Gutsy -- or just gusty?
The billowing dust bowl of HBO's "Carnivale" may offer an unprecedented exploration of despair. But how much can viewers take?
By Heather Havrilesky
Nov. 1, 2003 | In 1934, the worst drought in U.S. history hit the central plains. Overplowed and overgrazed lands created massive dust storms known as "black blizzards." Thousands of farmers whose topsoil had blown away or whose land had been repossessed by the bank packed up their belongings and fled the plains in search of work elsewhere. HBO's "Carnivale" begins on this dusty, deflated landscape, unleashing an unruly tangle of misfits, zealots, and chaotic spirits whose spells and superstitions blend seamlessly with the confusion and desperation of the one of the darkest times in U.S. history.
"To each generation is born a creature of light and a creature of darkness," Samson, the carnival boss, soberly informs us in the first episode. But we seem to meet creatures of darkness over and over again, from the absinthe-drinking blind man with the penchant for bad news and omens, to the catatonic, stricken-faced fortuneteller who badgers her daughter telepathically. Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a local preacher, seems to offer some hope at first, welcoming destitute migrant farmers into his parish and then setting up a place of worship just for them. But before you know it, old preacher Crowe is using his curious supernatural powers to pour vengeance down upon those who stand in his path. Even Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), the young farmer whose mother dies and whose farmhouse is bulldozed in the first episode, has nothing but bewilderment and bad dreams to offer in the place of hope. He has strange powers similar to Preacher Crowe's, and like Crowe, has little grasp of what they mean or how to use them. If "Carnivale's" unrelenting eeriness and cumbersome pace are designed to bring the hopelessness of the Great Depression to life, then it's succeeded in spades. Still, it's worthwhile to ask just how much slowly unfolding sadness viewers can take.
In this sepia-toned world populated by bearded ladies, Siamese twins and women clutching dead babies, feeling empathy and concern for any of the characters is a blatantly self-destructive act. Crowe is confronted with selfish parishioners, disheartened vagrants, a distant and blindly supportive sister, and frightening powers, which he wields without discipline. When his new parish burns to the ground and the children housed there are burned to death, we recognize that this is the "unimaginable cruelty" Samson (Michael J. Anderson) warned us about from the start. Still, as Crowe falls to the ground in agony and an eerie wailing soundtrack leaves us mired in the despair of death, some part of us is silently vowing to divest any concern in Crowe's pursuits henceforth.
Similarly, it feels safe to assume that we met up with wayward farmboy Hawkins at an all-time low point in his life, burying his mother in the dust as the bulldozers stood by to knock down his home. Then Hawkins starts having flashbacks of healing dead cats only to watch his mother kill them again, hissing variations on a, "That boy ain't right! He's got the devil in 'im!" theme. In other flashes, his mother lies on her deathbed screaming, "Don't touch me!" Was she screaming because she didn't want Hawkins to heal her, or because the devil in him repulsed her? It doesn't seem to matter either way. Will Hawkins wise up and find love with poor Sofie (Clea Duvall) or satisfy some Oedipal urge with the snake charmer Ruthie (Adrienne Barbeau), or shuffle around mutely as he has so far? The only thing that's certain is that any small hope of a positive outcome will be punished swiftly and unforgivingly.
It's one thing to avoid the "hugging and learning" of mainstream television, which frequent "Carnivale" director Rodrigo Garcia referred to in a recent interview. It's another, though, to serve up such a steady diet of anguish and dashed hopes that viewers refuse to take the risk of making an emotional connection. Without one, we're left with a surreal "Twin Peaks"-style shockfest that, however entertaining it was in David Lynch's hands, hardly bears repeating.
Next page: Evoking "The Grapes of Wrath" -- and that's not a compliment
