by Rob Thomas
Veronica, however, didn't miss a beat; she knew immediately that the solution to Carmen's problem would be found not with formal legal actors, but in a partnership with Veronica. She told Carmen her only choice was to get something "that would ruin Tad back. You know, get your own A-bomb and it prevents him from launching a first strike. Mutually assured destruction." When Carmen worried that boring Tad had no dirt to uncover, Veronica assured her, "Leave that to me." With some creative role-playing, photoshopping, and audio dubbing, Veronica armed Carmen with a Web site entitled "Our Precious Secret," convincingly dedicated to Tad's (non-existent) gay romance. And so Veronica's plot for justice was hatched: If homophobic Tad was going to release Carmen's Cold Throat video, he could do it under threat of his own greatest fear.
Perhaps Thomas's darkest forays into the law's limitations are found in his depictions of violence against children. When we watched Aaron Echolls force Logan to select the leather belt that would deliver his barebacked beating while mother Lynn sipped her drink in what appeared to be blissful ignorance, we wished for-but knew we could not have-some semblance of justice other than Logan's public charitable pledge of half a million bucks on a surprised Aaron's behalf ("Return of the Kane," 1-6). We believed that Logan had no other recourse because we know from our own experience that the word of a celebrated celebrity like Aaron Echolls-think Tom Cruise before the sofa-jumping-would outweigh the word of a trouble-making teenager who webcasts bum fights. (Hello? Michael Jackson anyone? And Harry Hamlin's work is far less creepy than MJ's, and Logan has way more baggage than that Neverland kid.) The costs of law's tendency to undervalue children's reports of abuse is perhaps most transparent in Cassidy Casablancas. Beaver would not have developed into the criminal mastermind that he became if he thought anyone would possibly believe that Woody Goodman was a serial child molester. His name might've been Woody, but come on, who'd buy a guy as smiley as Steve Guttenberg as Chester the Molester?
Thomas reminded us again about the law's inability to protect children after Veronica and Duncan learned that the pious Manning family was locking cute, helpless Grace in the closet ("Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner," 2-7). Unfortunately, they had to break into the Manning home to make their discovery, and Mr. Manning turned the tables on them by calling Sheriff Lamb. Lamb's decision to release Veronica and Duncan-and the suggestion that Lamb's own father was abusive-is Lamb's most sympathetic portrayal in the series. Note, though, that his beneficence results not from a decision to enforce the law against Mr. Manning, but rather from his decision not to enforce the law against Veronica and Duncan. Only by neglecting the expectations of his office is he able to do the right thing. The law, Thomas is telling us, is an impediment-not a vehicle-to justice.
In episode after episode, law and the people who enforce it prove unhelpful-until, of course, Veronica gives the system a little shove. Ultimately, Thomas's masterful and believable depiction of formal legal systems as inadequate is the grounding that makes the rest of the show work. Without this context, Veronica's many witticisms, the multi-layered plots, and the best father-daughter relationship on television wouldn't fly. It's precisely because cops, prosecutors, lawyers, and judges are credibly depicted as lazy, reactionary, and/or powerless that we satisfied viewers can swallow a series based on a high school student solving not just little mysteries about fake IDs and missing dogs, but also weighty ones, like murder, molestation, and mass violence. We would never buy the notion of Veronica's importance if she existed in a world with meaningful governmental response. We believe in her importance because she lives in lawless Neptune.
ALAFAIR BURKE is an author and law professor. After graduating with distinction from Stanford Law School and serving as a deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, she is now an associate professor at Hofstra Law School and frequently serves as a legal and trial commentator for radio and television programs. She lives in New York City and is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series of mystery novels (Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case). Her first stand-alone thriller, Dead Connection, will be published in July 2007. Alafair welcomes contact from readers at www.alafairburke.com.
