How Strong Are the Walls of Jericho?

January 25, 2009 by Guest Blogger
Filed under: Culture 
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By Walidah Imarisha

Last month I was stuck in the house for a week straight, thanks to the worst snowstorm Portland, Oregon has seen in the past 30 years. Over a foot of snow and the city just had no idea how to deal with it.

It is ironic, then, that I picked up the first disc of the CBS series Jericho at the Blockbuster I slogged to through snow and freezing ice. Jericho (2006-2008) explores the aftermath of nuclear bombs detonated in 23 major cities in the U.S. through the lens of Jericho, a small town in Kansas.

The season and a half of the show (canceled after the first season, the most massive protest the networks have seen brought Jericho back for an eight episode wrap up) has all the characters you might expect in a small town a la Mayberry before the bomb: the lovable mayor who has been in charge for 25 years (Gerald McRaney); the son, Eric, he is grooming as his successor (Kenneth Mitchell); his other bad boy son Jake (Skeet Ulrich) who has seen and done too much.

Add one possible FBI agent or possible “terrorist suspect” (and the only significant black character in the film I might add) (Lennie James), and the stage is set.

Despite the fact that we see the story through the eyes of the white male U.S. citizens’ characters, with everyone else is relegated to a marginalized other, I slogged back out into the storm for the rest of season one and all of season two.

The reason I did is expressed by Lennie James’ character when he is talking to his daughter. She asks him a question about Jake: “Dad, is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Her father replies, “Honey, there is no such thing.”

This is the crux of the series, why it is so compelling, and why I consider it to be a subversive piece of programming. Not because of the ending of the series, which I won’t ruin for you, but of course ends up reinforcing the status quo.

No, I find it subversive because it opens up a dialogue, in a time where this country is supposedly so clear on who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are. It allows us to see that things are never as simple as we imagine them to be. This is done masterfully by a plot thread about the use of military contractors and private armies to fight, exploit and “rebuild” nations. These companies, BlackWater, Aegis Defense Services and more, have been accused of atrocities in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in the gulf region of the United States post Hurricane Katrina. Taking information from real life situations, Jericho doesn’t ask the question, what if these private armies go too far, instead it queries, what do we do because they already have?

The series is riddled with lines like “This is America, not some third world country.” But looking beyond this incredibly problematic and racist rhetoric, I think Jericho poses an interesting question: What do people do when they have no other options, no resources, and no hope? And what the series details is that things can degenerate very quickly, much more quickly in fact in “civilized” middle America than they do in so-called third world countries.

Strong parallels can be made between Jericho and the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971. Sociologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University took a carefully selected group of 24 students, picked for their lack of “criminal tendencies” or “violent behavior,” and randomly assigned some to be prisoners, and some to be guards. He placed them in a mock jail, and told the guards they had to get the prisoners to follow prison rules. They could not use physical violence to coerce them, but any other tactics were fair game.

The prison simulation was supposed to run two weeks. Zimbardo shut it down after only six days. The “guards” used sadistic tactics to impose their will, from forced physical exercise, to deprivation of bathroom facilities and sexual humiliation. After two prisoners were removed early because of emotional trauma and a prison “riot” broke out amongst the prisoners, the experiment was terminated.

These students, from one of the most prestigious schools in the country, were, by society’s standards, the cream of the crop. They were all white and middle class, no history of violence, no criminal records, exceptional students. And in six days, they degenerated to a level of abuse and victimization that horrified even them when they were shown the tapes later on.

Jericho explores these same issues, on a national level, and asks how long will it take us to become what we supposedly hate and fight against? And if that happens, then what, exactly, are we fighting for?

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