1899 and the Nature of Reality
Some spiritual commentary on the strange and mysterious Netflix show.
I’m a sucker for anything involving creepy ships and a plot about a missing ocean liner is definitely up my alley.
It’s been a while since I’ve binge-watched anything but 1899 (on Netflix) immediately drew me in…and I have been working too much lately so I figured why not?
The show has been a hit after one season, but Netflix has bizarrely canceled it. (Here’s a petition to sign if you’d like someone, anyone, to do a season 2.) That said, the first season could be considered self-contained and it’s worth watching even if 1899 doesn’t find its footing on another streaming service.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched 1899 and intend to, I would recommend bookmarking this article to read after you watched the show. Also, be sure to put on the ORIGINAL “English” soundtrack and not the “dubbed” version. Netflix for some stupid reason decided to dumb down the show and use default dubbing for all the cast members speaking different languages, which screws up the story because half the point is that people are talking past each other because one person speaks Dutch and the other French, etc.
Alrighty. Now that I’ve gotten the spoiler alert out of the way…
1899 is one of those “what’s going on?” type of shows akin to Life on Mars (which, by the way, had two different endings, the British one and the American one).
Of course, we can surmise right from the get-go that nothing is as it seems. With our heroine, Maura, being dragged away by orderlies in what appears to be a mental institution, and a shot of an alien landscape with a pyramid:
So right off the bat, we are wondering if everything is just in Maura’s mind.
As the story progresses, we have elements of a possible haunted ship, aliens, or a matrix-type situation. At one point I was wondering if they were all in some sort of purgatory or hell-realm due to their ship being named “Kerberos” (as in Cerberus, the 3-headed hellhound that guards the doors of Hades in Greek mythology).
We’ve got upside pyramids (with an eye) showing up everywhere, even in hairpins and earrings.
We have people with dubious backgrounds and flashbacks, ala Lost.
Given how many times movies and television shows have explored alternate realities, 1899 was surprisingly refreshing…and refreshingly surprising. Despite my spoiler alert above, I won’t give away any specific details, but a few things happened where my jaw dropped and I literally said, “wow.”
We find out at the end of the show that the characters have had their memories erased and are living in virtual reality…but with layers of realities within that virtual reality, it seems.
An interesting question comes up about who is the “Creator” of their virtual reality…with the idea that wherever the “Creator” resides (where God is), that’s where the “real reality” happens to be. But where did God come from?
Now, in 1899, the “Creator” (Maura) is also stuck in the false reality, as she too has had her memory wiped. Or is she really the Creator? In the end scene of 1899, we find Maura (and other inhabitants of the steamship) actually on a spaceship named Prometheus…but could this have just been another layer in a multi-dimensional virtual reality? Sadly, we would have needed at least one more season to find out/
At any rate, as someone who has spent far too much time trying to figure out what/who God is, and how our reality (or any reality) came into being, I enjoy shows that delve into these types of deep philosophical waters.
Seekers vs. Avoiders
1899 explores our basic existential crisis through the mythology of the show, and posits that it’s actually harder to be the one seeking the truth. As one character explains:
“We’re born into this world either a seeker or an avoider. To be an avoider brings pure bliss. To be a seeker, on the other hand, brings nothing but pain.”
I’m definitely more of a seeker variety, although I don’t think it brings only pain. Being an avoider leads to its own types of pains, mainly through addictions and attachments to “dunya” (the Sufi word for this world).
To be a true seeker, an almost obsessive need to discover the true nature of reality should burn within you.
For most people, just allowing the mystery to be the mystery is enough. Not for me. I want to know the why, the how, the wherefore.
Ultimately, as with 1899, we’re not going to get the answers in our current reality. Our current reality is a facsimile of sorts, a virtual playground where we are limited by our spiritual VR goggles…the actual “real” world is shut out from our vision and our senses.
Death pulls back that veil (at least, we hope so), but the other way to potentially get there while remaining alive is through dedicated spiritual practice.
I watched this… now I’ll read