Carnival Row is a fantasy with intriguingly complex battle lines within people and between peoples, factions and ideologies. But while we may look at sides in a conflict, we may wonder what creates conflict? In whose interest does it happen? And most of all how to escape it?

How Fantasy Unmasks Abuse of Power

The one big lesson from racially mixed fantasy TV series.

New norms lead to new values, lead to new story formats. And writers try to tell new stories through these new lenses. Stories that actually make a human idiocy quite visible. And I hope seeing this idiocy can help raise humanity in the face of new crises to come.

Shadow and Bone is about fighting an ancient evil. But to fight evil the good magical people need to become accepted by those with prejudice. And need to understand that evil can nestle within anyone, once they believe self interest is more important than rights of others or what goes against nature.

The lesson of Carnival Row, Shadow and Bone, and others.

In these two series, and we see it in many others too, racism is being given a new face. There are those with magical gifts, or who are of a very different species. Many seek to live in peace or co-existence with ordinary humans. This is often being denied to them, even when their talents might help normal human order mightily. Yet these ‘other’ people are feared, hunted, let alone being repressed. Of course many of these magical humans resist this and fight the repression. Others seek to protect everyone.

So what’s different? The good guys are a collective of white and black humans, and of magical humans, often the main characters being magical. We could see them as especially talented people, with skills few people have. The bad guys offer the same mix. Often prejudices make matters worse and serves as obstacle to overcome the real big issues; dare we say global pollution, ravaging nature, poisoning seas and lands.

It’s like Viktor Frankl made it very clear in his core book of humanity, “Men’s Search for Meaning” that it is not ideology, nor race, nor religion, nor sexual preferences, nor culture, nor nation, nor tribe that separates mankind. These series show this as complexity in full glory, as a battle between factions, sides, interests. Yet at the core lies only one choice. We all may choose to serve only our own interests, or that of our tribe at the cost of all others. Or we choose to be supportive to all others and live with values and help the whole to flourish.

Human Programming vs Change

We all have our own survival program, and often this rules how we choose sides. There are those who operate on lust for control and power, those that flock to the powerful ones, those that seek to stay hidden and those that follow inner values. And there are all those in between hoping for peace, and often watching where the major sentiments lie. This group often ends up being played by the ruthless ones. And it is up to the good people to unmask the real bad ones, and not becoming a new evil in their turn burning with desire for revenge. Indeed, many revolutions are led by new monsters, driven by the trauma done to them by their oppressors.

In adventures the heroes often need to just kill the worst bad guys to save their world. In reality heroes need to do a lot of convincing to sway the general public to resist their abusers. Sadly too often they seem the successful ones, the voice of order, the heroes on the front page of Fortunes 500. It’s too often only in hindsight we see how bad Nazism, the Inquisition, Stalin’s followers, (and soon?) Wall Street Bankers were. In our current world this is made worse, the industrials that ravage the planet spend millions to look green and attractive.

So What Is the Lesson?

Politicians keep stoking us with ideologies, religious leaders with beliefs, nationalists with tribal thinking. What hope do we have?

If these fantasy series teach us anything, then it is we should be looking at our leaders with way more scrutiny. Anyone pointing to a group as a whole, degrading them as the enemy, the lazy ones, the rotten ones is denying that humanity knows no colour, knows no sexual preference, no true belief, no best ideology, etc. All groups have their own bastards, oppressors, abusers, scammers, lazy ones, etc. All groups have their own awesome ones, great ones, heroes. And these fantasy series show us that humane treatment, allowing growth for all is what helps everyone, helps the whole.

These series focus on overcoming the bad guys. In the real world we should focus on supporting each other to become our best possible self. Those that block such efforts, well, those are the ones that haven’t understood the lesson, and who are, as in the series, part of the problem. Don’t let such people be your leaders or inspiration. Rather always support what and who have love and humanity. And grow it within. We’ll all benefit.