A question of depth

I was pondering the other day, and I turned to someone I talk to on occasion about my writing. I like the idea of writing about families (a lot of good writing involves them – just look at Dickens) and in my universe for Steve and Danny I wanted to explore, in depth, the conversation between two partners about expanding their family. Of course when it’s two male partners there’s virtually no margin of error for the “oops, we got pregnant” conversation, unless somebody’s gone out and knocked up some woman on their own, in which case the conversation becomes about a lot more than just having more children.

I said, “Steve and Danny want to have another child, their sixth, not including Grace,and I need a conflict.” The reply came: “I don’t see one. Does there need to be one?”

Well, of course there does. Even if the conflict is a simple as coming up with 20 large for an artificial insemination, there’s got to be conflict, or there’s no story. The series itself explores themes such as family relationships, loyalty, trust, duty, scapegoating, the nature of and the difficult line between good and evil, bureaucracy, justice, corruption, and loosely (very loosely) history of Hawai’i.

So far in my writing, I’ve tried to explore other themes in a departure from the canonical series:

First love, jealousy, misunderstanding and self-doubt (Hele On) 

Coming out, community, sexual assault (Na Aihue) 

Separation, longing, normalizing a new relationship (Moekahi) 

The catalyst of birth, the significance of names, the journey of parenthood (Na Leka No Na Keiki)

Realizing one’s parents aren’t invincible, that not all marriages are happy, not all deaths are grieved, not all lovers triumph (Na Hoa Mau Loa)

And this one – actually two of them.

In the first I’ve got Danny at home alone with two toddlers while Steve is away on deployment. With Steve’s death a very real possibility, he begins to discover Hawai’i’s inherent spirtuality – which is a rich pastiche which draws from traditions of Polynesia, Asia, and the West. Concepts of spirituality and the life/death divide are much more fluid in Hawai’i, and there’s a definite otherworldly presence – especially at night, which Danny will begin to encounter.

The second I mentioned earlier, but I want to look at the differences between Steve and Danny’s approach to parenting. Steve is what one would call a “natural” and Danny finds it more of a chore – he’s more fearful and pessimistic, and becomes increasingly wary of having children in a world he no longer understands and barely tolerates while Steve is a creative optimist who isn’t done creating yet. The concepts of “Family as Art/Creation” is one I want Steve to have to unravel and explain for his partner, which of course will be much more difficult when other events intervene (can’t give it all away, can I?)

In short, writing has the power to ennoble us. Our language is the language of Shakespeare and Byron and Faulkner – there’s no reason there can’t be some depth in transformative literature. It’s my aim to make sure there’s plenty more of it.

 

 

 

 

 

Brokeback McDanno: The theory of Realism

In Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain, the two main characters share a post-coital cigarette in a motel room and discuss their future. Jack Twist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the film) is the idealist of the pair, throwing out every possible suggestion for the two to leave their wives and set up shop together. Ennis del Mar (played by the late Heath Ledger) is the realist. “If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it.” he says when faced with Jack’s idealism. The difference between the two characters (and by extension the Idealist and Realist) is the scope of the viewpoint. Jack (The Idealist) sees only himself and Ennis, and thus sees no impediment between them. Ennis (The Realist) ostensibly sees the same lack of barriers, but instead is overwhelmed by the barriers they would face together. Jack’s idealism sees only the relationship; Ennis understands where their relationship falls on a bigger picture and views at untenable.

Steve’s not shy about telling Danny how he wishes he could quit him (or vice versa) but they both know they can’t. 

Unlike the McDanno idealist who sees only the on-screen relationship and wonders how it’s possible McDanno hasn’t been made “canon” (that is, the perceived romantic and/or sexual nature of their relationship is made clear in the actual production of the series), the McDanno realist understands that the obstacles facing the actualization of any canonized McDanno canoodling are just as formidable as those faced by the fictional heroes of Brokeback Mountain. 

