How to watch 'Sense8'

When departing from convention in storytelling, there are still a lot of requirements for making something truly oppositional to the status quo. Along with recognisably new if not unique characters and story, a changed structure unblemished by the ideological complicity of existing works that support harmful, dominant attitudes is needed. It’s always been my understanding that sci-fi is the genre most suited to go beyond those rigid boundaries of acceptability our earthly culture institutes, having no necessary allegiance to the world as it is but rather the world as it should be. 

Recent offerings, however, have left me feeling trapped in a mechanically lazy doubling down of cynicism and pretentiousness that offer condescension rather than hope.  In Man of Steel, a bleak tone and style are used too legitimise a non-sensical dilution of the purest embodiment of heroism.  Even the TV revolution of the last decade has brought only the repetitious Heroes that failed under the weight of its own visibility or the misleading Lost that hid it’s poor plotting and irresolution behind it’s dynamic characters and manipulative score.  

Thankfully and in true sci-fi fashion, developments in our viewing technology and industry have landed us the Netflix Original Series Sense8, one of the most genuine attempts at starkly oppositional sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time. Transmuting Heroes’ disinterest towards innovation into a disregard for basic dramatic principles and transferring Lost’s sympathetic confusion between audience and viewer, Sense8 summons an engrossing, wild eyed storm of sensation that makes the experience of watching the series its central, gripping conceit. 

Resulting in something of a blend between the vulgar angst of Misfits and the brain breaking incongruity of From Dusk till Dawn, the real challenge of watching Sense8 is deciding how far it is artful in its lack of convention rather than being completely without craft. Where any viewer falls in this divide will come from their reaction to the series’ premise, pace, characterisation, tone and editing scheme. To help the adjustment process, I’m going to share the mental compromises and distortions I’ve made in my desperate attempts to identify and accept Sense8’s approach to revealing a unifying, optimistic and inclusive human experience.

The agonising suicide of Angelica in a burned out church disturbs the lives of 8 people across the globe. Rebellious but compassionate Chicago cop Will Gorsky experiences vivid dreams of powerlessly watching as a strange, tortured woman shoots herself in front of him. In San Fransisco, transgender hacktivist Nomi Marks sees Angelica in a Pride stage show, eventually collapsing from the shock as the hallucinations become more and more vivid. In Mexico City, secretive action movie star Lito Rodriguez begins spouting lines that aren’t in the script and seem to belong to someone else. Isolated London based DJ Riley Blue is mentally transported across continents during a drug trip that goes from euphoric to dangerous as soon as she returns to reality. Hedonistic Berlin safecracker Wolfgang Bogdano’s career defining heist is interrupted as he hears sirens from police cars thousands of miles away. Conflicted bride-to-be Kala Dandekar feels rain on her skin in place of the summer sunshine of Mumbai. In South Korea, violently frustrated businesswoman Sun Bak sees live chickens inexplicably appear and disappear from her desk. In Nairobi, good natured bus driver and Jeanne Claude Van Damme worshiper Capheus develops a fearlessness that opens up new career avenues, as morally questionable as they are well compensated. 

Despite their disparate lives, they are all no longer simply individuals; they are now part of the same Sensate Cluster. Along with the inconvenient mental and emotional side-effects of their attachment, the Sensates have the ability to psychically ‘visit’ one another while remaining invisible to those around them and ‘share’ their skills and knowledge when required. The difficulties and intimacies the group now have beyond their own struggles leave them under threat from a shadowy corporate entity.

What seems like a relatively simple premise is almost immediately hampered by the pace of Sense8 and it’s ambitious but frequently tangential cast of characters. Checking back and forth between characters as well as delving into both their dreams and childhood memories, any binge-watch potential is quickly depleted by the sheer mental exertion of keeping up with this baffling, at times boring, blend of stories. 

