm, and then in the prison.  When the prison was breeched at the end of season three, the group was fragmented and this season has instead showed oddly paired survivors each trying to survive in much smaller groups.  Despite being a rather glum season, the show has still given viewers these brief moments of community building:  Rick, Carl, and Michonne setting up house together; Beth and Daryl drinking moonshine together on the porch of a house they would soon torch; etc.  These were always fleeting.  The momentary happiness and safety the characters found was always shattered (by walkers or scavengers) and soon enough they were all on their pilgrimage again.  The episode in question, however, highlighted this practice of teasing viewers with a safe haven only to destroy it like none other has to date. 

In “The Grove,” Carol, Tyreese, Lizzie, Mika, and baby Judith eventually find temporary shelter in a little country house protected by a wire fence.  It is almost tranquil.  They bake pecans, sit by a fire, and Mika plays with a toy doll she has found on the property.  Tyreese and Carol even contemplate staying for a while.  Of course, like most viewers, I had no doubt this happy little household was bound to be rocked by a tragedy. The foreshadowing was thick:  Mika was going to die.  This was first hinted at when Carol was talking about her deceased daughter, Sophia, who “had not had a mean bone in her body.”  The parallels to Mika were obvious but they would be reinforced when Carol would say this exact statement again to Tyreese when expressing his worry about the two girls (that Mika was too weak to survive in such a world and that Lizzie just didn’t understand it – as seen in many scenes in the episode where she fed zombies, attempted to play tag with them, and cried at their demise).  I was preparing myself for what I thought would happen:  Lizzie’s inability to view the walkers as not human would lead to a dangerous situation where her sister would die.  And the show did a nice fake out, giving us just this.  She caused a situation, zombies attacked, but the group prevailed (and Lizzie even picked up a gun and shot them).  This scene was like the magician’s artistry of misdirection.

Not long after this Carol and Tyreese return from the woods to find Lizzie holding a bloody knife over her sister’s dead body.  As they look on at horror, she tells them that it’s all right because she didn’t damage her head.  She has killed Mika to prove that she can come back to life and still be herself.  Lizzie then admits that she was just about to do the same to Judith.  Everything that happens next is equally disturbing.  Carol is forced to stab Mika in the brain so she will not turn, Tyreese protectively keeps Judith away from Lizzie, and the two eventually discuss what to do next.  It is Carol who, again, makes the hard decision for the greater good.  She says that Lizzie cannot be under the same roof as the baby; moreover, she cannot be around people.  Ultimately Carol must lead Lizzie out to the pasture and ask her to look at the beautiful flowers as she fires a bullet through her head.  Unsurprisingly, the house then loses its appeal as the horrible deaths of the young girls has tainted it.  The episode closes with Carol, Tyreese, and Judith again on the road.

After all of these episodes I had a discussion with a colleague of mine in which we debated about whether television’s reversal of the “thou shall not kill your main characters” rule had suddenly become overdone – if TV shows were now just killing characters for the shock factor and the ability to advertise their next episode as a “must watch” or “the most shocking episode ever.”  While I think this is largely the case, there might be more to it in the case of The Walking Dead. 

Many have criticized the dark swing occurring in television programming.  However, others have claimed that dark shows like The Walking Dead and Dexter are new narrative spaces where we are posing important questions about human nature and ethics.  They are our modern day morality plays.  Dystopian narratives set in post-apocalyptic environments usually do just this, so The Walking Dead is not an exception.  However, the fact that so many of the storylines concerning ethical choices rests upon a main female character is interesting. 

In an earlier post, I noted that I thought the show might be policing Carol’s gender performance, punishing her for acting in more “masculine” ways.  I think I need to revisit that argument not long after making it.   After all, she doesn’t get punished at the close of the episode when she admits to Tyreese that she was the one that killed his love interest, Karen, and David in her attempt to protect the group at large.  The show may very well be critiquing gender roles or suggesting that in post-apocalyptic settings they have no place and meaning.  In this episode although Carol is again cast in a motherly role (both in caring for the Samuel sisters and Judith, and in briefly discussing her daughter), but she is also shown doing what is thought to be impossible (by any human, let alone a “mother” figure):  killing a child.

Some have asked whether the show has now gone too far and I actually don’t think so.  I don’t think that this was episode was just meant to have shock value.  I think, as is true of the season at large, it is asking us to think consider the answer to some pretty dark questions:  what would you do to survive in such grim circumstances; what would you do to protect those you love in such a world; and is there really any definitive moral conclusions as to which behaviors and choices are “wrong” and “right” in such conditions? 

I’ve put off returning to all three of these shows since these dark moments and tonight I’ll finally pick up my DVR remotes and dive back in, knowing that it can’t get any darker than it did in mid-March.  Or can it?  

