"My dear family, it's painful knowing that I'll not see
your faces anymore. But I must take a stand for what I know is right. You may
think that an old man wouldn't be afraid to die, but this old man is very
frightened. I'm hoping that I'll find a little of your mother's dignity and
strength. So far, I'm as frightened as a child who fears the dark. But we must
fight this darkness that is threatening to engulf us. Each of us must be a ray
of hope and do our part, and join with the others until we become a blinding
light, triumphant over darkness. Until that task is accomplished, life will
have no meaning. More than anything, you must remember always which side you're
on -- and fight for it. Your mother and I will march beside you, holding hands
again. We'll sing your song of victory..."
-Abraham Bernstein’s (Leonardo Cimino) final words to his family.
From Kenneth Johnson’s V.
Throughout
the last week on the blog, I’ve pointed out several literary and TV antecedents
to V
(1983), the original four-hour mini-series that in 2013 celebrated the 30th
anniversary of its premiere on NBC.
Specifically,
writer-director Kenneth Johnson imagined V as a science-fiction variation on
Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935), the story of a fascist regime
rising to power in the United States during a time of crisis, the Great
Depression. The NBC mini-series also expands meaningfully on some genre concepts
seen in the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man,” particularly the idea of
aliens arriving on Earth proclaiming peace, but actually coveting the human
race as food.
Today,
the original V mini-series remains an enormously entertaining production of
feature film quality, and it compares favorably with many genre films released
theatrically in the early 1980s. The astonishing visual effects and literate,
emotionally-affecting script help this original production escape the
gravitational pull of its TV origin and the mini-series format allows for a
depth in terms of characterization and storytelling that is immensely rewarding,
especially on repeat viewings.
In
terms of theme, V’s visuals and teleplay allow Johnson to explore key aspects
of human nature, and specifically our varied relationships with established power.
When
faced with a bigger dog -- good or bad
-- do we join the pack?
Or
do we fight those things that we know and understand are immoral, or worse,
obscene?
Reflexive,
layered, and buttressed by book-ending visuals which champion the dedication of
the “resistance fighter” (to whom the
film is dedicated…), V explores the many human responses
to power, and also its (ruthless) application by the proverbial bigger dog, in
this case, the Visitors.
The
mini-series also acutely diagrams how fascism comes to the land. It does so, we
see here, through three avenues: scapegoating, propaganda, and declarations of
emergency that effectively cloak the consolidation of control.
Because
-- as Ronald Reagan once noted -- “freedom
is more than one generation away from extinction,” V serves as frightening,
thought-provoking, and scarily plausible cautionary tale, even with all its
spectacular outer-space trappings. Later iterations of the V saga, particularly the
last days of the 1985 series, falter a bit, but the original V
is nothing short of a pop culture touchstone, and a masterpiece to boot.
“You always said it couldn’t happen here.
Then one day we woke up and we were living in a Fascist state.”
Fifty giant saucers descend upon Earth,
taking up positions over major cities including New York, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Moscow and London.
Although Earth’s populace is fearful of
this incursion, these fears are soon quashed at the United Nations building. A
small alien shuttle descends, and a humanoid alien, John (Richard Herd)
introduces himself to the Secretary General, and then the world.
John is the leader of “The Visitors” on
Earth, humanoid aliens who report that they come in friendship and in peace
from Sirius.
The Visitors are facing an environmental
disaster on their world, and John offers to share their advanced technology
with mankind in exchange for a chemical produced by factories on Earth, but
worthless to humans.
The governments of the Earth soon cooperate
with the Visitors, and journalist Kristine Walsh (Jenny Sullivan) and
camera-man Mike Donovan (Marc Singer) are allowed to tape a tour of a Visitor
mothership. There they meet John’s beautiful science officer, Diana (Jane
Badler).
Soon, however, Earth’s first contact with
alien beings goes sour. The Visitors
expose an “international conspiracy” of scientists to the public, one designed
to kill the Visitors and steal their technology.
