I am writting about 5 essay reviews which are written in an accessible style and incorporate significant approaches of contemporary cultural analysis. They look at the film with respect to decisions that went into it's making, it's visual, narrative, musical and performance strategies; it's commentary on American history, myth and culture; it's prduction history and relationship to other films by the Coen brothers, the imnportance of it's settings and the gender and racial issues it raises.
More speciffically, David Sterritts essay gives a production history of FARGO, describing how and why it was made, and charts it's relationship to the entire body of the Coen Brothers work.
Pamela Graces essay explores the unusual way FARGO develops it's central character as both a resourcful officer and an expectant mother. Grace shows how the films development of this character comments incisively on the history of gender relations.
Christopher Sharretts's essay illustrates ways in which the films setting and characters comment trenchantiy on dominant myths of American History and culture, particularly those of Western frontier. He demonstrates how the appeals of many of these characters to the American Dream for self-validation are little more than a hypocritical reliance on long discarded values; a reliance that points not to cultural superiority, but rather to the nightmare world of the modern horror film.
Mikita Brottman's essay implicity deals with the issue of how FARGO can be seen as both comic and horriffic. She develops the relationship of the films comedy to it's grotesque elements and shows how FARGO'S does not contradict but rather reinforces it's grim themes and events.
William Luhrs essay shows how FARGO both invokes and diviates from the stereotypes of genre, setting, comedy and characterisation to simultaineously engage and disorient its viewers.
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