Lessons in Capitalism #41: Storia Americana

“Archaeologists here have to destroy what they collect, because history belongs to whoever tells the story.” 

-Scout Tafoya

Perhaps the most famous Jack Kirby New Gods tale is The Pact. For many people, the story amounts to just the final page or so, wherein it’s revealed that Highfather and Darkseid swapped kids in order to end the war between them. A war that threatened to consume the entire universe and them along with it. But the story is about so much more than just that: It’s about the changing nature of history. Specifically, it’s a parable for what World War II was: the sea change from one understanding of how the world worked to another.

This is perhaps most telling in the role Darkseid plays within the majority of the story. Contrary to how many people play the evil God of Apokolips, Darkseid was not the actual main antagonist of the story. Or, at least, not in the traditional “I AM A BIG DEAL WHO IS GOING TO STOMP ON YOUR FACE.” He’s not even the master of Apokolips. Rather, he acts as a malevolent force acting behind the scenes, working to rise to a position of power greater than that he already held. He is a shadow manipulating players on both sides of a war, be it his uncle Steppenwolf or even Highfather himself, to rise to where we know him to be. In other words, Darkseid is Starscream and this is the story of how he beat Megatron.

 

Instead, that role belongs to Steppenwolf and Darkseid’s mother, Heggra. In many regards, Steppenwolf and Heggra represent the old way of being. The way that existed before your Darkseids, Orions, and Scott Frees. The monarchs who treated the land as another colony to conquer. They are the brutes who will murder for kicks, because they have a divine right to rule. “I hunt where and what I wish,” says Steppenwolf.

 

But their time is not long. For as with the world wars, we saw the end of seeing history through the lens of their dynasty. Sure, some of us still fantasize about how great it would be for a new king to rise, while others fetishize the monarchy. But ultimately, such stories are mere pageantry, mere aesthetics rather than reality. By its very definition, the divine right of kings cannot be bestowed by the people. It must be given to those who deserve it. But the question lies in who bestows such a power? This is, in many ways, the question at the heart of this final season of Fargo: If something is defined by what is not, what is absent, who then defines what it is?

 

Fargo has a rather straightforward answer to this question: the willingness to kill those who are deemed unclean in the eyes of the American God. In East/West, there’s an offhanded nod to the HUAC trials occurring around the same time as the season of Fargo was set. The targets of HUAC where what you’d expect from an extremely conservative organization: Queers, People of Color, Non-Conformists. Whoever its gaze looked upon was deemed Unamerican lest they were willing to give up their fellows and swear loyalty to the United States of America. One nation under God.

 

You’re American as long as America deems you American.

“Be afraid of stories, be afraid of storytellers. They are only trying to lie to you.”

-Kieron Gillen

The sea change at the heart of The Pact is much like the cruel joke at the end of 1066 and All That: this is the end of History. There have been many scholars to argue such a point within the world. Francis Fukuyama being the most famous of which. At the heart of his claim was the notion that History is best understood through the lens of the rise of Capitalism, a fitting claim to understand the implications of given the show we’re talking about. That, no matter what happens in the future (be it the rise of Hitler 2: Electric Boogaloo, Climate Change, or what have you), the world will remain as it has always been: Neoliberal capitalism all the way down. That you can somehow win the war of ideas as if that’s how the story works.

Many utopian figures have argued that the way to beat an idea is with a better idea. The most recent of which is in Rian Hughes’ XX, where the phrase is stated verbatim. In a story where we must choose between capitalism and monarchism/fascism, capitalism is certainly the better idea. A little bit of freedom is always better than no freedom at all. But what that sentiment misses, crucially, is that a) just because capitalism is the better idea, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea and b) just because capitalism was the idea that ultimately won, doesn’t mean it was the only option.

Often when looking at history, the storyteller will focus on specific elements, structure it in such a way as to make the present seem inevitable. Be they the textbooks that argue that Capitalism was always going to beat communism or John Lewis and Nate Powel’s March, which concludes its tale of Civil Rights with Obama being President. The temptation of the neoliberal view of history as the rise and fall of stock markets, where it was guaranteed to be the winner no matter what, often ends poorly.

 

For us, we need look no further than the rise of Fascism. Contrary to the implications of Fukuyama, fascism is not antithetical to capitalism. In many regards, fascism has risen to power in societies that declare themselves to be democratic. Berlin before the Nazis was considered the cultural capital of the world, where Socialists, Queers, and Non-Conformists lived side by side. The thugs of Hitler were given power, they didn’t take it from anyone.

 

In many regards, Darkseid being the child of monarchs is apt for his story. Throughout the New Gods under Kirby, Darkseid is presented as a fascist working within systems to corrupt them from within. This has always been the MO of fascists. Not to simply conquer the world, but to use the systems against us. Fascism was born in this period of time, when the family business of monarchism was deemed to be too chaotic: the iron will of a fascist. When capitalism, and specifically American Capitalism, began to take root.

 

Of course, it’s just a story. One look at the brain trust that fascism always gravitates towards, and you see a bunch of incompetents who think themselves smarter than they actually are. That isn’t to say that intelligence precludes fascism. Rather, they tend to see nothing wrong with a system that hinges upon always winning, even as it repeatedly fails utterly time and time again, only being kept together by men with guns slaughtering the opposition. When it does fail beyond the scope of strong men, they blame individuals within the system rather than fascism itself. Some will even argue the problem was that they put a jock in charge where a nerd would have done so much better.

But then, there are other ghosts haunting in the halls of History, waiting for the right moment to strike the future. In Fargo’s climactic moment, it shows its understanding of this through the return of Zelmare Roulette. As we have discussed previously in Lessons in Capitalism #35, Zelmare and her lover, the late Swanee Capps, are anarchists. Rejecting the system as it is in favor of a better life where they are free to live and love as they please. Like many alternatives to capitalism, agents within the system actively worked to destroy it before it could be anything more than a pipe dream. The lovers are dead, and the world shines on.

 

Except, they didn’t quite get them all. Zelmare survived the war, the betrayal, the pale white gaze of the Black Racer, and she got one of the bastards. She’ll go back into the margins, the places where History rarely looks. As an individual, Zelmare can’t take down the system. The story she gets isn’t promised a happy ending. One where we are freed from the chains of capitalism, even as it strangles them as well. They like the chains because everyone else is strangled faster. That’s why Josto Fadda’s pathetic pleas for something better are met with deaf ears: he didn’t care until the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party wanted to eat his face.

“I used to draw comics, before all of this, the ring. Before everything. Y’know comics, right? Panels, pictures, adventure. I don’t—you probably don’t know, but to separate the panels you draw these lines, gutters they’re called. You can kind of make a grid out of them. It’s weird. I’d stare at them , the grids, they looked like something… familiar. Took me a while to see it, I mean. All those hanging crosses. It’s a cage, right? They’re just bars on a cage. The story, the adventure, is locked behind them—separated from us. As if it’s something savage. As if we’re something civilized.”

