by Rob Thomas
In Veronica's case, her "ghost" during the first season is threefold: her best friend Lilly was murdered, her boyfriend Duncan inexplicably dumped her, and her mother abandoned her without explanation. Veronica's wound and theme are thus abandonment, with a sub-theme of violation at the hands of her peers and community elders.
Her two character wounds-abandonment and violation-are reflected, doubly or singly, in nearly every character in Veronica Mars, lending the series a marvellous thematic unity-no mean feat for such a complex storyline, especially one in the mystery and thriller genres, a form that traditionally has been more about surprise and suspense than character growth.
All this is to say, just as our American zeitgeist can be seen as the "United States" of Veronica, so too can the other characters on the show Each reflects a different aspect of Veronica's character, whether it's her destructive and vengeful side, reflected in Duncan and Beaver, or her protective and generous side, reflected in Wallace and Keith.
Thus Veronica-and we-can use their good (and bad) examples to learn how to deal with our own sense of abandonment and isolation. But let's back up a moment to look at the big picture: exactly where did America's sense of abandonment and isolation come from?
"iou Wmw, Nu Om Seems to [are. I'm Prac[ically an Orphan."
Just as 9/11 was the defining event for America's current sense of violation, the New Orleans flood was the defining event for America's current sense of abandonment. When Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline and endangered thousands of American lives, national resources were not mobilized as efficiently as they were, say, to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to hunt down a comparatively small band of dangerous terrorists who turned out to have nothing to do with Iraq (surprise, surprise).
The New Orleans debacle and Veronica Mars have this in common: they bring to the surface an American theme that has been psychologically denied and barely kept in check for much of the present decade-namely, that many of our high-ranking authority figures, our political leaders, the "fathers" and "mothers" of our nation, may not truly care about protecting us, their citizen children, but may in fact be more interested in bending the truth and securing their own power base.
Like Lianne Mars when she abandoned Veronica without explanation and later stole her college funds, and like Woody Goodman after he sexually abused his Little Leaguers, our political leaders have left the scene of the crime. They have treated human beings, at home and abroad, as objects whose needs and subjectivity, whose very lives, are to be ignored, destroyed, or endangered. Is this who we want to be?
And although it's true that Lianne Mars was also trying to protect her daughter, her means did not justify her ends. She owed Veronica more information and better communication. Her weak moral fiber was only confirmed when she bolted again at the end of season one, violating Veronica by stealing her college fund and abandoning her by putting her own agenda first.
Welcome to Veronica's world. And welcome to the picture of our times: a selfish, abusive authority figure and his or her dependent child, a child whose resulting pain, rage, and drive for self-protection, if acted out-the way Beaver did in season two-will only repeat the cycle.
"The Getting Ewen Part? Vou Might Want tc Rethink That One."
But getting from rage to its healthy release doesn't happen overnight. Witness our current decade. Our era is the scene of an epic inner struggle between the base instinct for revenge and higher moral ground. A few of us-like Veronica-will come out winners on the side of self-mastery and wisdom of choice. More than a few of us, however, will not.
Or am I being pessimistic? What if I'm wrong? What if most of us will overcome our drive for revenge? A girl can dream, can't she?
Early in the series, I wasn't sure whether Veronica had what it took to overcome her weakness-a weakness that I define as her drive for revenge and her inability to let down her guard and open her heart. "Here's what you do," Veronica told Meg, whose reputation was being dragged through the mud at Neptune High. "You get tough, you get even." Later in the same episode Meg told her, "Getting tough? Yeah, that was good advice. And I needed that. The getting even part? You might want to rethink that one." ("Like a Virgin," 1-8).
Meg had a good point. In season one, Veronica exacted revenge for offenses committed against her and those she loved, much in the way the U.S. bombed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan after 9/11, hunting down and killing al-Qaeda members throughout the world. True, Veronica never resorted to murder, but she did get people arrested and publicly humiliated-and she got chastised for it by her peers.
By season two Veronica began learning from her mistakes. When she had the chance to take revenge on Jackie, for instance, by publicly outing the girl's father as a gambling addict, she decided against it. For someone as ensconced in her shell as Veronica, backing down like this takes extra guts because, for her, backing down is akin to admitting defeat, and admitting defeat means showing her throat, and showing her throat makes her vulnerable to getting it bitten again, just like when she was an innocent kid, powerless to defend herself against the people around her.
"I'm Fishing Vuiu U Let It Gtr.
So now that we've diagnosed the American wound, how do we treat it?
The way I see it, Veronica Mars presents us with several coping strategies for dealing with our teen noir times, some of them effective, some of them less so. First the ineffective strategies:
We can (1) laugh the problem off, the way Logan did when he pretended he was accepting an Academy Award during his police lineup ("Oh, wow, I'm stunned. You like me! You really like me!" ["Rat Saw God," 2-611), which is only a partial solution-and I say this as a comic fiction writer-because laughing at something without also confronting its reality is a form of denial. Or we can (2) numb out, like Duncan did when he went catatonic after finding Lilly's body and later took antidepressants to avoid his feelings, another form of denial. Alternatively, we might (3) grow an impenetrable shell, the way Veronica did early in the series, a strategy that leads nowhere because toughening up without also opening up is as much of an opiate as Duncan's antidepressants. Or, just as ineffectively, we might (4) flee responsibility, as have the many deadbeat parents in Veronica Mars, leaving their children behind to fend for themselves. And finally, we might (5) fight fire with an apocalypse, the way Beaver did when he bombed the school bus, murdered Curly, and committed suicide (not an effective strategy, as the tragedy that is Iraq clearly shows).
