Bill Hader, JONESTOWN and Gore Capitalism

When I found out a few days ago that the multifaceted Bill Hader, co-creator, director and protagonist of Barry, one of my favorite shows of all time—I don't understand why more people aren't talking about it, WHAT'S GOING ON?—was going to produce, direct and possibly star in a series based on the famous 1978 Jonestown massacre, the first thing that came to mind was "everything makes sense." Why did I think that? Max's impressive series in which a shy hitman clumsily joins the acting world turned out to be a brutal portrayal of the masks we put on every day when we step out into society.

Our need to show ourselves inexorably equivocal before others JUST to gain acceptance can be seen in all possible corners: in the pseudo-hipster that buys a latte to symbolically whisper to the barista "I'm one of them," referring to the alleged status he belongs to; in the "manly" guy who tries to impose his poor sense of machismo on the mechanic—who surely is two or three times more sexist—after his car breaks or in the fake Lady Godiva who wants to enforce her presence when the girl that was doing her nails makes a mistake. Yes, all this may sound too resentful, but it's true. I'm one of those people who aren't afraid of saying things as they are, not mincing my words. Cheap boastfulness or extreme self-indulgence? You decide.

The thing is, Hader knew how to capture "the education of violence" in his masterpiece throughout four seasons, which unfortunately flew under the radar. Or at least a radar I consider valuable. Defining Barry would be limiting myself, but I have thought about how to summarize this wonder many times. Let's say the series is about the stories we tell ourselves and others, about those fantasies we use to disguise problems extraordinarily bigger than we think, about the spreading of violence, about infections we can pass on to our peers—almost—without realizing it and about our never-ending cycles.

Barry Berkman/Block's arc is simply amazing. His character is initially shown as a puppet hitman, who is manipulated by his tutor, Monroe Fuches, a man with a questionable past who torments him with the idea that his purpose is to be a lethal weapon—"Hitler painted. John Wayne Gacy painted," he tells him with an unsettling serenity—thanks to the astonishing criminal skills he possesses. But Barry starts to see himself fulfilling a much healthier destiny: becoming an actor. What happens next, meaning, throughout the whole story, is disturbing, striking, ridiculous but overall real. Barry starts a process of catharsis in which he channels all his wilder, deeper emotions on stage. Guilt transforms into the main element of alienation for him, but it's mostly present in the battle between desire and essence. BARRY IS A VIOLENT PERSON AND NOTHING CAN CHANGE HIM.

The massacre planned by Jim Jones—preacher, cult leader but mostly a fake human being— was one of the most disturbing events of our contemporaneous history. More than 900 people—mostly African Americans—died poisoned in what was presented before the authorities as a collective suicide in the agricultural community of Jonestown, Guyana, led by the infamous preacher involved in the protestant movement known as "Peoples Temple."

This sinister event, which to the naked eye may seem like the result of an isolated cult, can also be interpreted as a radical manifestation of what Mexican poet Sayak Valencia conceptualizes as "gore capitalism": a type of capitalism based on presenting violence, necropolitics and the use of the human body as merchandise as if they were spectacles. In the series created by Hader and Alec Berg, these concepts stand out thanks to the construction of the main tone through mediocre elements: Barry lives in a country where buying a gun amounts to buying candy in another one, controlled by a nobody who orders him who to kill and who to spare, and slowly walks on the edge while he gets rid of bodies without any remorse.

Jones, a character spiritually anchored to these extreme ideas, had promised his inhabitants a communal, anti-racist, self-sufficient paradise, far away from the injustices of American capitalism. On the surface, his Jonestown was a ruthless critique of the system, the search for an alternative life based on collectivism and equality. The utopia soon became a dystopia and the winds of change blew the other way. Surveillance became constant, together with physical punishments, a satirical internal propaganda and an irrational devotion to a Messianic leader. What was sold as liberation quickly ended up shaping a brutal, systematic bubble of control and exploitation.

Here is where the concept of gore capitalism comes in handy. This idea of being "reborn" with Jonestown wasn't simply conceived by Jones as part of an isolated sect, it was also the most sickening possible symptom of a camouflaged, dark system that causes marginality and desperation. According to Valencia, this type of capitalism operates within the margins of the formal system mostly everyone knows, but it never stops being functional to it. Jonestown was THE relief valve for many people discriminated against and excluded from the American dream, like it happens to our beloved Barry Berkman in the series. Yet that relief was never the alternative they dreamed of, but rather the most perverse extension of the same system that had expelled them.

Hader can easily recreate these scenarios that interweave the fake idea of an idealized future with the raw present we live in. The outstanding detail of this massacre is that it wasn't just massive, but also spectacular. The occurrence was covered by the sensationalist press, and its horrible images—rows of swollen bodies poisoned with cyanide—were recorded and immortalized forever. This act of making a spectacle out of death fits in with the logic of gore capitalism: bodies that aren't useful for the job anymore become profitable resources for entertainment. Tragedy turns into media merchandise and, thus, life, or actually death, translates into rating points.

The Peoples Temple can be considered the facade, an unintended reference in Barry shown in a scene of season two's eight episode. While NoHo Hank (leader of the Chechen mafia) enjoys his alliance with Cristóbal (leader of the Bolivian mafia) and Esther (leader of the Burmese mafia) in a peaceful party inside a monastery, Barry decides to violently intervene to go after Fuches, his mentor who had just betrayed him. The scene itself is extremely bloody, set in an institution where—seemingly—positive values are preached.

This is nothing more than Hader's ruthless critique of this type of capitalism, which functions as a microcosm with its most extreme features: rigid hierarchies, surveillance, emotional and physical exploitation, individual sacrifice for the sake of a superior cause—in the show, money; in Jonestown, absolute annihilation.

This occurrence represented the macabre fusion between utopia and horror, between resistance and the reproduction of the system in its most inhumane form. Within the framework of gore capitalism, its history is a warning that's still more intact than ever. Hader has the resources and tools to, once again, create something unique and phenomenal, but also to raise awareness. Long live Bill Hader.

Published on MAY 18, 2025, 16:10 PM | UTC-GMT -3

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