Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  At the same time, the conservative deeply distrusts the dominant social order, which can all too easily turn predatory and corruptive without constant vigilance. This is the hard-boiled-detective story, where the hero can never trust anybody but himself, and any individual, no matter how beautiful, and any institution, no matter how august, can at any time turn out to be rotten, evil, and plotting against the hero's life. This is Neptune's story.

  Let's look at some of the ways this plays out in the show

  The Sgs[em Is Broken

  Ms. DENT: Good morning, Veronica. I was thinking maybe you'd be interested in covering the election for the student newspaper.

  VERONICA: Sure, I'll write it up this afternoon.

  Ms. DENT: The election's tomorrow

  VERONICA: And I can already see the headline: "Brown-Nosing Resume Packer Wins in a Landslide."

  ("Return of the Kane," 1-6)

  Outwardly, Neptune is pretty, prosperous, wholesome-the American dream. The core, however, is rotten. The leading citizens are selfish, hypocritical, and corrupt. The poor are lawless and desperate. The police are ineffectual and self-serving, and even the city government (as we learn in season two) is pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of white-collar organized criminals like Mr. Casablancas, Dick and Beaver's dad, manipulating the public good to get the most profit out of his shady real estate scams.

  A libertarian conservative (let's just go ahead and call him a Mallard Fillmore conservative) might grudgingly admit that government is necessary for functions like defense, law enforcement, and public transportation, but he definitely believes that government works best when it does the least. When government has too much power, libertarian thought states, it begins to strain and buckle under its own weight. Efficiency is lost. More importantly, supporting a massive and bloated government requires that the government confiscate an undue portion of its people's money in the form of taxes (and then it has to charge more taxes to pay for collecting the taxes). Finally, an overly powerful government creates a culture of entitlement among the populace, where people expect the nanny-state to take care of every need and wish as a "right." This leads to a decadent, corrupt, and immoral culture of weaklings. Neptune is a pretty powerful metaphor for the arrogance of power.

  This overall social breakdown can be seen in several different recurring themes in the show To name three....

  Public Schools

  KEITH: How was school?

  VERONICA: You know-mean kids, indifferent teachers, crumbling infrastructure.

  ("M.A.D.," 1-20)

  So let's look at Neptune High. The 09ers spend their time doing drugs, hooking up, running scams, and throwing wild parties while their grades get automatically inflated to the point where they can get into any school their parents can afford. Meanwhile the PCH greasers are selling them the drugs while bullying the weak. The teachers are burnt-out and uninspired, and the few intelligent, motivated students, like Veronica, are pretty much left to fend for themselves. The only kids with any hope of any kind of upward mobility are the jocks, like Wallace. Buffy's Sunnydale High had an excuse-it was built over a Hellmouth. But Neptune High is just corrupt.

  To a certain subset of the modern conservative movement, this portrait of U.S. secondary education isn't a dramatic exaggerationit's pretty much a documentary. There's a strong current among conservatives that the government has no business collecting taxes for a mandatory, secular public education system that many feel is a joke to the rest of the world. It's not much of a stretch to guess that this is one theme that works particularly well for Tinsley and Mallard Fillmore. Tinsley considers the U.S. public education system completely broken, and his alter-ego has often said so in the strip.

  Defense Laurgers

  CLIFF: I failed criminal law

  ("Like a Virgin," 1-8)

  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cliff McCormack, the Mars family's lawyer friend-always available to provide justice at a reasonable cost. Though Cliff is often actually on the side of the angels (usually despite himself), defending those who really are innocent (or at least pure of heart), the fact remains that basically Cliff is presented to us as cowardly and opportunistic. This jibes well with the prevailing wisdom of the conservative movement. Prosecutors put criminals in jail, defense lawyers get criminals out of jail. Conservatives-at least those not currently under indictment-tend to prefer the former to the later.

  Hellgwucd Types

  AARON: Have you heard from your sister?

