Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars

by Rob Thomas

  Things went downhill from there. It turned out that the unfortunate Wallace was taped to the flagpole by members of a Latino motorcycle gang for calling the cops when gang members stole beers from the convenience store where Wallace worked. This same gang menacingly surrounded Veronica while she sat on surveillance duty outside the Camelot motel trying to catch Jake Kane cheating on his wife. When Veronica offered to get the bikers off in court for robbing the convenience store in exchange for leaving Wallace alone for one week, Weevil agreed, but asked: "Why do you care so much for that skinny Negro? Things I heard about you, he must really lay the pipe right" ("Pilot," 1-1). "Negro"? "Lay the pipe right"? A racist, misogynistic, Latino motorcycle gang?

  And it just kept getting worse. Rape and murder also appeared to be the norm in Neptune. Lilly Kane, Veronica's best friend and Logan's girlfriend, was murdered the previous year, resulting indirectly in the loss of Keith Mars's position as town sheriff and Veronica's loss of status among the 09ers after Keith accused Lilly's father of the crime. In the aftermath of the murder, as Veronica attempted to rebuild her life and re-assert her sense of self, she was drugged and raped at a party hosted by former friends. Rape, sadly, is not a big deal in Neptune, as evidenced by the sheriff's unwillingness to investigate; Veronica herself reduced the assault to a question of virginity and virtue: "Quite a reputation I've got, huh? You wanna know how I lost my virginity? Yeah, so do I" ("Pilot").

  Let's recap: on my first date with Veronica Mars, I was treated to a modern-day lynching of a young Black man, a roving gang of misogynistic Latino thugs, and a sexual assault that was laughed off by the local sheriff and seemingly shrugged off by the victim. Neptune was a different world from my Sunnydale, one that didn't seem like a place where I'd want to hang out. And yet, I wanted more. Maybe it was Veronica's unapologetic style, the in-your-face trash talk that cut through the crap and spared no feelings-friends, foes, or otherwise. Or maybe it was the moral doppelgangers that peppered the first episode; they haunted me like Lilly Kane long after the credits rolled. Sure, Veronica was threatened by the PCHers in the middle of the night, but it was a gang of 09ers who vandalized her car in broad daylight-a gang that was driven off by the menacing PCHers. In another moral double take, the same surveillance tape that almost sealed the PCHers' fate in court and Wallace's fate on the flagpole also ended up sealing Wallace's position of power over the PCHers. Symbolically, just as PCHers held him over classmates' heads by tape, Wallace held a tape over their heads. Wow

  I began to suspect that what I thought was a depiction of the same old racial stereotypes-literally Black and White-was really gray all over, and my second date with Veronica confirmed my suspicions. In "Credit Where Credit's Due" (1-2), I learned that, in Neptune, what I thought was racism is really in-your-face-ism, that the villains are often victims, and that redemption is often elusive and frequently fleeting. I began to see how they make the gray in Neptune.

  Like children mixing black and white crayons to make gray, Blackness is layered over Whiteness to create a narrative gray zone in Veronica Mars. Neptune, the town without a middle class, is the place where 09ers and PCHers alike wear Blackness by performing it.

  "Credit Where Credit's Due" begins with a delicious visual and symbolic inversion that shows the fluidity of race and language in Neptune, as both are alternately borrowed and performed by Blacks, Whites, and Latinos alike. In a Neptune High hallway, Veronica decoded 09er signs in a party flier for Wallace, the outsider, letting him know that neither was welcome at the party. The very next scene featured Troy, an 09er in economics class but an outsider socially, engaging in an exchange with Duncan in which they performed a self-mocking version of Black vernacular before joining the party where they were welcome:

  TROY: Whaddaya say, dawg? You ready to get this party started? You ready to burn this mutha down? Upjump ... the boogie?

  DUNCAN: My plan, and I haven't worked this out entirely yet, so bear with me, was to raise da roof.

  TROY: See? That is so you, man, mister old school.

  DUNCAN: Me, old school? You're the one who wanted to get jiggy with it.

