Evan and the "Real Man" in Miami Vice
NOTE: this is a very rough draft. I have no idea why I keep writing these things.
I keep trying (and failing) to get through the scholarly MV book. It's just so poorly written, it's hard to tell if the author succeeds in making any points at all. He doesn't support his theories with good examples, and the examples he does use often contradict his arguments.
Take his view that the three mannequins in the teaser to Season One's standout episode Evan were symbols of women as passive objects acted on by masculinity. Perhaps. But he goes on to say that the violent destruction of the mannequins represents an overall trend toward glorifying male domination and female passivity on MV.1 This is an example of a repeated flaw in his text - he tries to use an isolated scene from the show to illustrate what he sees as a general trend, but he fails to look beyond the surface of the image or place it in the wider context of the episode or series as a whole and therefore his "proof" tends to backfire on him, even if his point could be supported using other evidence.
Taken within the context of Evan the destruction of the female mannequins takes on a more nuanced meaning than the one the author puts forward. The lavender colored, female mannequins do exhibit a passive pose and are chained to their support. The antagonist, Evan Freed, greets the mannequins with mocking affection (calling them "ladies") and then uses them as targets in his demonstration of automatic weapons in a gleeful, over-the-top show of force and destruction. The mannequins are blown apart, destroyed by what is by now a cliched symbol of male force - a gun. This scene, taken as an isolated example, might support the author's point. But the events of the rest of the episode muddy the waters.
Beneath the themes of guilt and redemption "Evan" is at heart about questioning established notions of masculinity.
Again and again the episode raises the spectre of conflict surrounding the notion of what makes up a "valid" male identity. While in the guise of a white supremacist/survivalist, Crockett (as Burnett) bemoans the "pansies" and "homosexuals" in the (traditionally hyper-masculine) US armed forces. After Freed is revealed to be a former Vice cop now working undercover for the ATF, one of his federal colleagues asks for the identity of Freed's old "playmate" in Vice, an ambiguous label Crockett rejects. Because Crockett refuses to explain his request to be removed from the case, Castillo denies him. In this scene, his reluctance to divulge personal information can be read as a "male" characteristic, while his passive and subdued tone and body language reads as "female." Crockett rejects the option of sharing the painful personal history between he and Freed with Castillo - even if this more "female" act of confession could have resulted in his desired outcome. This choice, combined with his initially violent rejection of the opportunity to come clean with his partner about his history with Freed (even at the expense of their close friendship) all serve to alert the viewer that something very unusual is affecting Crockett - a man of few secrets, who usually wears his heart on his sleeve.
TPTB could have taken the easy route with the material of the episode, but instead they chose to explore the agonizing guilt, paralysis, and self-questioning that have haunted the characters as a result of the choices they have made. Early in their police careers, Sonny Crockett and Evan Freed were close friends, joined by a third man - Mike Orgell. Crockett refers to them as the "three musketeers" when he finally breaks down and relates the story to Tubbs. After Mike's request to be removed from a bust of gay dance clubs provokes teasing from Evan, Mike admits his homosexuality to his friends. This presumably being the mid to late seventies, neither man reacts well to the news that their close companion is gay. Crockett admits that he was paralyzed and failed to stand up for Mike when he was forced out of the department. That he didn't know how to handle the knowledge. Evan reacted with violent rejection, hurling homophobic slurs at their friend and even leaving the Vice department in an apparent attempt to get far away from the threat posed by working alongside a gay man.
Devastated by his friends' betrayal and the loss of his career, Mike Orgell walked into a criminal's shotgun blast, a suicide that was covered up as death in the line of duty. Evan reacted by pursuing increasingly dangerous missions, moving from the police force to the ATF, living on the edge, with an unstable and hair-trigger temper. Crockett presumably buried the incident and lived with the guilt.
A later scene underscores the ambivalent relationship between Crockett and Evan. Evan appears at the Vice office stumbling drunk. Crockett pulls him into a conference room and shuts the door. Evan proceeds to give a plaintive speech about how a "real man" makes mistakes. Crockett calls him on his reckless behavior, in effect questioning Evan's definition of a "real man." Evan makes a lunge toward Crockett that Crockett clearly expects to lead to violence (having been threatened by Evan in a previous scene), only Evan instead grips him in a desperate embrace, begging for Crockett's forgiveness and asking him to "make him [Evan] happy" - a curious turn of phrase that heightens the scene's discomfort for both Crockett and the viewer. Crockett, conflicted, uneasily returns the embrace but cannot bring himself to give Evan absolution. When Tubbs opens the door to the room the two men part violently, and Evan covers his emotions with jokes and posturing, leaving a shaken Crockett behind. It's unclear which man was more disturbed by being caught in the embrace, but contrasted with Crockett's comfort in physical interactions with Tubbs I would suggest that it would be Evan.
Now we return to the teaser scene and the mannequins. Viewing the scene with the knowledge of what follows, the destruction of the symbols of passive femininity takes on a more complex meaning.
