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Fluff
And The Right Stuff
by Stephen Henkin, The World & I (March
2004)
If NBC's soon-to-depart Friends is like a Chinese
meal, leaving you hungry a half hour later,
HBO's new dramatic series Carnivale is a feast
for the mind, eye and soul.
This year's television
season offers two series at opposite ends of
the sensibility spectrum, demonstrating different
reasons why people watch television. One show
is the soon-to-depart escapist NBC sitcom Friends.
A comfortable, safe haven for the viewer who
likes to be ensconced in warm, fuzzy story lines,
it follows six characters who were originally
adrift in New York in their twenties. Now in
their thirties, they are still adrift, having
somehow replaced the normal need to work and
accomplish something in their lives with endless,
angst-ridden cavorting and interminable small
talk. A pessimist might say that the popularity
of this series indicates this is what the majority
of folks probably want to do-to focus only on
fine-tuning (or flipflopping) our relationships
away from the real cares of the world.
Diametrically opposed
to the bland tastes of legions of comfort-zone
viewers who have consistently sent Friends'
ratings into the stratosphere are those nurtured
by HBO's new apocalyptic drama, Carnivale, which
challenges us with a world that is anything
but safe. For Armageddon junkies, already hyped
on heightened terror warnings and catastrophic
daily headlines, it's all there: a storyline
charged with omnipresent doomsday religious
symbolism; the stark environment of Dust Bowl
America; a haunting, ominous soundtrack. Even
the opening credits say "end of the world."
Perhaps no possession,
including the family auto, symbolizes the freedom
of democracy in America more than the television
set. Not only is it our own personal window
to the world and a most convenient forum for
public debate, it also is a living-room Coliseum
where programs of widely varying sensibilities
and backgrounds compete for our attention while
slugging it out in the ratings war. Yet the
power to chose the winner is left in the hands
of the one who holds the remote control, and
each night this individual is faced with the
choice of going along with the herd or taking
a chance on the new and untried.
Last fall, Newsweek devoted
a cover story to Friends, opening with the alluring
lead-in, "They won't be there for you-not
much longer, anyway. Behind the scenes as Friends
begins its final season, and great sitcoms become
an endangered species."
You should wish! Friends,
now in its (thank goodness) tenth and final
season with just eighteen new episodes, will
be around in syndicated reruns as long as water
runs downhill. And despite Newsweek's lofty
implication, the show is not a "great"
sitcom; it is not even a very good sitcom. I
Love Lucy, Mork and Mindy, Moonlighting, all
In the Family, and even Married With Children
(for those with thicker skin) are great sitcoms.
Friends is something of a semicomic soap opera.
Bland, uninspiring eye
candy, Friends picked up where Seinfeld left
off in exploring new extremes of urban hedonism
and self-gratifying behavior. For ten long seasons
we have had to endure the constant flitting
about and meaningless chatter of Rachel, Ross,
Monica, Joey, Phoebe, and Chandler as they jumped
from who knows who's bed to who knows who else's.
All of its stars were
relative unknowns at the show's outset. Matt
Le Blanc, for example, has said that he had
$11 to his name when he auditioned for the series.
These overhyped stars, who each started out
making "just" $20,000 per episode,
now command over one million dollars per half-hour
show. This translates into $82,790,000 estimated
earnings per lead character after ten years,
not including syndication rights that may eclipse
this amount over time. Building on their exposure
not only in America but around the world, the
six have attempted to parley their fame into
film careers, serving to further enhance their
charisma among their faithful fans.
Friends' loyalists are
attracted to Lisa Kudrow's zaniness, Jennifer
Aniston's sexiness, and Courteney Cox Arquette's
coolness. These unchanging, sole traits have
defined the female leads for the past decade,
just as noncommittal aloofness alternating with
spates of possessiveness in their interpersonal
relationships have defined the male lead characters.
But aren't people supposed
to be more complex than these underdrawn, two-dimensional
personalities, whose time seems equally split
between their New York apartments and their
favorite Greenwich Village coffee shop? I defy
anyone to name one redeeming social quality
in the show, this influential window to American
life seen in well over a hundred countries around
the world.
Some may say, "What's
wrong with that? We all need a break."
But need it be quite so brainless, and need
the characters we invite weekly (and with syndication,
daily) into our living rooms be so unswervingly
self-centered and morally clueless? It makes
one wonder what has done more to spoil America's
image around the world, Dirty Harry and Rambo
films or Friends? At least with the Eastwood
and Stallone shoot-'em-ups, there was the statement,
albeit an overplayed one, of good overcoming
evil. With Friends, nothing is overcome, especially
not the characters' immediate desires. They
seemingly have no future because they never
resolve the present.
