Thursday, September 27, 2018

The Mayans MC Snitch

OFF THE WIRE
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You may have become vaguely aware in recent weeks that a television program called Mayans MC debuts tonight on FX at ten in every time zone, except maybe Hawaii, and it is 66 minutes long without commercials. You may not have heard that the show’s leading character is a Drug Enforcement Agency snitch.
Spoiler alert!
Oh?! Oops! I guess I was supposed to say that before I said that the show’s leading character, a Mongols – excuse me, Mayans – prospect named “Easy” Reyes – you know, like “Easy Rider” – is a DEA snitch. Snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch, snitch. Oh well. Too late now.
You have undoubtedly already heard that the show is great art; or rather you have been force fed like you are a Strasbourg goose the notion that this is “the next chapter in Kurt Sutter’s award-winning Sons of Anarchy saga.”

Greatest Of All Time

Right. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony Number Nine, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy Saga. Sure. Okay.
Sutter is also widely regarded as being insightful about the motorcycle club world. He has tattoos. He has employed Sonny Barger. He has purchased beautiful, custom motorcycles from Rusty Coones. He has an indoor pool filled with hundred dollar bills. His hot tub bubbles Single Malt Scotch. He is a Twitter tough guy.
Sutter’s partner in this creative endeavor is the incomparable Xicon film maker El Jeen Hahmez (formerly known as Elgin James).

Geography Lesson

The Mayans, after whom the series is named, are cynical drug dealers, as some Entertainment Industry executives may be described as cynical, only without the self-deprecating irony and gentle humor for which Entertainment Industry executives are famous. Their motorcycles are mostly for show. They smuggle drugs hidden in quinceanera dresses for a syndicate called the Galindo Cartel. And they get bossed around by the cartel boss’ son, an Ivy educated jackass named Miguel Galindo.
Easy’s back story is that he was all set to go to Stanford before he got jammed up and flipped. The show is set in a town called Santo Padre which is understood to be the twin cities of Calexico and Mexicali where the first season of Mayans MC was filmed. Calexico is on the Yankee side of la linea and Mexicali is south of the border. Calexico, with a population of about 40,000 is really just a suburb of Mexicali which is about 20 times as large. The cities straddle the border, 125 miles east of San Diego.

Snitches

A show about an undercover informant joining a motorcycle club could be interesting in the hands of film makers who are slightly less self-important and clueless than Sutter and Hahmez. Mel Gibson wanted to make a movie about William Queen. Tony Scott wanted to fictionalize Jay Dobyns.
Gangland Undercover, a television series Mayans MC seems to have broadly plagiarized, was based on the memoir of a snitch named Ashley Charles Wyatt, also known as Charles Falco. Gangland Undercover tried to grab the Sons of Anarchy audience in 2015 and failed but it did succeed as drama in a way that Mayans MC probably will not.
The Falco portrayed in that series was nothing like the real Falco. The television character was actually someone interesting. That character was aware he was playing a role and he portrayed the feelings someone with a soul who got themselves into that situation might actually feel. He was scared when the Vagos he was betraying turned out to be dangerous men. He was touched and felt guilty when they turned out to be generous men. The Falco character in Gangland Undercover was very aware that he was just making things up as he went along.
To date , Sutter has never demonstrated that kind of artistic humility and Hahmez seem to be an even more deluded egomaniac that Sutter.

Post Truth

So far in his career Sutter has seemed not to care that he is just making things up as he goes along. Like so many celebrities in post truth America, he insists that his audience admire the beautiful inanities he pulls out of his ass.
The opening scene of Mayans anticipates the sort of self-reverential, cut rate postmodernism audiences can expect to see for the next six or seven years.
The camera’s eye moves from a slogan scribbled on a wall, “divided we fall,” to a hungry dog gnawing on a dead crow. (You know, the Sam Crow. Get it? Nudge, nudge. Get it?) Then prospect Easy appears, riding alone on his motorcycle. Subtle, huh?

Like Cows?

This isn’t the sort of thing writers invent, let alone writers who know anything or who actually have stories to tell. These are the sorts of images television executives invent. For all his social media braggadocio, Kurt Sutter seems to turn into an ingratiating puddle of goo whenever somebody offers him money and praise.
Who could know better what a mass audience wants motorcycle clubs to be than a television executive with access to hundreds of volumes of audience research and focus group reports? So, you might enjoy Mayans MC.
Do you enjoy long, romantic, moonlight walks in feed lots? Do you like how your boots smell after?
Before you get your hopes up, though, you might want to remember that the executives who are really writing this thing are calling it “the next chapter in Kurt Sutter’s award-winning Sons of Anarchy saga.” Remember that ten years ago, they called that motorcycle melodrama Hamlet. And, remember all that green paper in that big, dry, indoor swimming pool.