Death by Lightning: Netflix's Contribution to U.S History & Politics 101

President James A. Garfield, the college educated farmer & Congressman from Ohio should have played a transformational role in U.S history and politics than the couple of months fate had allowed to helm United States of America in 1881.

Netflix's latest historical offering, "Death by Lightning," brings this forgotten giant of American politics into sharp focus. If you're a student of history and politics, especially of U.S. history like me, we should be thrilled by these contributions Netflix is making towards our historical and political education showcasing some of the forgotten figures that shaped the United States. Garfield holds the unique distinction of being the only sitting member of the House of Representatives to be elected president, and his resume reads like a greatest hits of 19th-century American achievement - preacher, lawyer, Civil War general, and finally, a tragically brief POTUS.

The mini-series, based on Candice Millard's exceptional book "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President," doesn't shy away from the complexities of both Garfield and his assassin Charles Guiteau. The casting choices are nothing short of spectacular. Michael Shannon's portrayal of Garfield is so convincing, his beard looks eerily similar to the president's historical photographs. Matthew Macfadyen's Guiteau made viewers genuinely uncomfortable each time he appeared on screen - which is precisely what a good portrayal of an unhinged assassin should do. Betty Gilpin delivers a convincing performance as Garfield's wife Crete. Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur is so amazing that Netflix, if you want it, you could almost tease out a sequel based on Arthur's presidency.

What strikes you most about this series is how faithful it remains to historical facts. I am sure the personal moments probably didn't occur exactly as depicted or might not have happened at all, but they help building context and fleshing out each character. Guiteau really did join a free-loving commune and failed spectacularly at everything he attempted in life. Garfield truly was one of the last "log cabin" presidents, rising from poverty through sheer intellect and determination. The assassination attempt itself unfolds with disturbing accuracy - Guiteau hiding the gun in his pocket, the black physician being one of the first doctors on the scene, the pioneering use of the first metal detector on the wounded president.

While the series does not really capture the magnitude of Garfield's popularity and the nation's grief on his assassination, that did not stop me from going digging after binging on this engaging mini-series. His inauguration drew 100,000 people to Washington D.C., while his funeral in Cleveland attracted 150,000 mourners - one of the largest presidential funeral turnouts in U.S. history up to that point. He was mourned as a national hero, his death marking a pivotal moment in American political consciousness.

The 4-part series does take some liberties with period-appropriate language - the liberal use of f-word and phrases like "quality time" that wouldn't appear for another century and feels anachronistic. But these minor quibbles don't detract from the overall impact of seeing this transformational figure brought to life.

Interestingly, Garfield's legacy extends beyond politics into pop culture. Jim Davis named his famous cartoon cat after his own grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was himself named after the President Garfield following his Republican nomination in 1880. The score, composed by the same talent behind Game of Thrones and Iron Man, perfectly complements the dramatic tension.

One of the reasons "Death by Lightning" succeeds is its perfect length. Four episodes allow enough time to develop these historical figures without overstaying its welcome. Perhaps a deeper dive into Garfield's impressive Civil War career would have strengthened our connection to him, but the focus remains laser-sharp on this pivotal moment in American history. As a student of history and politics, this series got me digging deeper into both Garfield's and Chester Arthur's presidencies - exactly what good historical drama should do.

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Unsettled Ground : Notes on a book

A county, a college, a national forest, public schools and dozens of other enterprises including an upscale hotel and a church memorialize the nineteenth century Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman.  He would have been a footnote in history if he and his wife and eleven other white people were not killed by Cayuse Indians in 1847 in Walla Walla valley in the Pacific Northwest.  

I picked up this book by Cassandra Tate on one of my rare in-person visits to the  Public Library. I had no particular subject or book in mind. After a few minutes of wandering around I found myself in the local section - Washington based books and this book caught my eye. I finished it a few days ago, reading it over a period of several weeks because unlike the ebooks I read these days, a hard copy book cannot be read in the dark. 

Coincidentally I finished the book on Thanksgiving day, the day marking the autumn harvest feast shared between the native Americans and white colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Former President, Warren G. Harding said, "I like the story of Whitman. If it isn't true, it ought to be." Thus the story of a hero (non-existent in reality) was created, a convenient portrait (there were no portraits or drawings of the Whitmans) of a chiseled white frontiersman missionary was written and sculpted into a nation's memory and museums.  In an era when across the United States the statues of old White men are being toppled by the new generation trying to re-align history and correct past mistakes, Unsettled Ground is a timely read. 