-Tom King

Fargo closes out its fourth, and potentially final, season with a question: just who is writing the history, this true story, we are being told. 

Is it the Jewish World War II veteran, returning home to find a world broken by cruelty and hatred? Where fascism is always on the prowl waiting for just the right moment to turn humanity into math, into an equation that can it can use to control the populace, exterminate those that it hates. Whose utopian dreams ultimately failed, as the children he sought to enlighten towards a better way of being instead voted for Thatcher and Regan.

 

Is it the child of another veteran of the War? One whose experiences were not against the Nazis, but the fascism of his own men trying to rape India into submission. Who raised his child with the horrors of the nuclear bomb and failed to get rid of the bases housing such bombs in his back yard. A child who tried to change things from within, but found out far too late that the system is not kind, it doesn’t care for individuals living within it. It only cares about the bottom line. A revelation that came far too late for them to stop them from hurting people.

 

Is it the Jewish ex-CIA agent who left the agency with a profound sense of guilt for, at the very least, what he was complicit in? Who coped by writing stories about sad, broken men unable to change a machine built only to kill. That doesn’t care what tin pot dictator is in charge of the black sheep of the world as long as they keep things orderly and without interaction with the rest of the world. Stories of an undestroyable system that most would rather exist because it gives them power than create one that could cost them everything. Who skirts on the edge of a leftist breakthrough, but always ends up holding on to a liberal vantage point.

 

Is it Martin fucking Freeman?

 

Fargo season 4 doesn’t have the answer. Sure, it frames itself as a history told by a young black girl, but her story, as with all other stories, leaves out details. Details she could never know or guess. History is ultimately a story that is based on what we know. And what we know is changing as time moves on and on. Information is found and lost and found again. Perhaps, as our narrator muses, History is like memory. Things that are forgotten can be remembered. The alternatives tend to have a way of haunting the future.

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.”

-Ursula K Le Guin

Lessons in Capitalism #40: Happy

“There’s a word for people like you.” 

“No. That’s your word. You invented it to make yourself feel bigger. But that’s not what I am.”

There are many crimes that America is guilty of. Slavery, Imperialism, The Nuclear Bomb, Concentration Camps, Genocide, the list just goes on and on, even if you don’t include the comedy examples. But perhaps the quintessential American crime, as Fargo notes, are the con and the serial killer. While important to the events of the season, the serial killer has gone the way of the dodo in terms of the modern crime scene, in favor of the mass murderer. The school shooter who kills indiscriminately without any rhyme or reason. For all that they prosper in the pre internet age, they aren’t as prolific as they once were. Or, at the very least, their story has been deemed too convoluted to survive into the future outside of the realm of fiction.

 

A con, by contrast, is a rather straightforward crime all things considered and thus more prosperous in the modern day. There’s not as much scheming as a bank heist or a presidential term. It requires a story to be told. Throughout these seasons of Fargo and the subsequent 41 lessons in capitalism, we have seen a great number of cons performed. From Niki Swango’s fake grenade to the botched con of the police to end the war with an L for Kansas City.

 

But in terms of this season, we must put our gaze towards that of the various factions in this crime war. The obvious con, in terms of this episode, would be that of the titular Happy. As with many con artists, Happy attempts to play both sides of a conflict, acting as if he’ll help one side while secretly helping the other. Now, if you were to ask Happy, he’d probably tell you this wasn’t so much a con as karma. Loy Cannon struck his son and whipped him, and that man needs to pay, regardless of the reason why. The point of the con is to accrue power and stick it to Loy.

 

Alternatively, we could look at the con that pushed the war to go even further than it needed to. Josto Fadda, in an attempt to kill his brother, tries to con Loy into doing it for him. He spins a yarn about Loy’s son, Satchel, being murdered on Gaetano Fadda’s orders. The con ultimately fails due to Loy realizing he’s being conned. Because men like him have always been conned by the American Dream the way men like Josto never were. Both Josto and Loy’s ancestors may have come from a boat, but only one of them came in chains.

Which brings us to the core con at the heart of this season of Fargo: You too can become an American. The nature of what it means to become something when the definition of the thing is as mutable as can be has been talked about before in Fargo. Actualization, as Season 2 termed it. But the nature of it here is far different. Not merely becoming the person who was always within you, but actually being considered a person by the world around you. That if you just behave the right way, succeed in the right way, then the Americans will accept you as one of them.

But it’s a con. It’s a story being told to keep people from imagining the world as something different than it currently is. A belief that all these things that have happened have happened before and will happen again. The cycles keep on trucking, looping on and on and on, sons killing brothers killing fathers and so on and so forth. Rabbi becomes Josto becomes Satchel becomes Scott Free. The small details may change, but the rudder of the world never does.

 

What a nice story.

 

But there’s a bigger con going on, a con that goes back before all these stories have been told, before even the first lesson in capitalism. All the way back in the original motion picture Fargo. The movie is a rather simple story, lacking the television shows leaps in chronology, mysticism, and identity, opting instead to approach the subject of a rather absurd crime straightforwardly.  Not to say it’s a bad movie, there’s a reason it and not Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Scam got a television series out of it. But it does remain among the top 10 Coen Brothers movies rather than among Miller’s Crossing, O Brother Where Art Thou, Raising Arizona, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Burn After Reading.

 

But at the heart of the story is a rather absurd crime where all the characters seem to get the fates they deserve. Jerry Lundergaard ends up in jail, Carl Showalter dies, and Marge Gunderson lies in bed with her husband feeling good about her lot in life. And yet… what of the rest of the Lundergaard family. Sure, Wade was a rather shitty man, but that doesn’t mean Jean Lundergaard deserved to have her head shoved into an oven or Scotty deserve to be orphaned. The more you look at the story, the more holes you see in the belief that life is fair.

 

That is, after all, at the heart of the con: Life is fair. Everyone in Fargo believes that there is some force out there— be it God, Aliens, or the System itself—that makes sure that all the goodies get their reward and all the badies get their punishment. But what determines some criminals more in need of punishment than others. Sure, Odis Weff killed one of the breakout characters of the season (and, also, Dick Wickware), but Wickware was a man unbound by traditional law, willing to threaten a minor if it meant getting his man.

 

Hell, if we remain bound to traditional law, we must consider Swanee Capps deserving of her fate. After all, it was illegal to be a lesbian for close to 150 years at the time this season of Fargo takes place. Not to mention her various murders, theft, crossdressing, and other such crimes. And yet, her death doesn’t feel just the way other deaths might in Fargo. It feels cruel and awful and completely arbitrary.

