EPISODE 2.02
ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE
YOU EVER BEEN
Written by: Tim Minear
Directed by: David Semel
Fear is the Key
The soul and its struggle with evil has been a continuing
preoccupation for ANGEL the series. At the heart of this struggle has been the
great and unresolved paradox of life. The Angelverse starts with the basic
proposition that the human soul knows the difference between right and wrong.
More than that, the possession of a soul means that human beings have a basic
orientation towards good. And yet human beings still commit evil. Why? There is,
of course, no one answer to this question, let alone a simple one. In “Blind
Date”, for example, the writers looked at the way some people make a conscious
choice to do evil for personal gain. In AYNOHYEB they concentrate on the way in
which human weakness can lead to wrongdoing, or rather one human weakness in
particular: fear and especially the fear of those who are different and the fear
of being different.
The Times we Live in
And in this context I have to say that setting the principal
action in the 1950’s was an inspired move. This was the decade of fear and
suspicion. There was fear of Communists and Communism. Right at the beginning of
the episode we see people in the lobby of the Hyperion hotel watching televised
hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Later, the Hotel
manager is reading a copy of the LA Times with a story about a “Soviet Spy
Ring” being revealed. There was also fear of those who belonged to a different
race and the resultant desire to stay away from them. Even in those States where
racial segregation was not enforced by law it was a fact of life, as witnessed
by the family turned away from the hotel simply because of their race. And there
was the fact that homosexuality was underground. It was known, even tolerated to
a degree in some circles. But only on the strict condition that it was kept
secret. In the 1950’s it really was the “love that could not speak its name”.
None of these prejudices were unique to the 1950’s. In fact
they undeniably survive to the present day. But in the 1950’s they were more
visible and more powerful. So this was the ideal backdrop against which we could
understand the fears and of the residents of the hotel. Each of their own fears
was a reflection of the times in which they lived. So, for example when the
writer and the actor were discussing the death of the traveling salesman it wasn’t
long before they each latched on to thing about the other person that really
bothered them:
Writer: "You had more reason to murder him than
anyone else here."
Actor: "What? I didn't even know the man!"
Writer: "That's what you say, but maybe he saw you
with one of your little trysts! Maybe he threatened to tell the studio.
Expose perhaps your little peccadilloes to the press?"
Actor: "Don't you dare use alliteration with me, you
hack! You're just mad because the studio won't take your phone call,
comrade!"
Writer: "Pansy!"
Actor: "Red!
And this general background, where we see fear of the person
who is different from us as a part of life, makes it very easy to understand the
attitude the bellhop had towards Angel. When asked to do something as simple as
give him a bill he reacted with fear:
Bellhop: "Why me? I did it the last time. The guy
gives me the heebie-jeebies. How about instead of this bill I deliver an
eviction notice?"
Manager: "We can not evict residents on the grounds
of the heebie-jeebies. Now, if we did, we'd have to shut down, wouldn't
we?"
Bellhop: "Ever look into his eyes? There's nothing
there."
But Angel wasn’t the only person who was different. There
was also Judy. She was of mixed race but was “passing”. That is to say she
could pass for White. And in that era she could, therefore, expect advantages
denied people of other races. Advantages like a secure job, like being accepted
in White society. But the price for living like that is that you live in fear of
the truth coming out and of loosing all you had. That is what happened to her.
When she was discovered she lost her fiancé and she was not only fired, she was
obviously harassed. That was why she stole:
“I've never stolen anything before in my life. It's
just…God, the things that they called me."
And in the Hyperion she lived in fear of being found by the
Federal authorities or by private investigators hired by her former employers.
Compared with that, the fear of being asked to leave the hotel because she was
of mixed race didn’t even warrant a mention.
And in this fact Judy shows us what a vicious cycle fear can
be. Here was a young woman with everything to live for but whose life was
destroyed by others’ fear of her. As Angel said:
Angel: "Fear makes people do stupid things."
Judy: "It was stupid. And I wish I'd never done
it."
Angel: "I didn't mean you. I meant your former
employers. They were afraid. That's why they fired you."
But Judy’s reaction to his remark shows that she realized
that her treatment had also led her to do something stupid - steal the money.
