June 17, 2015
E Pluribus Unum: Polyphony in Serial
To say Sarah Koenig’s genre-defying Serial is novel is an understatement. Its worthiness of a prestigious Peabody award necessitated the outfit’s christening of an entirely new category, and, while the crime story within Serial is gripping, the way it’s told is what sets it entirely apart. The narrative begins with the flow of an edited literary work, in which the central case’s different elements are very deliberately delivered. As the podcast proceeds, however, Koenig exhausts the already established facts about the case, and sets out on a “journey” of her own ideas. As successive episodes find Koenig wandering into uncharted territory, her literary “puppeteer’s” voice turns into something far more uncategorized. Though Serial begins with the tone of a narrated crime story, successive episodes find the œuvre morphing into a genre yet-unseen, and its narrator’s voice along with it. Having given the audience a connotatively structured synopsis of everything that had already happened by the time Koenig entered the case, Serial progressively morphs into a generally unedited documentary in which the audience is right alongside Koenig on her foray down the untrodden paths of new ideas.
At the opening of Serial, the narrative is very much synopsis, and Sarah’s voice is that of a narrator, or rather, a literary ‘sculptor.’ Assuring her audience of her credibility, thoroughness, and impartiality. Koenig is divulging to her audience the facts she has gathered about the first investigation, in a chronology suggestive of how she wants her audience to view the case. With the ostensibly clear objectives of discrediting the basis of Adnan’s conviction and retaining listeners for the next episode, Koenig’s tone is authoritative, and her diction is economical. When this economy seems absent in the conversational tone of Koenig’s interspersed insights, it is not accidental. The friendly colloquy with which she interrupts her more confident-sounding narration invites listeners to agree with the angle she is taking on the subject at hand. This “literary Koenig” also makes a point of putting key plot points into context, and she often uses these “asides” to that end. In this way, she makes sure her audience is right with her in her view of things. She refuses, for example, to leave the Nisha call un-contextualized and open for her audience’s interpretation, using the appeal of sound logic to explain how it complicates her inclination to suspect Jay: “and then I remember the Nisha call…if Adnan is supposedly at school this time, and Jay is not talking to Nisha for two minutes, then who the hell is calling Nisha…and the whole thing crumbles…no way around it…”[i] Using word choice and repetition for emphasis, she labels this “the ‘smoking gun’ call” (Koenig). In directing the audience to, “think of it as a title, capitalized, The Nisha Call,” she exhibits her intentionality in organizing and sculpting- personally writing, for all intents and purposes- the way the information will sit in her listeners’ minds. In this artful delivery of plot elements, Koenig has the luxury of modulating what, when, and how the audience learns things, because she is choosing these elements from a large pool of information she already knows. It is when Koenig ventures outside synopsis of events that have already happened that her insights turn less affirmative and more interrogative. As she moves out of the territory of what has already been investigated for her, Koenig’s voice becomes more investigative, uncertain, and informal.
As Koenig takes a turn for unconsidered angles and new ideas, she increasingly assumes the voice of a roving investigative journalist. Having pored over much of what is already known about the vastly complex situation she got herself into, Koenig ventures out on her own. Koenig is going places that the original investigation failed to go, and her voice assumes a tone of candor and innovation. She no longer seems to have a predetermined trajectory, nor does she have time for much editing. Those redundancies, those false steps, the colloquy-it’s all there now. The audience is with Koenig in the moment, and we hear everything, from game-changing insight to every day expletives. When she discusses the suspicions surrounding Adnan asking Hae for a ride, her interspersed insights are less affirmative, and more interrogative: “I consider this a red flag. What I don’t know is: Is this a teeny tiny red flag, like, he just got confused, and so what? Or is this, like, a great big flapping in the breeze red flag?” (Koenig). She has provided confiding, conversational “asides” since the beginning, but, while they first served to ingratiate her to the audience, they now lend to the “real-time” nature of Koenig’s delivery. One no longer gets the feeling Koenig is withholding information yet to tell; we are learning it as she is. Though a hint of literary intentionality remains throughout, this literary artist-to-journalist transition can be observed when Koenig retraces the alleged route driven on the day of Hae’s murder. We hear what seem to be like her voiced thoughts in comments like, “Sometimes I think Dana isn’t listening to me. Anyway…” (Koenig). Expectedly, there are hits, when we hear her excitement, and misses, where we hear her disappointment. The promise listeners may have perceived at the opening of Serial, of a literary arc, where loose ends should be remembered for their inevitable role in the forthcoming climax and dénouement, has vanished. What remains is the sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, now poignant, and then awkward, admixture of real life that one doesn’t expect of a formal piece of entertainment. A point of paramount awkwardness, representative of Koenig’s concomitance with the uncertainty of her audience, the case, and life in general, comes when she bluntly asks Adnan, “And I was wondering if you had-were in the group of [many others calling Hae] like ‘where are you?’” (Koenig). Koenig is intrepid and tentative all at once, her brave plea for Adnan to be accountable tempered by the palpable timidity of having dared to go there. As Serial’s transcript proceeds with Adnan’s answer, “(long pause) ‘What, are you asking me a question?,’” the audio element of Serial is at its most indispensable in capturing a moment with facets for which there are no words (Koenig).
Though development in the murder case continues to slow, Sarah’s kaleidoscopic narration style has made Serial a story as much about her as it is about Adnan. Through all the forms Serial has taken, and all the roles its narrator has played, the podcast’s undefined nature is likely to have simultaneously delighted some listeners with its novelty, and frustrated others with its failure to complete the classic arc it first appeared to promise. Of the many ways Serial proves to be elusive, the most fascinating mystery of all is what exactly Sarah Koenig initially intended to do with Serial. Whatever Koenig did or didn’t intend at Serial’s outset, it seems that, somewhere along the way, the hybrid tale took on a life of its own, and that Koenig, to a degree, took a seat in the audience to see where it meandered. As the ever-changing phenomenon grew from the small seed Koenig initially planted, it is no surprise that the voice needed to tell it has adapted and evolved accordingly.
[i] Koenig, Sarah. “Episode 6” Serial. Audible, 30 Oct. 2014. Web. 4 June. 2015.
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