So much for what not to do. Let's look at what works. While Veronica Mars presents more than a few positive strategies for healing the national psyche, three of them are key:
1) FUIuuring Pain, Truth, and Uuhwrahublg
The truth can hurt. When Veronica broke down and cried behind the wheel of her LeBaron after visiting Abel Koontz in prison, I believe it was because she had finally opened her heart to the painful truth about her mother, who at some level just didn't care about Veronica (or at least not enough). Veronica learned from Koontz that her mother lied to her and that she herself might be Jake Kane's daughter and Duncan's sister. Just being reminded of her mother's lies and abandonment must have hurt, but instead of blocking the pain the way she had earlier in the series, she allowed herself to feel it.
Allowing vulnerability like this was an important step for Veronica. It let her more easily identify with and accept other characters who were suffering, and forgive them when they repented their crimes. This is harder to do than it sounds. In order to feel another person's pain, we first have to feel our own, a challenge for hardened people like Veronica who are afraid of lowering their guard.
But Veronica braved her fears, allowed the painful truth about her mother, and so by season two was able to sympathize with and even forgive Koontz, who'd perjured himself in court over Lilly's murder, thus helping to tear apart Veronica's family. Veronica's forgiveness of Koontz also allowed her natural generosity to come to the fore; she later helped him locate his daughter Amelia, fulfil
ling his dying wish, and allowed him to die believing Amelia was happy and healthy.
Veronica was also able to forgive Logan and risk trusting his love, a love which, to her way of thinking, might at any moment turn into an attack or be ripped away, as her mother's love had been.
LOGAN: I'm the one who's responsible for what happened to you. And I can't take that I hurt you like that. I can't take that I hurt you when all I want to do is protect you.... I want you to trust me.
VERONICA: (softly) I do.
("Trip to the Dentist," 1-21)
Her love for Logan was only possible once she had allowed herself to identify with the full range of his humanity, including his suffering. And that, for Veronica especially, took guts. It's much easier to hate the person who has harmed you than to understand him.
Without such understanding, without sympathy (or "suffering with" in Greek), the milk of human kindness would sour, with war and vengeance as likely results.
2) Protecting our innocence
Another positive strategy for treating the current malaise is to acknowledge and protect innocence-in ourselves and in others. Time and again, Veronica has been called on to learn the truth about an abused innocent, and if possible to protect that innocent. First there's her best friend Lilly, who in a sense stands for Veronica's innocencesomething Veronica spends all of season one trying to regain by solving Lilly's murder. Then there's baby Lilly, Duncan's infant, who must be protected by Veronica and Duncan from ending up the victim of Meg's parents, who locked their daughter Grace in a closet for extended periods to discipline her.
And yet again, there was the abandoned newborn in the Neptune High School bathrooms, a crime uncovered and exposed by Veronica twenty-five years later.
How does acknowledging our innocence help in the grand scheme of things? It calls forth our generosity and protective instincts-impulses that are life-affirming, not life-denying.
3) Releasing the Need tur Revenge
Then there's the third and final strategy, the turning point task for healing what ails our times, and that is: releasing the need for revenge.
While revenge can feel protective and empowering in the moment, ultimately it's a dead end, as Veronica began to realize early in season two:
VERONICA: So you got even? Is that it?
BUTTERS: It looks that way.
VERONICA: You're playing a dangerous game. Kelvin will take your head off if I tell him you're the reason he's off football this year.
("Normal is the Watchword," 2-1)
Ironically, one of the psychological functions of detective fiction like Veronica Mars is to allow us to experience revenge vicariouslywhich we rationalize to ourselves as justice-and therefore to release extreme emotions like rage. It's a sort of steam valve on a pressure cooker, if you will.
This experience is what Aristotle in his Poetics calls "catharsis," a term he understood in a medical sense. According to Aristotle, spectators feel fictional dangers and sympathies so strongly that they show reactions like widened pupils and sweating hands. During a story's climactic scenes these reactions are at their most intense, and when the story concludes, resolving all conflicts, spectators experience a healthy physical release.
For Aristotle, catharsis also has a moral dimension. In his view, one of the strongest forms of catharsis is the reinstatement of moral rectitude, or justice. The more injustice an innocent character has experienced during the story, the greater the moral pleasure afforded the spectator when the scales of justice tip back in the victim's favor.
But if crime fiction is to say more about the human condition than just "let's sock it to the bad guys," if it is to reach the level of art, I believe it must also include a moral dimension that shows characters making existential choices for better or worse, the way they do in Veronica Mars. To take revenge, or not to take revenge. That is the question. Not just "Who done it?" and "Did they get away with it?"