And then there’s men like VM Varga. Outside of the scope of the season, but then we do not know who gets away at the end. This is not the final episode. But for Varga, his story is done. He got away with it. To be clear, there is a degree of ambiguity to his fate. A coin toss as to whether or not he goes to prison or fades into the either. But it is in ambiguity that men like Varga, for all their talk of certainty, thrive within.

 

Consider another American con: Hope. Hope, as a concept, is a rather solid concept. It’s the desire for something to occur. But often within the political landscape (and, indeed, the fictional landscape), that word is used without qualification. Characters will spout lines like “I have hope” or “You just need to hope more” without ever truly saying what, exactly, they hope for. It can be easily turned into a conservative idea rather than a liberal one.

 

To use comics as an example, noted Ethan Van Sciver collaborator Geoff Johns framed Superman as a figure of hope in his twelve part Maxi-Series, Doomsday Clock. In particular, the end of the narrative reveals that hope fuels reality and Superman is the purest avatar of the hope that reality has. Superman will hopefully defend the values of truth, justice, and the American Way as he punches an army of angry foreigners from killing President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, including one who is explicitly a child refugee. All the while sympathetic characters bemoan that we have all this fighting when there are good people on both sides. Without meaning, without content, hope is just another commodity to be used to pacify the masses, another con.

 

But like any story, cons don’t last forever. For good and for ill, the con artist can eventually be caught by those they tried to con. Be it a serial killer poisoning the old and ill because she hates them all, the brother out to kill his fellow brother, or the business man trying to expand his empire by any means necessary. All these cons are consumed in the end. No story can ever defeat coming into being without some damage, and the same story told over and over again will be worn out quickly.

 

And yet, the con can also save a life. Consider the end of the penultimate episode. Here, Ethelrida Smutny proposes a con of her own to Loy Cannon. While the full details aren’t there, the base facts to be used for the con have been given: 1) A woman by the name of Oraetta Mayflower has been murdering sick people and stealing their shit as trophies. 2) Among the dead is a man named Donatello Fadda, leader of the Fadda Family. 3) From Fadda, Oraetta stole a ring, which Ethelrida has given to Loy.

 

It’s not a story, not quite yet. But the pieces are in place, the players are set. The show is about to end.

Lessons in Capitalism #39: East/West

Note: One of the references in this video would not be made were I to do this now due to the reason this was moved to the main blog.

Image by Ritesh Babu

Texts Sampled:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

Minnesota Biblical by Jack Graham

Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads

The Black Archive #43: Arachnids in the UK by Sam Maleski

The Book of the War ed. by Lawrence Miles

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

So What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Friend of Dorothy’ by Terra Necessary

The New Tarot Handbook by Rachel Pollack
Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss

The End of Policing by Alex S Vitale

Mr. Burns by Anne Washburn

Lessons in Capitalism #38: The Nadir

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“I know. But it is.”

It is tempting to argue that there is an inevitability to history. That there was no other way these events could have turned out. Not that it was necessarily planed out from the start. As a famous con artist once put it, the plans and schemes of the world all bungle into one another. The world is rudderless. Rather, who we are, as people, forces these events to occur. These were the only choices we could have made with the knowledge we had.

 

To justify this series existence on a Doctor Who blog, Doctor Who is massively guilty of this. The most notable example is that of fixed points in history. That there are moments where the world must go one way, no matter how hard you try to cheat them. Changing them will break the world, and destroy everything forever. Sure, the moments could be cheated, but they still must happen. Equally, there’s the episode The Doctor Falls, wherein the 12^th Incarnation of the Doctor notes that the Cybermen “always get started. They happen everywhere there's people. Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus. Like sewage and smartphones and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable.” Even the Classic period of the show is guilty of this with the character of The Monk, whose evil scheme is to upend history by preventing the Normans from winning the Battle of Hastings and pushing England towards a future of technological prosperity.

 

These views of history as a frozen document are not solitary in nature. From Star Trek to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Bill and Ted, the act of changing history is frequently seen as being wrong. (The invocation of Bill and Ted is fitting considering The Sofa of Reasonable Comfort gag from The Curse of the Fatal Death is a blatant rip off of the ending of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.) History has been written, published, and finished. That story’s over, best tell a new one.

 

And yet, Noah Hawley does not take this view of History. It is worth returning to Legion here. It would be prudent to start with the third season, wherein time travel is on the menu. But it’s equally apt to talk about a second season episode. We talked about it before back in Lessons in Masculinity #14, but it’s worth revisiting it through the lens of history. In that episode, David visits alternate versions of his own life where he made different choices. From attempting to live a normal life unmedicated to embracing the Devil on his shoulder to becoming a homeless Akira who murders Alex DeLarge and his Droogs. He considers each of these possible worlds before accepting the one he’s got. He can’t imagine a world where he’s not miserable. Even the happiest of all possible worlds ends with him dying on the streets, alone in the world.

 

But to truly get to the heart of it we must discuss one of the most striking moments from its third season: David’s conversation with his mother. David’s focus throughout the season has been to force the universe into giving him a happy ending. One where Amahl Farouk never entered his brain, his father never abandoned him, and he was loved. He pleads with his fatalistic mother to change things. To never let her husband leave her to go overseas, never let the Devil in, never leave him. She retorts, sitting in a cell in a camp called Auschwitz, that if he has Time Travel, why not change this. He stutters at the very notion before rejecting it. Not because such actions would break time (though the Time Demons are making that argument very clearly [for more on them, see Lessons in Masculinity]). Rather, it’s because David is an egotistical little shit who doesn’t care how many people he has to destroy, torture, or kill in order to get what he wants.

 

To say David is alone in this egocentric approach to history would be an understatement. The largest historical event of my lifetime, that of the election of Donald Trump, was predicated upon a bunch of egotistical, narcissistic bastards deciding that nothing was more important than their egomania. Who cares how many people die of a plague, as long as we have the power to strangle democracy to death. Because if we do not do this, then some Other group will have the power. And they will do to us what we do to them.

 

This is the motivation that Odis Weff gives to Dick Wickware in order to be allowed to join the raid on the Kansas City Train Station to capture (“or” kill) fan favorite characters Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps: He wanted power to prevent the fear he has. Whether or not this is true is irrelevant to the point of the con: Dick buys it. It’s a reasonable enough motivation to become a cop to want power over people. Why else would someone take a job that’s about keeping things the way they are.

 

Except, Odis ultimately kills Dick and Swanee, breaking the status quo of two down on their luck criminals running across America as the cop chases after them, always missing them at the last moment. A large portion of the police force was slaughtered in that raid, along with a number of citizens. The thing about history is that it’s a true story. That is to say it’s a story. And like all stories, it will prioritize some events over others. Some characters over others. Even a history set within the margins is still going to leave people out. The full scope of life can never truly be captured.