And the consequences for her of that stupidity were far worse than the harm she
suffered because her employers discovered the truth about her. As she said
herself:
“I can't go to prison. It's just…I can't. Just the
thought of being confined, trapped. It would be like death. No. No. It would
be something worse than death. It'd be …it'd be…like…like being buried
alive."
The fear and insecurity demonstrated by her employers had
driven her to do something desperate and instead of making the situation better
it had simply compounded her own fear and insecurity and almost certainly
confirmed the fear and insecurity of her former employers about “those people”.
This is intended to be a picture of real fear and insecurity
at work, not the demonically inspired variation. But the vicious circle we see
in Judy’s case finds its own reflection in the way that the demon worked in
the hotel. It didn’t create fear or insecurities. It found those in humans.
But the demon magnified their fear and insecurities to the point where they fed
off those of others and that is when they became really dangerous. As the
Thessulac says itself:
“God I love people! Don’t you? They feed me their
worst and I kind of serve it right back to them, and the fear and prejudice
turns to certainty and hate, and I take another bite and …mmmm. What a
beautiful, beautiful dance!”
The response of the Hotel residents to the suicide was, of
course, the dramatic representation of the way this worked. They first of all
accepted that the salesman killed himself. But then the demon whispers to one
old man:
"Maybe this wasn't a suicide. Are you sure you're safe here?
And so the first doubts are aroused on the flimsiest grounds
(the salesman’s request for peanuts) and in the face of all evidence to the
contrary (locked door and gun in hand). Almost immediately the salesman’s
murder was taken as a fact and the search is on for the one responsible. And the
prime candidates were the ones who don’t fit in. And because everyone in this
hotel has something to hide, the insecurity of each fed off one another. The
actor fearing he would be singled out because he was homosexual points the
finger at the Communist and vice versa. The manager raised suspicions about the
actress who asked where she could buy a gun. And most telling of all, is the
bellhop’s response when the manager brings him into the frame. He starts off
by protesting against the paranoia:
Bellhop: "He shot himself, remember?"
But when the Manager asks:
"Did he? Where you there?"
he immediately deflects attention from himself by accusing
the maid:
"It was Consuela! She's the one that found him!"
Eventually we have a mob mentality where anyone who is
different can be picked out as a scapegoat and everyone is so anxious not to be
the scapegoat that they will submerge their conscience, indeed their own
individual identity into the mob.
For me the metaphor of the Thessulac demon works so perfectly
because it does parallel so closely the way that real life fear and insecurity
feed off itself. This makes it such a very effective means of exploring the
issue. But equally effective is the way that the writers, through the metaphor,
look at the harm fear and insecurity can cause.
An Alternative to Fear
When Angel saw and understands how alone and
frightened Judy was, he reached out to her and tried to help her. By now she is
herself a victim of the Thessulac demon. Her fear of prison and her apprehension
of the cops both seem to have been heightened by its whispers. It is noticeable
that at one point she seemed to believe that the cops had already come for her.
This gave Angel the clue as to what was going on and led him to research the
nature of the threat posed by the demon and the way to deal with it. In parallel
he offered to show her a way out of the trap she had found herself in over the
money by hiding it, presumably with an eye to returning it later on.
If he had been successful in this, everyone (except the
Thessulac) would have benefited. There would have been an end to the paranoia.
For Judy in particular there would have been a chance for a fresh start. But it
was not to be. The return of the private detective to the hotel was sufficient
to focus everyone’s attention on Judy and despite the fact that there was no
evidence about her being responsible for the salesman’s death, the mere fact
that she seemed to have something to hide was enough to convict her.
Actor: "We know about you, missy."
Manager: "The name you registered under is a fake!
We have proof!"
Actress: "Who knows what else she's lied about, the little slut!"
Judy: "I didn't mean anything, please, I'm
sorry!"
Old man: "Now you're sorry! I thought you didn't
have anything to be sorry for!"
Actress: "Stop lying!"
So, she did what everyone else had been doing up until then.
