Musings on the hidden depths of television dramas – by S D Anugyan
Amongst the criteria for great fiction is that one returns to it repeatedly, always finding new depths and treasures. One of the things that was new for me when I read Middlemarch by George Eliot for the third time not so long ago, was just how funny the book was. It’s taken so seriously in academia, and it’s certainly a weighty tome, even having been compared to War and Peace; but for the first half I found myself laughing on nearly every page, Eliot’s penchant for observational comedy really striking. Another thing that was new for me, was how Eliot is actually depicting our world almost in esoteric terms, as an obstructed universe. The potential embodied by two of the main characters is thwarted, and the world is revealed as all the poorer for it.
And now, in a typical segue, I will mention the new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds. Finally, after the way-off-course meandering recent series Picard and Discovery, the franchise has got its mojo back, which they’ve done in no small way by remembering that Star Trek is a philosophy, an ideal, as much as good storytelling. Great literature, as the English critic F.R. Leavis argued, is dependent on a profound sense of morality. With George Eliot her Christian ethos often manifests as a sense of intrinsic goodness in people no matter how sabotaged by society; in Star Trek we have managed to beat the saboteurs and create a universe of equality, rationality and well-being.
This is not the first time I have argued that depth can be masquerading as entertainment. (See The Rebirth of the Ninth Art.) Here, I wish to explore how televisual fiction in particular has managed to explore serious issues in attractive packages, by highlighting specific themes in a few shows. First off, as we have already mentioned it, is Star Trek:
Star Trek and Death. There can be a huge discrepancy between popular views of a show and a – shall we say – literary interest. A Harvard lecturer Thomas Richards, writing in Star Trek in Myth and Legend, picked up on this, one example being how death is never glorified in Star Trek, which is highly unusual for popular television. The death of the much-loved character Tasha Yar in Skin of Evil is pointless, serving no purpose whatsoever. Similarly, Captain Kirk’s son is killed off-camera in a brutal senseless manner in the movie The Search for Spock.
I have argued for a while that a future humanity will need to balance the need for science, art and spirituality in equal measures. Star Trek is very weak in the latter, despite having a strong moral compass. Any religious or spiritual tendencies are inevitably revealed to be bogus or archaic. There is an inherent hypocrisy here in that telepathy is taken for granted, and in odd episodes other so-called supernatural factors are presented with a scientific face. A famous example of this is the hilarious – quite outrageous – episode Sub Rosa, where a very traditional Scottish ghost is wrapped up in scientific technobabble to make it palatable.
Yet when it comes to the actual phenomenon of dying, the franchise has consistently refused to glorify it or make it anything other than it is. The film Generations was much-derided for killing off Kirk in what was felt to be a lacklustre moment. In my view, it was a triumph.
The iconic captains Kirk and Picard have to work together to stop an obsessed villain causing the deaths of millions. The villain’s motivation itself is interesting, in that he is not seeking the clichés of money or power, but to bring about an experience of timelessness – essentially, a taste of nirvana. The captains faced their own temptations in regards to this, thus their superiority is not in being braver or stronger, but in having a morally higher ground, that they are capable of going beyond their own selfish needs.
In the process of defeating the ‘bad guy’, Kirk is mortally wounded. As he looks into the void, his eyes open, with his last breath he says, ‘Oh my…’ I prefer to write it that way, though conventionally it’s more emphatic as in ‘Oh my!’ Either way, those two words are an acknowledgement that there is so much more out there, and inside us, than a simple exploration of Space.
After he dies, his sacrifice helping Picard defeat the adversary, Picard stands in silence as a Federation shuttle craft approaches to take him back to civilisation. This last scene speaks volumes, that after a brush with death and the ultimate question of existence, there is hope, and ways to enact that hope in the physical world. It is everything Trek has ever stood for.
The X-Files and Truth. ‘I want to believe,’ is the slogan, as shown on the poster of a UFO in Agent Mulder’s office. What people tend to miss is that is actually his response to a Native American elder’s comment, that young people ‘no longer believed’. It is the beginning of a long thread that lasts throughout the entire series of The X-Files, for many years, that of Native American culture surviving under a dominant European one, a culture that is more comfortable with the mysteries of the universe than one which seeks continually to analyse, categorise and ultimately manipulate rather than be respectfully in awe. Yet things are never black-and-white in The X-Files. Mulder’s partner Scully, both a staunch Catholic and a sceptical scientist, embodies a different approach, accepting the mysteries endorsed by the church whilst questioning all the others.