  The vernacular appropriation continued at the party in a Neptune version of "playing the dozens" when the 09ers engaged the PCHers in a beach battle of slurs using rhetorical strategies borrowed from this African-American oral tradition:

  LOGAN:... She is a good little worker, your grandma ... yeah, spic and span.

  CHARDO: Grandma says you go through a box of tissue a day-your room alone.

  LOGAN: What can I say? She's a very sexy lady.

  Within the Black community, playing the dozens serves both a performative and a displacement function, as men seek to prove their verbal prowess before an audience while diffusing aggression without resorting to violence. In Neptune, however, when this strategy is performed by Whites and Latinos, they metaphorically cloak themselves in Blackness and contribute further to the visual and narrative gray zone of Neptune.

  I also saw one week's villain revealed as the next week's victim, as Weevil Navarro willingly confessed to stealing credit cards from the Echolls family to protect his grandmother, the Echolls' housekeeper, who was accused of the crime. The roots of Weevil's mask of bravado became evident when I saw his grandmother willing to let Weevil serve time for what was, in reality, his cousin Chardo's crime. When Veronica confronted Leticia Navarro about Chardo's guilt, Mrs. Navarro openly admitted to letting Weevil do Chardo's time because, at seventeen, Weevil would only have to serve four months in a juvenile facility; eighteen-year-old Chardo would have had to serve hard time in an adult prison. Leticia's confidence in her decision quickly disappeared, however, when she learned from Veronica that Chardo used the credit cards to impress Caitlin Ford, a "spoiled, rich, White girl" (emphasis Veronica's) who was dating Logan Echolls.

  Weevil's redemption was a difficult one, but it also affirmed Veronica's location in the gray zone. As Veronica fought to clear Weevil, Wallace reminded her that Weevil had taped him naked to the school's flagpole and that she should have been trying to prove Weevil's guilt. Even Weevil was less than enthusiastic about Veronica's investigation on his behalf, challenging Veronica to question her assumptions about him (the same way she so often forces others to question their assumptions about her) by reminding her of her own fluid position in their world: "You think you're this big outsider, but you're still one of them, you think like one of them" ("Credit Where Credit's Due"). With a family willing to let him serve time for a crime he didn't commit-a sentence he willingly served out of loyalty to a disloyal grandmother-Weevil evolved from a stereotypical villain into a complex man.

  Weevil's redemption was short-lived, however. At the episode's end, he hunted down and found Chardo at Caitlin Ford's home. After the relationship between Chardo and Caitlin was finally revealed, Logan and the 09er boys showed up at Caitlin's to attack Chardo when he arrived to carry Caitlin away. The attack, eerily similar to a scene from the film American History X, had the 09ers poised to stomp Chardo's head against the curb before his cousin Weevil and the PCHers showed up to rescue him and ride off into the sunset. But Chardo's salvation was also short-lived, as the PCHers took him to the beach to beat him out of the gang. The next day, Caitlin faced her own beat-out, 09er style, when she was frozen out of prime lunchtime real estate by former friends who denied her access to their tables. Neptune, it seemed, was a battleground for a race-class-gender war that had no clear villains or victors and no clear path to redemption.

  Emu on Now, Sugar, Bring U On, Bring U On...

  Villains in Neptune, we frequently learn, usually occupy the gray zone as a result of their past victimization. Logan's insensitivity to others, from his mocking of Veronica's absent mother to his staged fights between homeless men, becomes, if not excusable, then at least rational when considered in reference to the crimes of his abusive and murderous father. Cassidy's reprehensible rape of Veronica and murders of his classmates on the bus are clearly attributable to his sexual abuse
by Woody Goodman. Even the not-so-villainous Neptuners straddle the line between black and white. Sweet, virtuous Meg became petty and vindictive toward Veronica after Duncan broke up with her; we learn later that her change stemmed from her unwanted pregnancy and her fear of her abusive father's response to it. And ironically, Meg's pettiness saved Veronica's life when she let the school bus pull off from the gas station without Veronica on board. Jackie Cook's spitefulness masked her insecurity about her illegitimacy and working-class background.

