My rant about the Rajan/Kala/Wolfgang (Sense8 finale):
I’m honestly so disappointed. Y'all preaching to us about growing up and learning to accept polyamory in the form of Rajan-Kala-Wolfgang don’t even understand that for hundreds of brown girls, including me, Kala was a symbol of resistance against the norms of a society built on ancient and unwritten laws of patriarchy, which still believe that girls should be seen and not heard, a society where people are invested in the sons’ careers but the daughters’ marriages, a society which forces a woman to be submissive to a man at every step of her life, daughter, sister, wife, mother and so on. Finally, we, brown girls get a representation of a brown female character, not unnecessarily exoticised or sexualised (a fetish we can trace from Disney’s Jasmine to ASOIAF’s Arianne Martell)and instead possessed of brains beside the beauty, well-educated, rooted in heritage, feminine and intelligent, romantic yet practical enough to think up solutions to kooky situations.
As an Indian Hindu myself, may I express my sheer delight at the introduction of this character? Tina is so beautiful and Kala was badass in every sense, with the juxtaposition of her pretty floral dresses and her pyrotechnic tendencies. She walks the line gracefully between respecting/drawing strength from religions and customs and being level-headed and empirical in how she surveys crises. She dares to love this German bazooka-toting dude, the very image of whom would make your average Indian parents shudder. An actual, well-written interracial relationship that surprisingly doesn’t end in death or shit like that. He respects her and is attracted by her insight, knowledge, resourcefulness etc, not just her sex appeal. She in turn is able to see the sincerity and even valiance hidden beneath his moody broody exterior.
Yet in the finale, all this is dumped aside to make way for a random ass ménage à trois which just hammers home the fact that we will forever have to sacrifice what we truly want for duty, because no, Kala didn’t love Rajan, he was a nice guy and all, but she didn’t love him, she didn’t have that harrowing physical and mental connection with him as she did with Wolfie, and there was never any buildup to her and Rajan’s relationship. She was ready to give up her LIFE for Wolfgang. Her LIFE. Rajan….?? Idk?? Did they even have an actual, genuine moment where you could feel legitimate potential for love? I felt it was more convenience, and sympathy and sympathy is the worst substitute of genuine love. After they kissed she legit didn’t seem into it and looked like she was indulging him (*SPOILER ALERT: SHE WAS!*)
Polyamory needs representation and no one is denying that. Dany/Lito/Hernando were actually adorable!!! And yes, I wouldn’t have minded the whole Rajan thing if it hadn’t been so sudden and weirdly injected, like some pretentious desire to drive in the WOKE, WE ARE WOKE message. I get that this was a daring and innovative way of settling out what could’ve been yet another love triangle, and this one with perhaps certain unfortunate implications that are unavoidable when you have interracial lovers (the words “white saviour” and “colonial hangover” come to mind, kind of like when some people came to trash on Katrina Kaif’s character in JTHJ because according to them she got the guy at the end cause she was white, not, yano, cause the WHOLE DAMN STORY revolved around them) But the stigma surrounding us and the oppression faced by brown girls is also legitimate and by reducing Kala to her relationships with men, and by having her run circles only to return to Rajan, and somehow having her be surprisingly okay with this (Kala! My-body-is-none-of-your-fucking-business Kala! Just submitting cause Rajan will feel hurt????), thus negating the whole emotional core of her story, the show actually perpetuated the toxicity that ironically, it had sought to avoid through this character. And Kala Dandekar perhaps wouldn’t pay that price, not to Tumblr at least, which seems to ADORE R/K/W but Indian women will, by having that glimmer of hope stolen from us again, using the protective veil of an open marriage. It’s like what Frollo said of Esmeralda, “A beautiful prison…but a prison all the same”.