According to a recent Deadline report, FOX is developing an event series about the Boston Marathon Bombing, based on the bestselling book, Long Mile Home. (We should, of course, ignore the term “event series” because honestly, what it really means is, “if it does well, great we’ll renew it, if not, we say it was only meant to be one season long and we don’t look bad for another new show not getting a second season order.”) This announcement, whether or not it turns out to be true, begs the question: how soon is too soon?
I remember the first time I saw the 9/11 attacks included in one of my school history textbooks. It felt wrong. It was maybe three years after the attacks but as a New Yorker, my immediate thought was “this isn’t history yet.” When Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close came out at the very end of 2011, reactions were very mixed as to whether it was appropriate to be doing a film about such a sensitive subject. The New York Post called it emotional blackmail and described it as exploitive. More recently, coming out of the most recent Superman movie, Man of Steel, my friend and I left the theater saying “well, it wasn’t bad, but did it feel a little bit too much like 9/11 to you?”
Though most people seem to have a knee-jerk reaction about movies that are too reminiscent of (or actually about) 9/11, fewer seemed to be put off by Third Watch’s depiction of the characters at ground zero only one month after the attack. For most, it was considered moving and emotional. I don’t remember many people upset by the depiction of the attacks. Perhaps it was because people understood that as a show based around NYC first responders, the show had little alternative. (This is the least likely explanation, as people are rarely forgiving of television, no matter how logical the inclusion of something controversial is.) Perhaps it was because it was about the first responders and was framed as a tribute and only aired after a two hour tribute special to real life first responders. How can anyone be upset about honoring some of the greatest heroes that emerged on one of the darkest days in the country’s history? Or perhaps the question is really what makes television different from the movies, thereby allowing them to tackle more recent subjects that draw greater criticism in movies?
It might be that, if well done, television has a much longer time to address the issues of great tragedies. If well-handled, a tragedy isn’t a one-off event, it has long-lasting emotional repercussions that the audience can relate to. In a way, the audience can confront their own demons by watching their favorite TV characters struggling to deal with the same or similar issues. It might also be that the lower budgets and smaller screens keep it feeling as “real” as seeing it up on the big screen does. Unless watching in a private theater, the audience is BIGGER than the characters they are watching, somehow minimizing the impact, whereas on the screen we feel about the same size or smaller than the events transpiring on screen, making it feel closer to home and more “real.” We could step into the scene if we wanted to, in a sense.
But to have this discussion, one has to also look at the reaction to the episode of Glee “Shooting Star” which centered on a school shooting. Most responses to this episode involved outrage, disgust, and the sentiment that it was too soon, given what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary just four months earlier. Whereas a month was “acceptable” to most in Third Watch’s case, four months was not for Glee. Could the issue be context?
For Third Watch, ignoring 9/11 might have been as insulting, if not more so than including it. It would have taken a show grounded in our reality to one inherently set in a different reality. Might they have done a simple time jump to avoid the issue? Sure. But even then, the setting is NY. It would have to come up one way or another, so rather than let it be some passing comment that doesn’t reflect the true impact of the event, the show addressed it head on.
For Glee, which has a history of dealing with a number of issues from tolerance to bullying to suicide, the context might not have been quite right for a school shooting episode. Maybe it is the lack of full on violence in Glee (for the most part, bullying involved dumping a kid in a dumpster, cruel taunts, and being slushied, but until the most recent season with Kurt getting beaten up, the more physical violence was all but absent). School violence is certainly a sad reality in these times and is not necessarily out of place on a show about high school, but it is still a relative rarity. It could be that anything dealing with children is closer to home or that 9/11’s violence feels less targeted at specific people than a school shooting that typically (though not always) targets specific people and often specific children. It doesn’t help that in Glee’s story the shooting was an accident and only had repercussions that lasted a couple weeks at best. (Glee is well known for having its storylines dropping off the face of the earth only to be brought up again if and when it is convenient.)
Does the fact that Glee was about a made up event while Third Watch was about a real one change our acceptance of it? Possibly. One is addressing a national tragedy while another appears to be a more obvious attempt at garnering buzz. (I wish I could remember how either of these shows advertised these storylines, because this element may very well inform how they were received as well.) Third Watch shined a light on the admiration and respect for our first responders that had so recently been brought to the foreground, while Glee was more about a group of kids being traumatized for what turned out to be nothing. Does that make a difference? Probably.
If context is key, where does that put this idea of a series about the Boston Marathon Bombing? While Third Watch and Glee addressed tragedy, they were both within the framework of pre-existing shows that incorporated these events rather than being shows centered on them. The show Fox is reportedly planning is centered around the bombings. Could the fact that it is about a real event, based on real stories, help? Possibly. The question ultimately becomes, how will the network handle this story? Having never read the book, I cannot judge the specific plot intended. What I can say is that, should this series go forward, the message that should come out of it is the one that spread across the country: Boston Strong. Maybe even ending the series (which I hope is truly an event series and does not get dragged out beyond a single season) on this year’s marathon, where an American won for the first time in 31 years.
SHARE:
