From Dream to Invention: The West Wing

A Particular Point of View

Let’s start from a particular point of view, that of a French spectator in front of his TV, in Paris, some years ago, looking at these images, a US President behind his desk.

It was during the George W. Bush administration, at the time of the second war in Iraq, at the time of French bashing. The TV news from the world was pretty bad for us then. But the second half of the evening’s program happened to be quite different. With a TV fiction, The West Wing, the president of the USA was once again a Democrat.

In this series, French people continued to be mostly either ignored or sometimes caricatured, but they were no longer the object of anger, resentment or scorn that the news had just shown us. The West Wing was showing what we had been deprived of, showing what we would have liked to have seen and to have had: a different American administration, closer to our desires as people more or less on the left, liberals as they are called here.

The series even underscored domestic preoccupations that were not far from ours:

PRES. BARTLET.

Toby, what are you talking about?

TOBY ZIEGLER.

I think I know how we can save Social Security.

Fig. 1.

The West Wing opening credits. “Pilot.” S01E01. The West Wing, Seasons 1–7, Warner Bros, 2002–2007. DVD.

Fig. 2.

“Slow News Day.” S05E12. The West Wing, Seasons 1–7, Warner Bros, 2002–2007. DVD.

Entertainment and Compensation

The West Wing was thus fulfilling the first role of a series: it was an entertainment which extracted us from the reality, it was an imaginary compensation. A dream for losers and candy for the powerless.

And what’s the best pleasure you can give to those who have lost all faith in the powers that be? It’s the pleasure of penetrating to the very heart of the power, and into the very wings of it. So, through our lost faith in reality, fiction played the card of a “feel good story.” It didn’t present itself in the mode of nostalgia (here’s how it was), nor in the mode of a wish (here’s how it could be one day), but in that of hypothetical past: here’s how it could have been.

We were not in a remembrance of time lost, but of time spoiled. In reference to what was going on in reality, the images were constantly saying to us “it’s such a shame!” They provided a moment of imaginary well-being. But they where also sounding like a “Bonjour tristesse” and the “feel good” aspect of this fiction was enhanced by a sensation of sadness. It was a series that tried to reconcile intelligence with what intelligence usually rejects: sentiment, sadness as a sentiment.

An Intelligent Show

I say “intelligence” because there is a difference between The West Wing and what we usually think of in France as a TV series. It was neither stupid nor aesthetically cheap. It was not a guilty entertainment, it was not corny. The series had a film aesthetic, carried the Warner label, and the press gave us an impressive list of its Emmy awards.

The directors were going beyond the usual close-ups, and provided a variety of camera angles and focal points, long and medium shots, tracking shots, dollyings. There was space and time for real group scenes, collective interactions. Real attention was given to the décor and to interior decoration, pattern and design. The whole thing offered a convincing palette of colors. And as for the actors, there seemed to have been a real control of the directors over them. Light composition was rather subtle, and set decoration didn’t come from the supermarket. There were often scene shots on location, and approaches to shooting that brought us into the everyday life of people closer to us than a presidential staff. This wasn’t Dallas or Little House...