I'm calling the Deadwood fans out there !
Apr. 25th, 2012 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniBut her chapter on "Women and power", although convincing in regard to the characters of Jane and Richardson and thought-provoking, left me unsatisfied in regard to the big scheme of things, and she doesn't even try to analyse the theatre group and what it brings to the show. I wonder if there a work out there that does. If so, point me to the right direction, please!
So let's try to decipher, here and now, the confusing theatre stuff, especially in the final three episodes, a storyline that, according to some fans, made no sense and ruined the show (btw it reminds me of all the critiques of the First Evil in Buffy's season 7).
First, I wanted to write a complete review of each episode but I changed my mind, and will rather study one aspect of the ending season 3 today: Jack Langerish and the mysterious women who were suddenly showed up near the end of the season.
Actually, three new female characters are introduced in the final episodes and I think that three new dark-haired women are supposed to be interpreted together. They look alike A LOT and, yes, it is supposed to be confusing.
The women are: Mary the artist (the woman in red), Josiane the Gypsy dancer (and possibly a former prostitute) and Janine the new whore whom Cy hired at Bella Union.
I have said it before in my previous entries about season 3, and I'm saying it again, the theatre storyline is pure meta, a mere mise-en-abîme of the show's current storylines and writing, like a clever reflection on a Flemish painting or a Coryphaeus and his Chorus adressing the audience with its singing or speaking with the characters on stage (in Jack's case he mostly speaks with Al), in Greek tragedy. Actually, the same way Joss Whedon borrowed Shakespearian (and medieval) use of Vice characters to create The First Evil (if you aren't familiar with my theory see this old post of mine), David Milch used his academic knowledge to play a little with the viewers.
I even think that Jack Langrische, although he is a historical character, represents Milch on the show (apparently many characters have some of Milch's personal fetaures in a "Madame Bovary c'est moi!" kind of way, but Langrische, given his job is his fictional alter-ego). It is a literary process that might look a bit too sophisticated or hermetic for a tv show, but David Milch used to be a literature teacher in Yale after all.
The theatre people are not true characters, or at least they aren't as real as our regular characters. They live on another writing plane even though they do interact with the other characters on screen. They are there to tell the story, to comment on the action, to observe and to repeat, or echo like a musical counterpoint.
It's incredibly confusing given that the regular characters themselves often work as doubles whose storylines can be seen as parallels. Milch added another layer with the theatre people (because he's the god of the show and could do so!) and many viewers couldn't figure it out, thinking that their scenes were mostly pointless. On terms of plot they were indeed, but it wasn't because of bad writing that would have gone nowhere. The characters were just not really part of the plot. In a way they were ghosts haunting the Deadwood verse. It is very smart and very meta given that the show makes the audience see characters who did live once upon a time – well most of them– , historical characters who were borrowed, who are fleshed out again for us by actors. From day one Deadwood has been a clever play on fiction and reality.
Also one of the big themes in the second half of season 2 is the idea of replacement. It was hinted at, before " A Constant throb" with the Earp brothers who appeared as possible replacements for Sol and Seth (they were even dressed as the "original ones"). Their brief appearance looked like a casting, but eventually they left on the same night the exotic dancer performed. They literaly left a stage they didn't belong to. They put on a show but failed to catch the producer's eyes.
I think that the theme of replacement is a key concept to understand the mysterious women thing.
First we are introduced to the exotic dancer:
Jack: There’s a stout woman, the Countess Berman, fires and hires for the troupe. You will meet her at the theater should you appear and apply. The devout Shaunnesey has a week in advance to your account.
Gypsy: Take it back from him. I won’t take money from you.
Jack: Are you not being quite absurd, in the self-serving way of your sex? You come here penniless, a supplicant.
Gypsy: For learning.
Jack: Well well well…and to learn, must you not live? And how will you do so amidst the thoroughfare’s depravities?
Gypsy: Let me stay in the theater.
Jack: (chuckles) At a minimum, for the career to which you aspire you show the requisite presumption.
BTW I wonder how many times, David Milch had himself had to deal with aspiring actresses...
Later, Jack meets up with Claudia and the countess at the restaurant, and when they recall the Amateur Night, Claudia says:
And what about that beautiful harem dance by that darling little dark-haired prostitute?
And then we have a new theatre a parte when Jack visits the woman in red, at the Grand Central (I think we had glimpses of the woman in red before but I can't remember on which occasions exactly) :
Jack: May we speak?
Mary: You stand in the hallway addressing me in my room.
Jack: Yes. (She stands to the side allowing him to enter. She closes the door behind him.) The girl who danced last evening, vagabond sort, hodgepodge costume—
Mary: I know who you mean.
Jack: She’ll be staying in the theater, possibly joining the troupe. Knowing precious little at all events, of the course now charting I know absolutely nothing at all.
Mary: You seem to know what it means for us.
Jack: Knowing you, I suppose I do, swearing I’ve laid no carnal hand to her.
Mary: What does installing her accomplish acknowledging me could not?
Jack: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. That I’m old, that I’ve lost my belly for sham. (She opens up her dresser drawer and takes out her sketchbook.)
