10 Years Ago: Arrival (2016)

[Spoilers abound. Swim at your own risk.]

The 2016 science fiction movie Arrival concerns many fascinating ideas, but two, in particular, stand-out as being particularly intriguing or noteworthy, especially given our current national and historical context.  

The first such notion involves a cornerstone of communication studies: The Sapir-Whorf Theory. 

Broadly-speaking, there are two readings of this particular hypothesis, but Professor Betty Byrne explains the hypothesis best in an interview at Slate with Melissa Martinelli, from November of 2016:

“There are two ways of thinking about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and scholars have argued over which of these two Sapir and/or Whorf actually intended. 

The weaker version is linguistic relativity, which is the notion that there’s a correlation between language and worldview. “Different language communities experience reality differently.”

The stronger view is called linguistic determinism, and that’s the view that language actually determines the way you see reality, the way you perceive it.”

What is being discussed here, specifically? 

No less than the idea that the code (language) that we use to express our philosophy of the universe actually shapes our philosophy of the universe.  

Denis Villenueve’s Arrival actually name-checks Sapir-Whorf in the film’s dialogue. Much is made in the film of the notion that separate nation-states (with individual ideologies) attempt to teach the aliens to speak meaningfully to humans.  

But since each nation-state -- China, Russia, etc. -- possesses a different code, and a different understanding behind the code, each will define terms like “weapon,” or “war” in a very different way. For the alien learners, this is a problem.  

Will they learn that human life is a competition? A game? A battle? Or a “non-zero sum game?”

In discussing the ways that language can shape reality, Arrival eerily forecasts, the “post truth,” “fake news” world we live in now. If those in power here view America as weak, being taken advantage of by shadowy foreign governments, and experiencing “carnage,” do they risk shaping America into the very dystopia they describe and fear? Has our reality been reshaped on X (formerly Twitter), 140 characters at a time?

The second idea of value in Arrival is much more personal. It concerns the path one must choose once the mind has become open to new ideas.  

One can either embrace those ideas -- and move forward into a larger, more nuanced world -- or  one can attempt to deny what has been learned, and fall back on old outdated perceptions; essentially ignoring all new input. 

If understanding the code of another culture can open up new doorways, reliance or dependence on the old code, the familiar one that formed our cultural understanding, can result in slammed doors. The response to understanding the world better is then, in those instances, a retreat into a bubble of confirmation bias, or pre-existing beliefs.

Arrival -- following on in the tradition of Solaris (1972), or even the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) premiere episode, “Emissary” -- comments meaningfully on the human condition, and its limitations regarding perception of time. What the aliens teach us in the film goes against the familiar code our language has established regarding chronology.  

What if there isn’t a past, present or future? What if time is non-linear…a circle?

And if time is non-linear -- if there is no past/present/future -- what does this new understanding of reality do to our concrete understandings of birth and death, mortality and the afterlife?

Interstellar (2014) from Christopher Nolan was likely the last big-budget cerebral science fiction film to play so cleverly with our understanding of time, but Arrival is an even stronger, smarter film, in part, because of the lead character’s humanity, and relatability. 

Amy Adams’ Dr. Louise Banks sees her conscious altered by contact with an alien race -- the Heptapods -- but the change doesn’t make her immortal, or allow her to escape the bounds of reality.  Instead, it permits her, touchingly, to better perceive time, and contextualize a tragic experience in her life. What she realizes, finally, is something amazing, and beautiful. The startling manner in which the film permits her self-discovery to unfold actually reflects the nature of the discovery itself.  

In this case, form has reflected and augmented thematic content, and -- as you know -- I believe that equation is the highest virtue of filmmaking: the ability of an image to echo, mirror or encapsulate for audiences the point of the narrative, or increase our understanding of it.

Thrilling and smart, Arrival is also filed with unforgettable imagery, not the least of which involves the visualization of the alien vessels, and their placement on our terrestrial landscapes. The design of the Heptapod ship, too, seems to suggest the something vital about the alien nature, and their way of understanding reality.

In short, Arrival, like its lead character, Louis Banks, plays a “non-zero sum game.”  

A non-zero sum game is a situation, in game theory in particular, in which one player’s gain or loss does not necessarily equate to the other player’s loss.

