by Rob Thomas
Netune, 90909
WEEVIL: Hey, let me ask you something. Have I ever asked you if I could come play through at Torrey Pines? Have you ever run into me surfing down at Cape Crescent? Bro? Huh? Have you ever even once come home to find us throwing a kegger in your backyard? No? Then what the hell do you think you are doing on our beach? ("Credit Where Credit's Due," 1-2)
A running theme throughout Veronica Mars is that location, synonymous with class, is destiny. In "The Girl Next Door" (1-7), Eli "Weevil" Navarro complained to Logan Echolls, "All that matters [in this school] is who your parents are and the zip code your mom shot you out in," after they were both issued detention for very different infractions-Logan publicly humiliated the teacher, while Weevil merely chuckled at the joke. The difference is that students like Logan can bribe teachers by calling upon their parents' wealth and influence, and students like Weevil are usually the first to be suspected of any crime committed on school grounds precisely because of who their parents are.
As a result of this seeming distance between characters from different zip codes, "turf" battles frequently ensue, usually pitting the 09ers (led by Logan) against the PCH bike gang (led by Weevil). In season two, for example, Logan and some friends set fire to a community pool at the height of the summer heat wave, knowing full well that such a move would most impact the PCHers and their families, who are too poor to afford pools in their backyards (unlike the 09ers). That such battles have a hint of the cliche to them is not lost on the show's writers (who revel, like all good noir scribes, in overwrought narration and melodramatic confrontations). In the pilot episode, Veronica's "boy Friday," Wallace Fennel, described a physical showdown between Logan and Weevil as something out of The Outsiders, to which Veronica quipped, "Be cool, Soda Pop" ("Pilot," 1-1).
Location is so important in this series that a major plotline of season two revolves around Mayor Woody Goodman's plans to incorporate the town of Neptune. Though Goodman reasoned that his plan would make for a "cleaner, safer" Neptune, on par with other chic California vacation spots like Carmel, it was more likely motivated by his desire to price the lower classes out of Neptune. When incorporation was later voted down, Keith Mars astutely noted, "What's a yacht without barnacles?" ("Look Who's Stalking," 2-20).
Keith's comment highlights the significant, symbiotic relationship between the classes of Neptune. The "barnacles" on Neptune's perimeters, like south Neptune (where much of the Mexican population resides), the River Stix (the watering hole that caters to the likes of the Fitzpatricks), or the ubiquitous Camelot Motel, are necessary in that they provide 09ers with a place to conduct their unsavory business in order to avoid sullying their own pristine zip code. The very first image of the series, for example, is of the Camelot Motel, where the pillars of the Neptune community, like Jake Kane, go to have their affairs, where presumably disgruntled students who are planning to blow up Neptune High School supposedly rendezvous, and where Woody Goodman (purposefully) created a public scandal by appearing to bed an intoxicated campaign staffer.
Although the 09ers try to distance themselves from their crimes by limiting their criminal acts to Neptune's seamier edges, try as they might, they can't help but track mud into their own homes. In fact, the deviant acts committed on Neptune's outskirts are relatively minor-the threat to blow up the school even turned out to be a hoaxin comparison with the atrocities committed within Neptune, making Neptune itself the site of murder and torture. For instance, the murder of Lilly Kane, the event that forever changed the course of Veronica's existence and the mystery driving season one, was not committed in some back alley or dingy hotel room, but on the "Kane estate," beside the family's designer pool.
It is also significant that this crime was perpetrated by Neptune's own beloved action hero, Aaron Echolls. Aaron, a man who regularly had legions of devoted fans posted by the iron gates of his magnificent home, not only slept with his underage son's underage ex-girlfriend and murdered her when she threatened to expose their relationship, he also attempted to kill Veronica and her father when they finally discovered the truth. Being charged with statutory rape and murder, however, seemed to help, rather than hurt, Aaron's Q-rating, as evidenced by the Tinseltown Diaries episode that appeared shortly after his arrest. Not surprisingly, Aaron's celebrity and zip code were impressive enough to get him cleared of all charges, much to Veronica's chagrin. As in any good film noir, official society, represented by the courts, due process, and popular opinion, ultimately failed to produce any real justice.
