"Fear makes people do stupid things": Containment Culture In Angel's "Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?"

My reading of this episode owes much to Alan Nadel's book, Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism and the Atomic Age. 

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been" is the title of the second episode of Angel's second season. It is also a direct reference to McCarthyism and the House of Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) line of questioning towards suspected communists, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?". The story, which is set against the backdrop of Cold War anxieties, goes beyond solely depicting the period's "Red Scare" and instead offers up a broader presentation of the various aspects of containment culture.

Angel, spin-off to Joss Whedon's teen-horror Buffy the Vampire Slayer, focuses on the eponymous vampire-detective, cursed with a soul, as he endeavours to "help the helpless" in early-2000s Los Angeles. This episode features a dual timeline, where most of the action takes place in flashbacks to the vampire's (relatively) younger years. The villain of the peace is a thematically appropriate demon which feeds off of fear and paranoia, with the flashback exploring Angel's first interaction with the creature and the present action showing Angel (and his supporting cast) endeavouring to scourge the hotel of its longstanding occupant. The episode, written by Tim Minear, is one that leans harder into Angel's noir genre inspiration than most, as its oblique themes of fear and paranoia converge with its 50s setting and its disgruntled, pessimistic protagonist. Angel's quiet life in the hotel is disturbed by Judy, a mixed-race woman who passes for white. Judy, fired from her job and abandoned by her husband because of her heritage, has stolen some money and has a Private Investigator on her heels. Race is prominent throughout the episode, with a black family being refused entry to the hotel in the early moments of the story, and ideas of blood purity and sanctity in Judy and Angel's relationship are abound. This culminates in the paranoia-fuelled mob of hotel guests attempting to lynch Angel, as Judy deflects accusations of her deviancy by identifying Angel's monstrous nature to the mob. This betrayal has the protagonist wilfully surrender the people to the fear demon until his later, redemptive return, to slay the demon. Interrogating the questionable depiction of a white man taking the place of a black woman in the imagery of lynching is beyond the scope of this piece, but an interesting discussion can be found here.

What is of interest to me (and writer, Minear) is the episode's sensationalised realisation of containment: the containment that yielded high-profile witch hunts and took a focal lens to Hollywood, particularly. Trials and blacklists of notable figures came to define 50s Hollywood and the containment policy enacted on America as a whole. The focus of McCarthyism on Hollywood was not because the American government believed there was a secret sect of communists operating out of Hollywood, but rather that these particular, high-profile, trials helped disseminate the principles of Containment to a nationwide audience. Americans were encouraged to be suspicious of others and to police themselves well, so as to not demonstrate any deviant behaviour that may incriminate them; deviation from the norm was career-threatening, as the high profile Hollywood cases demonstrated.  The "Hollywood" community is developed in the episode through a cast of hotel guests, who are actors and screenwriters, and iconic Hollywood imagery; the Griffith Observatory, for example, harkening back to Rebel Without A Cause, eliciting the necessary cognitive link between text and context. The historical context is as much a villain here as any other antagonistic force and, in many ways, the suspected murderer, or fear demon, serves the role of subversive Other. The Communist, the Soviet, has infiltrated the ranks of the hotel, the inhabitants of which serve as a microcosm of an American community- particularly the Hollywood community- who must eject the subversive Other not only to protect the status quo (or idealised America), but to protect themselves also. As Angel states, "Everyone here has something to hide.", and each individual's hidden quality is one that would be considered deviant or a threat under containment. Deviancies of the "social, sexual, political, economic, and theological" (Nadel) are under surveillance, from the left-leaning politics of a blacklisted screenwriter, to the hidden homosexuality of a movie star, the passing of a mixed-race woman for white or a vampire passing for human.

The "Lavender Scare" is a term that particularly refers to the treatment of homosexuals- as subversives and inherent, anti-American, communist allies- under containment narratives. These hotel guests, identified as potential subversives, then engage in a race to find the most deviant identity: the person whose repudiation would cement them as innocent or truthful engagers in American life. The second to last subversive is a black woman, passing for normative white; the last, Angel, is then representative of the most profound anti-Americanism. His vampire nature serves him well here, as vampires have been theological, biological and sexual threats in their storied existence. With classic vampires, like Dracula, they have also been presented as geopolitical threats, an external Other. Most important here though is the dual nature of the vampire, the human face that belies the inherent demonic qualities. Looking like a human, the vampire is assumed to hold human values and this assumption is what creates the vampire's victims. In much the same way, Americans were instructed to be suspicious of those who appeared human, but hid anti-American sentiment. Sentiments could only be identified by interrogating minute deviancies.

Angel is secluded in the hotel for that own deviance, policing himself so as to not bring attention to his subversive nature. His monstrous nature as vampire identifies him as a metaphorical Other- someone feared by a paranoid, mainstream society- but his existence is literally Otherised as well. Angel exists as a character who cannot perform the masculine function- he cannot hold work, reproduce, be a functioning subject of capitalism- and, as such, isolates himself. Sequestered away in the hotel with the other gender, sexual, ideological and race deviants, Angel falls into a meta guilt of association. We understand that Angel must be a viable avatar for punishment on account of existing in this community of subversives.

The search for "truth"- or hunt for the duplicitous- characterises the demonically-influenced lynching of Angel, yet it is markedly important that the participants in the hunt for deviancy- particularly the hotel manager and bellhop, who together conspired to cover up a suicide by promoting the idea of a loose murderer- are all guilty, complicit in some way, of subverting idealised American capitalism. The instant turnaround as the mob has a new target for its legitimisation is one thing, but it's also worth noting how the woman from the lobby, previously accused of solicitation, likewise accuses Judy of being a "slut". Like the rest of this mob, her innocence will be proved at the altar of another's. "If the willingness to name names became the informer's credential, the ability to do so became his or her capital." (Nadel) By isolating the most deviant of them, the inhabitants have absolved themselves of their own individual crimes against cultural norms. Only once all these hidden facets are brought to light is the veracity of their accusation of Angel legitimised, echoing the role that evidenced deceitfulness of ex-Communists played in convincing a court that they truly were "ex".

Nadel writes that, under containment, objective "truth" was endowed with a theological aspect. The good, domestic monotheist was positioned against the evil, foreign atheist. As such Angel, as an unholy entity, is realised as the deceiver who must be disavowed and destroyed so as to prove the credibility and innocence of those accusing him. Angel's lynching provides the guests no freedom from paranoia, provides them no veracity to absolve them of their own deviance, it only sustains the culture of containment. In Angel's reckoning with containment culture, we can see the qualities of containment which have manifested and persisted in popular culture when we revisit 1950s America. Surveillance of the Other, policing of the self and the search for an objective "truth" are perhaps the most resonant of the existential questions which containment narratives and McCarthyism left for the American populace.

Nadel, A. (1995). Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age. London: Duke University Press.