And this is the crowning achievement of Veronica Mars as art and craft. The series seamlessly combines a character-driven storyline with a plot-driven one in such a way that we experience fear and hope for the victims as well as surprise and suspense during the story's many plot twists. In the end, the inner and outer stories come together in a grand finale each season, when inevitably, spectacularly, and (thank goodness) wisely, justice is done.
"Justice," Vincent "Butters" Clemmons told Veronica at the beginning of season two, "it can be a bitch" ("Normal Is the Watchword," 2-1). Yes, I agree. The bully's brand of justice can do more harm than good. But there's a difference between that kind of justice, which is closer to vengeance, and the tempered justice that occurs when a suspect receives a fair trial and a convicted killer is put behind bars. There's a difference, too, between the bully's brand of justice and karmic justice, described so well by Keith at the end of season two:
KEITH: However wrong it turned out, it's done. We're people with lives, and we will not obsess. We move on. Aaron Echolls will get his justice in his own way.
VERONICA: You really believe that?
KEITH: Yes.
("Not Pictured," 2-22)
Maybe Keith was right. Maybe justice doesn't need us. Maybe it will take care of itself. Meanwhile, back on earth, mere humans like me and Veronica have to battle the instinctive drive to strike back against both real and perceived attacks. I don't know what I would have done out on that rooftop of the Grand Neptune Hotel at the end of season two (probably run back downstairs screaming), but I'm glad that by then Veronica's moral fiber had grown strong enough to pass this ultimate test:
LOGAN: Veronica, don't.
VERONICA: (crying) He killed my father!
LOGAN: Now give me the gun, Veronica.
VERONICA: He killed everyone on the bus! He raped me!
LOGAN: Look, you are not a killer, Veronica. Give me the gun.
("Not Pictured," 2-22)
Veronica had the chance to kill Beaver then, but didn't. She overcame her true weakness-not her vulnerability, but her need for revengeand she let Logan take the gun from her hand. In other words, she won the real battle against the real enemy-not against the killer, but against the killer in herself.
"EM You Fed the LVUE?"
At the risk of over-romanticizing American culture, the way German patriots did in the thirties when they spiritualized concepts like Zeitgeist and Volhgeist, I'd like to posit that Veronica is a hero for our times, and that when she and all of us who emulate her fulfill our inner need, when we give up our anger at having been abandoned and violated and release our need for revenge, we will be able to experience more love and hope, and our teen noir era will come to an end. A new American era will then emerge, with new lessons to be learned and new heroes to live them out for us, leading the way.
Author and screenwriter DEANNA CARLYLE writes comedy, mysteries, and thrillers. She is the winner of the James D. Phelan Literary Award and co-founder of the International Women's Fiction Festival held each year in Matera, Italy. Visit her online at http://www.deannacarlyle.com.
nFlumm
Hiltunen, An. Aristotle in Hollywood. Exeter, England: Intellect Books, 2002.
Parker, Philip. The Art and Science of Screenwriting. Exeter, England: Intellect Books, 1999.
Scaruffi, Piero. "A time-line of the USA." Piero Scaruffis Home page 2006.
full disdosure: I'm not a car guy. I don't know much about cars. My assistant Alex and writer Phil Klemmer generally make decisions about the cars we use in the show. I've made a few of the calls. The LeBaron was modeled after the car my then-girlfriend (now wife) drove, and it was motivated primarily by the need for a convertible Veronica could afford with a back seat large enough to allow Backup to jump and attack a PCHer in the pilot episode.
As for Mr Daniels's cap; I was inspired by the movie Election. I wanted to see a teacher who walks out into the parking lot and sees 90 percent of his students driving nicer cars than he can afford.
I'm
in Love with My Car
Automotive Symbolism on Veronica Mars
EPTUNE, CALIFORNIA-A COASTAL town somewhere not too far from San Diego. It's fairly typical of southern California in many ways, deliberately so. It's got its share of the very wealthy-movie stars, software millionaires-but most of the town isn't so fortunate. If you work your way down to the bottom of the social ladder, you'll find the Hispanic families who supply the wealthy with maids and gardeners.
In Veronica's voiceover introduction in the pilot episode of Veronica Mars, she told us Neptune has no middle class just the wealthy and the people who clean their homes and tend their gardens. This isn't literally true, by any means, as we see plenty of schoolteachers, mechanics, and the like, but it's uncomfortably close.
Perhaps as a result, the people of Neptune, including the students at Neptune High, take social status very seriously. They're always alert to the markers that indicate who's better than whom-the clothes they wear, the accents in their speech, their manners, the cars they drive....
Oh, yeah. Definitely the cars they drive. In Neptune, what you drive tells the world who you are. And someone at the show clearly put a lot of thought into who drives what.
Once upon a time, if they showed cars at all, TV shows would typically give every character a fairly generic vehicle; often, every car on a given show would come from a single manufacturer, who provided them free as part of an advertising deal. The closing credits would include a line like, "Vehicles courtesy of Ford Motor Company," and every character would drive a different model of new Ford.
