Is Frank the Man for the Job? House of Cards and the Problem of Dirty Hands

2015 ◽  
pp. 102-111
Author(s):  
Tomer J. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Dirty Hands ◽  
House Of Cards

scholarly journals Strategies of involvement and moral detachment in House of Cards

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Sorlin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
House Of Cards ◽  
Level Model ◽  
Production Crew ◽  
The Way

Abstract The aim of this paper is to evince the reasons why the viewers tend to ‘root for the bad guy’ in House of Cards in spite of his amoral undertakings. It delves into the linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive strategies employed by the protagonist, Frank Underwood, to ‘transport’ the audience in the narrative while distancing them from moral judgment. It is shown that the ‘Para-Social Relationship’ he constructs with the audience invites them to adapt to his goals and perspective, guiding their emotions and reactions, distracting them from ethical matters through generalised impersonalised aphorisms and transgressive humour. Lastly it proposes a three-level model of producing/viewing processes that are specific to House of Cards, highlighting the way the protagonist’s manipulation of audience involvement breaks apart in the last seasons, as the production crew alters the Frank-audience relationship.

Marxism and Dirty Hands

1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-223
Author(s):  
Steven Lukes
Keyword(s):  
Classical Problem ◽  
Dirty Hands ◽  
The Republic

Lenin asked the question: what is to be done? A second question, which Lenin did not ask is: What is not to be done? A third question arises when answering the first and second yields incompatible directives. How are we to understand and respond to such situations, in which, as Machiavelli put it, the Prince must learn, “among so many who are not good,” how “to enter evil when necessity commands” for the good of the Republic? This is the Classical Problem of dirty hands. What, if anything, does Marxism have to say about it?

scholarly journals House of cards

BMJ ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 334 (7597) ◽  
pp. 772-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cross
Keyword(s):  
House Of Cards

Playing (the Casino) Indian: Native American Roles in Peak TV

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 79-100
Author(s):  
Courtney Elkin Mohler
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
First Century ◽  
Character Type ◽  
House Of Cards ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Established Line ◽  
The Sopranos ◽  
Noble Savage ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Big Love

The current television era, sometimes called “Peak TV,” was ushered in with serious creatordriven shows of the late 1990s. The increasingly frequent Indian character type of the manipulative, money-hungry, and usually criminal casino “chief”/CEO simultaneously offers dramatically significant guest-star roles for Native actors and reflects a neoliberal version of the Noble Savage fit for twenty-first century audiences. This article analyzes examples of the “casino Indian: characterization found in the award-winning television dramas The Sopranos, Big Love, The Killing and House of Cards. Adapting the figure of the imagined “Indian” to suit the anxieties of our political and economic moment, each of these critically acclaimed shows have created an image of “Indianness” in relation to “casinos” and thereby have added the casino Indian trope to the long-established line of “Indian” characters crafted by non-Native “experts,” writers, and artists of the stage and screen.

scholarly journals Compromise: What Makes it Bad?

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Biggar
Keyword(s):  
Basic Principle ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Rule ◽  
Dirty Hands ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Principle Of Justice ◽  
Moral Wrongness

This article considers what makes a compromise bad. First, it defines a compromise as a decision involving a loss of good (i.e., an evil), which should therefore be accompanied by ‘agent-regret’. Regret, however, is not moral guilt. Pace proponents of ‘dirty hands’, a morally right compromise cannot retain elements of moral wrongness (as distinct from non-moral evil). Second, the article proceeds to elaborate the features of bad compromise further in terms of common moral sense: the preference of less rather than more of a single good; the preference of an inferior to a superior good; and the violation of an absolute moral rule. Third, it extends its elaboration in terms of three historical cases: the abandonment of strategic promotion of a good; tactical suspension for insufficient reasons; complicity in indubitable and certain injustice to avoid tolerable costs; and the violation of a basic principle of justice as distinct from normal judicial process. Finally, it adds a methodological epilogue, in which it reflects on whether its treatment of the topic has been sufficiently theological.

Dirty Hands

2007 ◽  
pp. 167-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald F. Gaus
Keyword(s):  
Dirty Hands
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