The Importance of Place in The Act (Hulu, 2019–) (review)

Hulu's true crime drama series The Act (2019–) has stirred up much interest since its premiere on March 20, 2019. Hulu plans to extend the series (initially eight episodes), focusing on a different crime account each season. The first season of The Act covers the story of Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette) and her daughter Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King.) Dee Dee was stabbed to death by Gypsy's boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn (Calum Worthy) at Gypsy's request. For most of Gypsy's life, her mother had forced her to feign multiple serious illnesses including paralysis and epilepsy. Though she could walk, Gypsy constantly used a wheelchair. Gypsy met her boyfriend online and asked him to kill her mother to escape her infantilized and fabricated life. Having been tried for her crime and found guilty, Gypsy is serving a ten-year prison sentence (so light due to the mistreatment she faced), and Godejohn is serving a life-in-prison sentence.

Critical reception to The Act has been mostly positive However, one less-explored angle is how The Act aligns with the category of midwestern media literature and, more specifically, Ozarks media literature. This series relies on literary techniques related to place, such as local color and the Midwestern Gothic, to rationalize the bizarre occurrences surrounding Gypsy and Dee Dee's relationship. Such techniques allow viewers to vicariously experience the catalyst and aftermath of a heinous murder while simultaneously maintaining a comfortable distance.

The characters in the series are far from being stock characters and, instead, exhibit specific traits that tie them to place: the Midwest in general and the Ozarks in particular. Some would argue that the Ozarks belong to the Upland South rather than the Midwest.¹ Others insist that Missouri is both a midwestern and a southern state, due to its divided affiliations during the Civil War.² However, the federal government defines Missouri as a midwestern state.³ Regardless of technical breakdowns, popular conception has equal if not more bearing in common understandings of the state. As Letricia Dixon notes, "The Midwest has become more an idea than a region."⁴ Therefore, while one could split hairs over whether the Ozarks portion of Missouri is technically within the Midwest or the Upland South, I recognize the Ozarks as a part of the Midwest that has its own specific subculture.

Although documentaries of the Blanchard story usually delve into Dee Dee's past in Louisiana, The Act begins once Dee Dee and Gypsy have already relocated to Springfield, Missouri. The Blanchards are not depicted as Southerners, though Dee Dee spent most of her life in Louisiana and Gypsy spent close to half of hers there. Rather, The Act emphasizes the importance of current location and highlights ways in which Dee Dee and Gypsy are Ozarks residents. When Dee Dee takes Gypsy to the hospital, the camera fixates on the words "Springfield Emergency Center." Similarly, the camera highlights "Springfield Mall" during a shopping trip. In both scenarios, something sinister is in the works. In the former, Dee Dee pressures doctors to treat her daughter for a condition she does not have. In the latter, mother and daughter peruse the place where Gypsy will later secretly purchase the weapon used to murder Dee Dee. The association with place is not a positive one, as viewers are directed to connect the appalling acts with Springfield, Missouri, a place firmly situated within the Ozarks. Stereotypes abound about Ozarks people being backward and even dangerous. Anne Turner notes, "The Ozark native has long been stereotyped as a conservative, suspicious, often uneducated, poor, white hillbilly"⁵ Such beliefs may help viewers, possibly subconsciously, question how mother and daughter could torment each other so. The culminating emphasis on place occurs once Dee Dee is dead and Gypsy is on trial for murder. A close-up of the back of her jumpsuit reveals, again, the location: "Green County" For viewers outside of the Ozarks region, the name will not sound familiar, which may ease the minds of those outside of the area: such a crime happened there because of...