World governments reportedly ask for the
Visitors’ help in putting down scientist plots and terrorist attacks, and before
long, the Visitors assume positions of authority all over the globe. They erect
roadblocks outside cities, recruit human youngsters as lieutenants, and put up
posters proclaiming that “friendship is
universal.”
The world becomes a police state in no
time.
Some scientists, like Julie Parrish (Faye
Grant), realize that they are being scapegoated by the Visitors to prevent a
close examination of their alien nature, and start to form small resistance
cells.
Others, like Robert Maxwell (Michael
Durrell) realize that their families are now jeopardized: the targets of
violence and disdain. Robert and his
family are forced to abandon their suburban home, and hide in the pool house of
a neighbor, Abraham Bernstein.
Unfortunately, Abraham’s grandson, Daniel
(David Packer) is a Visitor “youth,” which means he could report them at any
time, especially because he has a crush on Robert’s daughter, Robin (Blair
Tefkin).
Even as his mother, Eleanor (Neva
Patterson) collaborates with the Visitors, Mike Donovan learns the truth about
them from a clandestine visit to a mothership. As Mike discovers, the Visitors are actually
humanoid reptiles, and are here on Earth to steal our water, and to harvest
human beings both as food and as cannon fodder for the “Leader’s” wars against
his extra-planetary enemies.
Meanwhile, Diana arranges a bizarre
Visitor/Human mating project, using the squad leader Brian and Robin Maxwell. Robin
becomes pregnant with child afterwards, but is unaware of its reptilian nature.
As the Visitors cement their hold on
power, Julie grows the Resistance, and defends a mountain camp against
attacking alien attack. Mike, meanwhile,
learns that his son Sean has been abducted by the Visitors, and meets with a
Fifth Columnist among Visitor ranks, Martin (Frank Ashmore).
After the battle at the mountain camp,
Julie and her friend, a former crook-turned-rebel, Elias (Michael Wright)
manage to send an S.O.S. to space, hoping to contact the Visitors’ enemies, who
would presumably be humanity’s ally.
The only problem is that the message might
take twenty years to reach its destination, or never be heard at all.
In the meantime, the Resistance will have
to fight its own battles…
“Charisma,
circumstances, promises. Not enough of us spoke out to question him until it was
too late. It happens on your planet, doesn’t it?”
Because
of the mini-series format, V is able to focus on numerous
characters, and thus numerous, individual responses to the crisis, on both the
human and the Visitor side.
Indeed,
I believe this is the very reason why the original V works so well, even
today: it is able to delve deeply into the varied emotions and behaviors of a
whole array of people.
Humans
are incredibly diverse, and as fascism rises in V, we see all kinds of
responses to it.
I
mentioned above that the mini-series offers a layered portrayal of humanity, and its four-hour running time
permits this in a way that a feature film or an hour-long pilot simply would
not.
In
terms of the humans, we see that there are collaborators, such as Donovan’s
mother, Eleanor, journalist Kristine Walsh, and Visitor Youth Group volunteer Daniel.
These personalities all have something to
gain from the Visitor occupation. For Eleanor, the prize is status and wealth.
For Kristine Walsh it is fame and fortune, and for Daniel it is both power and
belonging.
There
are antecedents for all three characters in world history, particularly in the
rise of Nazi Germany. Eleanor is the wife of a wealthy industrialist, and in
the fascist Third Reich many such industrialists bankrolled and otherwise
supported Hitler.
Meanwhile,
Kristine Walsh’s assimilation to the Visitor cause reflects the process in Nazi
Germany of seizing control of the press, or “Aryanizing” it. The press
that survived the assimilation became, simply, the propaganda arm of Hitler’s
organization. That’s the role that
Kristine serves, enthusiastically at first.
Finally,
Daniel reflects the same qualities as many boys who were indoctrinated into the
Hitler Youth. He has no real direction, and little or no interest in education
or learning. But he comes to feel a sense of “belonging” and strength in the
Visitor youth group. The Visitors focus his hatred and avarice, and direct it
towards their needs.
