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Sense8: Dangerous Minds

8/29/2017

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I recently started watching the second season of Sense8, an original Netflix series that revolves around eight people from eight strikingly different walks of life who become psychically tethered to one another*. While I’m often excited to analyze television and film, being one of those people who adore symbolism and social/political commentary, a straight analysis won’t do here. Granted, I’m only five episodes into the second season, but that nagging question won’t stop: Why the hell was such an exceptional series canceled?
 
Maybe I’m being preemptive in my presumptions, but it seems to me Sense8 might have rocked the boat just a little too much—and I mean that in the most bittersweet of ways. The series is too real, too bold, too beautiful. It said everything everyone else floundering haplessly in this nightmare world of bigotry and ethnocentrism was too afraid to say; it spotlighted courage, standing up for ones fellow human beings. A few of my favorite quotes:
 
“Who am I? I guess who I am is exactly the same as who you are. Not better than. Not less than. Because there is no one who has been or will ever be exactly the same as either you or me.” S2, E1
 
“If I didn’t take people where they hired me to take them, I wouldn’t expect them to get back on my bus. We expect leaders to take us where we want to go. The problem, it seems to me, begins when they don’t. When things do not improve and yet these leaders keep expecting us to get on their bus, I think this is when leaders become something else: politicians.” S2, E3
 
“Your life is either defined by the system or by the way you defy the system.” S2, E4
 
“There’s nothing as expensive as being poor.” S2, E5
 
The first encourages people to embrace difference in an intricately divided world. The last three speak directly to the average lower- or working-class adult: Why do you continue to elect people who don’t care about in interests of the common man? Why do you let corruptions, corporations, and greed continue to rule your lives? If you don’t do anything to change a system designed to feed the gap between the rich and the poor, then the masses will remain poor.
 
We have become the elephant bound in place by a thread of yarn around the ankle; we have been taught to believe we’re virtually helpless, and so we are. We’re taught our place from nearly day one, and we’re taught to conform, or we’ll lose even that. We’re taught to spend our money on the newest gadgets and vehicles at the expense of ever really getting ahead financially, and we’re taught to value those things we think we need to much based solely on how others value them. (Note those others defining said value are typically among the leisure class—people who don’t work because they were born into money, the people who rule this world.) We’re taught it’s better so seem than to be, and we’re taught not to rock the boat.
 
Too many people are still too afraid to jump alongside the boat rockers. A series like Sense8 didn’t have a chance. It was just too brilliant. Too powerful. And sadly, the people who need to watch this series the most probably never will.

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* Capheus “Van Damn” Onyango, a matatu driver in Nairobi who is trying to earn money to buy HIV/AIDS medication for his mother.
 
   Sun Bak, daughter of a powerful Seoul businessman and a burgeoning star in the underground kickboxing world.
 
   Nomi Marks, a trans woman hacktivist and blogger living in San Francisco with her girlfriend Amanita.
 
   Kala Dandekar, a university-educated pharmacist and devout Hindu in Mumbai who is engaged to marry a man she does not love.
 
   Riley Blue, an Icelandic DJ living in London who is trying to escape a troubled past.
 
   Wolfgang Bogdanow, a Berlin locksmith and safe-cracker who has unresolved issues with his late father and participates in organized crime.
 
   Lito Rodriguez, a closeted actor of Spanish background living in Mexico City with his boyfriend Hernando.
 
   Will Gorski, a Chicago police officer haunted by an unsolved murder from his childhood. (Wikipedia)
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Excerpt: AFTERMATH

8/7/2017

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THE RAINFALL had increased at least twofold, the sound of it like an army barreling overhead, threatening to break through and send a deadly flood of water, mud, and bodies from above. The tunnels had never felt so threatening before, but now George couldn’t get through quickly enough. The walls seemed narrower than he’d remembered, the ceiling lower. Might the pressure set against them by the unforgiving elements have caused the passage to begin to cave? Would the walls bow in before they burst, or would they just crumble and collapse without warning?

The sound of Maggie’s cries fell in time with the beating rain, filling George with a deep sadness. The poor girl was sure to starve—or freeze—to death on her own. There was no question. Neither Ken nor Jack deserved the badges and guns of their station. They were a disgrace not only to Police-Corp but to the whole of humanity. Forget fighting that deviant; he wanted one good shot at both of those pathetic excuses for men.