She pointed the finger at someone else - Angel. Again there was nothing to
connect him to the salesman’s death but the mere reference to his having some
blood in a bottle in his room and the fact that he had an axe in his hand was
enough to turn the mob on him. And in all of this the bellhop takes on the role
of the cheerleader:
Bellhop: "Ha..ha, we got you now! Come on! String
him up! String him up! Good. Push him. Come on! Push him out! Push him out!
Yeah! Swing, you freak! Yea, that's right, you had that coming, ha..ha..ha!"
Manager: "Oh, my lord. What have we done?"
Bellhop: "What? What's wrong? I don't get it. Come
on!
He was of course the one who was most fearful of Angel from
the very beginning. The very fact that he, once the person who was seemingly the
least vulnerable to paranoia, is now the one most excited by Angel’s “death”
speaks volumes about the effect that a person’s fears and insecurities can
have.
But here we see the most delicious irony. Judy had a choice.
There were risks for her in putting her trust in Angel. She was certainly in a
dangerous position but who knows what might have happened if she has refused to
give into her fear of the mob. She may well have found her salvation in Angel.
But she didn’t. She gave into her fears and, to save herself, set the mob on
him. But by doing so she had more effectively doomed herself. Even as a thief
her fears had not consumed her. She still had hope, hope of forgiveness, hope of
avoiding jail, hope of a new life.
Judy: "Hey, do you think that if…if somehow the
money ended up on the banks doorstep, and they saw that I didn't spend any
of it, you think they'd call off that detective? Maybe I could be free of
this whole thing."
Angel: "Maybe."
Judy: "I mean, there is such a thing as forgiveness,
right?"
And that hope was fed by Angel. Here was someone who knew her
worst secrets, her “tainted” blood and the fact she was a thief. And still
he was willing to help her. But she betrayed him. In doing so she had solved the
immediate threat to her but her hope of forgiveness for the theft and of living
a normal life had died when he was lynched. All that was left was her fear; a
fear now magnified by her realization that she had (as she thought) been
responsible for the death of the person who could have helped her. As the demon
said:
“You reached her, buddy! Restored her faith in people.
Without you she would have been just another appetizer. But you plumped her
up good! Now, she's a meal that's gonna last me a lifetime!”
And irony of ironies, it was her fear of prison that led her
to sell Angel out. There is no real suggestion that she would have been lynched.
Yet all her efforts to save herself ended in condemning herself to a form of
imprisonment more severe than any she would have known had she been convicted of
theft. She was unable to leave that one small room at all, for 48 years. It is
no wonder that at the end her one thought was to go out.
Equally poignant was the fate of the bellhop. This is perhaps
another cautionary tale about scapegoating. One is just never enough. Without
Angel’s body who were the residents of the hotel going to blame for the
salesman’s murder? The Thessulac demon had its meal and was going to protect
it so Judy was off the list of suspects. The bellhop was the person who had put
the body in the meat locker so the other residents probably figured he was the
obvious candidate to point the finger of suspicion at just in case someone else
started looking at their secrets.
So, what we have here is in effect a little morality tale.
And it is none the worse for that. I have no great illusions about the ability
of a television drama lasting less than an hour to define the problems of the
world, let alone solve them. But what it can do is to hold up a mirror to
society. In this mirror we can see a very recognizable truth about human beings
and the way they react. The proof of this lies in the title of the episode. I
have already referred to the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American
activities seen televised at the beginning. The question asked repeatedly by
that Committee of witnesses who appeared before it was “Are you now, or have
you ever been, a member of the Communist party”. But what the Committee was
really interested in was getting those witnesses who had been party members to
identify others, especially those not yet known to it. And for those whose
livelihood depended on the motion picture industry in particular, the pressure
to conform, to join the ranks of the accusers at the expense of accusing others
(who were entirely innocent of any “subversive activity”) was immense.
Blacklisting and even jail was the threat held over them. And, out of fear of
themselves being victimized for once having been “different” (i.e. members
of the Communist Party) turned “stool pigeon” as a way of saving themselves,
to their later regret and shame. And there was another even more unpleasant
aspect to this. Jews were very prominent members of the left wing in American
society at that time. A subtext (often not even a subtext) to the activities of
the Committee was the identification of these prominent Jews as enemies of the
United States because of their involvement with “foreign” and “un-American”
causes. And the pressure on many fellow Jews to “prove” their credentials as
American by leading the denunciations was intense. Nobody won this struggle for
the soul of a society. Everybody lost. But those who abandoned their principles
to save themselves lost most of all.
