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Sense 8 and racial stereotyping

queeranarchism:

Sense8 promises us a world were we could experience the lives of others across the world across language and cultural borders. Great. It promises racial diversity and cultural diversity. Great. 

And then what it presents is a huuuuuuge amount of racial stereotyping. 

First, there’s an Indian female character. She could have any possible storyline. Is she the awesome hacker character? The criminal mastermind? The talented DJ? Nope, she’s the character stuck in an arranged marriage she does not want to be in. She’s also a scientist but we rarely see any of that, instead her plotlike revolves around her marriage. 

(Dear white writers: can we have one Indian character in an series or movie who goes through her entire storyline without a ‘oh no, I don’t want an arranged marriage!’ storyline? Just once?)

Then, we get an asian woman living in Korea. She too could have any storyline. Turns out she’s passive and submissive under a terrible patriarchy (because non-wester country = automatic terrible patriarchy) but who is also secretly a martial arts genius! Well, that’s quite an old mixture of fetish tropes about asians.

And then there’s the black man, who happens to a poor man in Nairobi whose mother has AIDS and whose life is ruled by gangs. Which ticks every box on our ‘stereotypes of Africa’ list.

And then we have a Mexican man who happens to be a stereotypically macho actor, living a double life.  

If one of these characters existed and we also had a succesful DJ living in a modern African city, I would not complain. We don’t have to pretend that people whose lives overlap with stereotypes don’t exist. But all the nonwestern characters are walking stereotypes, every single one. You had the possibility of imagining diversity and you came up with this? 

And on a side note, we’re supposed to believe that a white cop would save a black child while all black and latino characters on screen keep telling him to let the kid die because ‘he might shoot someone when he grows up’. Like, what? 

And then, just to top it all off, there is a scene with an absolute stereotype of a Jewish man, who is dealing diamonds inside the Holocaust monument. That’s like next level antisemitism.

Sense8 has some compelling storylines and queer characters, and I quite enjoyed that. Nomi (the trans woman) is a character that feels real, has a fleshed out background and provides some great representation. The non-white characters? Not so much. The show is being directed by one white trans woman and a bunch of white men, and it shows.  This article (which has one transphobic remark that I absolutely do not support) further analyzes how empty sense8′s non-white world building is: In San Fransisco and Berlin, coffeeshops and streets have names and fit the kind of story taking place there, in Nairobi or Mumbai we never hear the name of a location and we see just the kind of stereotypes we’ve seen a hundred times before.

Sense8′s effort at cultural and racial diversity is a bunch of postcard stereotypes, fetishes and harmful tropes.