For one, the mannequins are a light metallic lavender - the color between pink and blue, between male and female. Lavender is also a color adopted by gay culture. This coloring gives the apparently female mannequins a layer of sexual ambiguity. Color choice on Miami Vice is very rarely random: Michael Mann was said to have repainted entire buildings in Miami before filming, sets were coordinated with the actor's wardrobes, and the specific use of neon and pastel lighting has been widely described.2
Second, Evan's violent act must be placed within the context of how his character is viewed by his colleagues. Evan is seen as rash and reckless by the other cops. His version of masculinity is not held up as heroic but as disruptive, counterproductive and dangerous.3 Evan's destructive behavior is implied to be a product of his doubt over whether he is in fact a "real man."
Crockett may not have known how to handle Mike Orgell's homosexuality, but his masculinity was (apparently) never threatened by Mike's gayness. Crockett's paralysis was due to a lack of a cultural framework with which to process the new knowledge - as Tubbs says, they don't teach that kind of thing at the academy. He feels guilt because he knows he did the wrong thing by failing to stand up for his friend. His sin is one of omission.
Evan's sin was of commission - he treated Mike as less than a person because he felt that homosexuality made Mike (and anyone who accepted homosexuality) less than a man. Evan's attack on the mannequins can be seen as a rejection of anything that doesn't fit his need to view himself as hyper-masculine. This is not a straightforward instance of a male dominance over women, but rather the destruction of anything that lies outside a certain interpretation of "male" in order to annihilate a perceived threat to that maleness. It's not an act of a man exerting his "male" power through violence but that of a man who is not at home with his own masculinity.
Individual images and events can rarely be taken in isolation in the best episodes of Miami Vice. Interpreting what is on screen based on visuals alone may seem like a legitimate strategy in this most visual of television shows, but it's a mistake. Even after insisting that much of the existing writing about Vice fails to look beyond the surface flash, the author himself falls into the same trap by attempting to use cherry-picked scenes to support his hypotheses without acknowledging the deeper context of the surrounding episode. It's a sore disappointment, for the author does raise some interesting questions about the construction of the male image and the relation of the genders in Vice. Again and again, his sloppy scholarship sabotages any points he may have tried to make.
1When I refer to "male" and "female" in this essay I mean the stereotypical interpretations of the genders by contemporary American society.
2The author himself has several good analysis of color use in the series, so it is surprising that he fails to make the connection here, though it is another sign that he paid only cursory attention to much of his "evidence."
3This is not unusual. See the treatment of the rash cop in The Maze.
I keep trying (and failing) to get through the scholarly MV book. It's just so poorly written, it's hard to tell if the author succeeds in making any points at all. He doesn't support his theories with good examples, and the examples he does use often contradict his arguments.
Take his view that the three mannequins in the teaser to Season One's standout episode Evan were symbols of women as passive objects acted on by masculinity. Perhaps. But he goes on to say that the violent destruction of the mannequins represents an overall trend toward glorifying male domination and female passivity on MV.1 This is an example of a repeated flaw in his text - he tries to use an isolated scene from the show to illustrate what he sees as a general trend, but he fails to look beyond the surface of the image or place it in the wider context of the episode or series as a whole and therefore his "proof" tends to backfire on him, even if his point could be supported using other evidence.
Taken within the context of Evan the destruction of the female mannequins takes on a more nuanced meaning than the one the author puts forward. The lavender colored, female mannequins do exhibit a passive pose and are chained to their support. The antagonist, Evan Freed, greets the mannequins with mocking affection (calling them "ladies") and then uses them as targets in his demonstration of automatic weapons in a gleeful, over-the-top show of force and destruction. The mannequins are blown apart, destroyed by what is by now a cliched symbol of male force - a gun. This scene, taken as an isolated example, might support the author's point. But the events of the rest of the episode muddy the waters.
Beneath the themes of guilt and redemption "Evan" is at heart about questioning established notions of masculinity.
Again and again the episode raises the spectre of conflict surrounding the notion of what makes up a "valid" male identity. While in the guise of a white supremacist/survivalist, Crockett (as Burnett) bemoans the "pansies" and "homosexuals" in the (traditionally hyper-masculine) US armed forces. After Freed is revealed to be a former Vice cop now working undercover for the ATF, one of his federal colleagues asks for the identity of Freed's old "playmate" in Vice, an ambiguous label Crockett rejects. Because Crockett refuses to explain his request to be removed from the case, Castillo denies him. In this scene, his reluctance to divulge personal information can be read as a "male" characteristic, while his passive and subdued tone and body language reads as "female." Crockett rejects the option of sharing the painful personal history between he and Freed with Castillo - even if this more "female" act of confession could have resulted in his desired outcome. This choice, combined with his initially violent rejection of the opportunity to come clean with his partner about his history with Freed (even at the expense of their close friendship) all serve to alert the viewer that something very unusual is affecting Crockett - a man of few secrets, who usually wears his heart on his sleeve.
