As I was reading Sarah Sharma’s Taxi Cab Publics and the Production of Brown Space After 9/11 and learning about the concept of Brown Space through the real life encounters of racial and cultural discrimination from taxi drivers of differentiating backgrounds, I couldn’t help but compare it to HBO’s eight part crime drama miniseries, The Night Of. This miniseries was created in 2016 by Steven Zaillian, best known for Schindler’s List, and Richard Price, known for The Wire. The show follows a young Pakistani-American college student named Nasir Khan, “Naz” for short, as he gets wrapped up in a murder case after taking his family’s taxi cab with the intent of going to a popular party. However, Naz picks up a woman, Andrea, who is found stabbed to death that same night. With HBO’s slogan “It’s What Connects Us” and the ideologies surrounding it and creating content that displays narrative that is often not portrayed in mainstream media, in this case Brown Space on a television cable network, the importance of the crime drama genre creating multiple parallels found in Sharma’s article discussing the behavior of blame and accusations, and, finally, the overwhelming cultural and political tones portrayed in this miniseries, are all what makes it a not only a successful show, but a necessity.
To start, it is important to recognize that The Night Of is apart of HBO, a pay television network that has the reputation of being both innovating and well respected. From a capitalistic standpoint, HBO has always been a subscription-only service, thus not carrying out the typical commercial structure and therefore not following the prototype of what advertisers expect networks to follow in order to gain revenue. Sut Jhally’s article, Image-Based Culture, goes deep into the psychological and sociological standpoints of an advertisement driven way of life we all participate in, specifically through media outlets that represent images such as television. As technology advanced from text-based advertisement, such as newspapers, to voice-based advertisement, such as radio, to image-based advertisement, such as television, a imaged saturated society has formed. With the rise of images, there was a desire to portray the ideal and happy consumer who was buying the ideal product from advertising agencies, “we see representations of people who ‘stand for’ reigning social values such as family structure, status differentiation, and hierarchical authority” (200, Jhally). The media, including advertisement, for a long time has been a white dominated topic. HBO, though it first launched in 1972 and after the initial frenzy of the birth of television, has never had to follow the monotype of what advertisers created for mainstream tv networks. Because of this and subscription profits, HBO has higher quality content that has recently attained praise for inclusivity and uniqueness. Most notable are Random Acts of Flyness, the female pushed Big Little Lies, and of course The Night Of.
With HBO having more freedom with content, The Night Of portrays a more accurate representation of a Middle Eastern family, more specifically a Middle Eastern family living in the United States. This miniseries is not the first time a Pakistani family has been portrayed, but the more notable portrayals often revolve around war or simply take place in the Middle East in films and tv series. In The Night Of, Naz’s family is residing in Queens, New York and just like the men interviewed by Sharma, Naz’s father, Salim, is a taxi driver for New York City. Both the creators of The Night Of and Sharma use the taxi cab to demonstrate Brown Space which is something created from external forces, such as Whites who use the service provided by a taxi cab. Those external forces (whites) can easily identify these persons and associate them with stereotypes. Brown Space is the categorizing of races and cultures and applying the stereotypes into public spaces, in Sharma’s article, the taxi cab. Taxi cabs themselves are a common civic place and are often described as being everywhere in her article which adds to the terror factor, “Further, the brown taxi driver is not invisible in the same way as the Latina nannies, dog-walkers, Mexican gardeners, and Sri Lankan cooks that Saskia Sassen locates as globalizations’ growing under class” (Sassen 1998). What makes Brown Space unique is it’s not defined as blatantly racism because “brown does not operate strictly within a biological framework of skin color or singular racialized identities” (Sharma, 187). With Brown Space in mind, its the taxi cab that ultimately determines Naz’s horrific fate. Despite his parents being very strict and frugal with money, as well as knowing it’s the cab that is the main source of income for his family, Naz steals his father’s cab to attend a party. While waiting at a traffic light, a white woman, Andrea, hops in the cab. After some talking, Naz decides to skip the party to spend the night with Andrea. Naz’s character comes off somewhat sheltered and naive. On the other hand, Andrea seems troubled immediately as she enters the cab. Andrea is the one who initiates sex as drugs the night her and Naz decide to spend together. They fall asleep together after sex. Once Naz wakes in the early hours of the morning he finds Andrea stabbed to death with the recollection of what occured. He flees the scene in his taxi cab.
