ABSTRACT
As noted in the introduction of this collection, the majority of political shows on millennial American television share a dystopian view of politics, one fraught with scandal, incompetence, fraud and exploitation, irrespective of their satirical/comedic or dramatic narrative modes. Despite the fact that the dark side of politics is always present in every fictional representation to create the necessary narrative conflict between good and evil, in the past it was usually reserved for secondary characters. The 2010s, however, introduced a narrative which dared question the integrity of the American political protagonist. Shows of the second decade of the 2000s went as far as to depict the president as a murderer (House of Cards and Scandal), creating a fictional political cosmos that is populated by astonishingly flawed individuals, with the possible exception ofMadam Secretary, whose protagonist has not yet made her dark side apparent – if she even has one. Yet, despite the overwhelming darkness of both characters and plot, and the questions they raise in both the media and academia, I find that all the shows share a narrative parameter; the idea of the USA. as the only political system that can save the world from evil powers and bring prosperity to humanity. In this chapter, I therefore argue that despite the obvious and oftentimes
unforgivable transgressions of the majority of these shows’ main characters, and the representation of the unseen illicit workings of the political arena, the narratives still promote American exceptionalism, interventionism, and capitalist ideology. Thus, I see contemporary political shows as the continuation of classic films and TV shows of the past in that they safeguard the core of American ideology, despite having assimilated the fact that modern viewers are more sophisticated and certainly more informed and could not easily accept a simple good vs. evil dichotomy. Yet, even in the present television landscape with its multi-faceted and complicated characters that operate in-between good and evil – usually leaning towards the second pole – Russia or the ex-USSR has re-emerged as a major antagonist. Interestingly, this narrative choice enforces not only the cultural verisimilitude of the shows, bringing fiction one step closer to real life, but it enforces the shows’ nuanced underscoring of American uniqueness and superiority. This chapter concentrates on the relationship between Russia/ex-USSR in
House of Cards and The Americans, two shows I view as exemplary of
contemporary political narratives and also promoters of American exceptionalism. My methodology includes a macro-narrative analysis of the shows’ seasons in order to extract the main narrative arcs. I aim to show that despite the corruption, darkness and perversion that reign in the representation of US political tactics in these two fictional universes, a parallel narrative maintains if not empowers the major policies and decisions of the US government. I am borrowing the term American exceptionalism from the rhetoric of the GOP but I am using it in this chapter as a politically neutral expression for the following reasons; first, although there is no translation of the word “exceptionalism” in Greek, its paraphrase is well understood in the Hellenic and I would add European context as a rhetoric of uncontested superiority that the USA promotes irrespective of whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power. I consequently argue that most political TV shows insist, albeit indistinctly, on the nation’s exceptional character, so much so that it has become a trope repeated in a great number of film and television narratives, irrespective of genre, perpetuating a type of political theory that finds the structure of the USA as exceptional and unfaltering.