Bashing the Bachelor (and Why “It’s Okay”)

I’m feeling extremely conflicted about this season of The Bachelor (not that I necessarily feel at ease with it in other years).  I had absolutely no feeling whatsoever about former-soccer pro Juan Pablo Galvis being selected as the star of the reality program.  He received relatively little screen time while on The Bachelorette and left much earlier in the season compared to prior bachelors pulled from the same type of pool (usually one has to make it into the final four to earn that honor).  But while I was neither excited nor horrified at the prospect of this seemingly nice single father appearing on the show, I was slightly bothered by the way that ABC marketed this season – focusing almost entirely on his physical appearance and drawing upon all the stereotypes concerning Latino men.  It seemed like Juan Pablo won the gig because he was “hot” and had a sexy accent.   I think the franchise also was proud of itself for diversifying its contestant pool (for which it has been aptly criticized) as they were quick to point out that it was their first Latino bachelor.  However, the Venezuelan playboy always seemed a bit “white washed” to me.

A lot has been made of some of the language barriers that accompanied this bachelor selection.  (We’ll touch on this again in a moment).  Juan Pablo himself often brought up his difficulties always finding the right words to convey his thoughts.   Although I suppose this could have contributed to him coming off as not intellectually engaged with the women on the show, I don’t think this is the case.  I think the show marketed his body (continuing its practice of being an equal opportunity offender on the front of sexual objectification regardless of gender) because he simply doesn’t have much going on in his head. (His dates with Sharlene, the well-traveled, sophisticated opera singer, were excruciatingly painful for me to watch because of this).  While I can’t say that the show is known for its stimulating, intellectual conversation, the lack of substance was particularly evident this year.

Somewhere in the middle of this season I realized why I was perturbed with this bachelor – I think he has helped to cement some problematic stereotypes about Latino men.  It appears he is the embodiment of machismo.  I first became unnerved by his sexist demeanor when he “slut-shamed” one contestant after he partook in a dirty midnight ocean swim with her.  (The lecture the following day was about how he was raising a daughter and didn’t want to send her the wrong message or have inappropriate female role models in her life).   Besides for the fact that placing the blame on the woman when he had equally participated was problematic, this lecture (along with other talks where he told girls he wasn’t going to kiss them because he was trying to be a good example for his daughter) was very hypocritical and conflicted with his actions.  He had, and continued to, made out with multiple women (often publically in front of the other contestants).   My first thought:  so much for being a good role model.  My second thought:  what did he think was going to happen on this show?

The program itself is sexist by nature.  As is much of reality television.  In Reality Bites: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV, Jennifer Pozner discusses the detrimental effects of reality programming, particularly on female viewers.  She also notes the draw of schadenfreude and the escapist appeal, but argues that while those may get viewers to tune in initially, that is not what holds their attention.  Pozner suggests:

on a more subconscious level, we continue to watch because these shows frame their narratives in ways that both play to and reinforce deeply ingrained societal biases about women and men, love and beauty, race and class, consumption and happiness in America. (17)

One major societal message that surfaces in reality television is associated with the antifeminist backlash. The tactic by which this message is hammered home most regularly is humiliation.  The strategic humiliation of female reality television characters is often “used to offer women an ugly, unstated, and all-too-clear message:  “This is where independence leads, ladies – to failure and misery” (Pozner 53).

In the reality television dating shows this is particularly obvious.  The practice can be seen when the “cameras zoom in on the tear-soaked face of some woman shattered by romantic rejection.  Producers bank on such scenes to reinforce the notion that single women are whimpering spinsters who can never be fulfilled without husbands” (Pozner 55). The strategic editing of such shows, such as the infamous “Frankenbiting” (wherein the actual words of onscreen persons are edited so that they come across as saying almost the opposite of what they really said), also paints women in a negative light.  Pozner notes that women get

edited into stock reality TV characters:  The Weeper, whose self-doubt is played for laughs.  The Antagonizer, whose confidence is framed as arrogance.  The Slut, whose strategic use of sex appeal we’re meant to condemn.  Through their beauty-based bravado and anxiety, participants become vessels on whose bodies and from whose lips these shows can reinforce antifeminist backlash values. (72)

Knowing all of this, I wasn’t surprised to see blatant sexism on The Bachelor.  However, what I was surprised about was that ABC allowed a contestant to call the star out on it.

This past week Andi Dorfman (a smart lawyer, and a candidate I had originally hoped would “win” the season) chose to leave the show after her overnight date in the “fantasy suite.”  While I thought it was cool that she was the second girl to choose to walk away (shattering the unrealistic myth that 25 women can all fall in love so easily with one network-selected beau), I was more thrilled that she was able to call him out on his bad behavior.  It was nothing drastic, just the mundane sexist, insensitive things that countless men have probably done on dates:  he was only interested in talking about himself, he shut down any attempt she made to talk about serious/emotional topics, and he talked about his intimate experiences with other women (his previous night’s “fantasy suite” date).   In regards to making little effort to truly get to know her, Andi asked:  “Do you have any idea what religion I practice? What are my political views?"  As Emma Gray points out in The Huffington Post,

His response, or rather, the utter lack thereof, exposed what anyone who has watched even a few episodes of the white wine tears-filled show already knew. "The Bachelor" brand of romance is built on the fantasy that big conversations about religious beliefs, socioeconomics, career aspirations and politics -- the very things that would make or break a budding relationship in the real world -- are unnecessary in the face of amorphous "connection."