 

The point of history, then, is to tell a sliver of life. The story of how certain events came to be. Sometimes, like the Assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, there are odd thematic coincidences that make the telling more compelling. Others, things just happen, what the hell. But most importantly, history is a story. All stories seem like there was nothing the characters could do to prevent what was to occur. There was nothing Ethelrida could have done to prevent Oraetta from finding her journal in her closet. Nothing Loy could have done to save Doctor Senator. Nothing Josto could have done to prevent the unspeakable from happening to him as a child.

 

These events are over, pulped and published into a book. Fitting then that the last episode of Doctor Who that mentions fixed moments is The Angels Take Manhattan. On the surface, the characters are trapped in a city by an alien race called The Weeping Angels. In reality, they are trapped in a book called The Angel’s Kiss. Their actions preordained by the story to lead to a tragic end. This awareness leads to cruelty, because if it’s just a story, why bother to be kind? Other people relevant to Fargo’s interests have far lesser motivations for cruelty.

 

And yet, we can subvert the narratives we are trapped in. Consider the opening confrontation between the Fadda brothers. When Loy Cannon released Gaetano from capture, he assumed the younger brother would kill the elder. What else would he do? Instead, being a bit of a fascist, Gaetano respects the guile and strength Josto showed and (after roughing him up a bit) pledges his loyalty to his brother. We are not characters trapped in a story. We can change who we are at a moment’s notice. We don’t have to live the same cyclical stories again and again. 

 

History is just the story we are told about what life is. But life is not a story. There is no ending save for the point where we leave off. We don’t have to be trapped in someone else’s idea of who we are, who we were, who we can be. We can be better than we were yesterday.

“The optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true. This is your best possible world, Will. Not getting a better one.”

Lessons in Capitalism #37: Lay Away

“I’m what they used to call a fly man round these parts.” 

So Grant Morrison is non-binary. As I am writing this piece, they have just updated their pronouns to be they/them, confirming without a shadow of a doubt that they are non-binary. This is something to consider given Morrison’s history with gender being… less than optimal. It’s also worth noting given Morrison is silently one of Noah Hawley’s major influences, as anyone who has watched Legion will tell you. We’ve talked about Morrison in the last Lesson in Capitalism, in particular their work with the New Gods. But in this episode, there’s another aspect to consider: their magical war with noted con artist Alan Moore. Unlike the show, I use the term “con artist” with an air of love and affection. The phrase befitting a beloved (if somewhat problematic) grandfather who punch an asshole in the face. He is the best kind of con artist, one not so much interested in swindling the poor out of billions, but one out to change the world with his cons. To con the world, the systems that control us, and win out in the end. But there are two things Moore did that every con artist inevitably does. Firstly, he burnt some bridges. Morrison’s was among them, but there were countless others. Davis, Lee, Fox, to name but a handful. One does not con people without pissing them off or being pissed off in turn. The second thing he did was trust the government. It’s surprising to think a man like Moore, an anarchist who started his comic book career committing tax fraud against Thatcher’s England, would trust the government. But the face of the government takes on many forms. In the case of Moore, it called itself DC Comics. Contrary to popular belief, corporations are not people so much as systems. Ones that will break and destroy you if you ever think of them as people, let alone a fellow con artist. There is no art in the conning of the corporation. Only math, only pain. Morrison, for their part, also fell for this. They thought they could change things from within. As if empathizing with a corporation. They learned, after decades of hard work and unfortunate bootlicking, that this isn’t the case. And now, adrift from the system they once served, they feel comfortable using language that wouldn’t be accepted in such systems of power.

“Au Revoir, Shoshanna!” 

This is a story about the margins. Not just in the sense of the main players all being marginalized (people of color, women, queer folk), but rather in the sense that this is a secret history. The secret history is not so much the history that wasn’t know or necessarily the one that was repressed. Rather, it’s the history that isn’t acknowledge, be it by a lack of awareness or an active repression. It is the story of Bayard Rustin, the queer man behind the civil rights movement, of Emma Goldman, anarchist philosopher and unionizer, of Walter Morrison, war protester and soldier turned pacifist. It’s the stories of the writers of history who keep their personal tragedies, which led to their biases, to themselves. It’s the stories of the countless people whose stories can never be told because they were lost in a fire, kept from us by the powers that be in favor of other stories, or for the simple banality that they just weren’t seen as interesting. It’s still election day as I’m writing this. Though it is now Wednesday, it will still be election day. The day has been an extremely stressful one. Putting aside that the last presidential election day was one where I came out as bisexual shortly before Donald won, I was supposed to get a book. I had read it beforehand, having been given a review copy by its author. The book is called Blue in Green. It’s a graphic novel about Jazz musicians, ghosts, demons, and art. It focuses on a black man doomed to mediocrity due to not having the push to make himself great. No muse, no drive, just rote competence. He comes across a song possessed by something old and cruel. Something that killed his father and his father before him. He becomes obsessed with the song, wanting to share it with the world. It will make him great, more powerful. But, in the end, the man finds himself lost of everything he held dear, on the verge of death. I did not get the book. Instead, I got a notification from Amazon asking me to authorize them sending me the book. When I did, I was informed that I would get the book by the end of November-the end of December. And it was that which pushed me over the edge. At the top of my lungs, I screamed “FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!” holding it for an entire minute. Even afterwards, I felt like I was on thin ice, dizzy, about the puke, standing on the precipice of collapse. I told Sam that I would probably be late in sending him the article. It’s probably the case. Election Day is way too personal for me to be able to walk through it unscathed.

“They’re buying it.” 

So I had planned on doing this as seven quotes about con artistry, but apparently the election madness has made me unable to write a lot at a time, and school work takes priorities. I did have thoughts about the relationship between serial killers and con artists, but my head’s not in a good place to write such a piece. I’m sorry that this is crap. Fargo is amazing. The acting is superb, the direction and editing are haunting, and oh god, the music is so good. It’s a great show that is willing to let its pace linger for long stretches of time. I wish I could say more about it, but my head’s currently fried from the hellscape that is the 2020 election cycle.

“The best liars tell the truth.”

A man pulls over on the side of the road and sees a billboard for an idea he came up with. The man will never receive credit for or any money off of the idea. Not because he didn’t capitalize on the idea, didn’t put the effort into making the idea, or anything else of the sort. The man won’t receive credit for the idea because he is a black man. He is a black man pegged as a criminal by the local establishment. In their eyes, he may be little better than a beast, but he will always be a little worse than a man. The game has always been rigged against the man. And what’s worse… he knew it all along. He knew that the American Dream was a con, but he still bit into the hook. A part of him wanted to believe the lie. And there it is: the world shattered before him, the son he loved but forsake for power murdered, his best friend dead, the war he’s fighting a losing one. The house always wins. Loy Cannon’s ultimate failure was believing his small talent for crime made him eligible to be part of the house.

