I want to mention that I just downloaded the first three episodes of HBO's new show True Detective. It's received amazing, yet somewhat also low-key, acclaim. (Note: The low-key part I find particularly intriguing, since I am a huge Game of Thrones fan, which has a much splashier and trumpeted media presence but I have never read anything about it quite like the recent story wherein True Detective's season finale crashed the HBO streaming site. Weird, right?).
Now I don't mention this to talk about the fact I downloaded True Detective. I mention this to talk about the fact I have not downloaded HBO's OTHER new show Looking. You know, the show made expressly for me. (Note: Demo: Gay males age 25-40.) Ish.
Now there are a couple of different ways I can talk about this. On the one hand, I can talk about the fact HBO has a knack for merging art and commerce (see: The Wire, Rome, GoT, Deadwood, Carnivale, etc.) as so few TV networks have before or since. However, this is apparently a good example of art and commerce working against each other, where the creators are so dead set on not being JUST entertainment that they forget to actually BE entertaining. On the other hand, I can talk about the fact I’ve dismissed this show based purely on ads and reviews of the show. This could be a pretty fertile topic, vis a vis the inherent idiocy/douchiness of dismissing any piece of art based purely on the opinions of others or the counter fact that I think the wisest course of action is to pull a Nate Silver and realize that when the gross aggregate of criticism is uniformly negative, it’s almost dumb to waste your time on something unless your job is to be one of those unhappy reviewers.
Instead I’m going to chose the third hand (?) and talk briefly about the inherent fallacy about trying to make any kind of art about a generic “you” or “them” or “us.” Art, especially a visual/language medium like TV, really only works when it is a specific you/them/us. Game of Thrones has magic and gods and dragons. It has a woman who gave birth (kindda) to dragons. It is implied that she will one day ride said dragons. She is utterly captivating but not because she is a pastiche of dragon queens or warrior princesses or some idealized version of a woman with the will to command this mythological force. She is a fully realized character with a specific back-story that has made her into a distinct/flawed character. She can be childish and thick-headed and make some really bad choices because, based on what we know of her, these are the choices we would probably make in her position. Or not. She’s not the strength that you find in all women or the wisdom that all mothers find within themselves or some other cliché intended to make her into an everywoman. She’s a person.
In regards to Looking, I understand their goal is to show the kind of groups that I’m told are pretty common, even if I’m not part of one, gay men who “hang out and smoke weed and talk about whatever and just basically act kind of boring.” But apparently that's it. A group of guys that could exist. As the creators have said to dismiss the charges of being a boring show, they made it boring “intentionally.” Instead of complex/complicated/interesting characters, the show presents us with characters who have been made as generically as possible so as many gay men as possible are able to identify with each of these precise arch-types. But therein lies the rub. We (the viewers) don’t connect with characters because we think they have a certain minimum percentage of similarity to our own existence. We connect because they are a unique character and we either recognize a moment of their existence as mirroring a specific moment of our own or even just because they are portrayed well and force us to empathize with the joy/suffering/experience of another human being. Even someone emphatically not us.
This brings me to probably the single most depressing idea this show has wrought on our already troubled world. The fact is that the creators have essentially told the gay male community, and by extension the whole of humanity, that when we think of ourselves we want to be bored. That the best way to make people connect with their own lives is to show us “similar” lives.....in which not much really happens. Is this meant to be auto-biographical? Do the creators think their lives are quintessentially boring? Maybe they just think “our” lives are boring. This is either the most nihilist television show since The Prisoner or the most complex/expensive hate letter directed at the gay community in television history. Are the creators endicting just themselves, all gay men, or all of mankind in this modern day adaptation of No Exit?
In either case, the best takedown of this idea of life as boring has already been delivered and the words are not mine. So I won’t even pretend I deserve the last word on this. Instead I will leave you with the words of Mr. Charlie Kaufman in his 2002 film, Adaptation:
[at a seminar, Charlie Kaufman has asked McKee for advice on his new screenplay in which 'nothing much happens']
Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
Charlie Kaufman: Okay, thanks.
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