Dialogue between the show's cast of mysterious characters is often opaque enough to leave us guessing. But we're still in Shadow's shoes, as confused and baffled as he is much of the time. We, as viewers, see more than Shadow does, privy as we are to the short vignettes and other perspectives. The magic here is real, but not of the sorcerous variety, and the show achieves many of its oddest moments by embracing the absurd. Personally, I found the art direction grew on me over time, as did much about American Gods. There's a twisted gaudiness to it that may not click with everyone. The visual effects are outlandish rather than realistic, and Shadow's dreams often look like fantastical television sets.
It's a fantasy set in modern America, that drifts between dreams and reality, airports and bone orchards, as easily as shadows between shade. What does it mean to believe, anyways? What does it mean to reason?Īmerican Gods is a weird show. American Gods is the kind of show that happily throws our cell phone out the window. The things people used to worship and the things they worship now. These cheap newcomers and golden calves, big-screen TVs and social media stand in stark contrast to the brooding, mysterious and unfathomable old gods, whose power stems from blind obeisance and hard faith, or sometimes simply need. Science fiction as cautionary tale is a close neighbor to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which itself was a parable about unchecked power in the industrial age.Īmerican Gods is the story of a war brewing between the Old Gods-those forgotten immigrant gods-and the New Gods: Media, Technology, Money. Indeed, science-fiction often warns of the dangers of technology gone awry, of unchecked human meddling and the thirst for power. None of this is to say that fantasy and science fiction can't work toward the same thematic ends. In some ways, this is what American Gods is attempting to examine, this division between faith and science. The latter is obsessed with technology, science, and the tangible.
The former is concerned with belief, magic, the unknown and inexplicable. Credit: StarzĪmerican Gods pits old gods against new.įantasy and science-fiction are often lumped into the same genre, but in many ways they're completely at odds. The old gods, come to America, once-hot flames now merely embers in the smoldering pit of modern America.Īmerican Gods asks us to question our faith in technology. In American Gods we see these beliefs in the flesh, as dwindling manifestations of once powerful conviction. Many of these stories are introduced through short vignettes that take place alongside the main story rather than within it. So we're introduced to various histories and immigrants, from stranded vikings to African slaves aboard a slaver's ship to Middle-Eastern cabbies. Perhaps that's because American is made up of so many disparate pieces, so many stories and beliefs. "This is the only country in the world that wonders what it is," Mr. Unlike most stories of immigrants, American Gods is less a story of individual people and more a story of the customs, history and, of course, gods of the immigrants, slaves and explorers who came to America.