‘Cult’ plays to our frights and follies
It’s hard to know how seriously to take the new season of ‘AHS’
Oh, Charlie Manson, who could have imagined your shadow would be thrown so far, your creepy-crawly cultural presence last so long? You did, I suppose, though possibly it has not been quite in the way you figured.
Manson is the ruling spirit in “Cult,” the latest installment in the Ryan Murphy-Brad Falchuk FX franchise “American Horror Story,” premiering Tuesday. Putting “American” in your title can signify seriousness or satire, to promise a defining look at how we are as a nation — for good but more likely more for ill. Or, as in “Wet Hot American Summer,” to mock the titling itself.
Indeed, it’s something of a tired strategy. (Murphy and Falchuk also use it for their “American Crime Story” anthology series.) But “Cult,” which is set around the 2016 election in an upscale Michigan suburb, is specific about its state-of-the-nation intentions, adapting a Manson-esque scenario for the Age of Trump. “Cult” seems meant to describe a sort of political support as well as the narrative business of the story.
“The revolution has begun!” declares a weedy young man named Kai (Evan Peters, one of many “AHS” able stock players) as Trump is declared the winner. Across town, Ally (Sarah Paulson) is panicking. “I won’t believe anything until I see Rachel Maddow declare it,” she cries. “She’s the only one I trust.” Nate Silver and the Washington Post are attacked, in ripe language, for their bad math.
Ally, her wife, Ivy (Alison Pill) — a restaurateur, almost inevitably — and their little boy are a picture of the kind of progressive modernity Trumpworld wants to negate. But the creators are carefully inclusive; this is not exclusively an attack on the side the