Sense8 Roundtable
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Moya Bailey, micha cárdenas, Laura Horak, Lokeilani Kaimana, Cáel M. Keegan, Geneveive Newman, Roxanne Samer, and Raffi Sarkissian Sense8 Roundtable Abstract In “Sense8: A Roundtable,” eight scholars, myself included, think through key questions regarding one of today’s most impressive trans-produced mainstream media productions, Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Netflix series Sense8, which has yet to receive substantive scholarly attention. We analyze how Sense8 both follows and breaks from the Wachowskis’ prior approach to narrative; offers a distinctly trans* engagement with the histories of cinematic and televisual genres; often relies on western colonial conceptions for its global imagination and marginalizes characters of color; and theorizes contemporary media spectatorship in its appeal to affect and eroticism. We do so believing Sense8 to be an important cultural interlocutor, not only with regard to the exploration of transgender representation but also questions of sexuality, race, and capital in the global present. However, we also share a conviction that the series’ potentiality still leaves substantial room for growth. We take a critical approach to our collective analysis, seeing in the series a glimmer of the kind of global utopian envisioning very much needed in our ceaselessly dystopian present. The first season of J. Michael Straczynski and was the prime decree of those reviewers who were Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Sense8 was released looking to witness a similar “seamless marriage on Netflix on June 5, 2015. The series’ critical of style and substance.”2 Those reviewers who did reception was mixed. Many found Sense8—which appreciate Sense8 were those who saw the series as tells the story of eight individuals from across purposefully demanding the labor of an attentive the globe, who, having recently been “birthed” by audience. As Liz Shannon Miller, writing for a “mother” from another cluster, are beginning to IndieWire put it, “‘Sense8’ makes you work.”3 It was learn how to “visit” one another in each other’s built into the premise of the show. Miller elaborates, minds and even “share” their knowledges and “[The sensates] have no idea what’s going on, so the skillsets—simply confusing, while others claimed show reflects that.”4 Furthermore, this intellectual the show only skimmed the surfaces of these eight labor is matched with authentic emotions, as Joshua characters’ lives, relying on visual design, rather than Rothman pointed out in his review for The New 1 narrative, to keep viewers engaged. “It’s no Matrix” Yorker.5 Miller and Rothman were also two rare critics to analyze the series as the newest entry in the Wachowskis’ romantic oeuvre.6 In this case, the love of Trinity and Neo (or their precursors, the lesbian couple Violet and Corky of the Wachowskis’ directorial debut, the 1996 neo-noir Bound) radiates out between eight strangers across four continents. As the sensates work to keep their clustermates alive by sharing their knowledges, skillsets, memories, and emotions, they form a multitude of bonds. Some of these are more romantic, while others more platonic. However, they all eventually become (if but temporarily) sexual, thanks to two mind orgy scenes. If anyone was uncertain as to the Wachowskis’ commitment to queer sexualities, genders, and families, the Christmas special, which Netflix’sSense8 brings to the fore Hollywood’s first out transgender was released on December 23, 2016 and contained creators. the second of these orgies, affirmed this allegiance 74 Transgender Media Roxanne Samer, editor, Spectator 37:2 (Fall 2017): 74-88. BAILEY, ET AL. in grandiose and heartwarming ways that only the Wachowskis, as masters of visual drama and cheesy dialogue (whether to one’s taste or not), know how to pull off. The Christmas special marked the beginning of the second season, and ten more episodes are set to release on Netflix May 5, 2017. Lilly Wachowski is stepping back from Season 2 production, as she takes time away from the public eye. While Lana came out as trans in 2012, after much reluctance to Sense8 gives image and sound to a queer future that might not yet give up the freedoms of living in relative anonymity,7 be present but is for some nonetheless palpable on the horizon. Lilly was coerced into outing herself prematurely by the Daily Mail just last March. In the statement she progress and in my very being, be an example of the published in Chicago’s Windy City Times, so as to potentiality of another world.” 