Likewise, in "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" (2-7) we discover that the wealthy, God-fearing Manning family kept their youngest daughter Grace locked in a closet and scribbling penances in composition notebooks as punishment for various minor transgressions. Despite the overwhelming evidence against them, the Mannings were never charged with child abuse. And when Veronica reported that she was raped by an 09er during one of Shelly Pomroy's big parties, Sheriff Lamb assumed she was lying, taking the side of Neptune's elite instead: "Is there anyone in particular you'd like me to arrest, or should I just round up the sons of the most important families in town?" ("Pilot," 1-1). In all three cases it appears to be impossible to accuse 09ers of any wrongdoing, no matter how strong the evidence is against them.
This emphasis on zip codes, on location, affects not only the social hierarchy of Neptune students, it also affects their location in the school, or at least the classes they take. In "Return of the Kane" (16), for example, an episode that cleverly highlighted how the social politics and caste systems of Neptune High School are a carbon copy of those found in Neptune proper, Wanda Varner, a non-09er, faced off against Duncan Kane, 09er par excellence, in the race for student council president. Wanda ran on a simple platform-she planned to abolish the "Pirate points" system that awarded students with certain privileges, such as having their lunches delivered to the school, for participating in extracurricular activities. The system was elitist, however, due to the fact that the only activities that counted towards Pirate points were varsity sports and student council-that is, activities dominated by 09ers.
Since the majority of Neptune High students supported Wanda's bid for the presidency, Madison Sinclair, an 09er and one of Veronica's primary nemeses, took it upon herself to rig the voting. In a nod to the Miami-Dade County election hijinks of 2000 or perhaps to the double-dealings of Tracy Flick in the black comedy Election (1999), Madison tampered with the voting directions in the classrooms most likely to carry Wanda supporters-band, auto shop, and art, where the students favor black clothing and tattoos over polo shirts and relaxed-fit khakis. The episode (somewhat problematically) implies that these are the activities (and clothing styles) of the school's underclass, that sports and student council are reserved for only the wealthiest of students. The 09er classes, of course, received the correct voting instructions, ensuring Duncan's victory. Thus, even Neptune High School is zoned by social class, and this zoning is, more often than not, the source of the show's weekly mysteries.
Of course, Veronica, as the noir hero, is granted access to all parts of Neptune, but only with the caveat that she will never be fully accepted by either the 09ers or their economically challenged peers. When, for example, she went to Weevil's home to convince him to turn his duplicitous cousin, Chardo, in to the police ("Credit Where Credit's Due," 1-2), Weevil accused her of being an 09er: "You think you're this big outsider, but, push comes to shove, you're still one of them. You still think like one of them," and then promptly dismissed her from his yard. And as we learned from countless voiceovers and flashback sequences, such as her ill-fated decision to attend Shelly Pomroy's big party after her father's public fall from grace, Veronica is not welcome on 09er turf either. Just as Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are roughed up by both the thug and the policeman, Veronica has sacrificed the acceptance of her peers, on both sides of the tracks, in order to be a lone wolf pursuing the truth.
Meaiw
VERONICA: Did you meet anyone odd or were you fol
lowed? Did you see any suspicious activity?
TROY: How about all of the above? Have you ever been to Tijuana? ("You Think You Know Somebody," 1-5)
In the film noir there are locations that unambiguously connote comfort and goodness, such as Dave Bannion's idyllic, middle-class homeshot in high key lighting and soft focus-in The Big Heat (1953). And there are locations that unambiguously connote criminality and impending doom, like the boarding house where the Swede accepts his untimely demise in The Killers (1946). But there are also locations that cannot be defined in such black-and-white terms. These liminal spaces, which exist on the border between two more defined entities-safety and danger, law and criminality, good and evil-are often a refuge for noir characters. Because there is no law or consequence, these carnivalesque spaces are where characters go when they need to start over, disappear, or just lie low for a while.