TPTB could have taken the easy route with the material of the episode, but instead they chose to explore the agonizing guilt, paralysis, and self-questioning that have haunted the characters as a result of the choices they have made. Early in their police careers, Sonny Crockett and Evan Freed were close friends, joined by a third man - Mike Orgell. Crockett refers to them as the "three musketeers" when he finally breaks down and relates the story to Tubbs. After Mike's request to be removed from a bust of gay dance clubs provokes teasing from Evan, Mike admits his homosexuality to his friends. This presumably being the mid to late seventies, neither man reacts well to the news that their close companion is gay. Crockett admits that he was paralyzed and failed to stand up for Mike when he was forced out of the department. That he didn't know how to handle the knowledge. Evan reacted with violent rejection, hurling homophobic slurs at their friend and even leaving the Vice department in an apparent attempt to get far away from the threat posed by working alongside a gay man.
Devastated by his friends' betrayal and the loss of his career, Mike Orgell walked into a criminal's shotgun blast, a suicide that was covered up as death in the line of duty. Evan reacted by pursuing increasingly dangerous missions, moving from the police force to the ATF, living on the edge, with an unstable and hair-trigger temper. Crockett presumably buried the incident and lived with the guilt.
A later scene underscores the ambivalent relationship between Crockett and Evan. Evan appears at the Vice office stumbling drunk. Crockett pulls him into a conference room and shuts the door. Evan proceeds to give a plaintive speech about how a "real man" makes mistakes. Crockett calls him on his reckless behavior, in effect questioning Evan's definition of a "real man." Evan makes a lunge toward Crockett that Crockett clearly expects to lead to violence (having been threatened by Evan in a previous scene), only Evan instead grips him in a desperate embrace, begging for Crockett's forgiveness and asking him to "make him [Evan] happy" - a curious turn of phrase that heightens the scene's discomfort for both Crockett and the viewer. Crockett, conflicted, uneasily returns the embrace but cannot bring himself to give Evan absolution. When Tubbs opens the door to the room the two men part violently, and Evan covers his emotions with jokes and posturing, leaving a shaken Crockett behind. It's unclear which man was more disturbed by being caught in the embrace, but contrasted with Crockett's comfort in physical interactions with Tubbs I would suggest that it would be Evan.
Now we return to the teaser scene and the mannequins. Viewing the scene with the knowledge of what follows, the destruction of the symbols of passive femininity takes on a more complex meaning.
For one, the mannequins are a light metallic lavender - the color between pink and blue, between male and female. Lavender is also a color adopted by gay culture. This coloring gives the apparently female mannequins a layer of sexual ambiguity. Color choice on Miami Vice is very rarely random: Michael Mann was said to have repainted entire buildings in Miami before filming, sets were coordinated with the actor's wardrobes, and the specific use of neon and pastel lighting has been widely described.2
Second, Evan's violent act must be placed within the context of how his character is viewed by his colleagues. Evan is seen as rash and reckless by the other cops. His version of masculinity is not held up as heroic but as disruptive, counterproductive and dangerous.3 Evan's destructive behavior is implied to be a product of his doubt over whether he is in fact a "real man."
Crockett may not have known how to handle Mike Orgell's homosexuality, but his masculinity was (apparently) never threatened by Mike's gayness. Crockett's paralysis was due to a lack of a cultural framework with which to process the new knowledge - as Tubbs says, they don't teach that kind of thing at the academy. He feels guilt because he knows he did the wrong thing by failing to stand up for his friend. His sin is one of omission.
Evan's sin was of commission - he treated Mike as less than a person because he felt that homosexuality made Mike (and anyone who accepted homosexuality) less than a man. Evan's attack on the mannequins can be seen as a rejection of anything that doesn't fit his need to view himself as hyper-masculine. This is not a straightforward instance of a male dominance over women, but rather the destruction of anything that lies outside a certain interpretation of "male" in order to annihilate a perceived threat to that maleness. It's not an act of a man exerting his "male" power through violence but that of a man who is not at home with his own masculinity.
Individual images and events can rarely be taken in isolation in the best episodes of Miami Vice. Interpreting what is on screen based on visuals alone may seem like a legitimate strategy in this most visual of television shows, but it's a mistake. Even after insisting that much of the existing writing about Vice fails to look beyond the surface flash, the author himself falls into the same trap by attempting to use cherry-picked scenes to support his hypotheses without acknowledging the deeper context of the surrounding episode. It's a sore disappointment, for the author does raise some interesting questions about the construction of the male image and the relation of the genders in Vice. Again and again, his sloppy scholarship sabotages any points he may have tried to make.
1When I refer to "male" and "female" in this essay I mean the stereotypical interpretations of the genders by contemporary American society.
2The author himself has several good analysis of color use in the series, so it is surprising that he fails to make the connection here, though it is another sign that he paid only cursory attention to much of his "evidence."
3This is not unusual. See the treatment of the rash cop in The Maze.