Following Errol Morris Into the Wilderness of Error: Part I, Page 2

A FOREST OF SYMBOLS:

Following Errol Morris Into the Wilderness of Error

PART I (page 2) by Christopher Funderburg

Human Fonts.

Around the time of the release of A Wilderness of Error, Morris used his semi-regular blog in the NY Times to conduct an experiment on how fonts affected the results to a question. Essentially, he tested whether the typeface in which a survey question was written would make responders more likely to give positive or negative answers. Additionally, it measured the certainty with which they believed in their positive or negative response. The results weren't random - they had a p value of less than 1% - and showed that the venerable Baskerville font caused respondents to both answer in the positive more frequently and with greater certainty of their positivity. I suspect Morris had a good deal of confidence that this would be the result of the test, even if in his column he seemed a little surprised that the notorious Comic Sans didn't illicit the strongest response.

The idea seems obvious, in a way: the stately or goofy or sanitized qualities of a font bleed over into the meaning, or more accurately "feeling," of their content. People respond to the innate qualities of a standardized artwork like a font on a subconscious level and their thoughts are guided thusly. That these effects are subliminal makes them all the harder to contend with - how does one steel oneself against the insidious manipulations of Haettenschweiler? Or how does a writer defend their meaning against the unintended consequences of Courier New? There's an assumed meaning in the mere presentation of ideas beyond the meaning of the ideas themselves. On a minute level, this means that fonts are screwing with how you feel about a NY Times blog survey concerning the future of the earth.

I think what makes the "Green Beret Murders" story so intransigent a narrative is the very iconic qualities revealed in the nickname: key players like Jeffery MacDonald, Helena Stoeckly and Freddy Kassab have been reduced to the fonts in which the story was written. As I mentioned, before A Wilderness of Error, I paired the MacDonald murders in my mind with another equally troubling case - incidentally they are both cases with vague but iconic nicknames: the "Central Park Jogger" and the "Green Beret Murders."

Both cases were weirdly abstracted by their abbreviated descriptions - hadn't at least dozens of sexual assaults been committed against joggers in Central Park over the course of its existence (the word rape being the usually unsaid final word of the nickname)? Hadn't at least a dozen Green Berets been implicated in murders in the past century? Or compare their nicknames to another Great Trial of the 20th Century, the immutably singular Brown v. Board of Education.

What I mean is, is there any reason the Bernard Goetz shootings, the O.J. Simpson trial and the Manson Family saga aren't known as the "Subway Vigilante," "Hall of Fame Running Back Murders" and "Hippie Cult Killings" for shorthand? Sure, you could probably guess what I'm talking about if I used those made-up nicknames, but those trials have appellations with a specificity and singularity that the iconic "Green Beret Murders" and "Central Park Jogger" titles lack. Both of the disputed cases have a subtle, almost imperceptible set of values hidden in their labels. There is a set of meanings that will subliminally influence anyone's perception of the MacDonald case who hears it described as the "Green Beret Murders."

Joe McGinniss' book and the subsequent miniseries on the crimes reinforced the standard narrative - which, it should be pointed out, is a narrative that led to a guilty verdict from an impartial jury. This narrative, coupled with law enforcement's total dismissal of other possible stories, created a singular idea of the case, an idea (a story) to which MacDonald has become a slave. A lot of people believe the story to be true, but that doesn't mean the iconic nickname isn't an inherently leading description with an almost subliminal point of view. In short, it is the font in which the case has been written.*

The narrative constructed by McGuiness creeped out into the universe to multiply over and over in increasingly simpler, more dismissive, less nuanced versions, as all stories do as they are repeated endlessly to less and less engaged, thoughtful and invested audiences. Jeffrey MacDonald became a womanizing, money-grubbing, family-killing green beret psychopath who smugly concocted a budget version of the Manson story to cover his ass.

Think about the iconic vagueness of the case's nickname: the "Green Beret Murders." It's a nickname that presumes a story, one in which a green beret murdered his family, one in which the facts were never in dispute - it's not known as the "MacDonald Family Murders" or the "Fort Bragg Murders" or the "Botched CID Investigation Murders" or any number of nicknames that allow for exculpatory evidence.

Hidden in the point-of-view of the nickname is the reason for its lack of specificity - to have simply called it the "Jeffrey MacDonald Murders" would have too confusing in terms of identifying whether MacDonald was the killer or victim. The implication naturally imbued in the nickname "Green Beret Murders" is that the green beret would naturally be the one doing the killing. Green berets, amongst other nobler things, are killers. The description of MacDonald, who never saw time on the battlefield but spent virtually his entire pre-murder adult life in the ER, as a green beret and not a doctor is one the subtle ways in which the perception of the case has been manipulated by the stories surrounding it.

Conversely, I think that Morris entirely overlooks how the font in which Helena Stoeckley is written affects the story; she is the mysterious "hippie" of MacDonald's version of events, but labels like "drug addict," "police informant," and "military brat" would be even more accurate. "Dr. MacDonald" and the "Lieutenant Colonel's Daughter" are two very different characters than the "Green Beret" and the "Hippie."**

Freddy Kassab, the murdered Collette MacDonald's step-father, is the most interesting "character" in the competing narratives for how McGuinness' book and especially the miniseries portray him versus the damage Morris tries to inflict on him. In the McGuinness version, he's the righteous and grieving father who to his shock and horror comes to realize his beloved son-in-law has killed his grandchildren and step-daughter.

