Just this week I realized I hadn't ever watched the final episodes of The West Wing, and had quite a number of feels finally watching them. And, one of the things I realized is how different my experience of that show has been when compared to either versions of House of Cards.
In many ways, for me, The West Wing was a kind of progressive fantasy, an escape and a catharsis for living in a world where Bush 43 was in office, but also there were characters on the show, quite a few, for whom I felt emotions while sharing the story. There were characters with whom I identified in certain and in general ways. I laughed. I cried. It became part of me. Over and over, many times.
Compared the the original BBC and the new Netflix version of House of Cards, the parallax is stark; but I think there's a definite case study in the way that the incipient fascism, and march toward the logical conclusion of that trait, of each is portrayed, in how the story unfolds, between the two version, aside from any comparison to The West Wing.
For me, the Ian Richardson portrayal of Urquart is someone with whom I could still feel some small emotional connection early on which, I think made the later developments that much more impactful. That version was a kind of ... Well, almost a tragedy. And, the ultimate conclusion was exactly the point at which I might have said, "if only he had not been flawed." Especially early on, there was a comfortable and welcome familial humor with which I could smile, and enjoy, with Ian Richardson's Urquart.
For the newest Netflix version, and Kevin Spacey's Underwood, I find the story still compelling, but I identify with nothing and really don't care for Underwood at all. This version is a noir thriller, I think instead of a tragedy. I await Underwood's ultimate end as a kind of refreshing justice, not as I awaited Urquart's with a tinge of tragic sorrow.
But, this difference seems to be the sense of the age. This is the Dark Knight House of Cards, one might perhaps say; but the Netflix version to me is intellectually compelling story, not. For me, emotionally compelling in any real sense; except, perhaps, vaguely, for a sense of the coming future relief at the end, a release. Spacey's Underwood is mainly vicious and inhuman, and not someone for which I care at all to overcome himself, so I'm not emotionally invested in the sorrow of his inability to do so. Spacey's Underwood induces me to a passionless state, emotionally detached from the story, and thus creates a kind of sympathetic lack of caring that mirrors the character's own. Underwood is then, perhaps, in some ways, entraining the audience into a shared psychopathy.
When I was a child, I strongly identified with Mr Spock on Star Trek, and felt longing and connection to the struggle to be emotionless and rational, while all the while actually having extraordinarily intense emotions under the surface, which seems quite the reverse of what these new narrative exemplars provide, namely emotionally inhuman thunderstorms of unchecked power. |
