Do you know what Arizona means? It means ‘small spring’.
The story of raising up a small spring is often one of love – but seldom one without turbulence. Here, in Arizona, it is the story of movements across a vast copper space, littered with bullet-riddled Huggies. If you close your eyes, you will see the colourful musings of a man convicted of taking pleasure from cash drawers. As we wander with his mind, we will see a road emerge between the whimsical and the serious, cutting through the vast desert landscape. And, whether that small spring chooses to stay there or not, a torrent of verdant life will certainly grow in its wake. If not in Arizona, then maybe somewhere close by.
Maybe in Utah.
This story feels like something John Steinbeck would dream up after a deep dive on William Faulkner and Kurt Vonnegut, with perhaps half a tonne of mescaline by his side. It is a distinctly American story, in so much as it captures that dream that all of us, the uninitiated, find both fascinating and inspiring. It has, at its heart, the beautiful mediation of opposites: A cop marrying a convict, materialistic fantasy and idealist reality, screaming banjos and operatic synths. What emerges is not a hodgepodge of emotions, but rather a glimpse at the in-between.
H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) is the embodiment of this mediation. His thoughts labour on the metaphysical and the whimsical in equal weight – though the narrative result feels outstandingly poetic. In the opening sequence, we hear him speak fairly little to his peers, though sometimes with a trademark rambling politeness. Yet, his thoughts are relentless in their beauty and, ultimately, they take up so much of the opening that when the title card finally does roll, it feels like a trick akin to something in Gaspar Noé’s films. A signpost reading: now the story begins in earnest.
The story is, as I said before, American in nature. The real kind which is founded on hope and aspiration in the face of great difficulty. Behind the humour of this film is the tragedy of true love faced with infertility, and the desperation which can arise from such situations. Ed (Holly Hunter), who we first meet as an officer of the law, is so desperate to fix her predicament that she is willing to literally steal a baby to settle her grief. Ed grieves the future she may not have, while H.I. grieves for the ‘salad days’ and the love that they once had.
It is most interesting to me that H.I. spends most of the film either trapped in the present or looking back. When faced with familial stress, he turns simply to old, albeit illegal, passions. He opens the story with a summary of the events leading to the present, and he offers safety to old friends, without considering the consequences of these actions.
Despite this, the film is only settled once we finally see that small spring grow. When H.I., dreaming with that familiar and lovable narration, sees the future, he sees the possibility of a loving and happy life.
I think my love for this film lies in this conclusion. Happiness, like hope, lies in the future and its possibilities. We must remember to take the whimsical with the serious and avoid dodgy old friends, creepy bosses, and bounty hunters with a penchant for finding children.
Jay-Ger reflects on the meaning of a biscuit in the popular TV show.
The most recent season of Fargo, a show which may be the first contribution to a nascent Coen brothers shared universe, ends with a strange and symbolically dense scene in which the protagonist, Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lyon (Juno Temple), bakes a biscuit for Ole Munch (Sam Spruell). Munch is a nihilistic contract-killer who ritualistically slathers himself in mud, staging himself as a ‘sin-eater’; something mirrored in his profession, where he enacts murders on behalf of the rich and powerful. In response to Munch’s melancholic sense of cosmic debt, Dot says: ‘It feels like that, I know… What they do to us. Make us swallow. Like it’s our fault. But you wanna know the cure? You gotta eat something made with love and joy. And be forgiven’. Munch eats the biscuit and breaks into a mouth-full smile, and the season ends. The scene strikes me as very Coen brothers, containing absurdity and ideology in a world trying to come terms with the twists-and-turns into and of postmodernism. At the same time, it stays within the show’s tendency of advocating for a kind of ordinary nice-ness, of twee and small-town character, summed up in the cultural phrase ‘Minnesota nice’. Perhaps, the biscuit can be said to represent this concept.
