Lessons in Capitalism #32: The Land of Taking and Killing

Noah Hawley is an extremely showy editor. His directorial style is quite straightforward, lacking the show-offy nature of fellow television directors Cary Joji Fukunaga or David Fincher. His directorial style is perhaps more comparable to that of Rachel Talalay: an extremely talented director who shows what is happening really, really well. But it’s in the way the shots are ultimately shown that Hawley shows off. Throughout the episodes, Hawley will utilize a split screen effect for dramatic purposes. But where in season two, where this tool was utilized first, the split screen was used to show multiple scenes simultaneously (be they happening simultaneously or in different periods of time). 

Take, for example, the final usage of it in The Land of Taking and Killing. The initial scene presents members of The Cannon Limited leaving the slaughterhouse proclaiming, “But remember, we’ll be back. Because y’all just got here yesterday, but we’re part of this land like the wind and the dirt.” As they leave, the upper and lower portions of the screen are replaced with two images, each one separated by a giant black line. On the bottom is a panning shot over an American flag while the top presents an array of weapons. Then, from middle to top to bottom, and finally bars, the images are replaced with the Cannon family (along with Donatello Fada’s youngest son) saying grace.

 

The implications of these contrasts is damning. Assimilation into the American is one that requires one to be violent to an Other. As breakout character Swanee Capps notes, the white school she was shipped to from the reservation was less interested in teaching her English and more in “raping the native out of me.” To be an American, it would seem, one would have to be cruel to someone of lesser standing. Be it the Hospital Director claiming “I’m not a racist, but those dark skinned sex fiends shot me because I refused to do something as minor as allow some Italian hoodlum to be treated at my hospital for a gunshot wound. I’m just a law abiding citizen of Proletariat descent trying to keep the blood supply pure” or a bank manager dismissing two black men as “boys.”

 

None of these connections are made explicitly in the shot, but their implications ring throughout the moment. There are other ways the show uses the split screen from the straight forward usage of multiple shots representing montage and distance or one shot in the first episode where Ethelrida Smutney is preparing to return to class from her regularly scheduled beating. As she’s walking and narrating about how she has to deal with small, narrow minded folks who think they could teach her a lesson, her perception turns the split screen into something akin to bars on a cage.

 

Given Hawley’s past with remixing comic book imagery (from all of Legion to the names used by VM Varga/Daniel Rand), it is perhaps best to talk about a specific kind of comic: the Grid Comic. Rather straightforwardly, a Grid Comic is one where the individual images on a page (panels) are structured such that they form a grid. The grid doesn’t necessarily have to be the exact number of its implied shape. Panels can be combined to create a larger panel or split up to make an even smaller one. But the basic shape of the grid must be abided to. There are many kinds of potential grids from the six panel (2X3) to the sixteen panel (4X4). But the most famous of these is the nine panel grid (3X3).

 

There are many reasons why it’s ubiquitous with comics, most notably because of the comic book series Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore. A murder mystery wherein a superhero is thrown out of his apartment under unknown circumstances that builds to an apocalyptic endpoint. The grid acting as a tempo building to the end. However, more interesting to look at in terms of Fargo’s implications is the Eddie Campbell/Alan Moore epic From Hell. In this comic, we are told a “True Story” about Jack the Ripper. Specifically, that he was a mason who went around killing women to prevent a scandal involving a royal bastard from coming out. Told predominately from Jack the Ripper’s perspective, From Hell explores the vast and insidious world of Victorian England while also commenting on the modern day via implication and characters having visions of the future. As one notable conversation puts it:

Hinton: Fourth dimensional patterns within Eternity’s monolith would, he suggests, seem merely random events to third dimensional percipients; events rising towards inevitable convergence like an archway’s lines. Let us say something peculiar happens in 1788…

Gull: A century later, related events take place. Then again, 50 years later. Then 25 years. The 12. An invisible curve rising through the centuries. Can History then be said to have an architecture, Hinton? The notion is most glorious and most horrible.

