Topic: The Box Office
Hollywood doesn’t do politics very well at all.
The above statement isn’t a criticism of Tinseltown political activism—which has a certain amount of entertainment value if you like low comedy. No, I mean depictions of politics on the silver screen and the boob tube. Even when they’re entertaining, they’re wildly unrepresentative of real-world politics. Case in point: House of Cards.
I started watching this much-praised Netflix last week and admittedly it’s good fun. Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood, a ruthless sociopathic congressman with his eye on America’s top political prize, is a memorable character in the vein of Macbeth and Richard III. One recalls the latter when Underwood pauses for one of his frequent cynical asides to the audience. And his wife Claire, played by Robin Wright, gives Lady Macbeth a run for her money. As for the rest of the cast of characters, a less appealing collection of soulless, venal strivers would be difficult to assemble. Particularly repugnant is Zoe Barnes (played by Kate Mara) an ambitious young journalist with the morals of a sewer rat who’ll use anyone—and allow herself to be used by anyone—to get ahead.
I’ve reached the point in House of Cards where Underwood, having intrigued, connived, betrayed and finally murdered his way up the greasy pole, is on the verge of being appointed vice president. Quite a thrill ride!
But hardly an accurate depiction of American politics. I caught myself thinking more than once that we could use a Frank Underwood in Washington DC—at least he knows how to get things done. No doubt if they’d put Frank in charge of it, the Obamacare website would have purred like a Mercedes Benz. But that’s precisely my point. People like Frank Underwood either don’t exist in politics or, if they do, the system stymies them. DC isn’t eleventh-century Scotland or fifteenth-century England. Guys like Macbeth and Crookback Richard could murder their way to the top but in our degenerate age, the successful political striver is not a man but a marketing concept: a media persona spat upon and spit-shined to a high sheen of inoffensive nothingness. Like you-know-who…
There was Richard Nixon, of course: a capable man of vast ambition and many resentments. I though of Nixon more than once while watching Spacey do his thing. But Nixon was no Underwood—or perhaps I should phrase it the other way around. For all his sinister charm, Frank Underwood just isn’t interesting as a person. He has his ambition and that’s that. He’s fun to watch. But he’s a cartoon.
Now it may be that as the series goes on Frank’s character will begin to exhibit some depth—I can only comment on what I’ve seen so far. And another feature of House of Cards that struck me is it’s Etch-a-Sketch depiction of the political process, e.g. how bills are written. Apparently all you have to do to pass an education bill is lock a bunch of staffers and teacher-union functionaries in a conference room for the weekend and presto! There’s your bill. This is about as far from the real-world legislative process as it’s possible to imagine. Recall the long, drawn-out agony of Obamacare’s progress from Jonathan Gruber brainchild to law of the land! Oh, well, if it took the time to show how things actually work, House of Cards would be an unendurable snoozefest. Instead it’s a slick, addictive TV soap opera—not on the Shakespearian level of Breaking Bad, mind you, but highly entertaining. Just don’t believe what you see. In its amalgam of naiveté and cynicism House of Cards has nothing much to tell us about real politics in the real world.
