Analyzing The Music Of 'Fargo': Emmit's Faustian Bargain

With the possible exception of the great bluesman Robert Johnson, no figure is more associated with Satanic bargaining for an eternal soul than Faust. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of re-tellings of the Faust legend in the past 500 years, going back to Germany in the 16th century. Faust has appeared in novels, short stories, plays, operas, rock operas, films, and TV shows. Faust has been particularly inspirational for composers, including luminaries as varied as Wagner, Liszt, Mahler, Stravinsky, Zappa, Randy Newman, and Radiohead. In Brian De Palma’s Phantom Of The Paradise, one of my favorite Faustian offshoots, the film’s titular songwriter attempts to mount his own version of Faust, before he is transformed into a monster. But even after the Phantom is doomed and disgraced, his Faust song cycle still goes on to great success. The moral of this story: No matter the century, context, or cultural group, Faust still sells.

Perhaps inevitably given this season’s themes of sin and retribution, Faust has also been integrated into Fargo. The most notable music in this week’s episode derives from Charles Gounod’s enduring 19th century opera, originally staged in Paris in 1859. Excerpts from Gounod’s Faust appear toward the beginning of the episode, when Emmit wakes in his house, and toward the end, when he’s carried to bed. The story of a man who have gave up everything he had to get anything he ever wanted is now Emmit’s waking nightmare, with Varga acting as a devilish constant in his life.

For the most part, the Faust story has stayed the same over the centuries: An elderly scholar, dissatisfied with his boring life, makes a deal with the devil in which he hands over his soul in exchange for youth, vitality, and an exciting romance with a young woman.

Where Faust stories tend to deviate is in the matter of Faust’s ultimate fate. In the earliest tellings of the story, Faust always wound up as a man damned for all eternity, perhaps because this conclusion helped to drive home the power of the story as a moral parable. Portraying Faust as a tragically covetous person, who risks his eternal life for short-term pleasures of the flesh, clearly resonates with the lessons of scripture that good Germans were expected to follow at the time.

One of the most famous versions of Faust was a hybrid of play and epic poem written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in two parts that were published 24 years apart, in 1808 and 1832. Goethe’s Faust departed from the established legend in two crucial ways: One, Faust is approached by the devil, rather than actively seeking him out; two, Faust is redeemed at the end of the story. In Goethe’s story, Faust is complicated and sinful but he’s still worthy of being saved. He is, in other words, recognizably human. More than two decades later, Charles Gounod took Goethe’s play as partial inspiration for his opera, including the part about Faust receiving a moment of grace.

Which brings us to Emmit, who ended tonight’s episode with his wish to confess all of his sins. Is Emmit’s own Faustian arc about to take a redemptive turn? Flashing back to the Peter And The Wolf episode, are we about to finally see Peter (Gloria) take on the wolf (Varga)? My guess is that the righteous and the wicked are about to have a battle royale.

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