Sure, Friends has humor,
though frequently bland, and charming, pretty
people; but the show since its inception has
steered clear of "hot" real-world
issues like religion, race, politics, and the
ethics of sexuality. This is a wise move if
you are trying to attract a broad audience by
not alienating anybody (almost), but the result
has been a mediocre show that has nothing to
do with reality and everything to do with our
fondest daydreams. Thank goodness Friends' eagerly
anticipated finale is this May, so that we may
all claw our way back to the business of life.
Armageddon Awaits
While Friends is poised
to enter rerun heaven, HBO's Carnivale demonstrates
why cable TV, not the major networks, has become
the choice hunting ground for more artistically
discerning viewers. The much-talked-about show
debuted last fall before HBO's largest audience
ever for a new series-5.2 million viewers. It
takes as the springboard for its story the fantastical
abilities of the misfits, outsiders, eccentrics,
and "freaks" in a traveling carnival
in 1934 who drum up business in the godforsaken
Dust Bowl. The story begins as they accept into
their troupe a young man who turns out to have
unusual gifts. The story has a second focus
in the doings of a California cleric with a
decidedly dark side and his odd sister. Series
creator and executive producer Daniel Knauf
has described the show as "The Grapes of
Wrath meets David Lynch." Others see traces
of Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, and various maestros
of the surreal thrown into the mix as well.
The intellectual and emotional appeal of this
brooding Depression-era tale of the occult challenges
the viewer to make sense of a most unconventional
story line.
"What would you
do if you woke up one morning and found out
that you were the Savior? Or you're the Antichrist?"
Knauf said when introducing the concept of the
series to an interviewer. However, although
the series makes use of familiar, highly resonant
religious imagery, it has its own mythology
that is quite distinct from any biblical source.
The opening words of
the series' first show, uttered by the carnival's
boss, diminutive Samson (played by Michael J.
Anderson, the dwarf on Twin Peaks), set the
stage:
Before the beginning,
after the great war between heaven and hell,
God created the earth and gave dominion over
it to the crafty ape he called man. And to each
generation was born a creature of light and
a creature of darkness. And great armies clashed
by night in the ancient war between good and
evil. There was magic then. Nobility. And unimaginable
cruelty. So it was. Until the day that a false
son exploded over Trinity and man forever traded
away wonder for reason.
Knauf originally drafted
Carnivale as a film screenplay in 1992. As the
story was too long and complex for the film
medium, however, he shelved the idea. Its production
as a television series now rides the rising
wave of fascination for things apocalyptic among
viewers of television and film. A great fan
of myth, Knauf describes the series as "an
epic story of good versus evil, set in a carnival
in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, between the two
great wars." But nothing here is simply
black-and-white. Ambiguity and mystery are integral
to the show. One of the two characters central
to the evolving plot, Ben Hawkins (played by
Nick Stahl)-the destitute young fugitive the
carnival picks up as a stagehand at the beginning-has
the ability to foresee the future and to restore
the dead to life, but in time he discovers that
he can do this only if another life is taken;
he must choose who is to die. A tormented soul,
he suffers crippling nightmares, considerable
confusion, and various temptations. The other
central character, who never actually meets
Ben and the carnival in the first season, is
Brother justin Crowe (played by Clancy Brown,
who was the villainous prison guard in The Shawshank
Redemption). he seems at first to be a bleeding-heart
Methodist minister, albeit with a penchant for
fire-and-brimstone sermons. When darker urges
to evil and power manifest themselves with growing
ominousness, he begs another minister to kill
him "before it is too late."
Surrounded by swirling
sandstorms, drought, and pestilence, the carnies,
like much of Depression-era America, become
increasingly beleaguered by a growing evil in
the world and a chronic despair at home. The
twelve-part opening season, which ended last
November, has created a hardcore following of
Carnivale addicts, who share a common bond of
trying to fathom the show's complex tapestry
of science fiction, history, and religious allusion.
Carnivale is not full of the fun and frivolity
usually associated with a road show. The wandering
carnival is a metaphor, a venue in which the
forces of good and evil are divined by characters
especially prepared for the supernatural task
at hand. The viewer's appetite is whetted by
this collection of world-weary freak-show characters-each
of whom has the psychological numinousness of
an archetype-who seemingly hold the future of
humanity in their sweaty hands.
