'Calderone's Return Part II'
(originally known as 'Calderone's Demise') is certainly a crowd
pleaser, providing everything you love about the eighties in a neat
50 minute slice of nostalgia. Bold colour shirt and jeans combination
(on the beach, no less)? Check. Fake tan and chest hair? Got it.
Tacky opening credits sequence? Of course. One of the most endearing
TV bromances with just a hint of innocent homoeroticism? You better
believe it.
Miami Vice represents all that those
who lived through it want to forget about the decade, and those of us
who have nothing but film, television and old family photos to go on
would kill to have been in their place to experience. Detectives
Crockett (Don Johnson) and Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) fight crime,
score chicks, restore peace to the social order and look good doing
it (supposedly). This is just how it was back then, right? Who
wouldn't want to be in their place?
A woman, for one. If 'Calderone's
Return Part II' tells us anything, it is that Miami Vice, perhaps
even eighties television in general, was not a welcoming place for a
woman. The representation of women throughout the episode is slim to
none, with only one female appearing as a character with any
substance, however small. Women appear all through the episode, of
course, but these women act merely as additions to the beach-y
scenery in their bikinis and short-shorts. It may be unfair to single
out 'Calderone's Return Part II' as a culprit of discrimination
against women in television, but we have to start somewhere.
Some may argue against this because of
the appearance of the character Angelina (played by Phanie Napoli).
“Hey, there's a woman in it, that makes it okay!” Does it? Let's
take a closer look at Angelina. In the first place, she is a
character that exists purely to advance the story of one of the male
leads, Ricardo Tubbs. But then this is the intention of a guest spot,
is it not? But unlike the episode's other top-billed guest star,
Miguel Pinero as Calderone – her father – Angelina has no story
of her own; she has no purpose outside of being Tubbs' fleeting
love-interest, and the daughter of the bad-guy they've come to take
down. Who is Angelina? What kind of person is she? What does she want
from life? Perhaps these are themes too deep for a single episode of
Miami Vice. In screen studies, there is a measure called the 'Bechdel
Test', comprising three conditions on which to judge a text's female
representation, created in 1985 by American cartoonist Alison
Bechdel. Firstly, the text must have at least two female characters.
Second, the two female characters must talk to each other at some
point throughout the text. And thirdly, their talking must be about
something other than a man. In some interpretations, the female
characters must also have names as part of the conditions, but not
always. Seems easy, right? Apparently not, as 'Calderone's Return
Part II' (as well a shockingly high number of texts each year) fails
the Bechdel Test with flying colours.
One could argue that this is a “bro
show”. A show for men that women don't necessarily need to be
equally represented within. There is some validity in this. But the
Bechdel Test doesn't ask for equal representation. It asks for basic
female representation, that allows its audience to believe that women
have some value and place in this fictional world outside of
objectification and sexualisation. If we are to take the only female
character of 'Calderone's Return Part II' and apply it in a larger
context, we would have no choice but to believe that women are
passive, naïve and easily persuaded by “attractive” and
authoritative male figures, without any regard for their own
feelings. Now that doesn't sound like a decade I'd like to be
apart of.
It is easy to dismiss 'Calderone's
Return Part II' as just another slice in the cheese-fest that was the
television of the eighties, but as one of the most popular shows of
the decade, it's influence cannot be denied. It has been almost
thirty years, and these Angelina characters are still fluffing out
our television screens, creating conflict for conflict's sake and
allowing the heroic males to further their story lines. I, for one,
look forward to the day when Angelina gets to have her story told.
ROMANY
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