Vincent Whitman: A Meta AnalysisÂ
Part 1: Happy Birthday Mr. Vox
Vincent Whitman. Vox. That self-absorbed TV-head.Â
This guy is a real garden of delights, psychologically-speaking. He was the first Hazbin character that I was intensely drawn to, partially because of his VAâs absolutely pristine delivery of the guy, but because he is layered. Just when you think youâve dredged up one thing about this fella, you find something else to chew on.Â
And you all thought Alastor was complex.
As I started writing, I figured out that this is at minimum going to be a two-parter. Get yourself something to drink and find a comfy seat, weâre going for a ride.
Based on context clues, we can see that he was very likely born (or relocated to) the Chesapeake area of Virginia. For the sake of clarity, (and because thereâs literally zero meaningful evidence otherwise) weâre going to assume that this is just where heâs been his whole life. I am also going off the assumption that he was around 45 or so when he died. It just seems to be how the character aged from his time as weatherman to cult leaderâ I canât explain it, he just looks like heâs in his mid to late 40s or so. His hair loses pigment, he gets grey streaks, his eyes look tired. He just... he looks 45-50, guys. When you finish reading this, I believe you will agree with this figure.Â
Nailing down Vincentâs birth year proved to be quite a pickle for me. Prepare yourselves guys, because Iâm about to blow your minds. We can cut this cake two different ways:
Context clues from the show
Real-life historical facts
Letâs assume that the showrunners put an extraordinary amount of detail into the scenes of Brighter. They are well-known for that, they rarely add idle, meaningless details...and Virginia didnât have a television station until 1948. He seems very young at this point, and I imagine that the earliest he could have done this work was about age 20. So that would place his birth at around 1925-1930. At first, I was likeÂ
âWell, that doesnât make sense, thatâs way too late if he died in the 50s.â
Then it dawned on meâŠmaybe we all got it wrong.
Now, the first TV broadcast in America was in Schenectady, New York in 1928, so itâs plausible that if we assume that the showrunners werenât actually going for accuracy (which is perfectly fair, not everything needs to be THAT detailed) then they could have envisioned Vincent as having been born around 1905-1910. Vincent, being a very early adopter, could have jumped on that as a very young man, but the clues donât quite line up that way.
Letâs look at what our guy is wearing in his first scene.
A menâs suit in the late 20s to early 30s had a few defining features, such as a high waist and straight-cut pants. Also, men almost ALWAYS wore a waist coat as part of the ensemble. The idea here is to make an elongated line and smooth figure. The shirt lapels were pretty high and wide. Jackets were long, shoulders were unpadded, and made to follow the manâs natural line. (Perhaps weâve seen this before⊠maybe a guy in red?)
What Vincent is wearing more closely resembles an early 50s silhouette. Thereâs no waist coat (at least not visible in this outfit), highly-structured shoulders and a narrow waist with a shortened jacket. No visible cuffs on his pants. This looks a lot like the continental-style that made its way over from Italian suit styles as a sleek, haute alternative to the boxier styles that were popular pre-war.Â
His hair is also a strong indicator that he started out on TV in the 1950s. Iâve seen artists and animators express some frustration trying to figure out Vincentâs hair. To those folks, I ask you to look at this:
Look familiar? The style (the ducktail) at this point in time could not have been more different from that of the late 20s to early 30s. This isn't quite the style he wears, but I want you to see the silhouette for emphasis. The idea is voluminous, and gravity-defying yet sleek. The whole side of the head can be swept up and over, which is why Vincent has that little burst of hair coming out of the side of his head.
If Vincent was broadcasting around 1930, thereâs a far more likely chance his hair would have been slicked back and neatly parted. Periodically, you might get some styles around the early 30s with some hair loose, but it was still not nearly as high as the Pompadour of later years. A TV producer in the 30s is likely to want his talent to look conservative, so he'd almost certainly be in a slicked-back style, if that was the time period he was working in.
The first on-screen weather reporting with a map was in 1954 on the BBC by George Cowling.Â
The majority of TV broadcasts prior to this were centred on arts and entertainment, with news broadcasts gaining speed as time went on (especially around the outbreak of WWII)
The aesthetic design of Vincentâs little set is very mid-century modern. Clean lines, vibrant pastels.Â
So, this evidence squarely places Mr. Whitman having been born circa 1928, give or take a few years.Â
âIf he was in his 40s when he died, wouldnât that place him as having died in the 70s?â
Gentle reader, yes. Yes it does.Â
Letâs say we use his averaged-out birth year of 1928 as our starting point. Even if Vincent died as young as 40, we are STILL quite late into the 60s. I know this feels wrong, but hear me out. Thereâs more.Â
For starters, itâs important to know that a LOT of people conflate styles with the wrong era. This happens all the time. What people tend to gloss over is that trends that seem iconic to a certain time period often overlap into the NEXT time period, and some styles just happen in totally different eras than we think because of the similarities to later trends.
For example, I was recently in a musical theatre production with a lot of 50s music. No, it was not Grease. During a dress rehearsal, some of the girls in the show were devastated when the director informed them that victory rolls were NOT a 50s hairstyle. A " victory roll" was a maneuver done by pilots in WWII, and eventually became associated with the wet-set curls women were already doing into the 30s, sometimes also forming them into a v-formation at the front. They were trendy with models and movie stars, but were effectively out shortly after the war. If you don't have an eye for historical hairstyles, a curl set might look the same-- and women were certainly doing curl sets into the 50s (but totally different styles.)
They were told they had to change it. They complied, sourly.
... seriously, it wasn't Grease. There are other musicals set in the 50s.
Another example: there was a 90s-themed social I went to not too long ago, and the majority of styles were very late-90s to very early 2000s. There was grunge, and a lot of women who looked like they walked off the set of Charmed. But where were the nylon tracksuits, bike shorts, Cosby sweaters and side-ponytails? These things were absolutely on-trend in the early 90s, but most people attribute it to the 80s.Â
What Iâm saying is, sometimes when we think of a certain decade, itâs very possible that the fashions and trends actually belong more to the decade just before it. So yeah, itâs absolutely plausible that Vincent âShark Weekâ Whitman lived well into the 1970s, or darn close to it. Want more proof?
The newspaper is 15 cents. American newspapers on average in 1960 to 1970 rose from about 10 to 15 cents.
Look at Vincentâs little vision board: see the TV? Heâs talking about color TV.
While the first color TV broadcast happened in 1938, color TVs werenât available to homes for the first time until 1954. This guy was EXPENSIVE for the time, and most stations werenât even broadcasting in color yet. This changeover wouldnât start until the 60s. Some stations moved over to color as late as the 80s. So, itâs unlikely that too many people were buying this for their homes at the time of its release. This is the RCA CT-100, and adjusted for inflation it was worth about $11,000 USD today. Here's what it looked like:
Look closely at that TV on Vincentâs board. Console-style, way bigger screen, really low to the groundâŠthatâs a 60-70s TV, friends.Â
Peep that bowtie heâs wearing in his final outfit. Thatâs an early 70s bowtie if I ever saw one. Bow ties went from tiny in the 50s to HUGE in the late 60s-early 70s, then kinda shrunk back down again just before the 80s. Â Allow our friend Mr. Travolta to demonstrate:
So there we have it. Based on this body of evidence, I believe that we can accurately place Vincent's life from roughly 1925/1930 to 1968/1973. Do you feel rattled?
There's more meta-analysis of our Screen Daddy coming, so rest up..all I did was figure out his birth date.
