further jericho thoughts
The other thing I've been mulling over, when thinking about Jericho, is the way Stanley's farm seems acts as a symbolic -- and contested -- space within the storyline. I think it stands in for the town, or perhaps for the country as a whole.
Thinking back to the opening episodes, the farm is always at risk -- first from the IRS (a risk that has been there all along, but which Stanley was ignoring), and then immediately after the attacks, there's some sort of infestation, and he needs a pesticide -- my memory of this is pretty vague -- which the woman who left the store to Dale won't give him, and he won't meet her price. I think I may need to watch the episode again, but doesn't it end with basically the whole town turning up to help Stanley harvest what he can? It strikes me as one of the first economic issues to be negotiated within the storyline: Stanley feels that his ownership of the farm is threatened by the town, while they feel that they need his crops to live, and meanwhile, the store owner knows that he needs her product right away, and tries to get as much as she can for it.
IIRC, that negotiation ends happily, but it's interesting to see that even now, Stanley is extremely reluctant to give other people the use of his land -- to let Dale have a right-of-way over it, for example.
And then, in the first Ravenwood attack, there's the possibility that Stanley's farm will be left isolated and undefended, if the bridge is blown -- or have I misremembered that?
More recently, the farm is the place where the battle with New Bern took place -- what started me thinking, of course, is the end of the latest episode, where the farmhouse yet again contains a corpse, this time Bonnie, not Johnston. Now the enemy is Ravenwood, but the battlefield is still the same. And between the two deaths, it's Stanley's farmhouse, again, which is chosen for the President's speech -- not a moment of literal warfare, but a significant moment in the war of ideas which is also being fought, and a moment where Gray, for one, sees the truth of what he's going to deal with.
I keep coming back to Stanley's defense of his decision to keep Dale off -- they gave my farm back to me -- and it seems to me to stand in for the issue the characters have been asked to face: the government is Cheyenne is giving them back their country, less or more. They have power, and enough food, and protection -- and the urge, after the preceding year, is not to look too closely at the giver's flaws. But again, no matter what Stanley wants to believe, his farm becomes the place where everyone sees the truth of what their new government really is.
So... maybe not contested space, but the space in which conflict is played out, and the nature of each party -- and even of the individual characters -- is revealed. It's at Stanley's farm that Jake refuses Constantino's final offer, that Gray decides not to cooperate with the new government, that Bonnie picks up her shotgun, and Goetz chooses to kill her. It's Stanley's farm that needs to be secured: against the IRS, against the town, against radiation and disease, against Jennings and Rall and Ravenwood. The farm is the town, is the country -- just in a way that's small enough to see.
Look, ma! meta!
Thinking back to the opening episodes, the farm is always at risk -- first from the IRS (a risk that has been there all along, but which Stanley was ignoring), and then immediately after the attacks, there's some sort of infestation, and he needs a pesticide -- my memory of this is pretty vague -- which the woman who left the store to Dale won't give him, and he won't meet her price. I think I may need to watch the episode again, but doesn't it end with basically the whole town turning up to help Stanley harvest what he can? It strikes me as one of the first economic issues to be negotiated within the storyline: Stanley feels that his ownership of the farm is threatened by the town, while they feel that they need his crops to live, and meanwhile, the store owner knows that he needs her product right away, and tries to get as much as she can for it.
IIRC, that negotiation ends happily, but it's interesting to see that even now, Stanley is extremely reluctant to give other people the use of his land -- to let Dale have a right-of-way over it, for example.
And then, in the first Ravenwood attack, there's the possibility that Stanley's farm will be left isolated and undefended, if the bridge is blown -- or have I misremembered that?
More recently, the farm is the place where the battle with New Bern took place -- what started me thinking, of course, is the end of the latest episode, where the farmhouse yet again contains a corpse, this time Bonnie, not Johnston. Now the enemy is Ravenwood, but the battlefield is still the same. And between the two deaths, it's Stanley's farmhouse, again, which is chosen for the President's speech -- not a moment of literal warfare, but a significant moment in the war of ideas which is also being fought, and a moment where Gray, for one, sees the truth of what he's going to deal with.
I keep coming back to Stanley's defense of his decision to keep Dale off -- they gave my farm back to me -- and it seems to me to stand in for the issue the characters have been asked to face: the government is Cheyenne is giving them back their country, less or more. They have power, and enough food, and protection -- and the urge, after the preceding year, is not to look too closely at the giver's flaws. But again, no matter what Stanley wants to believe, his farm becomes the place where everyone sees the truth of what their new government really is.
So... maybe not contested space, but the space in which conflict is played out, and the nature of each party -- and even of the individual characters -- is revealed. It's at Stanley's farm that Jake refuses Constantino's final offer, that Gray decides not to cooperate with the new government, that Bonnie picks up her shotgun, and Goetz chooses to kill her. It's Stanley's farm that needs to be secured: against the IRS, against the town, against radiation and disease, against Jennings and Rall and Ravenwood. The farm is the town, is the country -- just in a way that's small enough to see.
Look, ma! meta!