The second season of NetFlix’s Sense8 is here. Wow. Just WOW.
Before that, let me talk quickly about my relationship with TV. As busy as I am, I still push myself for some TV time, at least an hour or two everyday to take myself off work obsessions.
Not like my reading which is usually centered on work-life passions, the big screen at home takes me to to new worlds especially when I consume sci-fi shows/movies or documentaries. The consumption opens a different part of my brain focused on existence in it’s meaning or purpose if there is any.
So coming back to Sense8, the show is created by The Wachowskis, the brilliant former brothers who became trans sisters and brought us The Matrix!
For people from my generation fandoms of The Matrix is only shared with either StarTrek or StarWars, The God Father, amongst few others. It was a life-changing trilogy that has made mainstream culture. So anything The Wachowskis bring is definitely worth watching by default.
The show centers around the daily lives of 8 people from around the globe, who belong to a different species than sapiens -with a common ancestry of course. Sensates -as they are called, are organized into clusters and are always born at the same exact time, they are not related by blood or country or continent. They can share their full consciousness with each other at any point in time, and can easily move consciousness into any member of their cluster.
What a show and what a concept that is!
To date, I have never seen a production of a show that brings diversity to this level. Geography? The 8 star characters are from South Korea, India, Kenya, Mexico, Iceland, Germany, US. The scientist most credited with research into this new species is an Egyptian woman! Race? Asian, Southeast Asian, African, caucasian and mixed races. Sexuality? The show celebrates heterosexual and homosexual relationships the same. Class? all are represented. Patriarchy? one cast member has 3 fathers and a mother!
The gap between each of the characters is huge yet the show brings all of that together into one conscious! A big huge display of learning and empathy and understanding of the other.
These characters suddenly found themselves a different belonging.
In the no-sci-fi reality of the world today -the genre being a never-ending war movie at the macro level-, I have an issue with my own humanity, with homo-sapiens and the world they created.
I think I belong to a different species.
This is how much disconnected I feel from my own species.
I believe many like me exist, people who don’t relate to the zero-sum reality we are living in, who believe that we can exist in an all-sum reality, where we spend our lifetime deconstructing our internalized classism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia…etc. and where we try to change the world however small the efforts are.
As for sensates, it seems the clusters do fight each other. I guess the creators couldn’t imagine it otherwise or some sort of drama and action are needed after all. But that’s ok. Let’s start by actively forming different clusters that are not bound by blood, geography, language or race for a start and see how we go from there.