The aliens, the terrestrial combatants, and the individual lead characters all undertake in Arrival an encounter that changes them and forces them to grow in surprising directions.

If only they can contend with the new world-view their meeting reveals…

“Not everyone is able to process experiences like this.”

A linguist and college professor, Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) watches from her class-room as twelve alien space ships set down at seemingly random locations around the world.

As panic sets in across the globe, Banks is contacted by the U.S. military.  Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) wants her to translate the alien language, and help him come to a better understanding of what this possible enemy may want on Earth. 

Dr. Banks counters that she cannot translate an alien language until she learns something of the alien culture; until she is able to interact with the aliens, called Heptapods.

Weber is reluctant at first, but soon agrees to escort Banks to Montana, where the U.S. Army has set up a command post near one alien ship.  On the helicopter ride to the site, Banks encounters another expert in his field, physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), who believes, unlike Banks, that science is the foundation of civilization. 

Banks argues, contrarily that language is the “glue that holds a people together.”

Upon contact with the aliens, Banks attempts to form a common fund of knowledge, or language, upon which to build mutual understanding and trust. Other scientists around the world also attempt to do so but utilize different learning approaches, some more confrontational than others.

As Banks learns more about the aliens and their strange language, she begins to understand more about them.  As other countries grow alarmed that the aliens may be bringing weapons to Earth to cause fighting among its people, Banks receives the full-language as a gift. She understands that the language is not a weapon, but a tool.

It is a tool that fundamentally transforms Banks’ understanding of life, and opens her up to a possibility that she had never before contemplated.

“How would you approach translating this?”

Language relates to culture. I think everybody agrees with that premise. But can language determine culture? 

That’s a key question regarding the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and also the themes of Arrival. We all understand what “war” is, for example, but what if we understand that the word originally meant “desire for more cows” (in Sanskrit)? 

Does everything we fight for -- and kill for -- come down, finally, to a desire for more material wealth?  Is that how we understand war now?  

Perhaps. Our language, our code, shapes our reality, every day.

We see this idea very clearly in our understanding of time, to utilize a more illustrative example. We mark time as a force that moves in one direction only, from the past to the future. We don’t die, grow young, and undergo birth. 

Instead, the opposite always appears to occur.  

But what if time is non-linear, and has no direction whatsoever? What if we can’t understand the true nature of time because of our (limited) definition of time, which reads something like this: “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”

Arrival proposes and depicts an alien race that views time as non-linear. These aliens see outside the concrete ideas of past or future, and thus view the world differently than we do. That viewpoint is reflected in the alien language or alphabet, which is visualized as a series of inky circles of different thickness and edges.

In other words, the Heptopod language reflects the way the aliens see the universe (as a circle), just as our language code reflects the way we view the universe. Our language has a beginning and an end. Our alphabet starts at “A” and ends at “Z.” 

Yet Arrival travels beyond Sapir-Whorf by suggesting that if Banks learns the alien language, her perception will also change; and that she will also possess the ability to see outside linear time.  This is poetic license regarding Sapir-Whorf, to be certain, but good poetic license. 

Why? Well, when we are exposed to different cultures and their belief systems, we can’t go back to the narrow, parochial ethnocentric view we held before. The mere exposure to different thoughts, different words, a different language, opens up doorways to new understandings. Arrival takes the idea literally, but I believe it also utilizes it as a metaphor for what occurs every day in intercultural communication: the ability to grow beyond one’s set of precepts to understand that existence is richer than any one world view suggests. 

Stuck in our own ethnocentric bubbles, we believe there is but one way to do things (our way!). But if we open ourselves up to other languages, cultures, and world-views, we start to become relativistic in our outlook; understanding that different people, living in different places, possess different answers to problems. Sure, there are some customs or beliefs we will always reject as too alien, or too different, or even too barbaric. But other customs or beliefs we will recognize as wise, or as having things in common with our own traditions and morality.

Indeed, Banks almost magically assumes the power to view time in a non-linear fashion in Arrival after being gifted with the totality of the Hepatopod language. Yet metaphorically, this gift is something akin to the scales falling from her eyes. Her mastery of the alien language and culture grants her a new perspective on our own. Consider for a moment that the key imperatives for studying intercultural communication are: Self-awareness, demographic, economic, technological, peace, and ethical growth. In some-sense, Banks takes on several of these imperatives in the film, or at least the peace, ethics, and self-awareness ones.