Then,
a step down from the collaborators in V stand the “deniers” like Daniel’s
father, Stanley Bernstein, who believes that the fascist takeover will “pass.” He doesn’t want to stick his neck out for
anyone, and he refuses to accept the fact that the Visitors and their regime
are here to stay.
Julie’s
Wall Street boyfriend also fits into this category, as does Elias, at least at the
beginning of the tale. They are all too
self-involved to truly see that the Visitors are malevolent. In short, they are
selfish characters, looking out for number one and not for the principle of
freedom.
Kenneth
Johnson’s point seems to be that freedom is lost, and fascism can indeed “happen here” both when selfish people
collaborate with the enemy for purposes of power and wealth, and when good
people choose to look the other way, to deny what they are seeing.
On
the other side of the spectrum are those who resist the Visitors, like Mike
Donovan, Julie, Ben Taylor, Sancho Gomez, and Abraham Bernstein. They have
identified the Visitors’ sinister nature, and will not let freedom and liberty
die without a fight. They put aside their survival for a common cause, and
some, like Ben and Abraham, perish. Sancho undergoes torture. Julie is gravely
wounded.
Finally,
there are the human beings who do not have a choice about resisting. They have
been targeted and scapegoated by the Visitors because they pose a threat to Visitor
rule. These scientists -- the Maxwell
family in particular -- are explicitly designed as stand-ins for Jews in Nazi
Germany. Like Anne Frank’s family, they are forced to go into hiding. Other scientists are rounded up, and taken to
Mothership, where they await death.
One
may also notice a similarity between history and V in terms of
nomenclature. The Visitors’ “international conspiracy of scientists”
deliberately harks back to Weimar Germany’s “international conspiracy of Jewish bankers.”
When
fascism rises, V reminds us, the establishment needs to focus the people’s
rage on someone else. The choice of
scientists here reminds me of the line I mentioned in It Can’t Happen Here: “every man is a king so long as he has
someone to look down on.”
On
the side of the Visitors, there is also tremendous nuance in the
characterizations. Though Diana, Steven (Andrew Prine) and Brian seem overtly
power-hungry and very malevolent in mind-set, there is also Martin, a member of
the Fifth Column, and Willie, who is just an Average Joe from Sirius trying to
get along.
Again,
these characters make V feel realistic and layered, instead
of two-dimensional or cartoonish. Not
all Germans were Nazis, and so it makes sense that not all the Visitors are
evil, either. Instead, they are men and women who have been swept up in a
movement, but which they detest.
It
is important to note that the various characters I’ve enumerated above come
from all walks of life, and from different generations as well. They are not
part of some official police investigation that turns the human, emotional story into a police procedural (a key flaw of the V remake,
in my opinion), but rather part of a tale of people trying to deal with a
horrifying situation.
Each
does so according to his or her values, or lack-thereof.
But
consequently, the original V feels realistic in a way that many
science-fiction TV programs simply do not. Other than Donovan -- who survives quite a few visits to the
Mothership -- there is no one here who stands out as a conventional movie
“hero” type.
Similarly, the special effects involving spaceship landing and launches look very convincing, even by today's standards.
Another
quality that grants V a sense of verisimilitude, in my opinion, is the fact that
the movie acknowledges life as we know it (or knew it in 1983).
The
film is highly-reflexive, and knowingly
takes modern popular culture into account vis-à-vis its narrative about aliens
arriving on Earth. For example, at one
point we see that one of the Maxwell children is playing Space Invaders on the
Atari 2600.
When
the Visitors are first seen, Sean Donovan is disappointed that they don’t “even
look like” Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.
And
during the final battle at the resistance mountain camp, a plush E.T. figure
can be clearly seen on a picnic table.
When
the Visitors become a ubiquitous presence in America, there’s even
merchandising for them featured in the film. Donovan finds Sean playing with
Diana and John action figures with his friend, Josh.
This
is a splendid (and wicked) acknowledgment of the role that materialism plays in
modern American culture. V imagines
merchandising opportunities as an extension, actually, of propaganda
techniques, and that’s pretty forward-thinking.
