Daredevil Musings: Why, Mr. Fisk? Why?
Yesterday I finished watching Netflix's 13-episode series Daredevil and I'm quite glad I did. It took advantage of the series length to do some... interesting... takes on tropes, some bordering on being literary. I think I'll do a couple of posts over the next few days to jot some down. These will, of necessity, contain spoilers for the series so be warned if you want to see the show completely spoiler-free. This particular post, however, will not spoil any plot points.
One question I'm seeing come up in fan discussions is how Wilson Fisk can claim to be making a better city, even when dealing with Chechen drug lords, the Yakuza, and the Tongs. Is he lying? Is he deluded? I'd argue, no, he honestly believes it... and the main clue is given by Fisk's breakfast.
An episode tracing a day in Fisk's life shows his daily, inflexible morning routine; wake before dawn, meticulously make his own breakfast, dress. Yet it's always the same breakfast, an omelette, and I think that's supposed to tell us about Fisk's philosophy. Yes, it's somewhat Spartan and rigid... but also evocative of the old saw that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Fisk doesn't see himself as evil. He sees himself as the only man in the city willing to make the necessary sacrifices to save it. That this is staggeringly self-flattering twaddle (and note that the sacrifices are usually of others and not of himself) doesn't push it beyond the realm of, well, history, let alone plausibility.
-- Steve likes the attention the writers are putting into this sort of stuff, unless of course he's hallucinating it all.
One question I'm seeing come up in fan discussions is how Wilson Fisk can claim to be making a better city, even when dealing with Chechen drug lords, the Yakuza, and the Tongs. Is he lying? Is he deluded? I'd argue, no, he honestly believes it... and the main clue is given by Fisk's breakfast.
An episode tracing a day in Fisk's life shows his daily, inflexible morning routine; wake before dawn, meticulously make his own breakfast, dress. Yet it's always the same breakfast, an omelette, and I think that's supposed to tell us about Fisk's philosophy. Yes, it's somewhat Spartan and rigid... but also evocative of the old saw that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Fisk doesn't see himself as evil. He sees himself as the only man in the city willing to make the necessary sacrifices to save it. That this is staggeringly self-flattering twaddle (and note that the sacrifices are usually of others and not of himself) doesn't push it beyond the realm of, well, history, let alone plausibility.
-- Steve likes the attention the writers are putting into this sort of stuff, unless of course he's hallucinating it all.