The Plot Against America

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In a 2020 that the world population will not easily forget, we have had the opportunity (or at least the time) to reflect on what has happened and is happening around us. The covid-19 has allowed us to see how ineffective (and dangerous) populist and sovereignist policies can be, guided by a false national pride and united by a lack of care on the part of the people themselves who, such subjects, boast to represent and defend.

It could be said that the covid-19 has represented a litmus test for world politics and society.
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The latter have seen how they are ignored and crushed by sovereigns, presidents, nations and at the same time the powerful have discovered themselves fragile in the face of their own lies.

Unconsciously, we are living in a time when every country and area of the world can look on the other side of the globe and read a liveucronic novel, watch a live film depicting a resounding what if.

Every Italian can look, for once with pride, at the American people and discover what would have been of our people if led by a politician, or rather by an influencer who makes politics, of a similar mould to that of Donald Trump. The same for the inhabitants of Germany who, informed of what happened in Bolsonaro's Brazil, have been able to see the differences between Angela Merkel's attitude and that of her Green-Green-German "colleague".

We could say that Brazilian history is a Ukrainian history compared to German history, and vice versa, and that Italian history is a Ukrainian history compared to American history and vice versa.

By "ucronia" (pronounced with the emphasis on "i") we mean a kind of fantasy narrative often fantapolitical based on the general premise that the history of the world - at a given historical moment - has followed an alternative course to the real one, for this reason it is also called alternative history, allhistory or fantasy. I refer you to an article where the differences between ucronia, dystopia and utopia are illustrated.

All this preamble seemed necessary, or at least consistent, with the TV series that gives the title to this post:

The Plot Against America

The TV series, based on Philipp Roth's Romando, written in 2004, was produced and aired by the usual HBO. In Italy it was translated with the title "Il Complotto contro l'America", which, perhaps, will sound more familiar to you.

In the control booth a man who works with HBO constantly and whose name is inextricably linked to HBO as much as that of the Home Boxing Office is linked to his own:

David Simon

The author of The Wire, The Deuce, Generation Kill. Show Me a Hero, has this time abandoned his trusted friend and pen pal George Pelecanos to join Ed Burns.

The source of their inspiration was the aforementioned novel, which can be categorized as a political fantasy or, to tie us to our introduction, as dystopia-ucronic.

The story is set in the early 1940s, when Hitler's rise seemed almost unstoppable.

We all know how it ended, with millions of Jews exterminated in concentration camps and a war that ended thanks to the intervention of the allies, in particular the star-spangled army.

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But what would have happened if the Americans had decided to remain neutral, not to go to war and, therefore, to abandon the European citizens, the European nations, the Jews, to their own destiny?

This is what Philipp Roth must have asked himself at the time of writing his book, outlining a ucronia linked to that specific event, to that particular "what if" of recent human history.

What made the story even more compelling, and terrifying, was the choice to make history a real dystopia, not only with regard to Europe and the Jews, who in this scenario would have gone through a longer war, an uncontrolled domination by the Nazis and even greater suffering than those really suffered, but also within the United States of America.

An America outside the war would have led to ethical and moral questions for every single American citizen, but an America outside the war and a potential ally, not a belligerent one, of the Germans would have led to more than a few problems of conscience.
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These are the assumptions that David Simon puts on the table, brushing the story with his usual grace and surgical attention to the construction of the story and the characters.

It's amazing how the former journalist manages to change the subject of interest and era without ever changing his unmistakable style.

Even in "The Plot Against America" we manage to get in tune with every single detail, in contact with the lived life of each character, despite only 6 hours of shooting.

Wynona Ryder and John Turturro are two faces recognizable enough to arouse immediate interest in their interpretations of Evelyn Finkel and Rabbi Lionel Bangelsdorf. It's the work of until it's done on the "minor" characters, but not for this reason less important, that leaves as always astonishing.

The impetus of young Alvin, eager to kill Nazis (as if he were a character in Bastardi Senza Gloria), grows episode after episode, culminating in an ending that sees him as the subterranean protagonist of a fight against an even more devious and multiform enemy.

The patience and calm of Bess, wife and mother always respectful and polite, but not for this reason impermeable to the bottlenecks that the "America Firster" impose on Jews - Americans and force her husband to be less and less cautious and willing to take punches from the opponent.

And it is precisely Herman, Bess's husband, who is the most surprising character, apparently flat and one-dimensional and nuanced. A man profoundly critical, from the very first moment, of the figure of the new national hero Lindberg and the (non) role of the United States of America in the current world conflict in Europe. Herman is a man who is willing to sacrifice everything in order to be an example to his children, in order to affirm his existence as a Jewish man, but first of all as a human being, unlike Lindberg, Hitler, Gobbels who have nothing human. Herman knows that his conviction could be dangerous, his openly taking sides against the new America could be detrimental to his family. He will experience the wickedness of a nascent totalitarian regime on the land of freedom. This conflict will lead him to be constantly in the balance, constantly on the edge of conflicting, opposing but in any case just choices. To fight in the name of the Jewish people a daily war against nascent discrimination in the name of the Jewish people or to shield his family from possible retaliation by fascists, KuKuxKlan or other fanatics?

There are also the dramas of the little Seldon, Philip and Sandy, children, youngsters who go from the euphoria of an America outside the war and more inclusive, to the terror of a ghetto that is no longer safe, of a nation that is no longer theirs, ready to sacrifice them like lambs on Easter Sunday.

As always, David Simon wedges himself into the lives of the characters with scenes that are often very brief and detached, taking us from Alvin to Herman, from Bess to Evelyn, from the ghetto to the rooms of power, in an instant, without ever confusing us, without ever creating a sense of disorientation in the spectator.

Simon's skill, by now acclaimed, is that of inexorably succeeding in sketching a large and complex picture, starting from simple stories and completely marginal characters, at least at the beginning.

In the TV series of the author of The Wire, you will find it hard to find an absolute protagonist, a single man in charge of the story.

There will never emerge a main storyline but many fundamental subplots, vital to each other but never overwhelming each other. This also happens in The Plot Against America. Alvin's story is no more important than Herman's, Evelyn's path is different from that of her sister Bess but no more relevant, yet if you tried to eliminate the storyline of one you would end up depriving the other of the power of his own.

It is an immense work that Simon, and in this case Burns too, are able to complete, combining it with the power of the message, of the analysis that they bring on the small screen.

In watching The Plot Against America, one cannot but think of that masterpiece by Watchmen, another work by HBO. They are 2 profoundly different products, yet colliding on the same underlying theme: the birth of racial hatred, the value of sacrifice, the ascending climax that characterizes every spiral of hatred and violence.

In The Plot Against America we witness the ruthless reconstruction of what the life of a Jewish person could have been like in an America ruled by pro-Nazis, capable of formally calming the "jews" but at the same time making their life hell.

A democracy does not become a dictatorship overnight with the snap of a finger.

The fall into the underworld of totalism is rather a slow descent that starts from afar, from small deprivations of freedom, from accepting ethical and moral compromises, from looking the other way more and more frequently. The sum of these small actions usually represents the beginning of the end.

If there is one man capable of representing the imperceptible that dwells in society, it is David Simon.

If there is a TV series that this year has managed to represent what a world like the one designed by Philipp Roth could have been like, inevitably approaching it to a present that is not exactly rosy from the point of view of civil rights, that was precisely The Plot Against America.

Simon's gaze, combined with Roth's imagination, cast the shadows of the past into the present, giving us 6 leaden and traumatic episodes, and, above all, extremely topical and necessary.

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