Francis “Frank” Underwood’s immoral, politically motivated sins pluck America’s heartstrings to the tune of lustful support for the fictitious character’s ascension to power. His Southern drawl lures viewers into accepting his ethical impropriety — the ends do justify the means.
The main character of “House of Cards” is the anti-hero of American politics. Murder, deception, sex and blackmail are his political capital.
Yet despite Underwood’s deplorable actions, viewers root for the South Carolina congressman’s eventual coronation as the president of the United States of America.
Washington, D.C., is Underwood’s chessboard. He maneuvers the people around him like pawns intended for sacrifice. Nothing dares to come between him and the cold, satisfying words he hopes to utter while peering into your soul during his signature soliloquies: “Checkmate.”
Betray Underwood, and he proclaims in Shakespearean allusion, “‘Cry “Havoc,” said he who fights chaos with chaos, and let slip the dogs of war!’”
Underwood is the devil whispering in our ear, perched upon our shoulder. He commits the sins we dare not indulge. Underwood has no angel of moral reasoning sitting on his shoulder to balance his ethical mayhem. The biting chill of satisfaction that courses through my veins when he enacts his revenge on former President Garrett Walker is unholy, but understandable.
Most of our moral framework combats the glimpses of success through vengeance and deception that Underwood enjoys. But we can’t help the guilty pleasure of loving Kevin Spacey’s evil character. He acts on the feelings for revenge we briefly experience in fits of rage but dismiss once our boiling blood simmers down.
Underwood is our villainous doppelgänger who throws morals and social responsibility aside to achieve life’s zenith. Society preaches to America’s youth that hard work, good deeds and dedication will build paths through life’s mountains of hardships, and at the end of the path lies success.
As Underwood encountered the mountains, he obliterated them and leisurely strolled past the mounds of rubble to find success. He claws and cheats to achieve his American dream.
I envy his win-at-all-costs attitude, but know that I can’t move mountains and won’t claw and cheat to reach my dreams. Life’s goals are hard to come by when the means of reaching them are full of moral obstacles we can’t bring ourselves to spit on as Underwood does.
If your love of Underwood doesn’t derive from a guilty envy for his cutthroat methods, then it derives from his ethical stance that the ends justify the means. Underwood’s sins build up as he ascends from the U.S. House of Representatives to the presidency, but his presidential initiative to save America’s ailing unemployed is his confession and absolution.
Bending and breaking the law for the sake of “America Works,” Underwood’s employment program, seems a noble cause worth fighting for, but at what cost?
When we defend outcomes achieved through immoral means it is the result of self-justification. Internally, the immoral actions eat away at our conscience and to silence the guilt we justify the actions with the outcomes.
Underwood does not suffer from the guilt of his actions. Remorse is not his bedtime companion, and we envy that.
Justin DiCharia is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.