COLLAPSING HOUSE OF CARDS
Show may end over Spacey allegations
There are few shows with the pretensions to and patina of greatness that I hate more than Netflix’s House of Cards. And after the sexual abuse allegations against Kevin Spacey, production on the show has been halted, and Netflix says the season, if finished, will be its last.
My contempt for the series long preceded Anthony Rapp’s decision to come forward.
House of Cards presented itself as a savvy look at the dark heart of national politics, when actually it was a wildly naive conspiracy story that only worked by making Frank Underwood’s (Spacey), opponents too dumb to catch him.
House of Cards suggested Washington institutions were basically easy to manipulate, smoothing away the irritating narrative inconveniences that are constituent politics, congressional caucuses and the workings of bureaucracy.
The series ran down journalism and journalists, particularly in its egregious portrayal of reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), willing to sleep her way to the top.
It treated ideology as a rube’s fantasy, rather than as a real motivation for a lot of what goes on in Washington.
House of Cards, gleefully embraced the worst tendencies in our actual politics, without wit or insight. Frank and his wife, Claire (Robin Wright), racked up the kind of body count conspiracy theorists actually attribute to Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the show had nothing to say about why those murders might be necessary to Underwood’s ascendance, or what in the culture of Washington would let them get away with killing people.
Frank Underwood, like our current president, is a man without ideology. Unlike Donald Trump, he’s also someone without qualities that speak to any particular strain in the American electorate. Just as
The West Wing promoted a relatively naive vision for how principle could power a presidential administration, House of Cards has promulgated a view of politics dangerously unsuited to help us deal with our present moment.
The series encouraged viewers to assume the worst about politicians and to dramatically underestimate their own power to check them.
It argued we ought to look out for the glossy criminal machines eating our politics, rather than being horrified by the shambling ethical disaster that is our actual reality. And House of Cards suggested the smart thing to do was to fall for all of this nonsense, rather than assessing the complexities and fault lines in our political system as a whole.
House of Cards, gleefully embraced the worst tendencies in our actual politics, without wit or insight.