Although the first season concluded on Irish TV a month or so ago, and much longer again in the States, Homeland just finished its run on C4 in the UK so there’s some chatter on The Guardian about it. Personally, I quite enjoyed it - although I think that more could, and I was hoping would, have been made of some elements (like the above) while too much was made of other things (lots of complaints about American dramas being written for far too much end-of-season suspense, but then neat resolution is often more artificial). It’s at least as good as BBC’s Spooks, although not as honestly and openly jingoistic - I can never tell where patriotism ends and insanity begins with America, though - and some of the cultural themes did have some subtlety to them.
As for institutions, however, the show didn’t do nearly a good enough job questioning them - despite the themes of betrayal, cover-up and infighting, the CIA remains intact as a vehicle for cloak-and-dagger fantasy, not an object of dissection in its own right. Spooks did something similar, except with its terror-group-of-the-week format the whirlwind of threats meant that the organisation itself became the focus, with the bogeyman retreating to being just that - a more-or-less fantasty foil to the powers of intrigue. With Homeland, however, the spectre of Al Qaeda looms so large that it justifies the existential angst of those fighting it. Which makes this statement about Claire Danes’ character, Carrie, more than a little distorted:
“Until the final episodes, in which a trauma triggers a manic episode, she does what thousands of people in the UK with a mental illness do every day. She manages her condition, she goes to work and she generally gets on with her life. Her illness is part of who she is, but it does not define her.”
Except thousands - millions, even - of people in the UK don’t go to work in the CIA every day. And take their medication illicitly with the help of their doctor sister, because to reveal her condition would mean losing her security clearance, and thus job. It was this tension - which in context is incredibly different from the situation of most people with mental illness working in normal, non-critically sensitive jobs - that the program fails to address in any way other than the obvious collapse. Disclosure is an extremely difficult subject, but what does it say to portray mental illness as having two states: one hidden, covert, with the person functional and accepted (if more than a little eccentric); and the other a catastrophic denouement, exclusion from their job and - as it seems to turn out - their memories?
Realistic, the show seems to say; tragic, and perhaps true (if anyone with bipolar disorder were a key CIA analyst tracking down a double agent)… but on the other hand, maybe there is a bit too much of the ‘neurotic woman can’t handle the pressure’ narrative to it. I had discounted that because so much of the narrative is her coping with the pressure, but ultimately the show presents an impossible - and unrealistic - situation, so that collapse is inevitable. Although perhaps - and this ties in with a positive view of mental health - not irrevocable.
“Which is not to say everything is perfect. As a drama, it is by definition a heightened version of reality. And this artistic license is stretched almost to breaking point when Carrie, who had previously been shown to respond well to medication, is inexplicably given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the final episode. In reality, ECT is only used when all other treatments have failed. She is however, very much framed as being in control of her own treatment, which can only be a good thing.”
The oddity of the ECT, whether one supports that form or treatment of not, is true, but that only makes the course of her ‘control’ even more dismal: from denial to self-abnegation. Homeland may be, in truth, about illusions even more domestic than those of its title - where freedom and terror do battle in the mind.
