Brett's Fincher Notes (3)

House of Cards (2013)

Fincher makes transition to TV that few if any major auteurs could make. Rare ability to bridge aesthetics/narrative conventions of film and TV.

No questions asked to Fincher about Spacey and MeToo. Guess he knew how to keep the right distance.

Romanticization/glamorization of transmoral political superclass, as if they are Olympians inhabiting a world too lofty for the rest of us to completely comprehend or sensibly judge. Anocratic propaganda?

Does this show represent a similar darkening of Fincher’s view of human nature and of his artistic vision? Is there anything really subversive here? This is the worship of power, not the exposure of it. Similar trend with Nolan and Snyder: some spunky, maverick energy early on, but a slow fade into the dismal darkness of elite psychopathy.

Similar to his work in advertising and music videos: cultural propaganda glorifying the worldview and self-image of the superclass and selling it to the public.

Spacey’s Southern drawl way more convincing than Pitt’s (Benjamin Button).

Episode 1

Opening scene where he kills the dog, “putting it out of its misery”: glorification/justification of the ruthlessness of the transmoral superclass. Fincher is apparently leveraging the 90s fascination with “supercool” criminality and transferring it to white collar criminals.

Frank’s wife, Claire, working for an environmentalist NGO, a post that has everything to do with acquiring and consolidating beltway power and virtually nothing to do with the environment.

DC super-predator (“power”) couple.

The pastor invokes Matthew 23:12 (“he who shall humble himself shall be exalted”) for a sermon on humility, which is the opposite of what this show glorifies. Christianity here poised as anti-power, power being basically Satanic; the hypocrisy of the Washington elite is complete, as their Satanic power still requires them to pretend to be Christian. Quoth Fincher: “in order for something to be evil, it almost has to cloak itself as something else” (2017 Esquire interview). The only subversion here is the subversion of Christianity.

Frank loves playing first-person shooter games: superelite as killers who bask in the hyper-violent media environment, programming people to as ruthless as they are. I think of “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who was proud of a $2 million, limited-edition Wu-Tang Clan album. You can see these hedge fund types blasting hardcore rap music.

Use of moral weaknesses (the bald Congressman) to control power in Washington.

Kate Mara character: how real investigative journalism gave way to a cheap, shallow, opportunistic brand of “journalism” that is almost completely captive to DC power dynamics. “Unnamed sources.”

Season 2: Episode 2

Frank: money does not equal power; power is deeper than money.

People like George Stephanopoulos and Donna Brazile play themselves. Brazile is an arch-narcissist who shows up in the same capacity in at least two Snyder films, Batman v. Superman and Army of the Dead. I’m not sure that the purpose here is the same as in Snyder, though, where he was using real-life news celebrities to blur the lines between the superhero world and our world, to induce a mass trance state of a sort and then reprogram our worldview. I’m sure these people were driven by fame and money in both cases, but here it’s almost like they are being used to simultaneously lend credibility (verisimilitude) to the show while validating the show’s message about how venal everyone in this culture is.

No one in Washington can criticize Israel; Israel the sacred cow.

Conspiracy theorist in the trailer that the bald guy visits: IMF, World Bank, etc., are the real culprits.

Last scene: Frank as the Devil, telling homeless crazy that no one cares (inversion of Christ’s message).

Mindhunter (2017-)

Obvious profiler propaganda, as Fincher more or less admits in interview where he again denies any particular fixation with serial killers as such.

Same verisimilitude method as in Zodiac: showing a bit more than the conventional narrative but ultimately obscuring real truth through creating a false sense of insider knowledge in the viewer—a common enough tactic, especially in crime shows, duping the audience in the way that cops/Feds try to dupe journalists…but done here with even greater skill for arguably a larger purpose, namely, to obscure the real nature of the serial killer phenomenon.

