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Sunday, January 20, 2019

House of Cards Final Season – Are you still there?

HOUSE OF CARDS, POLITICS, ROBIN WRIGHT, CLAIRE UNDERWOOD, DOUG STAMPER, SEASON SIX, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PSYCHOLOGY, BINGEWORTHY, STREAMING, WOMEN IN POLITICS, GENDER PERCEPTIONS


It is a wintry long weekend here in the Midwest and the reluctant wife and I had planned to settle in to watch Kenneth Branagh’s four hour Hamlet, which had been streaming free on Netflix, only to discover that it was no longer running there and we couldn’t even purchase it on Amazon.  We were ready to watch before dinner and after dinner – so we had a chunk of time available (a rarity) and we considered various options, then remembered that the last season of House of Cards had dropped in October.  We had watched a few favorite series installments in the interim, including the Marvelous Mrs. Mazel’s second season as soon as it dropped in November, but we had been putting House of Cards off. 

House of Cards lost much of its luster as a bizarre tale of intrigue in Washington when reality began to compete with fiction and we had a real estate magnate running for president – and then to become far stranger as that man’s Presidency unfolded – and the penultimate season seemed to be stretching itself just a bit too far in trying to keep up with and perhaps top the very real crazy doings in Washington by having President Frances (Frank) Underwood (Kevin Spacey) appointing his wife Claire (Robin Wright – who is also a producer of the show) to become Vice President with the understanding that she, when she succeeded him as President, would pardon him for all his crimes (including multiple murders) and misdemeanors on her ascension.  On becoming President, she let Frank twist in the wind while she decided whether to pardon him or not.  The season ended with Claire as President and Frank on the outside after she had declared, through the fourth wall, “My turn.”

Meanwhile, out in the real world,  the me too movement happened.  Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual improprieties with a young man, and then other young men followed, and then Spacey was no longer going to be a part of the final season.  This final season was shortened from the previous usual number of thirteen episodes to a tighter eight.  And so we watched all eight shows of the final season last night in marathon viewing that kept us up past our bedtime.  One of many cliffhanger questions that kept us in binge watching mode was the overarching question: Who killed Frank Underwood? 

When, in the first episode, Claire broke the fourth wall to ask, “Are you still there?” I realized that I had avoided watching the show not just because of how crazy it had become, but because Spacey was no longer the star.  And an implicit question – will men watch “male” themed show with a female lead became explicit.  And the show depicts a presidency with a woman at the helm where that woman does not at first appear to be functioning on her own – she has borrowed or stolen or inherited the presidency from her male predecessor and we watch her grow into it to see her put her own stamp on it.  As the President does this, Claire also grows into Spacey's role by continuing to use his trademark asides to bring us into her world through that fourth wall. And the auxiliary question that is being asked within the show itself, "Will men allow a woman who has become president, whether because she was elected or assumed the presidency, allow her to govern?” So the question becomes: does a woman - to succeed in Hollywood or in DC - have to emulate the men who have preceded her in order to succeed at their business?

This series, in my mind, is intended as a kind of yin to the West Wing's yang.  Where the West Wing was too warm, too positive, too idealizing of the way the White House could and should be, this is too cold, too calculating, and too incisive about the kinds of people who rise to the top of the political heap.  If there is a political spectrum from ideal to feared, these two complimentary shows span that arc.  And if the task of a President is to run a marathon – with his staffers performing sprints that keep him or her afloat while burning themselves out (as was depicted in the West Wing), the House of Cards demonstrates what it would be like to be President without a team – to be one against the world  constantly sprinting and having very little room to appreciate that this is a marathon – which feels increasingly like the situation of the current White House.

When it is one against the world, it is important to have an aide who is indispensable – someone who would live and die for you and who will do your dirty work.  The constant through all six seasons – the person who has been there since the beginning for Frank and, to a lesser extent, for Claire, is Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly).  This character, who plays the role of fixer and then of fall guy – is deeply connected with Frank.  He is the son that Frank never had – indeed, in this season, it is revealed that Frank writes an 11th hour will leaving his entire estate to Doug.  This is largely, like so much else in this series, a plot device – and its presence allows Claire to override it both by stealing it from Doug before he can know about it – though like so many secrets in this season it gets exposed in due time – but also by allowing her to trump it by carrying Frank’s child to term – which will override Doug’s claim while also allowing her to masquerade as caring mother-to-be to the country.  This particular plot twist feels forced - and I think it is an effort to make something happen that can't quite work - the way that dreams - right before they fail - try to insert something that will somehow keep the dream going no matter how preposterous the dream.

