Now that this HBO series has concluded, we take a moment to review our previous analysis of the series to see how it culminates in a reflection on a process of transformation taking place in American society today .xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Our previous article on this new HBO series discussed the way in which, by introducing Scandinavian crime-noir and its cool dark-glamorous aesthetic to an American audience, the series has the effect of exalting the ordinary that works to undermine the toxic effects of pervasive representations of the criminal justice system through shows like CSI or Law and Order; and it discussed the way in which the pacing of the series supported both the objective content and critique the show develops against this system as well as how its slowness and withheld disclosure amplifies the moral and ethical dimensions of those whose decisions reproduce that system, through the momentum and continuity of their roles within it over and against the seriousness of the lives affected by it. That article ended in the hope that the series would conclude in the most counter-climatic way possible so that, in so doing, the force and sense of dominant expectations of endless intrigue and excitement that cinematic representations of the criminal justice system produce, that have the effect of both conditioning our expectations of what is possible within that system as well as determining how those within that system themselves model their behavior with reference to it would be drained of their intrigue to expose the value and importance of the invisible, a-cinematic ordinary, day-to-day life in America that receives so little (cinematic) recognition.

Now that the series has concluded, we've seen that this is, in fact, more or less exactly how the series ends: we saw how the 'optics' surrounding Nasir Khan's case continued to turn negative, how his own testimony ends-up with him conceding that he 'doesn't know' if he killed the girl, how his relationship and kiss with his lawyer is uncovered and an attempt to use this as grounds for a mistrial backfires and Turturro is forced by the judge to assume responsibility for closing arguments, putting him in an absurdly difficult position with regard to a jury who has not heard one word from him; and how the night before Turturro is to deliver his closing remarks, his eczema flares up and he ends up in the hospital and is forced in front of the jury for closing arguments almost unpresentable, with pink leprosy-like splotches all over his body, his hands covered in clown-like white gloves. And we saw how, despite all expectation and belief, despite the overwhelming knowledge that the system is too broken, too corrupt, too riddled with self-interest and blindness to ever administer truth and justice, the case against Khan concludes with a hung jury and the dismissal of all charges. Against all expectations, the jury remains steadfast in their acquittal. The judge wants them to continue to deliberate: 'what's the count?', he asks, impatiently, expecting there to be the usual cinematic 'one holdout' to which he can respond: 'try again'. In fact, though, the jury is divided right down the middle and there is little prospect of agreement, of the unanimity required to convict. But even more importantly, perhaps, this is followed by the decision of the over-zealous prosecutor—after thinking long and hard, looking down the table towards the defendant, looking him in the eyes and weighing the uncertainty accumulated over the course of the trial that even she has come to perceive—to not seek a re-trial, despite that the smug-looking judge sits ready to 'pencil it in' and do everything in his position of power to see that the system behaves properly rather than following the whims and fancies of some random jury of people.

Amidst the pervasion of police procedurals and cops chasing 'criminals' over neighborhood picket fences and pinning them to the hoods of cars in the night, against the over-flowing jail system and imprisonment of people for all kinds of insignificant crimes, disrupting families and lives, against the knowledge that the system has become corrupt beyond all repair, a new form of documentary and cinema has emerged that seeks to portray the actual reality of this system, in all its disheartening, soul-crushing reality. This has become most visible since the success of the podcast Serial (upon which The Night Of is clearly based); but also with series like The Jinx or Making a Murderer. And this has been accompanied by an increasing public awareness of the dysfunction of the criminal justice system, as it becomes a central element of the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance. It is into the mold of these that The Night Of fits. And so when the series concludes in a somewhat hopeful way, when what happens is vindication, rather than the destruction and injustice one is accustomed to in these documentaries, and when this happens in such a subtle, undramatic fashion, seemingly without need for hyper-forensic investigation or some deus ex-machina moment where evidence turns up at the 11th hour, the series makes a break with both the conventions established by these counter-narrative, reality-based, documentary representations of the criminal justice system as well as the predominant cinematic representations of it (as discussed in the previous article). And, in so doing, the series opens-up a new vision for the criminal justice system: not just either the glamorized television representations one may be accustomed to or the soul-crushing documentary of its predictable failures, but something else: a vision of people taking back their roles in life to redirect it to new, perhaps uncharted and potentially risky futures where criminals are set free in order to prevent the innocent from being unjustly incarcerated¹. A new vision for what 'justice' means, what it means to be a juror, a lawyer, a judge; what it means to be 'beyond reasonable doubt'; what a new philosophy and ethic of truth in postmodernity might look like, one that recognizes the limits to rationalizations of the boundaries between 'individuals' and what one does when confronted with the absolutely 'unknowable' that lies between². And if we view history as created, as Badiou says, through a process of an unfolding of events, of the collective moving towards the future of one event or dealing with the aftermath of an event that is already receding into the past, then perhaps we can also recognize through this series that something has in fact changed with perceptions towards 'criminal justice' in the United States and that now, rather than debating the merits of one approach over another, we are entering a time of resolute reform, a time where these kinds of transformations in meaning and awareness have already taken place and we are left with sorting through the aftermath of the previously failed ideas, trying to piece back together a new reality. Of all that is worth taking from The Night Of, it is a tone of purely ordinary, unexaggerated, dull resolve to accept and to deal with the realities of dysfunction we are now faced with in the United States that seems to resonate most strongly.

But there is one thing more to take from this series. After making his escape from Riker's Island prison, we find Nasir Khan, at the conclusion of the film, sitting by the water at night by the bridge where he first encountered the girl who would change his life irrevocably. Now, rather than a naive student, afraid of drinking a beer, he sits there a scarred person with an experience he won't soon be forgetting, almost unashamedly smoking heroin, contemplating his new predicament as a free man. It is a conflicted moment, and one not entirely negative. As Turturro says, while in prison 'he learned something': he's no longer simply the son of a Muslim immigrant family with idealized visions of his adopted country and what he can accomplish by sticking to the rules. He has been exposed to what today could even be considered one of the most quintessentially American experiences: mistreatment and abuse at the hands of the criminal justice system. But, even further, exposed to the break-down of that American Dream, let-down and exposed to the harsh reality of individual struggle and precarity just like the rest of us. So, certainly, he has lost his naivete; but in the process he has become fully American as well.

Footnotes