Popular film rarely combines the mother and the law in a single figure, but in the Coen brothers' neo-noir comedy Fargo, the police chief is a very pregnant and very maternal woman. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) carries a police revolver (clichéd phallic signifier of legal authority) and a large belly containing a child (proof of female reproductive power); a highly skilled and unusually self-possessed police officer, she demonstrates far more practical intelligence than any of the film's male characters. Marge is also a comic figure: she “walks funny,” “talks funny,” and constantly surprises us by violating the conventions of the crime movie. Throughout the film, her words and actions are implicitly contrasted with those of the more typical male cop. Many aspects of her job performance and personal life – her use of language, exercise of power, interpersonal relationships, and stated values – challenge cultural patterns and raise questions about familiar norms.

Marge is a powerful figure whose potency is kept in check by a combination of the film's overall ironic tone and its orchestration of comic incidents. One indication of her significance as the film's emotional and moral center is the image most commonly used to market the film. The still on the covers of Fargo videotapes and DVDs portrays a police officer (Marge) kneeling on the ground, looking down at a dead state trooper whose corpse is spread horizontally across the frame against a background of pure white snow.