Characterization questions
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | characterization questions |
| Creator: | Flamingo |
| Date(s): | Sep 7, 2002 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Starsky & Hutch |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
characterization questions is a very, very long post on VenicePlace Mailing List.
It is a response by Flamingo to a new fan's questions about characterization, fanon, and canon in Starsky & Hutch.
Some Topics Discussed
- fanon vs canon
- contains many details about things happening in the personal life and background of David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser
- the details that repeated viewings and VCRs allow
- assumptions vs fact
- fan writers and their freedoms due to purposely vague facts and characterizations created by TPTB
- how fans with detailed knowledge about real life events of the time (the 1970s) and of things happening in the actor's life gave a greater "understanding" than fans without this knowledge
The Question
I'm not sure if I've missed key scenes (and I'm not completely done with watching season 4 yet, either), or if perhaps some well-established fanon has no basis in on-screen fact.
[...]
If I came to this series with a completely fresh eye, without any preconceptions formed by fandom -- I think I would see Starsky as more cultured, courteous, and urbane, raised by a good family who taught him good taste, and Hutch as the good ol' country boy who is a little hit and miss when it comes to "taste" and social graces. I am seriously wondering if perhaps fanon makes too much of Starsky's less-than-refined dialect.
Excerpts
One of the things that is completely missing from episodes is knowledge of the common culture of the day, which was well understood (since they were living it) by the fan writers of the time who spawned fanon. S&H was very steeped in the culture of the seventies, which had its own social shorthand, much of which was employed on the show. This allowed fan writers to make casual leaps because the creators and the actors were pulling on that culture to create that character shorthand they knew their audience would recognize.
Many of the early writers who framed fanon didn't just have the show to work off. They also had a ton of written material about the show that could be found in major newspapers, tons of magazines, TV Guides, etc. etc., just like any show on today. The concept of the characters of Starsky & Hutch was that they represented two distinct sides of (young) society of the day. The counter-culture 60's, and the development of the Vietnam War made huge changes in the social fabric of America, which was still being felt in the 70's. Prior to the 60's, it was mostly upper middle class kids who went to college. College wasn't a necessity to have a career the way it is today. However, when the war kicked in and got heavy, college (and marriage) became deferments. If you went to college, you didn't have to serve (There was a draft. You served or got a deferment.). Suddenly, colleges were flooded with young men trying to avoid going to Vietnam. And because young men were going to college in increasing numbers, young women followed them. (In those days women went to college to find a good husband, not necessarily to foster a career of their own.) But (generally) men who weren't upper class still couldn't afford to go to college for the most part, so they got drafted into the army. Starsky and Hutch both fall under the age category to be affected by this. Hutch represents the upper class men of the day who got to go to college and get deferred and Starsky represents the lower class men who had little choice but to get drafted. It was this polarization of society that really shaped a tremendous amount of the events of the time, and it made sense for the show to play on that well understood cultural short-hand. The creators of the show talked about the fact that Starsky represented the "east coast, street-smart guy," and Hutch represented the "upper class, book educated guy" -- stereotypes, which made them familiar to their audience right away.
Again, the early writers, and those of us who lived through those times, recognized these roles pretty easily.
Hutch's disdain for fancy cars is typical of this kind of "new college type" as is his tendency to outfit his apartment with what would now be called antiques, but back then was considered second hand junk (this is another thing often lost on modern audiences). We all outfitted our apartments this way, usually through Goodwill or Salvation Army, and it was another way to show we were rejecting middle class values. Hutch also lives in Venice which was a run-down, bohemian, artsy kind of place at the time. Now it's a genuine artists colony and trendy, but then it was pretty seedy and rundown and was also known as a mecca for gays (which also feeds into the Hutch is gay fanon.)
In Survival, two boys take Hutch's wallet which is full of credit cards. This was not the norm for the day, though it is now. Back then hardly anyone had credit cards, and if you did you had *one*. Hutch has many. This indicates he is a person of means. In Las Vegas Strangler he introduces Starsky to his friend Jack who was filthy rich. Next to him, Hutch was considered a pauper. Starsky says, "I didn't know you were poor." and Hutch says, "Oh, I wasn't, but compared to Jack I was." For Hutch to have gone to college and come from people with means, at this
time, it would have been unusual for him to become a cop, not a professional like a doctor, lawyer, or business man of some kind. However, the college counter-culture would've encouraged this interest in service and away from professionalism. So it was understandable that a lot of fan writers perceived him as having a rift with his well-to-do parents and defied their plans to become a doctor or lawyer.