While it asks a lot of it’s audience, this is the first of many instances of Sense8 trying to have it both ways in its approach to spiritual subject matter. Without the heavy handed narration of Heroes reigning it in, Sense8 derives a halting but all consuming energy from its lurches between character’s stories. This allows for energised action sequences to be carried along by the Sensates ‘share’ power but also abruptly tense or dialogue based interludes as they ‘visit’ each other at particularly inconvenient or emotionally vulnerable downbeats. Corresponding with it’s premise, the pace of Sense8 incorporates the electrifying mood its ambition creates as well as acknowledging and co-opting its inherent dramatic failings into the lives of its distinctive characters.

 
Even so, the momentum derived from Sense8’s subject matter struggles to bond with the Sensates themselves. Once again stifled by the size of the cast, there is an alienating imbalance in the amount of time that can be spent with each of the Sensates to maintain the shifting pace. The dramatic consequences here take shape in a distance between viewer and Sensate, switching from one story to another for such long periods in a way that leaves them seeming dithering and weak willed. This is all the worse when these interludes come after a character is faced with a major decision. 

However, these slumps in characterisation too fit into the ebb and flow of the series premise as well as its global scope. Moving beyond the early cultural stereotypes of the Eastern nations, the time taken for the Sensate’s to reappear or make choices when off screen reflect an almost tidal meditation and emotional reality as they withdraw from the Cluster and return to their family, professional or hedonistic lives outside of their cross-continental connection. These languid retreats produce a real time, emotionally genuine and tidal interiority and consequence to whatever tragedy befalls them and each course of action they take. 

The audience is then rewarded for noticing the inner lives of the characters by the energy it produces, especially when we return to less frequently featured characters after they’ve just had sex or are winding down with some recreational drug use.The fluidity of the characters stories and interactions along with Sense8’s increasingly giddy approach to spiritual unity through introspection, sexuality and drugs that pervade the Sensate’s individual stories stops its stodgy, dragging weakness in a way that is not only refreshing but also disarmingly up-lifting.

Did somebody say trans-continental psychic sexy time?

Along with the heights of emotional intimacy it often reaches through it’s characters inner lives, the true frenzied nature of Sense8 comes full force with it’s tonal shifts between gritty spiritual drama and bawdy farce. The easy dictum of ‘visiting’ and ‘sharing’ is largely a carry over from the series’ equally out-there movie precursor Cloud Atlas and its accessible dictum of human destiny being shaped by both their ‘cruelty’ and their ‘kindness’. As the Sensate’s powers get progressively more conditional and complicated, though, just such an easy dictum of ‘visiting’ and ‘sharing’ loses its clarity and leaves us awash in the tempest of Sense8’s ambition without an anchor once the pace picks up.

High fantasy...

For those not already consumed by either its tides of energy or drowned by the dragging currents that its adjustments demand, the spiritual springboard of Sense8s premise is buoyed by gross-out humour. While these tonal changes push the mayhem of the series into an overdrive bordering on outright dysfunction, it sharpens the stories messy energy into a system of thinly contained bounces between a sucking mire of dangerous and isolated discontent to the freeing stratosphere of collective empathy. With it’s character’s interiority and each extreme of the outside world, the individual plot threads in Sense8 span a convincing, if chaotic, environment for it’s adventures.

...bowels of reality

Bringing it all home is the challenge Sense8 poses to it’s editor, tasked with marshalling this messy but exhilarating maelstrom of variable pace and tone in a way that is seamless and consistent. A major strength of Cloud Atlas was it’s ability to maintain the audience’s connection with it’s six stories taking place over six different time periods through riveting climaxes and consistent focus on characters that are variously reincarnated in each story. While this editing scheme helped elevate the effective if not incredibly deep message of individual and collective responsibility, Sense8’s long form narrative doesn’t allow for such rapid cutting as a result of it’s attempts to bring such an attitude to the multicultural present.

