Perhaps my earliest memory is a feeling that I had been born into the wrong universe. Possibly even the wrong species. My fantasy was that some sort of Pied Piper would lead me - - and not many other kids - - into a much less terrifying land, a place where psychic cannibalism was not a useful skill-set and that was pretty much obvious to everyone. A sad, angry childhood was my fate until my late teens when I finally found others to whom I seemed connected. And I discovered irony. But even at my current age, where the still-mysterious end looms uncomfortably near, the sense of wrong remains.
There’s little doubt in my mind that Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) totally gets this. I think a lot of kids do, both at the time and later in life. In her latest effort for television, Sense8, Ms. Wachowski takes all the alienation she has endured and drapes it with a new identity, one that says, in effect . . . it’s not you, it’s them. Unlike dystopian science fiction of the past, for example, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Lana signals alienation as a net positive, despite the rage of the reaction. She’s not the first.
In the 50’s a book was published called, in the US, Re-Birth (and in the UK, The Chrysalids). It was written by the brilliant British science fiction author, John Wyndham (The Day Of The Triffids). The story is set in a post-apocalyptic Canada, which is much hotter(!) than now, peopled by a fundamentalist tribe that practices non-stop eugenics on all life forms (even the livestock). The protagonists are a group of children whose mutation includes telepathy and extreme empathy within their group. The forces of conformity chase them across the landscape as the mutants attempt to unite with similarly evolved beings from a place they call ‘Sealand.’ Almost no one I know who read Re-Birth, forgot it, including me. Including, maybe Lana.
Wyndham’s novel offered a response to ‘otherness’ that was positive and progressive, although he didn’t have a Web following. But Lana’s philosophical interest in gender and feminist theory are manifest. It’s significant for this reason that Sense8 is the first time a transgender woman (Jamie Clayton, The Snowman) played a transgender character, written and directed by another transgender woman. But despite this deconstructive flurry, each character lives in a subplot that involves traditional empathetic devotions, unrelated to their ESP: a son to his critically ill mother, a devout Hindu to the god Ganesh. Season two ends with a proposal of marriage.
So Sense8 is really about connectiveness. As Naveen Andrews (Jonah) said in an interview it’s a big ‘fuck you’ to the current rage of global fascism. But before you get all rainbowy, in real life Agent Smith won this round. In June of this year, Netflix announced the cancellation of the show. “The audience was very passionate but just not large enough to support the economics of something that big, even in our platform,” wrote executive Ted Sarandos. To be fair, the show was shot in eight different cities across the globe, costing a buttload of money; Netflix does intend to film and screen a two-hour finale. It’s just so . . . ironic.
I look forward to the finale as I continue to come to terms with my otherness. Ms. Wachowski and I will survive in the brutal here and now, no trips to Zealand required. Because, after all . . . humans are evolving every day.