House of Cards

Emmanuel Taïeb

Description

Although, by all appearances, House of Cards is a television series about politics, it in fact explores some of the most subversive questions raised by Machiavelli’s writings: what if the Prince were a ferocious animal? What would happen if our political world were overtaken by vampires? Would they be capable of mastering their bloodthirsty instincts, or would they remain true to their fundamental nature?

In their relentless quest for power, Frank Underwood, his wife Claire and his chief of staff Doug Stamper are so ruthlessly ambitious that they demolish all boundaries between good and evil. According to a Machiavellian logic taken to its extreme, the specific necessity of a given situation always wins out over common morality. In the struggle for survival, these people are the predators, determined to come out on top whatever the cost.

This book examines how the producers of the series take monstrous characters – who would not be out of place in a crime series or a horror film – and set them in the world of politics, which offers little resistance to violence and turns into a laboratory for systematic destruction. In this variation on the conflict between brutalization and civilization at the heart of power, the political sphere therefore becomes the scene of crime par excellence.

Although the book contains concepts and theories in political science, it is accessibly written. It is also didactic: many examples are taken from the series and from the novels, so the reader always understands what is at stake in the analysis. It will find both an academic and a more general audience.

Primary academic readership will be scholars and students in law, political science, film studies, media studies and cultural studies. The wider readership will include fans of the show, and of course people interested in politics, political thrillers, political philosophy, corruption and democracy, as well as the nature of political leadership.

Introduction

Chapter 1: WELCOME TO WASHINGTON

The Art of Wordly Wisdom

The struggle for positions

Real and fictional manoeuvres

Chapter 2: THE PRESENCE OF EVIL

Progressive descent into crime

The dark side of the force

Masters and accomplices

Chapter 3: ANIMALITY IN POLITICS

Political Darwinism

Prey and predators

A politics of instinct

The strange world of politics

Chapter 4: ABNORMALITY IN POLITICS

A vampire couple

Gender and asexuality

A wake-up call for democracy

Conclusion: SURVIVAL

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Télévision
• Cultural Studies
• American
• General
• Politics
• Television
• Political corruption
• General officer
• Philosophy
• América
• Philosophie et théologie
• Political
• Media Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781789385090
• Langue: English

Extrait

House of Cards
House of Cards
Monsters in Politics
Emmanuel Ta eb
Translated from the French by Lucy Garnier *


* Updated and enlarged version of House of Cards. Le Crime en politique (Paris: Puf, 2018).
First published in the UK in 2022 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2022 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago,
IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2022 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy editor: Newgen Knowledgeworks
Cover and layout designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Production editor: Georgia Earl, Debora Nicosia
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78938-507-6
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78938-508-3
ePUB ISBN 978-1-78938-509-0
Printed and bound by Short Run Press Limited.
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.

This book was translated with the financial support of the Institut Universitaire de France.
Contents
House of Cards : Series Facts
Introduction
1. Welcome to Washington
The art of wordly wisdom
The struggle for positions
Real and fictional manoeuvres
2. The Presence of Evil
Progressive descent into crime
The dark side of the force
Masters and accomplices
3. Animality in Politics
Political Darwinism
Prey and predators
A politics of instinct
The strange world of politics
4. Abnormality in Politics
A vampire couple
Gender and asexuality
A wake-up call for democracy
Conclusion: Survival
Bibliography
House of Cards
Series Facts

Title : House of Cards
Country of origin : USA
Created by : Beau Willimon (Pack Beauregard Willimon)
Original network: Netflix, 2013
Number of seasons : 6
Original release : 2013-18
Genre : Political thriller
Cast : Kevin Spacey (Frank Underwood), Robin Wright (Claire Underwood), Michael Kelly (Doug Stamper), Mahershala Ali (Remy Danton), Molly Parker (Jackie Sharp), Gerald McRaney (Raymond Tusk), Kate Mara (Zoe Barnes), Rachel Posner (Rachel Brosnahan), Elizabeth Marvel (Heather Dunbar), Derek Cecil (Seth Grayson), Neve Campbell (LeAnn Harvey), Diane Lane (Annette Shepherd), Patricia Clarkson (Jane Davis), Greg Kinnear (Bill Shepherd), etc.
Synopsis : When Francis Frank Underwood, the Democratic House Majority Whip, is not appointed Secretary of State as promised to him by the newly elected President, Garett Walker, he vows to take revenge on those who have crossed him. With the help of his wife, Claire, and his devoted Chief of Staff, Doug Stamper, he embarks on a series of political and extra-political manoeuvres, removing the man who was appointed in his place, becoming Vice President, forcing the President to resign and taking his place at the head of the country, without ever being elected to any of these positions. The various other protagonists that cross his path are all pawns in his complex machinations, and he either uses them to political ends or destroys them when they become troublesome or dangerous, for example, assassinating the Congressman Peter Russo and the journalist Zoe Barnes, for whom he had been acting as a source. Doug Stamper, for his part, kills Rachel Posner, a prostitute in possession of compromising information, while Claire poisons her lover, the writer Tom Yates. Other characters are also assassinated by corrupt secret service agents. Even though they remain obscure, the actions of Underwood and his accomplices begin to cause concern to various political actors and commentators, giving rise to a journalistic investigation that advances slowly but surely. Once in power, Underwood continues to pull all the strings, using his talents as a cunning politician to handle the complex affairs now in his hands (negotiations with Russia, war in Syria, a plan to increase employment, etc.). After a gerrymandered election, Underwood is eventually elected President in his own right, with Claire as his running mate, but soon resigns under the threat of impeachment, leaving Claire to become President of the United States. Alone and pregnant with Frank s child, she manages to counter the various plots against her and eventually assassinates Doug Stamper, whom her husband had designated as his sole heir.
For Marieke, my charming accomplice, and for Man s, my little detective In memory of my father, master of politics
Introduction 1

