Book review: "Miami Vice (TV Milestones)" by Stephen Sanders
# 92: Miami Vice (TV Milestones series) by Stephen Sanders:Traumatized and transformed, Crockett appears on the scene in season five bearing significant psychological wounds because he has been deprived of the memories out of which his identity as Crockett is formed.
Synopsis:Noir-themed semi-academic wank on Miami Vice.
In a nutshell, what happened was I think, this: Steven Sanders really wanted to write the definitive book on how Vice is modern noir and is groundbreaking on that score alone. But the publisher who accepted his offer on the book deals in more mainstream tomes--the "TV Milestones Series"--so they made him add in stuff about how Vice was groundbreaking in other ways. Which led to these another four chapters, which really aren't any good at all. They're basically all about how Michael Mann was a visionary and how 80s tv was bereft of awesome, and how Vice used fashion and music and--yeah, read it seven other times before, Slappy.
What is good about the book is the noir bits. Specifically, Sanders lays out five specific criteria for evaluating the presence of noir.
They are:
1. Men whose pasts involve a range of indiscretions, questionable
affiliations and motivations and character flaws;
2. A godless world;
3. Enigmas of personal identity--"its meaning, fragmentation, partial
recovery, or ultimate loss" (more on this later);
4. Protagonists who are constrained by troubled pasts as reinforced by
flashback and other techniques of character exposition and backgrounding;
5. Near-exclusive focus on male protagonists.
And I really have to give Sanders credit here: he's incredibly skilled at citing textual evidence to support each and every point he brings up, and he does it in a manner that, even if a reader was not familiar with Vice, they're quickly able to get the gist of the scene or episode. It's very well done. Sanders also presents the best executed manner of examining and linking the music of the show with themes and messages, and I felt I learned something from the work he'd
done examining how the music contributed to the show.
In the chapter I most liked, "Authenticity, Redemption and Politics", Sanders talks about the classic noir redemptive pattern and points out all the ways Miami Vice subverts that narrative and what that ultimately led to in terms of advancing and reworking noir as a storytelling device. He talks about an idea of "sunshine noir" which, while not original to him is nonetheless fascinating, especially to those of us who watch too many David Lynch films entirely. So now I have a lovely new rabbithole to fall down in chasing after this idea and tossing around the idea that Lynch basically owns that franchise.
The problem with Sanders' book, however, is that he really wants to say a lot of things about personal identity and vice cops, and how that's compromised and redeemed, but everytime he starts to get into the heavy lifting of critical analysis, he sort of says, well, Crockett had these issues and he tried to resolve them (cite cite cite)....and now here's Bob with the weather! It's kind of as if he knew he only had 108 pages to say everything he wanted to say about noir and also what he'd been told to say about Miami Vice as a TV milestone, so he really had to cut some corners, which is a shame. He talks about Crockett's crisis of identity but stops short of talking about mirrors and doppelgangers (and really, can you talk about noir without bringing all your doppelgangers to the table?) even as he included that iconic shot from S4 where Crockett, memory blown and living as Burnett, stares in complete amazement into the mirror.
I rarely say this, but this book easily needed to be about 300 pages longer.
For instance, Sanders touches on Mann's use of color in the show and quotes a lot of people about it, but never looks at the black-and-white theme and how that played into the narrative and how that was used to invoke a sense of noir, an omission I just find intensely strange. He touches on Mann's creative genius/mania but only from a "HE'S A GOD!" perspective and not by examining any of the themes Mann brings to the table again and again and again. There's a frankly painful chapter near the end called "Why Miami Vice Matters" and it's basically just Sanders going down on Michael Mann and the show with wild abandon for fifteen pages. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I just found it very odd to see included cheek-by-jowl with some really quality scholarship.
In total then, what Sanders has written is a slim volume of Miami Vice meta that itself suffers from a crisis of identity: it doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious consideration of the themes and symbolism and storytelling techniques and Vice as noir, or whether it wants to be a fifty-page nostalgic blowjob.
Which is a shame because for me at least, the five elements of noir and the noir redemptive pattern and the music work are just top-notch.
Also, and I add this almost as an afterthought, apparently the main detectives on the show are Crockett, Tubbs, Gina and Trudy, and the comedy is provided by Noogie---yes, Noogie--and Izzy. And now here's Jim with the sports.
Spot who's missing. Again, unaccountable! Because if you're going to talk about crisis of self and the temptation of falling into the dark and the price you have to pay for that, I don't think you can skip talking about how Crockett and Tubbs make it out alive at the end of the story and Switek and Zito don't.
