Daredevil: Born Again Ep. 4 attempts to be Dickensian.
You got to keep the devil way down in the hole.
The Short Take:
Another compelling episode with one emotionally explosive scene. A tipping point for the season. The social commentary is blaring, but I’m not sure it’s quite enough.
[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains details about Daredevil: Born Again through Episode 4.]
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The Long Take:
The title of Episode 4 of Daredevil: Born Again was “Sic Semper Systema.” This is a slight alteration of a more commonly known Latin phrase, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” which means, “Thus always to tyrants.” It appears on the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, with a figure representing Virtue holding their foot on the chest of a defeated figured representing Tyranny. So it’s a threat against Tyranny, more or less. Logically, this means that the Daredevil episode title, replacing Tyrannis with Systema is a threat against “The System.”
This is an apt title, as we see both Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk struggle to do things by the book in their respective systems. We see Fisk tire of the formalities of politicking, sitting through not one but two renditions of “We Built This City,” (what a funny bit). He also runs into all kinds of bureaucracy that prevents him from swiftly taking action to improve the abandoned port area of the city. Meanwhile, Matt’s faith in the legal system’s ability to do enough good dips when he learns that Hector Ayala has been murdered after being acquitted; that faith continues to waiver with a new client arrested for stealing five boxes of Fiddle Faddle caramel corn because when he was arrested previously, he missed a deadline to renew his food stamps. There’s nothing but frustration and disillusionment in the systems that these two characters made a self-reforming commitment to in Episode 1. How close are we to the camel’s back breaking? I’d guess pretty close.
For me, critiquing the inefficacy of institutions and systems, leading to a declaration of “Sic Semper Systema,” goes all the way back to Dickens’ 1852 novel Bleak House. The most famous and lasting feature of this sprawling story, which has myriad characters and subplots, is the lampooning of the Court of Chancery (sometimes referred to as Chancery courts) or England’s civil justice system. The probate case that goes on throughout the novel, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, demonstrates how painstakingly slow and all-consuming the court can be. One character stuck in a different case, Mr. Gridley, constantly seeks the attention of Lord Chancellor in vain, and eventually gets arrested and dies. The system literally kills him.
Before that, though, Gridley has a lot to say about the system. He futilely rages just as Murdock and Fisk do:
“There again!” said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. “The system! I am told on all hands, it’s the system. I mustn’t look to individuals. It’s the system. I mustn’t go into court and say, ‘My Lord, I beg to know this from you — is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am dismissed?’ My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system. I mustn’t go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by being so cool and satisfied — as they all do, for I know they gain by it while I lose, don’t I? — I mustn’t say to him, ‘I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!’ HE is not responsible. It’s the system. But, if I do no violence to any of them, here — I may! I don’t know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!”
Gridley’s rant not only mentions the system several times, it presents the system as antithetical to the individual. He cannot hold any one person accountable for his problems because they can pass him off to the system or punt to the system. An individual in a system cannot tell him if he is right or wrong because that’s the system’s job. He can’t blame an individual for anything because “He is not responsible. It’s the system.” And yet, he says, if he loses it — if he just can’t take it any more, he will harbor ill will and maybe even become violent against “individual workers of that system.” He can’t help but take out his frustration on individual workers even though they would not consider themselves as implicated in the system’s doing.
This is where The Punisher comes in. He offers an alternative model of justice — one that ignores the system and fixates exclusively on the individual. As he gives Matt Murdock a hard time about his inability to save Foggy’s life and his inability to finish the job and punish Bullseye himself, Matt says, “I ran him down. I did what I had to do . And I let the system take care of it.” Then, Frank Castle has a very Gridley-esque outcry:
“You and your Goddamn system! Christ! So what now? Every day Bullseye goes to the chow hall, eats his slop, you know he gets to breathe the same air that you breathe. You feel good about that?”
Frank does not agree with the system’s justice and thinks that Matt should have killed Bullseye when he had the chance. To him, there’s no procedure or protocol that could replace individual vengeance and, in his mind, justice.
Image Credit: Cosmopolitan
If we’re thinking more broadly at individuals suffering at the expense of a system and the critical examination of systems, there is a much more contemporary comparison to make: HBO’s The Wire (arguably one of if not the best television series of all time, but that’s a discussion for another day). Showrunner David Simon has repeatedly tried to dismiss comparisons between his series and Dickens’ works, saying he thinks the closer comps would be Moby Dick or Greek tragedy. He accused Dickens of “punking out” in the end, as he would typically end his social commentary with a more classically Victorian happy ending: a marriage, a wealthy patron, or a lawyer saving the day. I don’t think that precludes drawing a parallel between Dickens’ examination of social systems and the many characters that suffer at their hands and Simon’s study of Baltimore through not only systems like courts, police precincts, schools, mayoral offices, labor unions, and journalism.
Thanks for sticking with me. I can now say that this is what I think Daredevil: Born Again is going for as well. With two major differences: 1.) It’s trying to do this social ill study from the top down in a much more condensed timeframe than Simon or certainly Dickens, who was famously paid by the word to write his novels serially (that is, in episodes). And 2.) the frustration with the system is primarily a vehicle for pushing Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk back to their true forms as Daredevil and Kingpin. That potentially dilutes the commentary as commentary unto itself.
Still, Jon Bernthal is the best, and that scene between Frank Castle and Matt Murdock, even if it is a single flash in the pan, was a thrill to behold. Bernthal slides right back into the role, just as Charlie Cox did when he returned. Just hearing him call Matt “Red” felt so right. But would that scene have been even more transcendent had it been the climax of a storyline, a search, an investigation, rather than a pop by for a therapy session and immediately go back to nunchucking. The writers clearly intend for Punisher to push Matt over the edge, to get out his feelings about Foggy in a way he never could with his actual therapist girlfriend. To achieve emotional carthasis through confronting his feelings as a liberated Daredevil rather than a repressed Matt Murdock.
Frank astutely observes when he says, “I don’t think you came here for my help. See. I think you want my permission. You wanna get your hands on somebody, huh? Wanna hurt them?”
Image Credit: Collider
Matt is done with the system. He does want to get his hands on somebody. He’s coming for individuals next. (Move over, Gridley!)