That architectural view of History can be felt in the usage the nine panel grid. Not simply tempo, the grid works as a design for the world. With this reading of From Hell in mind, one gets the sense of seeing a world from an eschewed lens. One not from the perspective of the rise and fall of Kings or a history of war or even that of material social progress, but rather that of a series of murders most fowl. (For more on the relationship between this shape of history, see Lessons in Capitalism #15.)

 

Of course, Nine Panel Grid comics aren’t just limited to the long 80’s or even to Alan Moore. Consider Sumit Kumar and Ram V’s These Savage Shores. The comic tells of the East India Company’s vast and cruel imperialistic acts in India alongside a supernatural horror out to suck the blood out of those he can get away with doing so. The grid is used to highlight the trapped nature of the characters, how there is nothing they or anyone else can do to stop the ultimate tragedy that is about to befall them. It’s a story about love lost, people pointlessly murdered, and monsters who would do anything for power.

 

Another example of a modern nine panel grid comic would be Barnaby Bagenda and Tom King’s The Omega Men. King is an interesting creative figure to contrast with Hawley. Both are ostensibly interested in similar thematic ideas from the ways in which being neurodivergent affects how you interact with the world (for good and for ill), how masculinity is a promise that more often than not hurts those trying to live up to it, and using comic book iconography to do weird and interesting things to the form.

 

The second part of King’s “The Wire, but for the Iraq War,” The Omega Men tells the story of Kyle Rayner being kidnapped by a terrorist organization out to overthrow the imperialistic government that wishes to destroy planets simply for the sake of a fuel source. Throughout the comic, we are presented with a number of diverging worldviews from a variety of cultures that don’t necessarily coalesce into a singular worldview. Being a metaphor for imperialism (and one explicitly paralleled to the United States and, subsequently, its actions in the Iraq War), the imperialistic government would rather simplify the situation as being between the civilized and the savage.

 

Throughout the comic, Kyle explicitly and implicitly rejects this metaphor in favor of the mad messiness of humanity. In his closing monologue, Kyle notes:

Kyle: 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.

The grid, in The Omega Men, is a cage to keep ideas inside. Something to be looked at and gawked by those who peer between the bars of its gutters. See them suffer, see them die, watch as they fight for your own amusement. Because you aren’t like them, you never were. You’re civilized, honest, and True. They are an imaginary story.

 

But perhaps the grid comic most relevant to Fargo is Mitch Gerads, Doc Shaner, and Tom King’s Strange Adventures. Unlike the comics we have discussed up to this point, Strange Adventures does not stick to a Nine Panel Grid. Rather, it utilizes a Three Panel Grid (1X3) with events occurring that do not necessarily relate to the other images on the page. Rather, they depict two incongruent time periods, one of the present wherein Adam Strange is being investigated for War Crimes by a man calling himself Mr. Terrific, the other of Strange’s novel about his heroic deeds during the war where he slaughtered countless lives. King has stated that he was inspired by his anger at the results of the Muller investigation.

 

The importance to Fargo isn’t just because of the usage of a three panel grid, just as Fargo’s fourth season splits its screen into three images with noticeably large gutters. Rather, it’s that subject matter, the story of a Republican space hero being investigated for his illegal dealings. As we have discussed throughout Lessons in Capitalism, Fargo is a television show about Conservatives. Season four has no sign of changing this exploration of Capitalism. The Fada Family is extremely racist towards their Black counterparts, frequently referring to them with demeaning language and showing nothing but simmering contempt for them and their success. The Cannon Limited, meanwhile, are trying to invent the credit card to make it easier to force money out of people.

 

Both crime families are trying to assimilate into a world of violence and cruelty. Rather than rebel against the system, they are trying to own it. While The Cannon Limited has its eye on the banks, The Fada Family is working the political angle, marrying itself into a rising mayoral candidate’s family with aspirations towards the White House. Both are trying to be seen as Americans, as something other than the Other. They have yet to realize that all they need to do to be considered Americans is smash the savage like they’re civilized.