The Killing - “Stonewalled”
I was in a creative nonfiction class last semester, and we had to write three essays. The first ones were almost entirely based on small, quirky moments in our lives - I wrote about a wedding I went to where there were no flowers. But with the second essay, about two months in to the class, the floodgates of hurt opened. Personal demons were unleashed; stories of death and decay and abuse were abound. My piece, which ended with a girl randomly being attacked and then a further assault which put someone in the hospital, was praised as light-hearted, because the four pieces around mine all dealt with someone close dying. The third essay mostly continued this as everyone got more comfortable with each other, and realized writing is an effective tool for letting go of things. (Or at least understanding better.)
One piece in particular stands out - it was about a girl’s best friend, and she painted to honor his memory/remember him/what not. It was good writing, to be sure, but it wasn’t very intriguing, just because it was so weighed down in sadness. I made the example of Jonathan Franzen’s New Yorker piece about DFW - it was about his friend committing suicide, but there were still moments of warmth and levity, of joy, and so it didn’t feel like a chore.
I feel like The Killing is a direct response to stone-faced liberals who criticize a show like Law and Order for dealing with the murderer for 42 minutes and not thinking about the families, about the emotional harm that murder causes. It brings us through the Larsen’s grief step-by-step, and through eight episodes, the show doesn’t seem like it’s going to leave them anytime soon.
It’s an honorable route to go, in addition to being interesting and needed, but it’s not working completely thus far.
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