The irony, of course, is that Doug is, in fact, the rightful and sole heir to Frank’s estate.  He is the one who is concerned with preserving the memory of Frank as the President who accomplished all that he did which is the only estate that really matters - the material things will rust.  He is the one who would protect Frank’s legacy, not only by taking the fall, but also by keeping all of the skeletons hidden.  When he negotiates to do dirty work, he is negotiating nor for himself, but for Frank - making sure that the Shepherds will fund Frank's presidential library.  And he is the one who would seek revenge on the person who led, in his mind, to Frank’s downfall – Claire.  From this perspective, Claire is seen by Frank as Macbeth’s wife, urging Frank (as Macbeth) on to do things that lead to his ascension, but that also involve both of them being drenched in the blood that gets them to the top.  And she deserves Doug’s wrath and intended retribution for having besmirched and failing to protect her husband’s legacy.

The issue of Presidential pardons is central to this thread of a very complicated tale.  Doug insists not only on his being given a pardon, but on Claire bestowing a posthumous pardon on Frank.  We are also, of course, living in a real world where Presidential pardons could loom large in the question of whether every citizen must abide by the rule of law.  Trump could wield pardons as a mean of springing those whose misdeeds are being used by Mueller as leverage to learn about Trump’s possible misdeeds.  From that perspective, pardons are, like so much else in this series, simply means to an end.  But this series, for all of its starkness and for all of the meanness of its characters, turns out to be about much more than just achieving a means to an end – and the issues of loyalty and redemption lie very close to the heart of what it is about – and what, in the end, redeems it as a series and, indeed, as a work of art.  And how much the redemptive process that is spelled out is about the President, how much about the world of Hollywood, and how much about the reaction of the show to the behavior of its star all overlap in the delicious ways that creative works - our own dreams and works of art - seem to.

Claire is presented as the first female president – and she is presented as needing to be ruthless in order to function in that role.  There is great irony here.  When, in an incredibly staged counter coups, she fires her entire cabinet and replaces them all with women – it is very important (this is a small but not emphasized point) that they are all functionaries - they are career bureaucrats; long term employees and leaders within the agencies that they head, and while she is pushing forward a woman’s agenda that follows the gender stereotype of working cooperatively with others rather than going it alone she is also supporting a culture of rewarding hard work and dedication to an organization with opportunities to lead that organization rather than plopping in political cronies who have not earned, by virtue of their work in the organization, the position that is bestowed on them.  She is embodying (as she does with her pregnancy) the anti-Claire.  This Claire sees the opportunity for a new world – one that is not run by the vile and despicable predator types that include Frank and her current nemeses – Bill (Greg Kinnear) and Annette (DianeLane) Shepherd.

Bill Shepherd is a billionaire scion of a chemical and oil and gas family who is dying of cancer and riddled with the fear that his high handed disregard for the environment and safety that has lined his pockets has also ruined his health.  Annette is his sister and a college intimate of Claire's.  Her meanness and moral depravity is captured by her attempt, despite her right-to-life stance, to kill Claire’s unborn child.  From this perspective, this series becomes a morality play, with Claire’s lack of apparent conscience seeming to be a foil to protect her from truly evil others – whom she immorally disposes of so that she can achieve a greater good.  Though this is present, it is a thin read.  There is much deeper and therefore more complex and difficult to read stuff going on here than a simple good vs. evil with good having to compromise to defeat evil moral.

We revisited Robin Wright in her early days when the Reluctant Stepdaughter’s latest enthusiastic partner joined us over the holidays and mistakenly stated that he had never seen The Princess Bride.  We were so enthusiastic to show him this shared family treasure that, by the time we had it cued up, it had progressed too far for us to undo it once the boyfriend revealed he had seen it before.  So we once again watched Robin as Princess Buttercup be protected by the dread Pirate Robert – who was a better swordsman than the great Inigo Montoya, outfought Andre the Giant, and outsmarted the brainy Vizziny to ultimately be able to wrest her from the odious Prince Humperdink and ride off into the sunset with her. 

For Robin to move from the dependent and helpless – if likeable and spunky Buttercup to the President of the United States, and for her to move – as Claire - from the pretty prep girl who must choose to forego an excellent sex life to marry the ambitious but self-infatuated and conniving Frank rather than charting her own path to power – she must come to grips with a world that is not filled with good hearted farmhands like The Princess Bride's Westley who only seems to be evil as he inhabits the role of the dread pirate Robert, but instead with the boys in the House of Cards flashback who cut her dress off when she is a tween in order to ogle and perhaps do more to her, and with women like her House of Cards mother who berates her for seeking revenge against her brother who led his friends to do this deed.  She must, one supposes, also come to grips with Kevin Spacey's behavior - and who knows what behavior she herself has more directly faced in the Hollywood culture that Spacey and other's behavior has recently uncovered.