Niceness is often reified in capitalism. Something the show, especially this season, does well is making it rather obvious that this ethos can’t be taken for granted. Dot, a profoundly traumatised person with a horrifying past, would be (more than) forgiven for not being particularly nice; especially to Munch, who was originally contracted to kill her. In contrast to a work which treats Dot’s trauma as simply a plot device, I like that in this season her way of navigating complex trauma has an ideological valance; being nice isn’t simply an escape or defence, but is proposed to be an ideological option alongside Munch’s version of nihilism, and well as Roy Tillman’s (the primary antagonist of the season, contractor of Munch, and long-term abuser of Dot; played by Jon Hamm), version of patriachalism.
At the same time, the demand to ‘be nice’ which we may feel (while watching or more generally), the idea that we ‘should’ be nice, is really what I would see as a reification. I think the season understands that niceness is not the natural order of things (because, perhaps, there is no natural order of things); meaning that being ‘Minnesota nice’ is an existential choice with no guarantee of reward. While the season ends comically, it could have ended tragically, and I don’t think this would have made Dot’s ethos any less inspiring. It’s worth also mentioning that ‘niceness’ isn’t totally treated in the somewhat one-dimensional, middle-class, way all this might suggest. Another character, Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani), is in many ways not stereotypically nice; being a kind of hard-nosed policewoman, who also happens to be grappling with around two-hundred grand of debt. At one point, her husband – a kind of man-child figure, says (in what apparently involves a direct adaption of Judy Brady’s 1971 essay): ‘I want a wife, someone to keep the house clean and cook… A wife who comes to the club for the socials… and trades recipes, with the other wives’. To continue my theme from the essay on Cleo from 5 to 7, I suppose there’s many ways to become a woman; and, well, also to become ‘Minnesota nice’.
Sheriff Roy Tillman, ‘a hard man for hard times’, is far from nice. While I could go into a character analysis here, I’d rather use this opportunity to discuss whether the season provides a useful political ideology. My answer here is… maybe? Generally, I think the ideologies at play are used to resolve social contradictions amongst the season’s characters. While, in our relations with friends, family, and so on, we may be inspired to ‘be nice’; I don’t think this is enough to develop and enact a project capable of large-scale, political, change. A sense I have (which I associate with the postmodern theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, finding them rather limited), is that much of politics has become something like an ecology of floating signifiers; ‘nice’ being one of them. While this isn’t at the sharp-end of what I think the show’s creator, Noah Hawley, wants to say; I think adopting the artifice of the Coen brother’s style has meant that highlighting such things are inevitable.
In, for example, a scene towards the end, Tillman stands for re-election as sheriff. Usually unopposed, this time a scheme has been created to embarrass him; with three other candidates, each also named ‘Roy Tillman’ and adopting his (frankly spectacular, although nothing compared to Munch’s) adornment style, also on stage. As Roy responds using the usual ‘soundbites’ (in this case, ‘defense’, ‘security’), the other Tillman’s parrot him, leading to Roy losing his cool; storming off stage and punching the host. The postmodernist-ish point is, I suppose, that to speak of being ‘nice’ or ‘hard’ when it comes to mass culture (Fargo is arguably the first example of which I have written about for WINH); contains a substantial meaning with political potential, but it tends to be couched in so much irony that this meaning becomes opaque, in need of excavation.
Well, I was supposed to talk about biscuits and I fear I’ve strayed too far. Fargo is an interesting show; although I’m not sure if it’s ‘good’, I’d recommend giving it a watch. The seasons I’ve seen (five, two and one) are pretty consistent in terms of quality, and each brings something a little different to this snowy, diner and mitts filled, area of the Coen’s universe. The show tends to support a non-progressive, twee, message; but, honestly, I think being twee or ‘nice’ is far from the worst thing a person can be. In the context of the season, the biscuit has a strongly representational quality. However, I tend to see objects of mass culture pointing not just to themselves, but also something bigger. In this sense, Dot’s biscuit is a little like the choccy milk I rambled about in my essay involving Show Me Love; representing a kind of potential (in this case for larger-scale change), but with no guarantee various political actors would, like Munch, love the biscuit; so to (ridiculously) speak.
Anyway, I think the heart of the season remains with the smaller-scale; of discrete relationships, characters, places, twists-of-fate, psycho-dramas, and that sort of thing. I enjoyed getting to know Dot, Indira, and others – in a parasocial way of course; and look forward to what Hawley’s show brings next.