From the Horsley article:

Coming back to Mindhunter and Ed Kemper: a couple of details Team Fincher left out of their “re-creation”: prior to Kemper’s arrest, there was media speculation that the murders were connected to a devil-worshiping cult. On trial, Kemper “testified that the killings arose from fantasies that began to build in his head during his confinement at Atascadero.” Attorney Jackson confirmed this when he testified that Kemper “had told California Youth Authority officials of ‘evil forces within him which tried to control his behavior’” (McGowan, p. 156-7).

All this indicates—to me at least—the kind of multilayered, high-level sociopolitical complexity which David Fincher’s talents were recruited to help “simplify” and streamline into an official narrative, for both Zodiac and Mindhunter.

Intro sequence not as strong but emulates Se7en—a nod from Fincher to himself about the huge influence of his Se7en intro.

Season 1: Episode 1

Relationship with young trendy girl (sociology PhD student) as emblematic of “romance” between segments of the intellectual counterculture (e.g., Esalen) and segments of the intelligence culture in the service of the “profiler” project.

FBI propaganda: these are our best and brightest, exemplars of professionalism, who only overstep the line out of zealous professionalism. Fincher’s limited hangout-type stuff about evidence tampering and fraud within the FBI only vindicates it.

Holden overhears a lecture by another FBI instructor, who asks, “Where do we go when motive becomes elusive?” The ostensible theme is then the socio-psychological analysis of the phenomenon of sensational crime post-60s.

Prof. Rathman says to Holden at the bar, “Next time let’s discuss Lee Harvey Oswald as Oedipus.” Need to provide “expert” psychological analysis of alleged criminals to paper over any ticklish questions about conspiracy. Formula for the profiler op: psychology trumps conspiracy.

First conversation with future girlfriend, Debbie: she brings up Durkheim’s idea that all forms of deviancy challenge “the normalized repressiveness of the state.” This while they’re watching a rock-and-roll band. Pervasive theme of overlap between moral loosening, pop culture, and serial killers.

Debbie has a poster on her wall with the word “Babylon”—I can’t make out the other word. Another poster has what appears to be an illustration of a woman as a Monarch butterfly.

Revelation of media role in “sexual liberation”: they watch Dog Day Afternoon in the theater, with special emphasis on the transsexual angle, and then Holden tells her about the transgressive words women were not allowed to hear at the Academy; and this is followed by a sex scene with dirty talk.

Season 1: Episode 2

The sign for “California Medical Facility: Vacaville” shown prominently. Vacaville figured in MKUltra behavior modification-torture experiments. Ford will later be sent to Vacaville himself, in episode 10.

Ed Kemper has special privileges and even genuine power within the prison. Cf. Richard Speck et al., and consider that Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to hundreds of murders, was the only person to have his death sentence commuted by George W. Bush to life imprisonment—supporting McGowan thesis that these serial killers have a peculiarly charmed relationship with authority (cf. Bundy’s and Gacy’s relationships, respectively, to the Republic and Democratic parties, and Bundy’s “miraculous” escape from custody in Colorado).

Kemper a big fan of movies and TV, especially cop shows (feedback loop between media and crime).

Kemper makes mysterious confessions for no reason ; like in Zodiac, he hints at suspicious details in these cases.

Kemper compared to Kubrick (by Tench): his “signature,” observes Holden, who is corrected by Kemper, who calls it his “oeuvre” and says, “You could study it” (cf. John Doe). Again with Fincher: serial killer as director/feedback loop. Cinema as a psychic assault/terror, a black psyop.

Kemper a sex pervert above all else.

Tench’s advice is sound: Don’t trust what a serial killer tells you. Which should be borne in mind as Kemper et al. give the standard serial killer bio of themselves (mommy problems, etc.). In episode 4 (NOT directed by Fincher), the jailed killer tells them what they want to hear about his relationship with his mother after they bribe him with a Big Red soda, suggesting (a la Henry Lucas, etc.) that some serial killers may be telling tall tales that people in authority want them to tell. Consider how “the profile” is already used, in The Eyes of Laura Mars, by a psychopathic killer cop (Tommy Lee Jones) to pin the murder on an ex-con (Brad Dourif).

