Frankenstein; or, The Modern Pygmalion
Christopher Williams wasn’t like any other producer in his firm. He was a true believer. He conducted himself within a set of narrow principles. He took on only the shows that moved him, that, when he read through their pilots or bibles, he could feel within his gut some intestinal change. He was very much a gut man, matter over mind.
His gut made no response to the file before him now. At the same time, he could not help but be curious. The author claimed that it was absolutely necessary for the protagonist to be a clean slate. Someone who knew nothing of the ideas by which the show had been designed. “An everyman with a dismal outlook in his remaining years. Preferably a young man in order to bear the physical pressures that would be put upon him.”
Dr. Patrick Kittle was a distinguished professor at Yale though he had explicitly requested that his name be kept out of the credits. He would nevertheless serve in an advisory capacity during the show’s runtime. Such advice would certainly be necessary, because Chris could not bring himself to accept the central premise. It was, in fact, a violation of his most deeply held beliefs. The agency and self-determination of man.
“I don’t want it,” he said to Cece, one of the executive VP’s, his reluctant advocate for the last ten years, and the only woman whose friendship he could honestly call platonic. It helped that she was twenty years his senior.
She fell forward on her hands, the sharp thin points of her elbows resting on the table like the points of a compass. She rubbed her sagging eyes and sighed.
“Why are we even entertaining this?” said Chris, beginning to pace. “It barely even makes any sense. A shock collar? And why would anyone on God’s green earth watch this?”
“Because it’s on tv, Chris.”
“Don’t give me that bull. This has ivory tower navel gazing written all over it. First year film school level stuff. I mean for god sakes the pilot came with a bibliography.”
“Which is why they want you to do it.”
“And I have to tell you, I find the whole idea repugnant. We might as well just throw a guy in jail–” Chris stopped. “They.”
Cece let the word hang in the air a minute. Chris slumped down on the chair in front of her desk.
“Did you know Mahomes went to Yale?” asked Cece. She was carefully sliding out a Newport from a carton on the desk. Cece had quit smoking after her first kid, but claimed the ritual of the movements still possessed a calming effect for her, and she went through them now. Tapping it gently on the table. Closing the carton. The moment it touched her lips her shoulders sagged. Her eyelids fluttered. An involuntary shudder ran through her body. Then the moment passed, and she quietly flicked the perfect cigarette into the trashcan by her feet.
“If we’re just pandering, why not let Garett do it?” Garett would put a camera on a dead possum if he knew it would please one of the higher-ups.
“Because we’re not pandering. Mahomes read the script. He likes it. He thinks it has legs.”
“Oh for god sakes. What are they paying you for then?”
“Dr. Destiny sent the script directly to him. What was I supposed to do? Kill the mailman?”
“You’ve gotten soft. A couple of years ago you would’ve convinced him out of it. Don’t matter if his own brother sent the script.”
“Why don’t we just cut to the chase? What do you want?”
“To have nothing to do with this abomination.”
“And a close second?”
Chris pretended to think for a minute. “Caesars.”
Cece laughed out loud. “Talk about first year film school.”
“Tit-for-tat. I do this one for you. I get to do one for me.”
“You know you could just go to Las Vegas on vacation like the rest of us.”
“I’m not a betting man.”
“Well, the table stakes for this are one-point-six. 18 to 49 bracket.”
“Not impossible.”
“And we’d want a second season.”
“As long as I’m not the one handling it. And I get to pick my own writers.”
“What writers? This is reality tv.”
“Very funny. We have a deal or what?”
Now it was Cece’s turn to pretend. She leaned back in her leather chair. “A second season.” Chris didn’t say anything. They’d known each other long enough not to need such assurances.
The show would make or break on the strength of its main character, that was obvious. What was less obvious was how to find the strange combination of wretchedness and latent potential the show required. And matters were only made worse by Dr. Kittle’s constant interference. He had shown up 1 week into production citing an extended sabbatical to help work on “the experiment”. He didn’t care about ratings. He didn’t care about the audience. The show was just a vehicle to prove his outlandish, outmoded theories about human nature. He was nevertheless a hit with the crew, especially the writers, who hung on his every soft-spoken, slightly accented word.
But Chris had the doctor pegged all wrong. It’s not that he didn’t believe in free-will, it was much worse. He believed that man was better off without it. “Man is born free,” he would say, “but should live in chains.” When asked who decides the chains, he would just smile slightly, rubbing his long gray beard, his ice-blue eyes twinkling behind his designer glasses, the spitting image of a philosopher-king.
It took two months to find the right one. But when they did, they knew instantly and unanimously that he was it. His name was John Palmer. He was unemployed, uneducated, unattractive, a borderline alcoholic, a twenty-two year old kid with no prospects. In a word, perfect.
“And so I have to wear this thing all the time? Like, even in the shower?”
“That’s right,” said Chris. He had been against the shock collar from the start, and had managed to at least relegate it to something less conspicuous and worn on the ankle. But he had not been able to budge Dr Kittle on the point of the shock itself. “There is no more expedient means to shape behavior than pain,” he had said.
“But not to worry, young man, the device is quite water-proof.” Dr. Kittle had also insisted on being in the room for this first official meeting, much to Chris’s annoyance.
“But, like, the water with the electricity?”
“Ah, the device does not deliver an electric shock, only the imitation of one through the use of vibration,” said Dr. Kittle.
“Like one of those buzzer toys,” added Chris. “It’s painful, but completely safe.”
“Right.”