Mary: Every drawing I made in this sketchbook, every one I’ve dreamed of painting from, near a home where we’d live.
Jack: Say at least I never asked it of you.
Mary: You’d have me say that on the day you ask it of someone else?
Jack: Shall I have these?
Mary: No.
Jack: Paint every fucking one, Mary.
When he leaves, Mary's eyes are full of tears. As she is sorta dismissed while Jack decided to install the Gipsy girl, another woman is hired by another sort of producer, Cy Tolliver:
Cy: You might want to close the fucking door. (She closes the door.) Who the fuck are you?
Janine: Janine, that’s Sara’s friend from Cincinnati.
Cy: Hmm. That’s a stupid name for a whore. Makes the tricks feel like they’re stammerers. Ja-ni-ni-nine-nine-nine, like they’re in the fucking alps.
Janine: You can call me whatever you want.
Cy: Well, let’s call you stupid until we can think of something better. You miss Cincinnati, Janine-nine-nine-nine-nine? Are you afraid of fucking Deadwood? Do you miss your Mom and Dad? Do you have one of each? Are they above ground, do you know? Ohh…Do I see the beginnings of a tear in the corner of your left eye?
Janine: I’m all right.
Cy: For the purposes of our discussion. As much as anyone cares, is my meaning. (He puts down his glass.) All right, stupid. Con’ll advance you $5 against your first evening’s fucking. Don’t do no dope with Leon. Welcome to the Bella Union. (She opens the door and hesitates, not sure whether or not she’s supposed to leave. She looks like she has something to say. He’s turned his back on her and is writing in his ledger.) Close the fucking door, stupid!
Later, Jack breaks the news about hiring the Gypsy dancer:
Jack: To spare you surprise on our advent at the theater in the morning, I tell you here and now that you will come upon a certain person—a woman who will be joining us.
Claudia: Who is she? Where has she performed?
Jack: I believe her name is Joseanne.
Countess: She is French?
Jack: I believe. I know she’s spent time in Paris.
Claudia: Where has she performed?
Jack: She has performed nowhere that we would have knowledge of, to my knowledge.
Countess: Joseanne?
Jack: Yes.
Claudia: Living at the theater?
Jack: Temporarily.
Claudia: To be installed thereafter where?
Jack: Shut up! I won’t have it, this is getting off on the wrong foot.
Claudia: So you commit us to a long relation with Joseanne.
Jack: You will find her at the Goddamn theater in the morning is what I mean! And I won’t have this Goddamn wrong-footedness. (He turns and sees Mary.)
Mary: Thank you, Richardson.
Jack: Mean-spirited is what I mean. A lack of generosity. Selfishness. Don’t you think it all has an effect…(he turns and sees the lobby empty) on your performance?
Claudia: (crying) Does this performance seem genuine?
In the following episode we finally we get a scene between Claudia and the Countess:
Claudia: I’m leaving.
Countess: Come in.
Claudia: It’s too much. He’s too cruel.
Countess: Come in. (Claudia enters, Countess shuts the door, sighing. Claudia flops dramatically on the bed.)
Claudia: Brazenly sends the other packing, to brazenly install her replacement in the theater.
Countess: How was he brazen with the one who left?
Claudia: No one with eyes could fail to recognize their connection. And now brazenly—
Countess: Us recognizing his connection to the one who left does not mean he was brazen.
Claudia: Fine. (She gets up) Fine then. I just came to say goodbye.
Countess: Must I agree he is brazen for you to not leave the troupe?
Claudia: He has no respect for art.
Countess: Claudia.
Claudia: He hates me.
Countess: No. (I do!)
Claudia: I was well-received in Denver.
Countess: Yeah, very well received.
Claudia: I could have stayed. I could have let you all go on.
Countess: I think you were approached by Millerick.
Claudia: I was.
Countess: Go to sleep, Claudia. No coaches now anyhow.
Claudia: Did he suspect Millerick approached me?
Countess: He doesn’t miss much.
Claudia: He misses everything.
So it's clearly voiced that Josiane is taking Mary's place. She is her replacement.
And look at what Jack tells Bullock during the non-meeting he and Al joined at the hardware shop:
Jack: Surely, Sir, you leave in the certain knowledge that you are the camp’s irreplaceable man.
Yet it turns out that, thanks to Hearst fixing the election, Harry Manning wins and Bullock is replaced in the office!
So nobody is irreplaceable actually.
And of course there's Jen, being sacrified, murdered by Al, in Trixie's stead; she is another replacement whose unique still performance serves a collective purpose. Once killed and dressed up with Trixie's blouse, she played her stand-in, theatre-style. Even the blood strain is part of the mise-en-scène.
Hearst is fooled but he isn't defeated. He has won eventually, securing his possessions in Deadwood, but he leaves without destroying the camp so Jen's death accomplishes Al's goal. Here we must notice that killing Hearst wasn't an option, in spite of Jack offering his theatrical services, which sounded like providing a deus ex machina:
Jack: The man I once was, Al, was not formidable, and I am but his shadow now. And yet I’d be put to use. A decoy, perhaps. A weight to drop on villains from above.
