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House of Cards Is a Dark Fantasy of Effective Government

house of cards

House of Cards is a terrible show. It’s cynical in all the wrong ways and it shows a “dark underside” of insider Washington that doesn’t exist. There are no “puppetmasters” like Kevin Spacey’s character in real life—the government is not one hyper-competent manipulative person surrounded by the few hundred least competent and most naïve people on planet Earth. He is a cartoon. There are no Democrats from rural South Carolina, either. The show seems to have no idea how schlocky its melodrama and constant fourth-wall breaking can be. The writers seem to delight in setting records for shark-jumping once or twice per season with unforeseen murder and threesomes. There are too many plot lines that don’t work.

 All of which is to say that I watched all thirteen episodes of season two within thirty-six hours of its Netflix release, just as I did last year, and there’s nothing I would rather do right now than binge-watch another thirteen episodes. No: another hundred episodes. All I want to do is watch House of Cards, alone, all day, forever. Gimme gimme gimme, now now now.

Why am I obsessed with this show that loves to trumpet its flaws in your face? It’s not just me, either. Over the weekend my Twitter account was filled with people bitching about this show that they too were watching for thirteen straight hours. The show—which doesn’t look cheap, either—is popular enough that Netflix green-lit production of a third season before season two was released. It has either won or been nominated for dozens of Emmys and Golden Globes and whatever-else awards, which doesn’t really mean anything, but still.

The basis of the appeal to my Twitter cohorts and me is that most of us write about American politics for a living, and so we enjoy watching shows about American politics. It’s that simple. We like it when they get things WRONG so we can announce to the world that House of Cards was WRONG about something politics-related. The show is also very pretty looking.

Are there those who enjoy watching it for its supposed realism, though? That perhaps this is the nitty-gritty way in which Washington works? In another time, maybe, people would watch this show and recognize it as farce. But in the Age of the Ten-Percent Congressional Approval Rating, conditions may be such that high camp is perceivable as truth. There should be no way that anyone who witnesses Kevin Spacey’s House majority whip character murder another congressman for “getting in his way” ever views the show as anything other than escapist fantasy. And yet.

The show hooks viewers by appealing to their willingness to believe anything evil about Capitol Hill. It also does the trick, though, by offering the fantasy of an effective Congress. Frank Underwood may be a murderous sociopath, but man, can he move an education bill or what!

It’s this two-fronted appeal that goes furthest towards redeeming the show: it plays Americans’ supposed hatred of any and all political corruption and its desire for an effective government against each other, by showing how more wheeling-and-dealing by unsavory figures could loosen up the machine. Not a bad day’s work for this crappy, perfect soap opera.