"Fargo" & Confronting The White Winterland - Chris "Preach" Smith

Photo Credit: FX

In the past few years, fans of dramatic television series
here in the United States have seen a sharp uptick in
the level of high quality programming on their screens.
It’s no accident - the traditional major networks have
been struggling to compete with serial offerings from
cable networks like HBO and Showtime as well as other
networks like FX. Add Netflix and Amazon to the mix
and we now are in the midst of a treasure trove of solid
TV programming available. For me, it becomes a bit of
work just to keep up with the amount of shows to check
out. One that has caught my eye from last year has
been Fargo, inspired by the iconic Coen Brothers movie
from 1996 and now in its second season on FX. It might
be the best series on television right now. And one of
those reasons is the character of Hanzee Dent, the Native
American right-hand man of the vicious Minnesota crime 
boss Dodd Gerhardt.

Fargo has been a crowd-pleaser because it has embraced
the dark humor of Joel and Ethan Coen’s film of the same
name, and has delivered compelling characters along with
storylines taken from real-life events. Plus a lot of gritty
action and noir elements don’t hurt either. This combo is
all the more important because of the frozen Midwestern
setting. White as far as the eye can see, in both the ethnic
population and the landscape. This season, Fargo has become
a prequel of sorts to the previous one that was set in 1996.
When the show opens up, we are confronted with a Native
actor on the set of a fictitious Ronald Reagan picture set in
the Old West during a break. The clueless director makes an
awkward comment about the actor’s “people” being part 
of the massacre the film is portraying. From that point on,
you realize that this show is not going to shy away from 
the bigotry that has attacked and decimated the indigenous
people of America. Native people being viewed as sentimental
and stereotypical and ultimately just part of the scenery.
Which is kind of how Hanzee is introduced, as a silent witness
to Dodd and his brother Rye’s(Kieran Culkin) argument in 
that same episode. Dent, played by veteran actor and Standing
Rock Sioux Native American Zahn McClarnon, seems to be just
another gunman in a Midwestern crime family that goes back
to World War II. It’s a perfect set-up for the show’s creators
and the character to touch upon something we just haven’t
gotten in period films and TV - race.

This season of Fargo goes there - not bluntly, but in a manner 
that’s pointed and subversive. Take for example the first murder
in the first episode that gets the ball rolling, a sort of comedy
of errors initiated by Rye Gerhardt. The Black cook in the Waffle
Hut comes out to try to stop Rye and gets a bullet that fatally
wounds him. A sheriff comes in afterwards with Lou Solverson
(Patrick Wilson), and recognizes him as a former high school football
standout. That’s it, but it is enough to give a slight bit of definition
to a character of color where other shows may not have bothered.
This instance helps the viewer to see how race, and matters related
to it, are viewed and expressed in 1979 Minnesota and North Dakota.
There’s a lot of complexity in the air that joins with the uncertainty.
For Hanzee Dent, and for Mike Milligan, the hitman for the Kansas
City mob played by Bokeem Woodbine, they are the most visceral 
signs of how the times have changed in the American heartland and
also how they haven’t. With Milligan being a Black representative of
arguably the most infamous crime organization the United States has
ever known, he has to not only be good but highly exceptional. In a
performance that should warrant Emmy consideration, Woodbine
imbues Milligan with a personality that honors the flavor of what
executive producer Noah Hawley wanted and stokes the audience’s
hidden desire to root for the bad guy. (The accent though. The first
time I heard it, I was in stitches.) Milligan is confident, strident even
in the face of uncertainty. There’s one scene that is striking - when
Simone Gerhardt comes to him and suggestively comes on to him,
Milligan’s retort is eloquent but as blunt as a Louisville Slugger as he
lays down his terms for her assistance in bringing down her family.
The familiar trope of a white woman clinging to a Black man via
sexuality is used here to add more drama and in the process, shatter
the stereotype of the Black buck without a mind of his own. Even
the fact that Mike’s conversation with the boss in which the boss 
attacks him for being incompetent solely because he’s “a darkie”
and Milligan’s own comeback denotes the complexity of his role.

Photo Credit: FX

As for Hanzee, he gradually steps away from the background
to make his own imprint. (Side note: McClarnon has revealed
that the character’s name comes from the Lakota word of
aháŋzi, which is translated to mean shade or shadow.) Starting
with the second episode, in which he calmly tells Dodd he’s cut
the ears off an enemy held in the family barn, Hanzee shows
that he is the shadow of the Gerhardt family and all that it
implies. He’s not taken in by any code but his own, and is loyal
to a point. Hanzee is also fiercely aware that being Native also
means being invisible, as evidenced by a conversation he has
with the mechanic Sonny as they speak about their Vietnam
War experiences. “Did you work the tunnels? “Send the Indian”,
they’d say. Who cares about booby traps?” Invisible but yet so
expendable. This feeling underscores the rage that Hanzee lets
out as he dispatches people in future episodes. It’s a feeling of
being connected and yet being constantly trampled upon by
almost everyone he meets including Dodd down the line.(More
on that in a bit.) Yet you can’t help but feel for him, even as he
assaults people dispassionately. You can’t help but feel that Dent
is only doing what he’s observed being done to his people in the
name of life, liberty and other American vaules that others will
tout as a cover for their misdeeds. McClarnon’s acting is highly
nuanced, with enough grit and enough pain that’s evoked without
a ton of dialogue. He uses brevity and silence to pick apart the
previous Hollywood-enforced views of indigenous characters and
reinforces that innate desire again to have a connection to the
bad guy. It’s part of what Fargo does so well - allow the audience
to connect with every character and give each actor the chance
to emote fully. Even when Dodd(Jeffrey Donovan)goes full on 
white male racist, seeing Hanzee just empty a bullet into his 
brain makes you…cheer. Because you can only imagine what he
went through in that Robinson Crusoe-esque relationship.

Photo Credit: FX

The fact that Hanzee Dent and Mike Milligan are two men 
of color on the opposite sides of a turf war between two 
older crime organizations that are the empires of immigrant
white males is not something to brush aside in this story.
Both men are actutely aware of their roles. Both have 
endured and become dispassionate assassins because of 
their circumstances(Dent being in one of those religious 
schools for Natives in a flashback, and Milligan speaking 
briefly about hardships with his mother). But both have 
also proven to speak to a hidden facet within this season
of Fargo - they both have observed enough about the nature
of the American society they came up in to survive. To be
more ruthless and yet keenly aware of why. The show has
been highly acclaimed by many this season, and I think that
it’s justified in the way these two anti-heroes have been
depicted. It speaks not only to the power of television dramas
that are constructed well, but it also provides more ammo
for the push to have television be more reflective of its 
viewing public. For Zahn McClarnon and Bokeem Woodbine
to have such standout performances amidst a mighty cast
that includes heavy hitters is important not only for TV 
but for more diversity represented in artistic media period.
I’ll be awaiting the end of the series with great expectation
as to what awaits these two on the white winterland.