It was a refreshing message to hear a contestant point out that, indeed, these types of conversations are important – not just romantic romps on a beach and so breath taking helicopter rides.

As happy as I was, part of the confrontation bothered me.  Andi focused a lot (and I mean A LOT) on Juan Pablo’s use of the phrase “it’s okay” to shut down her attempts to discuss serious matters.  The phrase itself was said in regard to her choosing to leave the show as well.  Andy pointed out that it was dismissive and rude.  Juan Pablo explained the verbal tick as being due to English being his second language, and perhaps that is partially true.  Or maybe he’s just exhibiting the aversion to emotional conversations that John Gray (author of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus) would claim men have.   While I agreed that it did sound dismissive and seemed to trivialize her feelings, I also found her mockery of his speech to be uncomfortable and I worried what wider message the show could be sending through this exchange.   I felt even more this way when I saw a tweet where she thanked fans for the support and then jokingly reminded them that “eeees okay.”  Had she simply typed “it’s okay,” I would have smirked at her repurposing the phrase, however, her choice to mimic his accent pushed it over the line.  After all, one set of bad behavior shouldn’t justify another, right?

I don’t necessarily dislike this woman now but I do think it shows a different side of her personality and it makes me wonder what else we’ll see now that (rumor has it) she is set to be the next bachelorette.  However, it’s not really her tweet that makes me wary of her next 15-minutes of fame, it’s the fact that she’s walking away mid-murder trial from her job to star on the reality television show.  Here’s a great message to send to young girls:  finding a man is worth walking away from your successful, professional career.  Sigh.   

You Better Cry Like a Girl: Popular Culture Lessons On Gender-Appropriate Emotion

 The problematic binary that privileges reason over emotion (associating men with reason and women with emotion) has existed for centuries.  Different historical moments often resurrect and repurpose gendered portrayal of emotion for particular reasons.   That this current post-9/11 moment is doing this is not surprising.  While tracing narrative trends among the popular post-9/11 wave of dystopian fiction, television, and film, I noticed some surprising lessons concerning gender-appropriate emotion.   Although it’s too early to make any grand claims, I think these didactic moments within these narratives can be traced back to the representations of gender seen in the days and weeks immediately following September 11th.

In The Terror Dream and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, Susan Faludi convincingly showcases how feminism was attacked in the aftermath of 9/11 as one of the supposed reasons for the vulnerability of the United States. She is clear to note that 9/11 did not cause the sentiments that gave rise to the renewed feminist backlash, but that it revealed cultural conflicts that were already brewing underneath the surface.  In the days following 9/11, Faludi herself was bombarded by calls from various journalists who wanted her opinion on how “9/11 pushed feminism off the map” or sounded its “death knell.”  Reporters asked for her opinion on so-called phenomena such as “the return of the manly man” and the trend of women becoming “more feminine” after 9/11 (and, therefore, in their opinions, less feminist).  There was an oddly celebratory nature to some journalistic articles that predicted the death of feminism after the attacks.  For example, in a piece titled “Hooray for Men,” Mona Charen wrote:  “Perhaps the new climate of danger – danger from evil men – will quiet the anti-male agitation we’ve endured for so long.”  And, in an attack on specific feminists, such as Susan Sontag, articles went to press such as Ann Coulter’s “Women We’d Like to See… in Burkas” which certainly did not mask their animosity toward the women’s movement.

And, in the weeks and months after 9/11, it was not just self-identified feminists who felt the effects of this cultural shift.  Faludi notes, “soon after the World Trade Center vaporized into two biblical plumes of smoke, another vanishing act occurred on television sets and newspaper pages across the country.  Women began disappearing… Three weeks after 9/11, the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) counted the op-ed bylines in the nation’s major newspaper and reported” a drastic decrease in women’s public visibility.” For example, the number of opinion pieces written by female writers at The New York Times had dropped from 22 percent to 9 percent.   Across mediated divides on television, The Feminist White House Project noted that during this time frame women’s representation on Sunday news talk shows plummeted, decreasing by nearly 40 percent.  When women were featured in the media, it was not the strong women of before being showcased. 

      

Women who garnered the most attention needed to fit the script of the moment; they needed to be vulnerable and in need of (male) protection.  The 9/11 widows fit well into this narrative and, therefore, became the focus of the media frenzy.  These women were desirable because “they weren’t ambitious careerists trading commodities on the eighty-fourth floor [of the World Trade Center].  They were at home that day tending to the hearth, models of all-American housewifery.”  Along with these images of women in need of saving were, of course, those who could do the saving:  men.  Some of the most iconic images associated with 9/11 are of first responders who became symbolic representations of the nation’s courage and resilience. 

