Investigating the “Teacher Savior”: Veronica Mars and the Mysteries of Education

Abstract

Originally airing from 2004 to 2007, Veronica Mars centers on the sleuthing adventures of its eponymous heroine, a teenage student moonlighting as a detective in the corrupt and segregated town of Neptune, California. The show is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that its active fandom led to the first successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a theatrically released film. Importantly, Rob Thomas, the show’s creator and showrunner, worked as a high school teacher in central Texas and therefore imbues his show with something of an insider’s perspective. What is arguably most interesting about Veronica Mars, however, is the diversity in its representation of teachers and teaching. The teachers of Neptune High School occupy a broad range from self-sacrificial to exploitative; the school also boasts an ethically complex administration—at once Machiavellian and moral—and a custodial and support staff that is regularly foregrounded in the lives of the show’s central cast. This chapter critically considers the construction of teaching presented in Veronica Mars from the perspective both of Rob Thomas’ experiences as a teacher, and also from the array of teaching models Neptune High affords viewers. Ultimately, we argue that Veronica Mars presents a model of teaching that differs from other pop-cultural representations of teaching in two important ways. First, the show presents “good” and “bad” teaching in ethical terms far removed from a focus on skill- and content-knowledge. As a microcosm for sociocultural inequity and corruption in the town of Neptune, Neptune High School presents as a site for liberation or oppression wherein “good” teachers act to protect students from systemic manipulation or devaluation, and “bad” teachers maintain the status quo, or leverage injustices in order to exploit students in their charge. Second, in a related, and arguably more important way, the show challenges conventional notions of what it means to be a “teacher,” and what it means to “teach,” by foregrounding the experiential, extracurricular learning inextricable from the mysteries Veronica solves. Neptune is a town filled with, and driven by, secrets; the task of uncovering those secrets acts as an extracurricular pedagogy that both complements and subverts classroom learning.