The editing staff of Sense8, in line with the deceptive prescience of it’s writing, bring out the truly gripping core of the series with their own subversions. Rather than editing around action sequences too chaotic and far between to be impactful or around more languid ‘visits’ which despite their spiritual clarity only occasionally shine with wisdom, the balance between stories instead focuses on involving the viewer in the very confusion the series’ distortions bring on. Noticeably jarring but nonetheless effective, our shifting between the Sensates struggles to reconcile their isolation, connection, sexuality, morality, responsibilities, loyalties, identities, memories and origins mirrors the experience of watching them do so. 

Hearts away from home

Assaulted on all sides by the slippery, sporadic sensory overload of Sense8, reconciling with Sensates who have withdrawn from proceedings in whatever state of distress or undress they appear in as well as noticing consistent motifs across stories at last becomes welcoming rather than rejecting. The forceful suggestion that these 8 people are related beyond simple narrative convenience then pulls their disparate realities of disgust and serenity together. Having adjusted our brains to accept identification with these characters, so too can we learn lessons of loyalty and co-operation across the globe thanks to the unifying human spirit unearthed in this optimistic and wonderfully diverse series.

Reproduction and (re)Birth: The Uncertain Future of the Bayonetta Series

'Yes, no more boob window! What an amazing outfit, the stars and the shoulder pads and the cape and the...diamond butt cleavage? *sigh*' 

Should I really have spent £200 on a Wii U specifically to subject myself to yet more internal conflict with Bayonetta? In attempting to achieve any kind of stability or justification for my financially and emotionally expensive commitment to playing Bayonetta 2, I first discovered that it's humanly possible to lament it's continually exploitative gameplay and cinematography that have passed from the first game with not one sign of reconsideration. Still, this possibility doesn’t provide the certainty I was hoping for, since critical reactions to the series as a whole is as conflicted as I am. If you ask Polygon reviewer Arthur Gies, I'm struggling to make the 'mental compromise' to enjoy the game despite the egregious sexualisation of it's female lead for an assumed audience of horny mid-adolescent men. If you ask Ria Jenkins in The Guardian, my fragile masculinity is being threatened by an image of a self-loving, hyper-feminine ideal that is ‘presented as about and for women'. As much as I want the series to change to definitively be one of these, I still want it to stay exactly how it is and not to fit into either.

Bayonetta herself comes up against just such a desperate and unresolvable duality and becomes a more balanced individual over the course of the story. Seeing her take this strain with characteristic swagger, I realise the closest I can get to a clear, certain reaction to this series of games is how close I feel to her as a character. However, if I and other male players are expected to find some level of maturity alongside Bayonetta, the developers need to fully commit to these joyously flawed creations in all their convoluted, baffling glory to maintain their dissonant chaos and relevance to their changing audience.

*spoilers to follow*

Bayonetta's Christmas shopping is interrupted when air show jet fighters are set upon by flying angel horses with dual sabres and gigantic, golden, razor taloned sky serpents. Even paying them in kind for cutting her out of her dress with her quadruple, jewel spangled pistols (one in each hand and one on each high heel), she is then confronted with a baby faced stone colossi with a solitary spiked tentacle on it's left side. Thankfully, the beast falls before her glamorous guns before being sent careering into a high rise tower block and being eaten alive by a dragon demon summoned by her magical hair. Then things get weird.

There's barely enough time for Bayonetta's hair outfit to re-cover her (yes, that's still a thing) as the ‘Gomorrah’ breaks free of it's trans-dimensional portal and claws at it's conjurer. Out of nowhere, Jeanne, Bayonetta's sister-in-witchiness, takes the hit instead. The blow separates her body from her soul, leaving her essence to be dragged away by the opportunistic and hands-y demons of Inferno. As Bayonetta quests to save Jeanne's spirit before it is completely absorbed into the mires of hell, she is joined by Loki, a young androgynous amnesiac wielding a magical deck of cards and one of the least convincing performances by a voice actor I've witnessed in recent memory. Promising each other co-operation on their journey to the revered arctic mountain of Fimbulventr that grants access to either Paradiso or Inferno to whoever scales it's heights, the snarky distance between them slowly levels into a respectful unity as they set about saving Jeanne and, eventually, THE WORLD ITSELF!!!!1!