                

 

Years later it seems like some cultural representations still want to see the two genders along these lines.  Two examples of strong women being punished for not behaving according to gender norms can be found in popular post-9/11 dystopian narratives:  Susan Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy and AMC’s The Walking Dead.    Katniss Everdeen, the main character of Collins’s successful young adult-trilogy-turned-blockbuster-hit, is portrayed as having many traits associated with masculinity:  she is strong, resourceful, calm, and rational.  While her actions and skill sets are often linked to those of the masculine sphere (she is the provider for her family, a skilled hunter), it is her affective qualities that cause many to classify her as male-like.  When forced to enter into a national televised competition where she has to fight-to-the-death in an arena where only one can leave as a victor, Katniss remains (for the most part) emotionally reserved.  Besides for rare outbursts, she refuses to show the emotions one would expect.  For the most part any emotion one sees from her throughout the training process, pre-game ceremonial activities, and the game itself is performed.  She is told, quite explicitly, that she is “unlikeable” and she is only made “likeable” when she is recast into the role of the love-struck teen, the star-crossed lover, who has to enter the arena alongside of her male love interest.   She plays the role of the emotional girl in order to survive – because to deviate from this gender norm could mean death.

                                 

    

                                     

 

AMC’s Walking Dead is a television program set during a zombie apocalypse.  Comprised of an ensemble cast, one of the characters originating from the first season (and surviving into the fourth), is Carol Peletier.  Unlike Katniss, this character was originally portrayed as quite emotional:  her early storylines focused on her status as an abused wife and later a grieving mother.  As the seasons progress this emotionality slowly recedes as she becomes more emotionally hardened.  She is depicted as a strong “masculine”-like character gaining a leadership role among the survivor’s camp.  Season three finds her training the children of this in community survival tactics and eventually 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 former leader, Rick, had made morally questionable, unilateral decisions on behalf of the group, he casts Carol out from the community 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,” is punished for not behaving according to social norms. 

                            

        

                            

        

21^st century popular culture houses an array of strong female characters, but (as discussed in previous posts) they are often cast into emotional scenarios that undermine that strength or (as is evident in the examples above) their refusal to conform to expected emotional scripts causes them some sort of conflict within the narrative.  In an age where we’re trying to raise children to ignore the age-old conceptions of the rational male/emotional female, how do narratives such as these undercut those efforts?  I’m not sure, but I better go cry about it now.

What Showtime’s Homeland Reveals about the Post-9/11 Emotional Landscape & 21st Century Gender Portrayals

I have a dirty little secret:  I don’t have any premium cable pay stations.  I’m cheap, or, more accurately, perpetually broke – so that’s my excuse.  I’ve justified my practice of studying mostly network television because of its accessibility and it historical legacy (finding some interest in how the big three networks continue to evolve).  But as of late, this refusal to dish out the big bucks for Showtime and HBO seems like an extremely irresponsible decision for a television scholar.  As much as I hate to admit it, network television is declining and most of the stuff most worthy of analysis is to be found on those pay stations.

But I digress.  So, because of my frugal/income-deficient status, I am perpetually a season (at least) behind in most of the hip, cutting edge shows – watching them on delay via Netflix (on disc no less!).  This explains why I have just now completed the first two seasons of Homeland – a show I knew was extremely important that I follow as a post-9/11 television scholar. So, forever late to the party, I’m here finally to chime in on my thoughts on the show (or at least its first two seasons – so no spoilers please!)

I’ll start by saying I loved it.  I watched two seasons in the span of approximately two weeks.  I haven’t watched a show so quickly since I watched the first day of Jack Bauer’s televisual existence (when I watched all 24 hours of his life, season one of 24, practically in the “real time” the show offers).  It’s not unimportant that I obsessively consumed this show in the manner that I did 24, as I find them extremely similar.  They are both suspenseful, action-packed shows with similar content.   Both shows place viewers behind the scenes of governmental agencies tasked with stopping major terrorist attacks; they include storylines on marital strife and adultery; they place main characters in situations where they have to choose between the safety of loved ones and morally problematic acts; and they even sneak in annoying subplots involving the drama of teenage daughters. 

While I agree with other critics that Homeland is more psychologically centered and character driven – Carrie Matthison (Claire Danes), Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) are among the best characters I’ve seen on television in the past few years – the overall similarities between Homeland and its predecessor make me feel that the show, however fabulous, is just a continuation of the slew of post-9/11 shows grounded in motifs of fear, salvation, and vengeance.  (For more on this wave, see my previous posts).

However, not all agree with me.  TV Guide’s Adam Bryant argued that Homeland is television’s first “post-post-9/11 show.”  In an interview with the show’s creators, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, the three compared the two programs.  Gansa said that 24 “was a response to the towers coming down” and “American taking action against enemies,” while Homeland is “a response to Osama bin Laden’s death” and “a psychological exploration of what this war on terror has meant to the United States” and the individuals involved in it.  Gordon added, "It's really about what we have to fear now that all the boogeymen of the last 10 years ... are no longer alive or in jail. We're left asking ourselves, 'What are we afraid of and what does that look like?' It doesn't mean there aren't things that are threatening us out there, but it does mean that those things are a little bit less obvious than we thought they were 10 years ago." 

And while I can see the slight difference that they make between the two shows, the result isn’t all too different.  And, if Homeland is a post-post-9/11 show running strong in 2014, what does it mean that 24 is returning this year after a four year hiatus (albeit in a supposed “limited run”)? Is this new 24 going to morph into a post-post-9/11 show as well? 

