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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/04/house-of-cards-real-life-politics
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| How similar to real life politics is House of Cards? | How similar to real life politics is House of Cards? |
| (3 months later) | |
| Francis Underwood is one of those characters who has politics tragics at hello. The House of Cards congressman is the politician we would all write if we could pen novels or compelling scripts for television drama – which most of us can’t. He’s a character living in the collective dreaming of people who watch politics as intently and passionately as other people watch football – the embodiment of our most wicked thoughts. | Francis Underwood is one of those characters who has politics tragics at hello. The House of Cards congressman is the politician we would all write if we could pen novels or compelling scripts for television drama – which most of us can’t. He’s a character living in the collective dreaming of people who watch politics as intently and passionately as other people watch football – the embodiment of our most wicked thoughts. |
| It’s quite good to be in my current position: I’m not yet through the first season, I’ve only seen bits of the British original, and I refuse to read ahead – so I have no idea whether Underwood is allowed by his creators to continue on with his elaborate revenges and plots without any consequences. Is House of Cards a morality play, or an amorality play? Is Underwood an archetype with the purpose of chilling the audience, or ultimately reassuring it? For now, I’d rather not know. | It’s quite good to be in my current position: I’m not yet through the first season, I’ve only seen bits of the British original, and I refuse to read ahead – so I have no idea whether Underwood is allowed by his creators to continue on with his elaborate revenges and plots without any consequences. Is House of Cards a morality play, or an amorality play? Is Underwood an archetype with the purpose of chilling the audience, or ultimately reassuring it? For now, I’d rather not know. |
| It’s interesting how soothing brilliant political dramas can be for those of us who live and breathe this world – how the best of them can make us suspend our disbelief. House of Cards is completely absurd in many respects. Underwood’s excessively theatrical, confiding asides to camera, as well as his rolling aphorisms (possibly the best set since Forrest Gump) are over the top. The same applies for that archly elliptical dialogue between Frank and his wife; that thrusting young female journalist who sleeps with her source in return for information (because young women don’t get news breaks by being bright and working hard, do they?); the louche, bean bag slouching iMac aficionados of the valueless “new” media world that is Slugline, and the rat-fucking and reverse rat-fucking of Washington, an institutional horror-show complete with pantomime lobbyists lurking in corridors demanding their pound of flesh from law-makers (because that kind of corruption never plays out subtly, in untraceable transactions and relationships, does it? It’s just all happening in the corridor, in front of multiple witnesses gracious enough never to blow the whistle.) | It’s interesting how soothing brilliant political dramas can be for those of us who live and breathe this world – how the best of them can make us suspend our disbelief. House of Cards is completely absurd in many respects. Underwood’s excessively theatrical, confiding asides to camera, as well as his rolling aphorisms (possibly the best set since Forrest Gump) are over the top. The same applies for that archly elliptical dialogue between Frank and his wife; that thrusting young female journalist who sleeps with her source in return for information (because young women don’t get news breaks by being bright and working hard, do they?); the louche, bean bag slouching iMac aficionados of the valueless “new” media world that is Slugline, and the rat-fucking and reverse rat-fucking of Washington, an institutional horror-show complete with pantomime lobbyists lurking in corridors demanding their pound of flesh from law-makers (because that kind of corruption never plays out subtly, in untraceable transactions and relationships, does it? It’s just all happening in the corridor, in front of multiple witnesses gracious enough never to blow the whistle.) |
| It really is too much – and if you weren’t completely addicted and hadn’t entirely sucumbed to the experience and begged for more, you’d actually laugh. | It really is too much – and if you weren’t completely addicted and hadn’t entirely sucumbed to the experience and begged for more, you’d actually laugh. |
| The most compelling political dramas usually subsist on a pernicious but enduring myth: that perfection is possible in politics. It’s the underlying condition behind those wise-cracking, walk-and-talk progressive brainiacs of The West Wing; the brilliant subversiveness of Malcolm Tucker, who can spin himself free of any tight spot; the studious imperfections of the woman driven as a kind of compulsion to deploy consensus politics for the greater national good - Denmark’s Brigitte Nyborg. | The most compelling political dramas usually subsist on a pernicious but enduring myth: that perfection is possible in politics. It’s the underlying condition behind those wise-cracking, walk-and-talk progressive brainiacs of The West Wing; the brilliant subversiveness of Malcolm Tucker, who can spin himself free of any tight spot; the studious imperfections of the woman driven as a kind of compulsion to deploy consensus politics for the greater national good - Denmark’s Brigitte Nyborg. |
