Coen Brother Populism

Coen Brother Populism September 13, 2014

The Atlantic is running a series of essays on Coen Brothers’ films (are they Brothers, or just brothers?), written by Christopher Orr, who is re-watching the brothers’ feature films and sharing his notes. Orr gets Hudsucker wrong, but still, it’s a worthy effort.

Orr’s series took me back to a December 2013 essay by Noah Gittell on the “subtle politics” of the Coen Brother films. The Coens seem apolitical, but Gittell spots a “populist vein that runs through their work”: “Their working-class heroes do not expect much out of life—just the fairness promised by the American Dream. The sole thing Jerry Lundegaard (Fargo) desires was to get out from under his father-in-law’s thumb and be financially independent. Ulysses Everett McGill (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) is only trying to keep his family together. The Dude just wants his rug back. Of course, few of them succeed at their quests, as they find themselves continually thwarted by power structures like corporations (The Hudsucker Proxy), religious institutions (A Serious Man), and the law (almost every film they have made).”

But that raises a question: “If the Coens are such men of the people, why do they consistently ignore the very political structures that our democracy has in place to fix inequities?”

Gittell’s answer may give the brothers a tad too much credit as prophets, but it does seem to capture the mood of their films: “they intuit—correctly, I’d argue—that true populism is not served by politics, not anymore. It’s hard to take solace in democracy when Congress has an approval rating below 10 percent, when nearly half of all members of Congress are millionaires, and when everyone knows that politicians on both sides of the aisle do the bidding of corporate America.”

Perhaps the Coens are not ahead of their time; perhaps, instead, their apolitical populism helped form what Gittell notes has become a widespread American aspiration to throw all the bums out.


Browse Our Archives