In a World of NRC & Brexit, ‘Carnival Row’ Is a Show for Our Times

Amazon’s new show lays bare the fallacies of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric – and warns us of its consequences.

Orlando Bloom (L) and Cara Delevingne (R) in ‘Carnival Row’.

(Photo: Erum Gour/The Quint)

Here’s a small challenge. Which of these lines were spoken in the real world and which come from a fictional TV show?

• “The *** are swarming our country. They are changing the very fabric of our society. The *** are like a tide that will swamp – and drown our country.”
• “The *** are like termites. They are eating the grain that should go to the poor, they are taking our jobs.”
• “^^^ can't find honest work because the *** do their jobs for a pittance!”
• “The government will identify *** living on every inch of the country's soil and will deport them.”

Don’t worry if you find it a bit difficult to figure out which is which – we are living, after all, in a world where this kind of rhetoric is all too common.

What makes matters worse is that this talk is not confined to narrow-minded middle class living rooms and tasteless family WhatsApp groups, and is instead a part of mainstream politics, with prominent political leaders proudly making pronouncements such as these for the whole world to hear.

Which is why, perhaps, ‘Carnival Row’, which arrived on Amazon on 30 August, touches a nerve in these times.

Anti-Immigration Propaganda to the Fore

Now look, I’m not saying even for a moment that this is the first time in history that anti-immigrant vitriol has been used by politicians. From ancient Rome to modern Italy, whenever economies collapse or politicians want to bestir emotion, there’s always been one effective way: “blaming immigrants and poor people” as put so pithily in 2015’s ‘The Big Short’.

Even so, we are at a peculiar inflection point in history, with old canards about illegal immigrants (a term under which even refugees are lumped) finding themselves front and centre in politics across the globe at the same time.

Home Minister Amit Shah used the narrative of immigrants posing a threat to India as a plank in the BJP’s 2019 re-election campaign and continues to bring it up in his speeches, while the party also positions Rohingya refugees in the cross hairs.

False claims about illegal immigrants causing a ‘breaking point’ in the UK was the driving force behind the 2016 Brexit vote.

Donald Trump’s rise to power was kickstarted with unsubstantiated claims about Mexican immigrants, and he continues to use his strong stance against immigrants as a way to consolidate power – note how his base has no problems with the inhumane detention centres set up along the US border in the south.

In Europe, far-right parties have gained a stronghold in the country, based almost entirely on anti-immigration sentiments, even in Germany, with its haunting history.

It’s worth remembering that the salient feature of this kind of rhetoric, as we can see today – lies which are exaggerated beyond all proportion and replete with hateful and dehumanising language – was supposed to be beyond the pale in most ‘reasonable’ societies.

Unfortunately, with the ‘Overton window’ of discourse shifting ever more rightward everywhere you turn, falsehood, hyperbole and viciousness have been dialled up to incredibly dangerous degrees.

Social media and the Internet allow this propaganda and misinformation to be spread wider and even more effectively, and the echo chambers they create ensure that the barrier to countering the narrative is almost insurmountable.

What is ‘Carnival Row’ About?

And this is where something that might have served as a weakness for ‘Carnival Row’ just five years ago, becomes its greatest asset: a complete lack of subtlety.

Reviews of ‘Carnival Row’ have been divided: some reviewers enjoyed it thoroughly and some thought it a plodding mess. One thing common to both camps, however, is that ‘Carnival Row’ is a show which wears its politics on its sleeve and doesn’t tiptoe around what it wants to say.

A little context would perhaps be useful here. Season 1 of the show follows events in the city of the Burgue – think Victorian London with a few steampunk improvements.

The twist is that this isn’t a world where humans alone are an ‘intelligent species’: it’s also populated by the Fae, a catalogue of mythical fairy creatures from flying pixies and fauns (known as ‘Pucks’) to centaurs and werewolves. 

The lands of the Fae have been ravaged by war and they, hunted and driven out of their homes, have sought refuge in the Burgue, a human city where, if not employed as servants by rich families, they mostly occupy the area of the city known as Carnival Row.

The Fae aren’t exactly welcomed by the natives, who resent their presence and believe they’re ‘stealing’ jobs in their willingness (out of desperation) to work for lower wages.

