Reading About FARGO (still early)
I’m making my way through the existing literature on the FX series Fargo, and as I mentioned last time, most of it is focused on the first two seasons of the show, with some of the most recent pieces glancing toward the third season, but without much substance because of how close to the season’s original airdate they had been written and submitted for publication.
But last night I read “Fargo and Cinema” by Sylvaine Bataille, and it has a very good bit of writing on the different ways the show connects to cinematic style broadly speaking, as well as specifically to the various parts of the Coens’ ouevre. While, again, much of the chapter is about the first two seasons - with some good analysis of how vastly intertextual those seasons are - it pointed out some of the ways season three also focuses on cinematic elements, especially in its use of screen style and genre tropes (as well as typically Coen-esque elements). I’m not personally invested in this discourse, but it’s of a piece with all of the adaptation studies scholarship that makes up the majority of what seems to be published as of yet.
As for my own thoughts, I haven’t put much together, but some ideas are starting to percolate toward thinking through seasons four and five, and I’m looking forward to addressing them, especially since it has become clear that Hawley’s approach to integrating culture and politics has become more focused and biting in its critiques of race relations, misogyny, radical White Christian Nationalism, the U.S. government’s long history of pseudo-fascism toward its own citizens, and so on. This certainly fits into FX’s brand of political engagement in ways the first few seasons don’t, drifting into areas touched on throughout early hits like The Shield and more recent ones like The Americans, which aired more or less contemporaneously with the first three seasons of Fargo.
Just some preliminary ways of thinking about this. We’ll see how it goes over the coming two weeks as I start to make my way through writing the chapter draft.