And most things of interest in The X-Files are hidden and paradoxical. Not for this show is the literary, erudite wit of Buffy or Wonderfalls, often the writing is clunky and obvious. The greater treasures are below the surface.
One of the things that puzzled me early on was when an episode featured a visit to a military base. Having grown up on numerous bases around the world, the one thing I know is that the atmosphere in these places is peculiar. All bases have a certain ambience, which nobody can know about unless they’ve experienced it. Yet The X-Files got it exactly right, unlike every other television or cinematic representation I’d seen. The genius of the show, I realised, was that it operated below and beyond words, tapping into an emotional and psychic, irrational, truth rather than one easily categorised or articulated.
It was only when watching various DVD extras that I came to understand in part how the show’s creators managed this. An interview with an air crash investigator was telling. He explained how when he was brought in as a consultant for the episode Tempus Fugit, on arriving at the site he was astonished – it was as close to identical to a real-life plane crash that could be possible. In another interview, the show’s creator Chris Carter reveals that when the script demanded a military raid, they didn’t use actors – they used actual soldiers. All this hints at a sense of verisimilitude established through an eye for detail and sensitivity to atmosphere, that is exemplary; not to say ironic, that they are telling fictional stories by such a rigorous adherence to the truth.
They use these techniques to reveal a cross-section of an emotionally scarred America, Mulder and Scully’s excessive air miles frequently commented on by their superiors. ‘The Truth is out there,’ another slogan, is at the root of all this travel. Only Scully, with her inward tendencies, starts to question if truth is really outside one. In All Things, another truth is accidentally revealed, of the inherent sexism in television, being the first X-Files episode directed by a woman, Gillian Anderson, who plays Scully. And it is a stunner.
While Mulder is off to England to chase crop circles, adding to his air miles, through a series of Wonderfalls-like encounters Scully is faced having to deal with the imminent death of an ex-lover and mentor. The mystery is now very personal, and inward, as she has a satori-like experience in a Buddhist temple. When Mulder returns, his quest a failure, a personal shift has happened in their relationship, as if Scully is now silently accepting that the truth is within.
Wonderfalls and Destiny. There are numerous examples of TV shows that people claim ended prematurely after showing plenty of promise. Wonderfalls is the only one I personally feel that strongly about. Its one season showed a level of genius and compassion for humanity one rarely comes across. I find it interesting, and dispiriting, that the creator found more success in the horror series Hannibal. Not to denigrate the latter, which is excellent in its own right, it’s the inference one gets from this contrast of success that is disturbing. Compassionate quirky humour with profound insights into destiny and purpose is not as popular as violence and psychopathy.
In Wonderfalls the over-qualified retail assistant Jaye starts to hear instructions delivered at first by a deformed wax lion, then later by any inanimate object with an animal face. She learns very quickly there is a wisdom in their seemingly insane instructions, such as asking a man why he no longer wears a wedding ring, setting in motion a whole series of events which are healing and set the participants on their right courses; none of which would have happened if she had not asked that simple question.
Right from the start, we are plunged into discussions about animism, insanity and free will versus destiny. ‘I’m a puppet. The universe sticks its hand up my butt, and if I don’t dance people get hurt,’ bemoans Jaye. The premise was that of a modern-day Joan of Arc, guided by voices, but the lack of a religious overtone is telling. To emphasise this, Jaye’s brother (‘who lives at home, and is still considered more successful than I am’) is studying comparative religion. Once he learns what is happening to his sister, he becomes obsessed, trying to force the toy animals to talk to him. The inference is that what is happening must be experiential rather than theoretical or academic.
Battling throughout the series with her apparent lack of free will, this comes to a crescendo on a wild night when people nearly die, and Jaye has had enough. Electrocuted after a brass monkey told her to lick a light switch, mad-eyed and hair awry, amidst the frenzy of the storm, she grasps the monkey and demands it tell her why they – the animals/spirits – talk to her. The monkey turns and looks at her. ‘Because you listen,’ it says.