  These Neptune villains' "black" deeds, when viewed against their obvious loss of innocence and sense of self, make it impossible to vilify them. It is equally difficult to locate the victors in Neptune. Aaron Echolls appeared to get away with Lilly's murder, only to be killed by Clarence Wiedman on Duncan Kane's orders. Veronica appeared to achieve her dream of reuniting her family, only to lose both Lianne, to alcoholism again, and the check that should have been her college money. Weevil Navarro survived his loss of status among the PCH gang members and managed to pass algebra in order to keep the promise he made to his grandmother to graduate, only to be arrested before receiving his diploma. Like Neptune's villains, its victors' deeds are shaded in gray, making it impossible to thoroughly enjoy their often short-lived victories.

  Lasting redemption seems nearly impossible for young people in Neptune, because the real monsters-the people who keep things nice and gray-appear to be their parents. The people who actually created the class and power distinctions that split Neptune's youths along their current class, gender, and race lines are the same people whose abuse and adultery keep Neptune's youths apart; parental influence and authority undermine their children's better impulses. Logan and Weevil in particular seem perpetually on the brink of becoming better people than their parents. They bonded together during detention to pay back the teacher who sentenced them by putting his car on the school's flagpole. When the prank backfired and Weevil got kicked out of school, Logan was taken aback: "I didn't know they expelled people at our school." "Not our people," Duncan responded. Logan went to the vice principal to get Weevil back in school by confessing that he helped Weevil in the prank-while dangling his dad's famous boots, which the vice principal had wanted for the school charity auction, before the vice principal as an unspoken bribe ("The Girl Next Door," 1-7). This alliance, seemingly temporary, remained a tenuous bond between the two of them as they were both alternately accused and exonerated of several murders in Neptune. And it is flexible alliances like this one, alliances which hold the potential for redemption that keep me coming back.

  Just Remember Me Man...

  Nothing is ever clear in Neptune and nothing is ever final; Veronica and friends live in the gray zone, like the rest of us. Sure, I still escape the gray by getting my slay on in Sunnydale, but Neptune is where I go to deal with the real. There are no monsters for me to hide behind; everyone has inner demons in Neptune, demons that come from real pain and that lash out in real violence with very real consequences. It certainly isn't a place for the faint of heart and it certainly isn't a place to hide from the real world. It's a place to learn how to confront it. And it's just the place I want to be.

  LYNNE EDWARDS, Ph.D., is associate professor of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College in Colleg- eville, PA. She is the author of several essays about popular culture including, "Slaying in Black and White: Kendra as Tragic Mulatta in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and "Victims, Villains, and Vixens: Teen girls and Internet Crime" in Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity (Peter Lang, 2005). Lynne currently is writing The Other Sunnydale: Representations of Blackness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Lexington Books, exp. 2006).

  During season one, we did a mall tour in which we had the cast appear in several shopping malls across the country. I attended the first one in Seattle, and we were shocked that, despite our paltry ratings, there was a line stretching the length of the mall. It took people a couple hours to get through the line. I mention this only because it was the backdrop for a conversation I had with a mother who had brought her fourteen-year-old daughter to the signing. She mentioned to me that she loved the show, but that our portrayal of the minority characters in the show made her uncomfortable.

  "Why are they the criminals?" she asked.

  Now, while the PCHers were mostly (but not exclusively) Latino, and they certainly steal cars, I hadn't thought we had portrayed our minority characters in any negative light.

  Well, that's not quite true.

  I didn't think I had portrayed them any more negatively than our rich White kids. Certainly, Wallace is the moral core of the show. His ethical backbone is certainly stronger than Veronica's.

  And I never considered stealing cars any worse than organizing bum fights, or crossing the border for drugs, or setting fire to the community pool. Noir thrives in a world of moral ambiguity and, outside of Wallace, I don't think anyone is clean. Even Mac takes advantage of her classmates for a profit.

