THE SANDMAN (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                       The first season of Netflix's THE SANDMAN became a critical and commercial success, while the second (and last) season is due to be released in 2025. The first season's eleven episodes, all adapting various stories and arcs from the first eighteen issues of the Neil Gaiman-scripted series, are far from a perfect adaptation, and on my philosophy-blog I'll be devoting far more attention to the season's greatest flaw, that of overweening political correctness. But for this review, I'm trying to say as little as possible about Netflix's DEI priorities, to focus on why I give the season a rating of high mythicity.                                                                                                      

One irony from my perhaps singular viewpoint is that the eleven episodes of the TV show score higher than the eighteen comic-book issues they take from. On the ARCHIVE I assigned mythic concrescence to one short story ("A Hope in Hell") and one long arc ("A Doll's House"), but I didn't think the symbolic discourse of all the comic-book stories was equally well executed. But I have argued, on a few other occasions like this one, that sometimes an adaptation manages to concentrate the myth-themes better than an ongoing work. Nevertheless, it's a credit to the excellence of Gaiman's original work that the deeper resonances of the stories are not overwhelmed by the politically oriented alterations.                          

Essentially the first season concerns two long arcs and three short tales, though the tales are strongly entwined with other ongoing subplots. The first arc introduces the titular Sandman, an anthropomorphic personification of the capacity for sentient creatures to dream. Like his other symbolic brethren, he rules his own metaphysical domain, but Gaiman introduced the character as the captive of a black magician, who keeps the Sandman-- usually addressed by his Greek name "Morpheus"-- in thrall for one hundred years, after which the dream-lord escapes. (In the comic Morpheus re-appeared in the 1980s era when the comic was being published, though the TV show is a bit more erratic about its timeframe.) The dream-lord spends the first arc seeking out various talismans of power that will help him rebuild his domain, gone to seed in his absence. The second concerns a threat to both the dream-world and the waking world, when a mortal entity known as a "Vortex" manifests her power. The other stories concern a man being given everlasting life, another man gaining custody of an immortal Greek muse, and an animated tale that might be dubbed "The Secret Life of Cats."                                                                                                       

Because even the lesser stories are extremely layered, I won't dwell on plot specifics. The resonances common to all of the Gaiman originals involve the double-edged aspects of dreams: able to enthrall or to horrify, to bestow revelation or breed delusion. It was this insight into the dreaming life of human beings that made the SANDMAN comic an international success, and the first season of the teleseries took that success to heart. In contrast to many streaming serials, which may spend a lot of money but look dull and artless, the showrunners of SANDMAN spent roughly $15 million per episode, but they successfully use simple, stark design-work and limited CGI to give life to Morpheus and his dream-domain. Not everything is equally well-done, for the imagery of Lucifer's domain in "A Hope in Hell" proves mightily underwhelming.                                                                                                                            

 Understandably, the teleseries elides most references to other DC franchise-characters that had appeared in the comic book stories, except for two denizens of the dream-world, the horror-story hosts Cain and Abel, and the aforementioned Lucifer, DC's version of the Lord of Hell-- who incidentally got his own comic and TV show following his appearances in SANDMAN. I'm not sure if the continuing character of John Constantine, who appeared in the first comics-arc, was changed to avoid some rights-payment issue, because this gender-bent version, "Johanna Constantine," could just as easily have been brought about to satisfy a political ideology. Morpheus gets some mild comedy-relief from Matthew the Raven (voiced by Patton Oswalt), who's also based on a DC character with a separate history, though in this case the elimination of previous connections has no negative consequences.                                             

  Finally, I'm tempted to theorize that a preponderance of excellent acting helps along my high opinion of the show's mythic            resonances. Star Tom Sturridge is of course the linchpin of the show, selling the evocative Gaiman lines as if he was reading Shakespeare. Other standouts include Jenna Coleman (as the aforementioned female Constantine), Boyd Holbrook (as The Corinthian, one of Morpheus's nightmare-creations), Eddie Karanja (as Jed, young brother of the aforementioned "vortex" Rose Walker), and Ferdinand Kingsley (as Hob Gadling, the man given immortality). Others in the cast are decent but not exceptional: Vivienne Acheampong (as Lucienne, the dream-world's librarian), David Thewlis (as a madman named John Dee), and Razane Jamaal (as Lyta Hall, a possibly ill-advised adaptation of a character from a separate arc). The only outright disappointment is the actress chosen to play Rose Walker, the somnolent Kyo Ra, who underplays most of her scenes and thus sacrifices the feisty appeal of the comics-version. There was some early negative reaction to the casting of Black actress "Kirby" as Morpheus' sister Death, because the prevalent comics-image of Death was that of a White goth-girl. But Kirby's readings fall into the "decent but not exceptional" category, so I don't begrudge her the role. However, one of my problems is that Netflix, in its quest to increase the quantity of "people of color" in the show, relied almost exclusively upon Black actors, with just a couple of Asians to break the monotony. But that's a screed for another blog.