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Message |
| Posted By: |
Uncle Tantra |
| Date: |
9-Dec-2003-20:46:39 |
| Subject: |
The Expat Cafe -- Talking TV |
Life as an American expatriate in Paris in the days of Bush-wa is challenging enough.
I mean, when the conversation in the café turns political, we have to deal with America's tendency to forcibly export its oligarchic political system, its corporate ruling class, its Beaver Cleaver values and its meat cleaver wars to the world. It makes you sad and tired and teary-eyed, as an expatriate representative of a country gone mad, trying to explain and find some compassionate justification for things that you'd much rather just agree with your French friends about.
So usually when someone brings up the export of American television programs to French TV, we quickly change the subject. Otherwise, we would be drawn into the unenviable task of having to explain away the various American TV series that degrade the already-questionable French airwaves. We are talking about such gems as Kojak, Diagnosis Murder, Dharma and Greg, That 70's Show and Starsky and Hutch. We are talking MTV, broadcast here as there, 24/7. We are talking -- go figure -- Son of the Beach and Jackass. And we are even talking, after all of these years, that homage to greed, power, self-obsession and other All-American values, Dallas. Can you blame us for wanting to change the subject?
This morning no one changed the subject.
The reason is the broadcast, last night, of two of the finest pieces of broadcast television it has ever been my pleasure to see, or discuss. For whatever reason, the same channel that rebroadcasts many of the shows named above has been rebroadcasting episodes of The West Wing. And last night they showed the final two episodes of Season Two, which were titled, respectively, "18th and Potomac" and "Two Cathedrals."
For those of you reading this who have never gotten into The West Wing, I strongly suggest a trip to the video store and a remedial marathon viewing of what I see as some of the most subtle yet revolutionary television you are likely to see on the U.S. airwaves.
The West Wing is nothing short of a reminder of what the American Dream could be. The series is well-written, skillfully plotted, and impressively acted. Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, John Spencer, Dule Hill, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Janel Maloney, Bradley Whitford, Rob Lowe, Marlee Matlin, Oliver Platt and others are as impressive an ensemble cast as has ever been assembled for a broadcast television series. But what makes The West Wing truly special is the weekly presentation, to an American populace, of "the way things could be," as opposed to what they have been trained to settle for, "the way things are."
Martin Sheen's President Jeb Bartlett is a Democrat. Moreover, he's a smart Democrat, a former Jesuit and Nobel Prize winner who is committed to what America used to be committed to -- making the Right Decisions. He is certainly not without faults. In fact, the two episodes that aired to a French audience last night show him dealing with multiple crises at once, at least one of which was of his own making. It turns out that President Bartlett chose to conceal that he suffers from recurring episodes of Multiple Sclerosis to get elected. The disease is in remission, and does not affect his ability to govern, but for various reasons the deception now has to be made public, in the last year of his first term. Secret polls have shown that when it is made public, 65% of even his fellow Democrats will not vote for him again.
Add to that pressure the fact that a democratic election in Haiti has resulted in the newly-elected President of that country hiding in the U.S. Embassy, threatened by the army of the strongman he is about to depose. Add to that pressure the question of whether President Bartlett should run for a second term, with this scandal hanging over his head. And then, in a moment of honesty rare in television of any kind, much less American broadcast television, add to that pressure the sudden, accidental death of the President's secretary, a woman who has been by his side since he was in prep school.
In the last episode of the season's scenes, President Bartlett attends the funeral for his long-time friend, secretary and mentor, Mrs. Landingham, and after the service, asks to be left alone in the cathedral for a few moments. When the great doors close, he is left alone with God, to whom he proceeds to give a tongue-lashing the likes of which has not been seen on network TV since Job had his own hit series. He calls God a "feckless thug," rails at him in English and in Latin, and finally lights a cigarette, takes one puff, and stomps it out on the cathedral floor, in a shocking acting-out of how low this man of faith has been lowered.
Finally, back in the White House, he sits alone in his office during the break between the live interview in which he and his wife admit to the American people their mutual deception about his MS and the press conference that follows, where he knows that the first question is going to be, "Are you going to run for a second term?" And during that break, the 'ghost' or imaginary projection of Mrs. Landingham appears to him and talks to him about the choice that he has to make in a few minutes. And her beyond-the-grave advice all comes down to, "If you're not going to run again because you're tired of it all and really don't want to, that's fine. But if you're not going to run again because you're afraid, then Jeb, I just don't want to know you."
And this fictional Democratic President, living in (as Michael Moore pointed out so well to over a billion people) fictional times, makes the Right Decision. The actual episode (and the season) ends before he does it, but if you've been paying attention to the screenplay, and to the words of the Dire Straits song that is played underneath the final minutes of the last episode of the series, you know what that decision is.
And it's inspiring. And it really IS the Right Decision. And it's not made, as so many of George W. Bush's decisions have been, with the delusional certitude of having a direct channel to God, but with the honesty of knowing that you really don't understand God at all, have no channel whatsoever to how He thinks, and have to do what YOU think is right, not only for yourself but for all of the people of the nation you represent and for all of the people of the world. And it's a reminder that politicians could actually think and act that way all the time, and have in the past.
And it's why we here at the Expat Café this morning don't feel the need to change the subject when someone brings up last night's rebroadcast of The West Wing. And it's why every one of us has tears in our eyes as we talk about it, and it's why our French friends who saw the show have tears in their eyes as they listen to us and it's why all of us -- American or French -- believe that there is still hope. And it's why each of us in the café this morning -- American or French - mentally sings along with the Mark Knopfler song that ended the TV show, and thus sing along with his sentiments about life as an expatriate and a patriot:
Through these fields of destruction, baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering as the battle raged higher
And though it hurt me so bad in the fear and alarm
You did not desert me my brothers in arms
We, as Americans who talk about such things over coffee in Paris, have not deserted you, our brothers in arms in America. We are waiting for you to either do something about the nightmare that the American Dream has become, or to join us.
Paris, 2003
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