Veronica Mars Blog 3

In the pilot episode of Veronica Mars, we are introduced to a town known as Neptune, California. The main character, Veronica Mars, explains how the town is a collection of extremely wealthy people. She describes the area as “a town with no middle class.” Throughout the episode there are comments about the socioeconomic structure of the town. I found this episode should be analyzed and critiqued using the Marxists theoretical approach because Marxism talks about “the focus on economic determinism, class relations and the exercise of power and control within social structures (Burton). ”

To begin with, Veronica explains how her father lost his job after he accused a wealthy father of killing his daughter. Officer Mars, was fired after police video taped was leaked out on the internet. Veronica mentions that someone made thousands off of that videotape while her father gets replaced. This shows an exercise of power by the person who bought and posted the video online. Later, there was an emergency impeachment of her father from the office of sheriff. It isn’t clear whether of not he is fired because he went after a wealthy town individual or not but the episode infers that the town’s upper class was not pleased that officer Mars was going after one of their own and we are lead to believe that this is the reason for his loss of position.

This episode was riddled with individuals exercising their power in relation to economic class. Veronica is a member of the so-called middle class of the town. She is looked down upon by others at her school. Her ex-boyfriend’s friend constantly picks on her and makes fun of her. When she explains the story of how she lost her virginity, she cites that the only reason she went to the party was to show people that it didn’t bother that people were spreading rumors about her and talking behind her back. It seemed as though she was easily shunned once her father was shown in the media making a mockery of the investigation. It also seemed as though she was easily shunned because she was a person of a lesser class. The popular kids who she used to be friends with no longer talked to her. We are introduced to them as she sits at a table by herself and explains to the audience how wealthy that group of people is.

Marxism also talks about the depiction of how men treat women. Throughout the episode we see that people of power are constantly men. Veronica’s principle is a male and the new sheriff is a male. Even when the leader of the biker gang talks to
Veronica for the firs time, he talks down to her because she is a woman and explains how women are only useful for sex to him. Despite being pushed around by the male dominated world around her, Veronica fights against this idea. We see her taking on an independent and tougher personality to cope with this. She constantly stands up for herself and does things other people don’t want to do such as take down a kid from the flagpole.

From these examples it is easy to see that the pilot episode of Veronica Mars constantly deals with the struggles of a female in a male dominated world and right of power among different socioeconomic classes.

Work Cited

Burton, Graeme. “Critical Approaches to Television Studies.” Talking Television. London: Arnold, 2000. 13-40. Print.

“Pilot.” Veronica Mars. 22 Sept. 2004. Television