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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in1

Present pasts in 20 years of American TV serial fiction from Northern

Exposure to Mad Men

Anders Hg Hansen*

School of Arts and Communication, Malmo University, Malmo, Sweden

This article investigates the representation ofmemory and dream in selected AmericanTV serial fiction concentrating on 1990s shows that blended the real, the surreal and thesupernatural. Departing from Northern Exposure, and moving on to Twin Peaks and The

X Files, these shows embarked on an extensive use of vision, dream and memory themesto portray, I argue, negotiations between what Jan Assmann coined communicative andcultural memory (Jan Assmann 1995, 2010). While Twin Peaks and The X Filesconcentrated on the dark undercurrents or repressed forms of American belief andanxiety, Northern Exposure took a more benevolent route, re-imagining and rewritingalternative American aspirations of belief and coexistence. Key protagonists wereportrayed as exiled individuals engaging with their pasts and the communities of whichthey became part of or estranged from while on roads to self-discovery. Carl Jungswritings formed an inspirational body of thinking for the shows, perhaps most explicitlyin Northern Exposure, which also elaborated on Jungian visions of a shared humanityamong the many differences inside and between humans. All shows elaborated on theconsequences of opening oneself to dimensions of life that formed the shadows (Jung1958, 1959), human duplex or doubling (Jung 1958), as well as the unused potential of

imagination in Western modernity. Roads to self-discovery involving repressed ordifficult memory work were also spelled out during the first seasons of a very differentcontemporary show,Mad Men. This show will be brought into discussion at the end of thearticle where I elaborate on the consequences of particular forms of American dreaming.

Introductory memory exposures

Northern Exposure, 19901995, was filmed mostly outside Seattle, WA, down the road

from the now famed Snoqualmie Falls ofTwin Peaks, which it referred to during Season 1

(Episode 5). It premiered on CBS in the summer break between the two seasons of the

ABC show, Twin Peaks, which also fused drama with comedy, the mundane with thespiritual, and the realist with the supernatural.2 While not as innovative as Twin Peaks, it

proposed a new look at human coexistence by creating stories about how individual

idiosyncrasy and difference related to communal integration, and in this project of

envisioning a changed and new social world it used memory3 and dream as devices with

which collectives and individuals maneuvered into their futures. Apparently irreconcilable

world views were integrated through re-imagining past collective cultural memories in a

lively and compassionate present-day problem solving. To create instant human

recognition as well as complexity4 in its storylines, Northern Exposure playfully created a

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

*Email: [email protected]

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2013

Vol. 27, No. 1, 141159, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2013.737194

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mixture of character stereotypes as well as cultural hybrids to embrace a range of forces

that Western society have made oppositional (Zubizaretta 2006) or conflictual. It created

stories about how memory comprised local lore as well as global cinematic and spiritual

(Western and Eastern) references or cultural memory (Jan Assmann 2010) assisted in a

present engagement with individual and collective development. Rather than trappingsubjects in damaging quests as in Twin Peaks and The X Files or trying to erase and

avoid the past as in Mad Men memories and dreams became life-enhancing resources.

The shows, as several researchers have noted, attracted new audiences to TV fiction

(e.g. Thompson 1997) and triggered proliferate academic writing.5 Why were these series6

so influential? The introduction of spiritual and supernatural elements combined with

realist and quirky character portrayals and storylines, the blending of humour and drama,

the concern with meaning beyond the worldly, rationalist and empirical, could be argued

to fit well into the zeitgeists of the 1990s. This was also mirrored in a range of other

serials/series notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer.7

The series shared a concern with memory. While darker and damaging memories and

dreams haunted the characters of the famed 1990s Twin Peaks and The X Files, Northern

Exposure ignited a warmer engagement with the mental and material debris of the past. It

viewed remembrance and dream as taking action! Rather than trapping subjects in

damaging quests, memory and dream in Northern Exposure became socially life-

enhancing resources and healing stories pointing towards possible futures (drawing from,

e.g. Spencer 2006).

The darker notes of Twin Peaks and The X Files were, in Northern Exposure, turned

towards a more optimistic and life-giving hauntology (Derrida 1994), if we can imagine the

variety of lifes shadows (Jung 1958) as such.8 This may be said to be a feature of the show,

which leans up against Spencers claim that Northern Exposure intended to heal and re-

imagine a last or new frontier (2006, 211), and even teach us social compassion (2001).9

Theory exposures

In Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks and The X Files, we were introduced to outsiders as key

protagonists struggling at the peripheries of the communities or collectives they negotiated

their membership to or alienation from. Jung discussed in The Undiscovered Self (1958)

how the individual, as a disassociated and scattered self (struggling with the forces and

impulses of the unconscious), was both in need of, and also framed by, an organizing

principle above him/her (Jung 1958, 64). The human being could search for his inner

man/self for spiritual self-realization, yet community, here in Jung seen as a state hisbook written at the heights of the Cold War, it should be noticed that had made man

statistical (589): a pawn in the mass, a simplex, yet forgetting that man is a duplex (81),

Jung notes. The conflict between real/inner man and statistical man lead to fantasies

coming up from the unconscious creating conflict and split personality, e.g. as tensions

between faith and the knowledge of science. Yet, we human beings are imperfect or

divided personalities caught in tensions, in need for the other and community. The perfect

has no need for the other, Jung notes (105).

Carl Jung, however, interestingly worked with attempts to explore and actively imagine

other or multiple forms of belief. He was searching inside the psyche, not only to understand

the individual, but also for phenomena to understand if/how humanity shared traits that

would not continue to divide us, inside and among each other. The notion of shared ancestral

traits or archetypes10 was one of his concepts, where he argued that through these traits we,

to some extent, could know our past from within (Coward 1985, 647)

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Northern Exposure had an explicit Jungian orientation in its focus on character

dualism, and its means of how to cope with, and overcome, conflictual quests for

individuality as well as community. The negotiation of the individual in relation to the

collective was also prominent in the quests of Agents Mulder and Scully in The X Files.

Here the collective, however, took on a much more threatening form.Although it may be difficult to imagine Jung coming to a consensus with Halbwachs

and Jan and Aleida Assmann on approaches to memory studies, this article will, in the

spirit of worked through dualisms, bring them together:

All these series worked with a myriad of references, a collective canon of culture

(Aleida Assmann 2010, 99), bodies of texts or icons that, according to Aleida Assmann, as

in the history of religion, referred to texts that are decreed to be sacred must not be

changed, a stable reference (2010, 100). However, in Aleida Assmanns elaboration

ofcanon, these texts are invigorated and appropriated, thereby becoming an active form of

remembrance. She opposes canon to the archive, the latter a storehouse or passive form of

remembrance, in Assmanns use of the term (99). The evoking of canonical texts becomes

a part of the personal reminiscence and sense-making of the past, in the present. Moving

on to Jan Assmann, social and communicative memory in the context of a recent past and

autobiographical framework (Jan Assmann 2010, 99)11 is rooted in everyday experience in

human interactive situations. This is what we draw on, or what we cannot do reminiscing

without, when we reconstruct the past or re-imagine what we were and what we want to

become. The everyday communicative memory (Jan Assmann 1995, 2010) became a

prominent take on social memory in all shows, and often the stakes that led to story

development were the clashes between these different levels of memory, the cultural and

communicative memory or the mythical, historical, institutionalized and formal on the one

hand, versus the recent, autobiographical, non-institutional and informal on the other (Jan

Assmann 2010, 117).The actively circulated memory that keeps the past present could be seen to find

particular prominence in any detective and crime show that works backwards, starting

with the crime before it works its episode or serial narrative backwards. The question I am

adding and will concentrate on is how the series explore humanity and culture in this

process. Theoretically, I attempt to concentrate on the odd coupling of Carl Jung with

Aleida and Jan Assmann in my investigation.

