Has the Blacklist gone mad?
Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. —– Bertolt Brecht
The most recent episodes of The Blacklist have been met with dismay by loyal fandom. Comedic interjections and real depictions of child brides are too much. And where are the Easter eggs, Jon? We need more clues! Bloggers, shippers, fan-fiction writers, and Spader adorers are downright angry.
Spader says they are taking a circuitous route.
Unique in its approach, the Blacklist is something of a conundrum to a viewer programmed to think there is a sacred bond between producer and audience. Loquacious and erudite, our leading man is doing a stand-up comic act as carney style preacher (Pattie Sue Edwards). Timelines don’t match up (wasn’t Samar 12 when her parents died?). Props noticeably change in appearance (wait, even the bones have changed?).
Lines delivered by one actor harken back to a different character. Parallels in stories run rampant. Red and Garvey are mirrors of each other, sipping on scotch, and playing a metaphorical game of chess as Red reveals he has something on Garvey (the bloodied ledger). Early in the series the family canine shape shifted from large golden retriever to mid-size terrier. Jon Bokenkamp coyly explained that they could not find the right breed so they had to substitute.
Really? You couldn’t find a golden retriever anywhere? (even a mutt that looks similar)?
It’s almost like the whole thing was one picture when we started in the fall of 2013 and now it’s a glass window with a crack that keeps growing and slowly shards of glass are falling out of the window frame until the whole thing falls on the floor in hundreds of pieces.
A scene from ‘The Djinn’ seems to be a clue.
Red: “I am not courageous. Only the poor have courage. Why? Because they are hopeless. To get up every morning to plow a potato field in wartime, to bring kids with no prospects into the world. To live poor – that takes courage.” Ugh. I forget the next line.
Liz: You’re a terrible actor.
Twitter burst into a knowing guffaw. Here Spader, a master thespian, is being goaded by our lovely Ms. Boone, not Reddington being teased by Elizabeth Keen.
Red: [ Laughs ] There’s nothing wrong with my performance. It’s the play. Bertolt Brecht uses the alienation effect to create emotional distance from the audience.” Red tells her he took part in the play “Mother Courage”
“Sadly, it was 1991, and audiences were going in droves to see “Cats.”
Red rises from his chair, declares they should get some rest, walks to the bedroom door, opens it, then closes the door neatly behind him.
Why does he use the door when he could simply step to the side and enter the ‘room’ bypassing the door?
Because the The Blacklist wants you, the viewer, to break the Fourth Wall, the imaginary wall between the actors and audience.
“You’re looking at it all wrong. Think like a criminal”
All the magic, the sleight of hand, card tricks, rabbits,and hats? In images they are telling us this is a magic show. What you think you see is not what you really should see. Maybe the real story is that we as the audience need to pay attention to the real story and not get so chummy with the characters.
Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
We, the audience, are looking at it all wrong.
The Blacklist is not escapism from the dullness of everyday life. This is a show that demands that we think outside the box. And it demands that we see the overall story.
The Blacklist producers have told us the first few episodes contain all the answers we need to solve the ‘puzzle’ of the Blacklist. What are we told in the pilot episode, “Ranko Zamani”? Zamani tells us:
“This is about the children.”
Zamani tells Red. “Today on this day I am giving their plague back to them.
We think we are being entertained. We think we’re playing with a jigsaw puzzle. But if we stand outside the entertainment as escapism mindset, we can see some really horrific social realities.
The exploitation of children
“The Freelancer” was the second episode to air and what did it feature? A wealthy woman doing humanitarian work shipping her freight, young girls tatooed with her ‘brand name’, in a highly profitable sex trafficking venture. Later, we see Dembe with a similar mark on his back indicating he had also been a victim.
Why weren’t we just as vocal in our outcry by this as we were when a husband slips into his bed and kisses his child-bride? Red found Dembe in the basement of a brothel tied to a pole having been subjected to horrors we cannot imagine after being abducted as a small child.
And Liz. What happened in her childhood that is so horrific that she has no memory of it?
Do you really believe Dr. Mindsweep came along and took that away?
Is this a drama or science fiction?
Was what happened in her childhood what will drive her to be the farmer in the parable from The Stewmaker?
She’s literally taken a page out of Stanley’s playbook as we see her liquify the corpse in a heart-shaped bath of acid. And now she’s building her team, starting with a rogue psychologist who encourages her to access her dark side. Isn’t she just selecting her chess pieces against Reddington?
“Don’t get too comfortable” Spader warns us in recent interviews.
There’s something more to these shape-shifters, continuity discrepencies, and prop switches. I think we’re going to have to suspend our reliance on reality and time as we know it. Remember the pilot? Liz wakes late only to discover her clock flashing 12:00. Time is both real and not real.
These aren’t fissures in the timeline. Yes, showrunners make mistakes. But this many? The picture we thought we envisioned in the first episode is as we now see it: a mirrored glass with a crack that keeps growing and slowly the whole thing falls on the floor in hundreds of pieces glass shards much like the scene from “Lady from Shanghai” and when all the pieces fall, we will see the picture for what it really is.
Remember what Red says to Liz when she gives birth to Agnes?
“It’s the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it.”
Anna-Gracia was trying to save her part of the world. Will Liz do the same?
Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
As the mirrors crash all around them, what do we see?
