Week One:

The American Dream has failed, and nowhere else is this more clear than in the Midwest. While the coasts flourish with gilded spectacles of cities that bring in wealth which very few will ever obtain and the south remains in utter desolation from both economic and environmental disasters, the Midwest suffers from what may be the greatest indignation of them all: it is utterly forgotten. 

The Midwest deserves its name not only for its geographic location, but also for the fact that most states run directly in the middle of most lists, both good and bad. The Midwest isn’t as infamous for its drug and mental health issues, though there are still thousands of people who fail to get the help they need. The Midwest doesn’t have an economy which rivals entire nations, but cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis spare the region from the same economic woes as the south. Truly, the region is entirely middle of the road, neither great nor derelict. This, however, provides its own unique issues. The Midwest doesn’t have the legs to stand on its own, like the coasts do, though they are not in the dire straits of the south. This means they will not receive the same aid as the latter, the same revitalization projects in an effort to pump life into a stagnant economy. This, in turn, leads to infrastructure growing old until it crumbles, and yet there is very little effort to renew the region. 

The Midwest will neither grow worse or better because of this. Yes, there have been some economic disasters which capture the nation’s attention, such as the failure of the auto industry in Detroit, but this in turn was caused by a lack of attention on the region as millions of jobs were exported for cheaper labor. But when presidential candidates visit, they always center on the agricultural base of the region, never the industrial. There are no (genuine) promises to renew the auto industry as there are to protect coal industries in the Appalachians. The Midwest remains an agrarian culture, and– as with all agrarian cultures– this will lead the region into irrelevancy.

The American political system is beginning to shatter and fail across the board. Soon, we will be overlapped by other economies that exploit the flaws in our social and financial structures. But as the south rots and the coasts (metaphorically) pull further away from the republic in favor of political and economic independence, the Midwest will do as it always does: sleepwalk into oblivion.

Week Seven:

Depicting the Midwest through two distinct perspectives, Field of Dreams and Fargo are influenced by the decades and societies in which they were created. While the former is an attempt at escapism during a time in which the Midwest was declining in reputation, the latter is a deconstruction of the “good old boys” of the region, positing that the same aspects that allow the region to thrive also prove to be their downfall. In this way, the status of the Midwest in the 80s and 90s are propped against each other, symbolizing the status of the country as a whole. 

Field of Dreams was developed during a time in which the Midwest was at a turning point. After decades of taking out loans and developing land on credit, economic downturn forced the banks to call their loans back, leading to a recession and farm crisis. Farmers, many poorly educated, felt compelled by an all-powerful and unseen force to take out these loans, and felt cheated. These emotions are reflected in Field of Dreams, in which the kind, morally-upright farmer is simply trying to follow his dreams, while a nefarious bank-without-a-face threatens to punish him for doing so and take away his farm. The sentiment, while presented fantastically, is a reflection of the emotions and disillusionment of farmers to the banking system. The baseball players are a representation of the past, a time in which dreams were available for everyone, and life was much simpler. The notion that “people will come” if the baseball field remains reflects this as well; this field of dreams is the boon that will save the Midwest, the simple solution that the busybodies from the cities will come to find and discover the simplicity of Iowa. 

While Field of Dreams is an attempt to escape the decay of the Midwestern lifestyle, Fargo is a deconstruction of the lifestyle as a whole. For many of the Coen Brothers’ projects, they choose to hold a mirror and “disprove” the cultures depicted in their movies in different ways. In No Country for Old Men, the ideals of the Western hero defeating the treacherous Mexican dressed in black and proved to be nothing more than vanity from an old sheriff; similarly, the prestige and intrigue associated with the CIA is shown to be overly bureaucratic and largely useless in Burn After Reading. Fargo is no different. In a traditional Midwestern crime story, the small town police would be corrupt and ineffective, and it would take the skills of a fast-mouth city dweller to solve the case (see Silence of the Lambs). However, in this version, all the men present are stuck in their ideals of being the big man to save the day, so much so that Wade Gustafson opts to go alone and armed to pay the ransom, ignoring his son-in-law's pleas to do it himself. There is no big action piece or final fight. There is no case to crack. Instead, it’s the power of small-town gossip that solves the case, and the only capable authority figure, a heavily pregnant woman, does so purely by accident. Just like in real life, there’s very little fanfare for the whole affair. The ending reflects this. Rather than comment on the excitement of the past few days, the married couple is concerned about the price of stamps, showing just how simple their lifestyle is.