El nacionalismo sólo permite afirmaciones y, toda doctrina que descarte la duda, la negación, es una forma de fanatismo y estupidez.-Jorge Luis Borges
Being Human is only the latest to tap into the expanding popularity of vampires and the like. As evidence by Twilight, True Blood, and Vampire Diaries, monsters are currently in season. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, in his introduction to Monster Theory (1996), the anthology that gave birth to that particular niche of cultural studies, argues that one could learn a lot about a culture by looking at the monsters it envisions. Monsters embody a culture’s hidden fears and secret desires, it’s prohibitions and exclusions. Monsters enforce traditions, scare children straight, and articulate differences between the self and the other. So what does Being Human say about us?
The series begins when coworkers at a Boston hospital who happen to be a vampire and a werewolf decide to become roommates. Aiden the vampire has been trying to stay on the straight and narrow path—not feeding on living human beings—but he falls off the wagon in the first episode and kills a nurse in the heat of passion. Josh, meanwhile, has reacted to his werewolf transformation by living in a self-imposed, punishing social exile from the friends and family of his former life, but even so he’s terrified once a month of what he might do and whom he might hurt. Taking a cue from the promise-keepers manual, Aiden the chaste and Josh the hermit decide a brother might help them keep their promises.
So each monster is tempted by some “natural” urge one’s humanity should resist:
Vampire nature is predatory and power hungry. Aiden must contend not only with his blood-thirst but also with his vampire friends, who have installed themselves in positions of authority (priests, police) and continually pressure him to do the same. Werewolf nature is hyper-masculine and aggressive. One of Josh’s plots included meeting his “maker,” who exhorts him to embrace “the Wolf,” which primarily involves hitting on women and starting fights with vampires. Ghost nature is defined by the past. They exist because they can’t let something go.
These characterizations add up to how the show constructs the culturally-specific “nature” out of which humanity emerges as its negation.
To help you discern whether you should really invest time in a television series, it’s good to ask if you would recommend it to someone. Ask yourself: are you watching this show merely out of habit, because you watched it last week and the week before, because some past version of you once took a chance on it and you’ve just been taking it for granted ever since that he made the right choice? Or would you still, after declaring all obligations to past decisions null and void, bravely commit yourself anew?
Tonight’s episode of Fringe is titled “Os.” I will be watching it, and you should too. Here’s TV Guide’s description:
The team investigates a gang of thieves who can defy gravity; Walter assesses the harm he’s caused to the fabric of the universe. (Drama), (V=Intense Violence, L=Strong Coarse Language).
“Wow! Say no more! I’m already way interested!” is what you’re probably thinking. But as if that brief summary weren’t already enough to convince you, I’m going to identify 5 more reason why you should be watching Fringe.
SERIES SYNOPSIS
Similarities and Differences to X-files
The similarities to X-files are already apparent, but that’s roughly as far as they go. The skepticism and faith set in romantic tension that defined Scully and Mulder’s relationship is wholly absent from Fringe. From the first episode, Olivia demonstrates her openness to the unusual when, with the urgency of Jack Bauer, she accepts Walter’s administration of hallucinogenic drugs and enters a sensory deprivation tank in order to directly access the mind of a man in a coma. Instead of skepticism and faith, the duality that Olivia and Peter set in romantic tension is, at least in the beginning, that of action and inaction. (Although one further similarity to X-files, is that, like Mulder and Scully, Peter and Olivia are both pathological about the ways they represent their respective approaches, because they’re symptomatic of repressed childhood traumas.)
Also missing is the general atmosphere of horror and dread characteristic of X-files. Much more of Fringe is filmed in the light of day. It’s monsters appear mostly as men.
One last difference worth mentioning is that although both X-files and Fringe employ a two-part plot structure in which almost every episode advances not only the stand-alone plot (whatever strange occurrence they happen to investigate that week) but also the continuation plot (the series arc), Fringe’s series arc tends to dominate much of the time. The reverse was true of X-files; individual episodes of X-files work much better as stand-alones, but Fringe episodes discourage missing episodes or out-of-order viewing.
