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.

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.

Lessons in Capitalism #31: Welcome to the Alternate Economy

 For... reasons, I will be reposting my coverage of Fargo Season 4 here.

This is a true story.

 

The events depicted in this article

took place in Connecticut in 2020.

 

At the request of the survivors,

the names have been changed.

 

Out of respect for the dead,

the rest has been told exactly

as it occurred.

It is often said that History is written by the victors. Putting aside that you can never win forever and even if you did, time would ultimately consume your victory and leave those who come next to rewrite you for your own ends, the History Fargo’s fourth season presents is, by its very nature, not written by the victor. For in the history of America (and, more specifically, the history of crime in the American Mid-West), it could never be said that the victor was a woman, let alone a woman of color.

History is a small subject of interest to Fargo. It’s not so much that it views History as unimportant, each season (in one respect or another) is invested in the idea of History, be it season two’s usage of The History of True Crime in the Mid West (written by a man who could absolutely be considered a winner of American History: a white man of English descent) to the Hollywood discursion in season three. But it is in season four where the notion of History comes to the forefront. What does it mean to be told a “True Story?”

 

(This is in contrast to season three’s main theme of “What does it mean to be told a Story,” a distinction that’s as subtle as it is insidious. The key focal point is in the nature of the narrator. Why is Ethelrida Smutny telling the story of the rise and fall of crime families as opposed to Barton Brixby? What knowledge does the young girl have to the events that followed? What are her sources, her insights, her agendas? For all Histories, by their nature as Stories, have an agenda. The is no objective history.)

 

There are of course consequences to this. Mainly, as Ethelrida notes, we will not know the full extent of the History that is developing before our eyes as it is happening. History, by its nature of a story based on what we know (otherwise known as a “True Story”), is reliant on what we know. We know that there is a cyclical history of crime in the Mid-West. The cycle goes like this: an established criminal organization meets up with a newer organization in front of what claims to be just a department store. Both organizations are filled with people who are not considered true Americans (Jews, Irish, Italians, Blacks, and other people who aren’t considered White). Their leaders shake hands and trade their youngest sons to be raised by their opposition. Years go by, and the son of the newer crime family betrays the family he was sent to be raised by. The new crime family slaughters the old and takes their place.

 

There are deviations to this (in its most recent incarnation, the handshake was done with a mixing of blood instead of spit), but the shape remains the same. The past recurs visually again and again. It is tradition to go through all of this in order to become an American. This is a core question of the season: If America is a nation of immigrants, what are we assimilating into. Certainly not the native population. As we discussed by in Lessons in Capitalism #18, the Native Americans were rather cruelly displaced from their land, murdered by an invasive organism, and demonized as a faceless horde who wish to destroy our freedom. The epitome of all evil in the American psyche is the face of its own imperialism.

 

Certainly people of color likewise experience perceptions such as these. Eltherida opens her history of crime in Kansas City, MO with this quote from Fredrick Douglas:

“I stand before you as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and I ran off with them.”

There are moments where the meaning of this sentiment is shown throughout the premiere from Italian crime boss Donatello Fada snarking in his native tounge that Loy Cannon, leader of the Black Mob, “Look, the boy thinks he is a man” to Oraetta Mayflower’s theories of miscegenation with regards to Eltherida’s family to the general schooling of Eltherida. Eltherida is attending a school with a predominantly white population of students and a completely white staff. She is often sent to the principal’s office for being too good a student and spanked for her “misdeeds” such as punching a girl’s fist with her face. She is a highly gifted student, but the only thing worse than a misbehaving black woman in the eyes of white society is an exceptional one.

 

At the same time, when Donatello Fada was shot in the neck with a bb pellet, he was immediately rejected from the white hospital and forced to go to another facility despite bleeding out. The other hospital Fada is sent to is of lesser quality, though is able to save his life never the less. That is, until a nurse named Mayflower sneaks into his room that night and poisons him.

 

(We had initially seen her at the funeral house Eltherida’s parents run. She was attending a funeral for a white man (which Eltherida’s father oversees). One can presume upon a second viewing that she was responsible for his death as well, but on initial viewing it appears that she was a member of his family. It is only with the knowledge of what comes later in the episode do we learn the significance of her presence in the funeral home. It is only upon revisiting the information we have that we can see what we missed.)

 

While the Fada Family was dealing with the loss of its patriarch, the Cannon Limited was preparing to partake in its own schemes of power. Specifically, Loy Cannon and his associate, Doctor Senator, were at a white bank meeting with a white banker to expand their operation to the white communities. Loy has a bright idea, one that would revolutionize the very concept of banking. The majority of people want to appear rich (which Doctor notes is different from being rich). They want the prestige of class and capital without the problem of taxes. Cannon’s idea would facilitate this facade. He calls it… a credit card.

 

(It should be noted that the idea of a credit card has been in the mindscape of humanity since 1887 with Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887. Likewise, charge coins, Air Travel Cards, and other predecessors to the credit card had existed since 1928. However, it wasn’t until 1958 that the credit card as we know it was invented by the California branch of Bank of America. It did so by breaking the cycle that had perplexed previous incarnations of the concept.)

 

Upon hearing this idea, as the music rises and the man has a funny look is on his face (the look of a man who knows how to make a lot of money), the banker, in the episode’s most gut busting moment, says, “No. I’ll give you this, you boys have got a hell of an imagination. Heh. But the people I see day-in, day-out, hard-working people, family men. Well, they’re just not going to spend money they don’t have. And charging them high rates of interest, preying on them when times get tough… well, that’s just not what banking’s all about.”

 

Among the people who owe money to the Cannon Limited as part of this plan, are the Smutneys. Which leads us to the other end of what History can tell us: there are some things that aren’t known to us, be it deliberately kept or simply missed in the confusion. Ethelrida repeatedly asks her family what is going on with the presence of Loy Cannon in her house. Her mother and father, Thurman and Dibrell, both deny her the truth at the dinner table. Her father would later tell her that they owe Cannon money for a loan, but he doesn’t go into much detail. Furthermore, his personal presence at the dinner table while a white funeral was occurring brings to mind that there is something more going on. This is but speculation based on little to nothing.

 

There are other mysteries to consider. Why did Oraetta kill Donatello? Is she a serial killer? An incompetent? A member of the Reno Crime Syndicate that Lorne Malvo did work with? What fallout will come from her actions that night? What plans does she have for the Smutney family? And what of Cannon’s child? We know that a man named Milligan works for the Fada Family and there was a man named Mike Milligan from Kansas City. Is Loy’s son the same person, with an anglicized name? And what of the man on the street? You don’t see him at first. The street is dark and he is far from the camera, slightly askew from center. But there he stands, arms to his side, faceless before the world. Just standing there between the cars.

Fargo isn’t a show that’s unwilling to leave things to mystery. We never found out why it rained fish or where the UFOs came from, or even who Ray Weise really was. We are not owed answers to all of life’s mysteries. Some stories are not to be told or ever discovered. For History is not, as some who use fancy words would say, written by the victors. Rather, it is written by those who live past the end of “True Stories.” Those who see what has happened, learn what they missed, and tell those stories. In other words, History is written by the survivors.