I
watched the second-season debut of Magic
City, a Miami-based, 1960’s-set drama, on Starz this past week. I was somewhat disappointed with its slow
start, yet still excited that this wild show is back. But it makes me wonder, what is it about the
shows on premium channels that draw us in?
Most
of them have a formula:
·
Excessive
violence
·
Likeable
characters amidst illegal activity
·
Healthy
serving of gratuitous nudity
·
Good
writing and creative plot twists
These
shows have to be excellent because they inspire viewers to keep paying for the
channels they air on. If they don’t hook
a certain number of people in, they vanish.
I
date the current formula to The Sopranos. The HBO original show broke ground for TV in
its day and now seems to be the norm for envelope-pushing shows like Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, and Magic City. Others, like Weeds, Nurse Jackie, and Californication,
use humor to explore the dark side of humans – as well as other devices
such as sex and/or violence.
Is
it because most people’s lives do not consist of the quantity nor quality of sex
and violence depicted on these shows that makes people tune in – or is it the
humanization of people we’d otherwise not like that makes us watch? Nurse
Jackie is a drug-popping, cheating, ethics-violating, murdering nurse. Dexter
is a serial-killing cop. Weeds features a drug-dealing, murdering
suburban soccer mom. Magic City is
about a hotel owner in bed with a sadistic Mafia front man. All of these people would be in jail or
divorced or banished in real life, but we embrace them in our living rooms.
Fiction
is supposed to supplement the reality we can’t have, to fill in the gaps of
what we dare not do. We want
to see the other side of life, but not get dirty or risk injury. We’re all voyeurs in the train-wreck lives of
others. We want to be the womanizer, the all-powerful gangster, the witty
heroine, the smooth-talker, and the law-bender out for justice. These shows should serve as models for
today’s novelist.
The
more that authors can write about the things people never truly get to
experience first-hand but in some, perverse way desire, the more readers they
will have. We can’t all write about
criminals having kinky affairs, but writers would serve their careers well to
infuse their writings with what these premium channels serve up.
The
world offers many landscapes to paint a picture. TV shows – and books -- have
many story lines waiting to be told. For
instance, rather than focus on the Mafia, start putting a lens on hackers and
identity thieves. There must be a
nonviolent story waiting to be told about the tech criminals out there. Or maybe we highlight an unheralded
blue-collar worker, such as a school janitor or an immigrant landscaper. Perhaps these stories should be set in places
we never hear about, like South Dakota, Kentucky, or Kansas City. I think going overseas would add color to a
story. And instead of following white
people behaving badly, lets’ open it up to Latinos or Asians.
Maybe
there will be a teenage or senior version of an existing show/book. Could we have a high school cast doing The Sopranos or a geriatric take on Californication? The possibilities and permutations seem
endless.
I
know I’ll tune in to the next episode of Magic
City, because it still gives me something I can’t have in my real life. It manages to come close enough to reality while cushioning me against
its depictions of the immoral, illegal, and improbable. I will root for the sadistic character, Ben
Diamond, because in my reality he’s the last guy I would champion. But these shows allow us to turn the world
upside down and find it acceptable to root for the villain.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this
blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book
promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed
in the third-person. This blog is copyrighted material by BookMarketingBuzzBlog
©2013
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