TV: Scandal & House of Cards

Two recent television shows, Scandal (2012-) and House of Cards (2013) give a great deal of insight into the current political milieu and the House of Representatives (less popular than cockroaches at the moment) and White House. Both shows are cynical at their core, while providing A-list actors and sometimes likable, though morally-flawed characters. They seem to embody the way television and movies have portrayed politics and politicians for years and yet go a step further in their representation of a world of lying, cheating, stealing, greed, rape, corruption and even murder. If this is what politics looks like, what hope is there? And I get the sense shows and movies like this go a long way in giving the American public a skewed sense of politics that undermines their will, or desire, to engage in democracy at all -- which is, by the way, the only way democracy works. 

Scandals centers on the life of power broker Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) who has left her role as White House Communications Director for the Republican President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn) to start her own crisis management firm. She is a professional'fixer' who makes problems go away before anyone even knows they exist. We soon learn that she was having an affair with the President and she is constantly drawn back to the White House to fix one problem or another. While Scandal started slowly, with a new case each week, the back story was being developed and gaining steam. Without giving too much away it involves assassination attempts, a rigged Presidential election, a bombing coverup, covert CIA operatives, a stacked Supreme Court, among other intrigue. At the center of most of it are the President's gay and Real Politik Apparatchik Chief of Staff, Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), his conniving wife Mellie (Bellamy Young), the evil corporate lobbyist Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) and, of course, Olivia. The series is strangely addictive, even as it becomes increasingly far-fetched and teeters on the edge of caricature and soap operaesque drama. But the only character who doesn't appear to compromise their values and ethics for political gain is, ironically, the President himself and a DA, who has had his life ruined for getting too close to a number of scandals in the subtext of the show. 

House of Cards (2012) is a remake of a British mini-series (in three parts) from  the 90s, itself based on a novel that became a best seller. The protagonist, Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is Majority Whip of the House and has been snubbed by the new Administration when the Secretary of State nomination is snapped from under him. But he won't take this affront lying down and instead embarks on a path of revenge and retribution that leaves careers and bodies strewn across the Washington landscape (actually not that many bodies). While Spacey humanizes the character, often my speaking directly to the audience (a trait from the original BBC series), he is a man that seems to lack any real heart or compassion and is essentially pure ambition (except in one odd episode from the first season when he goes back to his high school military alma mater and we learn of a gay love affair he had while there). His wife Claire (played to great effect by Robin Wright) is just as ambitious and duplicitous, though she cloaks it by running a non-profit, which benefits from oil money. As with Scandal, Francis' Aide de Camp (Doug Stamper, Michael Kelly) is a largely amoral political beast that does anything to protect his master, including silencing troublemakers and covering up a murder. The show was released by David Fincher all at once on Netflix (13 episodes) based on his assumption that that is how people watch TV these days -- and while my ribs were healing, that is exactly what I did. 

Both shows are quality television, though they do often fall over into almost comic dramatic devices and hyperbole. Yet they draw you in and make you hunger for more. What interests me about both, besides the rather tired analysis that they could further inculcate cynicism about politics among their audiences, is that both seem to be drawn from conservative thread. Scandal props up the President as an ethical man surrounded, like Caesar, by traitors who seem to have his best interest at heart (though here, they sort of do). As a Republican, we is the voice of reason and values in a world that is otherwise devoid of them. Sure the show has a gay couple, most of the Republicans are corrupt and Olivia seems to struggle with her attachment to conservatism -- as well as the fact that a GOP candidate has stolen the election by winning in Ohio (hmm, that sounds strangely familiar) -- but it appears to reinforce the notion that all politicians are corrupt, that one should do whatever is necessary to win (with Olivia as exhibit A) and that we live in a Social Darwinist, Machiavellian world where the victims have only themselves to blame for their fall from grace. With House of Cards, the GOP agenda seems even more apparent. The original BBC series involved a conservative party member who rises to Prime Minister, killing his lover and a number of other enemies on the way to beating Thatcher's reign by one day, before a rather ignominious end. Here, inexplicably, the bad guy becomes a Democrat and is really beyond even an ounce of empathy, though given Spacey's bonhomie and general likability, one can't help but feel some level of amiable contempt for him. One just can't help but notice the message -- the liberals are even more corrupt than the conservatives, and if they act exactly the same, there is no hope. 

The most powerful ideology the world has ever known is that change is impossible. If people fundamentally believe this, democracy becomes a facade. And the cynicism that passes for politics today only reinforces the notion that the world is beyond repair and we might as well just settle in and hope for the best, or get our piece of the pie. While I enjoy both shows and look forward to the new season (House of Cards) and next episode (Scandal), one wonders how many take these shows a little too literally and are driven further from the fundamental truth Heroclitus shared so long ago -- you never enter the same river twice, even if it is still full of shit.