The supposedly unprecedented change in the balance of power between the angel controlled Paradiso, the human world of chaos and Inferno that caused Bayonetta’s summon  to go out of control has surprisingly little impact on the early gameplay, which is almost identical to that of the original Bayonetta. Even four years of production and the massive unlikelihood of a sequel even being funded hasn't dulled the inspiration of the game's heroine from those  pens you turn upside down to make the cartoon woman’s clothes fall off. Even with the addition of the Umbran Climax special moves that can bring screen filling, sin coloured griffons and demonic toad gods into your battles with the heavenly hordes and hellish hosts, completed combos always end on a close up of a scantily clad Bayonetta. Frustrated with this and the off-putting proximity of the in-game camera to Bayonetta’s ass outside fight sequences, Gies notes that 'the on-screen chaos you can wreak through skilled play is infinitely more satisfying' than these 'prurient rewards'. He remains at a loss about why this feature (that I have expediently dubbed 'strip summons') have found their way into this sequel. Gies begrudgingly recommends the game after committing to a 'mental compromise' on the basis of this distracting appeal to the male gaze throughout Bayonetta 2.

More of this shit?

However, talk of this 'mental compromise' is also an analytical compromise on Gies' part which devalues or ignores the humanising aspects of Bayonetta that have been achieved, as I wrote not too long ago, by her appeal to a female viewer being not only a defining aspect of the first game but also an inherent part of her character. While Gies sees no reason to think about strip summons beyond their appeal to an assumed male-only audience, Jenkins’ perspective would diagnose his compromise as Bayonetta's 'overt sexuality, her acceptance and love of her own body' making Gies and many of the men playing ‘uncomfortable’. With the agency afforded to Bayonetta in the series previous instalment, such overt expressions of sexuality can be seen as serving her gratification. With this in mind, just as the sexualised gameplay is carried across from Bayonetta and into Bayonetta 2 so is her body positivity in the story cutscenes. At one point early in the story, she poses  to admire the reflection of her butt, that she is presented as enjoying as much as the assumed male audience is supposed to, in a shop window. Her self-admiration is treated less like a subversion than in the original game but remains completely in character.

Considering Jenkins perspective, the positive representation of sexual agency in Bayonetta 2 makes the position of Scott Nichols at The Daily Dot that Bayonetta's attitude is diluted for the younger demographic of Wii U users in a way that leaves her overshadowed by Loki's story utterly baseless. In their first meeting, Bayonetta sneaks up behind Loki after he dispatches a small group of angels so that once he jumps aside, as Jenkins identified was the case in Bayonetta, the camera is left to linger on her crotch and leave her defiantly 'thrusting her vagina into the face of the player'. From there, Bayonetta constantly holds her own against Loki's chides by refusing to call him by name and justifiably mocking him for being a bratty, annoying kid. As Loki fails to defend himself from angel attacks and a masked, homicidal ‘Lumen Sage’, Bayonetta then negotiates their co-operation deal and commits to protecting him as she did Cereza, her surrogate daughter and past self from the first game. Later, as her strength and support in pursuing his lost memories gain his respect, Loki eventually puts his own quest on hold to help save Jeanne from Inferno. Pairing her sexual self-assuredness and heroics, Bayonetta is dominant once more. Here, the mental compromise and perceived passivity of Bayonetta 2's heroine is contradicted by humanising attitudes that are carried over from the story of the original game.

Your parachute pants impress no-one!

While Jenkins' perspective renders Bayonetta's characterisation in a more nuanced way than merely serving the gratification of the straight male player, she gives near total agency to a fictional character as to her own depiction, ascribing agency only fleetingly to the developers. Not only does this potentially undermine the defiance she assigns to the many crotch, ass and boob shots that litter the story sections of Bayonetta 2, this chaotic meeting of real world and fictional agency reveals a frustrating division of purpose, especially in how contradictorily certain narrative events are framed. Accompanied by the removal of agency from Jeanne and other female characters, these choices make Bayonetta’s ambiguously positive sexualisation an agonisingly visible limit on Platinum Games’ claim to subversion that Jenkins credits them.

