TOTALITARIAN TOKENISM PT. 3

I suppose that this essay-series is a very roundabout way of approaching the subject I first raised in my review of Season One of the Netflix SANDMAN teleseries. In that review, I specified that I wanted to discuss the formal properties of the show, and deal with the "politically oriented alterations" elsewhere. But before doing so, I wanted to explore the background of said changes. In Part 1, I described the way that a given phenomenon could be viewed as either a "negative token" or a "positive token" according to one's presuppositions. In an intermediary essay, I analyzed the conditions of the early 20th's century's "Status Quo," in which positive tokenism had very limited potential, and in Part 2, I proceeded to specify the early inroads of this form of tokenism in the 1960s decade. I did not deny the possibility of negative tokenism. However, whereas many people have used the term to connote a superficial pretense to follow certain political principles, I've defined negative fictional tokens as those that shows no individuality, but are defined ONLY as sociopolitical indicators, whether for "Liberal" or "Conservative" purposes. While the showrunners showed a great deal of sensitivity in adapting the Neil Gaiman stories from the SANDMAN comic book, their efforts were compromised by the constant emphasis on virtue signaling through Netflix-approved DEI casting. Instead of making all the race-bending, gender-bending and kink-bending seem natural, the message of forced inclusivity serves as a constant reminder of a new-- and totalitarian-- Status Quo.                                                                                                                        So what were the various "bendings" of SANDMAN SEASON ONE?                                                                                                                  

"The Sleep of the Just"-- Alex Burgess, who has custody of Morpheus at the time that the dream-lord breaks free, is given a gay lover, played by an apparently-Black British actor. Lucienne, the librarian of The Dream-World, is depicted as a White male in the comic book, becomes a Black female in the TV show.                                     

"Imperfect Hosts"/"Dream a Little Dream of Me"-- the original Gaiman stories concern male John Constantine, who gives aid to Morpheus in exchange for help with his opposite-sex lover. In the Netflix narrative, John becomes Johanna, but her lover remains female. In the comics John Constantine was sometimes defined as bisexual, but I suspect Johanna swings only one approved way.                  

"A Hope in Hell"-- In the original Gaiman story, a male demon in Lucifer's domain acquires Morpheus' helmet, and the dream-lord enters Hell to challenge the demon, name of Choronzon, for custody of the prize. The challenge proceeds largely as it does in the comic, except that Lucifer, now played by Gwendoline Christie, takes Choronzon's place in the contest, for no discernible reason but to give the actress playing Lucifer more lines than the actor playing Choronzon. In a subplot, the madman John Dee escapes an asylum and catches a lift from a female driver. In the comic the driver is a White woman, whom Dee kills when he's done with her. In the TV episode, the driver is a Black female, but Dee not only spares her. he gives her a protective charm for no plot-related reason.                                   

     "24/7"-- As in the original story, John Dee enters an all-night diner and uses his powers to manipulate the personnel and customers. The comic included a White "power couple." but here they become an Asian wife and a Black husband. The original story includes a young lesbian woman, who gets to stay the same. But that's not enough for the TV show: the Black husband is secretly gay, and so is the diner's cook, with whom waitress Bette thinks she has a romance of sorts. The cook not only reveals that he's gay, but that he's slept with Bette's younger brother. Somehow the writer manages to omit the question of anyone gay committing child sexual abuse.               

"The Sound of Her Wings"-- In the comic, Dream's sister Death is depicted as a Caucasian-looking Goth girl with skin as chalk-white as Dream's, so of course she must be played by a Black actress here. Hmm, since she's a conceptual being, couldn't she have also satisfied DEI had she been played by a dark-complected Hispanic or one of several different Asian types? But no, we have a hero who's White, so a Black "sister" is the necessary counterbalance. One or two minor characters go from White to Black as well.                                         

    "The Doll's House" and the next three episodes-- The characters Rose Walker, her brother Jed, and her great-grandmother Unity go from White to Black. Yet Jed, separated from his family when his Black father dies, lives with his Aunt Clarice, played by a White performer, as is her abusive husband Barnaby. Was Clarice's sister, mother to Rose and Jed, supposed to be White too? Maybe someone in the writers' room didn't think things through? Or they just thought it was OK for villains to remain White? Another conceptual entity, a nightmare named Gault, is played by a Black actress, but this time the two entities she substitutes for were generic monsters, not belonging to any racial type as such. Rose's friend Lyta Hall, a White character in the comics, is played by a Lebanese-British actress, but her late husband Hector? Starts with "B," ends with "k--" again.         

   "Dream of a Thousand Cats" and "Calliope"-- though there a few minor characters who are race-bent, there are no major changes here. But that may be because the main human characters-- a couple who drown some kittens for expedience, and Ric Madoc, a man who keeps a Greek muse in captivity-- are White People Doing Bad Things.                                                                                                                                                                                                                Yet "Calliope" displays the most interesting script-change in any episode. In the original story, Madoc is an immense hypocrite. Though he exploits his imprisoned, suffering Muse so that he becomes a celebrated author, Madoc describes himself to his adoring fans as a "feminist writer." This line is also in the episode's script. However, someone on staff added a rather revealing line. Madoc is on the phone, talking to what one assumes to be an agent about a TV-adaptation of one of his books, and he says, "I need [the producers] to guarantee at the outset that the cast and crew will be made up of at least 50%  women and people of color, and that we need to publicize it so they won't get out of it when it comes to hiring people."                                                                                                                                                                                             Now, what does it mean that someone-- be it the credited writer or one of the showrunners-- inserted that line? Was it meant to carry the same irony as the Gaiman line in which Madoc describes himself as a feminist writer? It's possible, but the line is weird, coming from a writer working for a company that insisted on the very pattern of virtue signaling that Madoc uses to make himself look virtuous. Did the writer of the line want to imply, however covertly, that virtue-signaling Netflix wasn't any more virtuous than Ric Madoc?                                                                                                                             That's one possibility. Another is that the writer of the line really did believe that it was both moral and necessary to make companies commit to DEI hires, because otherwise they would revert to the bad old days of "if you're White you're all right." I should point that, although SANDMAN Season One came out in 2022, as of this writing Netflix remains firmly committed to DEI, unlike a number of companies that have at least modified their more extreme positions.                                                                                                                                                                                                   To pursue my tokenism metaphor to the bitter end, usually the word is used for one character of a divergent race, gender or proclivity whose presence "proves" that an author, or the characters the author creates, is/are free of bigotry against the divergent type. But tokenism inheres just as much in mass quantities of virtue signaling. In the minds of the politically correct, they believe they're fighting the good fight. But how "inclusive" can their multi-ethnic, polysexual characters be if they exclude themselves from accepting any of the "badness" that belongs to the entire human race? Their demands to be in all ways sympathetic and/or heroic hold the ring of totalitarian propaganda-- particularly that of the totalitarian seeking to drum up a war against an enemy's alleged wrongdoings.