Television on Television
Among its many varied uses, fiction often provides us with a means to analyze the world, either in a philosophical, abstract way (The Stranger, Anna Karenina), or in far more concrete, practical ways (think Pride and Prejudice and its useful lessons in conversation etiquette). We can also use it to think about and understand topical issues; it’s hard to think of a more appropriate text for the Madoff scandal than Little Dorrit.
Particularly for current events, though, our accompanying fictional works can sometimes be more effective as visual rather than written stories. This is the case for two shows now on in the primetime slots – CBS’s new program The Good Wife and FOX’s procedural Lie to Me, now entering its sophomore season. The Good Wife follows a fairly standard weekly episodic law firm plotline, where each episode introduces us to a new innocent victim who our heroine tries to defend. The premise and surrounding context of the show, however, is a little more involved. The main character, Alicia Florrick, is married to the former State Attorney of Cook County, who has recently admitted to occasional sexual encounters with young prostitutes and is fighting charges of political corruption. While her imprisoned husband waits for trial, Alicia goes back to work in a law firm after years as a stay-at-home mother, and has uncomfortable encounters with her husbands’ former colleagues.
It’s a fun premise – relatable for women who struggle with work/life balance and there’s a hefty dollop of scandal to keep things exciting. But it works especially well as a television show rather than a novel, because all our cues for interpreting Alicia as a beleaguered political wife are visual ones. In the beginning of the first episode, Alicia and her husband walk out into a crowd of reporters, and while Peter informs the crowd that he has resigned as State’s Attorney, Alicia stands silently off to the side, looking shocked and pale. This is an image we know, television we know. This is Eliot Spitzer’s wife, standing up next to him while he admits to having sex with prostitutes. For most Americans, this is an event that happened visually, something they watched on the news or saw clips of on the internet, and so this fictionalized representation of that event can give us a jolt of visual recognition that text is unlikely to achieve.
On FOX’s Lie to Me, the premise grapples with current events more abstractly, and rather than using jabs of visual reminders, the show provides retroactive interpretation of significant images. Cal Lightman, the show’s protagonist, works as a lie detector, using the examination of physical signs like heart rate, gestures, and most importantly, micro-expressions, to determine whether someone is being deceptive. In the season two premiere, the Lightman Group interviews a possible Supreme Court nominee, attempting to determine whether he has secrets that will hold up his confirmation. After learning that he feels fear and anger about one of his early cases, they uncover a hidden sexual relationship between the nominee and the daughter of a woman he once acquitted. A picture of the judge and the young woman reveals her feelings for him – she looks at him with love and hidden knowledge. As corroboration for the image’s interpretation, the investigator pulls up several other images: Mel Gibson’s mistress looking at him, Hailey Glassman looking at Jon Gosselin, and of course, Monica Lewinsky looking up at President Clinton. Their expressions are the same, and the inference is clear. As in the fictional plot, the expressions of famous and infamous people are available for further interpretation, and the fictional storylines of Lie to Me can act as a decoder ring for real life.
Of course it’s dubious that you could sit watching Lie to Me and then re-watch Dave Letterman’s fumbling attempts to apologize for his indiscretions with new insight. Still, the idea stands: television is uniquely suited as a fictional medium to respond to and provide interpretation for current events in our visual world. That doesn’t mean it happens often, or that it frequently happens thoughtfully, cleverly, or effectively. But The Good Wife and Lie to Me are not bad places to start.