Lessons in Capitalism #36: Camp Elegance

“The poor and wretched don't escape

If they conspire the law to break

This must be so but they endure

Those who conspire to make the law”

-The Goose and the Common

Since we’ve past the halfway point, I think it’s a good time to talk about the New Gods…

 

Fig. 1: As with the fourth season of Fargo, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Saga is about capitalism in a post-World War II age. It tells of the survivors of a great and cataclysmic war between forces of cruelty and peace. Of the ideas that fostered in the wake of that dark and dreary war. Of the pacifistic hippy movement pitted against the fascistic tendrils of capitalism. Chief among these is the series Forever People, where a group of space hippies travel about confronting the various machinations of Darkseid on Earth to obtain the Anti-Life Equation, a math problem which will prove that all must be slave to Darkseid. Among his many schemes, one involves the creation of a theme park known as Happyland. A blatant Disneyland riff, Darkseid’s scheme reveals the Happiest Place on Earth to be a place of exploitation, cruelty, and horror. But what’s truly horrifying about Happyland is not that it runs exploitation, but that it exists to make us not care that it does. To prioritize riding on Splash Mountain over the historic racism of Song of the South. Or, to choose something that would have been a thing when Kirby was writing the series in the 1970’s, there’s EPCOT. The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was supposed to be a shining beacon for the future. It would be a utopia where the best minds could develop and exist with minimal government oversight. A city that would change with the times like a Disney theme park. A place where man was free from the ills of democracy, where lesser thinkers held sway over the all-powerful Walt Disney. Every decision for the poor, working class families expected to move into this community would be done not by some committee, but by the Genius™ behind Disneyland and the 1964 World’s Fair, Walt Disney. Everyone would work to make the shining beacon of tomorrow shine brighter. A live exhibit to be watched 24/7 by the world. Of course, this is more Seaguy territory than Fourth World, so let’s just simplify things by noting that Disney was an arch capitalist who frequently busted his unions for daring to want to be paid what they were owed based on their work. But that’s not the point. The point is that we would rather have the simple Cock and Bull stories to the complex, ugly history of what we like. It’s better to act as if the worst parts of the world aren’t there than acknowledge the ugliness of it all. However, it should be noted that of the Fourth World series, Forever People is perhaps the weakest. This is in no small part due to the core premise of the series perhaps being better served in an era predating the fall of the hippy movement towards embracing Thatcher and Regan, even as the latter famously ordered the slaughter of countless protestors, citing “If it takes a bloodshed, let’s get it over with. No appeasement.” The dream the Forever People represent was dead before ink hit paper. The Fourth World is a story built on a corpse. 

 

Fig. 2: Race is a minor theme within the Fourth World. Historically speaking, the theme has been, at best, somewhat poorly handled by white men. Among them being Grant Morrison. In their initial foray into the Fourth World (that isn’t an arc of JLA), Morrison presents a narrative familiar to many who have born witness to the long and ugly history of the music industry. It starts with a black man, a pioneer within the field. One day, a capitalist sees this and decides to take it for his own. He “gives” the new way of creation to another artist, be it himself or someone he represents, someone who has less rough edges than the original artist, or, at the very least, rough edges that are marketable. Typically, these newer artists are white men who end up richer than god while the black artists die penniless. It’s an old story that’s so familiar, Back to the Future made an entire gag about the reverse happening. Within Fargo’s schema, this is the path the credit card is taking. As I mentioned at the start of the series, the credit card was invented by a white man after the events presented. Where the gag in Back to the Future was focused on how the artistic triumphs of black men actually came from white men, Fargo reflects the reality: the creations of black men are frequently stolen from them by white men while the black man dies alone in a gutter. Because the black man has just far too many rough edges to truly appeal to White America.

 

Fig. 3: Throughout Fargo’s fourth season, there’s talk of the performativity of being an American. Certainly, this is a subject of many a film by Quentin Tarantino, but within the context of capitalism, it’s a far more interesting game. As Loy Cannon and Doctor Senator note, people don’t want to be rich so much as appear rich. They want to look bigger than they actually are. This can be used to the advantage of many a cruel monster, Loy included. We all want to believe we can succeed in the American Experiment. To pass as an American. But to be an American is to be cruel. To exploit, torture, and maim. And there’s no one who does that better than a rich man.

 

Fig. 4: A natural consequence of the credit card, as Fargo notes, is a system that feeds off of predatory loaning. Going after those who owe debts to the bank, to the landlord, to the master, will be forced to sell everything they own to pay them off. As Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis demonstrates, a world controlled by Darkseid is a world of rampant capitalism. Who cares if you have to pee in a bottle just to complete production of something you will never use. To suffer is to suffer for Darkseid! Who cares if you die from heat exhaustion? To Die on the Job is to Die for Capitalism. Fargo’s exploration of capitalism and its failings is largely through the lens of the people who try to do something other than the working class jobs they have. The criminals who, through malice, desperation, or stupidity, want something better than the life they have. In their video essay on the series, Eric Sophia McAllister notes, somewhat blithely, that you don’t have to turn to a life of crime in order to find fulfillment in your life. You could become a mailman. On the surface, this seems to be a fair reading of Fargo’s “solution” to capitalism: just be a good person. As long as you remain within the system of capitalism, the law, you can become a better person. To want more from life is, at best, pitiable and, at worst, condemnable and actively toxic. And yet, much like their claim that VM Varga (who I just co-wrote an essay about, among other devils, with fellow critic Ritesh Babu) is just “Scary Terry,” it’s lacking something. It’s not a full answer, merely the surface of one. In many regards, season four acts as a rebuke to McAllister’s claims, noting that placing the moral center of the show on the police is extremely problematic and not something that should be applied uncritically. That just because you’re good and play by the “rules” doesn’t mean the game will treat you fairly. There are those who want the crime of capitalism to keep running rather than something better to come along. The most sympathetic and best characters within the season are those who reject the system in exchange of something better.