There is, then, a deep fracture in the character of Claire (even if she had never, in real life, been Princess Buttercup).  Whatever maternal feelings she may have towards others feel like they will betray her and keep her from achieving the ends that she has in mind - ends that might right some of the wrongs in this world, because the softer feelings would allow her to be used and discarded by those whose ends are nefarious.  So she must lose that which is most precious to protect it.  And it is in the final scene of the series that this becomes evident (and yes, if I haven’t already spoiled enough, I am about to spoil the whole thing, so be warned…).

Pain is described by Frank as being divided into two types – that which makes you stronger and that which is useless.  Claire amends this to say that pain is of only one type – the useless variety.  When Claire confronts Doug in the final scene, Doug is in pain.  Doug’s pain is the pain of having lost a father – and he lost Frank as a father when Robin froze Frank out of the White House driving Frank to become frenzied and irrational.  Frank was returning to the White House – perhaps to kill Claire.  Doug desperately wanted to head this off.  In order to protect Frank's legacy, Doug chose to kill the person who was threatening it – Frank himself – and Claire divines in the instant that Doug tries to kill her that it was Doug who killed Frank.  Doug confesses that he messed with Frank's meds so that Frank had what appeared to be a heart attack and Claire could claim that he was sleeping beside her when it occurred.  But Claire can see that the pain of killing Frank is something that Doug believes he can only erase by killing her.  To see her as responsible would absolve him of guilt.  But she sees beyond that and realizes that this is a false solution.  Doug, unlike Frank, is attached to Claire - and he can't kill her.  Also, unlike Frank, Doug is connected with all people, especially Frank, and feels, in fact, guilt.  And this is a pain that he can't get rid of himself.

This scene is a powerful one that is hard to reconstruct as I write about it (and I have liberally interpreted what passes between the two of them).  Doug has returned to the White House with the intent to assassinate the President.  She knows this and she has ordered the secret service members out of the room to confront her assassin directly.  She has lied to Doug repeatedly and Doug has brought Frank’s recorded memoir for her to listen to.  These are recordings in which Frank recounts his crimes and misdemeanors and implicates Claire in them.  Claire points out that Doug’s name does not appear anywhere in Frank’s rantings – even though it was Doug who carried out many of the deeds.  Frank has erased Doug and overlooked him.  Doug – whose life revolves around Frank – does not exist as an entity in Frank’s life.  Doug’s deep and powerful love is not reciprocated by a man who cannot love in the way that Frank so desperately desires.

Doug wants to kill Claire – because he blames her for having ruined Frank - and to relieve his own guilt.  But it was Frank’s failure to be the person that Doug wanted and needed him to be that is causing Doug pain.  Hardened Doug – Alcoholic, AA surviving Doug – fixer Doug – unattached Doug – this Doug feels deeply, longingly connected to the slick and competent star that is Frank – a person who was able to trick and deceive people – and one who let Doug see who it was that he really was – and this opening to Doug felt like an act of love – but it ended fueling Doug's desire for intimacy and love - not addressing it.  And killing Claire is not the solution – so when she brutally and lovingly kills him – when she puts Doug out of his misery with the murder weapon that Doug inherited from Frank and attempted to use against her – the letter opener that Doug used to carve his initials in the Roosevelt desk – the instrument that he used to say, “I was here, I mattered,” she was able to end the pain that involved his feeling that he never really had been here – that he didn’t in fact matter.

So Claire’s statement, “No more pain,” with which this series concludes, suggests that she has walled herself off from pain – but that she has also been able to be open to her own pain enough that she can engage in a tremendous act of empathic generosity and put someone who is in unresolvable pain out of his misery.  This kind of twisted, powerful, perverse maternal figure – one who would create space for a new, more feminine based means of engagement – can only, it seems, in the universe of the House of Cards, which seems to oddly parallel our own universe, assert that new femininity from a decidedly warped version of masculine power and control.  To end the reign of masculine depravity, one must be not only depraved, but also care for others - one must not just have more strength, but address the true needs of others - to end their hopes for a fairy tale - for a clean and simple world of white hats and black hats, to help them quit desiring something that does not exist.  What she does not go on to do is to articulate how to train a new generation to recognize that we are all compromised, but that we do the best that we can out of that compromise.  I think maybe her all female cabinet will do something she can't do - advise her on how to be a compassionate woman.

If we are still here – can it be we who remain?  Do we want to see women take on masculine roles and carry them out, as it were, with a vengeance?  What does it take for a woman to stand up to a man like Putin?  Or the Koch brothers?  Or to Trump?  Or to Spacey?  Or Harvey Weinstein?  What will we lose in the process of gaining a new, better, more powerful and authentic voice that will lead our organizations and this country?  How will we be able to stay in touch with our deeply based Democratic ideals as we become more powerful and more transparently vulnerable to corrupting influence than we may be able to stomach?  Are we still here is a question to be asked indeed.


To access my original post on the first four seasons of House of Cards link here.


To access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here.  For a subject based index, link here. 





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