Satanic angle raised with harvest moon case in Sacramento that they are investigating.

Their unit is relocated to the basement (under Behavioral Sciences). Cf. the psychological language here to that in Alien 3: basement is dark, repressed, shadow area of FBI.

Note that a Playboy article in Holden’s hand is about Howard Hughes’s “secret files.”

Outro music is “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads, underscoring intersection of cultural engineering, pop culture, the serial killer phenomenon, and deep state conspiracy. Remember that the Copelands pioneered the post-punk art rock movement of which the Talking Heads were a big part. Stewart Copeland currently in a “supergroup” Gizmodrome with Adrian Belew, former live and session guitarist for the Talking Heads, among other suss acts like Frank Zappa and David Bowie.

Season 1: Episode 9

Speck interviewed. As McGowan shows, his crime of killing eight student nurses single-handedly strains credibility. Speck, again, given special privileges.

His story feels very ad hoc (“don’t believe serial killers”). Profile doesn’t fit. Hardboiled but not the deranged psychopath that Kemper is. Their boss can’t even make sense of his story, although the public has been expected to buy it for decades.

Speck is compared to Whitman: so all spectacular homicidal crime with elusive motives lumped together.

Speck accuses Holden of “fucking with his head.” Mindhunter or Mindfucker?

Holden gets closer to the serial killer psyche as his own relationship with the feminine, through Debbie, goes downhill. By the next episode, when he extracts a confession using his growing profiler knowledge, he’s a total asshole.

The redaction/destruction of taped evidence, in this and the next episode, invokes the “lost” footage from Bundy recordings, allegedly due to amazingly convenient tape malfunctions, in one case while he’s apparently describing the assistance he received in hiding/traveling after his escape. Noble lies must be told to save the unit (interesting that Fincher chose to direct this episode). Cf. ending of LA Confidential, where even the conscientious detective (Guy Pearce) goes along with a cover-up to save the LAPD and maintain clean law and order. Limited hangout stuff here for sure.

Suspect in majorette murder is “AWOL” soldier. Sheep dip?

Season 1: Episode 10

Mindfuck games continue: Kemper a target.

Such games, used to extract a confession from a suspect, are explicitly compared to the vocation of movie director: “You staged it, like a director,” Debbie says. “Only he didn't know

he was playing a role in your drama. That’s what made it a nail-biter.”

Wendy, the boss, is concerned that serial killers won’t cooperate with him if they know the psychological insights they offer are being used to execute other killers. This is an odd concern to voice, and perhaps it points to the concern that an audience may not participate in its own destruction if it realizes the psyop.

Ford, as always, is willing to engage in cover-ups even though he doesn’t want to, not out of integrity but because, in principle, he thinks all the psychological beans need to be spilled.

Kemper talks about “spirit wives,” his spiritual slaves, the victims of his murders that will supposedly serve him in the afterlife. This is an overwhelmingly common refrain among serial killers. It comes up in the Zodiac letters, Bundy, BTK, Son of Sam, Dahmer, and a number of other cases. A version of it is also expressed by James Holmes, the Aurora killer, who denied any Batman/Joker motivations but said he believed those he killed were helping to construct his spirit body or something.

Season 2: Episode 1

The “ADT serviceman” (the ongoing serial killer plot) caught by his wife dressed as a woman and self-asphyxiating. Cf. Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and his real-life inspiration, Ed Gein. All of this supports Horsley’s thesis that the fascination with serial killers reflects a pattern of intense aggression against women in general and the mother in particular, revealing a desire to appropriate the feminine, the mother, and thereby make it superfluous. The “pathogen” of the “aggrandizer-imposer” type, the typical leading member of the superclass, is this (p. 441):

the men who would be kings are men who turn themselves into women. The creation of a surrogate reality to escape into and rule over, a matrix-womb that is a simulation of the lost maternal body, is achieved through the meticulous and painstaking assemblage of a mosaic of eidetic memory images, a celluloid (and cellular?) panopticon made up of copies of reality. A matrix.

