Fargo in the Anthropocene: Kasaba or Karaağaç

 

My followers (if there are any) know well my prejudice against Turkish films/series. I politically object to the apolitical and anachronistic nature of today's Turkish film industry(*).

After the lightning-fast first 3 episodes of the Turkish series Kasaba, which climbed to the top on Netflix, I paused watching midway through episode 4 because the script started to wobble. I even didn't hold back from criticizing it as "written by AI."Still, I continued from where I left off, and by the end of episode 6, with chills down my spine, I said: this is actually Fargo.Fargo took its name from the town where the events took place. Our series is called Kasaba (Town), but it wouldn't be wrong if it were called Karaağaç.If the character named Kar, who strangely resembles Frances McDormand in her 18s, isn't a nod to Fargo—where McDormand shone as the pregnant police officer—then I'm ready to question my profession of deriving lives from films. It's been almost 30 years since Fargo.Accidentally found dirty money, closed-circuit town relationships, family pressures, ghosts of the past, trouble coming from outside... The parallels go beyond spatial positioning. I attribute the scriptwriters' failure to be sufficiently convincing while narrating the complicating events—in a job where they saw the fine shot so cleverly, in billiards terms—to time constraints, and time constraints to money constraints.I'm sure the sound system allocated by Netflix, which proudly boasts about the series being number 1, dates back to the 1970s, but I can't prove it. Those who won't hear the sound well, but you'll still do a good job—the producers who set out with this "brief" probably didn't dare to ask Netflix for time=money.The director understood best Netflix's instruction to do big work with little money and conveyed it very well to the actors. The actors, in turn, told Seren Yüce: no need to explain, "that's on us."Whoever did the casting for this series, I want to transfer them as a scout to Beşiktaş. We'll have to wait for this team's new idea to watch a Turkish series where the characters feel more real.On the other hand, this team proves they could shoot the dizi format aired 10 per night on mainstream channels with their little finger. While the central characters of the story live as real people, those chasing them feel like they've been borrowed from an ATV or Kanal D series and added to the story. Gel-haired, black shoes, suits, expensive cars, mansions—like a spinner bait for the misguided Turkish series audience.Of course, the transmission system of this reality comes from where the story pauses. Karaağaç, right on the nose of Edirne, is a place you couldn't urban-transform even if you wanted. You can't technically (at least for now) see the rental transformation you'd encounter in any Turkish town in Karaağaç.While Edirne buries its past under concrete—with the effect of the leva pounding the Turkish lira like the Kırkpınar chief wrestler—Karaağaç lives in the peace of being perhaps the farthest town in Turkey from concrete mixers, staying just as the grandfathers' grandfathers left it.That's why money doesn't easily come to the Karaağaç area. Plots don't yield one-to-three in Karaağaç. When money arrives by chance, just like in Fargo, things get messy. Lives fall apart. Death becomes the other face of money.For a while now, I'm not spending my life earning money. I'm dealing with what Aristotle called "high activities." These are jobs done without payment in return. Writing, cycling, cooking, caring for loved ones, helping with field and garden work without getting paid, playing table tennis, watching films, making new friends. The list goes on. One should try this not because they have a lot of money, but because jobs without monetary compensation truly give more pleasure.Although I wouldn't recommend a moneyless life much in the class society that agricultural society has brought us to, while watching "Fargo in the Anthropocene"—that is, Kasaba—I once again thought that the unequal distribution of money isn't such a great thing and needs to be urgently abolished. Money, when it comes from outside, first disrupts peace, then spills blood; and brings out the darkness in everyone.The quietness of Karaağaç saved from concrete mixers or the snowy infinity of Fargo doesn't matter; greed is the same greed, betrayal the same betrayal, conscience the same conscience.Kasaba reestablishes in Turkish the universal warning of the Coen brothers even after thirty years, and does it well. That's why, while excitedly waiting for this team's next project, I added one more item to my own "high activities" list: Pursuing a good story.

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(*) The corpse washer had his own unique reasons. Do Not Disturb, Cumhuriyet Şarkısı, and Sen Ben Lenin were already outside the prejudice. I watched and wrote about them. For the curious, links:https://cagatayarslanfilmlerhayatlar.blogspot.com/2025/02/gassal-turk-isi-six-feet-under-olunce.htmlhttps://cagatayarslanfilmlerhayatlar.blogspot.com/2023/09/turkiye-uzerine-cmylmz-tezleri.htmlhttps://cagatayarslanfilmlerhayatlar.blogspot.com/2022/05/requiem-for-ahmet-abi.htmlhttps://www.yeniarayis.com/yazi/sirri-sureyya-onderin-son-sirri-11000