Now consider Banks’ embrace of the new understanding she gleans from the aliens, and contrast it with the xenophobia we see rampant in today’s political swamp.  Of late, have we seen “others” consistently scapegoated as dangerous bogeymen. For example, illegal immigrants are often deemed rapists and murderers. Those of divergent religious beliefs would be banned from the United States, and by a president who ostensibly supports religious liberty. 

Banks reaches out to the alien viewpoint with understanding, and saves mankind.  If she simply retreated into fear and fear-mongering, the human race would have been doomed, instead, by its own self-destructive impulses.

That’s the big picture of Arrival. It is the idea that language is “the first weapon drawn” in a conflict. But that language can also be the basis not for war, or battle, but for better understanding (just rarely in 140 characters).

How does Banks come to understand herself better? How does intercultural communication make her more self-aware? 

Leave the cerebral notions of Sapir-Whorf behind for a moment, and consider, what she chooses at film’s end.  With a knowledge of non-linear time, Banks comes to see that she will have a child, a girl.  She will love and raise that girl into young adulthood, and then, tragically, see that young woman taken away by incurable cancer. 

But, knowing about her daughter’s death is not a reason, finally, for Louise to choose a different course.  Instead, Banks sees that her daughter’s life possesses meaning, and continues, always, even if in linear time, Louise will have to suffer her child’s absence. 

Oppositely, Banks’ husband, Ian, resents her choice to have a child, knowing that the child will die young. It’s as if all that love is wasted on a life that is short. It’s as if Louise chose cruelty, giving birth to a child just to see that individual die.

But that child’s life is not wasted, and Banks is able to discern that fact. Although we are “so bound by time and its order,” Banks is able to see that the times of love and joy in her child’s life are not outweighed by the shortness of her life-span, or by the sad way that her life ends.  For if time is non-linear, then death is not an ending.

We saw this idea, in some sense, in “Emissary,” the premiere of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) was unable to get beyond the tragic death of his young wife, Jennifer, in the Battle of Wolf 359. He later encountered the wormhole aliens, who didn’t understand the concept of linear of time, or his refusal to end his period of mourning.

If time is non-linear, mourning is no longer necessary.

Banks chooses that her daughter should exist, despite the fact that she will die of a terrible disease when she is young.  

Banks feels that because time is non-linear, her child will “come back to her” and that what she believed was the beginning and end of a journey were no such thing. 

“There are days that define your story beyond your life,” she concludes. Life is not a zero sum game. You don’t live and then die.  You live and die, and cycle goes on, in a circle, never-ending.

Arrival’s twist in terms of narrative structure is that the story of Louise’s child -- life, growth, death -- is told first. It is the first mini-arc of the movie’s plot. Therefore, we presume, throughout the film, that Louise’s child has died, and that she is experiencing grief and loneliness over it. 

Instead, the truth is that Louise has not yet had the child, or even met the father of her child.  She only becomes aware of these factors after encountering and mastering the alien language.  We have, like Louise, misunderstood the nature of time, and the time-line of the film.  We see her child’s story first, but are experiencing the cinematic equivalent of non-linear time.

By giving us the end of Louise’s story as a mother first, the film structurally apes the nature of the alien world view.  Form reflects content. The visuals symbolically teach us what we need to know about the Heptapod understanding of the universe.

In terms of visuals, I can argue that I find the film quite lovely too. 

If language is an expression of art, then imagery is, too. Consider the first, portentous visual of the alien ship in Arrival.  We are treated to an aerial view of Earth’s green, rocky landscape, and a bed of encroaching mist. Beyond and over the wall of mist is a giant levitating ship that looks like a pebble perched on its side.  

The ship, in fact, looks like a pebble you might choose to skip across a pond.  Its shape evokes the idea of a stone creating ripples in time, its influence expanding outward in all directions at once (past, present and future?)

Arrival is smart, emotionally-powerful, and beautifully-wrought. It doesn’t possess all the answers, but its brilliance arises in its ability to ask the right questions about the world, and our existence as human beings. 

How would you approach translating this?

Arrival isn’t a movie about a linguist who saves the world, but about a linguist who comes to understand her own world in a way that makes her existence (and her daughter’s existence) not just bearable, but meaningful.