However literalized it has been throughout history, it would seem that the sacrificial victim is, finally, one’s own body, and the desired prize, immor­tality, is achieved through the translation or transference of our consciousness to a disembodied phantom self, a residual body image, a holographic replica captured, in the ether or in celluloid, or both, forever. Or rather “forever,” since a counterfeit of the soul must remain forever time-bound, and so has no access to eternity—thank God.

So cultural engineering filmmakers as serial killers! From 438f.:

The parallels in all this are striking; the implications, while elusive, seem profound. Both Hitchcock’s and Polanski’s careers adhere closely to the ancient tradition of the old seers of Castaneda and, less fantastically confabulated, the secret society sorcerers Hayden tracks archeologically through pre-history. 1) to spread terror through the populace; 2) to torture the women and steal their creative power. 3) to use that power to create surrogate realities, dream matrices, artificial wombs, and attain virtual immortality. A central feature of these dream-worlds seems to be a dependence on luring souls to enter into them (attention harvesting), making of them a power source to keep the dream-world operational. What is Walmart without shoppers, a galley ship without slaves, the matrix without coppertops, or the Nosferatu without the blood of virgins to keep them youthful and strong?

The aim of this ancient sorcery is to recreate the original womb from the inside out: to colonize the mother’s gaze (and body) and so have complete control over it. This is evident in the precise overlap between two seemingly disparate goals: turning oneself into a woman, on the one hand, and creating a surrogate, imagistic reality with which to replace physical reality, on the other. It seems fitting that the men behind The Matrix—the defining movie myth of surrogate reality creation and enslavement—have, since 1999, turned themselves into women.

So the serial killer’s violence against women is reflected in the psychic violence directed against the viewer by so much post-MKUltra cinema, with the ultimate goal of conquering the mass mind and reshaping it into a new, false reality that confers immortality on the aggrandizers/imposers.

A priest explains that resurrection is the meaning of the cross: “the triumph of life over death.” Implied here is the inversive serial killer reading of this idea, of life achieved through psychic vampirism (see above about “afterlife slaves” and serial killers). Christian subversion also implied in shot of terrified kid looking at bleeding Christ, the implication being that our culture is no worse than that of those violent medieval-minded Christians—violence is just part of the human experience. It’s OK for the media to traumatize us with psycho-sadistic sexual violence because Christians are bad too.

The new chief of the section says he worked SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) case, clearly an MKUltra-related op, with Patty Hearst’s lawyers later arguing that she was mind controlled by the group. Look into Mae Brussel’s work on that.

Their stated goal is to make psychological instinct scientific in order to “harness” it for forensic purposes. Metaphor for the Method?

Wendy: Manson is not a psycho-sexual killer—so, again, the profile is that there is no profile. The profile is a psyop and the show is a limited hangout of that psyop.

Season 2: Episode 2

Opening: ADT killer looks at book on “Therapeutic Approaches to Sexual Deviance” that his wife or girlfriend hands to him; he glances up at somewhat arousing images on TV as someone mentions that a secretary had to “see a special doctor in Cincinnati.” If nothing else, these kinds of scenes remind us to pay special attention to audio-visual cues coming from both diegetic and non-diegetic media within the diegesis.

Uri Geller mentioned in bar scene with Tench.

Serial killers taking credit for crimes they never committed.

BTK had a “military” watch, writes to media like Berkowitz and Zodiac. And BTK used a Process Church symbol like Berkowitz.

Only one serial killer they’ve profiled up to now could keep a job. So much for the high-functioning, genius serial killer. Berkowitz not a psycho-sexual killer, as Wendy observes. And he doesn’t even fit into their organized/disorganized typology. Profile is a psyop.

“You saw The Exorcist?” Holden asks Berkowitz, after the latter explains that he named himself Son of Sam to alert people to the reality of demons. “Everyone did,” he answers. And Ford brings up The Exorcist yet again. The Exorcist is near the top of the list of suspected cinematic psyops—and here we have it deliberately associated with the serial killer phenomenon. Consider movies like Brainscan here, written by Andrew Kevin Walker: media programming people to be killers (to be disinhibited, as part of red pill programming).

