The Election Is the Worst Part of American Horror Story: Cult
When Ryan Murphy announced that the latest installment of his horror anthology American Horror Story would use the 2016 election as a jumping-off point, it was easy to deduce that this season would be divisive, if unsubtle. Although Murphy and his co-show-runner Brad Falchuk have taken on contentious topics before—chiefly racism and homophobia—a tense post-election political climate promised that this season took could court hostility from practically any direction.
Given all that, it’s remarkable that A.H.S. has managed to turn in a season that isn’t actually too harsh on any one political ideology. But it’s unfortunate that the show treats every faction with equal cynicism. Even more unfortunate is that, for the most part, some top-notch performers’ capacity for nuance is wasted on such perfunctory material. This season presents one of A.H.S.’s best ideas in years—but it wastes most of its energy on an uninteresting, tired interpretation of politics and dogma.
Both Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters seem to be playing caricatures this season: the former is a typical “liberal snowflake,” while the latter is a literally Cheeto-dusted, fear-mongering monster. Paulson’s Ally Mayfair-Richards is a lesbian restaurant owner who wailed her way through election night; Peters’s Kai is a blue-haired, basement-dwelling bigot who decides to harness people’s fears as a way to seize power for himself in local politics. As time wears on post-election, the former finds herself haunted by old anxieties and phobias, while the latter forms a plan to use the fear that’s gripping the nation for his own gain.
Although it’s hard not to feel for Ally at first, her decisions quickly become both unrealistic and unsympathetic. A few episodes in, she’s nothing more than an unhinged lunatic who, dare we say, seems “just as bad” as the other side. And Kai? Somehow, Murphy has handed one of his most charismatic actors a part so cardboard that even he can’t sell it. As a horror character, Kai is pretty compelling—but as an allegory for Donald Trump voters, he’s far from effective. His motivation is never really established beyond a thirst for power, and his beliefs—beyond the fact that fear is a great motivator—are equally murky. Oh, and then there’s the band of killer clowns, who are only sometimes a figment Ally’s imagination.
Near as we can tell, the general message of this season appears to be, “politicians, much like cult leaders, use fear to guide the ignorant masses.” Unfortunately, that theme is both overly simplistic and a bit worn out. Most importantly, at a time when protests and marches abound—on both the left and the right—it seems odd that the chief stand-in for liberals on the show is, at least so far, paralyzed by fear. There’s also a fair amount of P.C. culture scolding this season, including one moment in which left-wing protesters surround a car. (Post-Charlottesville, that moment might come across more provocative than intended.) Murphy and Falchuk had no way of knowing that, weeks before their show premiered, the president who inspired this entire season would stand up for Nazis. But its timing still feels both misguided and dangerous.
And when American Horror Story: Cult stops trying trying to deliver its grand message about the politics of fear, it’s got some ideas that could have made for a fantastic season. Bad neighbors are a staple of the franchise; think Constance Langdon, Joan Ramsey, and those cannibalistic hillbillies. This season is no exception: Ally and her wife, Ivy (Alison Pill), have a very strange couple living next door: Billy Eichner and Leslie Grossman play the beekeeping couple the Wiltons, an unhappy pair who actually made good on their college marriage pact. Over time, Ally becomes increasingly convinced that her neighbors are intentionally terrorizing her—with fairly good reason. The Wiltons’ politics—they’re extremely bothered by perceived racism, but at least one of them also seems incongruously homophobic—muddy exactly what we’re supposed to make of them, but the paranoia they induce in Ally results in a Hitchcock-like subplot that will hopefully get more screen time as the season goes on. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell where, exactly, this cluttered season is going. (There’s also a strange chemical conspiracy subplot that seems likely to inflate as episodes wear on.)
With only three episodes to review, there’s no way to determine how this season will stack up against others. Its aesthetic feels most closely related to Murder House and Coven, although its tone so far feels more closely related to Roanoke. (That’s probably thanks, in part, to a lack of Jessica Lange’s trademark scenery chewing.) All of the performances so far have been both nuanced and sardonically witty—particularly those from A.H.S. newbies Eichner and Billie Lourd—but with such clunky material to work with, results so far are mixed. As promising as some aspects this season are—and as fun as it is to see Murphy finally tackle cults, something so many fans have long craved—it’s hard to enjoy this season’s better aspects when they’re all inextricably linked to such a lazy, cynical political allegory. Even TV’s foremost horror maestro couldn’t have accounted for actual Nazis.
