American Horror Story: Cult, Shelley, and the Patriarchy

The King of Kings Is Very Popular

When I finally finished American Horror Story: Cult on Netflix, then promptly went to sleep and dreamed that a man who looked not unlike Donald Trump was chasing me with a knife. I did it to myself, watching it so late at night. But it might also be true that Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk did it to me. I admire the way that this season was able to tap into contemporary American fears about politics, sex, and violence in a way that felt contemporary. 

As usual, I want to talk about poetry and pop culture, and more specifically, poetry and television. It's one of my weird obsessions, and maybe it's yours too. You can imagine my delight when I learned, via my liberal use of closed captions, that Ally & Ivy's son was not named "Ozzy" as in "Ozzy Osbourne" but "Ozy" as in "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
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The son of main characters Ally (Sarah Paulson) and Ivy (Alison Pill) is named Ozymandias, which is the name of the most famous poem by English Romantic poet