On my mixed
feelings about the show’s two most prominent ethnic women.
House of Cards seems to subscribe, in its general worldview, to an extreme version of
Trip’s (Denzel Washington’s) famous lines from Glory: “And we all caught up in it, too. Ain’t nobody clean.” The
show’s deep-seated cynicism makes it very difficult to see any character as
fundamentally good, as separate from the lies and deceptions and backstabbings and
connivings that drive most of the plot threads. But if I had to identify characters
who seem closest to honorable in this dishonorable world, at or near the top of
the list would be Linda Vasquez (the President’s dedicated Chief of Staff,
played by Sakina Jaffrey)
and Gillian Cole (the founder of a nonprofit company seeking to solve the world’s
water shortages, played by Sandrine
Holt; true, Cole ends the season suing Robin Wright’s character for
discrimination based on partly false claims, but Wright deserves it and has
more or less forced Cole into that position).
Vasquez and Cole
have a couple other interesting elements in common: they are the show’s two
most prominent ethnic female characters, and are quickly and overtly identified
as such (Kevin Spacey calls Vasquez, in one of the first episode’s opening
lines, “a Latina”; Cole calls herself a “token Asian” in her second scene); and
they are both closely linked to Stanford University (Cole is repeatedly
referred to as an alum and valedictorian; Vasquez has an ongoing plotline about
trying to get her son Reuben into the university despite his less than perfect transcript
and application). Because of those elements, and because of that aforementioned
cynical worldview, it’s very hard for me not to see both characters as at least
partly commentaries—and troubling ones at that—on diversity
and affirmative action; not because they aren’t portrayed as capable and
impressive, but because so much emphasis is placed on both their ethnicity and
their ties to a university famously associated with far-left liberalism and identity
politics and the like.
It would even be
possible to read the two women’s relative goodness (at least compared, again,
to most of their fellow characters) as related to those potential connections
to affirmative action narratives: to read them, that is, as naïve and out of
their league amidst the bigger and more ruthless (and potentially more
deserving of success) Washington fish. (To be clear, those bigger fish are not
always white—one of the most ruthless of all is African American lobbyist Remy Danton, played by
Mahershala Ali.) But on the other hand, both women have achieved tremendous
success in their respective worlds, and by the end of Season 1, despite
setbacks, both are fighting hard to maintain their positions and power, and
perhaps even make the world a better place (even if, as with Cole’s lawsuit,
they have to do so by bending the rules more than they’re used to). In the
world of House of Cards, such
sustained success is nothing short of admirable, and as a result it’d be far
too easy (either in that world or as viewers of it) to dismiss Linda and
Gillian.
Next House
analyses tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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