Some thoughts on The Night Manager S2 re: our collective sentimentality about Teddy Dos Santos, the psychic damage of being a POC viewer in a media environment where the onscreen deaths of POC are still instrumentalized, and Diego Calvaās perspective on his character (spoiler alert: I donāt think Teddy necessarily should have lived but itās part of a larger conversation about how much of a minefield the politics of representation are)
I think Iāll just start by saying that Teddyās death fucked with me, even though the show was shockingly heavy handed with foreshadowing his fate and even though I think it was narratively justified. Thereās been a lot said about this being a bit bury your gays, but it also doesnāt exist in a vacuum with respect to the dignity of nonwhite character deaths. But then, I was thinking about what this show is, and the source material it was based on. I donāt think it was realistic for me to expect anything different from a show which, in the first episode of S2, introduced a whole ~Diverseā¢ļø~ cast of Night Owl unit characters, only for every single one of them to die violently or quit with the exception of Sally Price-Jones. Like I really allowed myself to think āoh, maybe a decade on, this show wants to reflect the actual demographics of modern British society in the makeup of Jonathanās new team!ā, but it was of course only a pretense to get us to a vision of the conflict-ridden āsecond/third worldā with Jonathan Pine on the warpath again. Egypt during the Arab Spring in S1, Colombia on the brink of a coup in S2. I read the Le CarrĆ© novel S1 is based on shortly after S1ās release and that was nearly a decade ago so my memory may not serve for all the details but what I do remember is that I found it a difficult read because Sophie Alekan is truly just a sexy exotic narrative device to fuel Pineās revenge for Le CarrĆ©. This might be a cynical take but I do not think you can truly make an adaptation of The Night Manager in the spirit of Le CarrĆ© without being somewhat blasĆ© about the deaths of brown people. You might argue that this is just an extension of how senseless death in general is in Le CarrĆ©ās world of espionage, and to some extent it is, but there is still a clear difference in the book between how much of an inner life a character like Pine is given, versus any woman or person of color.
And look, Iām not Egyptian or Colombian (Iām Asian) but somewhere along my journey of growing up in a western media environment, I realized that when I try to identify with the largely white protagonists of western film and television, that experience is not borne out or confirmed by my lived experience. I simply cannot take up space in the world in the same way that these characters do, for reasons out of my control (Iāve worked as an educator, and had a white male mentor tell me that sometimes his solution when his students havenāt been keeping the classroom clean is to just yell at the class. Just a concrete example of a situation in which I would Not be able to get away with what he gets to do because of the body I exist in). And then there are directors who I think are incredibly interesting and do shit Iām totally jazzed about, and then theyāll do something totally bonkers likeā¦have an Asian-looking android peel its synthetic skin off so that a white-looking android can take it and become Real (Iām looking at you, Alex Garland in Ex Machina. Not to go off on too much of a tangent but itās also interesting that Ex Machina stars Oscar Isaac, who was born with a face Hollywood thinks is ethnically ambiguous enough that he has not been relegated to solely playing Latin American characters). And I think this is a political position more than an aesthetic one, but when I watch things now, I am mindful of where my emotional and imaginative allegiances lie. More often than not, itās with POC characters. And since doing that, Iām justā¦a lot more cognizant of how POC are treated onscreen, particularly in death. Like how many times can you see people you identify with killed without any particular thoughtfulness to advance other narrative goals before it starts to fuck with how you see yourself and your place in the world? Itās not a question of never showing POC dying in grim ways, but I think it is a question of some sense of decorum or dignity that comes from being part of that community. I think a good example of a violent and gory film that still maintains this ethic is Ryan Cooglerās Sinners. When characters discuss lynchings in their community, it is not shown. Instead, characters break into song - as in, this is very much the reality of how this community coped with this kind of violence, the only way they knew how. The film ends in a literal shootout death but Smoke is gently reunited with his wife and child in the process. I realize Sinners is a fantasy film about vampires, but I would argue the spy genre is just as much about fantasy wish fulfillment, even if its trappings feel more factual. There is a way to make a character suffer or die while also telegraphing that they mattered, and not just to illuminate another characterās depravity or to satisfy our scopophilic desire for blood and guts. I think many POC filmmakers show more restraint or perhaps just a more restorative impulse in how they depict violence because they know that their communities have lived that violence - they donāt necessarily need it represented onscreen ad nauseam to understand the stakes.
And like I said, I just Do Not think this was remotely within the ethic of how The Night Manager was written or produced. So yeah, Teddy is dogs, and letās not violate anyoneās delicate sensibilities by showing actual dogs getting shot, but we will show Teddy in his final indignity quite explicitly. Iām disappointed but not surprised. Even though I think this was a reasonable and inevitable place for his story to end, I wonder if I would feel differently about it in the hands of different filmmakers with different priorities. I wonder if I would feel differently about it if it was the only character death treated this way, instead of part of a pattern extending back to S1. I also think about how you can still navigate a system that may not have your dignity in mind to speak to those who are listening for something other than the A plot.
And that brings me to Diego Calvaās perspective on Teddy, because I think itās reasonable to assume representational politics play a part in how he chooses what roles to take, especially based on what he said in this interview:
I think heās navigating this conversation with some delicacy and he doesnāt outright say āon its face playing a drug lord/arms trafficker is pretty typecast fare for a Mexican actorā, although I think itās somewhat implied. But in my opinion he makes such a compelling argument for why he said yes. On one hand he points out that, as much as we mourn for Teddyās lost potential for redemption, he is a character who has no qualms about selling out his own people. That there are 100% people like that in every country right now as the world is hard pivoting to fascism. I might be reading too much into this but I think part of what heās saying is that he wanted to embody this archetype to speak directly to Latin America about something endemic in culture right now in a way that would resonate specifically with them. I think him having this more birdās eye view on the character and specifically, his failings, contextualizes why he seems less sentimental about Teddyās death than some of us. The other part, of course, is that he very much does see Teddy as a narrative foil whose purpose is to cast light on the true shape of Roper, but he doesnāt see that as any less important because of how many Ropers are ascendant in the dark times we live in right now.
And Iām really grateful he shared this perspective because it kind of put me out of some pretty pessimistic binary thinking about POC representation in media. There is always possibility even if it wasnāt necessarily written for you. Of course there are limits to the whole ātake down the system from the insideā idea but it is the position most of us are operating from and so it behooves us to be able to see that possibility. I think the fact that this character has been such a brainworm for so many of us speaks to the success of Calvaās portrayal in ways that go beyond what was written on the page. This was my first exposure to his work but I will be following his career with great interest from here on out.