But if it is truly the psychological makeup of the characters that differentiates these shows, then I find myself agreeing with media reviewer, Jeff York’s suggestion that Carrie and Brody act as metaphorical embodiments of the emotional climate of America post-9/11:

If Carrie literally represents the bipolarity of America post 9-11, with our morality so often at odds with our need for safety, then the Brody character is a perfect mirror of that conflict too. For the first half of (season one) we were kept in the dark as to Brody’s true motivations. Was he an Al-Qaeda operative turned by torture, or was the real torturing being done at home, by a zealous CIA hounding him to hell? One of the brilliant things about the show is how it kept us guessing from scene to scene what Brody’s true motivations were, and empathizing with him the whole way…. Both Carrie and Brody are sides of post 9-11 America. We too have become overtly paranoid, partisan and reactionary. And yet, we are also trying to move on from those events, find peace and stave off the demons that have haunted us since.

As someone who reads contemporary television through two simultaneous lenses – as a post-9/11 and feminist media scholar – I also find myself wondering what these two characters reveal about 21^st century gender roles.

As I’ve noted before, television is offering some amazing female characters – complex, intelligent, successful, professional women in varied careers.  However, the programs that house these extraordinary characters still seem drawn to traditional melodramatic romance plots featuring star-crossed lovers like Carrie and Brody (or Scandal’s Olivia and Fitz, to give a similar example).  These storylines often undo the female protagonist, converting them into unstable, emotionally weak, women who come close to sacrificing their professional accomplishments and reputations because of the men they love.  Does this one element of the shows mean that we should discard everything else that is truly great about them?  Not necessarily.  However, it constantly makes me wonder:  have we really come that far in terms of gender portrayals?   When even the strongest women on television need to be saved (emotionally or physically by their male love interests), are these programs buying into the post-9/11 rhetoric that called for the revival of male cowboys and female damsels in distress?

Whether Carrie Mathison is a flawed feminist figure or not, I think she is a fascinating character, an intriguing portrayal of mental illness, and another one of Claire Danes’ fabulous performances.  I look forward to catching up to the rest of the viewing world soon and seeing what season three had in store for her.

Nostalgia for the Past: ABC’s The Goldbergs Returns Viewers to 1980s Culture & Television Stylistics

As I’ve said before, it’s hard for a sitcom to win me over.  This was the case for ABC’s The Goldbergs which debuted this fall.  As a product of the 80s, I was excited to see this much-promoted show packed full of 80s fads (rubik’s cubes, big hair, VCRs).  Although I only remember the later years of the decade with any real detail, the decade has always held a special place in my heart.  (I’ve always been a bit slow to let go of eras.  I was still listening to Madonna records, yes records, on my Fisher Price record player well into the alternative rock movement of the 90s).  So in love with 80s memorabilia, I once tried to purchase VHS’s “I Love the 80s” miniseries (only to find out it wasn’t for sale, big marketing error on their part).  So, I tuned into the first episode.

I enjoyed being transported back to the 80s with glimpses of television shows (Luke & Laura’s wedding on General Hospital), films (Ghost Busters), and toys I remembered (He Man), but for some reason the first two episodes of the show didn’t hook me the way that I thought they would.  At the heart of the show is, quite obviously, the Goldberg family and although no one character or relationship bothered me, none drew me in especially either.  So the series sat on my DVR for most of the fall.  But as 2013 drew to a close and my DVR queue dwindled down, I decided to give the show another chance and it was in this second attempt that I grew fond of it and started to appreciate how the show was operating.

What I realized as I watched the middle episodes of the first season was that it felt very different than the other sitcoms on at the present and that had nothing to do with the historical backdrop.  Or, maybe, in a way, it did.  What I finally realized was that it sort of felt like watching a 1980s sitcom in that it wasn’t as fast-paced and cynical as most sitcoms on today; it was instead heartwarming and positive (and even touchy-feely) in a way that reminded me of the great family sitcoms of the 80s:  Full House, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, etc.  While it is a staple of the sitcom to rest individual episodes around a familial problem that will be resolved by the episode’s end, this show almost always ends that familial problem with an emotional scene.  And more importantly, added emotion (and nostalgia) comes right before the credits roll. 

The premise behind the fictional series is that Adam Goldberg, the youngest child of three, is narrating his childhood as an adult.  A video enthusiast, he follows his family around incessantly shooting home videos.  The reality behind the series is that it was actually created by the real Adam Goldberg who did, in fact, spend his childhood documenting his family’s lives.  Ever the lazy pop culture scholar, I didn’t know this when I watched the first two episodes and the pre-credit video footage isn’t consistently present so it may not have appeared in the first episodes I watched (or, ever the lazy DVR fast forwarder also, I may have missed it).  But I first became aware of this connection when I saw one of these pre-credit videos on my second go at the show.   For example, after an episode about the father, Murray, a short video ran featuring the video of Goldlberg’s real father; after an episode about the new family, the Kremps, who moved to the block, real footage of Chad Kremp, Adam’s childhood best friend is seen; after an episode about experiences at the local video store, shots of the exterior of a Hollywood Video is seen with the epitaph reading “In Loving Memory of the Video Store, 1980-2013.”  I now eagerly wait for this scene before the credits because it makes for the perfect double dose of nostalgia at the episode’s close:  the sentimental end of the fictional narrative and the sentimental tribute to the family interactions that inspired it. 

