Man in the High Castle: a review

12/14

The Man in the High Castle has just concluded its fourth and final season on Amazon Prime. Based on the Philip Dick novel of the same name, the series posits an alternative reality where the Axis powers won World War II. The Nazis control the eastern part of the US as part of the "Greater Reich” the Japanese occupy the West Coast and there is a buffer "Neutral Zone" through the Rocky Mountains. We see cities like New York and San Francisco as they would have been in the sixties without the postwar economic boom that took place.  Washington, DC suffered the first nuclear attack and is a District of Contamination....We later discover that Harlem has become a “depopulated zone” and its inhabitants sent to extermination camps. A resistance movement continues and there is a community called “sabra” for surviving Jews in the Neutral Zone.   Germany and Japan are in a tense state of Cold War.

Films begin appearing depicting an alternative world where the Allies had in fact won.  These films give hope to those who seek to overthrow the Nazis in this world. We are gradually introduced to a world where there is actually not one world but many worlds. With a portal that can allow travel from one to the other. And the increasing danger that the Nazis will seek to control other worlds as well. We experience much of the story through the family of John Smith, who went from being a US soldier to a Nazi commander and ultimately Reichsfuhrer for the North America, Nazi “purity” laws will ultimately impact his family. 

More than anything, TMITHC , like the Handmaid’s Tale, is for us a depressingly timely meditation on how quickly and easily people will come to accept and adapt to fascism. How making decisions based on “what is best for the family” can lead to the slow acquiescence to and participation in acts of inhumanity. Ultimately, the family can't be seen as separate from the whole of community.  The last season also becomes a reflection on race in this country. (Like HBO’s Watchmen series…)

A Black Revolutionary Communist movement out of Oakland eventually is able to get the Japanese to decide to abandon their occupation. In one especially poignant scene, a member of the BRC has brought back an old American flag thinking it might help rally a broader resistance. Other BRC members say, ‘What has that flag ever meant for us?” As we see our democracy being dismantled day by day, as the language of supremacy spreads and well armed acts of hatred continue, we need to be vigilant. Projects like Man in the High Castle make us think. And hopefully talk to one another. The stakes are high. We live in perilous times.