Northern Exposure

This is a serial television drama aired from about '92 to '96 and, in my view, the best effort in that genre yet seen. It is currently ('98) being aired on A&E.

The supposed location is a small town in northern Alaska named Sicily, though its actual filming location was near The Dalles in northern Oregon. My best guess for an actual location that corresponds to the dramatic location would be Circle Alaska.

In my view, the intent of the writer is to produce the television equivalent of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, by which I mean that the writer wishes to describe and dramatize a Utopian village and its inhabitants.

The main characters follow:

The men:

Maurice Menefield. Maurice is a middle aged retired astronaut. He is very macho, given to order, technology, and authoritarianism with himself as dominant. He tries to project this persona onto the community, but they only allow him to maintain it for his own amusement. His romantic interest is a woman cop who is even more masculinist than he.

Chris: Chris is the DJ on Maurice's radio station. He is an amateur poet and philosopher with a doubtful family background that includes an African American brother. He has spent time in the penitentiary and has a way with women. He frequently fills the role of psychologist and minister, having purchased a degree through a Rolling Stone advertisement.

Holling Vencoer: Holling owns the local watering hole, is of French descent, has a particularly cold and exploitative family background, which he abhors, and maintains a relationship with the much younger and mildly slutty Shelly. He combines the characteristics of the strong mountain man with the vulnerability of a man who knows his happiness lies in another’s hands.

Dr. Joel Fleishman: Joel is a recent graduate of medical school from New York who is paying for his education, under protest, by ministering to the inhabitants of Sicily. He is Jewish and hyper and involved in a love/hate relationship with the very attractive Maggie. He is a typical eastern golden rule liberal who is prone to base his opinions on stereotypes which Maggie loves to point out.

Ed Chigliac: Ed is a twenty year old Indian and attractive, though presenting the fairly ridiculous persona of a native American trying to live the life of a Western European with very mixed results. He is also a Shaman in training and is frequently used to portray the conflict between western objective interventionist masculinist medicine and the eastern feminist subjective approach.

The women:

Marilynn: Marilynn is an Indian and works as Joel's receptionist. She has a round shape and relies heavily on knowing silence as a defense, to the great frustration of Joel. She is frequently portrayed for shock value as a leader in the indian community.

Maggie O'Connell: Maggie is from the Grosse Point upper middle class and is a bush pilot who supports herself by transporting packages and people between Sicily and Juneau or Anchorage. She has a history of boyfriends who die young while their relationship to her is still in progress. Maggie is the most militant feminist and frequently sees male chauvinism even when it isn’t there. Her reasons for choosing her employment are mainly to rebel against what she conceives of as her family’s excessive conventionality.

Ruth Anne: Ruth Anne owns and runs the general store. She is over seventy and functions as a wise elder though still very active member of the community. Ruth Anne epitomizes the non judgemental elder. She has been disappointed in her husband and children and has learned to avoid opinions about people’s actions.

Shelly: Shelly is the girlfriend/wife to Holling and works as a waitress in the bar/restaurant. She is generally tasteless in her attire, tending to dice earrings, but a good soul and essential to Holling's equilibrium. She arrived in Sicily as a means of escape from her immature boy friend/husband.

There are of course many minor characters, some of great appeal. One of these is Adam, a conspiratorialist with profound culinary capabilities and a tendency to hide from civilization and Eve, his wife, who is an extreme hypochondriac. Adam is the only actor to move from this series to another successful series as the star up until now. That series is Chicago Hope. Maurice has turned up in supporting roles in B movies and the rest of the ensemble seems to be relying on commercials.

This demonstrates the fact that a supreme moment on TV, like All in the Family, for example, is pure happenstance, requiring the coming together of the right actors, writers, directors, and producers and no doubt others, too.

In addition to All in the Family and Northern Exposure, I would identify The Smothers Brothers, the first Star Trek, Lonesome Dove, and Shogun as examples of these happy coincidences.

The main conflict dramatized, as is so common in most of TV these days is that between masculinism and feminism, with feminism always winning. The masculinist perspective is generally provided by Maurice and Joel, while everyone else is generally a manifestation of feminism or is trying, like Chris, to emphasize feminist values. Marilynn is the feminist archetype, never revealing any sign of a masculinist value. The other women are of various mixtures, though always defending the feminist ideal.

Holling has given up killing wildlife in favor of photographing it. Ed pursues shamanism which is frequently healing people when Joel can't help. Adam happily lives in a cave. Chris lives in a trailer next to a lake and constantly spouts philosophers with feminist ideas, like the value of passivity and non judgementalism.

On the other hand Joel and Maurice are constantly coming up with masculinist schemes: medical interventions on Joel's part and development of Sicily on Maurice's, that usually come to naught. In Joel's case something like the natural poultice used to cure an outbreak of the flu arrives and in the end he finds himself using it. In Maurice's case, the expression of feminist values is generally used to make him appear foolish. As an example, in one episode he tries to corner the market on bottled water using a newly found deep well near Sicily, only to discover that the water produces a reversal of sexual characteristics in those who drink it. The females become aggressive while the males become passive and begin to complain of being sexually exploited.

Frequently the areas of values conflict in the political arena are dramatized as when, for example, a homosexual couple moves to Sicily. Maurice, of course, never ceases to refer to them contemptuously, while the partners themselves are presented as ideal neighbors. The feminist attitude towards death is also frequently dramatized. In one episode an old man refuses medical treatment, in another an old woman predicts her own death even though she seems healthy, which comes to pass to Joel's bewilderment.

Some areas are not dealt with directly: drugs and abortion for instance, thus demonstrating that this is truly another Utopia and could never be expected to actually exist. For one thing, high technology and feminism are freely mixed which can't be expected to happen, long term. Feminists will take advantage of existing technology as can be seen among the Inuits, but they don’t understand it and, when the production declines they will certainly give it up in favor of traditional low technology. You can't have your cake and eat it too, as the common sense condensation of this verity goes.

In any case, this series charmingly dramatizes the everyday conflicts in our individual lives and not only entertains us but instructs us in possibilities for coping.