All the stuff about Starsky's father being a cop is strictly fanon. Starsky's father was killed by criminals, that is established in the Set-Up, but it would be just as easy to assume that his father was a store owner, local politician, labor organizer, or anyone of a dozen other things, including a cop. We know Joe Durniak, a criminal, paid for Starsky's father's funeral. While it would be typical for the police department to bury one its own, this is not an absolute. Starsky's mother could've rejected that if she blamed the department for his death, or for personal reasons. Funeral rites are very personal, and there could've been a lot of reasons she wouldn't let the police department bury her husband. You can play that any way you want. The creators of the show intended that Starsky was not college educated. The fact that he went to the Army implies that due to the social situation at the time. (Hutch's being married to Vanessa would've been another reason to be deferred. However, you could also argue that in spite of his being deferred he volunteered to go. Men did.) Likewise, Starsky might've gone to Vietnam -- the time was right -- but not everyone went. Not everyone even went overseas. Some men were assigned other duties. However, it is *likely* that he went to Vietnam.
Also, in several episodes we see Starsky acting as a marksman, more than Hutch. This again implies his military background and lends more credence to his having served in Nam. (There are tons of other characteristics implied by the actors throughout the series, such as Starsky's Jewishness, which is never stated, because at the time, it simply wouldn't be.)
David Soul was a singer and guitar player long before he was an actor, and he had a huge hit and a number of albums during the show's heyday. So, of course, they let Hutch sing, since his fans watching the show expected it. He strums guitar casually in several shows and sings songs in "Long Walk Down a Short Dirt Road," and "Body Worth Guarding" and does a hell of a blue grass number in "Moonshine". The band in moonshine is David's band. David toured a lot and had a successful concert career. Paul stared in "Fiddler on the Roof," and had a solo in it, however, it his song was cut from the theatrical release and only recently has been seen on the just released DVD. Paul played guitar and liked to sing, and sings little snatches of songs repeatedly throughout the show, but quite frankly he simply isn't very good. I know a lot of his fans think so, but I shudder when he sings. Clearly, *he* thinks he sings well but the producers of Fiddler didn't think so. Paul tried to get a recording contract while S&H was at the height of his popularity and could not.
Also, he was a huge fan of Jim Croce and bought the rights to Croce's life story. He was determined to play Croce in the film, which was not a problem since he was a popular actor at the time. However, he also insisted on doing the singing, as opposed to having his voice dubbed over by Croce's actual songs (fairly typical when portraying the life of a well known singer still being played on the radio). That killed the project.
These are canon-specific facts, which, while they may be lost due to episode cutting, are often there but aren't noticed except through multiple viewings. But more significantly, these character types were established when they meant something, a cultural shorthand that may be meaningless today but is still relevant in the time frame of the show.
Most fanon is based on logical assumptions from the episodes, and has a good basis. It certainly doesn't mean you MUST abide by them, and adhering to them blindly can stultify the characters and make them intractable, and boring! Newer writers often find different angles for the guys' characters in stories -- I know I try to -- and that can only help keep the characters fresh and give us more good fiction. Fortunately, there is tons of wiggle room in the canon, lucky for us writers.
I should mention, too, that in fourth season the guys got to do whatever they wanted, and whatever they wanted included reversing a lot of the traits they'd established previously. They were bored with the characters. They wanted to do different things. A lot of this leads to character changes that a lot of fans aren't happy with. So there's plenty of confusion to be had, that's for sure.
I think a lot of this subtle stuff, and even the conflicting bits of information, behavior, and characterization, give us, as writers, a much greater freedom that folks writing in a lot of modern shows where so much more of the character's backgrounds are finitely nailed down. I know I haven't had much trouble getting the guys to cooperate in almost any given situation I've come up with, and its the flexibility of the characterizations on the show that allow this.
The actors stated many times that they wanted the background of the characters to be as vague as possible so that they go anyplace they wanted with the show. There are often conflicting statements made through the four years about their backgrounds. At this time, TV wasn't known for its consistency of character or character history. It just wasn't considered that important, and no one imagined that 25 years later people would be rerunning these episodes over and over again looking for background. ;-)