Uaenka is uxtaintg a vigilante, and here at VM headquarters, we love her for it. We love her for it in the same way we love Bruce Wayne throwing on a cape and becoming Batman. There's something twisted in both of their psyches that makes "seeking justice" or "wreaking vengeance" a compulsion. When an occasional character (Meg, Carmen) suggests that it might be healthier for Veronica to rid herself of this compulsion, well, yeah... they're probably right. That said, Meg or Carmen would be equally correct in pointing this out to Bruce Wayne. I hope people don't think we're holding Veronica to a different standard because she's a young woman.
The New Normal
Breaking the Boundaries of Vigilantism in Veronica Mars
URING THE FIRST two seasons of Veronica Mars we watched our dynamic heroine's social status vacillate between sharing limos with the popular 09er crowd to lunch room isolation and back again. She couldn't seem to make up her mind about Duncan and Logan. In fact, she shape-shifted so often that one of the only things we can say with any degree of certainty is this: she really wanted a pony. In fact, she had probably wanted one since she was a little girl; it's the kind of thing that gets tacked onto the end of birthday or Christmas lists, the kind of thing that-after years of wanting and never getting-comes to represent something else entirely.
Veronica references her pony frequently; it's part of the Mars family vernacular. It was the first thing she squealed for when her father handed her an envelope at her high school graduation, and it was her request when he suggested that they spend an evening doing something regular fathers and daughters do. (Tough break there-in lieu of the pony, Keith thought Veronica might instead like to rub his feet.) Although it's entertaining, the metaphor is hardly worthy of Mensa: what the detectives Mars are really longing for is normalcy; the pony is just part of their shtick. And who can blame them? Two seasons on the air and they've already weathered their fair share of trauma: divorce, alcoholism, rape, murder, ostracism. Their mutual desire to blend into the woodwork makes perfect sense.
The search for normalcy is at the very center of Veronica Mars and, in many ways, has become synonymous with the show's struggle for truth. "Normal" is presumably what will be left once Neptune, California, has been stripped of all its dysfunctionality and deceit; it's the goal assumed to be shared by its residents, regardless of their race, gender, and socio-economic status. As our local do-good detectives, Keith and Veronica aren't exactly superheroes, but they are the champions of normalcy, the characters charged with restoring moral order to their undeniably corrupt environment. And, like many social crusaders, their actions and behaviors quickly become lightening rods for criticism-an analysis of which reveals a firmly entrenched cultural bias relating to gender and power.
Keith and Veronica each bring their own personal code of ethics and unique set of values to their detective work. As the former sheriff of Neptune, the elder Mars has a clear respect for established authority and conventions; his daughter, to put it mildly, does not. In fact, her style leans strongly towards a reliance on vigilante justice, the kind of work where the hero famously takes the law into his or her own hands against the perceived insufficiencies of established authority. Popular culture is filled with these kinds of figures-most recently personified by 24's Jack Bauer-but classically depicted by the likes of Rambo, Dirty Harry, Shaft, and virtually every comic book character. It is thanks in part to this fictional boys club that vigilantism has become synonymous with masculinity, which creates an interesting paradox: because Veronica attempts to bring justice (and therefore status quo) to Neptune via a highly gendered and controversial method, her actions provoke a strong response from those around her, thus ensuring that her life will never be normal-the very thing she seems to long for.
Yet that is not to say that there is not pop cultural precedent for female detectives. On the contrary, Veron
ica is a clear descendent of Nancy Drew-in fact, finding a review of the series that does not reference the twentieth century's favorite girl detective is a formidable challenge. And a propensity for sleuthing is not the only thing these characters have in common: significantly, both young women are only children being raised by a single father, and both are described as being highly intelligent with an upbeat, sassy personality. These rhetorical devices are likely present to explain both teens' "unladylike" behaviors and the relative ease with which they are able to solve cases that baffle adults. There is, however, one very important difference in their characterizations: while Nancy relies heavily on consultations with her father, teachers, law enforcement, or other experts to solve a case (thereby implicitly urging her readers to do the same), Veronica defies all such conventions. It's a subtle, but important, change. Veronica's willingness to go her own way, to take the law into her own hands, could be viewed as a booster shot of feminism right into the heart of a genre that is not generally hospitable to woman-or it could serve as a cautionary tale to girls of a similar mindset.
