A Series Analysis
Approaching Arendt's Thinking

What do the series Andor and Sense8 have to do with Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the banality of evil? Susann Kabisch and Michael Seemann reveal the fascinating connections.

“When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

Immediately before her escape – in her final speech to the Imperial Senate – senator Mon Mothma bears witness to the reality of the denied genocide carried out against an entire planet’s population.

We are in the Star Wars universe, before the Return of the Jedi, before Luke and Leia, before Rogue One. And before the Death Star.

The series Andor expands on the political themes of the early films about the rebellion against the Dark Empire. Unlike in the films, however, the Empire – with the lure of the Dark Side of the Force – feels not supernaturally menacing, but eerily ordinary and disturbingly banal.

Another contemporary portrayal of the banality of evil appears in the series Sense8, where members of another species – known as “Homo sensorium” or “Sensates” – resist an organisation intent on annihilating them.

Both series reflect different facets of Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viewed together, the two series give shape to a utopian vision of resistance.

Andor

The series Andor shows how the Empire functions as a vast power apparatus. We see prisons that are, in reality, economically exploitative labour camps. We see the Imperial Security Troopers searching for undocumented migrants. We descend into the inner workings of bureaucracy, into the hierarchies of the security apparatus, explore colonial administrative structures, and are presented with the Empire as a potential career path.

Over two seasons, we follow the rise of Dedra Mirro, a senior officer in the Imperial Security Bureau. As Hannah Arendt writes about Eichmann: “Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.” The same holds true for Dedra. At a secret Imperial conference – visually reminiscent of the Wannsee Conference – she is tasked with contributing to the genocide of the population of Ghorman. She not only puts forward her own proposals, but even assigns her partner Syril Karn as a surveillance operative on the planet.

Syril Karn, too, is primarily driven by his career. He is ambitious but not especially smart, and always behaves humbly toward his superiors, the Empire as a whole, his mother and, of course, Dedra.

We also get to know the rebellion in a different way than we are used to from Star Wars.

Cassian Andor, the series’ titular protagonist, starts out as a petty criminal, driven largely by self-interest. Over time – through a series of coincidences and chance encounters – he becomes involved in the Rebellion until he is ultimately willing to sacrifice everything for the cause.

Without sacrifice, there can be no rebellion. And no rebellion is ever without sacrifice. The series illustrates this truth in many different ways.

Senator Mon Mothma starts out by secretly funding resistance efforts. She risks her reputation, office, dignity, estrangement from her family and ultimately – through the Senate speech quoted at the beginning – her own life.

Willingness to make sacrifices for resistance

Luthen Rael, the ambiguously portrayed founding figure of the Rebellion, delivers an extended monologue when his espionage contact in the Security Bureau asks him what sacrifices he has made:
“Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. […] What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!”

This moment touches on a central theme of Star Wars – the seductive power of the Dark Side of the Force. In Andor, however, this seduction occurs without the involvement of any supernatural powers.

Luthen places the fight against the Empire above all else, instrumentalising and even sacrificing people and relationships in the process. He is a controversial figure even within the Rebellion, yet he remains unwavering in his decisions.

Hannah Arendt characterises Eichmann by his “almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view” (Arendt 124).

Luthen, too, is vulnerable to the lure of the Dark Side.

Sense8 

Seeing things from someone else’s point of view – in the series Sense8, this ability becomes a fundamental aspect of how the characters exist in the world.

Here, too, rebellion against an empire is a central theme. The organisation BPO seeks to exterminate an entire species, the Sensates, of whom we meet eight protagonists in eight different locations around the world.

The Sensates, also known as Homo sensorium, live undetected among the Homo sapiens. They closely resemble humans but possess a very unique ability: they can empathically connect with other Sensates. They see what others see, know what others know and feel what others feel. They can even be wherever the others are.

It is precisely this ability and its world-altering potential that BPO seeks to destroy, as though they “had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world” (Arendt 404). Just as the Empire hunts the Rebels, the pursuit of the Sensates serves to uphold existing power structures.

One example of this potential occurs between Kala and her husband Rajan. Kala, a pharmacist and Sensate, confronts Rajan, a Homo sapiens and heir to a pharmaceutical company in Bombay, about an alleged bookkeeping error: expired medications are being shipped to other parts of the world, including Africa. Rajan explains that this is deliberate, because everyone does it. It’s about protecting the company and “our people”.

At this point, Capheus from Nairobi enters Kala’s perception through the Sensate connection – an experience that remains invisible to Rajan. Capheus’ mother is HIV-positive and relies on exactly this medication.

Bearing witness as a form of resistance

Kala adopts Capheus’ perspective. In doing so, she risks estrangement from her husband and confronts him with the immorality of a practice that seems widely accepted in his environment.
Her act of witnessing becomes a form of resistance against a hostile system.

In Sense8, each act of drawing attention forges a connection between people living in entirely different worlds, revealing previously inaccessible truths.

The Sensates’ ability to see the world through the eyes of others is contagious.
Rajan will eventually see what Kala sees – and change himself and his actions.

Making marginalised or taboo perspectives visible through the act of witnessing, and effecting real change as a result – this is what the Sensates and their allies achieve in Sense8. “Kindness, kinship, love” – what Luthen, in the service of the Rebellion, sacrifices or believes he must sacrifice – becomes, in Sense8, the most powerful weapon.

Epilogue

In the second season of Andor, we see Syril acting as a double agent on Dedra’s behalf, making contact with the resistance on Ghorman. Unaware of the impending genocide, Syril has immersed himself in the local culture, adapting clothing and even hairstyle, and he gradually begins to understand and empathise with the perspective of the other side.

By the time he realises, far too late, that the Empire intends to annihilate the people of Ghorman, he confronts Dedra and denounces the Empire. Yet in Andor, no one is granted redemption. Syril ultimately dies in a futile bid for vengeance against Cassian Andor.

And yet this moment, the moment of bearing witness, is crucial because it reveals the possibility of escaping the banality of evil.

Hannah Arendt describes genocide as
“… the crime against humanity – in the sense of a crime ‘against the human status,’ or against the very nature of mankind, [...], an attack upon human diversity as such, that is, upon a characteristic of the ‘human status’ without which the very words ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity’ would be devoid of meaning […] .” (Arendt 391)

In Sense8, the act of bearing witness and showing empathy point toward a society shaped by diversity and respect for otherness.

Both Andor and Sense8 demonstrate that resistance is possible. It begins with empathy and the act of truly seeing, and it becomes real, though sometimes costly, through the act of bearing witness. Whether fighting a physical empire or defending oneself against a hegemonic social order, witnessing serves as a defence against the banality of evil: a semantic form of resistance against indifference and ignorance.

Literature:
Arendt, Hannah: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen. Munich 2007.