What I Learned at the Umbrella Academy

 

by Pa Rock

Remote Learner

I have recently finished watching three seasons (30 episodes) of the Netflix original series entitled "The Umbrella Academy," and while it may not the best program currently streaming, it's pretty damned good.   "The Umbrella Academy" is a science fiction feature somewhat reminiscent of Great Britain's extremely long running (nearly sixty years!) and very popular  "Dr. Who" series.    Both shows involve time travel and tinkering with history.

The general plot of "The Umbrella Academy" focuses (initially) around seven young people who were all born on the same day in 1989 after their mothers endured surprise pregnancies that lasted less than a day.  A couple of dozen of those babies were born that day, and an intrigued New York City billionaire rushed out and adopted (purchased) the ones that he could find.   The "father" brought the babies to his palatial home in NYC where he raised them, discovered the special abilities that each one possessed, and refined those abilities.  He called the group "The Umbrella Academy," and the young misfits grew into an active crime-fighting assemblage of super heroes.

During their youth one member dies and another disappears, and all but one of the rest breaks free of their father's control.  (The father sends the one remaining on a mission to the moon where he works in isolation for several years, sending reports and lunar samples back to his adoptive dad.)  Then, when the father dies somewhere around our current time, the gang all comes home for the funeral, including the moon man and the child who had gone missing in his youth.  The missing youth, "Five," has a special ability of jumping about in time, and he had jumped into a post-apocalyptic world where he had spent a couple of decades living and traveling with a female mannequin.  He returns to the group and shares his knowledge of the apocalypse which is just on the verge of happening.

From there the group's efforts focus on fighting a different apocalypse during each season of the show's production.  There is a lot of jumping through time and space, again much like "Dr. Who," except that while the good doctor uses his Tardis (a British police call box with magical qualities), the young people from the Umbrella Academy employ an equally magical brief case that transports them - and it takes them across a very realistic landscape of our recent history, providing viewers with knowledge that fills a certain void as state governments rush to bury or alter large segments of our national history and culture.

Season two is especially good.  In it the group has fled New York City together in the wake of an impending apocalypse and landed in an alley in Dallas, Texas, in the early 1960's - but they became separated during the transport and landed at different times.  Allison, a young black woman, is the earliest to arrive, and by the time the others begin dropping in she has married a young civil rights activist and is involved in the early days of civil rights organizing in America.  As their tale progresses, she and her husband and a clandestine group of friends plan a lunch counter sit-in as a way of drawing attention to the segregation issues that were persistent in the South at that time.  They want their demonstration to attract the notice of President Kennedy who is about to visit their city.

In that segment the hatred of the white community as the protest starts is palpable.  The intensity of both the anger of the whites and the fear felt by the blacks is so stark and electrifying that it cannot fail to impact the viewers.  As I watched the demonstration and white response unfold, I could not help but think that while local school boards are pulling history textbooks off of the shelves, the ugly history of segregation and racial violence in America is still finding ways to be told.

Another area that season two addressed in a starkly realistic manner dealt with gay relationships and gender identity.  That segment focuses on Vanya, a member of the group who was a concert violinist and thought she had no special abilities - as her siblings all did.  But as Vanya uncovers her special ability, she also begins t realize that perhaps she is also someone else on the inside as well.

After Vanya lands in Dallas she steps in front of a car being driven by a harried abused wife and mother of a young son.  The woman takes Vanya to her home and nurses her in recovery, and, being separated from her siblings and not knowing where they were or if they would eventually join her, Vanya stays with the woman, her abuser husband, and their son - where she acts as a family helper and a live-in babysitter.

Vanya and the abused wife begin falling in love, and Vanya slowly starts to see herself as a male.  As her siblings finally begin showing up in Dallas, Vanya cuts her hair short and starts identifying as a young man named Viktor, and from that vantage point viewers get a broad perspective of what it means and how it feels to be transgender in a world that is not open to that sort of personal growth and change.

The whole transgender process is brought to a higher level by the fact that "Vanya/Viktor" is played by an actor named Elliot Page.  In 2007 Elliot, who was then known as Ellen Page, was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe for "her" title role in the movie, "Juno."  The actor had transitioned form female to male, and now his character, Vanya, also transitions from female to male, a circumstance which makes the entire situation more believable and intense.  Like the segment on the hatred and violence associated with trying to integrate a segregated lunch counter, Vanya/Viktor's struggles are also very real and immediate.  Viewers are left with a deeper understanding of various perspectives on one person's struggle to come to terms with who they really are - or at least this viewer had his horizons broadened!

Even as books are being banned and burned, ideas still find ways to persist and advance.  And yes, censors come, and censors go, but even as small-minded people race around furiously trying to erase or cover up the aches and pains of social change, it keeps happening.     There will always be ways to mark the advance of humanity, and we must never cease telling our story so that others may benefit from where we have been and what we have learned and accomplished.

"The Umbrella Academy" does a good job of explaining some of the more thorny issues in our culture, and it explains them right in your face!

Thank you, Netflix.