VERONICA LODGE: THE GIRL WITH THE JANUS COIN
I will not just repeat my thesis here. But maybe some of it.
Veronica’s role in the core four is as the connective tissue that keeps all of the pieces of Riverdale moving in and out and around and thru her, and the proof of concept for everyone else.
The minority body serves many purposes, and none of them have to do with the occupant of said body. The Black body, is there as a host for the parasite of whiteness, the gay body a grave, the lesbian body an absence, etc. Because the bi-body is unknown - it cannot be confirmed by sight or by sexual contact - bis must rely on third parties to provide proof of concept, and that third party interaction, which isn’t sexual, is where bi-ness is defined. How those around us use our body is the only way the bi-body can prove its existence.
When Veronica comes to school, her first misstep is bowing to Cheryl’s pressure to have a closet make-out with Archie Andrews, which puts a huge strain on her budding relationship with Betty. The girls get over it and everything seems to be going fine until Veronica goes on a date with Chuck Clayton, the captain of the football team and the equivalent of dating a Kennedy. Chuck slut-shames Veronica on Instagram, and repeatedly humiliates both Veronica and Betty as they attempt “appropriate” approaches to get him to correct his behavior. So Betty hatches a plan involving a hot tub and Veronica agrees.
It is quite clear that Betty loves the domination, the vengeance she performs for Veronica. Betty’s UNKNOWN sexuality is FORBIDDEN, and only POSSIBLE thru the trespass and violation of Veronica’s body. The sexual awakening, this surprise sexual revelation Betty experiences must be hidden from Betty’s psychotic mother, who is so controlling and domineering over Betty, she is the direct cause of Betty’s self harming behaviors. So Veronica obscures her, and lets Betty hide under the cover Veronica’s mother can give both of them. When the hot tub revenge goes from bad to torture, Veronica does not really intercede. She tells no one what has happened, because she has achieved the justice she had desired. The crime (torture) between Betty and Chuck happened within Veronica’s court of law, and Veronica’s behavior at Jughead’s awful birthday party is her attempt to manage the outcome of that crime. When Cheryl plays her game at Jughead’s party, meant to hurt as deeply as possible those she’s angry with, Veronica moves to protect everyone in the room from as much harm as she can. She can’t (or won’t) lie, and because of what just happened to her in her exile from New York, she knows that denial is capitulation and she must respond. So she turns to Cheryl, and responds with the safest accusation she can manage. Accusing Cheryl of incest is safe and not harmful, because, as Updike writing about Nabokov says, “Incest is the common sin of the aristocracy.” Incest is something rich girls are familiar with and can handle.
Veronica is the only one at this point close enough to Cheryl to know the truth, and that is that Cheryl, the only remaining heir to a large and complex fortune, is a lesbian. Such a revelation would be catastrophic if not deadly in the claustrophobic conservatism of Cheryl’s family. So Veronica does what she can to protect Cheryl, a woman who is only tangentially a participant in Veronica’s court of law.
The contradiction and dependence between law and criminality (‘criminal intent’) is the bisexual contradiction, dependence and management of the gay/straight binary and the place where real desire can be acted upon. She has successfully achieved her revenge, and she will minimize harm to any other women — gay straight or otherwise — who come into contact with her court of law in the actualization of that reparation.
Veronica is a bisexual who spends more of her sexual experience with men, and her relationships, protection, and power lie with women. This is bisexual jurisprudence concerned with the correction of a violation or harm, as shown thru unknown and impossible bodies.
Jughead, describes Janus (incorrectly) as a double sided coin, two halves of the same whole. But that is a misunderstanding of Janus. Janus is really more like St. Peter, or the Hierophant. Janus is the crossroads, god of doors, the doorway to god, the liminal space between birth and death — life itself — and so is sometimes seen AS god, when God really....is what lies behind the locked door.
Veronica touches everyone, and shares experiences with everyone. Her strange, maybe inappropriate relationship with her rich mafioso father overlaps with Cheryl’s strange, super inappropriate relationship with the rich men in her family. Veronica and Jughead commiserate over their incarcerated fathers, and experience periods of homelessness, are the only two characters who kill for love, and also read the most. She and Archie have parents who love them, and are both hard working and ambitious, even if those ambitious vary in scale.
I could go on. Veronica is my favourite, and who I spend the most time thinking about. I don’t want to be her, I definitely don’t see myself in her (besides the Catholicism that veers into the satanic, her devotion – here I am three years later still writing about this show – and her bodily offerings) but she’s finally provided a solid way of looking at bi-ness, the most opaque identities out there. I’ll keep looking at her for the rest of my life to remind me that while our identity relies on transactional harm, it isn’t defined by it. She’s unashamed and proud of who she is, and proud of her friends. And thru her body and its unusual status, she saves the world.
I love you Veronica Lodge. Forever.
Books
- The Secret History - Donna Tartt
- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Breakfast at Tiffanys - Truman Capote
- The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
- Mildred Pierce - James Cain
- Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King
- Bartleby, The Scrievner - Herman Melville
- Kiss of The Spider Woman - Manuel Piug
- The Girls in 3-B - Valerie Taylor
- A World Without Men - Valerie Taylor
- The Witching Hour - Anne Rice