What ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Did Better than ‘Outlander’
*if you have not seen either of these shows and are either planning to or would like to avoid spoilers in every way, please skip this entire post. it will probably contain more spoilers than it does punctuation marks
The Umbrella Academy is a Netflix series based on a comic book series of the same name. The comics, which were written by My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way, follow the dysfunctional [and estranged] Hargreeves siblings who reunite to solve the mystery of their adopted father's death and prevent an oncoming apocalypse. As you do. Oh and I should mention that they have superpowers. And were all conceived/ birthed in mysterious circumstances. How quaint.
Outlander is a historical drama series based on the novel series by Diana Gabaldon. It follows Claire Randall [then Claire Beachum and later, Claire Fraser], a married WWII military nurse in Scotland who in 1945 finds herself transported back to 1743. There, she meets, falls in love with and then marries a Highland warrior named Jamie Fraser. Now, regardless of what else I will say in this post, know that this is and will forever be a James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser stan account.
Now, what do these two shows have in common? Time travel of course. At the end of the first season, the Umbrella Academy travel back in time so they can attempt to stop the apocalypse…again. Before you ask, yes this was Five's idea. Of course, nothing works perfectly, and the result is that the Hargreeves siblings are scattered between 1960 and October 1963 in Dallas. Some vital context before we get into this is that Outlander focuses largely on 18th-century Europe as seen through the eyes of many Caucasian people. The Umbrella Academy starts in the modern-day and takes us back approximately 60 years whilst remaining in America. Being adopted, the Hargreeves siblings are a wonderful melting pot of ethnicities, races and gender identities. For the sake of this post, I will be comparing the experiences of Allison Hargreeves and Claire Fraser.
We have all encountered the person who loves to listen to old bands, doesn't love social media and considers themselves an "old soul". There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these characteristics until the individual opens their mouth and utters some version of the phrase, "I've just always thought I was born in the wrong era." Gag. Now, unless you are a rich white man whose family has always been wealthy; respectfully, shut up. You see, what people tend to forget when romanticising the fashion, customs or even aesthetics of any time in the past is that in most parts of the world, human rights are the best they have ever been for minorities. If you had been born before 1902 in Australia as a woman, you might have had more layers in your skirts but you wouldn't have been allowed to vote. Being a member of the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community at the time would have also meant you weren't considered human (although considering the way our constitution is set up, not much has changed). Though there aren't specific dates to be cited, I think we are all aware that for many of us people of colour, life anytime before 1980 would have been not only insufferable, there's a great possibility that we wouldn't have survived it.
When Claire travels back in time she experiences culture shock after culture shock. As an 'outspoken' woman who works as a healer [first a nurse, then a doctor], she is constantly having to fight to be respected in the new world she finds herself in. Truthfully, she doesn't always win, at times being labelled a witch and once being half an hour away from being burnt at the stake. I am not trying to argue that Claire's experiences in the past are breezy or without conflict in any way because that would simply be a lie. My point is that though the show hints that there have been others who have 'travelled' in a similar way to Claire, it never takes a moment to acknowledge just how different Claire's experience would have been if she wasn't a caucasian and somewhat educated woman. In the fourth season where the Frasers find themselves in North Carolina, there are even discussions on potentially being "moral slaveowners" as if such a concept exists. Because both Claire and Jamie are white, they get to be around these issues and they can give their own two cents in the name of allyship without ever having any skin in the game. They spend many conversations debating colonisation, slavery, and the unfair treatment of Native Americans but these discussions don't go anywhere because these issues will never truly affect them.
Allison Hargreeves [played by the inimitable Emmy Raver-Lampman] is a celebrity in her own time, someone who walks around with a lot of wealth and privilege. She might have manipulated herself into that position of privilege but hey, what billionaire hasn't? When she, a black woman, travels back in time to 1960s Dallas, amid the climax of the civil rights movement, it would be an understatement to say that she no longer inhabits the same place she used to societally. Oh, and did I mention that she had lost her voice? It's a little on the nose as a plot device but I'll accept it. A lot of Allison's scenes involve either discussion of racism, attempts to desegregate the American South or police brutality based on colour. The Umbrella Academy's showrunners didn't shy away from confronting in very real ways the kind of 'culture shock' Allison would be confronted with. They didn't insist that her biggest problems would be an inability to access the internet, or even not being famous anymore. They dove headfirst into some controversial and difficult subjects and I love them for it.
Diego Hargreeves, a Latinx man, finds himself in a similar situation. He might not be the focus of this post but it's worth pointing out that great care and consideration were undertaken to make sure that the Hargreeve siblings' experiences in the deep south would not only be poignant but also that they wouldn't try to avoid or ignore the sometimes-ugly truth of that time.
Some people insist that television should be an escape from the brutal reality of the world we live in. The argument is that we are all aware of how dark and grim things can be, so why would we want to dwell on that fact. Now, I am all for using the media purely for vibes or to show what the world could be like. But I am at the same time a very firm believer in 'keeping the same energy'. Either let your media be an escape or let it be realistic, there isn't usually a lot of room for both. Discussions around slavery in Outlander were grim, at one point Jamie had to kill a man so he wouldn't be tortured by a literal mob. They weren't exactly trying to shield the audience from that harsh reality, and yet, they strategically refused to discuss other issues. Usually issues around colonisation or the experiences of BIPOC. Instead, they would pivot and the show's biggest conflict became one that the showrunners had created.
Even to myself, it sounds like I am asking a lot from a show that was made predominantly for a white audience and is based on the works of a white woman. That's not going to stop me though. I think Outlander did itself and its audience a great disservice by completely ignoring the experiences of other travellers. The most insight we ever got into the experiences of a non-white traveller was the trippy flashbacks they did of a Native American traveller. Not only was that plot not cohesive, but it also wasn't memorable and I cannot remember a single detail of that story. Tell me why it makes sense plotwise to replay the same rape scene almost every second episode yet not hold real conversations around the treatment of people of colour in the periods Claire finds herself in? I might write something about my disdain for period drama's obsession with rape scenes and rape culture but this is not the time.
Was Outlander trying to avoid bringing up some traumatic subjects for the sake of entertainment or did none of the show's writers deign it necessary to centre a non-white narrative?
i heard a rumour
Wikipedia | the Umbrella Academy
Wikipedia | Outlander
Wikipedia | Allison Hargreeves
