Times of fiction and politics, by Josep Maria Fonalleras

‘The Good Fight’ is a series from the CBS network that can now be seen on Movistar. It is the sequel to another fiction called ‘The Good Wife’, which was focused on the comings and goings of a law firm. The cases to be resolved, the trials, the pacts, and, of course, the sentimental and personal relationships of the protagonists. So far, nothing new. In ‘The Good Wife’ there were already political notes (one of the characters was and we saw his electoral race to be governor), but it was still a conventional series, although with an excellent bill. The Good Fight’, with more formal daring (they are able to stop the development of history to tell the composition of the Supreme Court with cartoons, for example, or the reason for the strike of the American administration or the operation of ‘fake news’ on the networks), it is made Starting from an essential premise: the link with the most immediate present. Beyond the legal quarrels and the ever-present racial conflict, in its six seasons there have been constant references to the Trump’s rise to powerto covid, and, of course, to storming the capitolJanuary 2021. The partner of the main character, Democrat Diane Lockhart, is a member and advisor to the NRA, the National Rifle Association, and seems to have enough information – and privileged – about that fateful day.

In the current season, the approach is closer to political fiction. Since the intervention of the papers that Trump hid in Mar-a-Lago, the ideological conflict has radicalized. The Proud Boys (and all manner of far-right organizations) take on the Antifa on the streets of Chicago, right below the office where Lockhart works. Violence is no longer latent or hypothetical, but derives in a almost civil war. There are terrorist attacks, deaths and suicides, and the perception is that the country is shipwrecked. Given this, there are combative or contemplative attitudes, against the background of a national tragedy. While I was watching the series and thinking that this time they had gone too far in the dystopian hypotheses, I heard about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in his house, an assassination attempt against the speaker of the House of Representatives. And I thought that tragedy was not so far away. And that, as always, it is the fictions that inform us of the times in which we live.

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