Religion, gender, debt, and patriots: Fargo's latest excellent season
The latest season of the television series Fargo has recently concluded, and it is a delight to watch—though given their challenging resonance in our current politics, "delight" may not be quite the word.
I could wax lyrical about the superb acting from the likes of Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, and Jennifer Jason Leigh among others, or the script being on point, or the great production values. But, for me, it's the themes that are most worth delving into.
This particular season has concerned itself with the difficult topic of domestic abuse, gender roles, financial and spiritual debt, and America's right-wing, religiously grounded, Republican patriot militias. As you can imagine for a writer at OnlySky, it is the subject of religion that has piqued particular interest.
The creators did a first-rate job of dealing with the often-triggering idea of gender and gender roles in a way that doesn't overplay its centrality too obviously. It is obvious, but not in a way that hits you around the face. In addition to the way the storyline has been created, this is down to the wickedly delicious portrayal of the matriarch Lorraine Lyon, played brilliantly by Jennifer Jason Leigh, a female sociopathic Rupert Murdoch-style billionaire seemingly devoid of conscience or empathy.
Three very strong female portrayals look at gender roles in quite different ways. The main character of Dorothy "Dot" Lyon (played insanely well by the brilliant Juno Temple) has a brutality that has emerged out of domestic abuse, harnessed for self-preservation and protection of her family. That physical tenacity and her mental fortitude are played in concert with a deep-seated fragility that shows nuance in both acting and writing.
Dot's daughter Scotty is a tomboy of sorts, exuding an innocent, forthright demeanor that has its origin in a subtle confidence in who she is.
Jennifer Jason Leigh superbly creates the soulless billionaire who has succeeded in life at the expense of goodness knows how many others, overcoming gender stereotypes, to be a ruthless businesswoman. "I'm not being kind, I'm being smart," appears to be a mantra for her. Indeed, her character is furnished with umpteen brilliant lines. "Women who apologize for things that aren't their fault might as well have 'welcome mat' written on their faces" or "Now, honestly, what's the point of being a billionaire if I can't have somebody killed?"
The reconciliation at the end of the season between the matriarch and her previously belittled daughter-in-law as a mutual recognition of each other's strengths and virtues was a truly touching scene.
Religion is a touchy subject, financially speaking. Although the US has moved in leaps and bounds toward a more secular ideal, most of the country is still religious. As such, creating a storyline or script that was overtly anti-religious would be somewhat controversial, financially speaking. With this in mind, there is no surprise to see how the show has dealt with religion—or more accurately, a certain type of religion.
Season five of Fargo takes aim at a very particular, political type of religiosity: the gun-toting, Second Amendment advocating, Patriot militia, Republican type of Christianity. The season is set back in 2019, and at first, I was left wondering why this would be. But, of course, this allowed some otherwise perhaps throwaway lines to make a lot more sense. This was a story set under the tenure of Donald Trump—a febrile atmosphere that resulted in January 6th.
The villain of the drama is Roy Tillman, an elected sheriff in small-town Minnesota and leader of a religiously motivated Patriot militia community. John Hamm's performance of Tillman is nothing short of immaculate. Scary, but immaculate. Scary, because these people almost certainly actually exist to some degree. One of the best interactions in the season in terms of cinematic dissection is as follows and deserves to be laid out in full:
Lorraine Lyon: Listen, slick... nothing would make me happier than to put that girl in a box marked "Return to Sender", between you and me. But she's married to my son, and he loves her, and she's the mother to my granddaughter, whom I'm fond of, so you need to put your big boy pants on and take the hit.
Roy Tillman: Bible says the wife is the property of the husband. Therefore, that makes your son a thief. If we're talking about who has the more legitimate claim.
Lorraine Lyon: You know, I've heard of you. You're one of those constitutional sheriffs.
Roy Tillman: Yes, I am. Defender of freedom and protector of the common man against the tyranny of the state and all its wicked demands.
Lorraine Lyon: Taxes?
Roy Tillman: Oh, yeah.
Lorraine Lyon: The social safety net?
Roy Tillman: Well, I'd spit, but, uh...
Lorraine Lyon: Respect for the otherly-abled?
Roy Tillman: The whole multi-cultural panoply. Billy has two mothers, et cetera, et cetera.
Lorraine Lyon: So... you want freedom with no responsibility. Son, there's only one person on Earth who gets that deal.
Roy Tillman: Mmm. The president?
Lorraine Lyon: A baby.
[chuckles]
Lorraine Lyon: You're fighting for your right to be a baby.
Ouch. There is so much rich subject matter here that is expressed so efficiently. We know the arguments and, in so few lines, they are laid out for us. Those hints and suggestions allow our minds to fill in the blanks.
One of the most bizarre elements of the story is the character of Ole Munch (played so well by Sam Spruell). The director Thomas Bezucha explains the origins of the character, understood as a Sin Eater, a Welsh historical practice whereby poor people were hired at funerals to take upon the sins of the deceased by swallowing bread and beer at the ceremony. This appropriation of the sins of others through bread and wine, essentially, has very obvious religious connotations. Bezucha sees the character as 500 years old and unable to die, being cursed to appear and disappear, an "elemental force that's blowing through this landscape."
While many of the episodes take aim at MAGA-style religiosity, you might think the show would take an overtly anti-theistic stance. However, the last episode (spoiler alert) sees Ole Munch literally breaking bread with Dot, her daughter Scotty, and her husband (another fantastically drawn and played character, courtesy of actor David Rysdahl). This takes place after they hold hands in prayer. It's the first overt evidence (there are a few easily missed hints) that the family continues to hold faith.
Ole Munch: Then one day a man comes on a wealthy horse and offers him two coins and a meal but the food was not food.
Dot Lyon: What was it?
Ole Munch: It was sin. The sins of the rich: greed, envy, disgust. They were better. The sins. But he ate them all for he was starving. From then on, the man [Much himself] does not sleep or grow old, he cannot die. He has no dreams. All that is left is sin.
Dot Lyon: It feels like that, you know, what they do to us— make a swallow like it our fault. But you want to know the cure? [Picking up a home-made bread biscuit] You gotta eat something made with love and joy and be forgiven.
[Munch takes the biscuit and it's a mouthful, savoring the taste and breaking into a fevered grin.]
And here the season ends with the understanding that forgiveness with love and joy overcomes all sin. This can be read in an overtly religious manner if that is what you want to draw from it. This is, after all, the story of Jesus. My sense is that the anti-MAGA religiosity needed to be couched in terms of there being a better ideal of Christianity rather than the promotion of an anti-theistic thesis. In other words, it is better to advocate to a pluralistic audience a liberal Christianity of love and joy and pit that against a perversion of Christianity as proclaimed by Roy Tillman as he advances his cause and crusade with his patriot militia.
This reminds me of an interview I saw recently with evangelical author Tim Alberta on The View:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPCjOObq64
Alberta's book The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is a look at the distortion of "True Christianity," to see the religion co-opted by the extreme right in the Republican Party. He asks whether such Trump-supporting Christians can "see whether their beliefs, their convictions as followers of Christ can withstand the sort of testing of national idolatry, of political partisan identity, that has taken them further and further away from Christ and turned Republican politics and Trumpism into an idol."
So rather than dismiss this kind of Christianity by dismissing all Christianity and thus alienating many liberal Christian viewers of the series, it is about moving people in the general direction of moral progression. For many, the first stop on the Enlightenment underground metro line is a more liberalized version of their own faith system.
There is much more to say about the many themes in this excellent season, but there is no getting away from the very obvious and welcome broadside against the sort of Republican evangelicalism that enrages so many of us in the secular community.