TV Review: Steven Seagal: Lawman - "Too Young to Die"

If the contemplation of art is united with a suitably assiduous mental effort, one can see on the canvas fragments of what might have been. Shadows of possibility lie embedded within the image, ghosts of ideas long-dismissed, ideas smote by the very mutability that heralded their original being. The visual assemblage always leaves a gap in its form, a cue for the overactive mind to insert what it deems lacking.

Consider Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. When we look at it we see a foreground in which the eponymous god, conceived as a giant deistical beast, feasts upon his offspring with ruthless alacrity. It’s a scene of compelling brutality – a crime that resonates with the deepest human compulsion for procreation. But stare into the darkness behind Saturn’s form for long enough and a new figure appears. Sneaking up behind him is Steven Seagal. Seagal wears a face of steely determination, head shot through with anger, a man about to beat down an infanticidal son-of-a-bitch.

We do not know why Goya chose to have Seagal as merely implicit in the painting. He could easily have had Seagal kicking Saturn in the side of the head whilst a virtuous nymph picks up the child. Or Seagal could have punched Saturn in the arsehole, causing the latter to release the child. But Goya opted to leave Seagal as a faint phantasm, a threatening bodily fog set as the moral antithesis to Saturn’s crazed power-trip.

One thing is for certain: Seagal will not tolerate harm being done to children.

This is also the primary thrust of episode four of Steven Seagal: Lawman. Following a stormy intro sequence of weird shapes and furious cuts, Seagal and co. are seen driving through a neighbourhood on patrol. The night has brought about its daily eruption of misdemeanour and iniquity. A man-sized mantis kicks over bins. A winged-demon soars through the air, someone’s pet feline clutched in its talons. Twenty harpies engage in vociferous debate with a politician. Each scene yearns for Seagal’s mighty fist of righteousness, an angelic remedy that only Seagal can distribute. The chupacabra defecating on the sheriff’s lawn needs ninety kilojoules of Seagalian punishment, the citizenry cries out for it.

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic, the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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