Fincher going out of his way to discredit Berkowitz, to have him say it’s all fantasy…which only complicates the evidence, since it means that so many serial killers were weaving the same bizarre, demonic fantasies. Wendy’s takeaway is interesting, though: Berkowitz determined to be seen as a “tormented genius,” not a “pervert.” Cf. John Doe—and consider, of course, the parallel between movie director and wannabe-genius-but-really-perverted serial killer.

Body found on property owned by Tench’s wife. Not sure if there is any semblance of historicity to this subplot, but it bears comparison to the weird connections to law enforcement that cropped up, for example, in the Night Stalker case.

Season 2: Episode 3

Crucifixion pose of victim’s body (cf. Resurrection).

William Pierce says he speaks seven languages. Super operative? And yet his English is colloquial. Wayne Williams, the alleged Atlanta child murderer, claims to be an operative for the CIA trained in the mountains of Georgia.

Pierce doesn’t fit the profile because his mom loved him. He had father problems; there was family violence. Profile is there is no profile—proving McGowan’s thesis at every corner.

Pierce denies murders he confessed to, says he was brain damaged by a job accident. They bribe him with Oreos but still he won’t confess, says he just happened to know where the bodies were…then finally confesses to the murders he was accused of. Can’t keep his story straight, it seems.

Pierce also received special treatment—candy and such.

The other interviewee is William Henry Hance, a former soldier accused of killing four women near military bases. He had claimed to be part of a “vigilante group called the Forces of Evil,” but now he says he just made that up to through off the cops and make them think a white guy did it. He used Army stationary in his notes. Phoenix Program suss.

The former FBI guy they consult denies any pattern to Atlanta killings. Ford uses circular reasoning to argue that age group more important than MO in these cases.

As Wendy observes, Ford “loses interest” when killers aren’t intelligent. More selection bias in creating the Hannibal Lector profile. The profiler finds the profile he’s looking for.

Nerdy guy uses Aristotelian-Platonic “essentialism” to conclude that real key is that these two killers are both soldiers. Phoenix Program.

In the case of Tench’s hometown murder investigation, he and the detective in charge falsely reassure the public (Tench knowingly lying) that this is definitely not a cult killing. Cf. the anxious efforts of media and some law enforcement to obscure the Satanic angle in so many of these cases, even in the Night Stalker case, where the killer screams in court that he did it all for Satan.

Mank (2020)

Background

Based on a screenplay written by Jack Fincher, David’s father, who was a journalist/Hollywood insider (wrote about celebrities). Written in 90s, according to Fincher in Mark Harris interview. Jack discovered the Upton Sinclair fake news stuff after first draft. So not just Hollywood insider but father interested in crypto-power dynamics of Hollywood.

From Fincher’s 2020 New York Magazine interview:

My dad, because he was a journalist, lived by the axiom that the greatest entertainment was written by people who understood the real world, and his love of The Front Page and Citizen Kane certainly supported the idea that the best movies were grounded in reality by their creators, who often came with fairly extensive journalism backgrounds.

Cf. Tarantino, Altman, Lynch, et al.: big-time insider Hollywood directors sooner or later become obsessed with the process and politics of making movies as a subject matter.

Barton Fink comes to mind as a precursor treatment of the theme of the talented-but-deeply-disenchanted writer who experiences the creative politics of Hollywood as a dystopian nightmare of sorts.

Historical revisionism

Harold Meyerson (“‘Mank’ Is Fake News about Fake News,” American Prospect) says, there is “no larger narrative framing Herman Mankiewicz’s life and career and decision to take on Hearst, something that could drive the story beyond the clicking of typewriters and the fight over screen credit. So the Finchers, in the best Hollywood tradition, invented one,” namely, the subplot about Mankiewicz taking on Hearst over his fake news fixing of the 1934 California gubernatorial election…though Hearst did indeed, along with Harry Chandler’s LA Times, engage in a fake news smear campaign, complete with fake news reels featuring hired actors.

