“THE PENGUIN”, A DARK AMERICAN DREAM
Cinema Writer/Film Critic Efe TEKSOY; action, crime and drama series “THE PENGUIN”, for America’s Los Angeles-based Internet Newspaper @alaturkanews.
POWER AND THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN THE CORRUPTED CITY OF GOTHAM
The Penguin, which premiered on HBO in the United States on September 19, 2024, is a spin-off of The Batman (2022). Oscar and BAFTA award-nominated successful actor Colin Farrell plays the leading role in the series, which is about the rise to power of the Oswald “Oz” Cobb / Penguin character in the criminal world of Gotham City. In the story of the series, where we encounter a dark version of the American dream, we see a successful example of the Italian-American crime drama popular in the twentieth century.
Stars; Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Theo Rossi, David H. Holmes, Myles Humphus, Joshua Bitton, Carmen Ejogo, Myles Humphus, Clancy Brown and Michael Kelly.
CRIMINAL EMPIRE
The series producers state that the films The Long Good Friday (1980) and Scar Face (1983) influenced the series. The Penguin character, especially compared to Tony Soprano and Vito Corleone, essentially presents a story of rise to power, just like Scarface. The Penguin series offers the audience a different perspective from the high window shown in The Batman (2022) and takes us into the corrupt streets of Gotham city, mud, darkness and evil through the lens of the Penguin character. Penguin, who we see as the second man of Carmine Falcone, one of the biggest mafia bosses of Gotham City, is on the weak side, eager to gain more status and be seen as a more important person. This weakness constitutes the greatest source of his ambition for power.
ELITE CLASS
On the other hand, Oswald “Oz” Cobb, aka the Penguin, is trying to get to the top among Mafia families such as the Falcone family and the Maroni Family in Gotham’s underworld. These powerful families, which rule the criminal organizations of the underworld, are powerful by including many politicians, police forces and bureaucrats around the world. It portrays the image of an organization. When we look at it from a sociological perspective, it symbolizes that it is one of the centers of power ruling the world and the class called “Elite Community” at the highest level of society. American sociologist C. Wright Mills’s sociology classic book “The Power Elite” is presented by the International Sociological Association as the 39th most important book written in the field of sociology throughout the 20th century. This book, a classic of social science and social criticism, reveals the characteristics of the centers of power that rule the world. In the book; “The elite group in power consists of people who have the power to transcend the ordinary environments of usual and ordinary people, thanks to the opportunities and knowledge of life at their disposal. These people are in a position to make decisions that lead to big and important consequences.” says the sociologist Mills, stating that such people are in command posts of the major organizations and hierarchies of modern society. We see that the Mafia families in the movie symbolize such a mechanism and command great power. Thus, the concept of the Will to Power, a doctrine of thought that the great German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called the most fundamental fact of life, and also the German political philosopher and also social theorist Hannah Arendt’s The important political concepts of violence and the will to obey also emerge.
THE PENGUIN
Accompanied by Colin Farrell’s successful acting performance, we encounter a strong example of psychological character study in the series. The Penguin series, which was shot in New York and Los Angeles; A crime drama that will both introduce you to the dark criminal world of the Batman universe and open the curtains on the iconic villain penguin’s past that you did not know before.
EFE TEKSOY
REFERENCES AND SOURCES
Arendt, H. (1997). On Violence (Şiddet Üzerine); Bülent Peker, translate, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları press
MILLS, C. Wright, The Power Elite (İktidar Seçkinleri), Ünsal Oskay, translate, Istanbul: İnkılap Kitabevi Yayın Sanayi ve Ticaret Aş press, 2021
NIETZSCHE, F. (1968) The Will to Power, (Trans. Walter Kaufman and R. J. Hollingdale), New York: Vintage Books