For various geographic, political, and economic reasons, including California's proximity to Mexico, Franklin Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy, and the importance of the Latin American market to the postwar U.S. economy (Naremore 229-230), 1940s films noir posited Latin American locales as foreign lands filled with exotic primitives and as safe havens for doomed lovers and the perpetrators of botched robberies and crimes of passion.
In Out of the Past (1947), for example, the protagonist, Jeff, recalls his torrid love affair with a femme fatale in Acapulco as a feverish dream, a pastless present in which both were free of obligations and former ties: "I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked... don't know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end. Maybe we thought it was a dream and we'd wake up with a hangover in Niagara Falls." And Mexico is where a mortally wounded Walter hopes to flee after he murders Phyllis and confesses his crimes to his boss, Barton Keyes, in Double Indemnity. Except Walter knows this plan is impossible; he is dying and Mexico is a dream that will never be realized. As James Naremore points out in his seminal study More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Con texts, "No matter how the Latin world is represented ... it is nearly always associated with a frustrated desire for romance and freedom; again and again, it holds out the elusive, ironic promise of a warmth and color that will countervail the dark mise-en-scene and the taut, restricted coolness of the average noir protagonist" (230).
By the 1950s, however, the image of Latin America as a utopia for doomed noir protagonists, as a place free from America's "unfair" notions of law and order, began to change. With the onset of the Cold War, the postwar notion of "good neighborliness" started disintegrating. Latin America, specifically Mexican border towns like Tijuana and Juarez, became more threatening and ambiguous; Mexico was both too close and too foreign to be trusted. In Orson Welles's baroque Touch of Evil (1958), for instance, the border between Mexico and the United States becomes a space where white men can pass as Mexicans (Charlton Heston as Ramon Vargas), women can pass as men (Mercedes McCambridge as a butch gang leader), and concepts like guilt and innocence are meaningless, defined by the whims of an embittered and vengeful detective (a bloated Orson Welles).
The writers of Veronica Mars have clearly done their noir homework, as Mexico is repeatedly invoked throughout the series as the place of escape from Neptune's (appearance of) law and order as well as a space of criminality and potential danger. As they say in The O.C., another teen drama that uses Tijuana as a carnival space where characters can obtain drugs and alcohol and escape from their white-bread worlds, "What happens in Tijuana, stays in Tijuana" ("The Escape," 1-7).
Tijuana is where Logan was able to purchase the "Liquid X" (or GHB), that was later responsible for Veronica's rape ("A Trip to the Dentist," 1-21). And Tijuana was also the focus of "You Think You Know Somebody" (1-5). As the episode opened, we heard mariachi music playing. Soon we saw Logan, the closest thing the series has to a femme fatale, vomiting outside of Troy's BMW. While we assume that these 09er boys had only been drinking and consorting with prostitutes, we find out later that one of them has also nabbed himself a pinata full of steroids, which was later stolen. By the end of the episode it is revealed that Veronica's seemingly upstanding new beau, Troy, had in fact stolen the drugs and hidden them in the bathroom of the Border Diner, where the boys had stopped for a quick nosh after crossing over into the U.S.
It is significant that the border between the United States and Mexico-signified by the liminal space of the Border Diner-becomes a site of subterfuge and potential escape from Neptune. After retrieving his stash, Troy had planned to ditch high school, his family, and poor Veronica, to rendezvous with his partner in crime, the unseen Shauna. But as in all films noir, such heists, no matter how perfectly planned, are almost always foiled. The thief or murderer always makes some fatal mistake, a mistake he or she never saw coming. In Troy's case, this mistake was to date and, even worse, to underestimate the sleuthing prowess of Veronica, who, before Troy could make his pickup, had already replaced his hidden stash of stolen steroids with candy and a snarky note: "In case you're wondering, the former contents of the package are somewhere between my toilet and the Pacific Ocean. Say hi to Shauna for me. She sounds like a keeper." Even when her heart is breaking, Veronica knows how to craft a good zinger.
