Welcome To Night Vale

72 min read

Deviation Actions

techgnotic's avatar
By
Published:
18.4K Views
Img-og by techgnotic














Last year saw the birth of what could be called the first breakout hit in podcasting. Serial, a podcast spinoff of sorts from This American Life, was downloaded over five million times on iTunes, and enjoyed an audience comparable to your average cable television program. But before Serial exploded, there was Welcome to Night Vale.


In the summer of 2013, Welcome to Night Vale became the most popular podcast on iTunes, surpassing This American Life, The Nerdist and many other popular programs. It remained in that spot for about four months. Today it is the twelfth most popular podcast, and the only one in the top twenty that tells a narrative, fictional story. What makes the podcast so popular has been the subject of a handful of articles on entertainment and culture blogs around the web. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but it can be said with some degree of certainty that it has to do with the show’s uniqueness and quality.



The story is set in a fictional town somewhere in the southwestern United States called Night Vale.


Night Vale is in the middle of a desert. Night Vale has a dog park that its citizens are forbidden from entering. Night Vale’s PTA is raising money for a “blood space war.” Night Vale’s school board is headed up by a malevolent glowing cloud. In Night Vale, the citizens are terrified of librarians and street cleaning day. The local law enforcement is known as the sheriff’s secret police. In Night Vale, there is a Faceless Old Woman who secretly lives in your home.



But people in Night Vale have the same human concerns and problems you and I have, too. They fall in love, they have to deal with in-laws, and they occasionally get trapped in other planes of existence. Despite the bizarre, usually ominous goings-on that define day-to-day life in Night Vale, there are moments of utterly recognizable humanity that anyone can see themselves in. But more than this, the characters are very three-dimensional, and they are almost always involved in compelling stories.


To try to classify Night Vale in a genre is its own mind-game. The show deals heavily with philosophical themes and ideas, especially existentialism, and has numerous magical realist and sci-fi elements. It is also brilliantly absurdist — for example: an ongoing subplot of the show for many episodes revolves around the respective mayoral campaigns of the aforementioned Faceless Old Woman secretly living in your house and a literal five-headed dragon called Hiram McDaniels. There are also word-from-our-sponsor segments featuring recognizable brands such as Subway with messages and slogans that are characteristically enigmatic and disturbing. For example, “Subway: devour your own empty heart."


It isn’t difficult to understand why Night Vale is so successful. Its creators are committed to their work in a way that should inspire all of us in the creative community. When remarking on the snowball success that Night Vale has come to enjoy, co-creator Jeffrey Cranor explained how to achieve success in an artistic endeavor in three easy steps: “Make art. Make art with people you love. Respect the art you make.” If that doesn't sound like a quality set of guiding principles to you, don’t bother visiting Night Vale.


















Your Thoughts


  1. Do you listen to any podcasts or radio programs?
  2. Have you collaborated with friends or other artists on projects before? How does that experience compare to working on your own?
  3. Do “absurdist” elements in stories distract you and destroy the narrative, or make you enjoy a “magical-realist” tale even more? Is the artistry with which the absurdism is introduced and maintained what ultimately makes it beneficial or detrimental to the narrative?












Comments30
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Skyblue10's avatar
I WAS JUST LISTENING TO THE PODCAST RIGHT WHEN I SAW THIS