  LOGAN: Yeah. She sent a telegram. Heartbroken. Stop. Can't make it back from Sydney. Stop. Underwater scene shoot tomorrow Stop. Entire crew said prayer for Mom. Stop. Love you. Stop.

  ("Lord of the Bling," 1-13)

  Conservatives believe that the American culture of the moment is dominated by a "liberal media elite" that distorts the values of the average American and screens out information the elite considers "politically incorrect." The poster children for this media elite are Hollywood stars, with their trendy, liberal social causes, their immoral and immodest lifestyle, and their often uninformed outspokenness.

  The Echolls family doesn't completely conform to this stereotype. Aaron-by far the worst of the lot-seems to be a square-jawed, action-movie type in the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Clint Eastwood/Charlton Heston mold, and conservatives don't tend to have much trouble with that particular sort of star. On the other hand, George Clooney makes action movies, too, and plenty of conservatives would love to see him share Aaron Echolls's fate. Plus there's Trina, Aaron's ditzy actress daughter, who fully embodies the image of Hollywood irresponsibility. Trina's signature is social conscience as a career moveshe pretends to have principles, because she thinks principles are something celebrities are supposed to wear in public, like Manolo Blahniks. This sort of ideological opportunism is exactly what conservatives (especially the South Park conservatives mentioned earlier) really despise about "Hollywood liberals." It's a fundamental clash of cultures-rich conservatives quietly (sometimes covertly) give piles of money to candidates who believe the same things they do, while famous liberals (so conservatives believe, and often the evidence seems to be on their side) endorse candidates when it means they'll have a chance to share in a photo-op and get their picture in a part of the paper other than the Lifestyle section.

  Righ[ is Right

  VERONICA: [voiceover] So this is how it is. The innocent suffer, the guilty go free, and truth and fiction are pretty much interchangeable.... There is neither a Santa Claus, nor an Easter Bunny, and there are no angels watching over us. Things just happen for no reason, and nothing makes any sense.

  ("Not Pictured," 2-22)

  Poor Veronica has every right to feel disillusioned from time to time. After all, in her world, things are all too often not at all what they seem. Friends turn away, authority figures fall.

  However, for us, the viewers, things always eventually come into sharper focus. Once all the mysteries are solved, we know who the bad guy is, and who the good guy is-and the mystery always gets solved in the end, even if it takes all season.

  And pretty much everybody does turn out to be either a good guy or a bad guy. The good guys aren't perfect (Wallace has made a misstep or two along the way, and even Veronica occasionally pushes the limits of acceptable behavior), and a few of the victims have a sympathetic side (Terrence Cook, the fallen baseball star, has made a mess of his life, but he'd really like to be a better dad). Some of the characters are very complicated (Weevil, Logan, Lilly), but in the end even they shake out to one side or the other-Weevil and Logan, despite their faults and bad choices, are basically good kids, while Lilly Kane, despite her charm, was probably always doomed.

  Liberals are notoriously comfortable with nuance and shades of gray, but conservatives like a world that's more black and white. For proof, just look at the military policy of the current administration. The people we're fighting, or that we think we might have to fight some day, are not rivals or adversaries-they're evil: "Evildoers," an "Axis of
Evil." Our whole foreign policy under the Bush administration is based on the idea that, first, we can tell the good guys from the bad guys, and second, that we have a moral right to take down the bad guys because they're evil.

  In Veronica Mars the good guys come from the family story side of the fence, while the bad guys creep in from the hard-boiled surroundings. Having both, and being able to tell the difference, gives the show much of its appeal.

  Uerontta Gets Fare,

  KEITH: Have you been playing nice with the other children? VERONICA: You know, Dad, I'm old school, an eye for an eye. KEITH: I think that's actually Old Testament.

