Monday, March 16, 2015

Any house ought to stand a gust of wind

Professional guidance. The polite way of saying 'manipulation'.

It has come to my attention that a TV show about manipulation has become somewhat popular, so I decided to seek it out. See if it caught my fancy in a way such as the Blacklist has - every episode shows slight nudging, behind-the-scenes manipulation, all to make one man's plans come to life. Just a man's plans to ensure his survival, for it is a man who has many enemies.

The fresh show that appears to be more popular? House of Cards, you may have heard of it. After all, I'd be surprised if you hadn't. It is about a politician trying to be a good and proper politician - by that I mean the scummiest scum of a person anyone has ever heard of. So he makes sure bad things happen to his enemies and good things happen to him. In this pursuit, he takes risks that can give him little gain, but could cause his complete and utter failure. And so his victories are small. He has probably read Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' for he knows himself and his opponents, and thus triumphs at pretty much every turn. What bothers me is that every step he makes is small, and it has huge consequences. In just two seasons, he's become the president, and has appalling approval ratings, a wife that tolerates him solely due to his power, a lover that was disappeared, one friend (played by the ever-wonderful Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (The 4400)) and has magically succeeded in getting BOTH parties to work together against him. I mean seriously, American parties NEVER work together. It is an astonishing achievement to have people who disagree for a living to agree that what you are doing is completely and utterly counterproductive. It is as if someone in their infinite wisdom decided to reclassify an university's Department of Law as a subdepartment under Social Sciences. When you get that much opposition, especially from politicians and/or lawyers you know you're doing something wrong.

The show is also slow-paced. By this I mean each episode gets dragged out with lots of filler. As such, it becomes even more shocking that the protagonist has become a president in just two seasons, whereas Blacklist's protagonist has only just revealed his aim after two and a half seasons of constant action towards his goals. But House of Cards isn't all bad. It has slight non-complex manipulation, many believable characters, a long story arc.... and it reminds me of YPM.


To those who don't know, Yes, (Prime) Minister was (the new version isn't as good) a British satire show about politics. In it, a journalist becomes a minister following general elections, and meets his staff. The staff - civil servants - are the people who are actually in charge, regardless of which party is in office. As such, they seek out ministers who look good and are willing to follow their... professional guidance. As it happens, the protagonist Jim Hacker is quickly promoted to the position of Prime Minister by no fault of his own. On the way he becomes aware of the ploys of the civil servants, often spearheaded by his own Permanent Secretary, and tries to wiggle his way out, wanting to be independent. He even attempts to use these ploys to advance his own agendas. All this in a satire that even The Iron Lady enjoyed. But it is an excellent study of manipulation, game theory, politics etc.

This said, House of Cards moves at the pace of a small-budget drama, but has the influences of old successful classics. It isn't awesome in itself, but it is a surprisingly good introduction to more serious pieces of work, be they satire or not.

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