CONTENT WARNING- THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS MENTION OF RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT
Christmas TV can be many things. Camp and cringe-worthy, or wholesome and heartwarming. What it’s not supposed to be is utterly, skin-crawlingly unsettling.
Despite being much better acquainted than me with the world of entertainment, Kevin Spacey appears not to have got this memo. On Christmas Eve this year, coinciding with his arraignment on sexual assault charges, Spacey uploaded a video of himself in character as Frank Underwood, the ruthless politician he portrayed on the hit Netflix show, House of Cards. Spacey, wearing a Christmas apron, treats the audience to the type of soliloquy Frank Underwood is famous for, full of double meanings about an “impeachment without trial” and his faith that the audience is smart enough not to “believe the worst without evidence.”
I should say here, that as a performance, it’s brilliant. Sure, the lighting and makeup’s not as good as on House of Cards, but Spacey’s performance oozes with all the creepy charm of Frank Underwood’s best moments. When he snarls into the camera that “If I didn’t pay the price for the things I did do…I’m certainly not going to pay the price for things I didn’t do”, you could convince yourself that this is Frank Underwood you’re watching.
Except, of course, it isn’t. And therein lies the problem. For all it’s masterful acting, this is not a video of Frank Underwood, the fictional politician whose fictional ruthlessness House of Cards fans revelled in. This is a video of Kevin Spacey, a real person, accused of a crime with real-world consequences. It’s not my place to make judgements as to Spacey’s guilt or innocence, but his attempt to defend himself by blurring the lines between fiction and reality is, I think, revealing.
There’s a few reasons for this. Spacey is most famous for portraying depraved men- from John Doe in Se7en, to Hopper in A Bugs Life, to Frank Underwood himself. It’s not an overstatement to say that Spacey has literally made a career out of making evil look cool. In the world of fiction, that’s fine. In the real world, not so much. Spacey’s video seems to be trying to have it both ways, protesting his innocence even as he plays the role of unrepentant sinner to maximum effect. From watching the video, you almost get the impression that Spacey/Underwood doesn’t care what the verdict of the case is, as long as he gets the chance for one last great performance.
It’s also worth considering exactly what kind of man Frank Underwood is. During five seasons of House of Cards, rape seems to be the only crime capable of disgusting the sociopathic Underwood. In fact, he takes particular pleasure in ruining political opponents such as General Dalton McGinnis and Congressman Alex Romero who are guilty of sexual assault. The “you” Spacey/Underwood refers to in the video is suggested to be a big enough fan of House of Cards to know this, so it’s possible to see this as Spacey using his fictional alter ego as a grotesque type of character witness.
A third potential reason can be gleaned by examining the events that led up to the video. When Spacey was initially accused of sexual assault, he attempted, rather clumsily to parry the charges by coming out as gay. All this achieved was getting Spacey ridiculed as well as reviled. The #metoo movement is, as much as anything, a struggle over power and control, and it brought no house of cards down faster than Spacey’s own. Spacey didn’t just look evil, he looked weak. Helpless. Viewed in this context, we can understand what this video is meant to be doing for Spacey’s image. Gone is the fumbling, flailing Spacey of earlier this year. Instead, we have the attempted resurrection of Frank Underwood as he was in his last appearance in House of Cards, defiant and triumphant as he lectures his audience:
“In the end, I don’t care if you love me or you hate me, so long as I win. The deck is stacked. The rules are rigged. Welcome to the death of the age of reason. There is no right or wrong, not any more. There’s only being in. And then being out.”
Whichever of these explanations you prefer, they all point to the same thing. That the scariest thing about Underwood/Spacey is not sinister Southern bonhomie or creepy horror music, but the portrayal of a man who would rather be Frank Underwood than himself.
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