Much like our own world, this isn’t limited to the odd racist in the street – the opposition party has made immigrant-bashing its manifesto and batters away at an unstable pro-immigrant government.

At the end of the eight episodes, *MINOR SPOILER ALERT* by way of a gruesome murder mystery and some very convoluted romances, both sides of the political aisle are united in condemning the Fae, who are all then confined to a ghetto.

Why Should People Watch the Show?

Several critics of the show have said that it’s a bit too on the nose, that its depiction of bigotry, oppression, and persecution of immigrants and refugees is too obviously evocative of the real world.

Yet, the overtness of the social divide doesn’t simply drive the show’s plot; it is the heart of the story, and it’s what stays with you after the show ends. Many reviewers view the show from the prism of HBO’s fantasy epic series ‘Game of Thrones’, but in truth, ‘Carnival Row’ is an entirely different animal.

The murder mystery and the love story which scaffold the show are not its most compelling elements.

However, the tension over whether or not these people, who not only subscribe to different cultures, have different eating habits, but also look different, should be accepted in society, elevates the significance of these plotlines.

In today’s exceedingly polarised world, it’s become important for criticism of bigotry to be clear, unambiguous, and invulnerable to misinterpretation in favour of the problematic behaviour – take for instance the controversy surrounding the new ‘Joker’ film.

Allowed leeway by its genre (fantasy), ‘Carnival Row’ can sidestep some difficulties faced by other attempts at exploring the underbelly of the real world.

You can focus on the sheer evil of persecution on the arbitrary basis of ‘other races’ being inferior, the usage of derogatory slurs against an entire community, the trauma of victims – without the distractions of one group of people complaining (baselessly, of course) about unfair representation.

The ridiculousness of this kind of rhetoric is made evident, without the reflexive pushback which you might have to deal with while dealing with issues of race implicit in anti-immigrant sentiments. The Machiavellian mobilisation and weaponisation of the same by politicians is also easier to understand when it’s not clouded by real-world biases.

For instance, if you are a BJP supporter listening to Amit Shah talk about the need for an NRC across the country, or someone who supported Sarbhananda Sonowal when he argued in the Supreme Court that Assam was being inundated with Bangladeshi immigrants, it is going to be difficult to accept these claims as false, even though the facts unequivocally belie these arguments.

2011 Census data shows there has been minimal ‘infiltration’ by illegal immigrants across the country (despite what we keep hearing).

The final NRC in Assam, announced on 31 August, excluded 19 lakh people, not the hordes Assamese people have been told about for decades, and even this could be halved, if some experts are to be believed.

And yet, because of your political loyalties, it would be impossible to ignore what the people you believe in are saying, what your friends are saying, and what the articles and information pushed to you on social media are saying. This is something that plagues Brexit Britain, where ‘Leavers’ are willing to ignore revelation after revelation that their leaders have lied to them, and the US as well, where staunch Republicans are willing to defend even the mistreatment of children.

On the other hand, when you see fictional politician Sophie Longerbane admit privately to making an incendiary speech against the Fae regardless of the truth, simply because she knows it will help her cement her political position, the duplicity behind political manoeuvres of this kind becomes easier to comprehend.

There’s no baggage to stop you from condemning the other side of the political divide when it abandons its principles to jump at the chance of political gain, irrespective of the truth. At the very least, you may perhaps think twice before taking such sophistry, in particular the reiteration of the ‘Us versus Them’ narrative at face value.

Let me clarify: this isn’t a perfect show. Orlando Bloom isn’t exactly the best choice for a leading man, unless of course you enjoy watching the lead brood, gaze into the distance and mumble his lines a la Kit Harington’s Jon Snow. The show is unevenly paced at times and the ‘big’ reveal can be guessed from a mile away.

Nonetheless, it is a bold show and is willing to take on the brazen bigotry of the day, the ugliness that has seeped into the mainstream and does not, unabashedly, care about subtler critique. Most of the cast is superb, and the show is, refreshingly, an original story, and not an adaptation.

With Season 2 set to explore the inevitable consequences of its world’s bigotry –ghettoisation and collective punishment – it looks set to retain its pertinence to our times, especially India. 

We have already imposed collective punishment on the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, and are also building detention centres for illegal immigrants across the country even though they, as this paper reported in Mint shows, aren’t really a concern. We can only hope that life will not be imitating fiction when it comes to what happens next.