I've recently had my mind blown by a new TV show called "Sense8", about a cluster of eight people from all over the world who are telepathically connected. They can feel what the others feel, talk to each other, visit each other and access each others knowledge and capabilities.
The concept in itself is a great starting point for an entertaining show: "How do we live our lives when we are simultaneously living seven other lives?" But the thing about Sense8 is that it does so much more than just entertain. It has characters with great depth and substance, and the show makes you feel for them deeply. And, by letting the characters share each others lives and emotions, it also makes them (and consequently you) challenges issues greater than ourselves like gender, culture, ethnicity, sexuality and identity.
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| Amanita and Nomi. |
How would you live your life if you have the experiences of a lesbian trans-woman, a straight white male, a straight white woman, an African man, a German gangster, a Korean businesswoman, a gay Mexican actor and an Indian woman? If you were both straight, gay, trans, man, woman, a person of colour, white, poor, rich, famous or a nobody?
It asks important questions like: Are we obligated to honour our parents, even when they fail us? Do we make the choices in our lives, or do the choices make us? How do we deal with problems?
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| Wolfgang |
In the end, Sense8 has a strong message.
The character Jonas Maliki says: "Killing is easy when you don't feel anything", meaning that the ability to feel empathy is what we should hold on to.
I don't think we talk enought about empathy, or the lack thereof.
I wish more people could put themselves in my shoes, to feel what I feel when I talk about sexism. I wish more people could open their minds to different world views and realize that we don't have to fear what is different, and that we're not that different anyway.
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