(no subject)

[proximoception]

Fargo 2.9 ("The Castle")







There be spoilings.






Title reference: The police officer played by Patrick Wilson is summoned to Sioux Falls because the suspect who escaped from his custody was apprehended there, but as soon as he arrives he's told to go away. He nevertheless can't bring himself to, paralleling the troubles of Kafka's K. (This is the second Kafka work used for an episode title.)

Space aliens: Continue to fit my theory, I thhhhhink? Are taken in stride by Dunst and enable her escape, thus maybe associated with her media-saturated self-denied selfishness. For the third time (?) they put a Gerhardt brother into deer-in-headlights mode allowing someone to kill him, which would fit their representing the forces that replace entrenched, old-fashioned assholery. And which they don't see coming until it's too late, at which point their confusion (and ambivalence? The UFO sighters tend to be that) prevents effective action. The racist misogynist Dodd is brought down by a woman and Native American recklessly discovering their newfound power (remember those stabbings?). Do what thou wilt back shall be the whole of the law, I guess? The arrival and withdrawal of the UFO is a bit similar to Milligan and friend's cameo on the scene (speaking of which where was Martin Freeman? One of the cops or something?). Bear's killed by Wilson, though. Meaning what, that corporate capitalism helps the forces of justice to kill off old style cosa-nostric tribalism? Becoming their basically legal replacement?

The wife represents what, then? Just someone in a Camusianly absurd bind? The end of a traditional gender role? Her "police work" is better than her husband's, at the Waffle Hut, so maybe her being cut off from her proper place has something to do with the cancer? The tumor moment where nothing's recognizable anymore except as a member of a broad category could I guess fit that somehow? The sugar pill ... someone else gets the real one. Dunst? Does the sugar have something to do with the coddled and coddling, forced-smile, all's-well aspect of the housewife role? All while the spirit is killed? Can't remember enough of her interactions with her father and husband - various teasing about her cooking, I think? While mostly leaving her out of what they're going through? Maybe a sort of pointed conflation of the gingerly treatment of the very ill with the nearly identical protective/dismissive attitude toward adult women that men of that place and time mostly had? Plemons too, pretty much. It's presented beingnky, but maybe its effects are not - terminal illness for one, for the other deepening psychosis. But Dunst may at least get to live, and in a "realized" way, so maybe did get the right treatment - empowerment. Perhaps of a dubious kind? Or is the show pointing out a BRIGHT side to a phenomenon many of its viewers deplore. But surely not just doing that? What with the Reagan association and all.

"Cheney" was a cheap shot, but a great cheap shot.

So the massacre is pretty much alluding to the, what was it called, incident at Oglala? Positioning it as a sort of revenge for massacres committed by the whites? And suggesting it connects some aspects of '70s feminism, and ... maybe Blaxploitation movies, with that whirling ninja violence against the clean-up assassins and the domination of the young white woman? Resenters becoming too much like what they with justice resent?

Re. previous title refernces: was "Loplop" just about the haircutting scene? I don't rcall other bird or Ernst imagery, but hadn't registered the title while watching that one.

All the titles are (or allude to) existentialist or surrealist/absurdist works, which I guess have in common the notion that the truth about life is best expressed as uncomfortable fantasy, since that's how it seems to us when it shatters our illusions. Like an alien world that we on some level did know was out there - or, in this oddly politicized case, coming? Or is the final point that fascism has not left us, but merely become a fascism of all against all, what with all groups now increasingly empowered?