The revelation here is that it was never a question of being Fate’s puppet, she was open to the experience from the start, it was her decision. The psychiatrist she was seeing never got near this truth. And why would she choose such a life? Well, consider that she was a philosophy graduate who saw too clearly the pointlessness of the rat race, and decided to become a slacker. As a retail clerk, she explains to a reporter, she could avoid personal contact and ensure everyone’s expectations of her are kept really low.
The world she thus created for herself, although without the stress of the rat race, was stagnant, pointless. She had too much to offer, both for her own sake and those around her, to be truly content in this state. By being open to such irrational experiences as the talking animal faces presented, she could become aware of the inherent richness in ordinary life, the unseen factors at play, and the wonder of it all.
Buffy and Silence. Hamlet’s last words are ‘The rest is silence.’ The most astonishing performance of that character I ever saw was from Mark Rylance, before he was well-known. Rylance has the capacity to convey silence in his roles. With the articulateness of Shakespeare, it’s very easy to get caught up in the verbosity of it all. So it was, in contrast with Rylance, I saw another great actor, Daniel Day Lewis, do Hamlet at the National Theatre. It was the only poor performance I ever saw from Lewis. Oh he did the madness, spittle and all, raving this way and that, but there were few gaps in his delivery. It didn’t surprise me to learn later that he had a breakdown whilst performing that role. It was method acting to the extreme. As the famous quotation from Lawrence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman goes, ‘Why don’t you just try acting?’
Silence gives us perspective from the world, it gives us everything. The profoundest truths cannot be uttered. When limited to text, you can try tricks, such as the final scene in King Lear when the extraordinarily articulate characters start speaking in basic rhyme, an acknowledgement that that which is deeply felt cannot be said. But a writer is inevitably, ultimately hampered by the medium of text.
In When She Was Bad, an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the whole narrative arc is about that which can’t be said. In the story, Buffy, whilst insisting she is totally fine, behaves abysmally, as in her dressing-down of the class bitch Cordelia: ‘Well, that works out great. You won’t tell anyone that I’m the slayer, and I won’t tell anyone that you’re a moron.’ Her friend Willow’s response is that as a comeback, that’s a little too good. It’s like the line has now been drawn between words and truth.
The climax comes when facing off with the main villain, a vampire preacher named Absalom. As so many fired by religious zeal, he is extremely verbose and violently articulate; only at the end, when facing defeat by Buffy, breaking down into gutter-level threats. After he is killed, one of her friends comments that it’s over. ‘Not yet,’ says the other. Buffy then catharts as she breaks the bones of an enemy the vampires were trying to resurrect, and the source of her malaise. When she is finished, she herself breaks down, sobbing, and is held by her lover silently.
Yet one of the most remarkable scenes is earlier when Buffy is simply being driven to school, and she’s staring out the window, not saying anything. This more than anything else in the episode reveals that she’s in another space, dealing with an inner struggle that no one else is privy to. As a fledgling television writer myself at the time, I was amazed by how much was conveyed in so brief a scene. I wondered how the writer Joss Whedon accomplished this, and I ordered the official script to find out. Once it arrived, I turned immediately to that scene and found… nothing. There were no directions or indications whatsoever. Then I realised, Whedon had the advantage of being the director as well as the writer. He could simply direct things how he wanted, including the choice of music.
This advantage, as well as the continuing theme of ‘that which cannot be said’, goes further in later episodes, such as Hush, where most of the story is told in silence due to a spell robbing everyone of their voices. The story goes that the monsters will not be defeated until Buffy finds her voice. In the interim, incapable of speech, the protagonists discover more about each other and surmount emotional barriers that had previously seemed impassable. At the end, their voices returned, Buffy and her new lover find themselves incapable of saying anything, when there is so much.
A year later in The Body about the death of Buffy’s mother, the characters could speak but often couldn’t find the words, one character punching a hole in the wall out of frustration. It remains one of the most powerful depictions of grief on television, the depth of feeling behind any words accentuated by the complete absence of music throughout the episode.
Buffy always had her own type of meditation. When facing an adversary she couldn’t see, for instance, she would close her eyes and go deeply within, knowing that outer signs were absent. In the last season this becomes more formalised when Willow returns from England and starts to teach her how to sit silently in meditation.
Then, after seven years of trauma and triumph, in the final moment of the final scene in the final episode, Buffy is asked a question, to which she responds only by smiling, saying nothing.
The rest is silence.
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