 In light of current events, and perhaps especially since it's an election year, one thing should be clear. There's a vast chasm between politicians at every level in our country and the people who have to live with their decisions. And yet, tension between different identity groups is rising. We can see it on the news, on our social media feeds, and even outside our own windows. And to the extent that our political leaders are responding to the concerns of their constituencies, they're often doing it in ways that are, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, counterproductive. Partisan fueled bickering makes for snappy soundbites, but no real progress. If anything, the divisiveness in our discourse is only accelerating. To say the least, it's a distressing state of affairs. The real world is a lot to handle right now. If doom-scrolling is damaging your calm, but you'd rather watch something more timely than Seinfeld reruns, Amazon Prime's hidden gem original series, Carnival Row, might just be one of the better shows you haven't watched yet. It's set in an alternate reality fantasy world, but in today's cultural climate, it feels very real. When its first season was released late last year, Carnival Row felt super relevant, especially in terms of how it dealt with the way we were talking about immigration and refugees. And it didn't feel like these themes were forced or awkwardly crammed into the series for political reasons. Re-watching it now, nearly a year later, the show's other, more subtle ideas about heightened tribal tensions and a power-hungry, out-of-touch government make it feel even more connected to our current reality. Hit that subscribe button, ring that bell icon, and stick with me for this short edition of Out of Frame. Carnival Row is set in a vaguely late Victorian steampunk fantasy world, centered around a city-state called the Republic of the Burg. The Burg has a long-standing reputation for being a haven for immigrants and refugees of all sorts, including the non-human races of Faye, who have been fleeing a war ravaging their once-legendary home of Tirnanoc. But while the Faye were once accepted in Burgish society, now they're largely segregated in a small section of the city known as Carnival Row. That is, assuming they're not employed as household help by the human elite or working off indentured servitude to pay for their escape from Tirnanoc. Both the majority of humans and all of the Faye are doing their best to scrape together a living, but the laws of the Burg make it extremely difficult for Faye to work any jobs outside of manual labor or household service. Any legal jobs, I mean. And many human workers are disgruntled because they feel their jobs have been stolen by Faye newcomers who are less expensive to employ. Burgishmen can't find honest work because the critch do their jobs for a pitton. This animosity has boiled over into anti-Faye rallies on the human side, an anti-human religious sect on the Faye side, and violence in the streets coming from every side. Parliament is hopelessly divided into the narrow majority that claims to support toleration for the Faye and an opposition party that loudly champions a human's first outlook. While their rhetoric may be at odds with each other, members of both parties' hypocritical actions are remarkably in step. They all employ Faye servants, purchase goods from illegal Faye black markets, and indulge in Faye entertainment. And both parties are perfectly content to prevent any Faye from voting. More importantly, the leaders of each party seem far more concerned with taking down their political adversaries than actually achieving any kind of satisfactory result for the people who live in the burn. If this sounds eerily familiar, it should. Apart from all the magic in the show, it's a pretty good allegory for insert current year. In the real world, we hear constant rhetoric bashing ideological enemies at every turn. Republicans are fascists, feminism is cancer, libertarians hate the poor, left, right, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, Native, male, female, straight, gay, foreigners, immigrants, Americans. People keep fracturing into smaller and more specific identity groups, and each time they do, it gets easier to stoke hatred and animosity towards everyone else. We also see this bubble over into actual violence against people and property. We watch our political leaders claiming to care about what matters to the people they represent, making pointed statements, posing for carefully crafted photo ops, and then completely fail to make any meaningful changes while blaming everything on the other party. In Carnival Row, the same thing happens, and it all leads to murder, lies, and the internment of every fey in the burg. We don't need to wait for Season 2 to figure out that this is a bad situation, and not something we want to happen to us. One common implication made by the show is that perhaps if only the right people are in power, all these problems would be solved. Of course, the right person usually just means whichever candidate your team supports. We see this idea come up in our own political discourse all the time. Negative campaign ads routinely claim that if the opposition is elected to power, bad things will happen and the world will end in fiery catastrophe. The words culture war are now used as if actual battle lines have been drawn, and those who hold differing opinions are referred to as enemies. But using this kind of language sets us up for exactly the kind of disaster facing the people of the burg at the end of the first season. Thinking that we're engaged in a literal war with the individuals we meet just because we might have disagreements in politics or personal preferences can drive us towards more and more extreme rhetoric and actions, as we sacrifice doing what's right for the sake of winning. It can break apart relationships. It can make us see an objection or criticism as an attack on our identity. And it can make us forget that whatever power over others we give to people in government, even if we genuinely believe they will use that power wisely today, will one day be wielded by someone we don't agree with in ways that are terrifying. But it's not a war, it's a conversation. We're talking to our neighbors and coworkers. We're talking to people who have a lot of the same desires and goals that we have, and treating them like enemies makes it easy to dehumanize them and think that's saying hurtful things, trying to de-platform or cancel them, punching them or having them arrested for believing something you don't like is totally justified. But that's the actual road to fiery catastrophe. The answer isn't more power in the hands of politicians. It's not bashing our so-called enemies in the face or not allowing certain points of view to exist. It's the opposite. We need less concentrated power in the hands of the few and more freedom for individuals. And perhaps even more importantly, we have to nurture a respect for civil discourse and diversity of opinion in our society. The end of the day a man's no better than the pain he's caused the people who loves and what he's willing to do to set it right. We need to stop treating people like their first and foremost members of an identity group we hate and instead as individuals who can be reasoned with and who might even have something to say that's worth listening to. We don't have to agree with everything someone says, believes, or does to acknowledge their humanity. We don't have to be best friends with someone in order to work with them toward a common goal. I see no reason why we can't come to an accommodation. And while there's no single correct way to change someone's mind, it definitely won't happen by bludgeoning them either literally or metaphorically. Like in Carnival Row, we can either try to gain power to hurt the people we dislike and destroy our society in the process, or we can learn to connect with our neighbors and tolerate our different perspectives without anger and violence. But it's time to choose. I like the idea that a story like this might cross the world and somehow find its way back centuries later and change by constant retellings but familiar as if to tell us something. That might be a little different in the end. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. Let's try to have a productive dialogue about different viewpoints in the comments and also check out our new Out of Frame Behind the Scenes podcast. The audio is available wherever you get your podcasts but if you prefer a video version, we've set up a special channel just for that. The link for that is in the description below. It comes out every Friday but supporters on Patreon get early access and special bonus content so if that interests you, consider becoming one of our patrons. Please be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and look for our brand new Out of Frame accounts on Twitter and Instagram. See you next time.