As the series evolves,
so troubling are Ben's growing powers that he
cannot sleep; when he does, he dreams of an
unspeakable horror yet to come. Stahl steals
many a scene through his convincing portrayal
of someone completely at the mercy of unpredictable
spiritual phenomena. Brother Justin, meanwhile,
is coming into his own repertoire of spiritual
powers. When he breaks into a church and preaches
that sinners can be saved only by blood and
fire, he demands to be baptized; the sign of
the cross made with holy water on his forehead
turns to blood. After his parish's children
die in a fire that has engulfed his church (did
he set the blaze?) Brother justin is forced
to confront, yet also to savor, the growing
menace he has become.
The carnival's characters
bolster the growing sense of foreboding. Samson
runs the show for Management, a seldom-seen
but androgynously voiced entity of great authority
and mystery who resides behind a veil in a wagon
with a "Management: Do Not Enter"
sign on the door. The ever-vigilant Samson,
who runs the menagerie of misfits with a cool
head, keeps the viewer constantly wondering
about Management's identity. Is he (or she?)
God, the Devil, or something else altogether?
Then there is Lodz (played
by the fine actor Patrick Bauchau), a blind
mentalist who can see others' dreams and through
time, and for that reason knows that young Ben
has special gifts. The carnival's mother figure,
Ruthie (Adrienne Barbeau, Escape From New York),
the snake charmer, falls for Ben, who in turn
resurrects her from the dead in the first-season
finale. Other carnies add to the surreal environment,
including a tarot reader who derives her particular
gift by "channeling" her catatonic
but seemingly all-knowing mother; a bearded
lady who serves as Lodz's paramour; and a coterie
of Siamese twins and other side show attractions,
strippers, and carnival laborers of all shapes
and descriptions.
With high production
values, haunting music, and a Felliniesque mysteriousness,
the show resembles the mesmerizing Twin Peaks.
Knauf is aware, however, that Lynch's hypnotic
mind-bender ran out of steam, finally derailing
in what most viewers saw as a cop-out ending.
Knauf stresses that he has thought out the basic
plot for the entire series; the story has a
clear internal logic and a finite end, with
identifiable signpost developments along the
way. How long it will take to tell the whole
tale he does not really know; on American television,
it depends on how well the show does in the
ratings and how many times it is picked up for
another season. he estimates that it could not
last more than five or six seasons. Although
small revelations in each installment drive
the story forward, it might take a miracle to
sustain interest that long, given the growing
pile of unanswered questions that each installment
leaves behind.
In terms of writing,
directing, acting, and production values, the
show is undoubtedly brilliant, and this stems
from a wide variety of sources. Besides Knauf,
writers come from backgrounds such as Northern
Exposure (Henry Brom well), judging Amy (Nicole
Yorkin), and Roswell (Tony Graphia). The show's
talented staff of directors have worked on other
heralded HBO projects such as The Sopranos (Jack
Bender, Rodrigo Garcia), Six Feet Under (Garcia,
John Patterson, Jeremy Podeswa), The Wire (Podeswa),
and Sex and the City (Alison MacLean.)
Carnivale's music, composed
by Jeff Beal, is complex, haunting, and otherworldy.
"I think one thing that I've tried very
hard to do is to create almost a three-dimensionality
to the music," explains Beal. "I think
it helps tell the story, because obviously the
characters are that way, and the acting and
so many other elements are on that level. It's
not a one-dimensional show."
The show's philosophical
underpinning is its most compelling quality.
Knauf explains that Carnivale unfolds in what
he calls "the last great age of magic."
He curiously remarks that, "Once we as
a species created and managed to harness the
Bomb, that was the beginning of the Age of Reason.
You could argue that, at that point, God sorta
gave us the car keys and said, 'You're on your
own.' But up until that moment, there was such
a thing as magic."
Responding to the surge
of viewers in the final weeks of its opening
run, HBO has committed to a second season. "The
fans have been so passionate," says Knauf.
"I read virtually every web posting there
is. The postings aren't, 'Hey dude, bitchin'
episode.' We get people who feel like this is
a big part of their lives. To me, that's insanely
satisfying." He insists, "We're just
gonna try to continue to blow minds, you know.
And take people to places they've never been
before."
If the past is any prediction
of the future, Carnivale is going to lead viewers
to some pretty strange places, indeed. |
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