ABSTRACT
While the 2016 presidential debates roll around in the US, the world is watching a new season of Netflix’s House of Cards released on March 4 to engage us again with a provocatively told, dark-humored narrative of Francis and Claire Underwood’s personal lives. How the personal is always also political and what this means in terms of representations of power on American television has been repeatedly addressed both within the series and beyond its narrative boundaries since the show premiered in 2013 with all thirteen episodes at one time. Being the first original series produced under the Netflix brand, House of Cards has received extraordinary attention not only for its complex portrayal of a dynamic, manipulative, blood-thirsty power-couple, played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, but also for its unorthodox distribution and connectedness with multiple origins. A remake of the same-titled 1990 BBC’s miniseries, which in its turn is based on the same-titled British bestseller novel written by Michael Dobbs right after the demise of Thatcher’s regime in the UK, the Netflix version adapts the theme of ruthless power struggles in the fictional present of US politics, following South Carolina Congressman Underwood’s climb to the top of Washington’s ‘food chain’. Murder, betrayal, corruption, violation of rules but also charisma, impressive knowledge of human nature and the ability to take risks are complexly intertwined as characteristics of both Washington political and the Underwoods’ everyday life. The diegetic connections between them unfold in a multi-authored, long-term narrative with manifold references that, according to both journalistic and academic discussions as well as social commentary on the web, range from ‘sociopathic’ to ‘Machiavellian’, deal with highly conflictual societal issues and extend the boundaries of what has been presumed to be complex televisual narration. This growing narrative complexity (Mittell 2006), accompanied by a con-
troversial metastory proclaiming House of Cards as a series “that will change everything about what was once commonly referred to as TV” (Sternbergh 2014), can be considered partly responsible for the celebrated importance of the
show and, yet, cannot be taken for granted. The rise of serialized political plot lines on American television, which in their proliferation across narrative worlds of quality dramas such as Homeland (Showtime, 2011-present), Veep (HBO 2012-present) or Scandal (ABC 2012-present) become edgier and more provocative not just because they were planned this way but because they compete with, react to and complement each other in a variety of contexts. This implicitly raises the question: Why? Which practices in and beyond the writers’ room make a series like House of Cards appear as one of the most prominent political narratives on screens? How might various modes of participation, appropriation, interpretation and creation contribute to its narrative complexity? Why is it accorded special status over others? What are the redistribution dynamics that make it engage in broader cultural relations of popular legitimation and acceptance? Which sociopolitical issues and power relations are reproduced in its long-term narrative and which can be challenged? To answer these questions with regard to the specifics of both House of Cards’ political narrative and the narrative politics followed by Netflix, we will reflect on the workings of the series’ narrative environment (1) in terms of its capacity to create associations connected to other traditional and popular narratives, (2) in connection to the data-rich, analytically driven production dynamics merging TV with the internet, and (3) as embedded in relations of increasingly global industrial operation, media practice and cultural experience.
