Aaron Sorkin is good. Sometimes too good. In the same way that Kennedy was good. In general, Sorkin is as good as some of the best political rhetoric around. That might be the trick…
For anyone who has been following Sorkin’s latest tele-visual extravaganza, it will come as no surprise that the glorious and honourable defeat and execution of Osama Bin Laden was bound to be a subject for discussion. Thus far, The Newsroom has exercised a sincere level of class when it comes to analysing the tricky details of the American political system or the abrupt integrity of bygone news journalism. When the audience was introduced to Will McAvoy’s professional rag-tag team of hot-shot young go-getters, we caught a wonderful glimpse into the past that Sorkin intended to show us. Through the exhumation of the BP Gulf Oil Spill, we were shown the potential for high-class news broadcasting. Through the political insurgency of the Tea Party in the mid-term Congressional elections, we were shown the simple integrity in reporting that something is wrong with your political ideals. Apart from the fact that the only thing stringing these high-octane newsroom dramas together are tried, tested and clichéd romantic subplots, The Newsroom is beginning to show its true colours: Red, White, and Freedom-Fucking Blue.
This comes as no surprise to those who are semi-devoted Sorkin fans though. The West Wing offered audiences a departure from the formula of prime-time shtick. It moved with the paces of a political party, not with the moors and trappings of the average episodic drama. Storylines would rise and fall as the tone dictated, not as the ratings did. However, no one could pretend that they didn’t see Uncle Sam himself in the corner of nearly every scene, furiously masturbating with a sick look of pure self gratification on his face: President Bartlett is paralysed on the plane to China, and just as he utters those words that every fan loves to retort (albeit, the quote is becoming laced in irony?), you can catch a glimpse of the faptastic Uncle Sam, peering in through the plane’s window; perched on the wing like some freak-show out of a terrible parody of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Now, Sorkin himself may not have had anything to do with writing that particular scene, but you see what I mean, of course? It’s amazing that Uncle Sam found so many dark corners in an oval office…
To put this point in language avid Sorkinites(?) might be able to get a handle on: The West Wing, while often brilliant and seldom boring, was also painfully proud of the fact that “America’s so star spangled awesome.” With this effortless segue way of appropriated Sorkinisms, we come to the issues surrounding the unfolding nature of The Newsroom. It was hoped that The Newsroom would have interrogated the American hubris that The West Wing so gleefully exported. The characters carved out of the show’s premiere illustrated, through gasps for breath between their open-air screaming matches, that they were here to offer the hard-hitting truth behind the news cycles. To cut through the spin and deliver a fictional audience the factual details of stories already lived (don’t read too much into that Brechtian nightmare). We, or at least I, was waiting with bated breath for further outbursts from the surly and righteous newscaster; more displays of indignation thrown at a gullible and misled public; fire-breathing on a national soapbox that would make Sidney Lumet proud. Will McAvoy almost seemed like he was intended to be Aaron Sorkin filtered through HBO tinted glasses: a step back from the scene of American Exceptionalism. An objective look at the jingoism that is all too prevalent in the American media. But that was never going to happen…
As soon as the opening credits wrapped on the first episode of The Newsroom, Sorkin and his team almost fell over one another to tell the audience that McAvoy had a stress induced breakdown of some sort and had been on vacation for three weeks. While there are none too subtle allusions to the idea that he didn’t and he really meant what he said, the point remains hammered home: no one can talk about America that way. Now, while this and the fact that the rest of the episode turned into a farcical Al Pacino yelling match, greatly disappointed, I kept with it. The episodes crept along with a steady pace of interrogation. The stories were picked apart and resold to the American public with new and improved ‘honesty’. All the while, it became harder to find that sinister Uncle Sam hiding in the corners of scenes, like a deranged Where’s Wally. While significantly weakened by dreadfully sub-standard romantic subplots, nothing could have prepared audiences for the latest episode. A veritable atomic blast of hubris all over the screen for nearly an hour.
‘5/1’ detailed the unfolding information that was coming to the news team, through various avenues, that US forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Hoping and dreaming for an episode devoted to analysing the violent and vengeful character of the American hubris, all I was served was a lukewarm plate of sloppy jingoisms balanced clumsily on the perpetual disappointment of the characters’ individual story arcs. Let’s get Will stoned, why not? It’s not like that will somehow manage to devalue an already cheap teleplay! As soon as the unofficial news circulates within the show, you would assume it would be stern looks and fast work, but no. The majority of the dialogue revolves around each character settling themselves with their own, seemingly innate, grandiosity. Fiercely selfish people simply interested in being involved with reporting the news that Navy Seals had illegally entered Pakistani airspace and massacred the entire home and family of America’s villain; a man who was effectively a walking ATM for Al-Qaeda. Pilots’ acting like this was the greatest day for America since VE Day; vaseline soaked close-ups of a pilot’s wings pinned patriotically to his shirt; freshly introduced half-characters who I’m supposed to empathise with inside the hour because they knew another abstract character that was in one of the towers.
There was nothing utilised in this episode – no interrogation whatsoever of the story, the sources or the public perception. This was not The Newsroom we were watching, this was some one-hour TV special about how star spangled awesome America is. While everyone was busy cheering and slapping themselves on the back for a job they didn’t do and that realistically serves no purpose other than the satiation of a blood thirsty national manhunt, Uncle Sam crept into the corner of the newsroom and quietly placed one hand down the front of his pants while pointing belligerently at the viewer.
Aside from reading The Sun or The Daily Mail, watching ‘5/1’ was one of the only other times I’ve felt this quote unfortunately applicable: “Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits – a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” (HST, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).
Yeah, Aaron Sorkin is good. Good in the same way a politician is good. It’s great when you are spoon-fed what you never knew you wanted to hear, but it’s even better when kicked into your ears and spiked through your eye sockets with a rusty script covered in a flag. Sorkin is currently running his operation like the Director of Communications for a haphazard Congressman that’s just about to lose his seat. It’s rhetoric and oratory with very little of the analytic interrogation that makes HBO so clever and earnest. The exhumation of old news stories was a clever plot ploy, that up until now had been handled with great care. Yet, this Bin Laden venture just seemed like flagrant national necrophilia. Rehashing a story simply to make yourself feel better? HBO have gotten themselves a politician and Jingo is his name.
Jake O’Brien
jcobbryan 