 

Fig. 5: Perhaps the best of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World series is Mister Miracle. Indeed, out of all of them, it’s the one Fargo season 4 is drawing the most out of. Specifically, in regards to the core narrative of two children being swapped by the leaders of two warring factions. While the story of that swap was told in the pages of New Gods, the fallout of this was a side focus of Mister Miracle (before editorial told Jack to drop all this New Gods BS and focus on the escape artistry, leading to the weakest stretch of the whole Mister Miracle run). In the pages of Mister Miracle, we are shown the escape of Scott Free, child of Highfather traded to Darkseid for the sake of peace. Initially brought under the wing of a man by the name of Himon, Scott is shown an alternative path to the cyclical life of pain and cruelty. Where Granny Goodness, an agent of Darkseid, trained countless children to be soldiers who would die for Darkseid, Himon offered an alternative way of living. To embrace imagination, creative thinking, and escape artistry. To help your fellow man instead of torturing them. Because the world may be a hellscape from which there is little to no escape, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help one another out. In the end, Himon (among several others) help Scott Free escape from Apokolips, the aforementioned hellscape. At the precipice of his escape, Scott is offered two choices: stay on Apokolips and let the destruction of his soul be complete or escape to Earth (as opposed to New Genesis, where Scott’s people are from, but that’s a whole other conversation). In the end, Scott escapes on his own, to a world he has no knowledge of. There are a number of similarities between this story and that of Satchel Cannon. Like Scott, Satchel is not able to return to the home that was taken from him. Not for the binary choice Scott was given, but because the alternative would be to become a child solider, something Rabbi Milligan cannot abide. And yet, in many ways, Satchel is luckier than Scott. Where Scott was forced to be on his own, Rabbi escaped with him. Though underfed and mistreated by the family that’s supposed to care for him, Satchel knows love. Hell, Satchel even gets to be named by his father as opposed to being given a cruel name from an abuser. It is easy to fall into the trap of making Fargo season 4 a one to one allegory for the events of Fourth World where characters map onto one another nice and neatly. But Loy Cannon, Satchel’s father, isn’t a utopian thinker out to foster a better world. Much like Darkseid, he sold his son for power. Fourth World certainly an influence. A ghost at the table as much a member as the song choices made. But the show is far more interesting than a mere rehash of older material. It takes that material and does something new with it.

 

Fargo is a story of love, betrayal, rivalry, and blood spilled in the name of power. Its fourth season tells of how that story cycles again and again and again. A never ending loop of pain and misery that cannot be destroy, merely escaped.

“It’s an old song

It’s an old tale from way back when

Ans we’re gonna sing it again and again”

-Hadestown

Lessons in Capitalism #35: The Birthplace of Civilization

“You didn’t fight in the war, did you?” 

“Nah, man. Why would I fight for a country that wants me dead?”

What is an American?

 

On the surface, this is a rather straight forward question: Someone from America. However, in an age where even the President of the United States can be argued influentially that he is not, in fact, an American solely because of the color of his skin, it’s not as simple as that. Indeed, many people who claim themselves to be American would argue that the people who initially lived on this land we call America aren’t American (a key part of the Mormon faith is that Jesus was American and the “So-Called Native Americans” were actually a tribe of Jews who split off from the main group and immigrated to America. When they slaughtered their more righteous kin, God punished them by darkening their skin).

 

So then, what makes someone an American. Fargo provides a number of answers to this question that can be inferred by whose story gets told. And, in many ways, season four of Fargo is about the people whose stories don’t usually get told as the main story of America. Black entrepreneurs out to change the world forever, queer women of color trying to survive outside a system of control, and the ugly immigrants who didn’t rise to the status of whiteness the “right way.”

 

As such, to understand what an American is, if only in the context of Fargo, we must first answer the question of what is America. Thankfully, Fargo offers us with an answer:

“You know why America loves a crime story? Because America is a crime story. But here’s the rub. When we hear a crime story, who do we root for? Not the poor sap that got taken. The victim, no. We root for the taker. The guy with the gat. See, this country loves a man who takes what he wants. Unless… Unless that man looks like you.”

The audience the speaker, Josto Fada, is lecturing is composed entirely of black men. Men who, as the opening scene shows us, can and will be beaten, brutalized, and killed by the police. To the white cops of America, they aren’t Americans, not really. They’re brood parasites, a corruption of purity. Consider who would be, in previous seasons of Fargo, our protagonist, Dick Wickware. Dick is a Morman with a sense of righteousness and a duty to chase the truth down no matter who he has to fight, be it the systemic injustice of a corrupt local police or the mobsters controlling them.

 

He is also a raging sexist, racist jerk who is willing to humiliate teenage girls in order to catch his quarry. And yet, he is never once questioned of being a real American. His whiteness allows him a freedom to do and say whatever he wants to those not considered real Americans. Likewise the Fadda Family, in contrast to the Cannon Limited, are seen as whiter, albeit still not yet considered to be white. As Josto notes, “Johnny Society looks at me, they see a fella that’s using crime to get ahead. But you? All they see is crime.” America is a game rigged against those not deemed as American. Not deemed “White.” Sure, you can acclimate to the system, make it seem like you’re an American. But the second you step out of line, or the “Real Americans™” say you’ve stepped out of line, then they’ll kill you.

 

Going back to that opening scene, one of the most shocking moments of the raid on a Jazz Club was when one of the officers starts strangling a black man, Leon Brittle, with a baton. When his ward, Lemuel Cannon, pleads with the officers to let him go, because he can’t breathe, the officers comply… only because Lemuel was standing at the right place to not notice the officer about to beat him into unconsciousness. And keep in mind, Lemuel is a minor. He’s still in high school, working hard to become a musician. But the police treat him as if he’s an adult. Because he isn’t people to them. None of the colored folks are.

 

It makes one wonder if there’s an alternative to the American Dream. Fortunately, in addition to being the break out characters of the season, Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps offer such a response: Anarchism. As they put it, the system of America is one built on unjust and unfair rules. Even if you act as a criminal within the system, you are still working within the system to get ahead. Contrast their big scene with the scene of Loy Cannon explaining to his wife that their relatively rich status is precariously at best and can collapse at any moment if the rollercoaster stops.

 

But for Zelmare and Swanee, the game of life/society/America is rejected. Instead, the pair wander the country as Outlaws, “Ain’t nothing organized about our crime ‘cause our crime is freedom.” And while the episode has them explain their anarchistic philosophy in terms that would be negatively compared to The Joker in The Dark Knight, their actions within the series thus far fit within an anarchistic praxis. Rather than keep the money they stole all to themselves, they give their ill-gotten funds to the Smutney family in order to pay off their debts. They go after criminal organizations who want to become the banks that will systematically destroy generations of lives with a smile on their face.

 

Of course, such a way of living isn’t necessarily sustainable. Not because their beliefs are wrong, but rather because those with power will seek to consume them. In the case of Zelmare and Swanee, both Wickware and Cannon come after them to put them into bondage. Be it the metaphorical chains of capital or the literal chains of jail. The American system is built on suppressing ideas that aren’t within the best interests of the system. Anarchism, socialism, queerness, other ways of living beyond the White Purity. Sure, homeopathic facsimiles of other ways of living can be seen thriving, but it will always be on the terms of those with power over everyone else.

 

Because, at the end of the day, to be an American is to be an active participant in a crime made law call capitalism.

