‘Carbon’ imagines disposable humanity
“We use things and throw them away. ... I want people to find that upsetting.” Laeta Kalogridis Series creator
Extensive nudity and violence is common in pay TV, and Netflix’s Altered Carbon is no exception. But creator Laeta Kalogridis says there’s a purpose to what’s often considered gratuitous.
The big-budget sci-fi drama, based on Richard Morgan’s 2002 cyberpunk novel, imagines a future dystopia where mind can be separated from body. When a human consciousness, concentrated in a small disc-like “stack,” can change bodies (or “sleeves”) at will, the physical form loses value.
“I’m trying to make a comment about the commodification of the human body, that it becomes as disposable to us as everything else,” says Kalogridis ( Shutter Island), who is overseeing her first TV series. “We use things and throw them away. When you extend that to the human body, I want people to find that upsetting.”
In Carbon, highly skilled 22nd-century soldier Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman, The Killing) finds his consciousness downloaded into a new body 250 years in the future by a super-rich man (James Purefoy, The Following) who promises him continued physical life if he investigates the man’s murder. (Multiple sleeves allow for that.)
Kovacs, trapped in a foreign world and body and disconnected from a meaningful past, suffers acts of violence but doesn’t hesitate to use force.
“He starts in utter disillusionment,” Kinnaman says. “He comes into a world where everyone he’s ever loved is dead, and everything he ever fought for is lost.”
In a genre where male writers and producers traditionally are in charge, Kalogridis’ approach to nudity, violence and female characters may signify a different perspective.
Carbon is relatively even in its presentation of male and female nudity, she says, and while violence against female characters reflects contemporary reality, the most gruesome torture, which can go on indefinitely thanks to technology, is visited upon Kovacs.
The 10-episode Netflix series gives her the opportunity to “build out” strong female characters from the novel, including police Lt. Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda); Kovacs’ sister, Reileen Kawahara (Dichen Lachman); and polit- ical visionary Quell (Renee Elise Goldsberry). Lizzie (Hayley Law), a young woman trapped as a victim in the book, gets new autonomy.
Reileen’s nudity, in a devastating fight scene with Ortega, illustrates her power, not objectification, Kalogridis says. “Female nudity is often used to reinforce the idea of helplessness. The point of that scene is that she’s Kali the Destroyer,” she says, comparing the raging character to a Hindu goddess. “That is a woman who is such an embodiment of the dark side of the warrior goddess. But that’s power. She owns her body. … She’s not there for the male gaze.”
Kinnaman calls Carbon’s violence “equal opportunity” and welcomes the focus on the treatment of women, onand offscreen, in the Me Too era. “I think everything is being looked at through a different lens, and I think it’s a very healthy process.”
Kalogridis finds the separation of mind and body in Morgan’s novel, which allows the rich to become Methuselahs, or “Meths,” by constantly acquiring new bodies, timely amid reports of wealthy people seeking immortality and companies, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, anticipating a growing merger of technology and the brain.
“Now that Elon Musk is talking about the possibility of transforming ourselves physically, our bodies and our consciousnesses, via technology, it’s become much more” of a discussion topic, she says.
With two more Kovacs novels, Kalogridis is interested in future seasons to introduce new characters and, thanks to sleeves and different timelines, perhaps more versions of Kovacs.