Jax Teller as a Symbol of the Proletariat

December 2014 brought the end 2014 and one my favorite shows: Sons of Anarchy. The show over its 7 seasons had risen to a very interesting popularity. From time to time I have observed who really loves the show and who wears the various products produced for the show including hats and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle special edition produced in commemoration of the show. I really enjoyed the show and I really enjoyed seeing that side of life. Jax Teller reminded me of some people I knew at various times and I enjoyed the complex story line. The show was popular despite being on FX in cable Siberia and from what I can tell is a blue-collar favorite. However, I don’t want to think about the TV show itself (look to the suggested articles below for all of the gossip) I’d like to take a more philosophical view. Jax Teller is an interesting view of the Proletariat and that as a view of humanity.

Jax Teller as a Symbol of the Proletariat

Jax Teller’s at his core isn’t as evil as it might seem in season 6-7 of the TV show. He is an exemplary flawed and fatal hero. He has some disparate things working:

1) Keeping his family safe (very fundamental)

2) His belief that the system is not just and cannot serve his needs (something that he uses to his advantage)

3) His desire for his club to make money in “safer” and more “legal” ways (something he carried from his father and conflicted with Clay Morrow over in seasons 2-3)

4) Working class notions of masculinity (very limited emotional range and raging sexual desire)

5) Trying to stay on top in a dog-eat-dog environment demarcated by violence and survival of the fittest

6) Finding that he is capable of really terrible acts (wantonly shooting people and such) that he had not thought possible until season 7 and had resisted before

The Proletariat has many of the same desires as Jax Teller. He wants a strong family with a good wife at home and his children well taken care of. He does what he has to do in order to cause that to occur including divorcing his first wife who was addicted to heroin and strung out. He has decided to follow in the steps of his father and step-father and prospect to join the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club. Like many people, he has minimal education and few other prospects in life from what we can tell in the context of the show. He takes what opportunities are available to him and within the context of SoA he is able to earn good money in a certain business. In some way, he has more opportunity than other white uneducated males of our age even if that opportunity includes extreme occupational hazards due to the vicissitudes of that business. His character finds success but finds it at a cost. In the context of the show, he is constantly struggling to fully fulfill all these desires listed above. As the show goes on, he must become more and more violent in order to accomplish this feat.

The reason why members of the working class identify with Jax Teller is because they see him as overcoming many of the things that they can not. There is also enjoyment in seeing him be able to act in ways that they cannot. He is both above the law and subject to it. He does whatever he wants to do with little legal consequences and only when things get very bad does he finally suffer the consequences of his actions. At the end of the show, he suffers the ultimate consequence for his lawless behavior and that is the compelling and necessary need to commit suicide and for his sons to “hate the very idea of me.” In that moment, he realizes that he is no longer classically good but rather that he has become an evil and unclean thing. In order to get what he wants he must sacrifice himself.

It is interesting that he ultimately chooses to commit suicide and is compelled to do so rather than face the full legal consequences of his actions after overcoming all the underworld problems he faced and the difficulty of putting the club into a positive place for the future, although not the one he dreamed. This situation, if you look at him as a symbol of the Proletariat, one could say that at this point in time the working class (the proletariat) at its core cannot overcome the system (represented by the cops driving behind him down the highway at the finale)  and refuses to face the consequences of the system in a head-on way and therefore being working class is a form of celebrated suicide. By committing suicide, he deprives the system of the ability to punish him for his actions or bring him to account. In this way, death is better than trying to fight the system. In his death, he exercises the only power he has left and that is the power to take his own life.

Does Jax Teller, as a symbol of the Proletariat, show us the futility of the working class in the modern system?

Does his suicide show us that, ultimately, the working class cannot even rise up as Marx implored it to do in the Communist Manifesto but rather the only thing to do is to commit suicide in the face of an overwhelming malevolent  and unforgiving system?

Obviously, these questions are too large to discuss in the context of this article but, if Jax Teller is a symbol of the Proletariat (and I argue he is a good one) then the way Kurt Sutter brought the show to an end is indicative of the larger struggle of the working class and that quite possibly the struggle is fatalistic and destructive due to the nature of our modern system.