Last week's episode of American Gods
may have finally introduced us to the show's villain, but this week
Shadow and Wednesday face something even scarier: Trump's America.
Neil Gaiman's novel already contained quite a bit of social
commentary on racism in America, and the bigotry and hardships faced
by immigrants, but these themes are sadly more relevant and timely
than ever, sixteen years after the book's publication. If anything,
problems of racism and anti-immigrant hatred in America have become
exponentially more severe since the pre-9/11, pre-Alt-Right landscape
that Gaiman's book was released into, and this TV series adaptation
has amplified the story's themes accordingly. Much like the searing
monologue which introduced us to the show's angrier and more
confrontational Anansi, A Murder of Gods
sees American Gods get
overtly, defiantly political – with equally brilliant results.
This
is a series about mythical beings which feed off of, and embody, what
people believe, so it is only appropriate that it holds up a mirror
to what we as a country seem to believe right now – and it doesn't
hold back when it comes to showing the ugliness of that. The “Coming
to America” segment which opens this episode is every bit as
jaw-droppingly confrontational as the one which introduced us to
Anansi, and it serves as an immediate reminder that while the series
may be based on a novel from 2001, it is very much about the world of
2017. It shows a clash between two very different embodiments of
Christianity: illegal immigrants making a dangerous journey from
Mexico to America on the strength of their faith, only to find
violent white people hiding their hatred behind the mask of the
“conservative Christian.” The segment is a punch in the gut, and
sums up the hypocrisy of modern Alt-Right racism in a very scary
nutshell. And the episode hasn't even started yet.
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| So this is what "great again" looks like... |
The
episode itself follows Wednesday and Shadow as they visit a
blue-collar middle-America small town where Vulcan, the god of fire
(Corbin Bernsen, in an excellent guest-starring role) has reinvented
his religion as a guns and ammo manufacturing empire. This is Trump's
America taken to its logical conclusion: an outwardly-quaint,
old-fashioned place where the exclusively-white citizens literally
worship guns, and display frighteningly fascistic behavior. If it may
be a bit over-the-top, it is nonetheless an effectively scary
metaphor for the behavior we see every day in this country, taken to
an extreme which feels way too plausible for comfort. It is a place
where shadow not only feels ill-at-ease, but has every right to feel
that his life might be in danger just because of the color of his
skin. And we should feel ill-at-ease too, because while it may be
distorted through a stylized dark-fantasy lens, this is very much a
reflection of our society right now, and the deep-seated problems
that we face; not just in terms of gun violence (though it certainly
addresses that in pretty chilling ways), but in terms of our
relationship with what weapons symbolize. The idea that guns have
become a symbol onto which people project their belief, and which
they turn to when they want a simple answer to increasingly difficult
problems, is all too accurate. In 2017, perhaps it would be
impossible for Media and The Technical Boy to have their strong
foothold in America's belief system without a god representing guns
being in there too, depressing as that may be.
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| "Wait, you're doing the abrasive snark thing? I thought that's what I was supposed to be doing." |
In
addition to this very compelling story, A Murder of Gods
also focuses quite a bit on character development – specifically,
the development of characters who are getting a lot more to do in
this series than they did in Gaiman's novel. Emily Browning's Laura
continues to develop into a very compelling female lead: she is a
wonderfully complex character, and Browning is excellent in the role.
She captures the complexity of Laura's personality and motivations
with a performance that is at the same time both powerful and quite
understated. This episode also gives Pablo Schreiber's Mad Sweeney
some time to shine. This series seems to be elevating Sweeney from a
side-character, who in the book didn't get too much to do, to a
larger supporting role. Schreiber is great as that sort of abrasive
jerk character who is nonetheless very entertaining to spend time
with; not someone you like, but someone who steals the show, not
unlike Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Omid Abtahi brings a much quieter and more thoughtful type of
excellence to the role of another traveler on a spiritual journey of
his own. Whittle and especially McShane continue to anchor the show
with their pair of outstanding central performances, but it is very
nice to see the ensemble continue to grow so strongly outward.
Between
the strong performances on display in this episode and the
thought-provoking (if frightening) social commentary, A
Murder of Gods is an excellent
entry in this thus-far uniformly excellent series. This is certainly
the episode (so far) which most departs from the source material, but
that is because it does such a strong job of updating the material to
the present day. It is depressing but undeniably true that the issues
of racism, violence, and gun-worship at work in this episode have
escalated quite a lot since Neil Gaiman wrote the novel, and as a
result the material needs this kind of harder edge and more
confrontational attitude. The result of these additions is a series
which understands the material well enough to elaborate on it and
make it even stronger, and certainly to make it even more relevant
and timely.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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