Dimension

worldview, situate the character in
this worldview, pick out notes of
the worldview for the character to
hold as a personal philosophy, motivate
the character according to that
personal philosophy, and have the
character act throughout the story
in accordance with these motivations.
Missing out on any of these
layers — especially the first, broadest
layer of cultural context — leaves
you with a character that may or
may not be alive, but whose motivations,
worldview, and context are a
blank. And most of Sense8’s characters
are laboring within blankness.
Again, they gain a certain amount
of rootedness, but not one that is
trustworthy, because they are rooted
in this same cultural absence.
Again, we need that fictional
German word, to describe how
I feel about what I can only call a failure of global
imagination. The fact that the makers conceived of
having a global imagination in the first place is, in
itself, a triumph. The fact that they attempted to
embody a global imagination in a television show is
breathtaking. Given their approach, their failure to
achieve that global imagination was inevitable.
Because the very act of conceiving a global imagination
is itself a function of the specifically American
imagination. I “assumed” earlier that we agreed with
the Wachowskis’ philosophy of the universality of
human experience; but do we? Universality is a deeply
western humanist idea that attaches particularly well
to the US’s brand of Darwinist individualism. We
all have — or should have — the same opportunities,
the same basis. What we make of this is a function of
our individuality. Culture is just happenstance; what’s
important is our actions, our choices, etc. It’s a familiar
refrain, and much of American anti-racism and social
justice is based upon the idea of the even — the universal
— playing field as an ideal to aspire to.
But how universal is human experience, really? How
empathetic can we be? We don’t really know how
deep culture and environment go in the psyche. We
don’t really know how different people can be. Our
sciences — and especially our “soft” sciences, which are
tasked with these questions — have barely scratched
the surface of any answers, eternally stymied by their
own deep-seated cultural biases, and the cultural bias
of “science” itself. And the very idea of universalism
is — o, irony! — too often a culturally imperialist idea
imposed from outside upon cultures that share no such
understanding of the world.
The characters discuss their choices with one another,
but nowhere is there any cultural misunderstanding
of each others’ choices. Yes, they can each feel what the
others are feeling, think what the others are thinking.
But does that free each of them from their cultural
context? Wouldn’t, instead, each of them be having
profound identity crises based on the deepest sort of
culture clash anyone has ever felt?
“Universalizing” everything under an American
idea — an American set of choices — is a contradiction
in terms; one the Wachowskis underlined in Sense8
through their collaborative process. All five directors
who worked on the show are white men, except the
Wachowskis. All are American except Tykwer, who
has been working in Hollywood for years. All episodes
in all locations were written by the Wachowskis and
Straczynski — again, a white man and the Wachowskis.
There seems to have been no thought of reaching out
to, much less collaborating with, writers and directors
from the cultures here represented.
The great irony of this show is that it failed to
do what the show itself depicts: allow people from
disparate cultures to work together, influence each
other, clash with each other, and to live moments of
each other’s lives.
In a discussion before I wrote this piece, disagreed
with a friend about the handling of language in the
show. I really appreciated the choice of having all
characters speak English without forcing them all
to speak English in cheap versions of their “native”
accents. And, given that this was an American TV
show, I didn’t expect the makers to force American
audiences to read subtitles. My friend, however, pointed
out that it would have been… well, less hegemonic for
everyone to be actually speaking their own languages.
Upon reflection, I have to agree that having the
dialogue in non-English speaking countries translated
would have offered the translators an opportunity
for input about the content of the dialogue. And if
the Wachowskis had hired writers from each culture
to translate not merely the text but also the entire
culture and idiom — up to and including changing
plot points and points of view to better fit with the
local culture of that character — this could have solved
their whole problem.
Whether or not you believe in the universality of
human experience — whether or not you believe in
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