The show also reminds me in a way of ABC’s The Wonder Years (1988-1993), the coming of age sitcom that followed Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) through the late 60s and into the 70s.   While the distance between these two nostalgia shows are a bit different (The Wonder Years was always looking back exactly 20 years and The Goldbergs is now transporting viewers back in time almost 30 years), the effect is pretty similar.  The Goldbergs lacks the subtle political commentary present in The Wonder Years (Kevin’s father works for a defense contractor during this cold war era and his love interest’s brother is killed in Vietnam in the very first episode), but the underlying longing for a simpler time (historically and developmentally) is shared by both.  In a way they are both love stories, not in the traditional sense, but love stories about childhood. 

In making the connection between these two shows, I was drawn to review how the ancestor show, The Wonder Years, ended.  (Thanks Wikipedia for always being a source of ever-so-available information):

The final sounds, voice-over narration, and dialogue of the series is that of the adult Kevin (voice of Daniel Stern), with children heard in the background:  “Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of other yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back... with wonder.”  A little boy (Stern's real life son) can be heard asking his dad to come out and play catch during a break in the final narration. Kevin's narrative responds, "I'll be right there" as the episode closes.

Just re-reading that scene pulled at a heart-string and I realized that shows like this appeal to me because they look back on childhood through the rose-colored glasses that I long to look through when remembering my own childhood through aging photographs, diaries, and keepsakes.  They show the sunny side of childhood, the type I long to give to my little girls, and cast off the shadowy parts (at least by the episode or series close).   What do I get in watching them? A chance to smile slightly, murmur an “awe,” and remember ever so vaguely the wonder that was my own childhood.  

Working Outside the System: Studying the Post-9/11 Figure of the Avenger/Vigilante in Dexter

Always late to the party, I just finished watching the final season of Showtime’s Dexter last night.  Like many fans who watched all eight seasons, I, too, am disappointed in how it ended.  (For those who have not finished the show and do not want a SPOILER, stop reading here). 

For those unfamiliar with the program, the main premise behind it is that the main character, Dexter Morgan, a blood splatter pattern analyst for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department, moonlights as a serial killer bound by a moral code (similar to that of many vigilantes).  He was trained by his deceased father, Harry, a homicide detective, to work through his violent impulses by becoming an avenger of violent crimes – murdering those who the justice system fails to put away.  The major narrative arch of the program tracks Dexter’s progression as a sociopath who has little desire for human connection, or capacity for emotion, to that of a person struggling to rid himself of his demons and seek out a (relatively) normal life for him and his loved ones.   As expected, the final season teased viewers with this very possibility of redemption and a traditional “happily ever after ending.”

Even up until the final episode, this looked possible.  Dexter was just one step away from starting a new life with his girlfriend (and former serial killer), Hannah, and his son, Harrison, in Argentina.  He had captured the bad guy of the season, Oliver Saxon, and for the first time happily turned him over to the officials instead of bringing him to justice himself.  And then everything went wrong.  Saxon shot Deb (Dexter’s sister) and went on the run; Dexter had to send Hannah and Harrison off on their escape without them; after a promised full-recovery, Deb experienced complications from the gunshot and was pronounced brain dead; and Dexter was forced to murder Saxon himself (while he was in custody no less).  The death of Deb sent him over the edge and as he removed her from life support and snuck her body out of the hospital for a seaside burial on his boat, The Slice of Life, viewers quickly understood that this was not just a final, sad familial act before heading off into the sunset with his lover and child.  If viewers had still been hoping for that, the final phone call with his son where he pleaded with him to always remember that he loved him, should have been the clearest indication.  So, Dexter, instead, vowed not to expose Hannah and Harrison to his endless cycle of hurting the ones he loved, and drove his boat off into the tropical storm in an apparent suicide attempt.  What looked to be the final scene of the program was Hannah learning via a web article of Dexter’s death and putting on a good face for Harrison and taking him off to eat ice cream walking hand-in-hand through the picturesque streets of Buenos Aires.  It was a bittersweet happily ever after as it implied that their lives would be happy, even if Dexter was not a part of it.  Then, however, the series gave viewers the real final scene:  a shot of a bearded Dexter who survived the destruction of his boat at sea (perhaps a purposeful faking of his own death), working as a lumberjack off in some isolated area.  The final shot was him staring blankly into the camera, devoid of expression, and lacking the show’s normal voice over.