This is the great challenge for all of us, every day, isn’t it?

Deep Focus Ep. #7: The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)/Director's Cut (2026)

 

60 Years Ago: Star Trek: "The Corbomite Maneuver" (November 10, 1966)

Stardate 1512.2

On the third day of a star mapping mission in previously uncharted space, The U.S.S. Enterprise is blocked by a cube: a border marker, apparently, left behind by some unknown alien race.  

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is forced to destroy the cube when it emits dangerous levels of radiation and threatens the lives of his crew and the safety of the ship.

Before long, however, the powerful force behind that cube arrives to confront the Enterprise. Commanded by the fearsome Balok (Ted Cassidy) is a colossal vessel -- the Fesarius – hailing from a society called The First Federation. 

Balok threatens to destroy the Enterprise for trespassing in restricted space. No escape is possible. No plea is acceptable, he says.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, Balok’s uncompromising behavior rattles the nerves of a young navigator, Bailey (Anthony Call), and stymies Kirk’s attempts at diplomacy. There seems to be no way to escape destruction, at least until Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) off-handedly mentions chess.

Inspired, Kirk realizes he is playing the wrong game with this opponent. He adopts a different game -- poker -- and then, with the straightest of poker faces, attempts to bluff Balok.

This ploy succeeds, and opens up a channel of communication between the Enterprise an Balok.

Some months back, I was asked by a reader here on the blog to pick just one episode that I felt could represent the totality of the Star Trek (1966-1969) experience.

I selected “The Corbomite Maneuver.”  

Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest episodes of the series -- one of the ten best -- and an installment that delivers drama, suspense, and most importantly, a distinctive and uplifting philosophical world view.

First of all, “The Corbomite Maneuver” presents the idea that the greatest enemy in space is not alien races, but fear itself.  In other words, human psychology.  The problem is how we respond to that which we don't fully comprehend or know.

“The greatest danger facing us is ourselves,” Kirk announces to the crew in this episode. He then discusses “an irrational fear of the unknown,” and notes that there is actually no such thing as the unknown, rather merely “things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.”

This is a remarkable monologue, and a perfect distillation of Star Trek philosophy. 

The men and women of the 23^rd century and aboard the Enterprise are equipped to handle new frontiers, new civilizations. And what is unknown or seems different, in due time, becomes understood, explainable. They are explorers who -- if they can conquer their own demons -- are ready to meet the universe.

This is a great affirmation of mankind, and our potential. Star Trek shows us who we can aspire to be, if we put anger and fear behind us.

Kirk’s assertion of this philosophy is developed in the episode on an individual basis too; by Bailey, the young navigator who finds it difficult to control his fear, his emotions when Balok threatens the Enterprise. 

Bailey is young, and inexperienced, and unlike the senior crew has not yet learned how to manage his fear. He is well-trained, responsible, and capable...but personally, he grapples with the unknown.

At the end of the episode, Kirk notes that he “owes” Bailey a look at “the face of the unknown” and it’s a remarkable moment. Kirk has taken him under his wing, and shows Bailey that as captain he does not just mouth a philosophy of exploration, peace and understanding…he practices it. He lives it.

In my opinion, this quality is what makes Kirk (and certainly Kirk of the first season) an extraordinary captain and role model.

The very idea of fear is reinforced in the episode through the character of Balok as well.  

He has constructed a menacing puppet (replete with menacing voice…) as his “alter ego.” This is the face he shows the world...the universe.

Balok is so fearful of alien contact that might go wrong, that the very face he puts on is one of sheer terror.  At the end of the episode, Balok declares it "was a pleasure” testing the Enterprise and her captain (a common Roddenberry theme, actually), but it is clear that the First Federation (Balok's governing entity) operates from a position of fear, hiding behind technology and masks to suss out the characteristics of other races. Given their diminutive personal stature, this is perhaps an understandable philosophy too.  They present as terrifying, lest they be seen as weak.

The first episode of Star Trek filmed following the second pilot, “The Corbomite Maneuver” also establishes a long-lived Kirk/Spock character dynamic. Specifically, Spock makes an observation or analysis about a current situation or dilemma, and that remark inspires Kirk to concoct a brilliant, but spontaneous strategy for success. 