But what pleases me most about this is that not only do the
writers show us a vivid and truthful picture of human society at its worst; they
also restate their faith that it need not be like this. We are not being shown
that human beings are evil or malicious by nature. Rather they are weak. In the
way that Judy first put her trust in Angel there is undeniably a degree of
optimism in the potential for human beings to overcome their fears. And I think
this episode is all the better for that. Being realistic about human nature is
one thing. Being relentlessly negative is another. And I would also say that
this would have been out of keeping with the general thrust of ANGEL as a series
which, in spite of the darkness that permeates it and in spite of its
preoccupation with evil, is essentially a hopeful series. It is after all
essentially about redemption.
The Role Angel Played
I have been continually impressed by the intelligence,
consistency and coherence with which our eponymous hero has been characterized
on ANGEL. But in this episode the writers set themselves a task of unusual
difficulty. And I am bound to say that the way they pulled it off was little
short of a triumph. The problem was not that the Angel we saw in “Becoming I”
was living in the gutter. That represented the material circumstances in which
he was living at one moment in time. There was nothing necessarily permanent
about that. Much more difficult was to ensure in AYNOHYEB we see a character
that was a credible predecessor that the character of Angel as it developed
through three years in Sunnydale and one year in LA. This was someone who went
from near complete social isolation to someone who was still essentially a
loner. This was a person whose first steps in fighting evil were only undertaken
to help the girl he loved and even then were faltering. Can we believe in the
Angel of LA 1952 as the earlier manifestation of such a person?
The answer to that is a fairly unqualified “yes”. The
Angel we see in the Hyperion may not be physically separated from humankind but
he is certainly alone among them. He waits until the bellhop has gone before
picking up his bill. When Judy invades his space, he is rude, even aggressive.
The only thing that saved her from being flung out was the intervention of the
private investigator. You could see Angel take out on him the frustration he
felt at the unwarranted interruption and when he got back to his room he simply
slammed the door shut in Judy’s face. Later when she tries to strike up a
conversation with him at the observatory he is uncommunicative to say the least.
Most strikingly of all when he sees the salesman being tormented by the demon in
the corridor he stares but says and does nothing. And when he hears the salesman
actually commit suicide he is completely disinterested. The Angel stranded in
the gutter in Manhattan 1996 was no more alone than this Angel.
So, why did he help Judy? The answer is that he identified
with her. I find it easy to believe that she would confide in him. However
unwillingly he had helped her with the private investigator and she was probably
the only one with whom she had had a social conversation while she was in LA.
She had a oppressive secret and didn’t know what to do. The most natural thing
in the world would be to unburden herself to the one creature she felt she had
any hope of trusting. For his part it was the idea that she was neither one
thing nor the other that engaged his attention. As he said of himself in “Angel”
he could walk like a man but he wasn’t one. And because of that he felt less
than either man or vampire. She for her part felt the same way about herself:
Judy: “I'm not what I say I am. I've been passing since
I was 15 years old."
Angel: "Passing?"
Judy nods: "For white. My mother was colored, my
father - I didn't even know him! My blood isn't pure. It's tainted."
Angel: "It's just blood, Judy. It-it's all just
blood."
Judy: "Nobody believes that! Not even my mother's
family. I'm not one thing or the other. I'm nothing."
Angel: "I know what that's like."
It was as if trying to give her hope was a way of convincing
himself that he too was more than nothing and that he too had a place in the
world. And because of this he went out on a limb for her in trying to destroy
the demon. The conversation with the bookstore owner made it pretty clear just
how much of a risk this was going to be:
"Well, first you got to make it fat - corporeal. But
that only happens after it's had a nice big feed or if you raise it, but
that's tricky and dangerous."
And once it was made corporeal the only thing that Angel had
to deal with it was an axe and the bookstore owner was less than confident about
the chances of that killing it. The best he could offer was that “it might”
do so.