It was a dark and depressing ending.  And perhaps a fitting one for the show.  Had the series ended with everyone happy (Deb with Quinn, Dexter with Hannah, etc.) it probably would have rang false.  Although the question about whether he could ever move past his urge to kill was answered (it appeared, yes he could), would viewers have really been happy with him escaping prosecution of any kind?   As a scholar, I wouldn’t have liked the happy ending, but as a fan of eight years I’ll admit I wanted it.  Even when it was apparent he was going to “kill himself” I was hoping the ghost of his sister would replace the recently departed ghost of his father and talk him out of it in a string of colorful language.  (I’m a perpetual optimist when it comes to narrative resolutions).  And while I didn’t exactly like the ending we got, I didn’t exactly hate it either.  And, more importantly, I understood it.  The person who struggled the most with Dexter’s actions was always Dexter himself.  And in the end it is almost fitting that it is he who punishes himself, stripping himself of the happiness he had grown to want, through his self-enforced isolation.  Also, the open ending also allows the optimistic viewer like me to envision a future where a not-dead Dexter could potentially reunite with his family.  And perhaps that’s why Showtime didn’t allow the writers to kill him off.

A lot of the Internet buzz about the ending is concerning this dictate from the network to leave him alive.  Apparently some fans would have preferred his death.  Some, it seems, would have preferred the ending that Clyde Phillips, the executive producer for its first four seasons, claims he would have pitched for the series: 

In the very last scene of the series, Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, 'Oh, it was a dream.' And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, 'No, it's not a dream.' Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They're just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery ... And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible [for] killing, Doakes who he's arguably responsible for, Rita, who he's arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.

But this wasn’t how the show ended and according to fan surveys, over 60% of viewers were unsatisfied with the one they got and the show has earned the title of “lamest finale since Seinfeld.” 

While I could continue to add to this conversation concerning the ending, I am more interested in what the show’s popularity overall means and how it fits into my normal post-9/11 television analysis.  As I’ve discussed in posts before, in the years immediately following the September 11^th terrorist attacks, American television was inundated with programming focused on salvation, rescue, and heroics.  Popular shows featured governmental figures continually saving the nation (24, Alias, The Unit, The West Wing, Commander in Chief) and ordinary civilians working to save themselves and others from perilous situations (Heroes, Lost).  Toward the second half of the 9/11 decade (2001-2011), this focus changed slightly.  The virtuous hero became the unconventional avenger seeking a form of vigilante justice outside (rather than inside) the system.  (Dexter, of course, fits this categorization well.)  This focus can be seen in some of the earlier programming (for instance the last few seasons of 24 depict Jack Bauer more often than not as a rogue agent failing to conform to proper government protocol), but it can more easily be seen in the new programs that were launched.   My argument is that these narratives of vengeance are popular among audiences because they help audiences work through (and displace) emotions lingering a decade after 9/11.

The increase in revenge narrative post-9/11 is most noticeable when studying Hollywood film trends.  Barry Johnson notes that Hollywood has always been the “primary generator of revenge narratives in popular media” and looks to the summer releases of 2009 to show just how prominent this trend is in the post-9/11 moment (para. 3).  Some of the blockbuster films he lists include:  The X-Men Origins:  Wolverine, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen (para. 3).   However, not all “revenge” films are that explicit in their focus. 

In the aftermath of 9/11 many films were a bit more loosely tied to the revenge motif and instead attempted to allegorically explore the post-9/11 world with examples ranging from “the puppet satire Team American:  World Police (2004)” to Steven “Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)” (Purse para. 2).  Even more prevalent was the trend of what David Holloway calls “modish” references to 9/11, Iraq or Afghanistan, or associated locales and themes (75).  Laura Purse refers to a variety of films, such as Cloverfield (2008) and Law Abiding Citizen (2009) which seem to fall somewhere between the allegory/modish continuum (para. 2).  But ultimately, she argues, the most “discernible trend in post-9/11 action cinema is (the aforementioned) developing unease about the viability of notions that are normally at the heart of the action film:  heroism and a ‘just war’” (Purse para. 3).  Purse notes that “heroism as a cultural idea gained renewed currency in the immediate aftermath of 9/11” and stories proliferated “about people who had risked their lives or died trying to rescue others” (para. 3).  In these narratives “acts of human sacrifice and bravery” were “heralded unproblematically as heroic, and… were duly eulogized” (Purse para. 3).  But, as Purse notes,

The discourse of patriotic heroism was problematised by what happened next. The military interventions by the US and its allies after 9/11 were initiated in the face of anti-war demonstrations and debates about their legal mandate. In the years that followed growing collateral damage statistics and revelations about prisoner mistreatment at Guantànamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and about the rendition of terror suspects put pressure on any notion of a ‘just war’ and called into question the heroism of implicated military personnel, while the reduction of civil liberties flowing from the 2001 Patriot Act and the rising US and Allied troop casualties further muddied public opinion. (para. 3)

Purse references films that reflect this shift in public opinion.  For example, in “Shooter (2007), Vantage Point (2008), the Bourne films (2002, 2004, 2007) and Salt (2010), amongst others, the ‘just war’ of maintaining national security turns out to be a dirty and corrupt business, with the hero forced to attack the very government forces he thought he was fighting with (Purse para. 4). And, correspondingly, “uncertainty about the true nature of the central protagonist’s supposed heroism returns as a pronounced trope in” action films of this period (Purse para. 4).