Perhaps
the most unacknowledged yet impressive aspect of the original V
miniseries is the quality of the
visualizations. The mini-series is
beautifully -- and artfully -- shot, so that the most important moments carry
genuine, even visceral impact.
Kenneth
Johnson has structured the mini-series with book-end scenes, for example,
staged in virtually identical fashion.
As
the mini-series opens, Mike Donovan and Tony are in El Salvador conducting an
interview, when government authorities attack the mountain base of the
Resistance group there.
As
a rebel is shot by a strafing helicopter, Mike’s interviewee -- a leader of the resistance movement --
goes to the wounded man, and then eyes the approaching helicopter.
With
only a pistol as defense, this leader courageously stands his ground, and
engages the much more powerful, much more technologically-advanced enemy.
It’s
a pistol against a copter, essentially. It’s hopeless, but the resistance
leader goes on fighting.
On
first viewing, the moment plays as one merely of action. We don’t necessarily
sense the importance of the leader’s courage, or of the incredible nature of
the David-vs.-Goliath set-up.
But
Johnson very cleverly sets the end of V at the rebel base camp outside of
Los Angeles, again in the mountains.
And
then, history repeats.
Julie
sees one of her rebel friends sustain injuries, and also sees Josh crying over
the injured rebel.
Julie
goes to them, grabs her pistol, and stands her ground as the Visitor
sky-fighter -- with Diana aboard, no less -- strafes the camp.
Once
more, there is a David vs. Goliath aesthetic at work here: a human-made
hand-gun and bullets vs. Visitor spaceships and lasers.
And
once more a leader defends his or her flock.
But
importantly, this time, we understand thoroughly the reasons for the Resistance,
in a way that we might not understand (or take sides…) in the El Salvador
conflict.
After
four hours of watching the Visitors seize control, commit murder, and subjugate
humans under a totalitarian regime, we understand why a fighter like Julie -- or the one we saw in El Salvador --
would fight to the very last breath.
One
of the great and unremarked upon aspects of V is the way that it
brings us around to the cause of freedom through the act of learning. In terms of the visuals, the finale
explicitly and deliberately echoes the prologue, with a spaceship replacing the
helicopter.
The
players have changed, these images suggest, but the battle for freedom and
liberty does not change. If oppression
can occur in El Salvador, it can occur here.
If
we don’t know history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Other
visualizations in the mini-series remain just as canny.
When
Donovan steals into the Visitor vent shaft with his camera, and witnesses Diana
and Steven sharing a bite to eat while discussing the matter of conversion, our
eyes don’t understand -- at least at
first -- what we are seeing. In
other words, the camera seems to dart around and focus on everything except
what is actually happening in the scene. We can’t quite make-out what is
happening.
We
see the cage of rodents on the far wall.
We
see Diana move to the cage, and then out of sight.
We
see Steven go to the cage too.
But
we are so caught up in their conversation that we don’t realize they are
feasting on living animals.
And
then the impact-ful reveal lands: Steven
swallows a mouse...on camera.
Next,
Diana’s jaw distends grotesquely as it accommodates a living guinea pig. After she puts the poor animal down her
throat, we see it slide down her throat slowly, in bulges and lumps.
Perhaps
today we are well-past the point where these special effects seem particularly
effective, but the shock of the scene remains, largely because of the furtive
camera-work.
We
don’t know what the camera is showing us, and then, suddenly -- BOOM! -- we see it all.
I do not exaggerate when I say that, watching
this scene on TV in 1983, I practically jumped out of my seat. It was a water cooler
moment, and at school the next day, everyone was talking about V,
and that scene in particular.
Nobody
saw it coming, and nobody could believe their eyes -- or their shock – when it
did.
Other
visuals are similarly worth drawing attention to.
At
one point, we see a Visitor spaceship come into view in the background of the
frame, behind an extreme close-up of a hominid skull on an archaeological
dig.
This
single shot beautifully transmits the notion of time’s passage, and the changing of the social order.
Just
as man replaced these creatures as Earth’s masters, perhaps, so shall the new
arrivals replace mankind as the world’s dominant force.
