Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Adam Ochonicky (bio) When chatting with people about my work on representations of the Midwest in popular culture, I am often greeted by expressions of puzzlement and confessions about being unable to immediately name a widely seen depiction of the middle region. Such sentiments tend to be repeated by many of the students who find themselves in my courses on midwestern identity, whether by chance or curiosity about the region in which they live. Of course, there is a long tradition of visualizing the Midwest in film and television, and the latter medium has featured many popular series over the past five decades. From the Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–77) and Good Times (CBS, 1974–79) to Roseanne (ABC, 1988–97; 2018–), ER (NBC, 1994–2009), The Middle (ABC, 2009–18), and so on, there is no shortage of long-running programs set within the Midwest, especially in the region’s unofficial capital of Chicago.1 Yet the impression that the region is largely ignored within popular culture seems to persist in some quarters. Perhaps this notion stems from a sense that the Midwest lacks—or is commonly perceived as lacking—the types of defining traits and historical narratives attached to other regional spaces, as many scholars and commentators have observed.2 If there are no default understandings of the Midwest beyond a vague sense of imprecise spatial parameters and cultural blankness, then it follows that casual viewers may not be attuned to recognizing the region onscreen unless it appears in an overtly stereotypical form. Despite the recurring befuddlement that emerges in my conversations about the Midwest in popular culture, however, I do receive one highly specific response with great frequency: “Oh, you mean like Fargo?” The title [End Page 65] in question is Joel and Ethan Coen’s iconic film that was released in 1996. More than any other text, Fargo is consistently identified—at least in my anecdotal experience—as being a definitive vision of the middle region. So entrenched is this perception that I would somewhat begrudgingly screen Fargo as the first film in a course on the cinematic Midwest that I regularly taught during my time at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Certainly, Fargo is an important and successful film by a variety of measures (and is one that I personally admire and enjoy); the film was widely praised by critics and, as will be covered shortly, has been adapted into a fascinating television series. That said, the Coen brothers’ wintery genre hybrid casts such a long shadow over other midwestern films that it struck me as something to be acknowledged, studied, and then moved past in my course. Within the history of cinematic depictions of the Midwest, Fargo’s stature can sometimes feel as toweringly monolithic as the monstrous statue of Paul Bunyan that looms above the film’s violent proceedings. Because a sense of the nondescript clings to the Midwest, Fargo’s idiosyncratic treatment of the region is all the more striking, which may account for its staying power within the popular consciousness. Elements such as the characters’ exaggerated accents and acts of comically grotesque violence (particularly the infamous woodchipper scene) undermine the Midwest’s reputation as a staid realm. Upon the film’s release, such dynamics reportedly prompted negative reactions among some audiences in the upper Midwest, but the general critical consensus was quite positive.3 Scholars have subsequently examined the contradictory meanings inherent within Fargo, particularly in terms of the film’s correspondences with genre conventions, regional narratives, American society more broadly, identity categories, and other work by the Coen brothers. For instance, William Luhr asserts, “Fargo’s deviations from widely held stereotypes (of genre, region, gender, and ethnicity) have the cumulative effect of undermining the validity of those stereotypes, as well as the cultural validity of the society that perpetuates them, and that society includes the audience.”4 In this piece (which is included in a scholarly anthology on Fargo that Luhr also edited), Luhr categorizes Fargo as a paradoxical “white noir” due to its snowy landscape and crime genre affiliations, and he reflects upon how “the white functions as its own kind of darkness—an oppressive, ominous...