December 14th, 2022: Kindred (Hulu)
Octavia E. Butler's timeless classic has been boldly re-imagined in an eight episode miniseries, streaming now on Hulu.
On Tuesday, at the stroke of midnight, I and countless other television connoisseurs around the world tuned into the hotly anticipated new FX / Hulu adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 classic novel, Kindred.
The miniseries, led by the massively talented Mallori Johnson, a 2021 graduate of The Julliard School, marks a welcome return to the speculative universe that Butler so brilliantly conjured nearly a half century ago.
Kindred the series, unlike the novel that shares its name, takes place in Los Angeles in 2016, following the recent arrival of Dana Franklin, Silver Lake’s newest aspiring screenwriter.
There is a contemplative desire to Johnson’s transfixing gaze that studies intently the beats of soap operas in her cavernous mansionesk home, which apart from the odd suitcase, seems entirely and intentionally vacant.
Dana is a wanderer from the moment we meet her. New nearly everywhere she goes, there is a proud freedom to her that the viewer can palpably feel, as Dana seems to be at the onset of a profound reclamation of self, planting seeds that will germinate into a fruited new life, a new identity entirely.
PHOTO: Mallori Johnson stars as Dana Franklin in the bold re-imagining of Octavia E. Butler’s timeless 1979 classic. All episodes of Kindred are now streaming on Hulu.
Director Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ re-imagining of Butler’s classic world takes care to linger on the quiet and cavernous darkness that surrounds Dana, like a watchful and mournful eye that seems to be almost stalking her movements.
The gaze of the camera panders over her thoughtfully, but at other times obtrusively, mirroring the hyper-vigilance that surrounds Dana and her blackness in a predominantly white neighborhood, with nosey white neighbors, who can’t seem make sense any sound beyond silence emanating from Dana’s home.
The sound, of course, is that of transition. Both from the natural settling into post cross country country life, but also a deeper and more violent transition, one between worlds, often resulting in bouts of unimaginable pain that elicit shrieking, moans and unsettling sounds of terror that are torn from Dana’s body as she is pulled backwards through time into the antebellum south.
The Dana of Jacob-Jenkins’ creation has recently come into a large sum of money, unlike the struggling would-be novelist of Butler’s world, this Dana is decidedly rich, upwards of two million dollars of recently inherited money, following the sale of her deceased maternal grandmother’s home.
It is revealed in conversation that the home, a spacious brownstone in New York, was left to Dana after her grandmother’s passing, an oddness that is explained later by an unnamed falling out with Dana’s singular surviving familial tether in the modern world, a maternal aunt, who despite estrangement from her mother, and being left intentionally out of the will, claims to have mourned from a distance, to have still shouldered that pain.
The relationship between Dana and her aunt is one that fascinates and perplexes me. A stunningly real familiarity between the two punctuated by awkward bouts of formality, with seething resentments crackling beneath the surface of the icy lake of a family undone in the wake of a passed matriarch.
Dana is trying though.
In every sense of the word. She is pulling herself from the comforts of her palatial home out and into the world, she is eagerly and sticktoitively dissecting her soap operas, and keeping lit the pilot light of her screenwriting dreams.
PHOTO: Micah Stock (left) and Mallori Johnson (right). All episodes of Kindred are now streaming on Hulu.
When we meet the Kevin of Jacob-Jenkins re-imagining, he is different than the Kevin readers may remember from Butler’s novel. No longer a fellow struggling writer, but instead a washed up former musician, who has arrived on the tide of late young adulthood with little to show for his endeavors, other than a host of tattoos, and a sardonic and biting sense of humor.
Dana, despite her clear skepticism, seems drawn to Kevin in ways she cannot explain. The two first cross paths, when Kevin, a waiter at a restaurant in which Dana, dressed to the nines in a stunning floral dress, is berated by a disapproving uncle and a hesitantly reproachful aunt, steps in to offer her a ride home.
We learn that Dana’s iPhone has died and we are stranded with her in a world where so much of our safety and connection relies upon strange and unexpected agreements with strangers via geolocated apps, an oddness that Kevin himself announces to the bar at large, after pleading to drive Dana home, not wanting this new connection (and potential hookup) to become stranded, or worse.
It is an unsettling and oddly charming proclamation that Kevin delivers to the bar: If Dana is murdered, it was me!
In the context of the moment, it is a funny poke at the awkwardness of modern app-centric life, but at a bird’s eye view, it is an unsettling declaration of a centuries old and violent relationship between two blood lines.
Dana allows Kevin to drive her, first home, and then to the mattress store, where the two bond over dead parents and fractured, yet still persisting artistic ambition.
In an oddly revealing scene, Dana leaves a boxes of old records on her front lawn, seemingly willing to discard all remnants of her old world, only to find Kevin has a fascination with her possessions, which she gives him freely the permission to rifle through.
The Kevin that Jacob-Jenkins gifts us is eager and quickly attached, the quintessential charming and horny young man, but also somehow oblivious to himself and the space he occupies in the world. You might remember Kevin (portrayed by Micah Stock) from a former role, in which he played a similarly disaffected, washed up young love interest in Netflix’s since cancelled Bonding.
Unlike the assured husband of Octavia E. Butler’s novel, this Kevin, however, does not know who he seeks to become, and his attachment to Dana is both inexplicable and oddly unsettling.
The two even get into an early argument, when after Dana buys a rather pricey mattress, Kevin calls her, “his princess,” a nickname that inspires immediate revulsion and banishment.
“You hardly know me,” she says.
A forlorn Kevin, uncertain as to how he has managed to provoke such distaste, begins dressing himself post coitus and mopingly moves to leave Dana’s home, when suddenly, again it happens, only this time Kevin can see it to. He watches with his two eyes as Dana is ripped from space and time, there one moment, and gone the next.
Kindred is streaming now on Hulu.
Publication Note: I hope this dive into the Kindred pilot has intrigued you enough to give the series a watch! It investigates a host of important questions that Butler thoughtfully poses. Her work is more relevant now than ever.
I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts on this series with you in the coming days, as I watch and process more episodes of the show. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts below in the comments. Are you watching this series? What are your thoughts so far? I’d love to hear from you.
PS: Keep reading for some exciting articles, newsletters, and podcast recommendations. I’ve got some great links to share with you all!
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