10 This roundtable was beat the British tabloid, Lilly critiqued the Daily formed out a desire to examine this text that makes Mail for its history of destructively outing public explicit its rejection of the here and now, marked figures before speaking to her own experience and by transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, and her resistance to overly simplistic narratives of globalized capitalism, and gives image and sound to transitioning: a queer future that might not yet be present but is for some nonetheless palpable on the horizon. But these words, ‘transgender’ and Moya Bailey, micha cárdenas, Laura Horak, ‘transitioned’ are hard for me because Lokeilani Kaimana, Cáel M. Keegan, Geneveive they both have lost their complexity in Newman, Raffi Sarkissian, and I conducted the their assimilation into the mainstream. roundtable between December 2016 and February There is a lack of nuance of time and 2017. In an attempt to mirror the kinds of space. To be transgender is something collaboration envisioned by the series, the eight of largely understood as existing within the us first wrote together in pairs before responding dogmatic terminus of male or female. to another pair’s writing. Trained in Cinema and And to ‘transition’ imparts a sense of Media Studies; Communication; American Studies; immediacy, a before and after from one Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and Media terminus to another. But the reality, my Arts and Practice, in our collaborations we ostensibly reality is that I’ve been transitioning and “visited” each other and “shared” our knowledges will continue to transition all of my life, and skills with one another across geographies through the infinite that exists between via digital communication technologies. All of male and female as it does in the infinite the questions were authored by the roundtable’s between the binary of zero and one. We participants, and I made the pairings based on need to elevate the dialogue beyond the shared interests, combining questions in the ways simplicity of binary. Binary is a false that made the greatest sense to me. Although we idol.8 all wrote in pairs, I left the resulting format of each set of answers up to each individual pair. As you On her wall in her office, Lilly explains, she will see, we each took slightly different approaches has a quotation from queer theorist José Esteban to collaborative writing. Laura Horak and I crafted Muñoz that ends, “Queerness is essentially about our answers together, each of us having a hand in the rejection of a here and now and an insistence every paragraph we produced. The three other pairs on potentiality [or concrete possibility] for either took turns answering, each offering a slightly another world.”9 And this is what she, in living different interpretation of their given prompt, wrote and in working, is trying to do. She concludes her back and forth in dialogue and/or wrote their initial statement, “So I will continue to be an optimist answer one way and their response to another pair adding my shoulder to the Sisyphean struggle of a different way. What resulted from this process TRANSGENDER MEDIA 75 SENSE8 ROUNDTABLE is not the definitive account of the series and its to the privileges afforded by white supremacist contributions to media platforms in transition or patriarchy. intersectional transfeminist storytelling. Instead, this roundtable offers an initiation of possible lines Raffi Sarkissian: Following, much like how the of inquiry. We hope that readers will travel with Wachowskis’ success and leverage today is based us, as we work to develop our thoughts in other on their legacy built around The Matrix, Netflix’s scholarly forms, and we invite Sense8 to grow with powerful position as original content creators us and expand its own thinking as it continues to is also built on years of lucrative licensing of model socially conscious television. -Roxanne existing content from dominant television and Samer film studios—or Hollywood capital. The streaming company’s foray into original programming What role does the Wachowski sisters’ out trans also relies on the currency afforded to name narratives play in assessing Sense8? What is the brand authors or rebooting existing IPs. What significance of this work being done on Netflix? makes Netflix’s investment inSense8 significant, Are streaming platforms somehow prime in the then, is the reaffirmation of the value of a post- larger economy of identity politics and media transition Wachowski brand—as transfeminine production? How does Sense8’s complex storytelling auteurs—particularly after the middling financial follow or break from the Wachowskis’ prior approach performance of their post-Matrix films. to narrative? Lokeilani Kaimana: As we switch to streaming, Raffi Sarkissian: Representing the Wachowskis’ it is also important to remember “flow” as a key first foray into television content, Netflix’s Sense8 component of television as a medium.11 Netflix can brings to the fore the first out transgender creators/ only mimic flow to the extent that it allows viewers directors in Hollywood and provokes a new to binge watch a single narrative. I think that in understanding of the Wachowskis as transgender the way that “flow” marks the active relationship auteurs. Far from an aside, the sisters’ transition as between technology and viewer for broadcast paratextual narrative not only informs the stakes television, we might see binge watching as marking and content of Sense8, but also productively disrupts the relationship between viewers and the Netflix the familiar masculinist auteur narrative born from platform.