agingrebel.com
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.