Unlike most heroic conventions (like flying, super-strength, or the ability to turn into some sort of arachnid), vigilantism has definite real world applications. The most cursory look at a local newspaper reveals that there are vigilantes all around us, citizens who take action when they feel the law is standing silent. Significantly, as long as the vigilante's notions of justice remain in line with those of mainstream America, the term is not likely to be used as a pejorative. Defying all popular stereotypes of women in general and female detectives in particular, Veronica's vengeance is swift, exacting, and almost completely outside the established legal and judicial order-particularly when she's called upon to crack a case in which a man has harmed a woman through some form of violence or sexual coercion. In season one, this scenario plays out with alarming frequency.
The motivation behind Veronica's thirst for vengeance was established early in the series: aside from the unsolved murder of her best friend and her father's unseating as sheriff, a flashback revealed that the new sheriff literally laughed in her face as she arrived at the police station, torn and tattered, to report that she was raped at an end-ofthe-year party. Her attitude towards the resolution of that crime-"I'm going to find out who did this to me and I'm going to make them pay"-later became her goal for every young woman at Neptune High who approached her for help. And while Veronica Mars is hardly a catalyst for teenage would-be delinquents, community response to her actions serves as an interesting barometer of cultural zeitgeist-even if the community in question is the fictional Neptune, California.
Veronica soon discovered that the consequences of working outside the established moral order were particularly pronounced and gendered-a dichotomy that was painstakingly revealed when father and daughter worked side-by-side on a case. In "The Girl Next Door" (1-7), Veronica alerted her father to the fact that their upstairs neighbor, a young pregnant woman named Sarah, had apparently gone missing after a night of fighting. Suspecting foul play, Veronica asked her father to look into the case, a request that he ultimately denied, citing the standard twenty-four hours that must pass before an adult is declared missing. Veronica would not accept this explanation, and immediately began her own search for the young woman.
Because Sarah was not officially missing-a designation even her boyfriend was unwilling to make because he said she "tends to disappear sometimes"-Veronica was left to her own devices. She broke into the upstairs apartment when no one was around to look for clues, made fraudulent phone calls to her doctor to uncover the results of recent medical tests, and made several reconnaissance trips to the high-end retail store where Sarah worked. Keith Mars, in the meantime, did little to assist with the investigation of the case besides offering his official detective services to Sarah's parents when they arrived from Ohio to look for her. In fact, Keith did everything he could to discourage his daughter's efforts, primarily because cases where attractive young girls go missing "often end badly" Undeterred, Veronica continued to follow her intuition while investigating the disappearance, going so far as to enlist the local biker gang to disrupt Sarah's place of employment in an attempt to get her manager to return the young woman's diary. He did.
Veronica's unconventional sleuthing was ultimately more effective than her father's traditional methods, and she soon found Sarah, unharmed, hiding out along the seashore. The young woman returned home to her apartment, where her boyfriend had been entertaining her mother and stepfather. This seemingly idyllic family reunion was shattered, however, when Keith and Veronica heard shouting coming from the upstairs apartment. In this, the moment of truth, Keith ordered his daughter to stay put while he went up to investigate-and Veronica uncharacteristically obeyed his request. Keith interrupted the argument just in time to defend Sarah by shooting her stepfather, who we learned was the baby's father.
What made "The Girl Next Door" significant was that the episode was bookended by the aftermath of Keith Mars's shoot-out-in fact, the action opened on the entryway of the apartment complex, its darkness punctuated only by the flashing lights of emergency response vehicles. Before plunging into flashback, Veronica reflected in a tone heavy with regret:
I look over the past week and wonder if things could have turned out differently. If I hadn't met the girl, if I hadn't initiated the case, if I hadn't interfered, would tonight be just another dull, quiet night in our apartment complex?
