On June 5th Netflix premiered its latest series, Sense8, born from the genius of the Wachowski siblings and J. Michael Straczynski and highly anticipated by the whole sci-fi community. In full Netflix tradition, the whole season was released immediately, all twelve episodes ready to stream. In full me tradition, I binge-watched them all in less than forty-eight hours (a problem? Me? Please), and I still can’t wrap my head around how incredible what I’ve seen was. Does it ever happen to you? You leave a movie theater, close the last page of a book, turn off the computer and remain just there for a second, staring at nothing and thinking, «This thing changed my life». Or at least a part of it. It’s no small deal at all. Sense8 belongs with this kind of works – beautifully shot, incredible scenes, deep dialogues. Sure, it could be a bit slow for common standards, but it’s just because the whole show is much more character oriented than it is plot oriented. And here we come to what the main subject of this article is. The characters. These incredible characters that make Sense8 so, so important not just in the science fiction scene, but in modern television as a whole.
Let’s start with just a couple of things on the setting. The plot revolves around eight people, complete strangers who share just two dates, their birthday and the day of their second birth as sensates (you see the pun in the title now?), aka people connected to each other in a cluster that can share the same thoughts, emotions, abilities, everything. A whole new level of feeling, that makes these eight individuals from eight different parts of the globe become so much more than themselves – «I am also a we» is the title from episode 2, and it describes the whole concept of the show perfectly. The first season is their collective journey to the acceptance of this massive change, with just a hint of horizontal storyline that will probably be developed a bit better in the four more seasons that are part of the creators’s plan.
And up until now things are pretty normal for a sci-fi. I mean, it’s a very interesting concept, but it’s nothing otherworldly, right? What makes Sense8 so unique are its creators, because they never go for obvious. Had this been any other series, the concept would have been developed with eight Americans, probably all white, probably all hetero – we’re all looking at you, The Messengers. Then again, The CW’s main aim has never been representation, not even with Clexa (The 100) or Nyssara (Arrow). Netlifx is on a completely different planet.
We have Orange Is The New Black airing on Netflix, we have Daredevil, Marco Polo, and so it’s not a surprise that Sense8 was born right here – its characters are all important, all too ignored on modern television, and all in need to make their voices heard and be loved.
- Nomi Marks, the brains
Nomi Marks lives in San Francisco, is an incredible hacker, has an even more incredible relationship with her black girlfriend, Amanita – Neets for short, played by Doctor Who’s Freema Agyeman -, and when she was born, she was named Michael. Nomi is a trans woman, and her story helps so much in exploring a part of the LGBT community that’s still so misrepresented. Nomi’s life has not been easy, not with her WASP family that never made an effort to understand her, childhood bullying and her mother’s constant misgendering (she says to her that «You were Michael when you came out of me and you’ll be michael until they put me in my grave»), and even a certain kind of discrimination inside the very LGBT community of San Fran, where she’s seen just as «another men who wants to tell us what to do» because of her never stopping online activism.
Nomi is an unbreakable person, though, and her strength is amazing to see – as the season develops, we see that nothing can really bring her down, nor discrimination, nor finding out about the cluster’s existence. A good deal of her force comes from Neets, a truly beautiful secondary character, who loves her and supports her in every possible way, defending her from the rest of the world. Neets’s mom is also great, a perfect example of a parent that keeps on being there for her child through every up and down, and creating a very interesting question for viewers, «who would I want to be? Her, or Nomi’s mother?». All and all, Nomi’s story is the story of a fight against everything that stops up from being ourselves, in every aspect of our lives. And she herself says so, at the eve of San Francisco’s Pride, in episode 1×02 – she tells in a vlog about her mother’s admiration for San Thomas Aquinas, and how she always told her that pride is the worst sin possible. Nomi learned differently, and to her hate is a much bigger crime. «Today, we march with pride. So screw you, Thomas Aquinas!», and just like Neets we really feel like to burst into an «Hell yeah!».
Let’s not forget that Nomi is played by Jaime Clayton, a trans woman herself just like OITNB’s Laverne Cox. It never hurts to have real trans people actually play trans people on television, right?
- Lito Rodriguez, the actor
Lito is a Mexican actor at the cusp of his career, always landing the role of the main characters, dark, tormented heroes that make him the idol of basically everyone in and outside of Mexico City. Designer clothes, nice cars, beautiful women, Lito seemingly is the perfect cliché, was it not— for Hernando, is boyfriend, who waits for him at home after every premiere and whom Lito cannot bring himself to mention to the press, in fear of losing all the hard work he has done on his career. «You cannot be an actor that does the kind of roles that I do and be gay», he says, remarking the still present idea that in certain fields you just cannot be gay. Like in football, or cinema. Still, Lito’s love for Hernando is passionate and sincere, like Nomi and Neets’s. And when Daniela, Lito’s fake girlfriend, finds out about the two she doesn’t run immediately to the press, but decides to stay in their house and go on being the beard, while starting a very deep relationship with the couple, a relationship that sometimes even brushes polyamory, a subject that’s till very taboo in general media.