Northern Exposure in particular elaborated on the tensions between a cultural canon of

references and recognized literature and the presently breathing individuals

autobiographical and oral work with recent communicative memories. Jan Assmann

elaborated on the notion of communicative memory inspired by Halbwachs initial notionof collective memory12 and the social aspect of reminiscence. Memory needs continuous

feeding from collective sources and is sustained by moral and social props, Coser notes in

his introduction to Halbwachs Collective Memory (1941). People acquire their memories

in societies, yet memory research (before 1941) had a tendency to treat people as isolated

individuals (Halbwachs 1941/1992, 38). No memory is possible outside frameworks used

by people (43); we aid each others memories and we successively engage with them (38).

Each scrutiny or recall marks a point of possible reinterpretation, since memory as

history-writing is a practice of the present or something we reproduce under the

influence of the present milieu, as Halbwachs put it (1941/1992, 49).

Northern Exposure especially, but also The X Files and Twin Peaks, worked with

individual as well as social or collective dreamscapes articulating general or personal fears

and rites of passage. These uses of dream and memory become interesting to discuss in

relation to a distinction between layers of the unconscious: a personal level and a

Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 143

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collective level, what Jung called the collective unconscious (Jung 1960, 87). Jung

describes the latter as what remains from our forefathers, images already filled out (Jung

1960, 1012), forces and figures, or archetypes, that reproduce the same myths (92).

Although sceptical towards this conceptualization, in particular the biologism in Jung,

I find Northern Exposures appropriation of Carl Jungs terminology interesting. It madesense to address memory- and dream-driven stories in the show to evoke visions of a

shared humanity. Several characters from time to time experience the same dreams or

nightmares (as e.g. Laura and Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks). Their difficult, symbolic and

conflict-resolving dreams inform their waking orientations. The content of the dreams is

quickly interpreted and worked through: in tales to others, in public art or transmission

over the radio. Bonds between the deeply personal and the collective were tangled or

tightened in almost every episode.

Fish out of water

Northern Exposure begins when Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow),13 a young, yuppyish,

temperamental, whimsical, Jewish doctor from New York, finds himself forced to take up

a job as medical practitioner in the remote town of Cicely, Alaska (population: under

1000) to pay off his student loans. The show initially concentrates on the newcomer and

his adjustments, learning and quests in this new community, which includes a core group

of outcasts and yet rooted townspeople and their spiritual and mundane relationships and

routes.14

A key node of the fictional Cicely is the town-radio KBHR, where the local artist, DJ,

Harley Davidson-rider and caravan-living Chris Stevens (John Corbett) shares his musings

and philosophy. Chris sets the wordy, worldly and otherworldly tone of the show. The

radio is the medium where time and themes flow from Chriss mouth and albums to theears and souls of the community. Chris is also another sort of mediator: he conducts the

weddings, funerals, public art, memorials and other ceremonies in the town.

The indeterminable Alaskan location of the fictional Cicely creates the impression of

an imaginary place. It looks very familiar on the surface, but is also just as much a state of

dreaming mind. Its remoteness and weirdness allow creators and writers to play with

human relationships that not only draw on regular social conventions (Chan 2006, 423)

and realist notions, but also recognize that Alaska was the final frontier (Spencer 2006,

211). The rural and remote location furthermore allows for an emphasis on oral culture,

rumour and face-to-face relations yet the radio station and Chris musings (as mentioned

above) connect the place to work, to history, and assure the sharedness, and themediatization, of the stories going around among selective people. The town of Cicely

accommodates individuality and difference, and offers ground for individuation processes

(Spencer 2006, after Jung), where individuals confront its shadows and try to integrate

unknown parts of oneself or ones past. Yet Cicely also paves the way for community. The

quest for individuation is coupled with a search for community, a double orientation that

may also characterize frontier dreaming or what frontier mythology is made of.

Another key character is Maggie OConnell (Janine Turner), a young, independent,

feisty and feminist bush-pilot (running the local air taxi service). In the pilot episode, Joel

takes her for a prostitute. I am not a hooker. Jerk! I am your landlord, she spits. The

dynamic between Joel and Maggie or OConnell and Fleischman, as each often

addresses the other by using surnames (as Scully and Mulder in The X Files) is portrayed

through a series of situated sexual ignitions and cold showered arguments throughout the

series, a reluctant couple formula principle where both characters struggle with

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perspectives they lack or cannot quite integrate or come to terms with their own duplex.

We initially view the newcomer, Fleischman, as the fish out of water (Thompson quoting

Falsey and Brand 1997, 162) transferred from his urban habitat to a strange rural impasse.

In fact, all characters slowly take shape as strange fishes coming together in the bowl of

Cicely where they bounce against each other, following and resisting the streams,oscillating between small town incidents and trips into the Alaskan wilderness.

Fish in the water

Several episodes in Northern Exposure bring Joel Fleischmans Jewishness into play. In

Kaddish for Uncle Manny (4.22), Joel abolishes his attempt to gather 10 Jews to do the

minyan prayer when his Uncle Manny has passed away. With help from Maurice and other

townspeople, he succeeds in finding a few unlikely Jews, and then decides to use his own

new community ofgoys to do the prayer. In Things Become Extinct (3.13) and Shofar,

So Good (6.3), Joel also explores his Jewish identity. Another example that I will

concentrate on here is Fish Story (5.18), which begins with OConnell (a non-Jew)

offering to make the Jewish Passover dinner for Fleischman. After a series of

experiences on the lake nearby, Joel realizes why he fled from Maggies offer.

In Fish Story, after saying no to Maggies proposal for a Passover Seder, Joel

nevertheless experiences his own sort of pass-overor pass-through at the nearby lake. As

he fishes with Ed and Chris, Joel hooks the local big fish, known as Goony, but Goony

resists capture. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Henry David Thoreau, Chris

muses, as they sit by the lake just before Joel catches the fish. Later Ed and Chris leave

and Joel spends the night at the lake, holding on to a resisting Goony.

The trip to the lake triggers a recounting of the Old Testaments story of Jonah, a minor

prophet who turned his back on Gods call by fleeing on a boat (Bible, Book of Jonah1973). Joel reluctantly ended up in Alaska, and has now gone fishing. The big fish forces

Joel to stay in a rowboat alone through the night while the fish drags the line. At some

point, Joel feels the rumbling below. Has Goony finally given in? No, it is neither

Spielbergs shark in Jaws (1975) or Melvilles Moby Dick and Joel is not Captain Ahab.

(Melville 1851). He is there alone not dragging people with him as in Moby Dick. Up from

the ocean, and Joels unconscious, comes Joels former New York Rabbi! After a chat on

Judaism in the beautiful quiet moonlight, the rumbling under the boat comes back and

this time it is Goony. And she/he is hungry. Like the prophet Jonah, Joel ends up in

Goonys stomach but at least with the company of a rabbi. Down there the Rabbi lectures

on Jonah while Joel also encounters old artefacts from his past significant objects ofJoels past exhibited in the tomb of the whale while the two men look for an exit, in this

case the excretion canal (Jonah was thrown up, Joel and the Rabbi are going for the other

end). As soon as, the Rabbi concludes that Joel should remember his responsibility and

welcome Maggies plea for intimacy by saying yes to the Passover dinner, they are on their

way out. But just before excretion or escape from the burden of memory, they find

themselves in a tube: the subway on the way to downtown New York. Joel wakes up

disoriented on the lake where he had been fishing with the townspeople on their way

searching for him. Joel asks, with a bewildered just awakened gaze, what happened to the

Rabbi and the fish?