Here, Spock is reminded of chess, noting that Kirk and Balok keep making effective counter-moves.  That notation gives Kirk the inspiration of a different game, poker…and bluffing.  

As late as The Wrath of Khan (1982), and Spock’s observation of Khan’s “pattern” indicating “two dimensional thinking,” we see this character dynamic re-asserted.  Spock observe and assesses; Kirk synthesizes that work into purposeful, life-saving action. One man is all about knowledge and information. The other man is all about improvising survival from that analysis.

There are so many grounds upon which one can commend “The Corbomite Maneuver.” It is excellent entertainment, first off, with a surprising ending.

More trenchantly -- and like other early episodes of the series (namely “The Man Trap,” “Charlie X” and “The Naked Time,”)  -- this episode creates the impression of real people functioning on a real vessel. 

I termed this the “the lower decks” paradigm in my reviews of those episodes. Here, for instance, we see Yeoman Rand bringing Kirk dinner (while he gripes about a diet), and meet a young surrogate for the audience: Bailey.  

Bailey, like the audience, doesn’t quite know the ropes. This episode is his journey. In a way, he is really the central character of this work of art. No, he’s not a captain, a CMO or exec.  He’s just a kid promoted to a job of great responsibility. But importantly, he is a individual who has no practical way of grappling with his fear. When Kirk mentors him, he is really mentoring us too.

I also find this episode exceptionally tense, and, indeed, a template, perhaps, for many of the most challenging an remarkable episodes of Star Trek.  

Much time is spent on the bridge, as strategy is discussed and executed, and there are no planets to visit. 

Think about how much Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) resembles this story type. The crew --from their workaday control room -- grapples with alien contact.  In the midst of an emergency, the crew must face their fear of the unknown, and puzzle out the rationale behind an intelligence beyond human experience.

And of course, the answer in both cases is not violence. It is not hostility. It is not to kill that which is different.  

Instead, an episode such as “The Corbomite Maneuver” suggests that we can control all those impulses and meet the unknown with the best angels of our nature.  Bailey sees the face of the unknown, and fear disappears.

Put aside your fear, says Star Trek, and that which is dark an mysterious, becomes illuminated and known.

Do You Remember Colonial Safari Park? Abnormal Fixation Takes You Inside the Ruins...

 

30 Years Ago: Millennium: "Dead Letters" (November 8, 1996)

“For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

-Job 3:25.26

While young Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) is plagued by nightmares of an evil clown, Frank (Lance Henriksen) embarks on a new case in Portland. 

Specifically, he investigates a serial killer who leaves messages for the police in strange places (including a victim’s hair follicle), so as to prove his superiority over the authorities.

While Frank attempts a profile, he also works with another detective, Jim Horn (James Morrison), whom the Millennium Group is considering for admission.  Horn is undergoing a marital separation, and is filled with rage.  

That rage, unfortunately, threatens Frank’s case.

“Dead Letters,” an early episode of Millennium (1996-1999’s) first season, is another story in which an investigation actually provides a lesson, or an insight for Frank Black.  

Usually, the serial killers and their mode of operation cause Frank to reflect on some aspect of his life, or American society. Here, Frank meets someone that, but for the Grace of God, could be him.

That person is detective Jim Horn, a man who is undergoing a  marital separation from his wife, and has a two-year old boy, T.C. Jim is a mirror for Frank. Ominously, Frank actually says in this episode “I’ve never been separated,” but that’s actually precisely what occurs in the second season.  And like Horn here, Frank has a young child whom he loves more than life itself.

James and Frank work on the case of the Portland serial killer together, but it is an uneasy partnership. This awkwardness is demonstrated in a scene that could be described basically as a profiler pissing contest. Frank explains his view of the killer, (a man who has never been married or had sex), and then Horn offers his own competing version. He sees a killer who has a terrible rage towards women.

But importantly, Horn is actually imposing his own feelings on the profile he creates.

What Frank realizes in "Dead Letters" is that where he tries to empathize with the killer, and imagine what goes on in the killer’s head. Horn merely projects his own emotional state onto the violent criminal. In other words, it is Horn who feels the rage towards women; particularly his wife.  He has unresolved feelings about her, because of their marital problems.

