So a famous sociologist once proposed the following question...
Would it be possible or in other words fake the robbery of a bank without committing an
offence?
The obvious answer then would be, no.
Someone might get a heart attack or the police would shoot the robbers regardless of whether
they are pretending or not.
What I'm trying to say is that there is no such thing as, 'It's just a prank, bro'.
And the same goes for Fargo...
Because no matter how well established the illusion, reality will always inevitably break
through.
But before I get into what this all means and why it's so relevant in helping to understand
this particular movie, we first have to address the elephant in the room.
The world of Fargo is pretty.. weird, or quirky to say the least.
For starters, except the opening sequence, the movie doesn't even take place in Fargo,
but rather in Minnesota.
It's characters walk around with off-beat eccentric names like: Jerry Lundegaard, Marge
Gunderson, Shep Proudfoot, Mike Yanagita and Gare Gru...
Gaear Grimsrud.
And then there is Fargo's weather.
The icy, colorless, snowclad grounds of Minnesota seem to stand in stark contrast to the apparent
niceness of its characters.
All of this is accompanied by a score of adapted Norwegian folk music, combined with the occasional
sounds from cars and white noise from television sets.
But the lifeless surroundings in Fargo also help give away the true character of almost
its entire population...
Which is that they really have none.
Especially who we would consider to be the good guys show an almost complete lack of
emotional intelligence...
Marge doesn't really seem all that phased by the brutal murder of a police officer and
two unlucky witnesses.
According to film scholar Steven Carter Marge's use of this grammatical parataxis is indicative
of the fact that she's only able to respond aesthetically, not emotionally to suffering
and death.
And when she does finally seem to be nauseated by the entire spectacle, it turns out to be
from morning sickness due to her pregnancy.
You could argue that she's seen this more often in her profession, but since she lives
in such a small town this seems highly unlikely.
Another desensitized character is Jerry's father-in-law, Wade Gustafson.
After hearing the news that his daughter has been kidnapped he seems more troubled over
the amount of ransom he'll have to pay then over the safety of his own daughter.
This concern leads him to take matters into his own hands which of course ultimately causes
him to get shot and killed.
Oh and did you notice how Wade barely even reacts to getting shot?
Now take a look at his emotions in this earlier scene...
Television and money, or the artificial and the non-real have more of an emotional impact
on Wade than real life and death itself.
Literary theorist Frederic Jameson coined this postmodern phenomenon as 'waning of affect'.
Or the inability of ordinary people of our era to feel passionately about anything.
And another theorist, communications scholar Joshua Meyrowitz, links this directly to media
overexposure.
And in Fargo this predominantly takes the form of... television sets.
Which brings us back to this scene...
The kidnapping of Jean Lundegaard.
Now first off, this scene is relevant because it acts as the inciting incident which propels
the story forward.
But more importantly, this is the first scene that links media overexposure to the waning
of affect in Fargo's characters.
Notice how Jean reacts to the presenters on TV-show as if they were actually talking to
her.
See how this genuine reaction quickly shifts into a second long gaze as Carl Showalter
prepares to break in.
It's only when he finally breaks the glass that he becomes 'real' to Jean.
Now I know this might be a little confusing so let's try to put things into context first.
The sociologist Jean Baudrillard, the same scholar who came up with the fake robbery
example, explains this blurring of reality through his work on simulacra and simulation.
In which he states that our world today consists of copies or fake things and objects that
have no original to begin with.
Our reality has been highly mediated and replaced with simulations that imitate real world processes
and systems.
Which basically comes down to that our reality is both fake and real at the same time.
Take for example the First Gulf War, the first invasion of Iraq in 1991...
According to Baudrillard, it could have just as well never took place, because it was so
mediated and so scripted, that it provided the viewers at home with a fake reality or
a simulation of the actual event.
The Coen brothers endeavored to do something similar with Fargo, as we can see right here
at the very start of the movie.
As if the claim that it's telling a true story exactly as it occurred isn't already problematic
enough, a simple Google search reveals that the whole event actually never happened...
It seems that by doing this the Coen brothers are taking a jab at every film and TV-show
that claims to tell a true story.
And it sheds light on the issue of historical representation in media.
Even Fargo's entire story is built on a simulation.
Because the whole kidnapping of Jean is of course all set up by her husband Jerry, who's
just looking for a way to receive a large sum of money from Jean's
wealthy dad, Wade.
But of course, as I've said earlier, there is no such thing as the perfect illusion,
and for all the outsiders this 'fake' kidnapping is perceived as very real,
especially for those who end up becoming the victim of it.
This issue of perceived reality becomes even more clear during Marge's search for the two
killers...
The witness obviously mistakes that Marge will be able to figure out what the suspect
looks like with this vague description.
The problem of course is that while for one person 'funny looking' might evoke an image
of Steve Buscemi, for another person, be it from another culture,
background or even personality, this might just as well mean a modern day hipster, or
an Amish, anything goes really.
How we give meaning to objects, events and the people around us is all dictated by our
perceived reality, which can be totally different depending on the person.
Hence why Carl Showalter, who's obviously not from around town is so weirded out and
irritated by the people he meets.
What's also important to note is that these simulated realities can also be broken an
re-adapted to new situations.
Marge is shown to be rather naive in her belief that people wouldn't construct elaborate
lies to the police.
The whole reason why the Mike Yanagita segment is even in the film is because it exposes
Marge to her own gullibility.
She then decides to return to Jerry, knowing that he might have lied to her.
You could even argue that the characters in Fargo are so caught up in their media overexposed,
simulated realities, that they themselves have become part of the simulation.
Jerry works as an executive car salesman and seems to have adopted every part of the stereotypical
role of his job.
He is shown to be sleazy, scheming and egotistical as he even forgets about his own kid.
Other characters are identified with simulacra or lifeless objects in the world.
Greaer Grimsrud is both the Marlboro Man as well as the folk figure of Paul Bunyan,
as he uses an ax to kill his partner Carl.
The Coen brothers even go as far as to comparing the characters to animals,
Wade is seen with the painting of a lion behind his desk and horse sculptures.
Jean runs away on all fours as Carl and Graear break in.
Jerry's house is filled to the brim with pig objects, which might not come as a surprise
as he squeals like a pig upon arrest.
Marge's husband Norm's identity is based around Mallards, Carl is called a weasel and Shep
an...
The film also places an excessive amount of attention on the appetite of several characters.
Marge is seen eating food in numerous scenes and the connection with animals is made when
Wade's accountant is shown to be chewing like a cow.
The focus on these primal instincts are there to emphasize the dehumanization of these shallow
characters due to media over exposure, and come to a climax at the end of the film, when
Marge's pregnancy is compared to that of a beetle.
Just like the beetle, Marge will give birth during spring and the entire
cycle will start over again.
So in the end the Coen brothers manage to brilliantly and quite subtly incorporate the
issues and paradoxical nature of living in the postmodern era, in which reality and simulation
have been mixed together and are interchangeable.
We as the audience can laugh and enjoy the silliness of Fargo and its characters, knowing
that all of this of course is far away from the reality of real life, but that would be
missing the point.
Because next time when someone asks you about the city of Fargo, North-Dakota,
or you read about it in the news or you spot on a map, you might just be thinking of totally
different place, somewhere in a Minnesota, about a true story that
took place in 1987, which was told exactly as
it occurred.