One of the new, fun things about watching TV these days is that you don't have to watch it at all. You can just go on Twitter and observe the reactions of other people who are watching it. This is excellent for things like Question Time, where the actual act of viewing the thing is a tedious and frustrating experience. How much better to read the swift and angry responses of the online community, than to look at some UKIP berk spouting off again about how he's definitely not racist but he does, co-incidentally, hate a lot of brown people.
It's an interesting shift in viewing patterns which has changed the nature of television itself. Live entertainment shows, of course, rejoice in the knowledge that they are part of a live, online conversation. But it's changing drama, too.
Last night was the premiere of season seven of The Walking Dead - a show I much enjoy. Now, season six ended in quite the cliff-hanger. If you are woefully behind on the show, you should probably look away now. If you don't watch it at all, the programme can be summarised thus - a guy called Rick leads a bunch of survivors through the remains of civilisation, after zombies happen.
At the end of season six, Rick's group are captured by the show's new Big Bad - a baseball bat wielding warlord called Negan. Our heroes have encountered Negan's followers a number of times throughout the season and, indeed, killed a lot of them. And now they are face to face with the man himself. And he intends to pay them back for the wounds they have inflicted.
"Eenie, meenie, miny, mo..."
Fans of the comics, like myself, know what is coming next, and sure enough it does. Negan and his small army of post apocalyptic warriors surround our heroes and make them kneel before him. Negan strides up and down in front of his captives, deciding who he is going to kill, swinging his bat suggestively. His bat is called Lucille. It is made of barbed wire and spikes. Negan is clearly not kidding.
The season ends with a POV shot, putting us in the position of Negan's victim, watching as the bat comes down on our head. Blood flows down the screen as the camera lurches to the side. We do not know which of our beloved cast members is on the receiving end. All we know is, someone is definitely for the chop.
And it was all over Twitter. Just as the blood had filled the screen, so Twitter was covered in a thousand, 140 character responses. Who was dead? Why hadn't they shown us? What if it was Darryl? Oh, there would be trouble if it was Darryl!
The makers of this show know exactly what they are doing.
Clever stuff. Not, perhaps, a narrative driven by the true principles of drama. Rather, a story shaped and formed by the state of the medium. A programme that is not just a programme anymore, but part of a larger world - an online, interactive world where everyone gets to shout and cry and speculate.
So. Last night was the long awaited continuation of this cliff-hanger. Who was on the receiving end of Lucille's spiky wrath?
I won't spoil it here. But I will say, there is no reprieve and no cheat. No-one charges out of the woods to save them. No-one has a cunning plan. Negan most certainly does not change his mind. The episode is a bleak, brutal affair, full of pain and horror. I'd say it's pretty good drama and it certainly had me engaged. I say 'engaged' to dignify myself. I was clutching a cushion with one hand, while the other hand was waving frantically about in the air in panic.
Anyway. After the programme I spent a happy hour or so reading the online responses. People were all over the place. Shock, from those Tweeting in real time. Sadness for the characters. Anger at Negan. Anger at the makers of the show. It was brilliant - like being in a crowd at a gig, or a stand up show. Only rather than thousands of people singing a chorus , or laughing together, here they were shrieking in horror as a large man hit someone in the head with a baseball bat.
There were a few comments that surprised me, though. A number of people were vowing that they were done with the show, because it was too bleak. I mean, they were genuinely going to abandon a TV programme because of some fictional thing that happened. Popular science writer Doctor Ben Goldacre called it "Empty unpleasantness".
Empty Unpleasantness?
I find this attitude really weird. OK, I admit, this was not a 'fun' hour of television. I did laugh once - at an enjoyable bit of zombie grossness - but on the whole I felt a variety of unpleasant emotions. There was at least one moment where I had genuine, sick-feeling dread at what might happen next.
But for me that's part of the point of this kind of show. It takes us, safely, into places we don't normally go. And as for 'empty'... well, that's just silly. Ben Goldacre is about a million times more intelligent than me, but on this one thing I think I'm justified in saying, Doctor Goldacre - it's a little more complicated than that.
Off the top of my head, these are some of the things that stop last night's Walking Dead being 'empty'...
It's a story about hubris. A supremely cocky group who think they can control all situations and are always in the right are suddenly faced with something far more powerful, much nastier and - crucially - morally just about the same. Sound relevant for 21st Century America?
It's about leadership. What kind of a man does it take to really keep control, and do we really want that kind of man in charge?
It's about empathy. These are characters we've known for years. Here they are, terrified and helpless and in pain. In a world where we are increasingly insular and comfortable, maybe it's a good idea to see a little bit of bleakness.
It's about death. One of the characters has their head reduced, by Lucille, to a bloody pulp. I mean, like totally formless. Just a mess of meat, with eyeballs still wandering about in there. It's a moment of existential horror. Is that all we are? Some meat? That face, which I look at in a mirror, and call 'me', is just some stuff. My brain, in which all my thoughts and emotions and experiences seem to happen, is just some stuff. It could be destroyed, and there'd by no 'me' in there. I'd be gone. Brrrrr.
It's about what to do next. The episode doesn't end with the horror. It ends after the horror has stopped, and the survivors are wondering what to do next. What are you left with? Who are you, now? Who might you have been, without this?
And it's about the performances, and writing and technical skill and direction that makes this look and feel real. The craft that stops this looking like people standing about wearing makeup and pretending to be sad, and makes it compelling and powerful and horrible.
It's not empty, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment