Serialized Noir: The vulnerable interior of television

July13

Opening_credits_(Angel_TV_series)

The cinematic phenomenon that would retroactively be known as film noir began in a world without television. This fact has several bearings on the issue of discussion, but the main focus of this essay will be to show how this film cycle, its traditions and its sentiments, has integrated itself not only into a world with television, but into television itself. As television programming has moved steadily toward an easier, cheaper and more accessible form of entertainment than the movies, many televisual genres have been born, from the classic soap opera (The Bold and the Beautiful, Dallas) to quirky drama-comedy (M*A*S*H, Northern Exposure) to simple horror shows (The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits). The questions before us are, what of television noir, how has it happened, and does it succeed?

Firstly, I must indulge in a brief validation. It should be acknowledged that the presence of television in society, in relation to film noir, is not as culturally extraneous as it may appear: not only does it have a significant bearing on the national understanding of motion picture and entertainment, but the advent of television was one of the key factors in marking the delineation between effects had on America by World War II and effects had on America by the Vietnam War. Where American post-war disillusionment of the forties was reflected most strongly by the onset of film noir, it was perhaps more evidently reflected during the seventies by a glut of graphic and violent horror films, films that are persuasively argued in Robin Wood’s The American Nightmare to be products of a nation confronted by televisual images of the war effort, its destructiveness and its horrors. In this respect, television bore witness to the war during the sixties and seventies, and thus drastically altered the nation’s conceptions of itself.

Given that television, then, has been a strong influence on the course of America’s progressive and continuing return to ‘the dark past’, how has the cinematic reflection of that dark past been conveyed through television? The aforementioned Twilight Zone, Rod Sterling’s fantasy compound of Cold War paranoia, is a good place to begin.

Because film noir entails so many specific ingredients and characteristics, it is quite fruitless to expect to find all of them in any contemporary noir effort, especially television. To appreciate how noir has survived into new forms and works, it’s crucial that one try not to be overly purist – to accept as valid ‘bits and pieces’ of that amalgamative noir ethos. The aspect of noir that is most greatly adopted by The Twilight Zone is the existential and nihilistic philosophy that one might argue is at the very heart of the noir film cycle. Each episode is a new and frightening landscape of alienation and confusion, culminating in a revelation that damns the characters and leaves the audience without closure.

In terms of philosophy and intent, The Twilight Zone probably has the most brazenly noir sensibility to it of all American television. Its many revivals over the decades go to show that the series’ appeal has not dwindled along with the social climate that facilitated it, and no series of the same ilk (The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt) has been quite as successful. What needs to be understood about the show and its compatibility with noir, however, is that it was not a serial narrative at all – it was a string of weekly, stand alone stories. On this basis, a divide becomes clear between The Twilight Zone and the kind of commercial, ongoing narrative of which television became the champion. The Twilight Zone was produced and consumed on the tacit understanding that its audiences were after the kind of depressive and fatalistic ‘fix’ that noir has perhaps once provided – it was a television series that filled a niche of human desire. The really interesting attempts at television noir came much later, in the early twenty-first century, when commercial television shows that comprised serial narratives began trying to integrate noir into their formula.

The three television series’ that will be discussed here in relation to noir are Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars, Joss Whedon’s Angel and James Manos Jr.’s Dexter.

Veronica Mars is a production that shares strong and deliberately superficial similarities with film noir, so we’ll begin with it. The series is noir in premise: the eponymous character is a Californian high school girl who works with her father as a private investigator. Through her investigations she uncovers, far more often than not, the dark and dirty sides of humanity, making her cynical and emotionally detached. Her Ordinary World, to borrow a phrase from Chris Vogler, is one of disillusionment, discontent and alienation: in the fairly recent past, her best friend was murdered, and in the wake of the crime she has become a social pariah.

One will note that such a premise could well be fitted to The Maltese Falcon or Chinatown: the disturbing journey of a private investigator, living in the consequences of a past gone wrong. Or we could take, for instance, the opening monologue to the third episode, which sounds as though it might have come direct from a nineteen thirties crime novel:

I look back over the past week and wonder if things could have turned out differently. If I hadn’t met the girl; if I hadn’t initiated the case; if I hadn’t interfered, would tonight be just another dull, quiet night in our apartment complex? Is it my fault a horrible crime played out its final chapter here? Or was what happened inevitable?

