Canadian Politics Today

I am currently watching American Gods, which is not on Netflix but is on Amazon Prime Video, which I was delighted to discover comes free with my Amazon Prime membership.

The American Gods show is based on the novel of the same name by Neil Gaiman, which I read many years ago. The book and the show explore our relationship with religion, faith, culture, superstition, folklore, and our collective zeitgeist-- the mood and the moment that we create as a community.  The book talks about both old gods and new. Characters include old gods (including "Mr Wednesday"-- Odin, and Shadow Moon -- who may or may not be Baldur the Norse sun god) as well as the new gods like Media, Techno Boy, and Mr World. Other mythological figures appearing include a 6'4 leprechaun, a genie, Anubis, Jesus, and Vulcan.

As with the book, the TV show steps away from the main characters with little vignettes ("Coming to America")  depicting how old-world myths and superstitions were brought to America by immigrants throughout the ages.   A key vignette from the book and recreated in the TV show captures the major theme of the show. Thousands of years ago, a small tribe crossed the land bridge from Asia to North America, bringing with them the god they worshipped-- a mammoth skull totem.  The tribe struggled, they were starving, and their priestess sacrificed herself to a different god-- a great Bison-- to save her tribe. Her tribe was absorbed by a larger tribe, the Bison tribe, and they left their mammoth skull totem behind. Their mammoth totem god was forgotten-- and it died.  Mr Wednesday tells Shadow early on that the one thing, the only thing, that he fears is to be forgotten.  And with the rise of the new gods, that is exactly what he sees happening all around him. He, and the other old gods, are becoming weaker by the day.  Shadow doesn't actually realize he's anything more than a hapless convict just out of prison and thrust into an astounding world of strange events and people that he can't believe even exist.

Vulcan, the god of the forge, appears in one episode. He is one of the old gods, but he seems to have the new world figured out. His modern day forge is a factory making bullets. He puts god-like power in the hands of his followers, and their passion for gun culture is the worship that he needs to survive. Is American gun culture a faith or religion in its own right?   What about pro sports? If it was, which old-world god would pro sports venerate?

Ian McShane stars as Mr Wednesday, and I think his uncanny presence is what really makes the show.  Ricky Whittle co-stars as Shadow, and Emily Browning is Shadow's dead wife Laura. Even though she's dead, Laura is a much more prominent character in the TV show than she was in the book, which is nice.   Gillian Anderson appears as Media, embodied as Lucille Ball in one episode and Marilyn Monroe in another-- she's enchanting in her very limited screen time.

I am really enjoying this.  While it doesn't have the richness of detail that the book does, it captures the broad strokes and has great performances, especially from Ian McShane and Emily Browning.

 -k