Dimension

No woman on Orphan
Black is just a body
or an object; all
are individuals
Orphan Black is a just a body or an object; all are individuals
deserving of Clone Club’s love and support.
A Family & Community That Stands
Solely for Itself Cannot Survive
Clone Club didn’t adopt these principles by sitting down together
and writing out a community agreement on chart paper;
they developed them while fighting for their lives. This final
principle, however, was taken up by choice.
When Sarah is imprisoned in Castor’s military compound,
she and Paul ponder an unsettling question: what makes Leda
different from Castor? Both communities view themselves as
families fighting for their survival. Both sides harbor murderers;
Paul rightfully points out that Helena has quite a bit of blood
on her hands. If Leda is using violent, ruthless methods to reach
their goals, what separates them from Castor?
The answer lies in the difference between Mark and Rudy.
Mark and Rudy are the only two Castor clones given personalities;
Seth doesn’t get enough time before he dies to distinguish
himself beyond a mustache, Parsons is a barely-alive example of
Castor’s cruelty, and Miller rarely speaks. Where Leda gives us a
plethora of fully realized individuals, Castor gives us opposites:
Mark versus Rudy, respect versus violation, human versus robot.
Mark has a respectful partnership with Gracie whereas Rudy is
a rapist, and fittingly Mark is unaffected by the Castor “disease,”
a robotic glitch that highlights their inhumanity.
Appropriately, Mark alone shows Clone Club his humanity.
In an incredibly emotional, vulnerable moment, Mark tells
Sarah about his childhood as she pulls a bullet out of this leg.
Once the bullet is out, Sarah and Mark rest their foreheads
against each other and breathe together, almost as if they’re
saying, “we’re real, we bleed, and we’re both human.”
Rudy and Helena mirror this moment when Rudy lies dying
in Alison’s garage. However, everything is opposite: Helena is
harming, not helping, and where Sarah looks for Mark’s humanity,
Helena names Rudy as what he is: a rapist. This is the
difference between Castor and Leda: Castor, like Rudy, fights
selfishly and without compassion. Leda considers everyone’s
humanity, and fights for a cause larger than itself: bodily agency.
The principles of Clone Club are not just useful in the sci fi
universe of Orphan Black. Just as Leda’s struggles bear a relevant
urgency that mirrors real life battles for rights like access to
birth control and legal abortion, these principles are useful to
real communities. We can learn from Clone Club because we
too are not alone, and we are stronger together.
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