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.”