He's portrayed in the miniseries by Karl Malden, the personification of suffering, put-upon decency. Morris allows space for multiple quotes characterizing Kassab as a show-boater and media hog, a cruel and vindictive asshole who nobody liked, a thorn in everyone's side, singularly obsessed with the murders and bringing attention to them. He's written in Baskerville and Morris tries to flip him into Comic Sans, but it doesn't stick.

Kassab's thirst for vengeance and monomania never come across as badly as Morris wants them to. When busybodies and defense attorneys are the ones providing the smear quotes, the bitterness with which they spit on Kassab's image never feels less than unseemly: this is a man who lost the child he raised and the grandchildren he loved to an absolutely brutal and horrific crime. So what if you don't like him? The man has been through fucking hell. Give me a call when he does something illegal or nefarious or lies about who killed his step-daughter and children...you know, the kind of lie MacDonald told to him.***

To any right-thinking person, it doesn't matter that Kassab was gauche and single-minded. There's something undeniably noble about his quest for justice even if you believe MacDonald is innocent. The creeps Morris trots out to call Kassab's wife a demanding shrew and turn their nose up at him are the absolute worst aspect of the book - I don't give a shit if Freddy Kassab didn't play his role in this story "correctly" or to everyone's taste. Isn't that kind of character assassination narrative exactly to what Morris feels MacDonald has fallen victim?

The basic thrust of Morris' argument lays in the possibility of misrepresentation having befallen MacDonald: that he's being judged not on evidence, but on something more obscure, center-less and pernicious, pernicious for being center-less and obscure. Morris identifies the case as a story of a story, so he intends to re-contextualize MacDonald as a character, specifically MacDonald's erratic, questionable behavior after the murders and in numerous public appearances and interviews on the subject.

Morris wants to switch fonts.

But before he can get to re-contextualization, he needs to deal with the evidence. It won't save you if you write your murder confession in Baskerville, after all. Part II of this series will look at the book's relationship to the evidence and attempts to sort out a woeful investigation as well my own thoughts on the the intersection of "story" and "likelihood" in the MacDonald case.

Addendum.

Discussions of Morris' milestone achievement with The Thin Blue Line often draws comparison to Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky's three Paradise Lost movies, the final installment of which documented the West Memphis Three being released from prison after serving 18 years for murder. Mentioning these films in reference to Thin Blue Line is complicated (and impossible to dismiss with one or two sentences) for two reasons: Echols and the others basically disowned Berlinger/Sinofsky after they developed a support system that made the filmmakers' attentions unnecessary. While Morris later got sued by Adams for profits from Thin Blue Line, there's no Peter Jackson in that story who could make a self-congratulatory love letter to his own involvement that shits all over Morris' documentary.

Two: Paradise Lost 2 is such an egregious miscalculation that bringing up the trilogy in the context of investigatory docs is very touchy. In that film, the directors essentially do the opposite of Wilderness of Error: they blame someone for the murders utterly without proof of that person's involvement (someone, it should be noted, almost certainly had no involvement). Morris blames no one in his book. It's tough to say he even makes a case Stoeckley killed anybody or was a significant participant in the crime. He makes somewhat of a case that the evidence doesn't rule out her presence at the crime scene, but it's just another moment in the book where he follows tiny details into a dead end.

What's more, in Paradise Lost 2, the filmmakers try to make the suspect look like a total weirdo in place of finding evidence implicating him - that's the kind "behavior in place of evidence" analysis of a person's guilt that Morris pretty explicitly intends to overcome with his book. Morris very clearly doesn't want you to watch Dick Cavett's interview with Jeffrey MacDonald and say, "Whoa, this guy is clearly guilty!" - which is precisely what Berlinger/Sinofsky want with their film.

By being a slow-developing trilogy whose role is gradually downplayed (and then severed altogether) in the exoneration Echols & Co., Paradise Lost is just a very different animal than Thin Blue Line or Wilderness. Of every film in existence, the first Paradise Lost undoubtedly resembles Thin Blue Line as much as any. Yet Thin Blue Line's big claim to fame is that evidence uncovered by Morris was entered into the record on the appeal. I don't believe any of Berlinger/Sinofsky's findings were entered into the court records or that they uncovered any new evidence the way Morris put together timelines based on drive-in listings (I could be wrong). It's my understanding that Jackson paying for a detailed analysis of the crime-scene DNA is what forced the prosecution's hand and made them offer the Alford plea.

The Alford plea alone cloudies the water when we say "exonerated" - technically, Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley weren't exonerated, the state just admitted they wouldn't be able to score a conviction in the event of a retrial, so they offered a mutually beneficiall "out." Everyone knows this repulsive tactic is employed by the state so wrongfully convicted people can't sue for damages, but still.

CLICK HERE FOR PART II

* In discussing the case with Cribbs, he pointed out something I had overlooked - Fatal Vision was published after MacDonald was convicted of the murders. This is a key point, one that undermines Morris even more than I do throughout: Fatal Vision and the mini-series affirmed the public perception of MacDonald, but didn't create it whole-cloth. I hate to cast aspersions on Morris, but with how much he focuses on McGuinness (who indeed seems like a sleazy hack), I think he's happy to have this fact overlooked.

** This reminds me as well of one of The Thin Blue Line's more subtle observations: the media and police repeatedly describe Randall Adams as a "drifter" despite the fact that he is gainfully employed and has a decent measure of domestic stability. A "drifter" with no previous history of criminality randomly kills a police officer. A "construction worker" with no previous history of criminality does not.

*** I'll get into it later, but I don't mean "I think MacDonald is guilty, therefore he lied about killing his wife." I mean, MacDonald is on the record admitting to telling a verifiably untrue lie about who committed the murders. Crazy? Yes, so keep reading.

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