The experience on the lake, maybe a dream and/or a speech from the unconscious that

draws from Joels cultural memory or canon of Judaism (Assmann 1995), led Joel to come

to terms with his own change. The episode also exposes two other stories about resistance

and change through a journey and a return. Ill give the third parallel story some reflections


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too. Here the elderly tavern owner Holling has a try with painting by numbers. He becomes

overconcerned with the result, the product and if people like his work or not. Chris, the

radio DJ, then mediates and convinces Holling to separate the art from the artist. Chris

practices an aesthetics of the transitory (as he names it) by arranging public, collective

events of a memorable quality where he lets objects undergo a journey, exposure orannihilation through a rite. Chriss rites of letting go add to the shows concern with the

ephemeral. Chris arranges for humans, as well as the remnants and artefacts of human

creation, to go on their last journey. Also orally, he evokes traditions and texts that belong

to different domains of our cultural memory in Jan Assmanns terms. Like Carl Jung, Chris

believed in art practice as an alleviator of fear or anxiety.

Northern Exposure encircled the need for resistance and civil disobedience, yet also

posited that fate and the stream may carry us apropos the references to Thoreau and

Civil Disobedience (1849/1993) in the episode Democracy in America (also the title of a

book by de Tocqueville, 1840, who is also quoted in the episode) and the quote from

Walden, Time is but the stream I go a fishing in (1854). This passage, against or with a

stream, may also hold a possibility for a return to community in an altered state. The

stream in Northern Exposure can also be seen as lifes dynamic and changing state or

even a carousel15: it may lead you astray but it leads you back or home. An engagement

with a key mythology in the collective memory, a monster, a past event, is reworked and

then community life continues as normal (at least until next weeks episode). The Fish

Story16 episode ends with a Passover dinner for Joel, with all the key characters in the

series, in Joels house. The focus on parallel storylines concerned with different forms of

unworked debris surfacing or being humorously trialed can be seen as Freudian in

character, yet there is a strong focus on known and unknown connections of mentality,

themes that the different individualities share as a collective. The collective unconscious is

referred to in several of Chris radio musings, as well as in a shared dream with his brotherBernard (Aurora Borealis 1: 8), where they find themselves sitting in a truck, while Carl

Jung is trying to drive. Jung cannot drive, and the two men wake up before the crash.

Appropriately, in a later episode, Joel receives Jungs The Undiscovered Self in his post.

Moving on to other fish in the water, one of the so-called nature episodes ofThe X Files

engages with a sea monster not called Goony but Big Blue. Mythologies play a slightly

different role in The X Files; they represent either folklore or supernatural, or border-

natural, phenomenon i.e. the designation X File and a case for the detectives Mulder

and Scully. We are engaging with rumours and myths often of an oppressing and collective

character that can take the form of a conspiracy that our key detectives, as whistleblowers,

and outcasts, manoeuvre within a bureaucratic machine or apparatus, or enter acommunity full of secrets aim to unravel. The X Files can be said to belong to a 1990s

atmosphere or belief in government conspiracy and a paranoia towards the dealings of

political man and state power. In the light of the rise of Wikileaks and related movements

aiming to expose systemic secrets, might the mythology of The X Files gain new

relevance? The Wikileaks phenomenon has been led by other exposures, personal scandal-

stories, and as in The X Files, a focus on from below describing whistleblowers, the risks

they take, the protection they need and the truth they search for to make it available for the

public. The repressed public memories, or that which is not yet made collective, but should

be made collective may be said to herald The Lone Gunmen of The X Files as the early

digital age disclosure movement helping whistleblowers within the system.

In the episode Quagmire (3: 22), we also see characters stuck on a lake engaged in a

dialogue about change while waiting to be eaten. The two key characters are FBI

detectives: the largely intuitive and adventurous Fox Mulder and the more sceptical and

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reluctant Dana Scully. Mulder takes Scully out on a Saturday morning drive to investigate

an incident at a lake in the forest. Mulder believes that something weird is going on at the

lake (and of course he is right). Scully thinks there is nothing to it, but she cannot resist

Mulders speculations and goes along. Several local townspeople have been killed by

something that lives near or in the lake. The little town markets itself around the myth ofBig Blue. After some unexplained killings, Scully and Mulder rent a boat and take to the

lake to investigate. Their boat is attacked by something big from under the water, but find

rescue on a rock that protrudes about the surface. They sit down with their guns pointed

towards the dark lake and Scully wonders if Mulder really is like Captain Ahab, the hunter

of the great whale in Melvilles Moby Dick (1851), a man on a restless quest dragging

people with him. Earlier in the episode, Scullys dog which she has named Queequeg

after one of the harpooners of Moby Dick was eaten by the alleged monster just as a

dog had to die in Jaws (Spielberg 1975). Scullys family history then intrudes: her father

was always away on the ocean; he called her Starbuck, after another harpooner, and she

called him Ahab. We have learned this in a previous episode, but it is retold here on the

rock. Mulders family history joins in: hiss father resisted the operations he became a part

of. The legacy of their fathers is vividly alive. We see a stereotypical representation of an

UFO on Mulders X Files office poster. Below the hovering UFO the words I WANT TO

BELIEVE are written in clear and confident capital letters. But are they the shadows of

their fathers, and their lost siblings, that hovers over Scully and Mulder and guide their

quests? Scullys sister dies after a failed operation from which Scully escaped, but got her

sister instead; Mulders sister was abducted.

At some point in their conversations they hear sounds. Is it the monster? No, it is only a

duck. Scully reminds Mulder that cartographers tagged so-called undesignated territory

with the note here be monsters. Her remark encapsulates the series. The Alaskan last

frontier in Northern Exposure as well as the woods ofTwin Peaks also became metaphors.Character quests on all three series became about inhabiting places and a knowledge that

leads to transgression in imagination. The data the detectives look for in The X Files are

not only the truth, but data that come to change the way we understand the world.

Furthermore, the personal and the professional quests of the detectives come to reflect or

reinforce each other.

The three shows, with their obvious differences taken into consideration, are about

journeys into undesignated territories. Mulder looks for monsters. The two city detectives

sit on a rock on a lake and are scared by natural sounds while they also long for a noisy

metropolis as with Joel in Northern Exposure. They have in their urban lives turned their

back on nature, and now it is turning its back on them, to paraphrase an angry biologist atthe beginning of the episode. Later when they are rescued by the biologist, Mulder

manages to shoot the monster, after it had taken a bite out of the biologist. The monster

turns out to be an alligator.

Mulder is disappointed there was no monster. Scully comforts him. However, he

prevented more killings by shooting the alligator. Those myths and stories, like the one on

Big Blue, are stories Mulder finds hope in, he explains. People want to believe, and that is

why the stories endure, Scully responds. I could add to this that the poster in Mulders

office is not so much about UFOs. What is older than the hills?, one of the billboard

adverts asks (along the highway when Mulder, Scully and Queequeg drive into town). It is

not really the cartoonish Big Blue depicted, as we may think. What is older and bigger than

the hills is belief! Mulder and Scully glance over the dark lake for a moment and then turn

around to enter their car. We see a glimpse of something that could be a very big fish in the

lake. The episode ends.