  ("Meet John Smith," 1-3)

  Veronica likes to get payback. Most sixteen-year-old girls who suspect they've been drugged and raped at a party would want to think about it as little as possible, but Veronica is driven to find the responsible party. When Jackie embarrasses her on Madame Sophie's public access show, Veronica is determined to find a way to make her regret it. Veronica jeopardizes her own scholarship to see Aaron Echolls pronounced guilty and sentenced for Lilly's murder. Of course, it must be noted that this drive for vengeance doesn't always serve Veronica well-her anger at Jackie caused a split between her and Wallace, and Aaron was found not guilty, so she lost her chance at the scholarship for nothing. But even though she doesn't always get her personal paybacks, Veronica is still very effective at bringing the guilty to justice.

  Veronica Mars is a very vengeance-friendly show, and conservatism is a very vengeance-friendly philosophy. Though in general, conservatives may consider themselves to be solidly behind Jesus and his teachings, they do tend to have a bit of a problem with all that "turn the other cheek" stuff. By nature, they favor the Old Testament methods mentioned by Keith, above.

  Look at our criminal justice system. Liberals say that they'd rather see 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man face punishment but conservatives are more concerned with the possibility that innocent blood might go unavenged. This is most obvious on the question of capital punishment: liberals worry about the possibility of error, the economic practicalities of the institution, and whether the ultimate penalty is being applied fairly across boundaries of race and class, but law-and-order conservatives tend to think that such sweeping questions are meaningless-the only thing that matters is that in each specific case the condemned was guilty of the crime and is suffering the just consequences of that guilt.

  Veronica's not the only avenging angel in the show At this writing, the season two finale made it appear as though Aaron Echolls had successfully manipulated the criminal justice system to regain his freedom, only to discover that there's more than one kind of justice. By the time you read this, we'll have a more detailed picture of Aaron's fate, but it's pretty clear he got what he had coming.

  Sit DeEwtse

  There's not a lot of gunplay in Veronica Mars. In particular Veronica and even Keith are seldom seen with firearms. It makes the Mars family more heroic to have them think their way out of confrontations with armed enemies. Plus a teenaged girl with a gun is a rather disturbing image-and Veronica's routine skirting of the law would seem less spunky and mischievous and a lot more felonious if she were packing heat. However, the show makes no bones about the fact that it's okay for honest citizens to defend themselves with whatever means are at hand. Backup the pit bull serves as a fine lethal weapon when Veronica is imperiled. Like conservatives, Veronica Mars has no problem with the First Amendment's right to self defense.

  VERONICA: [voiceover] Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. Because after disaster strikes, the important thing is that you move on. But if you're like me, you just keep chasing the storm.

  ("Meet John Smith," 1-3)

  So, in the end, we're left with this: Veronica Mars is a show about a young woman who knows what's right and courageously acts on that knowledge. She doesn't let fear of personal danger, or social disapproval, or even arbitrary rules and laws stand in her way. It's a story everyone can relate to-and if it's a particularly powerful scenario to a conservative aquatic waterfowl, that's by no means the only group to which it speaks.

  CHRIS McCUBBIN has written more than twenty books, mostly about games (computer and otherwise). He's a cofounder of and writer/editor with Incan Monkey God Studios. Chris lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Lynette Alcorn, and his dogs, Penny and Sammy.

  1eren[es

  Tinsley, Bruce. Mallard Fillmore daily comic strip, 27 Jan. 2006. King Features Syndicate.

  Tinsley, Bruce, Interview with Bill Steigerwald. "Meet Mallard's Daddy," Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 22 Oct. 2005.

  Stone, Matt. Verbal remarks given at a People for the American Way awards dinner, 2001.

  Anderson, Brian C. South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Left-Wind Media Bias. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2005. Anderson credits blogger Andrew Sullivan with originally coining the term "South Park Republican."

  I'm not entlr li sure that Veronica's need to dole out retribution is entirely behind her. In writing an ongoing fictional creature I'm tugged in a couple different directions. There's the part of me that thinks Veronica should grow and evolve. She should get past her pettiness. She should learn how to forgive. (We just finished a script in the past couple of days for season three in which she unexpectedly heeds the advice of a televangelist speaking on the subject of forgiveness.) The other part of me wants to keep her complicated. Difficult. Testy. I don't want her to soften into angelic heroine who consistently does the "right thing."