  The Noir of Neptune

  N THE VERY first episode of Veronica Mars, Veronica, our hard-boiled private eye, sits alone in an outdoor high school cafeteria-the kind that only seem to exist in the Californiacolored worlds of Beverly Hills, 90210 and The O.C., where it never rains during lunch and where there's never gum stuck under the cafeteria tables. Veronica is eyeing a group of smug, wellcoiffed teenagers-her former clique, we soon find out-enjoying their freshly delivered pizzas. As she stabs at her cafeteria-prepared meatloaf with a plastic fork, Veronica explains, in her characteristic monotone, "This is my school. If you go here either your parents are millionaires or your parents work for millionaires. Neptune, California: a town without a middle class" ("Pilot," 1-1).

  With these words Veronica Mars established the central role that location, with its implicit ties to class and caste, would play in the series. And it is this incessant focus on location, borders, and who lives in what zip code that places the series so firmly within the long, rich tradition of the film noir.

  Of course, when we think of the principal settings used in the classic film noir, images of the city at night, with its low-rent apartments, shadowy alleys, blinking neon signs, and seedy bars, are summoned up. We recall the image of a doomed Frank Bigelow racing through the dusky streets of Los Angeles to inform the police of a murderhis own-in the opening scene of D.O.A. (1950) or of Gilda singing "Put the Blame on Mame" on a smoky stage in a Buenos Aires casino in Gilda (1946). The words film noir call to mind unshaven private dicks like Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and Mike Hammer, who are only able to find their key clues after the sun goes down and only in the most unsavory of locales. Even the name film noir-implies that the settings will be "black," both literally and metaphorically.

  However, these iconic images allow us to forget that in many films noir, it is not the dark, rain-soaked city, but the sunny, California suburb, with its manicured lawns, idyllic homes, and crystal blue swimming pools, that serve as the backdrop for the film's twisted plots. In Double Indemnity (1944), for example, Walter Neff and his platinum-blonde femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson, hatch their murder plans amidst row upon row of identical canned goods in a local supermarket, making a seemingly innocuous location feel as nefarious as any dingy bordello. And one of the first images of Sunset Boulevard (1950) reveals a glorious Los Angeles mansion with trimmed hedges and stucco walls; the only thing awry is the presence of our narrator, Joe Gillis, floating facedown in the mansion's swimming pool. From beyond his watery grave Joe describes himself in third person: "The poor dope! He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool-only the price turned out to be a little high." What is threatening in these two films is not the back-alley watering hole and the square-jawed thug, but rather the machinelike conformity of the suburban supermarket and the crumbling mansion of the washedup actress. Crime is found not in the stench of poverty but in the perfume of wealth. Indeed, Walter is i
ntoxicated by the sickly sweet scent of Phyllis's honeysuckle perfume, which he claims smells just like "murder."

  In such films lumieres the criminals are not hiding in back rooms, shadowed by fedoras or too much cheap make-up; instead they stand proudly in the public eye, wearing tasteful, tailored suits and pastelcolored sweater sets. This vilification of suburban living and the upper middle class accoutrement makes sense in the context of postwar America, when the concept of the man in the gray flannel suit driv ing to his nine-to-five job replaced a more romantic vision of America as agrarian, as a country built on the sweat of good, old-fashioned manual labor. Indeed, the seeming homogenization of American society was almost more frightening than the "big city," and the affluent, not the destitute, generated distrust in the popular imagination, making suburban living a subject ripe for exploitation in the 1940s and 1950s.

  Today the conceit of the sinister, upper middle class suburb is a familiar one in both film (Blue Velvet, 1986) and on television (Desperate Housewives), and Veronica Mars banks on this familiarity. Although the series does contain its fair share of villains from the "wrong side of the tracks," like the violent Fitzpatrick clan or the treacherous Thumper, it reserves its most stunning transgressions for those characters with the largest bank accounts living within the wealthiest of zip codes. And in this series, there is only one zip code that matters: 90909.