With the rain and its echo against the hard cement walls, it was difficult to discern how close she was, and the farther he went, the tenser his body grew. He couldn’t stop the mental picture of the ceiling giving way, trapping him, perhaps badly injured, within the confines of the fallen slabs. Perhaps he wouldn’t even have an inch to move. Maybe he’d drown in a sea of mud. What would that feel like, earthy sludge filling his lungs? Would he struggle long? Would he lose all sense of time and space, destined to spend his final moments suspended in the ruins?

The mental image stopped him for a moment. His lungs grew heavy, the air feeling thin and stagnant. A wave of lightheadedness sent him staggering to a wall, and he leaned against it to keep from collapsing. His heart raced. Pins and needles tingled through his hands and feet. He pushed forward, certain each step would be his last.

Breathe … just breathe….

Should he turn around instead of pushing forward? Maggie’s sobs captured his attention. She needed him to reach her. No one else would. One step after the last, his numbing feet staggered over one another. He couldn’t give up. Not now. As if in response to his determination, the rain pummeled even harder. Joining in the effort, his heart hammered against his chest in rhythm with the heavy beat. Cold air seized his lungs.

Just breathe….

He let out a sigh of relief when his light washed over Maggie’s huddled body.

Maggie turned, blocking the light with an arm. “Go away!”

“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I’m not going back!”

He knelt down when he reached her. “There isn’t anywhere else to go right now. It won’t be forever. I’ll figure something out.”

“No, I don’t want to go.”

“It’s better than roaming these halls on your own, don’t you think?”

She shook her head. “I don’t like the policeman.”

“I don’t like him much either.”

“I remember now where I saw him before. I don’t think he should have been made one of the police. You should have picked someone else.”

“Picked someone else?”

She nodded. “To be one of the new policemen. You’d be much better at it than him. They should vote you to take his place.”

“I don’t think it works that way. We can’t just vote any person to suddenly become a police associate.”

“Why not? You did it with him.”

George looked down the hall to ensure no one else had followed then leaned in close and spoke in a hushed voice. “He wasn’t always a police associate?”

She shook her head.

“What was he before?”

She followed his lead and whispered, “He was the plumber Repair-Mart sent when the toilet broke. Mommy said he broke more than he fixed, and she didn’t want to pay. He got real mad and yelled at her until she gave him her credit card.”

“You sure about that?”

She nodded. “Why did you make him one of the Food-Mart police?”

His thoughts became muddled, the shock of having not assumed the obvious hitting him like a heavy blow to the head. “I don’t think anyone did.”

“So how’d he get all that police stuff?”

Feeling weak, he sat down beside her and took a few seconds to catch his breath. “That’s a very good question.” Both possible answers looped again and again through his mind: Either he’d come across a dead police associate whose uniform was a decent fit or he’d killed someone for it. Neither diminished the fact that the man was a fraud, a liar, and no more suited to carry a gun and handcuffs than anyone else there.

And what about Jack? Was he a fake, too?

What did that mean for the group? They deserved to know the truth, but would anyone believe him if he said anything? Maybe Maggie had the right idea after all. Moving aimlessly through the district was a dangerous strategy, but was it any worse than living under the rule of a man who’d claimed authority that wasn’t his to take? How long could the rest of them possibly last under his tyranny?
Did he really want to find out?

Maggie’s safety was now his biggest immediate concern, but he wouldn’t likely be able to live with himself if he didn’t at least try to help the rest of the group. He also needed to consider how he would feed the two of them after they’d abandoned the stockpile. They could try returning to the district housing and breaking into other apartments, but there was no guarantee they’d be successful in bypassing the well-locked doors. Even if they did manage to break in, there was no telling whether they’d find any nonperishable goods for their effort.

They would need to go back, stay long enough to dethrone the impostor police associates, grab what they could carry, and then leave the district in search of a deviant camp. It would be a gamble, but it was time to play the odds.

Although his pulse continued to race, his lungs began to relax and the pins and needles in his extremities started to abate. Why the air suddenly became breathable again was beyond him, but he was grateful nonetheless.

He turned to Maggie. “I have a plan, but I need you to trust me.”
​
About Aftermath: Beyond World-Mart

When all seems lost, when all the world has crumbled away, what will rise in its place?

In this highly anticipated conclusion to the World-Mart trilogy, George once again travels beyond the district in search of possible surviving family. What he finds along the way, however, changes everything he thought he’d known about the world—and the end of the world—as he knows it.

Travel alongside George, back through the deviant shanty-towns and beyond, to a place he’d nearly forgotten—and to another he never could have imagined existed.
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