Frank suggests to Horn that he should take a “step back,” but Horn can’t. “As a father,” he tells Frank, “I risk adding nothing” to T.C.’s life.  Jim feels his fatherhood of the boy is like the “dead letters” of the title: a dead end.  Dead letters have no home, and no destination. They ultimately don't connect with the readers/people that they should. The killer in the episode is someone who wants to remain significant, and ironically, that’s precisely Horn’s dilemma too. However, Jim sees no way to remain significant or meaningful, and even ends up arguing with the telephone company because he feels that he undervalued. The business-like, non-personal interaction makes him feel dehumanized.

On a related note, in this episode we get a really good sense of how Frank reacts when challenged. In the profiler pissing contest I tagged above, he and Horn go at it, but Frank is never personal, and he never rises to take the bait. He doesn’t show offense. He is preternaturally calm, instead. This is a key aspect of the Frank Black persona, and one reason I find the character so appealing. Instead of being petty, instead of rolling in the mud over something like this, Frank simply says his peace -- without attitude -- and lets his expertise stand.

What others do with his expertise, he factors, is beyond him. Frank can only give others the benefit of his insight and knowledge.

This is an attitude Horn might adopt. As the episode continues, he lets his rage get the better of him, and goes off the rails. He interferes with a sting Frank has set up to catch the serial killer. He spoils the arrest and taints the evidence.  He is a basket case of inefficient emotion and directionless rage. By trying to avoid becoming meaningless, he becomes useless.

Why does he do it? Well, Horn looks at a picture on his desk, of his son, and conflates that image of innocence with the murders of a crime scene. He personalizes the crime scene to the extent that he thinks the killer is going to murder his son.  He loses perspective. 

And a good investigator needs perspective.

Frank tells Horn, at the end of the episode “You put them in your head,” referring to the criminals he profiles. This is not what Frank does. 

Frank empathizes. 

Frank seeks to understand, and this is something that Horn cannot fathom. But because of “Dead Letters” the audience starts to understand how Frank approaches a profile, and how delicate that process can be.  Horn tries to achieve the same magic, but can’t do it. He can’t put aside his ego or his emotions, and the result is a faulty profile.  The result is also, for Horn, a professional failure. It is made clear at the episode’s denouement that the Millennium Group will not again show interest in him.  He lacks the temperament to do what Frank does.

In terms of series mythology, this episode is so important because in season two Frank goes astray in “The Beginning and the End” much the way that Horn does here, in "Dead Letters." He acts impulsively, on his own (to rescue his family), and his wife, Catherine, separates from him. He loses his paradise and sanctuary of the yellow house because he loses the very equilibrium that serves him so well in episodes like “Dead Letters.”

I don’t think there was necessarily a plan, when “Dead Letters” was made, to send Frank down this path over the course of the series. Gut if one watches “Dead Letters” and “The Beginning and the End,” together, it is amazing to see how the same “flaws” that destroy Horn threaten to undo Frank, and his gift of insight (which is lost, for a time, in Season Two).

“Dead Letters” also continues to develop Jordan’s story line beautifully. Throughout the series, she is shown to be a sensitive, and somewhat fragile child. She is often taken to the hospital, or sick from some inexplicable illness. She can detect things in people and places, too, which others don’t.  Here, she encounters in a nightmare a clown that terrorizes her, and sees her Father descending an endless staircase.  

What is that clown? It’s hard to say exactly, what significance it plays in Jordan’s psyche, beyond being, simply, a childhood vision of terror.

But we can speculate about what it means to see Frank on the endless staircase in perpetual unseeing descent. 

Knowing how sensitive Jordan is, I wonder if she sees her father descending, further and further, towards a destination he can’t control. She can’t get his attention as he descends.  He's locked ona path; locked in a form of tunnel vision.

Gazing across the seasons of Millennium, it is not difficult to detect the overall path as one of Frank’s descent, losing his certainty about family, friends, his gift, and the Millennium Group itself.

Pointedly, Jordan ask Frank if he knows bout bad dreams, and he responds that he does; or at least that he “knows enough to keep them away” from her.  Frank’s descent, in some way is a mirror of Horn's descent, but for Frank it’s not that he desires to be significant or meaningful to his family. It’s that he wants to protect the ones he loves, and he takes ardent, sometimes violent responsibility for that job of protection.