And for his pains he was, quite literally, thrown to the mob
by the very person he had set out to help. It is no wonder that he felt
embittered. It is an open question whether the Thessulac that appeared to him
after the hanging was feeding his own fears of humans. I tend to think not. It
seems only to have operated from inside the mind and introducing itself to Angel
in that way would surely have undermined its efforts. It seems to me rather that
when he said to Angel:
There is an entire hotel here just full of tortured souls
that could really use your help. What do you say?",
he was gloating. He was saying that all Angel’s efforts to
help Judy were doomed to failure because of human fear. The only thing Angel had
done was to make her a tastier meal. The same would have been true of anyone
else he tried to help. He was saying that because of their fears and
insecurities human beings could not be rescued from him. They were, in that
sense, irredeemable.
And Angel, I think, agreed. When he said “Take them all”
there was an unmistakable sense of disgust; a refusal to forgive. And it is this
last part which for me constitutes a wonderful insight into the character at
this stage in his life. Contrast his attitude after the lynching with his last
meeting with Judy in LA2000. There he refused to blame her for the giving him to
the mob.
Judy: "They killed you - because of me. I killed you."
Angel: "No. No. No."
And when she asks for his forgiveness he simply says “Of
course”. The gentleness and compassion is due, I think, to more than the fact
that this is now a frail old woman or to the fact that time has dulled any
resentment. The key sentences in the meeting are:
Judy: "It's you."
Angel: "Yeah, Judy. It's me."
Judy: "You look the same."
Angel: "I'm not."
When he first met Judy in 1952 Angel did not believe in
concepts such as forgiveness or redemption. He was convinced of his own
worthlessness and that he was only on earth to suffer. Everything about his
behavior in and around the Hyperion suggested how deeply mired he was in
hopelessness. It was Judy who was the optimistic one, who believed in
forgiveness. Even as he identified with her and tried to help her Angel could
not go that far. When the bookstore owner said he didn’t get why Angel wanted
to help a human his reply was:
"To be honest, I'm not sure I do either.
What happened afterwards confirmed his former view. For him
there is no forgiveness, no redemption. We reap what we sow. It is now pointless
to revisit how this attitude changed, especially since he came to LA in 1999.
Suffice to say that this creature, who now for the first time hopes for his own
forgiveness and redemption, willingly offers it to others and must look back
with despair on the occasion when he refused it.
This is why the secrecy from Cordelia and Wesley. Cordelia
was right, in principle if not in detail. Their search was in connection with
something that Angel would now regard as “screwing up”. It was, however, a
different kind of screwing up to the one she had in mind.
What I love most is that here we have far more than just a
picture of Angel almost fifty years ago that is consistent with his character
development since. It is a yardstick by which to judge the distance he has
traveled. And the distance measured is not the obvious one - how far he has
succeeded in connecting with humanity. It is the far more important one of how
far he has come in his search for redemption and forgiveness. Comparing his
mindset now with that in LA 1952 we can see with the greatest clarity the extent
of the progress made not in terms of tilting a balance but in terms of a belief
that what he is doing is the right thing. And here too the writers seem to be
striking the balance in favor of optimism and that pleases me.
The Plot
I have often commented on the pace with which episodes of
Angel move. Typically a problem is identified rapidly and the Fang Gang move to
deal with it in an orderly and structured fashion with a minimum of
distractions. This episode, however, moves at a much more leisurely pace. For
stretches almost nothing seems to happen, especially at the beginning. But that
simply goes to prove that, properly written, slow pacing is not necessarily a
fault.
What we are in effect dealing with is a 50 year old mystery.
It is clear from the start that Angel knows about but he is keeping the
knowledge to himself. And the slow deliberate pace at which the this mystery is
unveiled doesn’t bore us but rather draws us in deeper and deeper because it
is so well conceived and crafted that we want to know more.
First of all we can infer that it is a very personal and
painful mystery or Angel would have been more forthcoming about it. And this
idea that it is important is sharpened by the parallel sequences of Angel going
through the deserted hotel in LA 2000 and allowing us to see the events in 1952
connected to that place, almost in the way he is remembering them at that point.