As Bayonetta frees Jeanne from the glass womb of hell queen Alaruna's spider boss-form, she loses more and more of her aloof attitude. Progressively unable to treat the rescue as repayment for Jeanne's rescue of her in the first game, Bayonetta begs that she isn't too late to revive her sister. Realising the strength of their relationship only when she thinks she has lost it and showing her vulnerability rewards her as Jeanne reawakens. Expressing this sensitive side in opposition to her domineering throughout both games gives Bayonetta enough dimension to dispel some claim that her sexualised power that leads many to dismiss her as a sexualised object for male consumption is definitive.  

In a dauntingly contradictory twist, Alaruna is punished for attempting to rid Bayonetta of Jeanne and the opportunity to be more vulnerable by being reborn as a whip, a literal sexualised object, by Bayonetta's demon arms dealer Rodin. With this almost painful swerve from rewarding Bayonetta’s vulnerability with humanising value and punishing Alaruna’s vulnerability with sexual objectification, we get an insight into the unique dissonance that is the source of my obsession with the Bayonetta series. This confusion as to how aware PlatinumGames are to the criticisms of objectification levied against them  take on a new tension as Jeanne’s role as the damsel in distress, her rescue from a hostile womb and Alaruna’s punishment brings out Bayonetta 2’s central themes of disempowerment and rebirth.

Punished for sharing Bayonetta's stage?

When the thematic concerns and sexualising gaze of Bayonetta 2 meet in the game’s finale, how and if Bayonetta herself will be reborn turns the wheel of mutually detracting tension that we’ve come to expect. As clunky and convolutedly as in the last quarter of Bayonetta, it is revealed that Loki is one half of the god Aesir, the god of chaos who created the magical Eyes of The World that allowed humans free will. His evil doppleganger Loptr, jealous of the Sovereign Power to be reborn into the future that Loki stole when he divided their identity, set a plan in motion to reclaim this power as well as the Eyes. Murdering Bayonetta’s mother in the Witch Hunts and sending her father, the Lumen Sage and keeper of the Right Eye of The World Balder after Loki and Left Eye of the World Bayonetta, he succeeds in getting all the power he needs in one place as they arrive at his palace on Fimbulventr. Draining Bayonetta of her power as Left Eye and casting her aside, his monologue continues as Bayonetta looks shocked while lying on her side at an angle to give another completley jarring ass shot. In another sadistic display of dissonance, the audience is expected to take as much pleasure in Bayonetta’s disempowerment as we did her  sexualised dominance early on. If Loptr is to be believed, this anachronism represents the ‘chaos’ that humans (ie. the audience) desire and so must be regimented under the consistent regime of divine subjugation. A good part of me, frustrated with the suggestion I need to see yet more of Bayonetta’s butt to stay engaged with the story, was inclined to let him win.

Save us, Doctor Manhattan!

As disempowerment in the context of Bayonetta 2 is accompanied by some kind of rebirth, though, Bayonetta and Balder settle on the idea they have been made more human by the loss of their special status as Eyes of The World and their true power is that of being able to choose free of Aesir’s direction. Since it’s still a video game, the two exercise their power of choice by punching, kicking, slashing and stabbing the shit out of the second God allegory the Bayonetta series has offered us. Loki then disempowers Aesir by using his control over ‘nothingness’, the core of chaos, to delete the Eyes of the World from existence. Aesir is then left powerless and naked enough to be sent flying off the mountain and eaten alive by a Gomorrah summoned by Jeanne (fully clothed) on a nearby fighter jet. Gratifyingly, Jeanne’s inclusion and lack of strip-summon points towards an inclusion of more introverted sexual expression. This final blow leaves the ending to Bayonetta 2 free of the need for equivocation or compromise and utterly satisfying as a result. 