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Double trouble and other dualities

In The X Files, Scully and Mulder share an understated intimacy while repeatedly clashing

over science and the supernatural. The stereotypic gender conventions are played with

Mulder general being the intuitive, supernatural, alien-hunter with a propensity towards

the use of dream and psychic powers where possible, a trait he shares with Agent Cooperin Twin Peaks.17 Fleischman and OConnell in Northern Exposure are also in a different

way established as dual and complementary characters: the urban and the rural, the

rationalist and the intuitive, the thinker and the feeler, the Republican and the Democrat,

the scientist and the handywoman, the educated and the streetwise. They do, however, also

share traits that trigger conflict as well as attraction: they are both talkative, bold,

individualistic personas seeking to be respected and heard. Maggie is initially only

attracted to the fleisch, not the man/persona, yet their relation grows as the series

progress and it is by far the only or central dualism in the series.

In Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper is paired or related to a range of characters and an object,

his detective diary, a small hand-sized tape recorder. When the creator behind The X Files,Chris Carter, invented Mulder, he must have thought of Agent Cooper of Twin Peaks, and

then proceeded to do something completely different with the character. While Cooper is

warm, open, literal, a classical gentleman-like persona, Mulder is deadpan, enigmatic and

ironic, a post-modern trickster to the bone. Neither of these men are, however, traditional

FBI agents. In both cases, we could be talking about strangely isolated individuals

appropriating the FBI as a Federal Bureau ofImagination. Cooper records his thoughts to a

personal assistant at home called Diana, or just a tape recorder called Diana, with

ramblings on Douglas Fir, coffee and pies, and comments on the course of his

investigation and life in Twin Peaks. The taped tales become Coopers memory archive

and reconfigurations, his therapeutic wall, and his ethnographic notebook. This devicereplaces, but also ironically mocks, other formats of authoritative voice-over, such as the

Voice of God, and connects the private and public or professional Cooper. His federal

agent toolbox consists of classical methods spiced up with Buddhism and Tibetan

philosophy, including dream material as clue provider the latter trait he shares with

Mulder and his lean towards abduction, contrary to Scullys more classic deduction

(Peterson 2007, 25). Mulder does not seem to make small talk with many people, if any,

and Cooper is much better at that. Cooper also smiles often and downs coffee, pie and

doughnuts (Mulder primarily lives off of sunflower seeds). Only once does Mulder try a

slice of pie and then he eats everything in a obsessive gesture to, and quotation of, Lynchs

Cooper character.

While it is easy to see where Scully and OConnell find their otheror complementary

persona, the case is more complicated with Cooper. Agent Cooper is open towards other

explanations, including those yet to be explained. Cooper also equips himself with varied

and eclectic principles in his work, notably a concern with the meaning in coincidences,

i.e. where events are seen as related by meaning, and not by cause (borrowing from Jungs

notion of synchronicity).18

Mulder is as open to the supernatural as Cooper, and his quest is also driven by earlier

tragic circumstances in his life. However, Mulder appears more stubborn in particular

beliefs or wants. Like Ahab seeking Moby Dick, Mulder seeks the truth and in his search

he finds an ally in Scully. Cooper has Sheriff Truman, but they do not challenge each other

(for a long time) as Scully and Mulder do. Truman follows Cooper, who leads the

investigation as a Buddhist-leaning anthropologist agent inhabited by local lore as a result

of his own intensive participatory observation. David Lynch and Mark Frost created a

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heartfelt romance, drawing heavily from the style of soap opera,19 which Lynch himself

was raised on, but told through an ironic lens. I do not claim that there is no heart in Twin

Peaks heavy shedding of tears and emotional and redemptive dialogue, but Lynch/Frost

created a counterpoint to the means with which the characters fought with their lives: they

unfolded the drama in a distinct visual style with slapstick as well as deadpan humour(combining early silent movie humour with what appeared as very rare and new forms).

Sometimes the visual spoke volumes through a parallel story related in many scenes (Hank

talking seriously while buck antlers stick up behind him, as if the antlers were growing out

of his evil head; Sheriff Harry Truman looking out the window while a picture of Former

President Harry Truman is visible on the wall; etc.). The latter visuality, speaking silently,

as well as through slapstick, the narrative off-roading or de-routing of story development,

provided a satire to the drama, a bizarreness to the mundane or a playfulness that

confronted the horrific (Campbell in Reeves et al. 1995, 190).

During its second season, Twin Peaks moved slowly away from the foreground crime

story towards a stronger engagement with the supernatural as well as everyday life in Twin

Peaks. Its many characters and its occupation with the bizarre may have caused less

interest (viewer numbers were dropping during the long second season), though its

conundrum-style signs and stories would have been even more difficult to deal with if the

show had premiered 1015 years earlier. Henry Jenkinss research (in Lavery 1995;

Lavery and Chain 2006) points towards how the VCR era, late 1980s and onwards,

allowed viewers to go through scenes and episodes several times. Furthermore, the

emerging Internet allowed viewers, not just those sharing a water-cooler at work, to

discuss and create community, across the country and the globe, among fellow Twin

Peakers online. Twin Peaks posed secrets and riddles that made it urgent for viewers to

debate what others thought was happening. Twin Peaks, and the rise of the Internet paved

the way for online fan communities, Jenkins (1995, 2006) noted. The similarly difficultThe X Files also triggered online discussion and writers often picked up on viewer

suggestions when adding/developing detail in the stories. As this is written (JulyAugust

2011), I notice recent entries in Twin Peaks Gazette online and on Facebook I do a thumbs-

up to the Northern Exposure 2011 fan gathering, Moosefest, in the city of Roslyn, Seattle.

While its supernatural focus and complexity would trigger people to record and watch

again and discuss online, Twin Peaks did not really provide a sustained engagement with

alternative worlds, as in the longer lasting The X Files (Johnson-Smith 2005). It did,

however (from Season 2) explore the supernatural aspects of the story it had laid out. Twin

Peaks began, at least in the foreground story, in a recognizable crime story plot mode with

discovery, investigation and revelation (EF) of crime, and in this process unraveled howthe crime was conceived, planned and committed (AC) (after Johnson-Smith 2005, 54).

After about a dozen episodes, the series shifted from being concerned with an explanation

of the past, and became more focused towards what will happen to the key characters.