The most inventive use of Mexico appeared in the convoluted but rewarding episode "Donut Run" (2-11), in which the baby-napping Duncan found solace and safety with his newborn daughter by crossing the border.' In the episode's climactic final minutes, Sheriff Lamb, who was pursuing Duncan, entered a Mexican restaurant with a sign reading, "American also spoken" (thus echoing Lamb's claim earlier in the episode to the FBI that he knew a little "Mexican": "Enough to get by. Tell'em to turn their music down."). But when he produced a photograph of Duncan and asked the proprietor if he had seen anyone resembling him, the latter replied with a grin, "No, but you all look alike to me."
Here, Mexico becomes the space where the gringo, because of his ethnic difference, can, paradoxically, blend in. A few moments later it is revealed that Duncan, donning a blonde wig and fake beard, was able to pass by Lamb, undetected, with a group of American backpackers. Unlike the classic noir, in "Donut Run" the star-crossed lovers do achieve their too-crazy-to-possibly-work plan. Veronica and Duncan outwitted the police, their enemies, and even their closest family and friends, allowing Duncan to ride off into the sunset, lit erally, with his love-child, the appropriately named Lilly. Success, of course, is a relative concept in the film noir. Like the classic noir hero, Veronica invariably unearths the truth and foils her enemies at the close of each episode, but always at the cost of her personal (often romantic) happiness. The end of "Donut Run" finds Veronica paying for her success with loneliness; we see her standing on the edge of Neptune staring out at the sea, caught between the haves and the have-nots, the suburb and the ghetto.
Veronica Mars, with its obsessive focus on zip codes, border crossings, and class conflicts, is not unlike Beverly Hills, 90210, The O.C., or even the "reality" series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. On the surface they appear to be light adolescent dramas about wealthy, photogenic kids, sunny California locales, and angsty love triangles, all set to killer soundtracks (available for downloading on iTunes).
The only difference is that in Beverly Hills, 90210, living in 90210 usually means a character is most likely to win homecoming queen or student council president; in Veronica Mars, living in 90909 usually means a character is most likely to commit mass murder, steal drugs, or, perhaps, be the ringleader of a few illegal bum fights.
AMANDA ANN KLEIN is an assistant professor of film studies in the English department at East Carolina University. Her publications include essays in the journal The Quarterly Review of Film and Video and in the anthologies Deadwood: A Western to Swear By and Media(ted) Deviance and Social Otherness: Interrogating Influential Representations. She has also published online essays and reviews in Critical Quarterly Debates, Reality Blurred: Exposed, and PopMatters.
Rffrrfnws
Beverly Hills, 90210. Darren Star (creator). Fox, 1990-2000.
The Big Heat. dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame. Columbia Pictures, 1953.
Blue Velvet. dir. David Lynch. Perf. Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper. De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1986.
Desperate Housewives. Marc Cherry (creator). ABC, 2004-
D.O.A. dir. Rudolph Mate. Perf. Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton. United Artists, 1950.
Double Indemnity. dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Paramount Pictures, 1944.
Election. dir. Alexander Payne. Perf. Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon. Paramount Pictures, 1999.
"The Escape." The O.C. Episode 7, Dir. Sanford Bookstaver. Fox, 16 September 2003.
Gilda. dir. Charles Vidor. Perf. Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford. Columbia Pictures, 1946.
The Killers. dir. Robert Siodmak. Perf. Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien. Universal Pictures, 1946.
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. Dir. George Plamondon, Jason Sands. MTV, 2004-2006.
Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Out of the Past. dir. Jacques Tourneur. Perf. Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas. RKO Radio Pictures, 1947.
The Outsiders. dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell. Zoetrope Studios, 1983.
Sunset Boulevard. dir. Billy Wilder. Perf. William Holden, Gloria Swanson. Paramount Pictures, 1950.
Touch of Evil. dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles. Universal Pictures, 1958.
l'ue said ft before, and I'll say it again, if I could get away with doing a completely grounded teen series like Freaks and Geeks, I'd be doing it. Veronica Mars is...hmm...what's the euphemism I'm looking for? Let's go with heightened.