This creates a sense of being taken on a very personal journey. Secondly the
structure itself creates questions. There are, in fact, two parallel yet
seemingly unconnected storylines going on at the same time. The first consists
of a series of small, initially insignificant supernatural events which begin
when we seen the salesman being whispered to in the hall and culminate in his
suicide. Angel is not remotely interested in these, even when the salesman kills
himself. At the same time he is, however, slowly but inexorably drawn into Judy’s
affairs: the initial meeting in his room, the talk at the observatory (was she
following him?) and finally the occasion in her room when she admitted the truth
about herself. Is there a relationship between the different storylines? If so
what is it? The little pieces of information that we do find out only deepen the
mystery because at first they don’t fit together. The supernatural involvement
in the salesman’s death is clear, not only because we saw it but because there
have been three other suicides in the previous three months. Yet from Wesley and
Cordelia we learn the bellhop was executed for his murder. Why?
Also helping to sustain interest is the very effectively
created rising level of tension over the salesman’s death. The fact that it is
a suicide is initially accepted, then doubted and finally it is accepted he was
murdered. And at each stage the degree of suspicion is heightened and the search
for scapegoats goes wider and wider. This helps create the sense of an impending
crisis but at this stage we are not sure just what that crisis will be.
Then things do start to come together. The paranoia about the
supposed murder is fed by the same whispers the salesman himself heard. Judy too
begins to hear whispers. We begin to suspect the supernatural is the link
between the different elements of the story, although even now we are unsure of
its precise nature. But with impeccable timing once the right moment has arrived
the answer is given to us directly and clearly. It is:
“A Thesullac paranoia demon. Whispers to its victims,
feeds on their innate insecurities.”
Significantly we see Angel give this information to Wesley
and Cordelia in LA2000 and immediately find out he had made the same discovery
in 1952. This changes the character of the mystery. We know the nature of the
threat. We also know that Angel did not deal with it in 1952 (because it is
still there). This reinforces the idea that something went terribly wrong. But
the question then is what.
Having already found out about Judy’s disappearance our
assumption is that she died because Angel failed to rescue her. But yet again
ANGEL has a very powerful twist ending for us which makes perfect sense of all
that had gone before but came as a complete surprise and had enormous shock
value to boot. And that shock value was due not so much to the graphic hanging
scene (which was terrifically well done) but to the realism of the crowd
reactions both before and afterwards. The outbreak of frenzied, hatred where
instinct takes over and rational thinking vanished followed by a sheepish “what
have we done” when the blood lust disappears. It all rings horribly true and,
demonic influence or not, shows us what human beings really are capable of.
But fortunately things are not left on that note. I have
already talked about the way this episode demonstrates that humans need not
always be a victim of their fears. This proposition has its dramatic realization
in the counterpoint between the circumstances in which the Thessulac is made
corporeal in 1952 and 2000. In the first he is triumphant and Angel is the
embittered loser who walks away in disgust at human beings. In the second the
demon is brought forth against its will and destroyed by an Angel who is now
psychologically unrecognizable from the creature who confronted the demon in
1952. And the sense of hope created by this counterpoint is, as I have already
said, reinforced by that wonderful scene between Angel and the now dying Judy.
It was the perfect ending.
Overview
9/10: I will leave to others the task of identifying the 1950’s
film noir references. For me the strengths of this episode are simple. First of
all it took a serious subject, how fear and insecurity brings suffering in their
wake. It developed this idea through a very intelligent use of metaphor which
seemed to me to be a pretty close parallel to the way in which fear and
insecurity cause harm in the real world. But it also tried to show that this was
not inevitable and that human beings were capable of better. And central to the
exposition of these ideas was the character of Angel. What was impressive here
was the way that the depiction of him in 1952 not only respected his later
character development but was actually used to show the nature and scale of that
development. And we the viewers are taken along in our exploration of these
ideas by a dark, brooding story. The almost claustrophobic atmosphere hangs
heavily over everything in the hotel, giving an almost physical reality to the
developing sense of paranoia. This adds immensely to a plot which at the start
holds our attention as a mystery tale but then changes and develops into a taut
thriller complete with a surprise ending.