Starting with the power hungry and ruthless couple Francis and Claire Underwood, the shows follows the couple’s quest for power and the presidency at any cause. House of Cards stands out due to its plot nature, instead of having a black and white good and bad show down, it creates a world where raw power and cunning wins every time. So in the end what’s the show is trying to tell us, what’s more behind the scenes and how it links the Eastern world. The show brings out a really strong message of appearance, everything is a about appearance. In the world of House of Cards, every character has both a public and private image of themselves, aesthetics plays a huge role in the show, arts and beauty are heavily featured, important decisions are usually made on a reflection of arts, for example Zoe and Frank confirmed their work play relationship in an art gallery and Frank and President Walker often discussed national matters while reflecting on the paintings in the White House, Claire’s image is heavily managed, her wardrobe is not only a frequent dialogue but also real life fashion all of which led to the question is there more to politics than pure spectacle? All of these surrounds the idea of theatrical politics, it’s a world of acting, from costumes to dialogue are carefully crafted, for instance when Frank first became president, he visited his father grave to seem ‘more human’ but soon revealed his true intentions and pissed on the gravestone. In the western society, politics is filled with catch phrase and slogan instead of real political arguments to keep the public entertaining, elections are no longer about policies rather it’s about the candidate, in other words appearance is politics. This is however not the case in most countries in the east, eastern politics focuses though also value appearance, there is no need for a theatre, in the less open minded eastern society, politicians’s ability to control their appearance is much more higher than those at the west where the press is mostly free. Furthermore, 5000 years of confucianism ideology shape the population into a relatively ignorant one, people are encouraged to take care of their won lives instead of raising questions, individualism is not as valued as it is at the west rather individuals are taught not to complain for the ‘greater good’. Therefore, politicians often take advantage of the ideology and are able to justify their wrong doing easily, such as the Secretary of Development of Hong Kong was found out to have an illegal basement in his house which could be sentenced for imprisonment but instead he simply used the excuse of being ‘too busy’ to take care of the scandal, although having some voices in the media, the public didn’t react much and simply accept the explanation. As seen upon, though appearance does matter in eastern politics, theatrical politics is not really needed due to traditional ideology. In the end, the theatre established by House of Cards is based on western political ideology which appearance matters the most, and despite entertaining, it is somewhat unnecessary in the eastern society since people are mostly obedient no matter what. The show brings out a really strong message of appearance, everything is a about appearance. In the world of House of Cards, every character has both a public and private image of themselves, aesthetics plays a huge role in the show, arts and beauty are heavily featured, important decisions are usually made on a reflection of arts, for example Zoe and Frank confirmed their work play relationship in an art gallery and Frank and President Walker often discussed national matters while reflecting on the paintings in the White House, Claire’s image is heavily managed, her wardrobe is not only a frequent dialogue but also real life fashion all of which led to the question is there more to politics than pure spectacle? All of these surrounds the idea of theatrical politics, it’s a world of acting, from costumes to dialogue are carefully crafted, for instance when Frank first became president, he visited his father grave to seem ‘more human’ but soon revealed his true intentions and pissed on the gravestone. In the western society, politics is filled with catch phrase and slogan instead of real political arguments to keep the public entertaining, elections are no longer about policies rather it’s about the candidate, in other words appearance is politics.
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