The shadows (Jung 1958, 1959) of the characters was explored and the everyday drama

decentred the crime story. It took the first season to work the shadows up from the mental

debris of the characters pasts, their personal and collective unconscious. Visions20 of the

reality of supernatural places, people and spirits became a major concern. Visions were

important for other characters than Detective Cooper. Major Briggs explained the

difference between vision and dream to his son, Bobby, in one of the many beautiful and

soap-opera-ish scenes (Season 2, Episode 1). Sitting in front of each other in the double R

diner, Dad and son are at first miles apart in miscommunication. Briggs talks about the pie,

the huckleberries are delicious, etc. But suddenly it changes. Briggs asks if he can share

something with his son: ... A vision I had in my sleep last night. As distinguished from a


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dream, which is a mere sorting and cataloguing of the days events by the subconscious; a

vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream, the mind revealing itself to itself. 21 Briggs

then retells the vision of a meeting and embrace he had with Bobby last night and how he

felt about this vision: his joy when seeing Bobby happy and in harmony with himself and

life. Bobby, who had entered the conversion as a slacker trying to shield his discomfort bya body language of indifference, is quickly alerted and de-masked. The encounter appears

to transform his relationship to his Dad. Rather than making reconciliation take place over

a time span of actions and talk, it takes place in this one moment. The scene is in a style

related to many other face-to-face dialogues of the show, not far from the style we may

imagine shapes Invitation to Love, the daily soap opera that many characters in Twin

Peaks follow on TV. Doublings again. Twin Speak. The soap within the soap. A genre

within another. Always another side to the coin of memory. This doubling may be the

series legacy. The soap and satire approach to supernatural drama and dream-working of

the collective closet of icons, archetypes and spirits shaped Twin Peaks portrayal of culture

and small town America. As Jimmie Reeves put it (in conversation with a group of Lynch

scholars): Twin Peaks . . .

evokes, mocks, yet lends quasi-reverence for the icons of the

past, while it places them in the present (in Lavery et al. 1995, 177).22

Another doubling providing ground for the cultural work of the show is a tension

between the urbanrural and real and imagined/dreamt or hard-to-comprehend territory23

Cooper represents the city, brought into foreign waters in the forested Pacific Northwest,

as does Fleischman in Northern Exposure and as does Scully/Mulder in a range of

episodes across the USA, notably a series of small town and nature episodes (including

Quagmire, discussed earlier). As in many small town crime stories, a murder makes the

coziness crack and dark forces and incidents arrive (or work their way up to the surface). In

Twin Peaks, the use of the Black Lodge and the spirit Bob take this model further. In The X

Files, the existence of the undesignated territory results in crime story endings withoutproper closure. The unresolved is labelled and given an appropriate place: an X File placed

in a drawer in a basement of the FBI building, deported to the underground, or the

unconscious, as shadow to remain not understood or taken out of official history. Scully

and Mulder run back and forth between this little office where light cannot enter (but

where there is imaginative light enough) and an outer world where normalcy is

interrupted with conspiracy, cloned humans, possible aliens, strange animals, tribes in

conflict a world of American anxieties.

While Mulder and Scully try to understand the communities they temporarily enter,

Cooper and Fleischman try to settle in the community they each have ended up in for a

long time. With a professional job to do and a good portion of unskilled ethnography, theirstays in Twin Peaks and Cicely, respectively, end up becoming a form of Jungian self-

discovery. While Fleischman and Cooper had formed their individual personas before

their arrival (individuation achieved, a point also confirmed by Spencer (2006, 220) on the

character Fleischman), the quest for both of them in their new roles is to become part of a

community, and function as fully fledged social human beings.

The duality of characters, or traits, gender roles or thematic parallel stories is in

Northern Exposure also developed in relation to the relationship between the past and the

present. A variety of episodes show how apparently minor family feuds and incidents of

the distant past suddenly play a crucial role in present-day conflicts. The series warmly

mocks the human condition our tendency to hold a grudge and fight each other. The

symbolism is often striking. In Democracy in America (3.15), the fight in the election of

a new mayor is over a traffic stop sign. This in a town with hardly any traffic. Now a sign

of the red light, the matter or thing of concern opens a discussion in the community.

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In Family Feud (4.19), a newly launched memorial, a totem pole, re-ignites an old feud

between two tribes of Cicely because of different interpretations of a fish crest, which

dates back to an incident in 1934. Passed on conflictual cultural memories have been

ignited in a communicative work through (elaborating on Jan Assmanns terms)

representing the tension between the canonized, established, formal and inherited and thepresent, living, shared and divided references and memories, which all provide fuel for

identity development and orientate wise steps into the future. They end up leaving out the

fish, and they are friends again. The residents of Cicely easily forget, but also easily

remember. Many episodes unfold through a bite of a Proustian Madeleine sponge cake,

though it only generates a brief conversation with the past rather than speaking volumes

(as in Proust). The residents quickly move on with their lives giving a sign of action in the

act of remembrance.

In a re-enactment of the town of Cicelys formation back in 1909 (Cicely, 3.23), the

creators reveal the history of Cicely and show how the descendants of the earlier Cicelians

have become the residents of today. Each key character of the series plays a 1909

simulacra of the present-day character. Thus, the 1909 version of the 1990s Joel

character must also be a visitor. So in 1909 he is Kafka, arriving from his urban

entanglements into the rural pioneer town of Cicely to cure writers block. The mixture of

fantasy, myth, memory and history characterizes Northern Exposure. Capital H history is

doubled with the minor histories, the mythical pairs with the mundane in the stories of past

and present. The notion of memory as a present faculty, as all remembrance necessarily

must be, but also a craft of the creating mind, is prominent. Memory is a processing engine

facilitating future action. In relation to this point, ritual often plays a role in creating the

passing from a difficult past to a tolerable future. In Northwest Passages (4.1), Maggie is

inspired by an Indian rite. She leaves a goodbye note to each former dead lover down by

the river. The stream will deliver the messages, and she can move forward. When she staysover at the river to go to sleep, she dreams that she has a walk in the nearby forest, where

she stumbles into all the ex-boyfriends having a barbecue together. They have all received

their note and they are now complaining about what Maggie wrote, such as blunt

remarks on their sexual capacities. Maggie then wakes up with a fever and is rescued by

Joel and others from the town.24

There is no such thing as American history, only a frontier

The words are Don Drapers (2/4), a key character in Mad Men, the period serial on life at

and around a big advertising company in New York in the early 1960s. Each seasondepicts one year. We begin in 1960. Season 125 unfolds with a detailed portrayal of an

expanding American middle-class consumer culture during a period where popular culture

changed the country but where minds and cultural norms did not move yet so fast. The

advertising companys take on American identities and their campaigns to capture

consumer emotions is the shows key to the portrayal of culture. A central character is the

mysterious, handsome, undoubtedly creative genius Don Draper, who is not really Don

Draper. The actual Draper died from in combat during the Korean War. Next to him in a

trench was Dick Whitman, barely surviving a bomb blast. Whitman takes the dead and

unidentifiable Drapers ID neckband and immediately changes his identity. We learn in

several flashbacks (and in the return of Whitmans lonely brother, Adam, who finally

tracked down Dick), that the two boys childhood had been far from easy. The new Don

Draper pursued or invented a life, on the other side of the past that now was no more: a

project of forgetting. As advertising digs into emotions that may not be fully transparent or


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clear, Don Draper is a new appearance (Dunn 2010, 30)26 suited to an American impulse

or feeling. Draper is the wealthy, lonely and unhomely man who has difficulty building a

history. He looks for a new frontier to cross, a new lover, a disappearance to San Francisco.

Although Draper says his life only moves forward, he does not appear to have a clear plan.

He does not even have a contract; he is a free agent in his self-conception. He cannothandle his past and therefore not his future either. For Draper to fully appear, his strategy is

to escape from another or former track of his life. Draper has a problem connecting

different life-epochs or spheres of relations, since he does not really allow a life story or

some coherency in the diversity to evolve. There are many attempts and moments of

regret, which leads us to engage with him and the serial. However, he generally lives in an

instantaneous practice of the pursuit of an American dream. While the 1930s hobo27 was a

gentleman of the rails, sleeping like a stone because he is freed from the pressures of the

past. As Fritz writes (2010, 63), Don Draper has become a modern hobo, I would say, one

who has manufactured himself as an empowered version of the poor wanderer he saw enter

his childhood home for a meal and some work.

