Charlie Cale - A Post-Truth Superhero

We’re introduced to Charlie Cale as she lies in bed and scrolls her phone. Her face is impassive, her arm at a right angle, the morning sun just barely touching her. We all know this moment, a modern affliction, the scrolling paralysis that overtakes you before your day begins.

She puts the phone down and gets up, but in the next scene she’s back at it, stuck again in that endless scroll. Only this time she has an audience, her friend Natalie. Charlie proceeds to tell her about a child porn ring she’s been seeing online. Natalie isn’t having it and tells Charlie to stop worrying about things she can’t change. But Charlie refuses. Her action? Commenting on a twitter post, the most performative of all acts of defiance.

What I didn’t think about when first watching this all-too-common conversation, was that Charlie might know that the child porn ring exists. She might’ve seen a video of a girl who’d been abused or a man claiming the ring didn’t exist, and Charlie would’ve known whether those statements were true or not. Not suspected, but actually known.

I couldn’t stop thinking of what a curse that would be. To live in this post-truth age knowing how often you’re being lied to. Think of how angry that would make you. I get angry enough watching politicians and billionaires and social media influencers lie so brazenly, and I’m not even sure they’re lying. There’s always a chance, the George Costanza theory if you will, that they might believe their lies.

But not for Charlie. She knows it’s a lie. Knows that they don’t believe what they’re saying, not even for a second.

Mostly Poker Face deals with individual lies. Someone claiming that an important phone call was nothing or that they wrote a song that they didn’t. This is more effective for the show. We want to watch Charlie solve a mystery every episode and getting bogged down in larger societal lies would muddy things. But you get moments, traces where you see Charlie for what she is – a cursed, post-truth superhero.

Often Poker Face seems to take place outside of time. We know its set in the present, but the unique circumstances of Charlie’s situation allow us to forget that. She doesn’t use a smart phone outside of the first episode for fear of being tracked. She spends times in small towns and places seemingly untouched by the internet. She connects to the world through the radio and survives by taking off-the-books minimum wage work. This all serves to place her in insular communities which allows every episode to have its own feel to it. And, in the end, we receive a sense of finality when the mystery is solved and the villain’s taken down.

But that isn’t life. The great villains are still out there. They’re still lying to us. And much like Charlie, we know it’s a lie. We all agree that the truth has lost its meaning and we’re all helpless to do anything about it. A world full of Cassandras, vainly howling at the moon.

I think that’s part of what makes Poker Face so satisfying. At first the truth doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough to catch the murderer. It seems like Charlie lives in the same void as us all. She knows the truth but seemingly can’t do anything about it. Only Charlie doesn’t give up. She pushes on and catches the criminal. She shows us that, at least in her world, the truth matters.

No, this isn’t reality. No, I don’t believe that we’ll get the villains and criminals in our society. But for one hour every week I know Charlie will. And there’s a comfort in that.