Like all the historical stories painted by the victors, the stories of native Americans and white colonists' interactions have always presented Indian tribes as the bad guys, attacking and revolting against the white pioneers and well meaning white missionaries.  The Whitman story is no different. Tate's well researched, even-keeled book prompts a revisit to learn the truth about the complex dynamics of Natives and white settlers, from the perspective of an infamous event, which led to the canonization of the wrong hero.

Here are a few intriguing facts I learnt from the book:

• Tate points out, when American Indians killed whites it was called a “massacre”; when whites killed Indigenous people, it often gets labeled a “battle.”
• Catholic missionaries had more success and rapport with the native Americans than Protestant missionaries in the American west because of the high threshold of entry (into Christian religion) that Protestant missionaries set for the new converts. The Catholics on the other hand were ready to baptize and convert even those 'heathens' who were ordered to be hung to death the next day, if the heathen wished to embrace Christianity.
• In early nineteenth  century it was more difficult and time consuming to complete one's theological education and be ordained a priest or a minister (took 7-8 years) than to study and qualify as a physician which only took about four years max.
• The focus of Christian missionaries in the Americas was to change the wandering, hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the native people and convert them into agriculturists who would stay put, farm the land, produce and procreate in one place.
• Oregon Spectator talking about the native Americans, "for the barbarian murderers and violators, let them be pursued with unrelenting hatred, let them be hunted as beasts of prey, let their name and race be blotted from the face of the earth, and the places that once knew them, know them no more forever."
• The Whitmans were markedly unsuccessful  as missionaries - in their 11 years in the Pacific Northwest they failed to convert even a single Indian.

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That time when the revolution almost came to America : The Trial of Chicago Seven, a review

It was counterculture Sunday for me last weekend, starting with The Trial of the Chicago Seven.  Then I went down the tube through Prague Spring, hippies & flower children, LSD & peaceniks, protestors and poets, civil rights leaders' and Kennedys' assassinations, Kent State and Jackson State and the great divide of Vietnam war - the timelessness of it all chokes me up. Half a century later those years that I have never lived except through grainy pixels on a flickering screen is deja-vu material. 

There was so much anger, frustration and helplessness seething under the surface and erupting as protests in the last four years that I thought we were living through the worst of times with no end in sight. It felt like the America I knew was unraveling. Then I used to remind myself of the only opening lines I remember, of any novel I have ever read - from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, set before and during the French Revolution. People were feeling the same kind of angst and helplessness as Dickens' opens his novel describing the tumultuous last years of the 18th century, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."    

The 1960s in the United States was not much different from those last dozen years of the 1700s for France. 1960s takes the prize for Revolutionary Years with the Best Music, with their rocking BGM. Compared to the great anthems that straddled the summer of '69, it has been all downhill for music ever since then. 

The Trial of Chicago Seven takes place during a brief, rebellious and beautiful interlude before most of the Seven grew up and went on to live staid lives in suits as yuppie stockbrokers or unoriginal academics. IMHO, the massive cultural and political uprisings that characterize the decade from 1965 to 1975 was the only time any kind of meaningful change was affected through people's protests in the United States.

Unlike India where I was born and brought up or the UK which has close historical/political ties to India, where people's protest movements brought down sitting governments and modulated the course of the Future, the world's oldest democracy in modern history - the United States' protests movements are weak sauce. The U.S has rarely seen any administration overthrown or have had sustaining and meaningful change happen through people's protests movements, except during the Civil Rights-Vietnam War-Nixon era. 

With the advent and encroachment of social media in our lives, we have become mostly keyboard warriors and slacktivists who dutifully discharge their political advocacy duty through signing online petitions. This is not just the scene here in the U.S but the world over. But in a nation where most of the adult population is classified as "interested bystanders" it has now become even more easier to be an activist. Wonder what the Chicago 7 or Black Panthers or MLK or Malcolm X would say about our activism? 