Lessons in Capitalism #34: The Pretend War

Note: This entry of Lessons in Capitalism contains opinions that have been reconsidered since the initial writing of the entry that are related to the reason for this series move to the main blog. 

Midway through the episode, the Fadda brothers go to blows over the younger brother, Gaetano, attempting to take over the crime family from the elder brother, Josto. It’s not until Josto threatens Gaetano’s manhood that Gaetano backs off. We have discussed the subject of masculinity before, both in the first ten chapters of Lessons in Capitalism and throughout the entirety of Lessons in Masculinity. But it is perhaps a good opportunity to explore these themes, especially considering our new home at DoWntime. 

Readers of DoWntime may be familiar with Sam Maleski’s massively influential piece “Is the future all girl?” Steven Moffat, gender, and privilege. In the piece, Maleski uses Hawley’s television series Legion as a contrast to Moffat’s portrayal of the failures of masculinity, but Fargo likewise acts as an exploration of masculinity. From Lester Nygaard’s embracing of toxic masculinity to get ahead in the insurance business while using and abusing numerous women to Lou Solverson’s inability to accept any shape of masculinity that isn’t the two-fisted soldier ultimately being one of the many factors leading to Ed Blumquist’s untimely death.

 

And there are retuns to familiar themes. For example, near the end of the episode, Thurman Smutny has the ill-gotten funds he needs to pay off his debt to Loy Cannon. The scene where Smutny sits across from Cannon is bereft with tension. Not just because the money was stolen from one of Cannon’s establishments, but also because of the aura Cannon projects to Smutny. It’s not just that he gets the money he was owed and Smutney’s meek assurance that everything is there, he has to show the working class mortician that he’s the big dog.

 

There’s no reason why such a projection is necessary. However, to get big in the game of capitalism (and the inextricably related game of crime), you have to project yourself as bigger than you are. From Donald Trump plastering the side of his buildings with his name in giant gold letters to Jordan Belford’s larger than life persona. The point of being a man of means is to show off you have means, be it a big house or a big dick. But the second it looks like you don’t, no matter how insignificant the other person is, the house of cards tumbles. Which makes the non-ending cliffhanger all the more full of tension.

 

But with season 4, we also see new angels on the matter. For starters, we have the actual first scene with Josto. In a turn from the traditional image of a mobster getting laid, we are presented with the Italian mob boss having sex with serial killer Oraetta Mayflower wherein she acts as a dom. While there’s nothing there as explicit as Sunstone, within the context of masculinity in Fargo, what’s notable is that it’s Oraetta who acts as the Dom to Josto’s sub and also tops him.

 

While in public, Josto presents a dominating persona (albeit one that’s not fully working as demonstrated by the chair he sits on being just too large for him), in private he embraces his sub status. However, when neighborhood kid Ethelrida Smutney sees him at Mayflower’s apartment, he immediately bails. It’s not that she saw them having sex, but rather the potential of someone finding out that his noticeable neck marks are from the hands of a woman topping him might end up hurting his standing in the criminal empire he’s inherited.

 

His brother, when faced with the threat of castration via bullet, immediately lashes out at the first man who suggests that it’s ok. He physically attacks the man and has to be slightly restrained before he can murder him. Instead, he goes outside only to have to deal with Dick Wickware. Wickware, being both a racist cop and a Mormon, doesn’t need to threaten a man with his fists. Instead, the power play he provides to the Italian is that of a story.

Stories in Fargo are extremely important. We’ve spent ten chapters exploring the implications of stories and True Stories™ back during our coverage of season 3. But Wickware’s story is that of the Italians coming to Utah and being faced with a lynching. There’s no evidence that Wickware has that either Gaetano or the man he’s with are doing anything illegal beyond being in the area of a crime den. For all he knew, these were just some hired goons rather than major players in the Kansas City Italian Mob. Dick just saw two Italians and feels the need to show that he can kill them if he so pleases and the law would be on his side.

 

And then there’s the grim reaper. Now, Fargo isn’t a show that has been unafraid of embracing the less than realistic. However, previous examples have not been as malevolent as the Grim Reaper. At most, they have been either benign figures with a cosmic sense of justice or not really given two shits about the pesky humans of the dust ball. But the grim reaper is different. He actively stalks our characters, be it the visibly sick Swanee Capps or the perfectly healthy Ethelrida.

 

Even his appearance strikes a contrast with what’s come before. Gone is the sleek design of the UFO and the fatherly serenity of Ray Weise. In its place is a corpse. A thing washed up from the ocean, nose long since lost to the currents. Its skin decays with the unnatural paleness of the dead. Its clothing drenched in water and seaweed. It oozes out of the bathtub, gliding across the room while the terrified Zelmare Roulette can do nothing but shut her eyes and pray it doesn’t take her true love.

 

It has been haunting the season since the beginning. It stood in the streets, hands outstretched as the serial killer watched her pray. Its motivations are unknown to us. Its presence, however, remains blunt: Death is a White Man. And he will take us all in time.

 

Fargo, at this time, has yet to provide a vision of masculinity that’s better than Steven Moffat’s various takes. Thus far, its vision of good men are beset with crippling flaws and insecurities of masculinity. Take, for example, the final scene of the episode. There Thurman informs his wife, Dibrell, that he accepted the money stolen by Zelmare and Swanee to pay off the debts he owed Loy. Dibrell is none too pleased by this turn of events. When he tries to explain himself, Thurman throws out the traditional masculine explanation of having to do the bad thing for his family. It was either that or have the mob hang over their heads for the rest of their lives.

 

In the end, he didn’t want to appear to be weaker to the world. He wanted to be a man, especially since she got them in debt in the first place… so he says. Dibrell, instead of embracing her husband for what he’s done, storms out. Because being a good man isn’t simply having the aesthetics of protecting a family. It’s actually respecting those close to you enough to talk to them about returning stolen money as if it wasn’t stolen in the first place. Instead, he decided to be a man. And it may cost his family in the long run…

Lessons in Capitalism #33: Raddoppiario

Were I my brother, I would be spending this post going in-depth on the vast and insidious implications of the first explicitly racist police officer in Fargo being a Mormon. (Note: this is in contrast to Moe Dammik, who was only implicitly racist.) I would go dive deep into the various cruelties of that American religion. I would explore the history of men wanting to own women, of a leader who is currently in jail for pedophilia, of a faith built on the racist ideals that built America.

Alas, I am not my brother, so I am left to simply talk about pie.

 

In the work of Noah Hawley, the corrosive and corruptive nature of pie had been previously used all the way back in the first season of Legion. Though we did not discuss those implications within our sister series, Lessons in Masculinity, it is perhaps best to discuss them here. The scene opens with David Haller getting a slice of pie. A rather innocuous moment all things considered and one that isn’t really bursting with import and implications. What is notable is that director Hiro Murai opts to present the initial sequence in one continuous shot. The long shot is often used to either ramp up the tension or to show off how good you are at moving through a set. But since the shot has none of the show offy trademarks an Iñárritu or Fukunaga would use, the shot has an air of unease. We are stuck in the moment and can’t quite put our fingers on why.

