[Last fall, I
spent a very happy month or so binge-watching all of FX’s Justified. With main characters based on an Elmore
Leonard novella, the show focused on—but was in no way limited to—the
exploits of Timothy
Olyphant’s federal marshal Raylan Givens. I loved many many things about Justified, so for this year’s
Valentine’s series I wanted to highlight and analyze a few of them. I’d love to
hear your thoughts on the show, or other things you love, in comments]
On why it can be
problematic to love characters, and why that love is still worth embracing.
Justified was a star
vehicle for Timothy Olyphant (if there were any true justice in the world, Deadwood would have
already achieved that purpose, but I digress), and throughout its six seasons
Olyphant was never less than compelling and charismatic in that central role of
Marshal Raylan Givens. But the true breakout star was Walton Goggins, long an
acclaimed character actor (such as in The Shield) whose
performance as Raylan’s boyhood friend, teenage coal mining colleague, and
ongoing nemesis Boyd Crowder was so good it literally changed the entire show: Crowder,
the other main character who appears in Leonard’s novella, was originally
supposed to be in only the show’s pilot (which was based directly on the
Leonard story); but Goggins was so magnetic and his chemistry with Olyphant so
undeniable that the show’s
creator Graham Yost wrote him into the remainder of season one. And the
rest is television history: Boyd would go on to become a co-lead in Justified, with at least as many
plotlines and arcs dedicated to his character, relationships, and communities
as to Raylan’s. I dare you to watch the 3-minute video/interview at that last
hyperlink and not see the chemistry between these two actors, which, combined
with each’s potent individual talents and charisma, makes for an infinitely
lovable pair of central characters.
I don’t want to be a Valentine’s
Day Grinch, but such love can have its downsides, and in the case of Raylan and
Boyd, I think our love for the pair might make it easy to overlook a couple
problems with their characterizations. In the case of Raylan, from the first
season on his propensity for answering problems with violence is presented as a
potential, complex legacy from his abusive, violent, thoroughly unpleasant
father Arlo Givens. By
the show’s conclusion Raylan has certainly made peace with Arlo and that legacy,
yet in the final episode, one of Raylan’s last scenes is another quick-draw showdown
that he wins by killing someone; and while such showdowns are an unquestioned pleasure,
they don’t allow for any true resolution of Raylan’s questions. Somewhat
similarly, Boyd is first presented as a white supremacist and
neo-Nazi, spouting hate about Jews and African Americans; eventually the
show wants us to see that identity as one of Boyd’s many self-inventions and
performances, but the fact that those performances are so consistently
engrossing doesn’t in any way minimize the problematic fact (in 2017
even more than ever) that the originating one was as a purveyor of bigotry,
hate, and violence. It’s easy, that is, to forget that origin in the course of the
show—but we shouldn’t, and so perhaps we shouldn’t love Boyd as much as we come
to.
On the other hand, we can love
something or someone and still be critical of it (that might in fact be the
subject of my
most recent book), and so recognizing these shortcomings in the characterizations
of Raylan and Boyd doesn’t mean we have to stop loving them. And I want to
argue briefly for both psychological and AmericanStudies benefits of doing so.
On the psychological level, I believe one of the things art can do most powerfully
is allow us to think deeply about humanity, about identity, about the things
that define us and shape us and how we move through our lives; and loving
characters helps pull us as fully as possible into their stories and
identities, furthering the possibility of us engaging with those fundamental
and vital questions both for them and (through them) for ourselves. And on a
related, AmericanStudies level, doing so can also help us connect and engage
with experiences and communities that might seem very distinct from our own—such
as, in the case of these two Justified
characters, the experience of growing up in a community like Harlan, of working
together in the coal mines there, and of trying with at best mixed success (as
illustrated by their amazing
final conversation in the show’s closing moments; SPOILERS, obviously) to
shape a life beyond those Kentucky starting points. Those experiences and
questions wouldn’t resonate nearly as much, I don’t believe, if we didn’t love
the two men going through and asking them.
Next Justified Valentine tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other loves you’d share?
(Spoilers ahead) On the subject of Boyd and love, I found it fascinating that for a good long while, Boyd and Ava's romantic relationship was the most well-adjusted and communicative one on the show. Neither of them had been depicted as mature open people before that, but their power couple dynamic felt believable and aspirational regardless.
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