So many Millennium episodes concern the serial killers and what they symbolize about the nature of our society. “Dead Letters” is a twist on the formula, from early on, because it asks the same question, but of an investigator.  Jim Horn is lost, and can't "see what the killer sees."  All he can see is his own rage.

What does Horn’s dilemma tell us about our culture, and our families?

If I had to answer that question, I’d focus on some key points. 

Both Jim Horn and Frank Black are men driven to protect their families. This drive forces them to see and experience things that jeopardize, for them, the overall experience of family.  They have to lie and keep secrets about what they’ve seen. They have to pretend the darkness isn’t there.  They are absent, for long stretches, from the ones they love, making them seem, to their children and spouses, distant and uncaring. Not surprisingly, because of their choices, they begin to be disconnected from their families.

Society asks men to be strong and silent, but if that’s the rule, where can men like Horn put the rage they feel? The killer reports in "Dead Letters" that people in our society are like “animals in a caged shelter” and in a way that is true of Horn.  He has rage and anger, feels rejection and loss, and has no place to pour out all that, except into his job.  

We hope the same isn’t true of Frank. But as Millennium continues, we see, sometimes, that it is. 

25 Years Ago: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Once More With Feeling" (November 6, 2001)

Although there are many outstanding episodes of Buffy, it is "Once More With Feeling," the all-singing, all-dancing musical episode, that shines today as something truly amazing, and transcends the both its genre and the medium. Critic David Klein called this 2001 installment "absolutely captivating," and "like nothing" he'd seen on regular series television, which he's watched and written about for more than twenty years. (Electronic Media, July 9, 2002, page 6.) He wasn’t exaggerating.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been called a "post-feminist parable on the challenge of balancing one's personal and work life," (Time Magazine, December 29, 1997, page 137), and a "literal scream and always a hoot," (TV Guide, January 2-8, 1999, page 23). "Just about the best horror show on television" according to Cinefantasique (October 1997, page 137), Buffy has also been praised for the fact that "no other show balances so many elements as deftly, without a trace of corniness or melodrama" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly: "Oujia Broads," November 6, 1998). "Once More with Feeling" boasts all those strengths, and more.

 

Some background: for its sixth season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved from its long-time home at the WB to UPN. In the fifth season finale, Buffy died while saving the world from an evil God named Glory, and for the sixth season she was resurrected by her friends (including Willow and Xander), but something went terribly wrong. Our stalwart slayer had been pulled out of a heavenly after-life -- not a hell dimension, as her friends feared -- and now our mortal coil was all pain and suffering for Buffy. She felt disconnected, alone, and out-of-touch, but the gallant Chosen One just couldn't express these uncomfortable emotions to her friends, and so she bore the pain in silence and isolation. At least until, that is, "Once More with Feeling," a musical treatise about communication, about the songs we sing to ourselves, about the secrets we hide and yearn to share.  So if “Hush” was a dissertation on non-verbal communication, “Once More with Feeling” was about how we song and dance can also reveal character.

 

"Once More with Feeling" features original music and lyrics by this Joss Whedon, with songs produced and arranged by Jesse Tobias and Christopher Beck. Choreographer Adam Shankman was responsible for not just fight scenes in graveyards, but the dance numbers too. 

 

The episode's action starts when a demon called Sweet (Hinton Battle) arrives in Sunnydale, summoned by someone close to Buffy. He casts a spell on the town that makes every inhabitant sing and dance about their innermost emotional issues. That doesn't sound so bad, except that the urge to release the singing and dancing also happens to cause murderous spontaneous combustion, and consequently townies are dropping like flies. Buffy and her friends -- including the lovelorn vampire Spike -- investigate the crisis, but all the while sing their own tunes. Spike sings "Rest in Peace," imploring Buffy to stop toying with his emotions, or leave him alone. Buffy sings "Going through the Motions," about her detachment from the world. Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) croons about holding Buffy back ("Standing"), and Xander and Anya sing a duet, a 1930s-style "pastiche" called "I'll Never Tell," that reveals their fears about their romantic relationship and marriage plans. 

