In the last few seasons of the Americans– which I continued to watch, frankly, because I wanted to see how it ended– Paige, and then Elizabeth, spent most of their screen time grimacing, frowning, and suffering. The artistic message required, I suppose, was that this character was unhappy. Did you get it? The artistic technique consisted of close-up images of actors looking very unhappy. Lots and lots of images. Over and over again, interspersed with short passages of narrative development which didn’t really advance the story very much at all. Paige at home being unhappy. Paige unhappy in a car. Paige unhappy walking the street at night. Paige unhappy in her bedroom. Paige unhappy meeting with Pastor Tim. Paige unhappy in the bathroom. Paige finally walking off the train, unhappy. Did you get it yet?
Your boring uncle might tell you a joke. It might be mildly funny so you chuckle a little. Then he tells is over and over again. That’s why he’s your boring uncle.
A good drama requires revelation, narrative, plot, dialogue, and development. Repeatedly dramatizing suffering, without development, makes the narrative inert and imposes stasis on the drama.
And that’s what the first two episodes of Season 2 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” are all about: very brief, modest narrative developments awash in long periods of dramatic stasis as the drama wallows in the suffering of its characters.
It’s very comparable to those bad dramas about alcoholism or drug abuse that repeatedly explore just how drunk or stoned the character is and how his unchanged behaviors lead to less and less interesting consequences. The consequences are less interesting because they are already inevitable from the earliest revelations. It is far more interesting to explore how a character might escape his addictions, or how a family rebuilds after a devastating loss, or how a lover might acquire the wisdom of moving out of the addict’s orbit, or how someone uses the addict to further his or her own aims.
But you can tell sometimes that the author or director or both really think you will be deeply impressed in some way by just how contemptible the character has become. They seem to believe that there is something raw and authentic in honestly revealing a character’s total degradation. They don’t understand that it’s not raw or authentic at all: it’s narcissistic. It’s a constant whiny battering: I am so interesting. You want to watch me suffer forever. You wish that you could be so blessed, so lucky, so gifted, that I would allow you to respond to my suffering.
So Elisabeth Moss, star of “The Handmaid’s Tale”– and a producer– don’t forget that–, appears to believe that the audience wants just that: let’s have lots of closeups of my beautiful unhappy, beautiful scared, or beautiful angry face, without any particular narrative development. And, from reviews, it doesn’t sound like any such development is imminent. One reviewer questioned just how long a series can continue without hope. I’m not particular about “hope” necessarily– there could be an interesting trajectory towards total disaster– but I am particular about development, and exploration, and revelation. It doesn’t sound like anything like that is forthcoming, and I knew from “The American’s” that a dramatic series can spend a long, long time wallowing in the suffering part of it.
That is why this development is so alarming: I know this could go on for a long time, for episode after episode after episode.
What is going on here? What is the matter with you, audience? Don’t you see that I’m suffering? Don’t you feel bad? Why don’t you give me what I want?
This time, I’m going to bail more quickly.
Will anyone else bail? Probably not. Here’s the real world logic:
“I feel awful,” the son says after his mother berates him for not calling. “
If I could believe that,” she says, “I’d be the happiest mother in the world.”
[whohit]Suffering as Entertainment[/whohit]