On Scandals and White Hats
[Pt. 4]
The ABC show, Scandal, is an attempt at exposing (from one person’s anxious imagination) the discrepancy between the appearance of, and the truth behind, the way American government works. Though poorly written and melodramatically acted, Scandal delves into the very roughest aspects of politics attempting to do justice.
In a recent episode titled “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” Olivia Pope, a political “fixer” in Washington D.C., questions the basic assumption that anyone can protect justice. The writers of Scandal created a fictitious government organization named B6-13 that exists to “protect the republic” by doing the dirty work of preserving its image in the public eye. In this episode, B6-13 kills three reporters who threatened to expose the Vice President’s criminal history.
The characters in the episode try to justify that B6-13 is really a force to add power and protect the position of the republic. But by virtue of its existence, the commander of B6-13 holds more power than the President himself. Olivia’s father was once the commander of B6-13. In this episode, he tells Olivia that the commander is “the hand of God…the worst punishment in the world.” The commander is responsible for deciding the fates of people under the guise of protecting the seat of the President.
The writers must assume that people don’t see government officials as virtuous people able to conquer evil simply by doing “the right thing” (whatever that may be). This show presumes that democracy and civilization are not actually powerful enough to make people good, or to keep people from acting barbarically. Even the “good guys” in the show with the best intentions collude with B6-13 in the name of protecting the stability of the perception of the government.
Miraculously, this show avoids equating good and evil with any association to Republican or Democrat, though it does demonstrate an interesting overturn of the political parties. President Grant is a Republican, but openly liberal. What the show seems to suggest is that Republicans do not really need to hold to Republican values to run on that ballot. In fact, rather than promoting a Democratic agenda, the show promotes a subtly more unsettling idea. It tries to show the Democratic values as better by projecting them onto a Republican character. This takes the meaning of one term (Republican) and turns it on its head by trying to associate it with its opposite (Democrat). This use of language re-appropriation is brilliantly executed, but deceptively manipulative.
Scandal tries to instill faith in the institution of government that it simultaneously says is not stable enough to prevent its own demise. It paints characters who are supposed to want what is good and righteous as people who still have to resort to a violent (and arguably immoral) agency for help.
Despite this portrayed weakness of the government, Scandal still tries to make Olivia Pope’s attempts at being the white hat look valorous and necessary. Even in this episode when Olivia tells her father that she doesn’t know what the point of democracy is, she ends the episode by pulling herself together and fighting for what she believes to be just.
The producers of the show capitalize on the fear of disillusionment that most people feel today. In this episode, the viewer learns that every candidate running in the upcoming election is guilty of murder. The one candidate the show tries to depict as more moral than the others, Fitzgerald Grant, is only seen as good because he feels guilty. He wants to be good, and that is good enough. There is even a hint of the, “if all men are evil, no men are evil,” mentality.
This episode of Scandal is one of the few where the fourth wall is broken to the extent that the viewer’s anxieties are addressed. Olivia Pope, the one who never questions why she has to do bad things to justify her good ends, finally needs an explanation. Her father answers her saying, “Everyone is worth saving—even the monsters. Even the demons.” He tells her the point of herself is to drag everyone into the light.
What this episode ignores is that this was never her (or the audience’s) problem. No one feels worried that maybe she is trying to save too many people. Everyone is upset about how this show justifies an “ends over means” hierarchy. It is not that the show normalizes evil (because it still makes you feel bad when evil things happen), but it does try to claim motive as the only moral explanation needed to justify behavior.
The difference between the good guys and the bad guys in this show is minimal. Actually, the difference between good motives and bad motives is also indistinguishable. At the end of “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” a flashback occurs of Jake Ballard, the commander of B6-13, when he killed James Novak, the Press Secretary and husband of President Grant’s Chief of Staff. He killed him to prevent the exposure of the story about the Vice President murdering her husband for homosexual behavior.
In the moments after Ballard shoots Novak, Ballard sits beside him and comforts him in the moments leading up to his death. He apologizes for making the death so painful, and he tells him he won’t die alone. Ballard is depicted, with swelling background music and gentle tone of voice, as being compassionate and valuing Novak’s life. It is almost as if the viewer is supposed to walk away from that scene saying, “Wow. That was tragic, but I guess he had to die to protect his country.”
No character’s hands are clean. Everyone breaks the law and serves themselves at some point. All it seems to take for a character in Scandal to flip from “good” to “bad” in an instant is good rhetoric or imminent threat. What does not make sense is that these are the tactics politicians use to convince American’s to take up their causes and believe in them. We already established that this show exists to make us suspicious of these tactics from politicians. Then why should these be the appropriate means for those behind the curtain to abandon their values?
The language of the show gives no satisfaction, no answers. It implies only circumstantial goodness and denies any sense of inherent right or wrong. It appeals to democracy as the solution, but destroys this in showing its flaws. It fails to ever prove that the republic is really worth saving.
vérité et de grâce
truth and grace