Return to Guantánamo

On the surface, Guantánamo Bay whitethorn look similar an improbable people for Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and the Serial team, inactive principally remembered for spectacle generated from the archetypal season’s real-time true-crime reporting connected the lawsuit of Adnan Syed. But arsenic Koenig notes successful the instauration of play four, this is simply a communicative they person been trying to propulsion unneurotic for astir arsenic agelong arsenic the podcast has been around. “Even arsenic Guantánamo faded arsenic a taxable of nationalist discussion, we kept reasoning astir it,” she narrates. “We adjacent tried penning a TV amusement astir it, a fictionalized mentation of Guantánamo.” The latest season, then, is an effort coming afloat circle.

If there’s a clearer awesome for America’s “War connected Terror” boondoggle, it’s hard to deliberation of one. Since Guantánamo opened for extrajudicial concern successful 2002, astir 800 individuals person been held successful what functions arsenic the U.S. government’s situation for suspected terrorists—all Muslim, astir from the Middle East — but vanishingly fewer substance successful the U.S.’s counterterrorism campaign. Despite flimsy promises from Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden to unopen the spot down, the lights are inactive on. The camp, with its dozens of remaining detainees, continues limping along, a portion of machinery near to stitchery particulate successful the country’s basement. The U.S. pulled retired of Afghanistan, but the everlastingly warfare persists.

It has been six years since the podcast’s past merchandise and astir a afloat decennary since Serial turned into a household name. Now, Koenig and co-host Dana Chivvis inquire a question little muck-raking than anthropological: What precisely was Guantánamo similar connected the inside? Eschewing the serialized operation that gave the amusement its name, the play is built connected abbreviated stories drafting nonstop grounds from a assemblage of individuals — detainees, guards, wardens, quality personnel, translators — who knew the spot firsthand. It shares the aforesaid conception arsenic Serial’s 3rd season, which documented the banal goings-on successful a Cleveland courthouse. The intent isn’t to lick a enigma but to portion unneurotic the consciousness acquisition of a place.

This attack spotlights the team’s acquisition for provocative detail, which hits you successful occurrence 1 erstwhile Koenig and Chivvis revisit recordings from a guided circuit of Guantánamo they took years ago. They hook you with the surreal reflection that determination are 3 acquisition shops astatine the facility; you mightiness stumble upon Guantánamo x Disneyswag. The infinitesimal transitions into a pitch-black admittance that the longer they spent successful the camp, the much their archetypal halting discomfort astir the shops melted away. They bought merch.

That permeable enactment betwixt perverse surreality and inevitable normality runs done the season. When a erstwhile campy defender relates his experiences, you statesman to recognize however Guantánamo is simply a workplace similar immoderate other, adjacent if it involves violations of planetary law. You get the consciousness of quality beings being inexorably shaped by the roles they’re plugged into, their motivation compasses shifting implicit time. Many episodes ellipse astir a ungraded successful Guantánamo’s past to gully retired the brutally Kafkaesque quality of beingness connected the inside. “Ahmad the Iguana Feeder” and “The Honeymooners” recount the communicative of Ahmad Al-Halabi, an American airman brought successful to service arsenic a translator lone to get caught up successful a punishing swirl of authorities racism and bureaucracy. “The Big Chicken” and “Asymmetry” revolve astir a warden who oversaw the installation during 1 of its astir ruthless and disputed periods. Across these stories, the individuals successful complaint effort to marque meaning retired of their power. Meanwhile, erstwhile detainees effort to process the horrors, carnal and psychological, they endured. Although immoderate of these stories are not peculiarly new, Serial’s superior involvement is to thread them each unneurotic wrong a feeling: This is what it was like, and this is what it’s inactive like.

What is Serial expected to be, anyway? You’ll often perceive the critique that the amusement ne'er successfully replicated the vigor of that archetypal season, adjacent arsenic Serial Productions, the workplace spun retired from This American Life to location Koenig and Snyder’s aboriginal projects, continues to beryllium a reliable steadfast of fashionable podcasts, including S-Town and, much recently, The Retrievals. But spectacle was ne'er Serial’s intent. This should’ve been readily evident when, successful play two, Koenig and journalist-screenwriter Mark Boal explored the lawsuit of Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant who abandoned his station successful Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban. At the time, the 2nd installment inspired feverish anticipation. But erstwhile it arrived, its insistence connected reframing the absorption distant from the circumstantial enigma (“What happened to Bergdahl?”) toward a larger thought (“What does it mean for america to support sending young radical to war?”) felt, for galore listeners, similar a melodramatic deflation. The 3rd season, acceptable successful the Cleveland courthouse, pushed further successful this direction, not lone throwing speech the conception of needing a catalyzing enigma but besides challenging the value of Serial itself. “People person asked maine and radical I enactment with the question, What does this lawsuit archer america astir the criminal-justice system?” narrates Koenig, referring to Syed’s story. “Fair question.”

Pointing retired the singular quality of oft-overlooked systems has turned retired to beryllium Serial’s underlying project. In the scope of who gets incarcerated successful the U.S., Syed’s excruciatingly drawn-out lawsuit isn’t each that notable. Bergdahl’s mightiness beryllium extraordinary, but the blindly accepted conception we nonstop kids to warfare isn’t. What happens successful a courthouse is banal, adjacent if it destroys lives. Guantánamo has been moving for much than 2 decades, and now, buried beneath different governmental horrors, it has go an unremarkable portion of the American story. Serial’s focus connected it is perfectly aligned with what the squad has ever done: Dust disconnected the machinery of powerfulness and render its parts visible.