[...]
Al: If that cocksucker hadn’t shareholders, you could murder him while you adjusted his back.
Jack: Serpent’s teeth—shareholders. 10,000 would rise to replace him.
Again, Jack provides a key line. Hearst can't be killed because of what he embodies, which is more than a simple evil individual but pure capitallism at its worst. As an individual Hearst could be eliminated but others would come in his stead, replacing him.
But that's how modern white America began after all. European conquistadores came and overcame the natives. Indians could kill them and win tempory victories, and they did sometimes, but more Europeans would come to the Eldorado from big old Europe, thousands more...
Like Cortez, Hearst is just another avatar of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent deity. And like many Mesoamerican gods, or the Greek minotaur, the monster demanded human sacrifice otherwise it would unleash hell. Jen wasn't a virgin, but she was an innocent so it worked.
Which brings me to another reading of the three women. They seem to embodie what the women usually were on Deadwood. Female characters fell into two categories: the whore and the mother.
In the whore category, we have Trixie, Joanie and all the prostitutes from either the Gem or the Bella Union.
In the mother category, we have Alma (thanks to Sofia), Martha, Aunt Lou...and Jane who doesn't consider herself worthy of being around children but loves them nonetheless and is defined by motherly features as a caretaker.
The hiring of Janine by Cy reminds us that women who come in the camp didn't have many choices. The fact that she's from Cincinnati sounds like an in-joke given that David Milch was preparing a new show, John from Cincinnati, at the time. Cy's abusive behaviour seems to point out that her fate isn't one to wish but also that he is sinking and possibly looking for Joanie's replacement (even her name sounds a lot like Joanie).
Josiane might have been a prostitute too, as Claudia suggested, but she had expectations, she wanted to find a new way; a harlot who deserted a previous "career" to learn something new, which echoes Trixie's journey (learning bookkeeping from Sol). By installing her in the theatre, Jack might be saving a real young woman from "the thoroughfare’s depravities"...but I think that Josiane is merely an echo of Janine, and of so many girls whose dreams shattered in the West(in Hollywood even!).
A man saving the young woman from a miserable life is an old trope and a male fantasy that Milch seems to play with here. In previous entries I said that I saw Jack as a mirror for Al, so his hiring Josiane would be a parallel to the bizarro way Al rescued whores from a horrible fate (the place he grew up himself and were abused as a child) to protect them in his very own personal theatre: The Gem. It turns him into a father figure, like Al. By the way, in the finale, Jack ends a conversation with Claudia by saying " I don’t know, child".
As for Mary, well, her name is quite significant – by the way it's interesting to note that the name Josiane means "God will add" and derives from the Hebrew male name: Yoseph!–, and so is the fact that Jack said Jesus Christ twice when talking to her. She is not the Whore, but the Mother, the muse even. So of course she had to be an artist!
And the last person we see Mary with before she vanishes? Richardson! The mentally-damaged man who remained a child, the man who said that he loved his mother, the man who comforted Aunt Lou, after Odell's death, calling her "Mama"!
And again there is a parallel between Jack and Al, Al who has mommy issues, and whose relationships with his own whores seem connected to the memory of his mother.
One last thing.
Jack mentioned a "sham" in his last conversation with Mary, or rather to have lost his belly for sham. With Jack being gay, one could interpret that as a sham marriage to cover his true inclinations, and Mary would be the woman he married without love but who seems to have had true affection for him, unrequited love even, and is jealous that he might have yet jumped the fence for a younger woman (hence Jack defending himself, assuring that he has "laid no carnal hand to her"). Maybe.
Also, given what Claudia said later ( "he has no respect for art"), it could be all allegorical. Jack the theatre producer who gave dying Chesterton a final Shakespearian production, would give up sham for reality, art for life? Or would be tempted to. It's unlikely. Now I wonder if the dialogue between Mary and Jack isn't more sibylline. Mary is the older woman, Josiane the younger one. All the painting that is mentioned could also refer to the make-up that actors put on, especially aging actresses. Josiane is the fresh new thing. " Time’s past, one’s fled" is another line voiced by Jack in "The Catbird Seat".
Or the dialogue is, again, a mere echo of other storylines that the "real characters" have had throughout three seasons in Deadwood: as sham unions go, we first had Seth marrying his brother's widow, aka one of the embodiements of motherhood, that is Martha. And of course there's the sham marriage between pregnant Alma and poor Ellsworth. Those shams reached to an end in season 3. The Bullock marriage became a true one, and Ellsworth could no longer bear the sham, left Alma, and finally he was shot in the head, leaving the one, who used to be the "widow Garret" and had become "Mrs Ellsworth", to be "the mother" (as Cochrane called her)only.
That last interpretation is my favourite. The theatre people were there to suggest connections to the viewers, to provide clues and interpretation. Claudia said so:
"No one with eyes could fail to recognize their connection".
So basically we shouldn' t try to understand the theatre bizarre plotline for it is rather blurry and non-existent, but we should listen and hear what the troupe tells about the show in general and the main characters in particular.
ETA: is David Milch's Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills worth reading?