‘Altered Carbon’: ‘Blade Runner’ and Whitewashing
Bless me, science fiction, for I have sinned. This is my first confession. I have never seen Blade Runner.
Of course I should see it. I won’t get any subsequent reference to a gloomy, slick, neon-soaked technological hellscape if I don’t see it. Am I even qualified to comment on any futuristic sci-fi film or television show without having seen Blade Runner? Normally the answer would be a soft no, but qualifications don’t matter post 2016, so fuck yes, I am. Actually, screw that ‘post 2016’ nonsense, I am more than qualified since I watched Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica and Farscape live, and, in the case of Farscape, my favorite science fiction show of all time, I own the complete series, including The Peacekeeper Wars. No. One. Can. Touch. Me.
But back to my transgression. I have tried, science fiction, I have tried to be enlightened, but it always ends with Blade Runner watching me. I even tried to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but alas, I was more intrigued by kippleization than with Deckard’s (and Dick’s) philosophizing about the soul. The only opinion I hold not gleaned from years of cinematic and cultural references to Blade Runner is that Roy Batty’s “Tears in the Rain” soliloquy is downright Shakespearean and probably the answer to the question posed by the novel’s title.
That being said, Altered Carbon is no Blade Runner because Blade Runner isn’t a love story. Sure, Blade Runner 2049 tried to retcon one between Decker and Rachel, and even conjured one up between Officer K and Joi, but there’s no love in the future, no room for it with replicant wars and tech gods obsessed with engineering viable wombs and towering holograms of glowing, naked women and the endless city rain and ecological disasters sweeping coast to coast.
Come to think of it, there aren’t any humans in Blade Runner’s future, only artifice and delusion and really, disgustingly nice coats. Also, and yes, brace yourself, we’re in 2018 and we’re talking about sci-fi futurism and cyberpunk, the future has not reached beyond the pale. So far, Altered Carbon has a lot more going for it than Blade Runner ever tried to do, so I’m going to end the comparison here, with this admission: Altered wears Blade Runner’s sleeve, but isn’t running its stack.
I’ve been thinking of this show since I devoured it in two large bites. Googled it more than a dozen times. Read all the articles on the sites I traffic. Chewed the fat with my watching buddy. Even started re-watching it, mostly because the tech jargon whizzed by me the first time. Now that I am slowly masticating my seconds, I can say, overall, Altered Carbon is one of the better Netflix originals. It has to be, considering the obscene amount of money used to make it. They (re)created a world and it feels plausible, even accessible. The cast is solid and the story is good.
But. But! (God, one of these days I’m going to write about something I unequivocally love, warts, ingrown hairs, and all) Altered Carbon has some issues keeping it from being Netflix’s Game of Thrones (the first five seasons and a select few scenes from the seventh). Those issues, man, wow, they have that weird, radioactive crackle of bread microwaved five seconds too long. Not one of those issues, however, is the whitewashing charge.
The angst is understandable. Joel Kinnaman cast as an Asian character named Takeshi Kovacs? Cue Ghost in The Shell meltdown. Understandable and justifiable if the contexts were similar. And context is crucial since the hot take machine powers most popular culture discourse.
In the world of Altered Carbon, bodies are like t-shirts. They can be shucked for something completely new, nice ones costs money, one can be bedazzled, one can be relegated to the gutter or elevated to the hanger. The only thing that doesn’t change is the mind inhabiting the shell. This concept plays with that other concept about race being a social construct. Identity, in all its aspects, is a consciousness we carry, something that can be transferred to a disc, copied, beamed, but relatively intangible. It only becomes real when expressed in a body, and only then it can be limited by the body it inhabits. It’s a wonderfully interesting premise, frightening too, because then who would choose to be re-sleeved in a body historically oppressed or disabled or aged? Why would anyone, with this technology, want to experience the hardship of the impoverished? Why wouldn’t they just set it up so their consciousness could be stored until a better body, circumstance, whatever is available? These are questions that are touched on, but not fully explored, in Altered Carbon, probably because the existentialism quotient is too high for safe binging.
Whitewashing claims in Altered Carbon are tied to the same conversation that bubbles up whenever news about advances in bio-engineering and gene editing rises above the muck of news in general. Eugenics is a topic that will, and should, be discussed as long as humanity is viewed through a racialized perspective. And because a massive majority of humanity has yet to confront its racialized perspective in actuality, it is confronted through our chosen simulation, popular culture. But the notion of race is not integral to the plot in Altered Carbon. It’s there because we put it there.
Takeshi Kovacs inhabiting the sleeve of a white man isn’t as simple as a white lead playing better to Netflix’s international audience. A man of Asian descent is locked into a body not of his choosing. Think about that. Takeshi Kovacs would rather not be in a white body. He wants a body similar to the one that grew organically around his consciousness. It’s his choice until it’s not, and when it’s not, it comes down to that hungry and powerful demon: money.
For me, that’s refreshing. The small touches — Rei commenting on getting Takeshi a body “less gaijin, with better hair”; Takeshi’s grimace whenever he gazes in a mirror; his wordless rage at seeing one of his previous, chosen sleeves — are that much more significant when we see Takeshi in his original body. The touches, though, may have been too subtle to grasp beyond the name plus Joel Kinnaman. I’m not fond of babying the audience, but this is one of those issues that’s too sensitive to not have a scene where Takeshi voices his discomfort about being housed in a white body, no matter how jacked. If Takeshi did some V.O. dialogue directly from the book, I am sure the whitewashing cry would be a dull murmuring and the conversation more varied and complex.
As much as I like Joel Kinnaman’s bod and strange accent and, well, all of him, another season of it would’ve meant Netflix playing to the notion that white plays better. As we now know, Takeshi Kovacs will indeed be housed in another body next season (if there is a next season). Netflix could still fall prey to that notion, but to do so would undermine not only the story logic, but also any future meaningful, insightful dialogue Altered Carbon could generate.