Bob Dylans Dont Think Twice Its Alright (Dylan 1962) is used as end music in the

episode where Don tiredly let his body sink to the staircase in the empty house after his

family has gone to celebrate Thanksgiving at his in-laws house. We see two different

versions of the scene. First, we see Dons hopeful imagination where he arrives home to a

family that has not yet left and kids who embrace him (this scene plays without the

bittersweet Dylan tune). This is Dons wish to reconnect, which is unfulfilled. Dons

lonely moment on the staircase can be linked to another event just before his return to the

empty house. He presents an idea for an advertising campaign for Kodaks new slide

projector using a circular tray prosaically named The Wheel, but in Dons brilliant

imagination now called The Carousel, vividly mirroring how a childs movements are

circular, a merry-go-round, exploring the world and then returning home (after Teschnerand Teschner 2010, 137). Don uses emotional images from his own happy family

moments, his recent history suddenly there, mediated and passed on to stunned and

touched employees. After Dons convincing demonstration, he attempts to move in

circular fashion to return home, but the house is empty.28

In Season 2, Don disappears temporarily from his corporate New York life, his

mistresses, and a life in a hotel after his wife Betty has thrown him out. First on business in

California, Don impulsively skips a planned meeting, stays over with bohemians and

pursues a new love affair (although the latter is not so different from escapades at home in

New York). During Dons flight from his everyday work duties, we see Don at a beach. He

has crossed the country and goes alone into the great Pacific Ocean to the George Jonescountry tune Cup of Loneliness. In the first season of the show, Don Drapers memories

appear to visit him in an accidental fashion: a situation or the arrival of a person from the

past forces memories upon Don, which he tries to shake off. He attempts to go back to the

stage of between, being afterthe past that is no more, or not influencing him (or at least in

an attempt to arrange life so) and at the threshold of the forward approach he endorses.

There is no attempt at integration. John Fritz writes, Don Drapers memories are always

triggered externally. We never find Don simply contemplating his past (2010, 64).

Memory here becomes a mneme, a reappearance, rather than an anamnesis, an intended

recall (terms from Plato used by Junker-Kenny 2010, 204; Ricoeur 2004, 17). I find Fritz

emphasis on mneme, interesting, while also seeing moments of anamnesis, as the

presentation of the carousel and other situations in the series reveal.

Don/Dicks duality is clear in Mad Men. The former Dick and the new Don, the

husband and father on the one hand versus the restless lover with parallel mistresses on the

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other. Don has disconnected his past and his present as he lives double lives, and this

parallel of life stories lends to the intriguing complexity of the character.

Conclusion

With this article, I have tried to show Northern Exposures non-judgmental approach to

living, its delighted use of dream and memory as guidance for action, its integration of life-

forms and quests the profane, secularized, scientific and mundane combined with the

spiritual, religious, mythic and folkloristic its dedication to community without buying

off individual idiosyncrasy.

Twin Peaks, The X Files and Northern Exposure provide meeting points and clashes

between what Metta Spencer names (after Tanaka) the horizontal and the vertical,29 or the

worldly and the spiritual. The series teach us about the consequences of leaving out, or

questing for, particular dimensions of life or belief. Northern Exposure embraced a move

from reductionism to holism and benevolently engaged with the living fossils (term

borrowed from J.J. Clarkes work on Jung 1994, 183), the cultural memory, of our pasts,

which the series then re-imagined and rewrote. The transformative power of memory and

dream apparent in Northern Exposure plays on the productive use of the past in the present

and the future. Chris, the radio DJ and lay minister, acts as a memory anchor of the

collective. His mediations work in several ways: not only as a transferer of radio speech

texts and music to the listening ears of the community, but also as a go-between public

interventionist in the public hall and church. He is the community middle-man for

marriages, funerals, conflict resolution, public art presentations and performances, an

interpreter of the communitys memory knots.30 The character types of the show prove to

be more subtle beneath their stereotypical surfaces. As any good fictional character, the

characters of Northern Exposure are contradictory, but the sometimes overstated traitsprovide an easy entry to recognizing a striking feature of the person.

We may more freely perceive and accept the storylines and quirky characters due to

the geographical placement of the stories in Northern Exposure. Cicely is a place far away

enough to hold a possibility, as Taylor says (1994, 25). It is in a real land, but further out. It

plays with another kind of American dream than that seen in Mad Men.

While Northern Exposure won drama awards (as did the other shows mentioned in this

article), it really was a comedy. Mad Men is a drama set in New York, the urban opposition

to the village life of Cicely. It is clear, however, that both places provide dream spaces for

invention. Cicely was mostly made up of exiles, apart from the few Native Americans,

each carrying a residue of personal and cultural debris, as Iain Crawford nicely put it(1994, 18). Don Draper and other key characters, for example Peggy, are not much

different in this sense. However, Mad Men is different in its take on community. There is

little of Northern Exposures warm romance. The design and clothes are pretty, where

everything in Cicely is gritty. A space in Northern Exposure looks like a place where

people actually live; Mad Men looks like a design brochure despite its celebrated realism

and accuracy. Everybody is smoking, but there is no smoke in the rooms. Its interior is

surface and art. In Northern Exposure, the interior looks real, fragile and rustic, but within

this weary frame strong and unlikely social integration takes place, while in Mad Men it

dissolves.

While Northern Exposure moves characters to a more comfortable territory, making

the faults charming, it never becomes comfortable or easy to feel with/for Don Draper in

Mad Men (genre-wise we have moved from comedy to drama, from stealth fantasy to

realism, which also explains the different approach to character portrayal). We come to


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feel sympathy for Don Draper partly because of his difficult past, and we notice his

reluctant engagement with that past in the present. Drapers antagonist in Mad Men is not

his rival Pete or his wife Betty or any other living, present character it is his relationship

to his pasts and the actions that made him depart from it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Erling Bjorgvinsson for leading me to Northern Exposure, to Nordic Summer Universityorganizers for the Hauntology and Aesthetics seminar at University of Rejkjavik, Iceland, 2009,where participants shared impressions on the first and early paper. Also thanks to Tracy Wise andSara Rehnstrom for comments. Finally, thanks to my wife Happy Singu31 for watching Mad MenSeason 1 with me before leaving for Desperate Housewives and then returning for my re-watch,and her first viewing, ofTwin Peaks during Summer 2011.

Notes

1. Henri David Thoreau (from Walden, p. 61) quoted by Chris Stevens (played by John Corbett) inNorthern Exposure Fish Story (5/18).

2. The interest in the supernatural fused with realist modes does not seem to have faded inAmerican TV serials during the 2000s a prominent example is True Blood, using thesupernatural to explore social issues, also named Southern Gothic.

3. The notion of memory has had a strong presence in cultural studies despite the continuousannouncement of particular turns (literary, cultural, spatial, memory, etc.), which couldindicate that memory has passed, or will pass to give space to other turns. The interdisciplinaryfields history from the late 1950s onwards has left a series of traces and concerns that point toorientations toward memory, notably the focus on identity and a history writing of the present,drawing upon living, contemporary memory. Cultural studies has also emphasized the hidden orlittle histories/history from below, the subject, the marginalized. Oral history research in

particular (e.g. Thomson/Perks, 1998) has provided one passage into the unravelling of memory.Several anthologies in recent decades point to an ongoing concern and no turning away frommemory (e.g. Erll and Nunning 2010, Radstone, and Hodgkin, 2003). Among the central,recurring terms in humanities and cultural studies engagements with memory have been thesometimes illusive, or illusively applied, notions ofcollective memory (Halbwachs), and social,communicative, as well as cultural memory (the latter two drawing particularly from JanAssmann 1995, 2010). Also a recent work by, e.g. Van Dijck (2007) witnesses to media studiesconcern with memory, a growing tendency in the era of digitization.