“You’ll be paid per day,” said Chris” The crew will set up and check all the hidden cameras every morning before you go out. On your clothes, your car.”
“I don’t have a car,” said John. “I ride the bus.”
“You may get a car over the course of the show.”
“But I don’t even have a license,” muttered John, looking at the space on the carpet between his beaten loafers.
“I think you’re failing to appreciate the gravity of this opportunity, young man,” said Dr. Kittle. “What we are offering you is nothing less than a total transformation in mind and body. A new life. The meaningful existence to which we all aspire.”
Chris pinched his nose. Why not just call him a loser while you’re at it? “John. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you. Tell you that you’re in for the time of your life. Change is hard. It’s painful. And what we’re trying to do, what this show is about, maybe what all television is about, is documenting that change. Your pain.”
“And people want to watch that?”
“They do, because they know what lies on the other side.” Chris took out the evaluation that John had submitted from a thick manilla folder. “You wrote here that you feel like you’re in a rut. Like you’re confined by rules and circumstances beyond your control. Believe me, I know what that’s like. I think this might be exactly what you need right now. Something to knock you into a new course. Something exciting. And we’re gonna go off everything you’ve given us. We won’t try to make you into something you don’t want to be. But it’s up to you. We can’t force you into this or anything else. It’s entirely your choice.”
Dr. Kittle scoffed. Chris paid him no mind. He knew he had said the right things and that it was just a matter of waiting now. He sent John home with the consent form, expecting it to be signed and on his desk by morning. Yet, later that night, he felt his gut act up inside him. That had only happened once before, the morning before his disastrous first marriage. But he reminded himself of the prize at the end of this rainbow, how his hands were tied, and fell fast asleep.
It was times like this that Chris was glad he didn’t have a family. He had slept maybe four hours total in the last three days, trying to handle all the fallout of the accident, camping out in the hospital waiting for the kid to wake up. At the same time, hoping that he never did.
The woman had come out without a scratch. They already had her interview on tape, the tearful confession of her intentions of suicide, the hand-wringing gratitude, the serenity of spiritual transformation. All primetime stuff. Another Emmy for the mantle. More praise. More critical acclaim. More money. So much money. And all Chris could do is wish death upon that woman, wish that she had collided with the bus she had chosen to be her conclusion. Because then John might still be OK.
But even then, he wouldn’t be free. The show had been renewed for a sixth season. It had become impossible to keep the bubble from being penetrated by John’s fame. Even if they pixelated his face, people recognized him by his voice, by his name, by his clothes. They triangulated his local haunts and gathered there for a chance to be on TV. At the medical school John now attended, the female students flirted unabashedly with him for their fifteen minutes of fame. Most of it didn’t make the final cut, but Chris couldn’t keep all of it out. The little that did make it sustained the overall enthusiasm. In the fifth season, they moved things abroad in an effort to reintroduce anonymity, but the show had captured an international audience and there was simply no escape.
No one could have predicted such success. Except perhaps Dr. Kittle, who, satisfied with the results of his little “experiment” by the third season, had returned to Yale elevated to the rank of prophet and seer. He did his interview circuits, wrote his books, and in the end had his name put into the credits as creator. A title he flaunted about as unassumingly as the byline of “God” on the cover of a Bible.
How was Chris supposed to know how hungry the world was for a modern Pygmalion? For absolution? To be told that nothing was their fault, that they too could fulfill their potentials if only they had an ankle monitor that shocked them into submission when they deviated, and an ivy-league witch doctor to pull the switch, orchestrate them and shape their lives as if they were pigeons and rats.
They didn’t see what Chris saw. The Zoloft and Lexapro never made it to the final cut. Neither did John’s confessions of meaninglessness, the feeling that nothing was his own, not his so-called progress and success, not his transformation, not even his thoughts. Every act and feeling and response was merely the conduct of a prisoner to rules. They hardly administered the shocks at all now. Dr. Kittle called it a complete success.
On the fourth night, John woke up. By morning he was strong enough to get the tubes taken out of him and to eat some solid food. The doctors were confident he would regain full function of his leg after a few more surgeries and a year of therapy. John listened to all this with vacant attention.
The first thing he had asked Chris, as soon as they were in private, was if the cameras were still rolling. Chris lied and said they weren’t.
The second thing he asked was about the woman. Was she alright?
The third thing was if the shock he felt before the accident was to stop him from saving her, or to spur him on. Was he a coward? Was the bravery he had displayed his own or just another rule he had unconsciously obeyed?
Chris knew the answer, of course. He was at the switch that day, not Dr. Kittle. He knew what his own intentions were when he ordered that they buzz him at full strength, when he saw the woman step in front of the bus, and saw John noticing her and running after her before they could put a word in his ear. He knew that he wanted to save John. To stop him from his instinct. But whether that instinct was John’s own, or arose out of the five years of meticulously sculpting his soul–would his old self have done it? Chris didn’t know. But if he didn’t know, couldn’t he still give the kid the benefit of the doubt? Give him something to hold on to. If the cameras weren’t rolling…
But they were rolling. And Cece had promised Chris this would be the last year. After this, he would work on his own project, with or without their support. He didn’t need them anymore, he could raise the money himself, easily. But only if the show ended as it was supposed to. Only if it maintained the message the people wanted to hear.
“No,” said Chris. “We buzzed you because you were just standing there. It was us.”
John said nothing. He leaned back on the bed and turned his head away from Chris.
In the editing room that night, there would be a shot of John with tears falling down his face, and the music that would swell when it was broadcast for the season finale, was hopeful and sweet and moving.