Remedial masterpieces for a grieving TV nation | Little White Lies

Not Movies

Reme­di­al mas­ter­pieces for a griev­ing TV nation

30 Jan 2017

Words by Roxanne Sancto

Smiling couple facing each other, woman in floral dress, man in checkered shirt.
Smiling couple facing each other, woman in floral dress, man in checkered shirt.
Tele­vi­sion is now more direct, fac­tu­al and unabashed than ever in its reflec­tion of our tox­ic social climate.

The social media rev­o­lu­tion has giv­en a new breed of activists var­i­ous plat­forms from which to stand up to sex­ism, racism and oth­er forms of social and polit­i­cal injus­tice by unashamed­ly tack­ling top­ics pre­vi­ous­ly deemed pub­lic taboos. Issues like abor­tion and inequal­i­ty may no longer elic­it the same type of cru­ci­fy­ing judge­ment as before, but they are still reserved for des­ig­nat­ed lis­ten­ers and crit­i­cised by pugna­cious purists – online as well as offline.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the com­fort of online anonymi­ty has spawned a sense of pub­lic sol­i­dar­i­ty and empow­er­ment. Peo­ple are dis­card­ing the gags put in place by law mak­ers and ques­tion­able hive men­tal­i­ties, and are chal­leng­ing impor­tant social issues no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able or shock­ing they may seem. The shame we have been made to feel when dis­cussing abor­tion, rape, white priv­i­lege, female sex­u­al­i­ty and even death is slow­ly evap­o­rat­ing and mor­ph­ing into some­thing dif­fer­ent alto­geth­er: outrage.

While the insti­tu­tions direct­ly respon­si­ble for this oppres­sion have yet to prove they are will­ing to change the dom­i­nant social dia­logue, the TV indus­try seems to have – at least par­tial­ly – accept­ed this as its own respon­si­bil­i­ty. It is still biased and flawed – espe­cial­ly in terms of diver­si­ty and real­ism – but TV has estab­lished itself as a mul­ti­fac­eted medi­um that is becom­ing increas­ing­ly more direct, fac­tu­al and unabashed in its reflec­tion of our cur­rent social climate.

Accord­ing to tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er Lau­ren Zalaznick, TV has always had a con­science. It direct­ly reflects the moral, polit­i­cal, social and emo­tion­al need states of our nation – the tele­vi­sion is how we actu­al­ly dis­sem­i­nate our entire val­ue sys­tem. So all these things are unique­ly human, and they all add up to our idea of a con­science.” In her TED Talk The Con­science of Tele­vi­sion’, she goes on to iden­ti­fy key tele­vi­sion shows over the course of five decades, and how they high­light the gen­er­al sen­ti­ments of their respec­tive eras.

The 60s were wrought with inspi­ra­tional” feel-good shows such as The Dick van Dyke Show, which focused on the proud­ly inde­pen­dent” haus­frau, Lau­ra Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore), and her cre­ative work­ing-class hus­band, Rob (Dick van Dyke). While it paved the way for future sit­coms to take on real­is­tic sit­u­a­tions and issues, The Dick van Dyke Show was still firm­ly root­ed in a misog­y­nis­tic fairy tale spec­trum that shied away from uncom­fort­able top­ics, thus per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing the men­tal­i­ty of an era of seem­ing­ly bliss­ful conformity.

But as a coun­ter­cul­ture began to form and grow rest­less, sud­den­ly the TV nation found itself relat­ing more to the likes of Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) as opposed to the Lau­ra Petries of the world. The Flower Pow­er gen­er­a­tion longed for social com­men­tary and gen­uine depic­tions of peo­ple nav­i­gat­ing their way through times of polit­i­cal unrest, and the TV shows of this par­tic­u­lar time address what Zalaznick calls this feel­ing of moral ambiguity”.

So if it is true that TV does in fact have a con­science, what do the most pop­u­lar shows of the 2000s tell us about our col­lec­tive dis­po­si­tion? The most cel­e­brat­ed TV series of the decade include The Sopra­nos, Six Feet Under, Lost, Nip/​Tuck and Dex­ter, and if there’s one thing these shows have in com­mon it’s a mor­bid under­tone that aims to pro­voke its view­ers into ques­tion­ing some of the more dif­fi­cult aspects of life and rela­tion­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly death and moral­i­ty. Pri­or to the release of Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under, no oth­er show had explored the many stages of grief as deeply as the Fish­er family.

Not only did it put us face to face with our dark­est fears sur­round­ing our own mor­tal­i­ty and short­com­ings as indi­vid­u­als, it was also one of the first shows to steer roman­tic sto­ry arcs into self-sab­o­tag­ing and crass direc­tions, the kind we were famil­iar with in our own lives but had not yet wit­nessed on the small screen. When the sec­ond sea­son of Six Feet Under aired a year after the 911, it attract­ed an aver­age of 6.24 mil­lion view­ers in the US alone, mir­ror­ing the mourn­ing of a nation and the need to find nor­mal­cy in the wake of tragedy.

Two people lying together on a bed, a woman with a thoughtful expression and a man beside her.

Death – like so many oth­er uncom­fort­able top­ics – was pre­vi­ous­ly only ever touched up on in a super­fi­cial man­ner. Writ­ers and direc­tors seemed too afraid to show the day-to-day devel­op­ment of loss pre­sum­ably for fear of los­ing view­ers to such pro­found real­ism and sad­ness. Recent­ly, though, it has become clear that hon­est por­tray­als of grief are more in demand than ever. TV is not just a form of escapism but a visu­al, audi­ble con­for­ma­tion of our desires and, espe­cial­ly, our fears. With the influx of shows like The Left­overs, Fleabag and This Is Us – all of which exam­ine dif­fer­ent aspects of grief – audi­ences are seek­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms which they can apply to all areas of life.

While Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and even Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life delve into the inti­mate realms of mourn­ing on a per­son­al, every­day lev­el – often play­ing with spa­cious­ness, pac­ing and flash­backs to accen­tu­ate a sense of loss and the lone­ly void left by loved ones – The Left­overs and This Is Us take a more glob­al approach to loss and the vary­ing stages of mourn­ing that goes beyond the con­se­quences of death. They present char­ac­ters griev­ing their for­mer selves, the loss of a unit­ed com­mu­ni­ty and the dreams they har­bour that will nev­er come true. These shows cap­ture the essence of an ever search­ing, infi­nite­ly dis­sat­is­fied soci­ety reach­ing for the near­est, the quick­est fix for bro­ken hearts and spir­its – even if its leads to fur­ther disillusionment.

Shows like Fleabag and The Left­overs allow us to own up to feel­ings that are dif­fi­cult­ly word­ed, rarely dis­cussed and gen­er­al­ly over­looked, and spark a kind of self-aware­ness that is no longer sub­ject to silence, judge­ment or even ridicule. As we enter a new era of desen­si­ti­sa­tion at the hands of an increas­ing­ly politi­cised media, we finds our­selves grasp­ing at relat­able art forms which we can use to recon­nect with per­son­al and glob­al truths in a com­fort­ing, if not try­ing, man­ner. Tele­vi­sion is the cre­ative medi­um that merges the heal­ing ben­e­fits of music, visu­als and sto­ry­telling into reme­di­al mas­ter­pieces, and it will con­tin­ue to act as a per­son­al grief coun­sel­lor to a world in mourning.

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