Vigilante Detective Veronica Mars is finally making it to the big screen……
Thanks to the fans.
If you
are a Veronica Mars fan, get ready to drink the Kool-Aid again because the (not-so-teen
anymore) sleuth is finally bringing her adventures to the silver screen. With
the release of the first official docu-trailer this week, the Veronica Mars
(VM) team, with creator Rob Thomas at the helm, have demonstrated the enormous power
of a committed fanbase. Earlier this year, after years of trying to get the
movie off the ground Rob Thomas and several key cast members (including Kristen
Bell herself), sent out a call on social media for fans to contribute to the ‘kickstarter
project’ which would raise funds for a VM movie production. While Warner Bros
were happy for the movie to be made, they had reportedly indicated that they
weren’t actually willing to pay for its production.
And so,
the ‘kickstarter’ project was born. Kickstarter is a web-based vehicle for independent creative
teams to seek public funding for their projects. Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell and
several other cast members created a promotional video seeking funding through
Kickstarter to get the project off the ground – you can see them here in a hilarious video promising
‘rewards’ to those who pledge a contribution (if only I had gotten on board
earlier I could have had a personally recorded answering machine message from
Kristen herself).
Amazingly,
within 12 hours of launching the kickstarter campaign, the VM movie reached a
massive $2 million in pledges. By the end of the funding campaign they
succeeded in raising over $5 million, and broke a number of kickstarter records
while doing it.
Fans
clearly love this show. And thanks to the fans this movie will be coming to our
screens in 2014. But what is so great about Veronica Mars? On the surface it
may have seemed like just another high school teen drama, but at its
core, it was a show that celebrated the empowered (yet flawed) heroine, and it took the noir
detective genre to a whole new generation. As a major character, Veronica was not
only intelligent , articulate and independent, but she also had a strength of
character that enabled her to pursue justice with angry power and confidence. As
a ‘detective’ Veronica was able to defend herself against both cops and
criminals, and more crucially against the social elite. As an ‘outsider’ herself
through most of the series, she regularly took a stand for the marginalized. And
these personal qualities, along with her wry sense of humour and wit, endeared
her to the fans. 
But for me, it was her vigilante-esque
quality that stood out most from this series. Veronica existed within a
somewhat lawless Neptune - a world where the justice system is corrupt and the
audience was encouraged to support Veronica as she resorted to a form of
vigilantism to regain some power and control within her particular landscape. Interestingly,
Veronica’s sense of justice was based on a subjective, emotional and personal
notion of what is ‘right’ in any given situation, and most importantly, this was usually contrasted with the standard of the prevailing institutional justice
system.  |
| see early promo video here |
Til then, MARShmallows, I'm Team Logan!
One of the most interesting things about Veronica Mars as a show is the complete lack of redeeming characteristics given to the police department. Lamb and his deputies are not just bad at their jobs, but seem completely uninterested in the idea of achieving justice at all. Lamb's spite for the Mars family clouds his judgement in almost every episode, regardless of how often they might try to cooperate with him and his investigations (more so with the bus crash than with the Lilly Kane case). The police are portrayed as bumbling, ineffectual, rude and mean spirited. Lamb is happy whenever he gets a chance to embarrass or arrest Veronica, convinced that she is the spawn of Satan (think of the episode where Veronica is arrested for supplying fake IDs).
ReplyDeleteThis is most interesting because Veronica and Keith are hardly infallible, but the utter incompetence of the police department makes the Mars' mistakes pale in comparison. When Veronica decides someone is guilty, she is gung-ho about making them pay for their perceived crime. This is presumably a combination of her age (as mature as she is, she is still a teenager) and her constant disappointment at the response of legal institutions to injustice. Veronica is actually a great example of why vigilantes come to exist, as she experiences SO MUCH injustice in her young life that she loses all faith the justice system. Her rape is laughed off as a petty complaint (and possibly a lie), her best friend's murderer is set free, the poor are constantly harassed by police while the rich get off scot free.
Ultimately, the show sets up two conflicts that strike at the heart of the public's concerns with the legal system: inequality between classes, and an inability for legal institutions to achieve justice. By portraying Neptune as a place where the rich and poor coexist but live such enormously separate lives, the inequities are highlighted and exposed. Families like the Kanes, Echolls's and Casablacas's use their immense wealth to cheat (and beat) the system. As a result, people like Veronica go outside the law to achieve the justice they believe they have been robbed of.