'Vincent D’Onofrio as Art Object'

By Michael H. Miller GALLERISTNY

We’re big fans of Paper Monument‘s “See Something Say Something” feature, where writers perform a close reading of a single image (our esteemed colleague Andrew Russeth wrote one about a photograph of Robert Irwin’s project at the World Trade Center in Art in America). The latest one comes from Mike Powell, who chose an image quite near and dear to our hearts: the negative-space image of Vincent D’Onofrio as detective Robert Goren in the credits of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

First, let’s get this wonderful description of what it’s like to pathologically watch Law & Order out of the way:

“There are nights when I have started watching an episode and not realized until about two minutes in that I watched the same one the night before. I don’t think I have ever registered surprise while watching CI. I have laughed approximately three times…”

And as for the negative image of Mr. D’Onofrio:

His head is hanging to the side. His features are washed out. In one mouse click in the editing room, he turns from virile detective to corpse. Criminal Intent usually begins with a three-minute segment that introduces the characters and sets up the crime before the credit sequence even runs. But it’s not until I see this negative image of Goren that I feel like the break between our real life and the people we are when we are watching CI is complete.

There’s also some, uh, personal information about Mr. Powell’s relationship with his girlfriend (hint: she calls the Detective Goren character “Bobby”)

FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE...

'SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING'

Mike Powell
PAPERMONUMENT 

 I have nothing bright to say about Law & Order: Criminal Intent. For forty-five minutes at a time, it reduces me to a ground zero of mental activity. Its stories are grinding and formulaic. There are nights when I have started watching an episode and not realized until about two minutes in that I watched the same one the night before. I don’t think I have ever registered surprise while watching CI. I have laughed approximately three times, two of them during the slow-motion sequences first introduced in Season 7.

One of the stars of CI is Vincent D’Onofrio, pictured here near the end of the credit sequence for Seasons 1-5, in a brief inverted or “negative” image. For the purpose of this piece of writing, all you really need to know about D’Onofrio is that he plays a detective named Robert Goren who has a kind of Sherlock Holmes-like allure. If a criminal has an academic background in Northern African ruins, Goren will invariably prove his deep knowledge of Northern African ruins. He’s the guy that gets “too emotionally involved” in his cases. Naturally, we never, ever see where he sleeps, and his Captain—played in Seasons 1-5 by Jamey Sheridan, and 6 onward by Eric Bogosian—is always pointing out that he’s obviously not sleeping anyway. 

Now let me tell you something about my girlfriend: I like her a lot. She, though, unlike me, seems to have been completely freed from the psychic chains of lust. Over time I have come to believe that she finds sex genuinely less interesting than clean, modernist interiors or the name of every single girl in Vogue. She, on the other hand, probably sees me as that cartoon wolf in a zoot suit whose tongue is always falling out. Our differences on the subject have become routine and amusing. I prod her to confess her lust in part because this would make me feel less guilty about my own, which is vague and constant, like the whine of mosquitoes in summer. Not even when coaxed in the most gentle and understanding of situations will she admit being sexually attracted to other people, myself included. There is one exception to this, and I’m sure you already know who it is: Detective Robert Goren.

Having not really grown up with girls, I find it very charming to watch a 32-year-old woman fawn over a television detective basically every night. I have encouraged her on several occasions to write fan fiction. She interprets my encouragement as mockery. She is right.

But on some level I confess that I’m threatened by Goren. It’s not that I don’t feel like I’m smart enough or psychologically unstable enough to be on his level. It’s much more basic than that: Goren has really big shoulders. He’s big. That’s actually the first thing my girlfriend said about him while watching CI: “Whoa. He’s big.” Having used coded language for as long as I can remember, I knew what she meant instantly. I’m about six-foot-two, but I’m not big, at least not in the way Goren is—sloping, hulking, uncontainable.

Nearly every time I watched the credit sequence for Seasons 1-5, I’ve wondered why they decided to show this negative image. Every other shot in the sequence shows him alongside his partner, Alex Eames, looking very curious and intuitive, taking samples with those latex cop gloves, standing in doorways looking like he’s about to psychologically dismantle a criminal, et cetera—a kind of highlight reel of his epiphanies and triumphs. So I have wondered why they show the negative image because the negative image is fucking creepy. His head is hanging to the side. His features are washed out. In one mouse click in the editing room, he turns from virile detective to corpse.

Criminal Intent usually begins with a three-minute segment that introduces the characters and sets up the crime before the credit sequence even runs. But it’s not until I see this negative image of Goren that I feel like the break between our real life and the people we are when we are watching CI is complete. It’s during the credit sequence that I give my girlfriend over to the man she sometimes called Bobby.

Sometimes I wonder why she hasn’t noticed the negative image and said Oh god, that’s scary. But maybe that’s it: When I see his negative image, I feel thrilled but also reticent, spooked. For her, well—it’s when some other part of her, some bright, desiring part that seems more or less inaccessible at any other time of our lives either shared or alone, comes alive.

 — Mike Powell is an MFA candidate in fiction at the University of Arizona in Tucson

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