4. The notion complex, which has travelled into everyday language meaning a combination of partsin a whole, is also an academic term central to a variety of disciplines. It was also usedextensively by Carl Jung (complex here meaning a core pattern of emotions, memories, etc. inthe personal unconscious), yet I use it here in the meaning of multifaceted in a cohesive whole.

5. Twin Peaks, premiering in 1990,has been noted as a turning point in TV serial fiction, generating

new audiences (Thompson 1997), and triggering a quality American TV drama serials atendency that is also said to begin around during the 2000s coinciding with the use of thevisualnovel format in American serials such as Lost, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and Mad

Men. In fact, several turning points have been mentioned, including 1980 and Hill Street Blues(e.g. Hammond and Mazdon 2005; Thompson 1997). TV serial fiction has been increasinglyscrutinized in the US and the UK, notably in the humanities (journals have premiered, e.g.Critical Studies in Television [2006], Slayage [2001], Joss Whedons Whedonverse, Buffy, etc.An increasing number of monographs and anthologies have been published. To mention a few,Carveth and South 2010; Delasara 2000; Lavery 1995; Potter and Marshall 2009; Thompson1997; Wilcox 2005 several of these works engage with a specific TV show).

6. I have used the term serial to characterize the format of longer TV fiction where a narrative ornarratives evolve over a range of installments or episodes (such as Mad Men), while the term

series is used to describe a format where each episode marks a end of a case or semi/closure ofa story or sub story, such as in Northern Exposure a format we may associate particularly withcrime stories. In the series we get a sense of starting over again, with a new challenge or probleminvolving the same key characters or ensemble cast in each episode. This distinction is inspired

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by Mazdon (2005, 9). Whether the series or the serial feature of storytelling is emphasized, both

formats can have a season arc or ongoing sub-stories, in addition to the general story or show arc.

The X Files is an example of a series that experienced an oscillation between what I just named

serial and series. It had so-called mythology episodes (Delasara 2000) relating to the general

story development, as well as double and single episodes which concentrated on specific cases,

also named monster of the weekepisodes. These episodes, closer to the classic series format, didnot always reach closure in terms of a disentanglement of the mystery, yet the particular story

was ended. Also, monster of the weekepisodes may have planted seeds which would be taken up

again in later mythology episodes. TV fiction shows that adhere to theseries format are easier to

miss out on, for an episode or two, and then catch up with again. From the 2000s, American TV

fiction using serial formats, elaborated in the so-called visual novel style, has flourished.7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer could also be examined here for its concern with memory and dream,

and the blending of realist and supernatural dimensions of life (yet for space limitation reasons I

leave this out). The series also crossed established genres intelligently and drew on an

impressive repertoire of cultural memory, notably Shakespeare for whom the blending of

realities and a mixture of tragedy and satire was common.8. Derridas contracting ofhaunt and ontology may be elaborated with regard to what Jung did

with the notion of the shadow, or the shadowside of the soul. The shadow is the repressedcontent the individual cannot negotiate with or recognize, but which nevertheless needs to be

integrated. It is what escapes conscious recognition(Jung 1960, 36, my translation). The notion

of ontology refers to the study of the nature or fundamentals of being, while to be haunted

refers to how being is affected by forces of the ghostly or supernatural. Hauntology can be seen

(!) as not necessarily concerned with the workings of consciousness, or the unconscious,

although Derrida addresses absence/presence or visibility (1994, 202: To haunt does not mean

to be present). Whether we accept Freudian or Jungian distinctions of ego/self and

consciousness, the notion ofshadow can be used to engage with content that the individual either

cannot formulate, come to terms with, or identify with, but which s/he possesses anyway (and

may project onto others, as Jung noted). This exploration and working definition of shadow

could be opened for further elaboration. Saul Friedlanders notion ofdeep memory expresses

what cannot be articulated or given coherent or meaningful narrative form, as opposed tocommon memory; what establishes coherence (Young 2000, 12 14, after Friedlander).

Friedlanders memory concepts could also have been interesting to work with in the TV shows

discussed. However, in this article I concentrate on the notion of the shadow and elaborate on its

relationship to duplex, as well Assmanns communicative and cultural memory.9. The series in question here also created spin-off fan cultures and folklore on the Internet and on

filming locations, such as the yearly Moosefest in the city of Roslyn where most of the town

scenes for Northern Exposure were shot.10. In relation to the series/serials discussed in this article, it may be of interest that Jung regarded

primitive lore (which in Twin Peaks and Cicely, for example, we could define as local and

traditional lore) as archetypes modified. The lore is archetype content changed into conscious

formula according to traditions (1959, 5). Jung saw the archetypes as a priori to human

experience, innate psychic dispositions. It is not the latter argument I find interesting orconvincing (I am critical towards Jung for parts of his biological framework, as Jan Assmann

1995, 125), but rather the idea of a community being built upon and not able to free itself from a

shared mythology. This mythology may be of a vibrant, living and often evoked form, i.e.

remembered, but it may also be in the format offorgotten form, whether neglected or negated in

Aleida Assmanns sense, and then brought to the surface (2010, 99).11. Jan Assmann notes that Warburg and Halbwachs profoundly social and cultural take on

memory was very different from the earlier biological frameworks of Jung, in his theory of

archetypes (Assmann 1995, 125). Jung did, however, also produce works removed or moving

away from his so-called biological framework (a categorization which I question) to social

critique and philosophy in The Undiscovered Self, which I engage with in this article.12. Jan Assmann argues that Halbwachs was engaging with what he callscommunicative memory,

since the institutional character did not apply to his concept. Halbwachs was elaborating on aneveryday notion of shared memories, he argues (2010, 111).13. Joel Fleischman, derived from German for flesh, Flesh-man, a man of the flesh, not the spirit.

However, Joel changes slowly throughout the series.


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14. Allegedly, the series creators Joshua Brand and John Falsey were inspired by a friend who waspracticing medicine in rural upstate New York (DVD Season 1 material) as well as an Alaskancity with a quirky radio station.

15. The carousel format may be particularly understandable in series, where characters are takenor take themselves on some kind of merry-go-round, then get off, and then next week repeat the

process.16. The Book of Jonah, which Fish Story drew from, is, however, satirical and facile, mocking the

fleeing prophets compassion for Israel. Joel, in the end, returns and celebrates Passover. He hashad a sign, and captures the meaning of the word pesah (Hebrew name of the festival) to protectand have compassion (Hayes in Metzger and Coogan 1993, 572). The episode suggests that Joel,at least temporarily, has found a promised land in Cicely although his exodus was lonely andreluctant. It turns out to be the dream he never had.

17. In general, he leaves the hard science and mundane rationalism to Scully, although they both

hold PhDs and exchange remarks about dissertations in the very first episode.18. See e.g. http://synchrologist.com/texts.html (accessed August 2011).19. The term Soap Opera was applied to daytime radio serials during the 1920s and 1930s. It was

soap manufacturers that mainly sponsored the programs, and although this has certainly

changed, the term is still in use. Television adopted the format in the 1950s. Although slippery indefinition it applies to melodramatic serials, most often running for a long time on a day to day

basis, with intricate plot lines around love, family, marriage, divorces, deceptions and betrayals(Lopez, Film by Genre 1993, 298).