Unlike Jack and Ennis, we no longer live in a world where the idea of two men in a stable, loving relationship is limited to some very specific neighborhoods in a select handful of the continent’s more progressive large cities. The “real world” that McDanno inhabits is one where gay men and women are increasingly accepted (although a major LGBT topic has yet to be featured in an episode of H50 – other than Danny’s mild annoyance and McGarrett’s bemusement at suggestions they act married, we have little if any indication of our boys’ attitudes toward the topic at all). So what, then, are the obstacles to a full-blown, canonized McDanno? Let’s review:

The Genre: H50 is a police procedural, not a romance. It’s like the meatball on the spaghetti. Is H50 better with McDanno? Absolutely. Is it absolutely necessary? No. Perhaps it speaks to the infancy of positive portrayal of queer theory in mainstream media, but character comings out has a tendency to hijack the show. To canonize McDanno would completely transform the show from a police procedural set in Hawai’i to that gay cop show. The show would also quickly degenerate into Rom-Com with well placed national brands. Chemistry is a tough horse to tame. There’s a reason that Niles and Daphne on Frasier took so long to get together – it’s because once they did, they sucked. The producers of The X-Files were another group that were frequently asked why there was no romantic involvement for Mulder and Scully throughout that show’s long run. The answer was simple: it would change the focus. It wouldn’t be X-Files anymore, it would be Beverly Hills 90210.  Steve and Danny staring googily eyed at each other for ten minutes an episode is amusing – an hour’s worth of it would send all but the most ardent McDanno fans fleeing. Bottomline: It would be hard to pull off without a format change, and while the ratings have tanked lately, format changes are a last-ditch effort. If it’s not broken you don’t fix it.

At the end of the day, it’s still a cop show, no matter how bad Steve wants to scoot closer.

The Characters: Speaking of keeping the plot moving, let’s talk about what makes for compelling characters. In order for a character to keep their hold on the audience’s interest, they have to be, well, interesting. At the HIFF event in Honolulu in October 2011, Peter Lenkov spoke about how the commonality between each of the Five-0s is that they’re all lost souls searching for their place, and they’ve reached a sort of entertaining purgatory in Five-0. Outside the unit, they’re wandering aimlessly – uninteresting filler in an uninteresting scene. Inside H50 they find this sort of tentative comfort that makes for good comic relief and “aww” moments between not-really-dead Moms and trailer fires on modeling junkets. Each of them are still searching for something, however, and it’s what keeps the viewer tuning in. They’ve identified with the character and begun to care about them from the B-plots, and their inability to settle is what keeps them coming back to unravel more. Steve keeps looking for answers about his family, Danny struggles to come to terms with living in Hawai’i and watching his daughter grow up too fast, Kono tries to prove herself and juggles her affection for Adam Noshimuri with a growing distrust, and Chin grapples with coping with the death of his wife. Remaining lost is important to our team; it speaks to the elusiveness of happiness and the futility of seeking it vis a vis the team’s triumphs.

Bugger me if they’re not holding hands. At least one of them looks happy about it.

The Business: Make no mistake – just like any other business in the entertainment industry, the artistic quality of the work is tempered by its viability. Networks are not charities, and a show as expensive as H50 has to remain profitable to keep its timeslot. The price of the average slot of the 15 minutes of ad space that take up an hour long broadcast is directly related to the ratings. The more viewers an advertiser can reach, the more they’re willing to pay. The show’s content has to keep existing viewers, and also attract new ones. If the number of new viewers watching the show for McDanno has neared saturation and begun to taper off, and it only makes sense to balance the needs of those viewers more evenly with those tuning in for a police procedural, or a Hawai’i travelogue, or even the odd McRoll shipper (that is, fans of Steve’s prostituting himself for intel relationship to Catherine Rollins). Now in the first half of the season we’ve definitely seen the waters being tested. We’ve seen more McDanno than we did last season, we’ve seen more explicit/boundary-pushing McDanno than we’re used to, and we’ve seen a lot more buzz from the network and the producers than we have in the past.

The H50 producer and showrunner famously sent a tweet with a photo of Steve and Danny for lack of a better word snuggling on the couch during one of the episodes that caused a mini riot among the McDanno fans. The caption? “Our Modern Family.”

We’re told this was merely an ad lib that made it into the final cut, but it gives us a compelling (if not somewhat Idealist) vision, although the question that it stirs is rooted in Realism. Why the hell not have your cake and eat it too? Human emotions are much more complex than tradition seems to allow, and it’s not entirely too far off base that it’s possible to have a primary, affectionate if not explicitly sexual (non-traditional) relationship between our two male heroes and a secondary (traditional) relationship on the periphery.