The studio moguls of 1934 had an ax to grind. They not only loathed

Sinclair’s socialism, but also feared his promises to raise their taxes. (In the

early 1930s, Mayer was the highest-salaried executive in the nation, and the

finance chair of the national Republican Party.) And so, Mayer’s MGM, at

the instigation of production chief Irving Thalberg, began assigning

directors and cinematographers to film “interviews with prospective

voters”—actually, studio extras—that were scripted to depict Merriam

supporters as good, solid Americans and Sinclair supporters as foreign-accented

Bolsheviks. They even appropriated footage from the Warner

Brothers’ picture Wild Boys of the Road, and shot footage of their own of

their extras jumping from freight cars, which the newsreel narrators said

were shots of dangerous hobos arriving in California in anticipation of a

Sinclair regime that would pay them to loll around and make trouble. All

this material was bundled together and presented as regular newsreels to

the millions of Californians who went to the movies every week. Thus

bolstered, Merriam staged a remarkable come-from-behind victory in

November’s general election.

But Mankiewicz had no part in any of this: it’s Tarantino-esque level (almost) historical revisionist fiction.

None of this actually happened. There’s no record of Mankiewicz inspiring Thalberg, imploring MGM not to distribute the newsreels, or even favoring Sinclair. His younger brother Joe (better known today as the writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz), then a lowly contract writer for MGM, actually penned some of the studios’ radio ads for Merriam, while the real director of the fake newsreels never showed any remorse for the deception. The entire motivating force of the Finchers’ film was conjured up out of whole cloth.

This author, by the way, thinks the movie sheds light on right-wing fake news vis-à-vis election fraud, the so-called “Big Lie.” The legacy of fake news is quarantined to the right wing, at a moment when the left is more and more emboldened to call for a one-party state. Fincher himself, in the New York Magazine interview, admits that the “fake news” angle made this timely in a way it was not when he tried to get it made in the early 2000s but avoids making any political statement in the interview.

Theme: controlled opposition

This movie is about controlled opposition in Hollywood, about the real power dynamics behind apparently dangerous and subversive Hollywood films like Kane—and like Fight Club for that matter.

Mank is repeatedly referred to, including by Hearst, as “the court jester.” The court jester is allowed to “speak truth to power” because he is harmless/controlled and not taken seriously by anyone inside or outside the Hollywood establishment.

Hearst pays “half” his salary anyway. Hearst portrayed as far from petty and resentful, almost magnanimous, not altogether approving of Mank’s project but, true to the Kane character (who allows Cotton/Leland to publish the negative review of his wife, and even finishes the review for him, before firing him), he doesn’t truly pull out all the stops to halt the project, and we even get the impression that he won’t do to Mank what Kane does to Leland. Deep glorification of power here: power so great that it can afford to be magnanimous and even to allow itself to be mocked as other than magnanimous…even allowing unflattering details about themselves to be made public, in an ingenious use of limited hangout? Fincher assertion in interview that this is a movie about “alcoholism” only tends to reinforce that message.

Fincher himself seems to me to be a man that doesn’t necessarily want to pick a side, whose strategy of maintaining creative and moral control is by vacillating and remaining an enigma

Many direct quotes attributed to Mayer used here (like how he thought movies were genius because you take the money and keep the product). Mayer as a cheap manipulator, contra his usual persona as ringmaster of the greatest studio in Hollywood; Hearst is the real boss. He has “black magic at his command.”

Revelation of the Method

“In two hours,” he says, you can’t capture a person’s whole life but only leave an impression…explaining the circular, vignette structure of Citizen Kane.

MGM using former actors as “crisis actors” to astroturf against Upton Sinclair. Political propaganda—riling the rubes. (Note more left-wing politics from Fincher; cf. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) Propaganda also involves fake news, fake commercials—fake flag propaganda.

“Marion Antionette.” “But it was Irving’s picture.” “Marionette.”