20. Visions were also crucial to the Log Lady. Here through the medium of a wooden log (her logbook and memory archive!). She introduced all episodes with a separate enigmatic prologuelaying forward some of the themes of the episode and thus the Log Lady thereby becameanother authoritative voice (or form of voice over).

21. The mind revealing itself to itself could be related tomeditation. Meditation gives us a way ofworking on the mind with the mind, Buddhist teaching says (Pauling 1990, 29). The fact thatmeditation has become a household word in the West has carried the misconception that it ismainly a form of trance state, relaxation, self-hypnosis or blanking of the mind (1990, 2930).Rather, it is a state of increased awareness (30), much like moments ofvision, Id propose, as

Briggs and Cooper have them.22. All reflective cultural products borrow from and relate to a tradition, or traditions, which leads to

the tradition or texts canonization, I would argue apropos Aleida Assmann. NorthernExposure and Twin Peaks evoked ideas of a wooded, cozy small town, though in Peaks theversion is a particularly troubled one. Cicely and Twin Peaks could both be seen as small townDesolation Row (Bob Dylan 1965, Highway 61 Revisited album), a bizarre end station withfigures and forces from different times and texts in confrontation and reworked (Hg Hansen2012); in Cicely, though, we have a much less nightmarish version. Dylan had his DesolationRow in look at Steinbeck and Kerouac, while Lynch and Frost drew from, yes, earlier Lynch, butalso the detective show (Frost, Hill Street Blues) and the soap opera (Lynch apparently watcheda lot of these in his younger days).

23. Thompson notes that Fleischman and OConnell rely on a well-knownreluctant couple format

(Thompson 1997, 161). Viewing the term couple broader, e.g. as a partnership, we could addMulder and Scully and even Agent Cooper and his oddities coupled with the country normalcyof Sheriff Truman.

24. After that episode we do not hear much about the old dead lovers again. Maggie does notconfront them in dreams either, but she does meet a 15-year-old version of herself in Season 6,complaining that she has not had a family although turned 30.

25. In this article, I limit the discussion ofMad Men to Seasons 1 and 2.26. George Dunn elaborates on how Don Draper believes he knows how to create an appearance, or

mimesis, of love. Indirectly, appearance is what he seeks, and what may be enough to create aresponse in a viewer or potential consumer (Dunn 2010, 30). Connecting to a remark by Kevin

Guilfoy Our emotions are being appealed to, not created (Guilfoy 2010, 40) it means thatit is about appealing to the manifest feelings and desires.

27. The terms vagabond and hobo may be used interchangeably for wandering occasional workers,homeless, most often on the road to another destination. The terms tramp and bum also exist,coining denizens lower down the ladder, the tramp as one who moves around, and the bum asone who neither works nor travels. Several of these terms have a rich history in American

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popular fiction and other cultural representations, from mid/late nineteenth century emergenceswhere the end of the Civil War and later industrialization have been mentioned as causingvarious forms of migratory practices. Chaplin took on the tramp in the 1910s, Steinbeck andWoody Guthrie did it during the 1930s and early 1940s, during the Dust Bowl and the GreatDepression. The hobo was also a recurrent archetype in many Bob Dylan songs during the 1960s

(Hg Hansen 2012).28. His childhood past may have wasted his precious time, as the lyrics go in the Dylan song, and

he did not seem to hesitate. He has exhibited the Dont think twice attitude but slowly the pastcatches up with Don. On one of the days where it hits hard: I have a life and it only goes in onedirection forward, he firmly tells his brother Adam. But it has become a lonely ride. A lifemoves forward only in time, unfortunately, or at least this is most common in my experience,and must be lived forwardly, but life can with an expression close to the cliche only beunderstood backwards (Kierkegaard 1842).

29. Spencer quotes the Buddhist teacher Ken Tanakas distinction between the horizontal (social,worldly, nitty-gritty world we live) and the vertical dimension (spirituality) (2006, 233).Spreading westward transcendence-seeking rejection of the world divided into twocontradictory orientations, which Weber called (worldly) asceticism and mysticism, shecontinues (233). One could argue these two forms can be seen in Northern Exposure.

30. Chris is not the only artist on the show. Expression over a range of areas appears as problem-posing, problem-solving or even problem-creating or problem-illuminating devices: from Edsfilms, over totem poles, to Adams gourmet creations.

31. While Twin Peaks play with genres could appear new to Western audiences, the mixture of soapand crime, realism and the supernatural, as on this show, was not uncommon territory for mywife. She made the joke Nigerian movie sometime during Season 1. I have only seen a fewNollywood movies, yet a recent viewing of a Nollywood movie in Copenhagen made meunderstand her point. Also, during stays in Tanzania in late 2010 I watched a handful of recentTanzanian movies with her, e.g. Surprise and Magic House, all containing a good deal of soap-ish drama, spirits and ghosts interfering, and introducing slapstick, satire or/and oddballdialogue. Several of the movies appeared to be buying time (a bit likeTwin Peaks Season 2?) tobe able to make up two parts, each feature length. The tight budgets also forced directors to let

much of the action and story development unfold through dialogue. The use of a repetitivespooky-grove score in one of the features (among those characteristics already mention, led meto mention Twin Speaks). The soap opera style was not a stranger to her either. Dubbed intoEnglish, South American telenovelas (such as Shades of Sin, which we watched together onvarious occasions) are part of many Tanzanians tear-jerking TV food.

Notes on contributor

Anders Hg Hansen has a PhD in cultural studies from Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is asenior lecturer in media and communication studies at Malmo University, Sweden.

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Carter, C. (creator). 19932002. The X Files (Fox). (Films 1998 and 2008), Primary example:Season 3, Episode Quagmire.

Lynch, D. (creator). 19901991. Twin Peaks (ABC). Primary examples: Season 2, Episode 1.

Weiner, M. (creator). 2007. Mad Men, Primary example: Season 1, The Wheel.

Songs

Dylan, Bob (1965) Desolation Row. On Highway 61 Revisited. Columbia/Sony.Dylan, Bob (1962) Dont think twice, its allright. On The Freewheelin Bob Dylan.

Columbia/Sony.Jones, George Cup of Loneliness [various releases and versions, e.g. Classic Mercury Years, 1994,

Polygram Records].


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http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dramedy/dramedy.htmhttp://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dramedy/dramedy.htmhttp://www.moosechick.com/http://pubpages.unh.edu/csc/xfiles/xfiles.htmlhttp://pubpages.unh.edu/csc/xfiles/xfiles.htmlhttp://pubpages.unh.edu/csc/xfiles/xfiles.htmlhttp://www.sk.ku.dk/citater.asphttp://www.sk.ku.dk/citater.asphttp://critical-regionalism.com/http://melaniemenardarts.wordpress/com/tag/carl-jung/http://melaniemenardarts.wordpress/com/tag/carl-jung/http://melaniemenardarts.wordpress/com/tag/carl-jung/http://melaniemenardarts.wordpress/com/tag/carl-jung/http://critical-regionalism.com/http://www.sk.ku.dk/citater.asphttp://www.sk.ku.dk/citater.asphttp://pubpages.unh.edu/csc/xfiles/xfiles.htmlhttp://pubpages.unh.edu/csc/xfiles/xfiles.htmlhttp://www.moosechick.com/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dramedy/dramedy.htmhttp://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/D/htmlD/dramedy/dramedy.htm

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