Fargo (2014): Dog Eat Dog

Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) is a terrifying yet strangely charismatic conman and hired killer in season one of the hit TV show Fargo. There is something dangerously attractive about the character as he kills, connives and causes general havoc. Perhaps that attraction is nested in the fact, as Gandhi and Nietzsche both assert, ‘cowards cannot be moral’. This is to say, in reverse, that many people would commit crimes, but are too afraid to commit them. Someone who is cowardly cannot have the strength in their convictions to actually be good people. Perhaps this is why we find TV shows with criminals and monstrous people like Tony Soprano or Lorne Malvo so fascinating. We are horrified by them, perhaps repulsed by their behaviour, but we watch them – by doing so are we are revealing that there is a part of that in us?

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Lorne Malvo seems to think so. He is vicious and violent, manipulative and sociopathic. In his view, we are predators or prey. He cryptically asks one police officer ‘Did you know the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour?’ We get our answer at the end of the episode: ‘because of predators’. Indeed, as we evolved, development of the eyes was necessary to avoid snakes and other predators, to find ripe leaves and fruit and for hunting. In Malvo’s view, we are so tied to this system we can only be the hunter or hunted – and Malvo is a damned good hunter. Malvo is able to change his own person (like a Chameleon almost) with his sociopathic manipulation because a good hunter avoids being spotted, as a response to the fact that other people will try to suss him out or ‘see more shades of green’. Perhaps we find his cold killing so terrifying and rewarding to watch, because we want to be like him, so we don’t end up like his victims. As a true outsider to society, we can learn something from him.

Malvo’s predatory instinct is revealed again in another episode; he says ‘Some roads you shouldn’t walk down. Old maps used to say ‘here be dragons’, now they don’t… but that don’t mean there aren’t no dragons there.’ Malvo is the dragon that lurks inside all of us, its just that he’s ‘walked into the darkness, rather than into the light’. Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) symbolically and literally, in a great cinematographic moment, walks from the light to the dark, and in doing so unlocks a terrible potential for evil.

Malvo articulates his world view in almost Hobbesian terms. He says ‘we used to be gorillas. All we had was what we could take and defend. It’s a red tide Lester, […] If you don’t let ‘em know you’re still an Ape – deep down were it counts – you’re just gonna get washed away.’ Malvo sees us in a state of nature, and as a sociopath is outside of the remit of usual society, which has strangely liberated him. Hobbes suggested that we state in awe, or fear, or under the power of a Leviathan, that stopped us reverting to nature. Nietzsche sought for us to overcome fear-based morality, but Malvo is truly radical because he reveals to us a third way – to embrace the state of nature.

For this reason alone, Fargo is worth a watch. Lorne Malvo is one of the most fascinating, chilling and strangely charismatic characters I’ve seen in long time. If you haven’t already seen it, I suggest you do.

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