There are a number of noir elements that develop as the series progresses, as well. We become aware that no character can be trusted (every one Veronica knows becomes a suspect in her friend’s murder case) and that every revelation will make matters direr. However, these elements are really no different to those of any serial drama, because the mystery and urgency they evoke is crucial to the appeal of episodic storytelling. In this respect, Veronica Mars falls victim to its commercial nature and betrays the fundamental conflict between noir and commercial television: the nihilistic philosophy of noir cannot be sustained in commercial television because it is detrimental to the marketing appeal of television in general. In short, audiences won’t return each week simply to be depressed.

On this note, we will move on to Angel, another series whose commerciality prevents it from truly reflecting noir philosophy, but which nonetheless has value and raises points worth discussing. Angel’s premise is another inherently noir one: a lonely and broken-hearted man moves to L.A., where he sets up a small detective agency that operates only at night, while he battles the demons, figurative and otherwise, of his past. Angel has more noir elements in it that Veronica Mars, most specifically in character. The hero of Joss Whedon’s series is a fickle one: he is very literally a monster, and is responsible for countless reprehensible and unconscionable acts, but he is now seeking amends and forgiveness. Although his dark side is almost constantly hidden, and he is driven by goodness and nobility, there is nonetheless an evident dark side there, and this makes him, at the very least, an anti-hero of sorts (Veronica Mars has no real anti-hero).

Angel is also a prime example of how television can secret noir sensibility into its structure, without upsetting its commerciality. The way to uncover this is to examine singular episodes, without thought of their place in the greater canon. Because there will be time later on to rebuild a sense of hope and decency, television is sometimes able to allow stand alone episodes that have no overwhelming hope or decency, episodes that, when viewed in isolation, are about as noir as they come. Or, in short, audiences may not return each week to be depressed, but they’ll forgive being depressed for one week and return to find closure.

Take Angel’s third-season episode “Forgiving” (3.17), which deals with the jeopardy of a central character’s life and the attempt to understand an act of betrayal that he has perpetrated. Once he is found and safe, and when the reasonable motives for his betrayal have been revealed, all of the series’ regulars, sans Angel, have amassed at the hospital, where they wait for their fallen comrade out of love and loyalty. When Angel too arrives, he seems in a receptive and forgiving state. However, he quickly turns murderous, and the episode ends very abruptly with him attempting to smother his friend to death with a pillow, professing that he will “never” (his emphasis) forgive the betrayal. He is forcibly dragged off his hospitalized colleague: “You’re a dead man, Pryce! You’re dead! Dead! Dead!”

Because Angel, both as a series and as a character, deals heavily in the darkness of the human soul, this scene and its place at the very end of the episode is one that harbours disturbing philosophical implications. The darkness of this anti-hero has, even if only for a little while, won. He has not risen above his hate, or listened to his better angels, and something pure has been poisoned. It is not a happy ending at all – it is a noir ending (an even more potent example of this can be found in season four’s devastating episode “Awakening” (4.10), but we don’t have time).

On the subject of dark anti-heroes, we will progress to Dexter, the last and perhaps most noir-esque of the series in discussion. Dexter Morgan is almost an exemplary anti-hero: were he not the subject of our exclusive attention, we might even call him a villain. He succeeds in bringing, at the very least, the quietly unsettling effects of noir anti-heroism by embodying darkness. For the first time, television has a hero in Dexter who is unable to contain his darkness, and who we are supposed to learn to accept in all his dark horror.

Dexter’s philosophy is a confused and confusing one, and it plays with our moral sensibility as many great noir works have done. There is simply no facet or angle of the series that we can appreciate without being first forced to confront the essential ‘badness’ of Dexter Morgan. He is a murderer and he makes no apologies for it. Because he is the first fact of the series’ existence, and this moral conflict is the first fact of him, we are unable to escape from it. It’s almost a prerequisite for watching the series that we accept Dexter and his immoral, evil actions. Very in keeping with the style of noir, Dexter is able, though remaining brightly lit with Miami sun throughout, to question morality at a base line.

Is it then possible that one day television noir may bear the same character, location, plot and philosophy traits as film noir once did? Perhaps that question is not the proper one. James Naremore talks of “the theatrical motion picture… evolv[ing] into some other medium”. It is not out of the question to suggest that the likes of Veronica Mars, Angel and Dexter signify a shift toward a new age of noir production, to be valued separate to the forties films. Perhaps television noir is not the right term for it, but it certainly displays a significant return to ‘the dark past’, and a fascination with human darkness, that prompted film noir to begin with.

You can pick up the first, second and third seasons of Dexter from Amazon.com, as well as the complete run of Angel and the complete run of Veronica Mars.