  Like America, Veronica and I are at a crossroads.

  The United States

  of Veronica

  Teen Noir as America's New Zeitgeist

  HAVE SOMETHING IN common with Veronica Mars.

  Last year I was sexually molested, and the cops laughed it off. The incident left me in danger of becoming a cynic. But it also taught me a hard truth, a truth that teen detective and TV sensation Veronica Mars learned an even harder way after her rape, when, with unnecessary cruelty, Sheriff Lamb let the case drop.

  The truth is, sometimes even the "good guys" aren't looking out for us. Ultimately, we're thrown back on ourselves and our own selfpreservation instinct. What then? Who can we turn to? The new task, maybe even the task for our times-the one Veronica Mars gives us the tools to tackle-is figuring out how to protect ourselves without putting too much faith in an external authority or blocking out feelings that make us vulnerable, feelings like trust, empathy, and love. The temptation is to join our violators' ranks by walking away from responsibility or acting out in some eye-for-eye campaign for revenge, a temptation Veronica struggles with mightily. But as Veronica learned after she was repeatedly condemned for her reliance on vengeance, that way lies misery, hate, and solitude.

  That way lies our current zeitgeist. That way lies teen noir.

  "Tensions in Neptune Rre the Highest They've Ever Been."

  That Veronica Mars falls squarely within the film noir tradition has been shown by sharper pens than mine. What I'd like to explore here is why teen noir is surfacing now and what it can teach us. Why does it hit a nerve that hurts so good? Why do adults and teens alike respond so deeply and enthusiastically to the show? Because it's a direct expression of America's current zeitgeist, that's why.

  The guarded, snarky noir voice and personality of Veronica's world are symptomatic of the modern American struggle to protect our vulnerability and recover our lost innocence in these cynical times. In a very real, if fictional sense, we are the United States of Veronica.

  Wartime, loss of innocence and stability, distrust of authority figures at local, national, and international levels-this is our current American climate, and it creates a pattern of response that is not unlike the way Wallace described Veronica in the show's pilot episode: "Underne
ath that angry young woman shell, there's a slightly less angry young woman ... You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars, a Twinkie" ("Pilot," 1-1).

  I'll go further. I'll say Americans have become like a smoking, burnt-out s'more at some sadistic teen's marshmallow roast, charred and crusty on the outside, oozing fear and repressed sadness on the inside. Oh, we'd like to think we're tough and invincible. We used to be in some illusory golden age. But the hidden truth is we're frightened and vulnerable. We're mourning the loss of our collective innocence and our shattered illusions-illusions about ourselves, our leaders, and our democratic way of life just as we did in the postwar forties and the war-torn seventies, and now again in the wartime naughts.

  It's a tough time, and we're hurting. And our poster child is Veronica Mars.

  "There is No Santa Claus, lherunica."

  When creating a character, screenwriters often talk about a character's need, or "ghost." By this they mean the character's past trauma and resulting emotional wound, which create a deep, unfilled need that in a sense haunts the character throughout the story. If all goes well, story events will both irritate the wound and help it to heal, and ultimately the character will come out having met a subconscious need. This is what happy endings are all about, and it's what Veronica Mars's main plot is all about, when it provides Veronica the upbeat closure she craves each season, a faint glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark and pessimistic world.

  At the same time the show's subplots tend to end each season on a down note, especially Logan and Duncan's, reminding us that not all of us get our happy ending, not if our parents have abandoned or violated us. This is the character wound that may or may not heal, and this is what creates the real suspense in Veronica Mars, at least for me. Will Duncan, Logan, and Veronica be able to heal their wounds, or will they repeat the cycle of violation and neglect their parents taught them?