This
elegant visual composition explicitly states that the new arrival hastens man’s
extinction.
Even
the simplest of scenes in V are lensed with flair, and acute
knowledge of film grammar.
Take
for example the scene in which Robert Maxwell attempts to retrieve Robin after
she has been captured by the Visitors.
He goes to a Visitor squad commander and offers information in exchange
for his daughter’s release.
The
visualization of this moment tells you everything you need to know about the
planet’s new power structure. Maxwell is
viewed from a high angle, the camera looking down at the desperate, wild-eyed
man.
The
Visitor, meanwhile, is shot from a low-angle so that he towers above the human,
a fact that asserts his place in their dynamic. The Visitor possesses all the
power, and hovers, almost vulture-like, over the distressed human.
We
realize, even as we watch and listen, that Maxwell has no chance at all. He will lose his family and betray the
Resistance.
At
another important moment, Brian and Diana bracket the vulnerable Robin in the
rectangular frame.
The
poor human teenager is boxed in by a two-way mirror, and we see the two
Visitors -- and their reflections to boot -- surround her. The message is that
Robin simply can’t see how much trouble she is in, and indeed, that could serve
as a description of the character’s “arc.”
Robin
has grown up indulged and entitled in free America, and so can’t even conceive
that she is in danger, or that society has changed and she is suddenly part of
a derided under-class.
This
particular visual sells that idea in a single, gorgeous shot.
These
visualizations are enormously expressive -- but not corny -- and successfully
transmit in V important concepts and ideas.
We
all wonder “could it happen here?” Could
America become a fascist state?
V’s greatest value as a work of art
is that it shows us how, indeed, it is possible. The presence of the aliens is almost
immaterial in this particular scenario. Any threat would do, frankly. The film works because the human response to
the loss of freedom -- from collaboration,
to denial, to resistance -- rings so abundantly true. Overcoming a fascist
authority is so difficult because not everyone would see it the same way, or
understand the true, insidious nature of the thing. V realistically, and non-glamorously
captures the humanity of the It Can’t Happen Here scenario.
There’s
a terrible tendency these days to label anything from the 1970s or 1980s “cheesy”
or “campy.” But V isn’t either of those things. The original mini-series holds
up remarkably well in 2014, and remains absolutely chilling if you willingly engage
with the material.
Such a strong first series. Too bad it was all downhill from there. But V is still a strong one.
ReplyDeleteV made a tremendous impression on me when it first aired. I was 14, about the right age to identify with Daniel (until I realized what was happening to him) and feel VERY attracted to Diana (until she ate that damn guinea pig... I was stunned!). I remember being drenched in sweat from the tension during the climatic battle at the mountain camp. A really amazing piece of television that, as David mentions, sadly deteriorated into soap opera and, yes, camp in its later incarnations. But that original mini was really something... and it makes me mad today when people snicker about "that lizard show."
ReplyDeleteI just re-watched the follow on tv series. They tried so hard, but they just didn't have the resources to do the matieral justice at $1 million per episode (a fortune in 84 dollars).
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the reason the various shuttle/fighter landings/takeoffs look so real is because in a sense they ARE real. Life-size mockups were pulled around and/or lifted/lowered by cranes.
V was a great show. Sexy women,aliens and it made a star if Robert Englund (the very annoying girlie alien! who had a baby with a human lol). It is and always will be an 80s classic. I still love it today and Marc Singer shows us how great he is when not acting alongside animals. The remake however was rubbish (2009 was it?). But the original is always going to be one of those shows "Do you remember Diana the lizard?"
ReplyDeleteThirty-five years later, and it's still one of my all-time favorite shows. Compelling, topical, and more relevant than ever in 2018, this is one that richly deserves re-binging on. Your essay is equally thought-provoking, and was a real pleasure to read. I especially appreciated your analysis of the opening and closing scenes. Thank you for this.
ReplyDeletefor anyone that's interested this is a link to a v group on facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/391392408328546/
ReplyDelete