May 22, 2015
Shrouded: Credibility and Doubt in Serial
In the opening episode of Serial, narrator Sarah Koenig describes her investigation into the seemingly straightforward murder of a high school girl, Hae, by her scorned boyfriend, Adnan. Before even beginning her exposé of the actual complexity beneath it all, however, Sarah stops to make an extemporaneous statement around which she will build the entire first episode. Affirming that “it’s really hard to account for your time, in a detailed way,”[i] she then abruptly quickens to interview the various people involved in the situation. As the cumulative inconsistencies in their stories build, they reinforce this exact unreliability of memory that Koenig postulated from the outset. Progressively exposing the frail credibility of Adnan’s dubious conviction, Sarah places each differing account somewhere on the spectrum of credibility implied by the second part of her central theory: that memory is unspecific unless surrounding a significant event. Using specific diction, Sarah deftly juxtaposes multiple snapshots of the characters to emphasize the tension of coexisting opposites- youth and maturity, specificity and lack thereof-within them. Having constructed a labyrinth of compelling questions and discrepancies by the close of the first episode, Koenig ensures that her puzzled audience will be all too obliged to remain by her side.
To an audience fully prepared for the complexity that necessarily exists to fill a 12-episode story, Koenig is oddly casual and leisurely in stating, and then testing, her observation that memory is fallible. However, her nonchalant claim that “just for a lark, [she] asked some teenagers to try [recalling a random day]” belies the likelihood that the time spent on this prologue of sorts is entirely intentional and vital to secure her thesis a spot in the forefront of her audience’s mind (Koenig) . She uses the opportunity of what her audience thinks they know to jar them with something unexpected. After all, as she herself said, things are better remembered when something memorable happens. Turning dramatic irony on its head, in a sense, Koenig’s casual, flippant delivery catches unawares an audience who thought they knew how her tale of intrigue would begin. They expected murder and intrigue; they are hit with a by-the-way musing they are sure to remember. With this opening, Sarah also lays out one of the spectra of credibility on which she will proceed to scatter her characters: the specificity of their accounts. In addition, she sets forth another spectrum, one on which credibility seems to escape the young and increase with age. While verifying her musing on memory by experiment, she also casts a critical eye on teenagers by the way she interacts with them. Speaking with them in their own informal language, she seemingly lets that untidy and unreliable age-group confirm themselves as such. As she intersperses this section with her own narration, however, she uses an adult tone different from that she uses to converse with teens, establishing her own voice as distinctly adult and credible.
Having set the stage on which her story will unfold, Koenig presents younger characters in a way that suggests their immaturity and fickleness compared with adults. Consistent with the inconsistency of the teens in Koenig’s pre-story demonstrative exercise, the characters in the murder story are self-contradictory and variable in their accounts of the crucial 21 minutes surrounding Hae’s murder. From the childish tone of Asia’s notes to the omissions and backtracking in Jay’s police interviews, the teens collectively present a body of evidence from which any scenario could be procured. Rabia is the first adult, other than Koenig, that the audience meets. Reflective of Koenig’s portrayal of adults, Rabia is thoughtful and reliable in her recollections. In stark contrast to the casual language Koenig uses when interacting with the teens in her pre-story demonstrative exercise, she uses adult language and logically progressing topics when interacting with Rabia. As the saga continues to unfold, Koenig does give voices to the characters introduced first as teens, as adults. Adding a new dimension to the “demi-adults” that the audience initially met, Asia, whose teenage notes were juvenile in tone and subject matter, is much different at age 32. Aligning with the paradigm of esteem growing with age, the older Asia now sounds mature and Koenig speaks with her in the same tone as she does with Rabia. When Koenig finally gets in touch with the girl whose notes could’ve potentially saved Adnan, had she not denied her own initial claims, Asia makes a statement that reflects her ostensible change for the wiser: “If he didn’t kill Hae, we owe it to him to make that clear. And if he did kill her, then we need to put that to rest” (Koenig). Adnan, on Koenig’s spectrum of specificity, had a teenage account most consistent with one for whom nothing remarkable happened on the day of Hae’s murder: he did not claim to remember specifics and could only offer that he was probably doing what he usually did on a typical day. As an adult, he presents with an honesty and thoughtfulness that suggests mature levelheadedness. Reflecting that he can “definitely understand that someone could look at this and say, oh, man, he must be lying,” Adnan presents as self-aware and intelligent (Koenig). The only main character given a dubious voice, but never a credible one, is Jay. On the spectrum of age, all that the audience hears is his teenage account. On the spectrum of specificity, his precision could raise red flags about his eerily accurate memory of that day.
Koenig’s closing statement of respectful like-mindedness with Asia in the final line of “Episode 1” reflects the tension that still pervades “Serial” by the end of its premiere episode. Koenig expresses a shared desire for closure with Asia: “I’m on exactly the same page” (Koenig). Most ostensibly conciliatory, this line still contains tension. Asia expresses this desire only late in “Episode 1,” and there is no guarantee that she won’t flip-flop as she is wont. The placement of this statement in the mouth of the character whose account has arguably varied the most in specificity reflects the plethora of questions that still pervade the accounts of all the characters. After all, the totality of “evidence” that the audience has been shown can only be called “ostensible,” at best. The only story that the audience has heard from Jay so far is here, then there, and back again. Nonetheless, in another appearance of dramatic irony, Jay seems oblivious, in contrast to Adnan, to how suspicious he seems. Moreover, the accounts of characters given fifteen years after the event leaves room for the phenomena of their psyches to have subconsciously fleshed out holes in a story with no hope of closure. Given all the tension between youth and adulthood, as well as between memory and forgetfulness, “Episode 1” closes with plenty of evidence that could go either way. Having cast enormous doubt upon Adnan’s condemnation, Koenig has guided her audience into a world that only grows more complex, given them a lens through which she wants them to see it, and leaves plenty of reason for them to get comfy in the labyrinth.
[i] Koenig, Sarah. “Episode 1” Serial. Audible, 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 4 June. 2015.
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