- Capheus, the heart
Capheus is probably one of the best characters in the whole cast of sensates – from Nairobi, he barely makes a living driving a beaten up bus, the Van Damn, from the Kenyan capital centre and the slums. His mother, a fierce woman who protected him when they game of thrones mixed up in tribal feuds, is suffering from AIDS and Capheus is willing to go to extreme lenghts to get her the medicines she needs. What I believe it’s amazing about Capheus history is first of all the fact that it’s actually set in Africa, with constant reminders to poverty and clan wars; but mostly the character’s genuine goodness, the smile he has to face the world. It’s what makes him the heart of the cluster, his warmness, his infinite gratitude for every single joy that life and his connection to the other seven can offer.
- Sun, the strong
Played by Bae Doona, who already starred in some of the Wachowskis’s other works – Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending – Sun Bak is a Seoul businesswoman, who has a managing position on her family’s company led by her father and younger brother. Silent and severe, an unyielding sense of duty, Sun hides her bone-deep rage mastering martial arts, fighting and winning in the city’s underground pits. What’s interesting about Sun is not just her moral willpower in facing what comes in her way, but also her very complicated relationship with her family – a mother who died when she was a child, a father who always ignored her in favor of her brother who is the heir to everything the Baks have built. It’s not often seen, a woman who almost ignores her closest family relationships, since loving is what women usually do in mainstream media. Sun does what a male character generally does – kicking asses included. It’s nice to know that the only one who can do a flying kick in the whole series is a woman, and a non-white one at that.
- Kala, the faithful
Kala is a pharmacist, lives in Mumbai and is about to get married to the young heir of the company she’s working for. The only thing is, she’s not in love with him, and is going throught with the marriage just to please her family. Kala’s story is one of the most beautiful, showing how a woman can be sweet and feminine and still be as strong and as intelligent as a more typically badass heroine – Kala builds a bomb out of kitchen supplies, and that’s not for everyday. She’s also the only one who openly is connected to a religion, being a faithful devotee of the god Ganesha, and her very deep spirituality doesn’t affect in any way her scientific call – on the contrary, Kala can perfectly balance these two often at odds domains, faith and science. To her, they both explain the same miracle of life using two different languages, as Galileo puts it.
Then there’s Wolfgang, a Berlin thief with quite the baggage of childhood trauma and daddy issues who lives with his friend Felix, for whom he’d gladly give his life; Will, a Chicago cop that has to deal with the everyday fights between the police force and the local gangs of the city ghetto; and Riley, Icelandic of birth and now deejaying in London, who has had a dark bast but will manage to overcome it with admirable fierceness.
Each and everyone of these characters has their own kaleidoscope of emotions and troubles, and while some of them are a bit cliché (the Indian woman who obviously has to get married, for once), we must praise both the effort put into creating such a varied cast, and the fact that it can actually perfectly sustain the show for twelve episodes. The focus shifts a bit on Will and Riley, the more classical hero and heroine, but the whole cluster is involved in the main plot, and everyone is just as important – after all, they’re all part of the same being.
True, the pilot might be a bit long, but it’s an hour of necessary introduction to eight people and eight settings completely different to one another. Sense8 still deserves a chance. It doesn’t shy away from important issues, poverty, homophobia, transphobia, politics, freedom; it’s a story of cultures, a story of the whole world, and all these cities are actually explored, bot just put there to be folkloristic and «colorful». Above all, it’s a story of courage, a story of how one can find themselves in others, of how people can accomplish much when they’re helping each other out of goodness, and not profit (pretty much like the movie Pride does; we mentioned it in one of our previous pieces). The deep human and spiritual connection brought to the screen is real and tangible, and touching too, I believe. And let’s not start getting into the technics, the masterful editing and the small works of art that are the scenes where the cluster interacts, especially the great choral moments, where everyone in the cluster participates and we live through all of their emotions, that in the end they’re all the same one.
So, give Sense8 some of your time. It’s a bit messy, not arguing of that, but isn’t life messy as well? The show actually tells us the way we perceive the world, sounds and images mixed together, meanings continuously shifting and changing. Sense8 works exactly like this, thanks to the brilliant concept of its creators, and the great stories they have managed to bring to us. Missing on them would really be a shame, and then, let’s be honest – what other show has a showrunner that actually says this?
It really is deserving. You find the whole first season online everywhere, and just for good measure, here are a couple of the trailers to give you a taste of what the atmosphere is like. Have a nice binge-wayching, y’all!