But we all know I'm biased.
Synopsis:Noir-themed semi-academic wank on Miami Vice.
In a nutshell, what happened was I think, this: Steven Sanders really wanted to write the definitive book on how Vice is modern noir and is groundbreaking on that score alone. But the publisher who accepted his offer on the book deals in more mainstream tomes--the "TV Milestones Series"--so they made him add in stuff about how Vice was groundbreaking in other ways. Which led to these another four chapters, which really aren't any good at all. They're basically all about how Michael Mann was a visionary and how 80s tv was bereft of awesome, and how Vice used fashion and music and--yeah, read it seven other times before, Slappy.
What is good about the book is the noir bits. Specifically, Sanders lays out five specific criteria for evaluating the presence of noir.
They are:
1. Men whose pasts involve a range of indiscretions, questionable
affiliations and motivations and character flaws;
2. A godless world;
3. Enigmas of personal identity--"its meaning, fragmentation, partial
recovery, or ultimate loss" (more on this later);
4. Protagonists who are constrained by troubled pasts as reinforced by
flashback and other techniques of character exposition and backgrounding;
5. Near-exclusive focus on male protagonists.
And I really have to give Sanders credit here: he's incredibly skilled at citing textual evidence to support each and every point he brings up, and he does it in a manner that, even if a reader was not familiar with Vice, they're quickly able to get the gist of the scene or episode. It's very well done. Sanders also presents the best executed manner of examining and linking the music of the show with themes and messages, and I felt I learned something from the work he'd
done examining how the music contributed to the show.
In the chapter I most liked, "Authenticity, Redemption and Politics", Sanders talks about the classic noir redemptive pattern and points out all the ways Miami Vice subverts that narrative and what that ultimately led to in terms of advancing and reworking noir as a storytelling device. He talks about an idea of "sunshine noir" which, while not original to him is nonetheless fascinating, especially to those of us who watch too many David Lynch films entirely. So now I have a lovely new rabbithole to fall down in chasing after this idea and tossing around the idea that Lynch basically owns that franchise.
The problem with Sanders' book, however, is that he really wants to say a lot of things about personal identity and vice cops, and how that's compromised and redeemed, but everytime he starts to get into the heavy lifting of critical analysis, he sort of says, well, Crockett had these issues and he tried to resolve them (cite cite cite)....and now here's Bob with the weather! It's kind of as if he knew he only had 108 pages to say everything he wanted to say about noir and also what he'd been told to say about Miami Vice as a TV milestone, so he really had to cut some corners, which is a shame. He talks about Crockett's crisis of identity but stops short of talking about mirrors and doppelgangers (and really, can you talk about noir without bringing all your doppelgangers to the table?) even as he included that iconic shot from S4 where Crockett, memory blown and living as Burnett, stares in complete amazement into the mirror.
I rarely say this, but this book easily needed to be about 300 pages longer.
For instance, Sanders touches on Mann's use of color in the show and quotes a lot of people about it, but never looks at the black-and-white theme and how that played into the narrative and how that was used to invoke a sense of noir, an omission I just find intensely strange. He touches on Mann's creative genius/mania but only from a "HE'S A GOD!" perspective and not by examining any of the themes Mann brings to the table again and again and again. There's a frankly painful chapter near the end called "Why Miami Vice Matters" and it's basically just Sanders going down on Michael Mann and the show with wild abandon for fifteen pages. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I just found it very odd to see included cheek-by-jowl with some really quality scholarship.
In total then, what Sanders has written is a slim volume of Miami Vice meta that itself suffers from a crisis of identity: it doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious consideration of the themes and symbolism and storytelling techniques and Vice as noir, or whether it wants to be a fifty-page nostalgic blowjob.
Which is a shame because for me at least, the five elements of noir and the noir redemptive pattern and the music work are just top-notch.
Also, and I add this almost as an afterthought, apparently the main detectives on the show are Crockett, Tubbs, Gina and Trudy, and the comedy is provided by Noogie---yes, Noogie--and Izzy. And now here's Jim with the sports.
Spot who's missing. Again, unaccountable! Because if you're going to talk about crisis of self and the temptation of falling into the dark and the price you have to pay for that, I don't think you can skip talking about how Crockett and Tubbs make it out alive at the end of the story and Switek and Zito don't.
But we all know I'm biased.