 

In the end, Buffy's secret emotions about being brought back to life are revealed in the final confrontation with Sweet, and her friends know, at last, what is up with the Slayer. The honesty and hurt evidenced in this crescendo is practically jaw-dropping. It's devastating, but in the style of the old-fashioned movie musical, the episode climaxes not with psychology, but with a kiss and curtain dropping. "Where do we go from here?" The cast sings, and as viewers of this fascinating series, we are aware that, again, the characters are headed to new and dangerous places. Nothing on Buffy remains static; everything changes, and "Once More with Feeling" is a turning point not only in the continuity, but in the series’ legacy, as viewed nearly two decades later.

"The thing about musicals," Joss Whedon told me in an interview for my 2004 book, Singing a New Tune: The Re-birth of the Modern Film Musical (which features a chapter on "Once More with Feeling"), "is you sing what you can't say. In the same way as shutting up [in "Hush"] caused everybody to open up in ways they hadn't before, singing did the same thing...The heart of the matter - what the person is feeling, what the person needs to communicate, the great revelation, the denouement, whatever it is - all of this should be expressed through song."

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always concerned language, and how characters use it to conceal, dissemble, reveal, lie, deny or express love. How the Scoobies sometimes look at Buffy (as a superhero) and themselves (as sidekicks) in dialogue ("Avengers Assemble!" Xander quips in one episode) is one of the perpetual joys of the program, and "Once More With Feeling" takes the characters in exciting new directions and lays bare their emotions in another manner of communication - not psychologically-adroit patter, but the simplicity and elegance of song. It's a bit amazing that a show this good -- boasting a dozen full-fledged musical numbers -- could be made on a TV budget and within TV time limitations. Yet every single song in "Once More with Feeling" brings out new facets of the characters, and gives the series a wind behind its back for the remainder of the sixth season; one of my personal favorites. The sixth season remains controversial because of the sometimes degrading, perverse nature of Buffy and Spike’s sexual relationship, but it is an ambitious season too, in which “Life,” not some made-up demon, is the “Big Bad.”

The musical is a form that's perpetually out-of-fashion in the twenty-first century but Joss Whedon did the seemingly impossible here. He made the artificial, theatrical form not just palatable to an increasingly "reality" obsessed world, but actually irresistible - especially to genre fans  "Once More with Feeling" is not only the finest and most involving episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's one of the great hours in TV history, with a brilliant soundtrack to match the action on screen.

 

"It's such an alchemy, Whedon explained to me "It's so hard to get it right, but if a musical really does hit people, they'll love it more than any damn thing in the world. Because music speaks to people more than anything else does...When you put in exciting lyrics, characters you love, and all that good stuff, everything heightens. It takes you to another level of existence."  Fortunately, the cast was up to the challenge and took on the difficult challenge of singing.

 

“I knew Tony was my ballad guy. I knew James was my rock-and-roll singer, and Michelle wanted to dance a little. I knew what everybody’s strength was,” Whedon told me. “What I didn’t know was how good Emma was going to be. That was a revelation, but I knew she was my musical-comedy girl.”

 

"Once More with Feeling" proves Whedon's thesis in spades. It is an installment of Buffy and genre television that transcends standard episodic television, and just about everything else out there too. Of course, just because Buffy was a success as a musical, that did not mean Whedon wanted to apply the genre formula to his other TV series. 

 

“I was asked, 'Do you want to do a musical episode of Angel or Firefly?' And I said, 'Not in a million years.' Those shows don't lend themselves to it.  The thing about Buffy is that you do the musical episode without violating the reality of Buffy.  That's the most important thing to me.  What's hilarious about working in fantasy is that you can say 'The evil twin thing? That's not reality, that's bullshit! Who buys that? But the dwarf going out of someone's head is fine.'...You have this seemingly arbitrary, but in fact very strict sense of what can go on in this world.  And Buffy is so sophomoric, romantic, colorful, tense, sexual...I think half the episodes feel like they're about to burst into song anyway...So to say a demon has come [to Sunnydale] who causes musicals makes perfect sense in that world.  It doesn't make sense in the Angel world to me.  It definitely makes no sense in the Firefly world.  It's a different kind of choice."

 

One might note that Angel is Whedon’s neo-noir, and Firefly his neo-Western. If that’s the case, then Buffy is his neo-musical: a series characterized by big emotions, colorful performances, and carefully choreographed action. If this is so, then “Once More, with Feeling” represents, actually, Buffy’s great act of “becoming” what it was always meant to be.