Two Universes
So here are the major spoilers: the continuation plot begins, in a way, back in the early 80s, when Walter Bishop invents a window (and later a door) to a parallel universe that is different in mostly subtle ways; for example, Walter’s doppelganger (whom Walter names “Walternate”), instead of challenging reality’s boundaries, focused his equally brilliant energies on reinforcing and protecting order and stability, entering politics.
Both Walters’ sons contract the same rare, genetic illness, and both fathers work towards a cure, but “our” Walter’s son dies before it can be stabilized. Watching through his dimensional window, Walter observes his double overlook a lab result that would lead him to the cure and can’t bear to watch the other Peter die while he has the power to save him, so he resolves to cross between universes, administer the cure, and return. But events don’t transpire according to plan, and Walter ends up abducting the other Peter, ostensibly to cure him over here.
Note, however, that these early childhood memories (of Peter being from another universe and of Olivia being subjected to abusive chemical and psychological experiments) are deeply repressed at the beginning of the series, so that the overall plot trajectory could, in some sense, be thought of as the gradual psychoanalytical process whereby these memories are unearthed and explored.
FINALLY, THE 5 REASONS
1. It’s dark.
For all the sci-fi whimsy of the parallel universes, drug trips, mind-reading, etc, this series is no Warehouse 13. Psychological trauma is at the scarred heart of it. Walter is a Victor Frankenstein; his science is fundamentally transgressive. But his materials aren’t (limited to) corpses. They also include the fragile minds of children. And the series cruelly manipulates its viewer into sympathizing with him, ironically, as we would sympathize with any protective, distraught father.
2. Olivia Dunham is awesome.
She’s no Super Wizard, of course; she has very human limitations, but she’s relentless and (usually) fearless on the case, which makes her great to cheer on. Her past has also made her intense and complicated, and she drinks bourbon, unlike her more well-adjusted doppelganger.
3. Intelligent characters.
Fringe is a JJ Abrams production, just like Lost, but it seemed to me that there were so many times during Lost that “drama” was the result of unnecessary, irrational miscommunications. Like so much interpersonal “tension” could be avoided if the characters collected their thoughts and explained themselves in the least hyperbolic, most honest ways. Not so with Peter and Olivia. Both characters, if anything, are hyperrational. They clearly have emotions, but they explain their emotions, and the suffering that sometimes results from one revelation or another is never of the “unforced error” kind, but rather of the “so this is the truth, in the most honest way I’m capable of saying it” kind.
4. Cool cameos.
5. Thoughtful exploration of the theme of estrangement.
I’ve written about estrangement on this blog before in a couple different ways, but what I mean is the experience of alienation—perhaps what Becket calls “defamiliarization”—the traversal of otherness and the rupturing of the usual or the comfortable. Fringe explores this experience in any number of ways, through an alternate universe that is similar to ours but different, through one character who makes his home in a universe in which he is a stranger, through another character who returns after a period of crisis to discover a stranger had lived her life in her absence, a stranger who looked like her, who wore her clothes, who even loved her beloved, and yet wasn’t her, who is therefore led to ask: if she isn’t those things, then what exactly is she?
Thus the life of God and divine cognition may well be spoken of as a disporting of Love with itself; but this idea sinks into mere edification, and even insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labour of the negative.
All that is serious in life comes from our freedom. The feelings we have matured, the passions we have brooded over, the actions we have weighed, decided upon and carried through, in short, all that comes from us and is our very own, these are the things that give life its oft-times dramatic and generally grave aspect. What, then, is requisite to transform all this into a comedy? Merely to fancy that our seeming freedom conceals the strings of the dancing-jack, and that we are, as the poet says,
...humble marionettes
The wires of which are pulled by Fate.*
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