‘Pandore’ (‘Pandora’) – A tragedy, or comedy-in-the-making?
A puzzle without solution? Disturbing or satisfying?
Where we live, only the first season of “Pandore,” a Belgian television drama of politics and justice, is available. Scraps on the internet tell us there is a second season, somewhere, and with it the hope for the victory of justice and the defeat of politics, setting the world to rights again while banishing the wrongs this feast of ideas explores.
I’m not sure I need to see that, however, need to see resolution of the tensions and a promise of harmony restored. If art imitates life, perhaps this drama should indeed end, as Season 1 does, in tragedy.
Called “Pandora” in English, the series opens a box of nasty surprises in which human decency gives way to personal ambition and longing for the forbidden overwhelms the need for love. Season 1 begins as a political campaign event dissolves into chaos, disrupted by a group of young feminists. They’ve come to protest the imprisonment, in Saudi Arabia, of one of their number. The men in charge of the political party, including the one now sitting as foreign minister, have done nothing to secure her release.
Baring their breasts emblazoned with a demand to “FREE RACHEL,” the women flee from the security guards, and one, Rachel’s sister, finds herself in the underground parking garage, surrounded by a gang of young men. The evitable becomes, well…. But the outcome was never inevitable.
One of the politicians, a man hopeful of a ministerial role after the looming election – prime minister? – arrives to collect his car, hears noises, and stumbles onto the scene of the gang-rape. He does nothing to stop it. Would he stand a chance against five guys in the late teens and twenties? There’s no mobile phone signal in the garage, so calling the police isn’t an option. But he picks up the victim’s phone – it has been knocked behind a stack of pallets – and records a video of the assault.
When it ends, he picks her up and takes her to the hospital and notifies the police. Coincidentally, a prominent female investigating magistrate is just leaving the hospital, meets him at the door, and helps bring the woman in for treatment. The politician lies about what he’s witnessed.
No, he didn’t see the rape. He merely found the woman on the floor. Evidence? None.
It’s the first of many lies.
In the hands of his personal assistant, the video that could be evidence becomes a tool of politics. She uploads it – or a portion of it – to social media, edited down to the moment when the youngest rapist, and the only reluctant one, is last to take part. He’s the only Arab among the five. The video post sets off a swell of anti-immigrant sentiment.
I won’t go further into the plot. It’s well structured, to be sure, and gradually, fragment by fragment, we learn the back stories. Lies seem about to confound each other and yet the politician evades their contradictions with clever explanations.
After ten hours of programming, and almost universally, characters and viewers alike have experienced an unwelcome, unsettling outcome. But Rachel is freed. Her campaigning twin sister, however, has, well … watch the show and see for yourself.
Instead of thinking merely about plot and whether this tragedy is a tragicomedy-in-the-making, we can let our minds roam through the complex of ideas this series both raises and challenges. Power, courage, boundaries, political order, truth, and justice. For now, let’s consider the last three:
Political order. Belgium is a made-up country, always at odds with itself. Half Flemish, half French; half rich, half not poor but less well off. Divided. It’s not alone in such regards. Look at Britain, America, Libya, China, and more. This drama takes place among the French-speakers, looked down upon by their northerly neighbors. But both look down on the African and Arabs in their midst. This is a country of coalition governments, when and if the disagreeing fractions deign to work with each other. Representative government is problematic at the best of times (Runciman, 2007), and this isn’t one of them.
Truth. Toward the end of Series 1, a character dies. Suicide? Accident? Murder? How do we know, how do we become certain, or certain beyond reasonable doubt? We, as viewers, know; we are certain. We were present at the scene, guided by the scriptwriter and director – the video equivalent of the third-person omniscient narrator in novels. That’s a source of truth we lack when living in the real world. We can forgive the other characters in this show for not knowing. The investigating magistrate has a hunch but lacks knowledge. Can truth exist in absence of knowledge? Or is any claim merely a proposition, or perhaps a warranted assertion? John Dewey (1941) is insightful if puzzling on this point.
Justice. Various characters in this program deserve what they get, at least for one set of their virtues and vices, their actions and inactions. But those same characters evade what they ought to get for others. What are the markers of justice? Is it fairness, and if so is it according to need or desert? Is it imprisoning the guilty or freeing the incarcerated? Is it distributive, and if so to reduce inequality or inequity? Is it retributive – and is that restoration or revenge? Justice is far from straightforward, far from uncontested (Cf. Rawls, 1999; Sandel, 1998; Sen, 2009; Walzer, 1983).
Yes, personal ambition and longing for the forbidden are the triggers of the tragedy of “Pandore.” But we also see the good in ambition, the need behind the longing, and how they complement as well as frustrate human decency and love. And there’s the rub, and why this disturbing drama is also satisfying.
Despite being content, even fulfilled, with the tragedy of Season 1 of “Pandore,” I hope in our house we’ll soon have access to the second installment!
Dewey, J. (1941). Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth. The Journal of Philosophy, 38(7), 169-186. doi:10.2307/2017978
Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice (Revised ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Runciman, D. (2007). The Paradox of Political Representation. Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(1), 93-114. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00266.x
Sandel, M. J. (1998). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice. London: Penguin.
Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books.