But there is something that United States' does for protest movements at home and all over the globe, that no other country does (nowhere close) - the Americans make or fund great movies/art/music documenting, giving and extending the voice of ordinary people rising up against broken systems. Watching The Trial of Chicago 7, I was happy for the existence of art, movies and other forms of output of creative minds. They immortalize and provide an account of the times, the events and the people and the struggles and beauty of their lives. I am glad art exists.

An original poster in support of the Conspiracy 8/ Chicago 8

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of Chicago Seven (originally Eight, including Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers) is a very Sorkin subject. The 1968 protest at DNC at Chicago has unconventional leaders breaking new pathways. Sorkin showcases these guys while they are in the midst of creating turning points in U.S history. Sorkin's characters are charismatic and articulate to the point of bringing a collective frisson of optimism and hope in the audience. Sorkin is the writer behind exceptional movies like A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network and Steve Jobs.

The Trial of Chicago Seven has eight intense characters on trial in a courtroom with an unreasonably acrimonious judge presiding. All the eight are the kind of people who are at ease on a podium with the ability to draw people through their words. My favorite is Abbie Hoffman, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. There are some incredible retorts from Hoffman in the movie, during his court room testimony. I found the transcript of the real testimony here and realized that Sorkin has summarized and retained the lines with the most impact without diluting the narrative.

Six of the real Chicago 7 -  Front row, from left: Rennie Davis, Rubin, Abbie Hoffman. Back row, from left: Lee Weiner, Bob Lamb and Thomas Hayden.

Steven Spielberg almost made this movie in 2007, Sorkin was the writer at the time too but the effort was canned due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Coincidentally Sacha Baron Cohen was slated to play Hoffman back then as well. Heath Ledger was to play Tom Hayden and Philip Seymour Hoffman was to be the defense attorney William Kunstler. These roles were played by Eddie Redmayne and  Mark Rylance respectively in the 2020 movie. 

As a lover of words and history with a fondness for cheeky one-liners, Aaron Sorkin's interpretation of the Chicago Seven/Eight's trial is edgy and larger than life. If we read the real history of the trial you would be able to see that the director has taken plenty of liberty interpreting the real incidents for dramatic effect and to shore up certain characters like Eddie Redmayne's Hayden and Joseph Gordon Levitt's prosecution attorney, Richard Schultz. Still it is a movie worth watching because as per the quote attributed from people ranging from  Edmund Burke to Santayana to Churchill, if you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.

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TV Series Reviews : Better Call Saul, Big Little Lies, Fargo Season 3, The Untold History of the United States, The Night Of

This is the golden age of TV series. With the cult of cord-cutting claiming its followers across generational groups it is time we all bowed down to the power of streaming. When Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and HBO provide some amazing content and bring the best actors of our era to the TV, how can we not binge watch, right?

I've jotted down a few series I watched this year and the last, although there are many more that I liked like Stranger Things, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Orphan Black and re-watching Twin Peaks and Twilight Zone that I find too lazy to write about. So let me go ahead with my random picks.

Nothing has yet toppled Breaking Bad from my pantheon of the best TV series ever, but Better Call Saul - the TV series that Vince Gilligan and his team spun off from Breaking Bad is a close contender. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman) is phenomenal. The same goes for the supporting cast - incredible acting and the story with its layered metaphors is as engrossing as Breaking Bad.

Big Little Lies brings big name Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon to a wealthy Monterrey neighborhood. It is a female oriented series centered around the lives and predicament of mothers whose children go to the same Monterrey elementary school. It is the closest in my list to a traditional TV series,

Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States is a ten part series I hope more Americans watched, as the untold in the title stands for untold to the Americans, but known as truth to the rest of the world. A great series for a history buff like me.

To me Fargo is all about its ambience, its colors and light and its all pervading 'winter-ness', which makes it a perfect series for dark and / or snowy nights. Although Season 3 won't be my favorite season, it is still a crime drama set somewhere where icy roads and grey sky are the norm - reminds  me of some place where I had spent a long time.

The Night Of , the mini series from HBO is the one I cannot leave without making a mention. This hard hitting series starring British actor Riz Ahmed was supposedly a pet project of James Gandolfini before he passed away.It is indeed one of the best series that came out in the last few years. John Turtorro plays the role Gandolfini was supposed to play. Ahmed won an Emmy for his role, where he thanked and touted James Gandolfini as the man who single-handedly changed television. Yes, the world was different before The Sopranos.

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