Further positive potential for a future Bayonetta game flourishes as the room made for Jeanne is again expanded to include Bayonetta’s vulnerability free from sexualisation or contradiction  As Aesir’s spirit attempts to escape his ruined body, be reborn into a new time period and keep on his megalomaniacal rampage, Balder dives in front of the escaping ghoul and becomes possessed by it, weakening Aesir in the process. Although Nichols believes that this self sacrifice and Bayonetta’s agreement to refer to Balder for the first time as ‘Daddy’ as he is cast back in time to the events of the original Bayonetta infantilises her, it is in fact the beginning of her maturation. Having rejected Balder as the cartoonish patriarchal villain he was in the first game, she has over the course of Bayonetta 2 learned more about him, realised she cares for him and then loses him as she feared she would Jeanne. This development closely mirrors the move past a kind of adolescent angst and into the sobering growth that grief brings. 

As Balder is reborn as a throwaway villain, Bayonetta is reborn as a vulnerable but more mature heroine. After Loki’s spirit returns to the aether to be reborn as someone new and Bayonetta returns to the New Years sales, one of Loki’s magic cards drops from a baby’s pram. She stops, contemplates and smiles just as another horde of angels sets upon her and Jeanne as the credits roll. Here, she recognises that her need to protect children and her vulnerability outside her standing as a sexualised power fantasy for the audience (and perhaps herself) will invariably resurface and prepares to face it in the same way she does the physical threat of the angels.

*Casablanca reference*

As much as I’ve now come to appreciate the fragmented, convoluted dissonance that Platinum Games seems to value in the series, I’d happily have taken any damage to the story’s pace that having Jeanne’s adventures in Inferno could have offered here. What was Alaruna’s plan in digesting Jeanne? Why did she turn up in Alaruna’s lair instead of some other hellscape? PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.

Not only would a future inclusion such as this show an allowance for Bayonetta’s welcoming Jeanne into her newly secure vulnerability by sharing the spotlight and practicing what Platinum preaches about the value of choice, it would give an even greater contrast since Jeanne’s sexuality is expressed less overtly. This would help the series to gain appeal while and remain relevant to a developing audience along with showcasing Bayonetta’s transition from ‘strong female character’ archetype into a more mature, developed heroine and by instructing that dividing her sexualisation as ‘for men’ and her humanisation as ‘for women’ weakens her as much as Loki did Aesir. 

As with all my reactions to this series, though, my faith is divided. Considering the inconsistency in Bayonetta 2’s presentation of vulnerability and Jeanne’s sidelining being perhaps motivated by her introversion in comparison to her ‘sister’, the possibility of returning to drooling over Bayonetta’s distancing, limiting sexualisation remains. This choice would diminish Platinum Games’ claim to depicting chaos if the audience can always expect the same. 

My demand in short is thus: give me a baffling, insulting, exploitative mess of a game with more resonant, gratifying and creative developments in it’s characters and world that I’ll continually fail to properly express my feelings about.

More of this shit!

References and research: http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/13/6957677/bayonetta-2-review-wii-u - Arthur Gies 'Bayonetta 2 review: Heaven and Hell'

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/05/lara-croft-bayonetta-female-games Ria Jenkins 'From Tomb Raider to Bayonetta: what is a strong female character?'

http://www.dailydot.com/geek/bayonetta-2-review/ Scott Nichols 'Gameplay shines in Bayonetta 2 but it's heroine falls flat'

Some blogs I looked at concerning a woman character saving a damsel or 'badass in distress':

http://maybegenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/damsels-in-distress-legend-of-korra.html Damsels in Distress: Legend of Korra and Tomb Raider by published author S.E Sinkhorn

https://girlslikegiants.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/a-survivor-is-re-born-or-playing-tomb-raider-after-anita-sarkeesian/ A Survivor is (Re)Born or Playing Tomb Raider after Anita Sarkeesian by Brian Psiropolous

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/10266-Lara-s-Damsel-in-Distress 'Lara's Damsel in Distress' by Shamus Young at The Escapist