Djelloul Marbrook

In a certain plot contrivance in television serials and films the conscientious subaltern makes a fool of his pretentious jerk of a supervisor. The gimmick is overused to a fare-thee-well in such productions as the three CSI shows. What intrigues me about it is that, as so often in television scripting, it seems to appeal to a yearning in viewers to triumph over the stuffed asses who run our affairs.

Certain actors, even young ones, seem to enjoy careers playing the jerks we love to trump. My wife and I when watching television often say, We don’t like him, do we? We’re like the cop who can’t resist chasing a red Corvette.

There are faces that could be telling you the gospel truth and you still wouldn’t believe them, and there are other faces that can get away with telling you any damned lie.

But it doesn’t seem to run true to life, does it? After all, we have watched the Bush-Cheney machine crush dissent, fire experts who disagree with their ill-considered decisions, and mock, often with the press’s help, those whose considered inquiries differ from their own. In other words, we have witnessed the triumph of the bully fools.

Perhaps that’s exactly why we love to see some modest criminalist prove his overbearing boss wrong. It appeals to our American individualist streak, our essential antiauthoritarianism, but it wouldn’t appeal to us so much if it wasn’t so conspicuously absent from our public stage. Our fondness for the maverick underling has been seriously undermined by our idolatry of celebrity, power and money. And it’s this idolatry that enables the Bush-Cheney machine to bamboozle us.

We thought that if they looked like senators and presidents and generals and cabinet members then they must be qualified. Just ask any short but
brilliant military officer how his career has been handicapped by not looking like an equestrian statue. We have forgotten that looks and words deceive. We have forgotten that machismo isn’t the mark of courage. We have confused entertainment for reality. Just because Dick Cheney (inset) talks out of the side of his mouth doesn’t mean he has guts or brains. Just because George Bush can do a good imitation of a cowboy doesn’t mean he would have been able to shoot it out with the Clanceys at the OK Corral.

So the next time a low-key criminalist trumps a stuffed boss on a CSI show let’s conduct a little reality check. Let’s see if we can whomp up a little nostalgia, instead of satisfaction—nostalgia for the days when Americans really did cast a cold eye on play actors and hornswogglers.—DM