Gift of the Magi seems like the odd man out, but I suppose one can read the story bleakly - if love is self-sacrifice for someone who love you back, thus is sacrificing back, no one will get what they want. As compared to "it's the thought that counts, and the sincerest thought counts most" or however we usually take it.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Yes. I like your alien take. Amazing that they would dare show an actual UFO in an episode so heavy with the Native American legacy. Also one of America's great universals (and the one that carried the Wire for four seasons) is that the bosses are always wrong-headed, always morons in the face of the obvious thing to do. It's Kafka translated to North American working life. Every American can relate to it, no?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

The horrible thing with The Wire bosses was that we were eventually convinced they were rational. They assumed nothing could be done at their level, given the pressures in place, so deferred action till they were secure at a higher level, at which point the process repeats. You get the impression even their power hunger is something that only comes to consume them because jockeying is all they eventually do all day, all they at last remember they are. And if (e.g.) Carcetti can help the whole state rather than Baltimore - or O'Malley help the whole country - if they just play to optics... The good that's doable becomes something vague on the horizon. And once the horizon's gone they say fuck it, nothing could have ever been done, and protect their position. Which involves denying how bad things are publicly, which if you do that long enough you deny it privately, too.

I mean, they're wrong, and the system either favors the bad or burns almost all the good out of damn near all of them, but at each micropoint we can't say they're being irrational. The expressions on all their faces when they're considering the risk to benefit ratio of Hamsterdam were amazing. An intense wistfulness about actually getting something done, where it's impossible for us (and probably them) to tell how much is hunger for the credit they'd get if the zone could be kept going and how much is long-suppressed desire to protect and serve the people.

Is it particularly American to be a stupid boss, or are we just more used to the freedom to express our exasperation with the stupidity of all bosses (when they're not around)? I guess even though we're often terrible at democracy and secularism these days we've soaked up anti-authoritarian sentiment longer than other cultures have.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Yes on all fronts. This is great.

Rawls was always my favorite supporting character on The Wire just for his sheer force of language. The scene when he says (paraphrasing): Bunny you stupid cocksucker you legalized drugs stays with me more than almost any other.

The line in Fargo 2.9 about showing what a Dakota man can do of course also echoes the destruction of the Sioux peoples. Do you remember the scene in Dances with Wolves about the Conquistador and the helmet? Karin and I used to talk about scenes like that where you want to reach into the TV and say "No! Don't do it!"

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Nice catch re. Dakota man! I figured they were doing something with the distinction between the N and S Dakota cops but wasn't sure what. The S ones seemed mostly about not making waves - head-low desk types, corrupt just in the sense of trying to evade the dangerous parts of their job that the Minnesota ones don't shy from. N were more gung ho, at least with others' lives, but we were given reason to think the Kansas City syndicate might have paid them off, so they're both older-style (pre-rules, pro-power, pretty much a gang themselves - and a rednecky, so by suggestion ethnic-centered one, the sort that murders whole tribes) but associated with the new evil.

What were their stated motivations? Getting the credit for arresting Kansas City agents caught by wiring the Luverne couple? So if we take their word they might be the last stand of traditional-fascist types in their department.

And if we don't take their word and see them, too, as being paid off by KC then what? They're seeking to protect Milligan by getting the couple killed at the meeting, then letting him go? Or has KC told them to kill Milligan too, given their concerns about him. Or has KC given one or both of these orders but only to create the perfect storm of bait (to borrow Cheney's metaphor mixing) to lire all the Gerhardts out for extinction? Would imply Hanzee works for them. The narrator suggests his motives aren't known, and gives some iffy candidates. Maybe this is another? Milligan turns Dodd's daughter. Maybe he's turned Hanzee too? Hanzee did kill the guy he worked for, but that wasn't necessarily against Milligan's interests.

Used to wonder if Dunst was the real "butcher of Luverne" and had killed Rye on purpose, but they seem to have gone a different direction with her. Nevertheless she, Milligan and Hanzee mostly end up acting in one another's interest, which fits my understanding of what they represent. Could Hanzee's "I'm sick of this life" statement have been more about being a double agent - and spoken to someone he knew to be on his side? When shooting at them was he just trying to hit the husband? Almost certainly not - I'm True Detectiving again. But maybe something is up. The massacre saves Dunst (and Plemons), Hanzee and Milligan - and extends the reach of KC/corporate evil's control at the expense of white male patriarchy. And aliens helped it happen. So even if there's no actual conspiracy among the three people and/or two inhuman entities it's as though there is.