It was an interesting reaction, considering that Veronica's meddling returned a young pregnant woman to her otherwise supportive and loving family. And while it was true that Sarah's stepfather was shot as a result of the conflict that followed, he wasn't mortally wounded-and even that is a consequence that is likely to be viewed by many as being relatively lenient in comparison to his crime. Veronica acknowledged this paradox at the very end of the episode when she rationalized, "Sure, the real tragedy happened long before I came along-I just brought it to the surface." Still, it's clear that her faith in vigilante justice is at best inconsistent, as she left the audience with a loaded question: "Are some things better left buried?" While the "things" Veronica alluded to are necessarily vague-depending on which angle you approach season one, they could refer to the identity of her rapist, Lilly's killer, or questions of her own paternity-her hesitation hinted at one of the series's central questions: Is Veronica willing to trade her reliance on vigilantism (and all of the positive, albeit masculine, traits it demands) for a chance at a "normal" life?
The following episode, "Like a Virgin" (1-8), would suggest not. In that installment, an online purity test wreaked havoc on Neptune High, as students paid ten dollars each to discover their classmates' sexual pasts. The results of some of the surveys were, of course, fraudulent, with less popular students appearing to have scores so low that they ranked well within the realm of deviant sex fiend. (Veronica herself rated a fourteen, with the test indicating that she had "pleasured the swim team while jacked up on goofballs.") But when purity mania ruined the reputation of Meg Manning, one of the few 09ers who still called Veronica a friend, Veronica promised her usual brand of vengeance, declaring, "We'll clear your name and make someone pay"
In an unrelated plotline in the same episode, Veronica's father took it upon himself to evict an unwanted tenant from Alicia Fennel's apartment. Presented side-by-side in the episode, these stories illustrated the contrast between father and daughter-or rather the contrast in the reactions they garner from those they try to help. When Keith Mars initially approached the single mother, he offered his assistance because he knew how "the law works-slowly" Mrs. Fennel categorically refused. "If I have a problem I'll go to the police," was her stern response. Similarly, when Veronica explained her sleuthing philosophy to Meg-"You get tough. You get even. Works for me"-the popular girl's reaction, much like Alicia Fennel's, was steeped with concern for the status quo: "Does it bother you, the things they say?" she asked Veronica, betraying her obvious concern for social standing.
While the outcomes of the Mars' investigations might have been uniformly positive, the reactions from their clients were not. Alicia was uncharacteristically contrite: "The fact that you helped me, even though I was awful to you. You're a very decent man." That encounter sparked a renewed friendship, and eventual romantic relationship, between the two. Meg's initial reaction was similar, insinuating that Veronica was her knight in shining armor as she quipped, "I was looking for a white horse." However, her gratitude quickly shifted gears as she offered Veronica the following words of wisdom: "Getting tough? Yeah, that was good advice, and I needed that. The getting even part-you might want to rethink that one." In those scenarios, both Keith and Veronica assumed the traditional male role of savior to a distressed, helpless woman, and both were forced outside the socially accepted boundaries of law and order in the process. And, while their assistance was eventually accepted with gratitude, only Veronica was condemned for her transgression.
A similar scenario played out in "M.A.D." (1-20), an episode in which Veronica attempted to stop her classmate Carmen's vengeful ex-boyfriend Tad from releasing an embarrassing, sexually charged cell phone video. Because it was impossible for Veronica to recover every copy of the digital file with any degree of certainty, she switched strategies, deciding instead to produce her own incriminating piece of media. The finished product: a homosexuality-themed Web site, designed to send the homophobic, Naval Academy-bound Tad running for cover. In a move lifted straight out of the Cold War, Veronica gave Carmen control of its dissemination, convinced that when faced with the prospect of his own reputation's demise, Tad would have no choice but to discontinue his threats.