WHITE HOMELAND COMMANDO

‘White Homeland Commando’ was written for the Wooster Group by associate Michael Kirby. It takes the familiar terrain of network action drama but tilts its playing field. Reminiscent of the increasingly popular reality-based cop shows, ‘White Homeland Commando’ offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organisation. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in highly textured visual style, the colours are subdued yet somehow garish and the sound is deliberately out of sync with the speaker’s lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot – the editing is reminiscent of flipping channels with a remote control. ‘White Homeland Commando’ was conceived solely for video. Although fictional, the teleplay relies on a composite from actual accounts of hate crimes, culled from assorted literature from white supremacist groups and the new media. The eight interrelated sections depart from the conventional television story by offering no clear-cut answers.