 

A potential reason comes in the form of Amy Haller, whose presence in this scene is at once intimidating and perplexing. Nurse Ratchet if she was played by Bea Arthur in a child’s idea of an evil mental hospital. Immediately, entering the frame as David was about to have a small piece of pie, she takes the pie from him without reason or provocation. She even, sadistically, eats the piece that was on his fork, and she savors it. The cruelty, as it so often is, is the point.

 

The first moment of pie within Raddoppiario comes when Thurman Smutney is forced to hold onto it while the blatantly racist police force storms his home looking for escaped convicts and breakout characters Zalmare Roulette and Swanee Capps. Note that throughout their unwarranted raid (The Fourth Amendment, which grantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized” was placed into law as far back as 1792), Thurman is ignored throughout, barely questioned. He’s not even told he can put the pie down.

 

Instead, focus is laid squarely on Ehtelrida Pearl Smutney and, after she tells Dick Wickware that she does not consent to a minor being interrogated by the police (a right that Wickware ignores as the police often do), Dibrell Smutney. Throughout Dibrell’s interrogation, there’s an air of tension brought on by the racial undertones of why she is being interrogated. Sure, Wickware says he’s not a racist and treats all criminals equally. But note that his steely eyes never pierce Thurman’s eyes. The threats of imprisonment are aimed squarely at Dibrell and not her husband. The rights of a black woman are ignored when blatantly crooked cops surround him. For the cruelty is the point: to make sure the black women know their place and don’t aid the ones for whom it is far too late to exist in “polite society.” More on this in a latter lesson (or, if you wish, considering exploring Lessons in Capitalism’s look at season three of Fargo).

 

The Legion Long Take concludes with the sound of pie being eaten by Sydney Barret. (Believe me, I’m surprised this series has yet to talk about Hawley’s naming conventions.) Only, the sound isn’t that of pie. Instead, it’s a loud crunch. The shot cuts to an image shot of the pie covered in bugs. Though not as grotesque as later episodes of Fargo or, indeed, Legion would use, the moment is nevertheless a shock to the system, invoking a sense of revulsion in the viewer as it does Barret.

 

A more grotesque usage of pie would come towards the end of Raddoppiario. Here, the sole member of the Smutney household to eat the pie, Swanee Capps, is in the middle of a robbery when her bowls and stomach begin to act up. At first, it’s played as a joke similar to Welcome to the Alternate Economy’s fart joke with Donatello Fadda, wherein we are set up to believe he is about to die of a heart attack, only for the tension to be released like the wind between his butt cheeks. Here, the sweet and loving kiss between Swanee and Zalmare is deflated by Swanee’s bowls acting up. However, unlike the Fada gag where the bit was forgotten both by the tension of an assassination by the Cannon Limited and the actual assassination being an accident caused by two kids playing with bb guns, the bit goes on and on throughout the robbery, escalating to causing tension via Swanee’s sickness distracting Zalmare from the gun the Cannon Limited member is reaching for.

 

The fluids in this scene are treated realistically, having their presence be the tension rather than being ramped up to eleven. An obvious contrast would be Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Released shortly after Fargo’s second season, The Hateful Eight is a western set one state shy of the mid-west Fargo explores. It tells of a three lawmen, four criminals, and an innocent bystander trapped between them. This being a Tarantino project built with the base premise of “Fuck every single one of these awful people,” all of the lawmen are racist shits where the most sympathetic is too young to have actually participated in the Civil War as a confederate; the criminals are openly homicidal and only spare the innocent because he adds something to the room’s flavor and probably will kill him in the end; and said innocent is an honest to god confederate soldier still wearing his uniform years after his side lost. (OB is different and perhaps best saved for a full piece on The Hateful Eight.)

 

As such, when it comes time for these characters to receive their poisoned pukings, the moment is exaggerated with gallons of blood and bile. And yet, the moment is nevertheless played for horror as opposed for the retribution such a moment would imply. Though the primary victim of the poisoning is a man who gleefully beats women, claims to not be a racist while holding racist values, takes sadistic pleasure in the suffering of others, and is based on Harvey Weinstein, we are nevertheless horrified by his murder. The blood painfully shoots out of his mouth like a geyser had been shoved up his esophagus. We aren’t supposed to feel comfortable watching this bad man suffer and die, even if the moment of death is satisfying and fitting. (Again, such implications are best saved for a Tarantino focused project.)

 

Contrasted with Fargo, Swanee feels like she got off lightly. And yet, Fargo treats the moment not as a light moment such a contrast would imply, but rather of a different register. The tension in Tarantino’s film comes from the potential of who else will consume the poison and the puking is the release from that tension in all the horror it can provide. Conversely, the puking and farting is the tension in Fargo. The failures of the human body lead to a potential failure in, as Fargo puts it, “getting rich the old fashioned way.” For capitalism isn’t designed for human weakness. It isn’t made for people who get sick don’t think or look like “normal” people. It is designed for cruelty.

 

The final shot of the pie in Raddoppiario invokes the final shot of the pie in Legion’s pie scene. Both feature zoom ins into a partially eaten pie with the filling revealed to the audience. But where in Fargo, the pie has nothing but the tan apple filling, Legion has a cherry filling and also the face of Lenny Busker. This would of course lead into an epic dance number set to Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, which we previously discussed in Lessons in Masculinity #24, but it’s her presence in the pie that’s more important. The implication of her presence here allows her to haunt the moment of tension previously discussed. This is, after all, a false world created by the thing wearing Lenny’s image.

 

Similarly, with Fargo, we are meant to consider who made the pie for the Smutneys to consume. That being Oraetta Mayflower. Her role in the series remains ambiguous at the time of this episode. While she is most certainly an independent figure within this tale of the rise and fall of empires and structurally akin to Gaear Grimsrud, Lorne Malvo, Hanzee Dent, and VM Varga, the nature of her role remains even more mysterious than those others. In contrast to her, by episode three of previous seasons, we knew Lorne was an assassin working for a syndicate, Hanzee a beleaguered hatchet man, and Varga an agent of modernity and control that seeks wealth and power.

 

But Mayflower remains ambiguous in her nature. Sure, we know she’s a serial killer out to “ease suffering,” but we don’t know what her deal is beyond that. She remains an enigma, the hole in things that may very well have no answer. Perhaps of the ones mentioned, she is most akin to Grimsrud from the movie: seemingly dimwitted, but in reality possessing a vast intellect and a murderous intent. Not unanswerable per say, but one who requires more than three episodes of context to discover the full extent of her being.