It’s Naz’s placement in the taxi cab, the Brown Space that he is apart of, that causes him to be arrested for a minor traffic violation. This begins the viewer’s anticipation to solve this murder mystery. The formatting and the telling of this story leave the audience genuinely uncertain if Naz committed Andrea’s murder. It is important to acknowledge that this miniseries is categorized as a crime drama so the interrogation scenes and police presence is expected. However, it’s the body language and dialogue of characters that allude to the unfair cultural and political tones that this miniseries holds. Once in custody, a bloody knife is found in Naz’s possession. Naz is put in custody the same time Andrea’s body is found, ultimately causing Naz to be interrogated by Detective Dennis Box, a white, long-time member of the police force. Naz eventually asks for a lawyer but is not given one, alluding to Box profiling Naz and already assuming that Naz is guilty, despite the right to a trial by jury in a criminal case.
Though this is a fictional storyline, it’s safe to assume that this is taking place post-9/11. It is also important to understand this story is taking place in New York City, the location where the September 11th attacks took place. In a lot of ways, Box being apart of the police force is a representation of U.S. government, the enemies of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda who did the attacks on September 11th, 2001. The series also informs viewers that Box was on the police force for many years, alluding that he was on the New York City police force during the 9/11 attacks. Detective Box has seen this threat on home turf before and is associating Naz, solely on his skin color and ethnicity, with it. Sharma discusses that America is more than aware of cultural differences and the historical and also present prejudices against skin color, but the discussion of applying these discriminations into public spaces and physical racial barriers is a dialogue that’s lacking. This miniseries is occuring during The Age of Terrorism, or at least in a time where that term is defined in a societal sense. As the story unfolds, and more characters are brought in to the crime, it becomes apparent that there is reasonable doubt surrounding Naz’s guilt. As the series develops we also see Naz waiting the prosecution at Rikers Island. There, Naz easily gets persuaded by prison gangs for the benefit of protection. They respect him and see him as a refreshing touch to the prison atmosphere, the complete opposite of what the outside world portrays him as. He feels more accepted by criminals than the rest of society. The 9/11 attacks became a scapegoat for peoples uneasiness against those of brown skin colors. It’s a social concept of policing individuals that fall in those multiple skin colors and identities. After some investigation, Detective Box learns from Naz’s high school basketball coach that Naz had to transfer to another school after expulsion resulting from Naz pushing a boy down a flight of stairs. However, Naz defends himself as says he was angered by the bullying after the September 11th attacks.
The conclusion for this miniseries is left open ended. After unreasonable doubt caused by other suspects in the case, such as Andrea’s stepfather who was after her late mother’s money that Andrea refused to give him, as well as other jurors seeing Naz as nothing but guilty, the jury was deadlocked, causing the charges to be dropped. Even Naz questions his own innocence by the end of the trial. Though not convicted, Naz’s life is still scarred from the trial, specifically with the deterioration of his family relationship. The series ending being left open is a mirroring representation of real life Brown Space and how there is still no conclusion with this wrongful social concept based on fear, scapegoating, and stereotyping. The Night Of represents both an accurate and unique representation of a Pakistani-American individual and as they swim through the waters of Brown Space that “are murky, muddy, and scary” (Sharma, 198). With the ideology of more inclusive and groundbreaking content, a twist off the typical crime drama genre, and the artistic representation of relevant political and cultural undertones, HBO creates a platform to continue the dialogue of Brown Space and it’s a effects on our society.
Bibliography
“The Night Of.” HBO, HBO.com, 6 Dec. 2016, www.hbo.com/the-night-of.
Sharma, Sarah. "Taxi Cab Publics and the Production of Brown Space After 9/11." Cultural
Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, Mar. 2010, pp. 183-199. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/09502380903541605.
From Jhally, Sut. “Image-based culture: Advertising and popular culture. The World and I”, July
1990, pp. 506-519.