Also prevelant during this time period was what film critic Peter Bradshaw terms “the  liberal fence-sitter” – “agonised, conscience-stricken films about war on terror,” set in “multinational locations,” aiming to “express a slowly awakening sense that everyone has been duped by the Bush presidency, but still unwilling to risk being (outwardly) disloyal in any way” (para. 15).  He lists Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs (2007), Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007), Michael Winterbottom’s A Might Heart (2007), and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005) as key examples of this trend (Bradshaw para. 15). 

Although one would expect action films and political dramas to be the genres that wrestle with the ethics of governmental policy and post-9/11 concerns, some other surprising genres rose in popularity during this time period and tackled some of the same goals.  In the midst of a major turn toward the dystopic or post-apocalytpic, the zombie narrative rejuvenated itself and many scholars have read its popularity through a post-9/11 lens.  For example, Veronica Cooper studied the alignment of the “zombie renaissance” and the “system-justifying nationalistic rhetoric” of post-9/11 (Paper 63).  She argues that zombie narratives “illuminate the motives of ‘us vs. them’ rhetoric and hypermasculine revenge narratives in the post-9/11 decade” (Cooper Paper 63).

Narratives of revenge and vengeance are, of course, not new.  However, their increased prominence in this particular moment seems worthy of note.  Although one might expect to see an increased number of revenge narratives in any post-war/post-tragedy period, such correlations are not immediately evident which leaves one to wonder:  why is this particular time period, and this cultural climate, so primed to indulge in these tales?

The avenger has long had a place in fictional storylines and often embarks on plots for revenge through a variety of means.  One of the most commonly chosen paths is to “devise a Machiavellian plan, maneuvering things (and occasionally people) in place until the time of final vengeance is at hand” (“Revenge” para. 3).  This type of vengeance is seen (with slight modification) in the example of the television program Dexter.  Although Dexter is driven as much by his need to kill as his sense of justice, the motif of vigilante justice definitely is present in the program since he often feels that the existing legal mechanisms for criminal punishment or civilian protection are insufficient or systematically flawed.  By nature, vigilantes typically see the government as ineffective in enforcing the law, which makes Dexter all the more interesting since he works for a police department.  The show consistently highlights the failures of the justice system (criminals who escape conviction; bureaucracy that interferes with civilian safety; and corruption from within).  Although no specific storyline points directly to acts of terrorism or 9/11, the notion that there is a need to prevent a large public from a dangerous looming threat (often in the form of a serial killer rather than a suicide bomber), this program indicates that “the system” (in this case the police force rather than the government) is ill-equipped to carry out this goal.

Vigilantes also tend to justify their actions as fulfilling the wishes of the larger community, which can be seen in the various daydream sequences Dexter has where he envisions cheering crowds supporting his brutal methods of dealing with criminals. 

In the early seasons of the program, each episode focused on the revenge/rescue of one individual person:  Dexter murdering a variety of rapists, pedophiles, and killers – one episode at a time.  Therefore, each week viewers are able to get their “vengeance” fix through the consumption of individual storylines.  Originally, my claim was that there is something cathartic about the revenge narrative surfacing in Dexter and other contemporary television programs.  Although such shows may problematically allegorize the revenge fantasies of a nation post-attack, their shift away from government-centered rescue narratives to individual-based vigilante justice storylines reflects a critique of this very revenge fantasy and (perhaps) the government that helped to foster it.  If one buys into the idea that television consumption can act as a type of affect theory – helping to ward off or decrease negative affect – then these programs may working against some of the fear-based rhetoric still surfacing a decade after 9/11.  Then again, the reciprocity involved in cultural consumption and production trends might indicate that these narratives could just as likely help sustain this culture of fear.  Regardless of how these programs are read, what is evident is that these revenge tales are not sites of mere guilty pleasure for viewing audiences – or they are not simply this alone – they are also sites where the cultural anxieties of the post-9/11 moment are worked through and critiqued in important ways.

If this is the reason for why so many viewers embraced Dexter, how does the outrage against the series finale play into this?  If in the years after the 9/11 attack we have been a nation hungry for revenge fantasies and vigilantes, how does the show’s ending affect us?  While fans probably weren’t expecting a happy ending for Dexter (although I bet some were still hoping for it), having the show end with his punishment (self-inflicted as it may have been) does seem to send the message that vigilante justice is not to be embraced.  (This type of ending is in line with how Fox chose to end 24, sending its rouge agent, Jack Bauer, on the run at the series’ close).   Could it be that some of the dislike for this ending is not just about its narrative closure (or lack thereof), but about how this type of ending sits with viewers affectually?  If Dexter somehow became the embodiement of a nation’s emotional state – of viewer’s hyperbolic desire for justice, revenge, and safety – then does Dexter’s punishment imply that we, too, are morally corrupt for having the desires he personifies?  Of course, I’m likely reading too much into this.  After all, fans love to hate the ending of popular shows (e.g. Lost).  But, if my never-ending theory that television trends reflect national affective states, I’ll be curious to see if the avenger motif is on the way out and what, if anything, that implies about the emotional states of Americans as we continue away from the  national attack that kicked off this era of fear and anger.