To close, I’m reminded of the sentiments of the Baker’s Wife from Sondheim vehicle Into The Woods (expertly and Tony Award-winningly portrayed by the incomparable Joanna Gleason) after she boffs a married prince in the woods in a moment of hurried “We’re About To Die Anyway” lovemaking (attribution where attribution is due.)

There are needs, there are standards,

There are shouldn’t and shoulds.

Why not both instead? There’s the answer, if you’re clever.

Have a child for warmth, and a baker for bread

And a prince, for… whatever…  

The slashgoggles: McDanno and the theory of Idealism

Lunching with friends the other day, one of them mentioned they tried watching H50,  but after talking to me, they couldn’t.

“After hearing you talk about McDanno all day, I couldn’t watch it. I just couldn’t take it seriously.”

That interested me for several reasons, and I had several questions come to mind over the next several hours. The first glaring item that popped into my head was a joyous one:

There’s (mostly) no arguing the existence of McDanno. When you’ve been told what to look for, it can’t be ignored. 

G.B. Shaw partitioned critical theorists into four distinct bodies of thought: Philistines, Idealists, and The Lone Realist, and Superman. Superman is an exceedingly rare, almost mythical figure, so we’ll leave him out, and focus on the other three. To be very brief, The Lone Realist (.1% of the population) sees reality exactly as it is, and attempts to strip away any human interference in the form of illusion; the Idealist (29.9% of the population) accepts illusion as reality and sees the world as they believe it should be; and the Philistine cares not to question reality at all (70% of the population).

The Philistine sees H50 as nothing more than a police procedural set in Hawai’i. A friend of mine whose middle-aged Mother watches religiously is blissfully ignorant of McDanno, and she likes the stories (it’s perhaps telling much of her other TV watching involves telenovelas.) When questioned about the possibility of McDanno, she denies it: “No, I don’t see it.” These are the people who don’t view media critically; they’re satisfied to simply enjoy the entertainment as it’s presented.

The Idealist sees McDanno a multitude of different ways based on the mask they choose to place on it. The majority of fiction writers fall into this category. These folks employ various tropes to view and explain the undeniable chemistry between our two heroes, including:

• Unrequited Love: Typically a dysfunctional, broken Steve pining after an idealized (but in reality similarly broken and dysfunctional) Danny, whom he views as representing and enjoy the family Steve once had, but lost. A typical example is this scene where Steve watches Danny reunited with Grace and Rachel after Grace’s kidnapping. The Philistine sees a war-weary Steve numbly viewing another episodic happy ending. The McDanno Idealist sees the lonely point on a Rachel-Danny-Steve love triangle; Steve sees the man he loves putting his ex-wife and child above all else, and struggles with internal conflict about his place.  

• Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST): Mutual, recognized but not actualized attraction that manifests itself in tentative glances and seemingly innocuous physical contact that is viewed as a plea for admission. Yup, that’s Danno’s hand on Steve’s ass.

• Unrealized Mutual Attraction (a.k.a. “Gay, But Don’t Know It Yet”): Mutual attraction on a subconscious level, which causes the characters to engage in a level of intimacy atypical among heterosexual male friends whilst remaining “implied heterosexual” on the surface. In this scene Danny checks to see if anyone’s looking before adjusting Steve’s tie in a moment of “gay panic” before carrying on and helping Steve do something he could easily have done himself. The Philistines find this amusing because it’s comically incongruous with Steve and Danny’s implied heterosexuality.

• “The Missing Reel”: The characters maintain a relationship, but direct implication remains off-camera. Here Steve gets a call in the middle of the night after having argued with Danno about the correct length of a hot shower, while Danno suggestively reaches for him from his makeshift sofabed. “Get your pants on, we’re going to work.” he bossily tells his partner.

Cut to the next scene: Sand Island in mid-morning light. Sand Island is 20-30 minutes from where Steve lives in ‘Aina Haina. Either traffic on the H1 is a real bitch at 3 in the morning, Danny’s in the habit of singing Wagner operas in their entirety while in the shower, or it took them a really long time to get Danny’s pants on. Don’t give us that look, boys: we know how to do math, and something doesn’t add up.

The Idealist is comfortable with the mask of their selected trope fitting neatly over the show’s portrayal of their pairing, but can eventually encounter a lack of payoff and desire more actualization. The Realist recognizes the external forces affecting the show and manages their expectations. We’ll talk about the critical theory of The Realist in our next segment.

A hui hoi!