| In House of Cards it is Underwood’s evil which is the burnished, high gloss perfection at the centre of the piece. His brand of ruthlessness is as perfect, uncluttered and elegant as Robin Wright’s couture wardrobe on the show. The Shakespearean asides to camera allow Underwood the luxury of perfect communication, allowing his intentions to be clear to the audience at all times – a quality that the sludgy political communicators of the real world, with their dog-eared talking points dreamed up by a kid in a room at 4am, can only envy. | In House of Cards it is Underwood’s evil which is the burnished, high gloss perfection at the centre of the piece. His brand of ruthlessness is as perfect, uncluttered and elegant as Robin Wright’s couture wardrobe on the show. The Shakespearean asides to camera allow Underwood the luxury of perfect communication, allowing his intentions to be clear to the audience at all times – a quality that the sludgy political communicators of the real world, with their dog-eared talking points dreamed up by a kid in a room at 4am, can only envy. |
| People conform to Underwood’s will. They might struggle with the yoke at the beginning, but ultimately they move as pawns on his chessboard. He has everyone’s measure, and their weaknesses are his strength. This of course is another great myth of politics – the uncluttered power of the strong-man, the kingmaker who trades only in pin-point treachery and possesses the perfect strategy and the means of executing it without mess or digressions. It is, of course, a fantasy – as all of the boilovers of political history can readily attest. | People conform to Underwood’s will. They might struggle with the yoke at the beginning, but ultimately they move as pawns on his chessboard. He has everyone’s measure, and their weaknesses are his strength. This of course is another great myth of politics – the uncluttered power of the strong-man, the kingmaker who trades only in pin-point treachery and possesses the perfect strategy and the means of executing it without mess or digressions. It is, of course, a fantasy – as all of the boilovers of political history can readily attest. |
| So what is politics in reality, away from the gloss of cable TV drama? Mostly punishing incremental work. One inch forward, a great slide backwards. It’s good intentions felled by events. It’s good days and bad days. There are more stuff-ups than conspiracies. There is treachery, but it’s mainly suburban and small rather than grandly operatic. There are strong men who control weak men (yes, mainly men, although not exclusively). People fall in and out with each other, compromise themselves, fail to live up to their best aspirations, lose nerve and will. But then of course there are those great moments: courage, heart, bravery, truth. Acts of genuine reform, and acts of progress. The moments that make hope not ridiculous. | So what is politics in reality, away from the gloss of cable TV drama? Mostly punishing incremental work. One inch forward, a great slide backwards. It’s good intentions felled by events. It’s good days and bad days. There are more stuff-ups than conspiracies. There is treachery, but it’s mainly suburban and small rather than grandly operatic. There are strong men who control weak men (yes, mainly men, although not exclusively). People fall in and out with each other, compromise themselves, fail to live up to their best aspirations, lose nerve and will. But then of course there are those great moments: courage, heart, bravery, truth. Acts of genuine reform, and acts of progress. The moments that make hope not ridiculous. |
| The thing that House of Cards absolutely nails, however, is the dangerous malaise of the present. Institutions are being hollowed out, making them ripe for gaming. Democratic politics around the world is corroding in the face of an entrenched culture of deal-making and voracious demands by third party interests. | The thing that House of Cards absolutely nails, however, is the dangerous malaise of the present. Institutions are being hollowed out, making them ripe for gaming. Democratic politics around the world is corroding in the face of an entrenched culture of deal-making and voracious demands by third party interests. |
| The mainstream media is exhausted, distracted and marginalised by its ongoing existential commercial struggle. There are players on the stage of politics who once might have been checked by more robust managerial systems, stronger accountability, or the simple faith in enduring values – but those checks and balances are weaker than they used to be. That’s the real chill of the Zoe Barnes character: the brutal transaction she makes with power, her willingness to be a stenographer in return for being a player. There’s no purpose to her activism, or at least none that I’ve yet detected. Truth? Well that’s something you create, not something you record. | The mainstream media is exhausted, distracted and marginalised by its ongoing existential commercial struggle. There are players on the stage of politics who once might have been checked by more robust managerial systems, stronger accountability, or the simple faith in enduring values – but those checks and balances are weaker than they used to be. That’s the real chill of the Zoe Barnes character: the brutal transaction she makes with power, her willingness to be a stenographer in return for being a player. There’s no purpose to her activism, or at least none that I’ve yet detected. Truth? Well that’s something you create, not something you record. |
| If you want the truth that House of Cards conveys to the viewer, it is this: more rubbish rises to the surface in this weightless world. The cacophony can conceal truth, not reveal it. Frank Underwood, compelling creature that he is, exists only in our dreams. | If you want the truth that House of Cards conveys to the viewer, it is this: more rubbish rises to the surface in this weightless world. The cacophony can conceal truth, not reveal it. Frank Underwood, compelling creature that he is, exists only in our dreams. |
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