I have been somewhat binge-watching this series over the last few days (by "binge-watching", I mean an average of two episodes a day, which, I'm sure, is a very conservative rate of media-consumption by the standards of most binge-watchers....), and have watched 10 of the 12 episodes in Season One thus far. I've been really enjoying it. I think it does a really good job of using the theme of telepathy to explore empathy among individual human beings--in particular, individuals who are LGBTQ--in a way that does not exploit or make light of these individuals' lives or experiences. I really think the Wachowskis and Straczynski are breaking new narrative ground here; with Sense8, they are doing for millennial politically-aware-character-driven drama what the Matrix did for sci-fi action movies.
The main characters in Sense8
[Image taken from io9.com]
As is hopefully very clear from the above, I am a great fan of this series. I hope there will be a Season Two, and I can't wait for it to come out. But there's one thing that kind of disturbs me about the series. There are three non-Caucasian characters (played by Tina Desai, Aml Ameen, and Bae Doona). While I think that the story arcs of these three characters are really compelling, engaging and real, I also notice that they all have one thing in common: They don't seem to have much of a sex life. I mean, yes, it is true that two of these characters (Desai's young Hindu woman character, and Bae's character, a Korean woman brought up in a patriarchal family) hail from very traditional Asian households. But coming from a traditional upbringing shouldn't deprive one of a sex drive, should it?
[Warning: Spoiler alert coming! Read no further if you do not want to be spoiled!]
This sexuality disconnect between the Caucasian and non-Caucasian characters becomes very glaring at the end of episode six, when five of the eight main characters (namely, the Caucasian ones) engage in a psychic orgy. What is a psychic orgy? Well, you know, having sex with somebody via telepathy, without having to actually be in the other's physical presence... how is this possible? The hell would I know, I'm not a psychic! But I digress. My point is, why aren't the non-Caucasians in that orgy? And this isn't just a sexual issue: If this orgy is not just a melding of bodies, but of minds and consciousnesses, could the absence of the non-Caucasians in this scene be interpreted as a sort of political statement about non-Caucasian consciousnesses?
What do you think? Any thoughts on this?