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Fargo, Watchmen, and the New Television History of America
The first episode of this new season of Fargo, now airing on FX and Hulu, begins with a history lesson. It’s not the sort of lesson you’d find in a high school history textbook. It concerns the growth and changing leadership of the Kansas City underworld from the very start of the twentieth century up to 1950, when the main body of the show takes place. It shows how the criminal elements of that city were initially under the control of a Jewish crime syndicate until the Irish came to town and made a deal straight out of Feudalism. This deal results, inevitably from the tone of the show, in…
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The Great, and Its Many Reflections on Power
So I’m going to begin this article today with a somewhat embarrassing admission. You know that famous Oscar Wilde quote: “Everything in the world is about sex except for sex. Sex is about power“? While I’d always found that quote funny and useful (acknowledging that it may be something Oscar Wilde never said), I don’t believe I ever fully understood what it was getting at until I was most of the way through binge-watching the first season of Hulu’s The Great this weekend. You see, I’d always thought it was about lust as motivation and the way in which lust can transform and curdle. Or, to put it more directly…
