American Horror story season 7, episode 1 review: How Cult's own take on Trump reveals the state of political satire
Is it a case of right idea, wrong time?
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What is the state of political satire today? It’s the question that plagued my mind throughout American Horror Story: Cult’s season premiere. In an environment in which late night hosts now lean less and less on one-liners, and more on heartfelt defiance and tear-filled speeches, Donald Trump has shoved America to a point so farcical, and so frightening at the same time, that it’s now beyond the reach of comedy itself. Even South Park’s decided to back away from the Trump jokes.
So, in that way, AHS: Cult caught me off balance. It’s full-on, broad-brush satire produced in a period of history that feels beyond that. The show, in truth, has barely changed its DNA; it’s always traded in operatic, grandiose approaches to the likes of gender, sexuality, violence, and vanity.
But the key, usually, is that all these notions are explored in the allegorical – through witches, aliens, vampires, and ghosts. Topical references might be plentiful, but they function only to keep things nice and pop culture-y and rarely develop beyond the superficial. Here, however, Cult plunges headfirst into a topic numbingly huge in its implications, and the results are fairly disconcerting.
We open, in fact, on Trump, as we spin through the news cycle to reach 2016’s election night and the establishment of protagonist and antagonist as placed on either end of the political spectrum. Ally (Sarah Paulson) is a glossy image of middle-class liberalism, plucked right out of a Clinton campaign ad: a successful working mother in a same-sex marriage with Ivy (Alison Pill).
Kai (Evan Peters), on the other hand, is a “4Chan” basement dweller who’s basically a discount Joker, spouting pseudo-intellectual rants about the beauty of chaos. He’s delighted by Trump’s win, slathering himself in a homemade Cheetos facemask to taunt his Clinton-campaigner sister Winter (Billie Lourd).
Ryan Murphy explicitly stated the show’s not intended to be a pro-Clinton, anti-Trump narrative and, in light of Charlottesville, it’s natural to be suspicious at the thought of a “both sides” narrative. But to assume that of Cult doesn’t seem fair to its intentions.
Ally’s made out as a figure of mockery, certainly; she’s a stereotype of that comfortable white liberalism that thought the election of “Barack” (as she calls him) magically fixed all problems and who believed Trump’s win was an utter impossibility, as if it weren’t supported by centuries of systemic white supremacy. “I won’t believe it until I hear Rachel Maddow say it, she’s the only one I trust!” she yells in disbelief. “Go to hell Huffington Post!”
But, really, it’s fair to say AHS has always assumed a liberal audience – it pretty much lives for conservative boycott, in fact - and Murphy’s projects always have a tendency to poke fun at their own viewers; like producing season-upon-season of morbidity and then having Hotel’s serial killer dinner party expose exactly how unhealthy our fascination with death and murder really is.
Cult’s examination of the election is more of the same. Indeed, Kai’s character is intriguing because he's not an attempt to represent some amalgamation of Trump’s base as a whole, but instead represents a very specific stereotype that anyone who’s spent time on Twitter will be both familiar with and baffled by.
That 9th circle of hell of the internet inhabited by white dudes who translated their own insecurities into paranoid delusion and tinfoil hat conspiracies, who talk with the over-rehearsed grandiosity of Greek philosophers because they’re afraid otherwise their own shortcomings will be found out. Someone driven entirely by fear, only now empowered “Papa Bear Trump”, as Kai is witheringly told.
Fear, in fact, is very much the central theme of this year’s season. Ally’s reaction to the election is (understandably) hysterical, but it also manages to spark up old phobias she worked so hard to suppress: clowns, tiny holes, enclosed spaces, blood. Kai is desperate to seek it out as a means of control.
It’s here that AHS’ old reliance on allegory remerges in full, and the results are far more effective; Ally becomes the target of a group of clowns who seem intent on pushing her to the edge, but finds that no one will believe her wild stories. When she comes under attack in the grocery store, the security cameras apparently show her screaming and throwing bottles of rosé (a fine weapon) at thin air. Conspiracy or insanity?
How fear can play into the rise of demagogues like Trump is fascinating territory and there’s boundless potential in what Cult appears to be setting up. The only issue is that it’s hard to take that removed perspective – to laugh at ourselves, or to view things from an emotionless distance – right when we’re in the centre of experiencing it; the result is now that every expression, every sentence feels like some definitive political statement. And that’s certainly not what Cult intends to be.
If anything, Murphy’s mistake here might have been to get overexcited by the zeitgeist potential of his idea and fire the gun too early. But, then again, with the very future of America seeming so bleak, maybe he’s just taking the opportunity while he has it.
American Horror Story airs Tuesdays at 10PM in the US on FX, and airs on FOX UK the following Friday at 10PM. Season 6, Roanoke, comes to Blu-ray and DVD on 11 September.
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