Welcome to Night Vale: A Return to Radio Drama
“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.” So begins the pilot episode of Welcome to Night Vale, a bimonthly podcast that has recently taken the Internet by storm.
Conceived of by New York City-based writers Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, Welcome to Night Vale has a seemingly simple premise—in short, it’s a broadcast of the news, weather, and traffic from a small, vaguely Southwestern town named Night Vale. But Night Vale is no ordinary town; it’s a town where “every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of is true.” When asked to describe what it’s like to listen to Night Vale, some of the popular descriptions are “NPR meets The Twilight Zone” and “Lake Wobegone by David Lynch.”
What makes Night Vale special, though, and what makes it stand out from shows like The Twilight Zone and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, is how utterly normal and completely expected supernatural occurrences are. Night Vale is a town where time travel is real, but the existence of time itself is dubious; a town where the City Council governs with an intrusive, iron fist, and the existence of the Secret Police is common knowledge; a town where a literal five-headed dragon and a faceless-old-woman-who-secretly-lives-in-your-home are viable mayoral candidates; a town that has a dog park, which humans and dogs are both forbidden from entering.
The details of all these events and aspects of everyday Night Vale life are delivered in the rich baritones of radio host Cecil Gershwin Palmer, voiced by New York City-based actor Cecil Baldwin. For most of the podcast’s year-and-a-half long run, Cecil the character didn’t have an official last name, and the fact that he shares a name with his actor led to a blurring of the lines between fiction and reality—between Cecil, and “Realcil,” as one fan dubbed him. This proved amusing for both creators and actor, as Cecil Baldwin is almost nothing like Cecil Palmer, who is prone to fits of ill-temper, expressions of profound thought, and moments of existential, ominous prose. Likewise, Cecil’s broadcasts are full of unusual and often horrifying stories, but his calm, collected voice and the nonchalant, “business-as-usual” way he discusses events like the disappearance of all the town’s children or the constant deaths of Night Vale Community Radio’s interns serve to transform a potentially terrifying experience into a humorous one.
But what makes Welcome to Night Vale—a purely auditory program that requires listeners to actually make use of their imaginations to form images—so appealing, especially in a day and age where television and movies are popular because they are easy to comprehend, and provide a visual image? Humor, especially the clever humor of the show, is a natural lure, and its spooky, supernatural themes are among the most popular in literature and art; one only needs to look at the work of Mary Shelley or H.P. Lovecraft, and at the success of shows like Supernatural, Twin Peaks, and The Twilight Zone to see that. Co-writer Jeffrey Cranor theorizes that fans of NBC’s show Hannibal, a new serial killer show based on the Hannibal Lecter stories, might be responsible for the podcast’s surge in popularity, especially through platforms like Tumblr, a blogging website with a very strong and varied fandom presence. At the time of its one-year anniversary on June 15, 2013, the podcast had only 150,000 downloads on iTunes—the following week, it received another 150,000. Soon after, it shot to the top of the charts, beating out even prominent programs like TED Talks, This American Life, and Prairie Home Companion.
Apart from the more apparent elements, perhaps Night Vale’s success can be attributed to its use of satire as a tool for social criticism, as well as its overall impressive handling of various delicate social issues. A setting like Night Vale wouldn’t seem like the sort of backdrop against which social commentary could be made, given how far removed from reality the story and the town itself are, but the absurdity of the podcast is the very element that makes it ideal for this purpose. On the surface, it seems like a simple news broadcast from a town drenched in strangeness, but in a similar style as Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose, Welcome to Night Vale playfully conveys its messages in ways that are not immediately apparent. In one episode, entitled “The Candidate,” Cecil informs listeners that the City Council is voting on a measure that would prohibit involuntary breathing; detractors argue that choosing how to breathe is a constitutional right and that it’s not the government’s job to legislate breathing, to which the City Council replies, “We learned to beat our own hearts! We taught ourselves to wet our own corneas! We have pulled ourselves up from nothing! It is the American dream.” This is not the most subtle of criticisms, but however one chooses to interpret it, it certainly does use an absurd situation to make a valid point about the role of government in citizens’ everyday lives. Often, the social commentary is even more overt than that. One minor character that is mentioned often throughout the podcast is called the Apache Tracker, whom Cecil makes a point of describing as “that white guy wearing the cartoonishly inaccurate and racially insensitive Native American headdress,” and whose claim of using so-called “Indian magicks” brands him a racist in the eyes of the community. That Night Vale, as a program, chose to overtly call out how problematic this character’s actions were is significant, particularly for American Indian fans who are tired of seeing their heritages reduced to offensive caricatures and insulting costumes. Welcome to Night Vale is riddled with countless more examples of such social commentary, most delivered with a thin layer of absurdity and a good helping of comedy.
Finally, a notable aspect of the story that unfolds in Welcome to Night Vale is the romantic relationship between Cecil and Carlos, a scientist who comes to study Night Vale in the pilot episode. Certainly, gay relationships are not a new concept, nor is Night Vale the first story to include a gay character or portray such a relationship positively. However, a key difference between the podcast and other programs is the completely uneventful way the romance is introduced. Whereas other shows often delve into dramatic, clichéd coming-out plots, or even worse, decide to include a gay character whose only real purpose is to be “the gay character,” Cecil and Carlos’ relationship is the most normal thing in Night Vale. Although Carlos is only heard once during the podcast (and even then, he’s talking about his scientific research), Cecil frequently refers to him as “perfect and beautiful” and gushes over him on live air the same way a teenage girl might squeal over her crush. The complete normalcy with which this is presented, and the fact that the romance does not overwhelm or become the main plot, is a breath of fresh air for LGBT+ fans who’ve longed for realistic, light-hearted media representation. For many, it’s the first time they’ve seen a canon gay couple that doesn’t leave them feeling frustrated, unsatisfied, or even vaguely offended.
In an era of largely visual entertainment, when even reading is too often regarded with disdain, it’s refreshing to see a radio drama gain such widespread popularity, especially among the younger generation. It has yet to be seen what the future holds for radio dramas as a whole, but if Welcome to Night Vale is any indicator, the future looks promising.
Works Cited
Rachel Edidin. “Welcome to Night Vale, the #1 Podcast on iTunes You Didn’t Know Existed.” http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/08/night-vale-podcast-itunes/ Wired, 21 August 2013. Web. 13 November 2013.
Adam Carlson. “America’s Most Popular Podcast: What the Internet Did to Welcome to Night Vale.” http://www.theawl.com/2013/07/americas-most-popular-podcast-what-the-internet-did-to-welcome-to-night-vale 24 July 2013. Web. 13 November 2013
Alice Vincent. “Welcome to Night Vale: What You Need to Know.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10415154/Welcome-To-Night-Vale-What-you-need-to-know.html 31 October 2013. Web. 13 November 2013.