One nation, Underwood .
Frank Underwood, S5E4

Does politics lend itself well to crime? In democratic societies, the reverse should, in principle, be true: politics should be a peaceful form of competition, in which adversaries triumph by means of rhetoric and votes obtained. Any outbreak of violence is immediately condemned as interfering with the electoral order and unleashing the aggressive impulses that centuries of civilization have taught humanity to control. House of Cards , the first series entirely produced by the American company Netflix, takes the opposite line. Rather than presenting the world of politics as a peaceful space, it makes it into the stage for murder. The show depicts politics in Washington D.C. but, for the purposes of the storyline, this backdrop, while both plausible and familiar, is not always realistic. The world created by the series focuses on the actions of a few specific characters who follow Machiavelli s sixteenth-century utilitarianism whereby necessity knows no law, including by subverting politics through violence. It is from this perspective that the political activity represented in House of Cards is fictional in nature and sets itself up as an experiment in the application of Machiavellian principles to contemporary politics.
A great many TV series start from a what if - a new idea that makes it possible to break away from the real world (Faure and Ta eb 2015 : 14). In the case of House of Cards , the following what ifs seem plausible: what if Machiavelli s idea of the prince as a ferocious animal were realized? What if carnivorous beasts were to take over the world of politics? Would they manage to control their savagery or would they remain true to their deeper nature? Would they ever be unmasked? In this book, I explore the hypothesis that the House of Cards showrunners shine a light on criminal and monstrous figures, of the sort one might find in crime films or novels, but place them in the political world, which serves as a laboratory allowing them to observe how these characters behave and survive. The series formal coldness is a result of the entomological lens through which its political actors are observed, like guinea pigs in an experiment. David Fincher, who directed the first two episodes, set the tone by explicitly choosing a classic style of filming, avoiding hand-held cameras or Steadicams and focusing on the plot and characters rather than on aesthetic brilliance. It is important to recall from the outset that serial narratives are made up not simply of situations, scenarios and dialogues but also of direction. In this respect, they therefore constitute suitable subjects for film analysis, an approach too rarely employed and that I adopt in places in this book.
The tension between brutality and civilization at the heart of many political analyses of modernity, including the work of the German sociologist Norbert Elias ( [1939] 2000 ), clearly underpins the series as a whole. Only, rather than present a very humane character forced to make difficult moral choices or to limit his or her violence, House of Cards showcases a protagonist with only the faintest hint of humanity, with whom the viewer is hard pushed to identify, and above all, without concern for morality. This is a series about brutality: about how it hides among men and how it functions in the everyday, whether in the crushing of others or in the protagonists unquenchable thirst for blood. Given that politics is essentially focused on combat, it emerges as a highly appropriate locus for fulfilling violent impulses. This hypothesis - that House of Cards is in fact an exercise in examining monstrosity - means considering the series as being closer to fantasy than to political realism.
However, to create some familiarity within the offbeat political world it presents, the series makes a lot of connections with the real-life political game in the United States and viewers are given ample opportunity to recognize thinly disguised characters or events. It is a well-known fact that The West Wing s screenwriters were inspired to create the character of the Latino Democratic candidate Matt Santos by a young Black Senator who had made an impression on them (Barack Obama ). Similarly, Beau Willimon, the main screenwriter for House of Cards , has said that he wanted Frank Underwood to come from a small town (Gaffney) just like Harry Truman or Bill Clinton. In the series, the Russian President is clearly Vladimir Putin s double, and two Pussy Riot members play themselves, as do several well-known journalists and commentators in the United States. This back and forth with reality is not limited to transparent allusions and extends to one of the key elements of House of Cards , which is its temporality. The series follows the rhythms of the Americanelectoral and political calendar, but in a sort of negative mirror of the United States: this America is a dream - or nightmare - world where a dark form of politics plays out, framed as the truth of real-life power relations.
In turn, this parallel fictional world seeps into the real world, as though reality needed to enter into dialogue