There is very little
'uplifting' or 'ennobling' about this whole exercise. I wouldn't go so far as to
say a new genre of 'cynical' political drama has been brought into being but it
does seem to be besmirching the holy of holies (White House inner sanctum) in a
sustained way which seldom if ever before has made it to celluloid -
long-running dramas necessarily getting 'under the surface' of things in ways
which the usually more formulaic movie script can never hope to achieve.
The difficulty is that the "depth" achieved is funnelled exclusively through the viewpoint of a politician (and his wife) utterly beholden to the pursuit of power for it's own sake. Playing politics as a game & ruthlessly gouging 'soft' liberals/leftists/ the 'naive' in general who are hopelessly crippled by clearly (outmoded) ideals - real politics apparently being uncompromising hard-ball or to use the implied metaphor, an endless round of poker where the winner keeps his cards (or his human identity) practically nailed to his chest; rather suffocating then actually reveal their hand.
The unsettling fact of the matter is that all of this is perfectly commonplace - what is less often observed is that this type of behaviour co-exists (all the time) in tandem with 'principled' politics; i.e. there are no shortage of elected representatives who routinely draw their own line in the sand with respect to what levels of ethical infringements they are willing to tolerate both in themselves and those around them. The two intermingle in myriad complex ways, the lines daily blurred with one round of legislation atop the next, lobby groups, constituency vs. party commitments, the question of fundraising, the mere interpretation of events to fit a top-down pre-ordained 'spin'; and in truth only a man's conscience can be the final arbiter as to whether the life publically led has being commissioned to the best of his (honest) abilities.
In a long life of politics it is impossible to avoid compromising some personal ethic or another but the struggle to prevent oneself falling down the shaft of complete indifference - going baldly on the make in other words - can usually be writ large in speech, act and gesture. Everyone succumbs to the "corruptions of office" to some extent and the attentive (media rehearsed) public usually have highly tuned antennae as to when permissible barriers are being breached. Given long enough under the camera or in interview or standing unrehearsed on a podium the truth of their personal struggle to conceal (their own poached deck)will usually out itself; which is why in today's world so many of these public interfaces are stage-managed manipulations offering a superficial morsel only of the being 'behind the suit'. Too much is at stake, there are too many boxes to tick and the risk of false inference from unguarded spontaneity is often un-necessarily minimised.
The unconscious never lies it is said, and while it's fashionable nowadays to dismiss Freudian 'quackery' it's nevertheless a fact that there are only a finite number of cubby holes in which to bury the darker secrets of the psyche - you jam too much in there; it will simply spill out someplace else unattended and make a goddamn awful mess. People are social animals; they circulate daily and leave traces of themselves everywhere they go - we would be fools and we wouldn't have amounted to much as a species if we didn't have a collective capacity to discern through our combined institutions the essential worth of a person through his public actions - a detectable logic drives us forward steered in the main by guile and good will. We extend each other the benefit of doubt, always with reservation but that is how "things get done".
The House of Cards universe is seemingly problematic (for some) as it's "internal logic" is broadly congruent with Spacey's (non-existent) ethics; the stratagems he concocts succeed unerringly while the narrative colludes in extolling him - but isn't the whole artifice; the elaborate machinery erected to manage our perceptions not really demonstrating under its multiple veils that this is indeed a bug, a social parasite of the most advanced and insidious kind - one that has managed to worm himself into the very bowels of government? And we turn away because that doesn't happen. I'd like to view it as an elongated public health warning. Art and real life are always interconnected and shows like this influence people's perception of politics in all kinds of ways - which in turn influences how politicians themselves think and behave.
I certainly think it's important to think about it.
A squeaky clean White House populated by Plato's philosophers quoting Jefferson by heart (or drama with a comparable premise to that effect) probably isn't too healthy either. I think of Hegel: thesis West Wing; antithesis House of Cards - synthesis (and true art) - yet to be born.
Combined, the examination of both by aspiring producers should inspire better & more realistic dramas.
The difficulty is that the "depth" achieved is funnelled exclusively through the viewpoint of a politician (and his wife) utterly beholden to the pursuit of power for it's own sake. Playing politics as a game & ruthlessly gouging 'soft' liberals/leftists/ the 'naive' in general who are hopelessly crippled by clearly (outmoded) ideals - real politics apparently being uncompromising hard-ball or to use the implied metaphor, an endless round of poker where the winner keeps his cards (or his human identity) practically nailed to his chest; rather suffocating then actually reveal their hand.
The unsettling fact of the matter is that all of this is perfectly commonplace - what is less often observed is that this type of behaviour co-exists (all the time) in tandem with 'principled' politics; i.e. there are no shortage of elected representatives who routinely draw their own line in the sand with respect to what levels of ethical infringements they are willing to tolerate both in themselves and those around them. The two intermingle in myriad complex ways, the lines daily blurred with one round of legislation atop the next, lobby groups, constituency vs. party commitments, the question of fundraising, the mere interpretation of events to fit a top-down pre-ordained 'spin'; and in truth only a man's conscience can be the final arbiter as to whether the life publically led has being commissioned to the best of his (honest) abilities.
In a long life of politics it is impossible to avoid compromising some personal ethic or another but the struggle to prevent oneself falling down the shaft of complete indifference - going baldly on the make in other words - can usually be writ large in speech, act and gesture. Everyone succumbs to the "corruptions of office" to some extent and the attentive (media rehearsed) public usually have highly tuned antennae as to when permissible barriers are being breached. Given long enough under the camera or in interview or standing unrehearsed on a podium the truth of their personal struggle to conceal (their own poached deck)will usually out itself; which is why in today's world so many of these public interfaces are stage-managed manipulations offering a superficial morsel only of the being 'behind the suit'. Too much is at stake, there are too many boxes to tick and the risk of false inference from unguarded spontaneity is often un-necessarily minimised.
The unconscious never lies it is said, and while it's fashionable nowadays to dismiss Freudian 'quackery' it's nevertheless a fact that there are only a finite number of cubby holes in which to bury the darker secrets of the psyche - you jam too much in there; it will simply spill out someplace else unattended and make a goddamn awful mess. People are social animals; they circulate daily and leave traces of themselves everywhere they go - we would be fools and we wouldn't have amounted to much as a species if we didn't have a collective capacity to discern through our combined institutions the essential worth of a person through his public actions - a detectable logic drives us forward steered in the main by guile and good will. We extend each other the benefit of doubt, always with reservation but that is how "things get done".
The House of Cards universe is seemingly problematic (for some) as it's "internal logic" is broadly congruent with Spacey's (non-existent) ethics; the stratagems he concocts succeed unerringly while the narrative colludes in extolling him - but isn't the whole artifice; the elaborate machinery erected to manage our perceptions not really demonstrating under its multiple veils that this is indeed a bug, a social parasite of the most advanced and insidious kind - one that has managed to worm himself into the very bowels of government? And we turn away because that doesn't happen. I'd like to view it as an elongated public health warning. Art and real life are always interconnected and shows like this influence people's perception of politics in all kinds of ways - which in turn influences how politicians themselves think and behave.
I certainly think it's important to think about it.
A squeaky clean White House populated by Plato's philosophers quoting Jefferson by heart (or drama with a comparable premise to that effect) probably isn't too healthy either. I think of Hegel: thesis West Wing; antithesis House of Cards - synthesis (and true art) - yet to be born.
Combined, the examination of both by aspiring producers should inspire better & more realistic dramas.
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