Raised By Didacts – The American Conservative

HBO's Raised By Wolves lacks nuance, but it's still worth watching.

Science fiction is didactic. Its no secret that the genre attracts those with big ideas they just cant seem to squeeze into a parochial British village or a Lower East Side apartment. Ursula K. Le Guin and Frank Herbert used the genre to explore environmentalism, Philip K. Dick wrestled with global capitalism in short story after short story, and L. Ron Hubbard built an entire religion on the back of the terrible Battlefield Earth.

No matter their specific hangup, though, every author of the genre seems to follow a concerning pattern. Look, man, a friend of mine once told me, once a sci-fi writer reaches a certain age, all of his books end up being about sex and God.

The more Freudian among us might argue that all fiction boils down to these timeless topics, but he has a point. Just try reading Herbert or Asimov toward the end of their careers and tell me they dont have a fixation. When you tell an author that sci-fi gives them the freedom to explore the controversial or the taboo in relative safety, it eventually goes to their head.

Screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski might be new to sci-fi, but his HBO show Raised By Wolvesis hellbent on following in the footsteps of the greats, at least as far as subject matter is concerned.

The show takes place a little over a hundred years in the future after a new monotheistic religionbased on early Christianitys historical rival Mithraismforcibly converts a majority of the world using technology encrypted in their ancient scriptures. Eventually, the war between this religion and the atheist forces resisting them destroys the world, giving both sides no choice but to flee to a distant uncolonized world. The church sends an ark full of cryogenic faithful, while a rogue atheist scientist ships a clutch of frozen embryos with two androids programmed to raise them.

The plot centers around these two androids, one named Mother and the other Father, as they raise their embryos to found the perfect atheistic society and clash with the Mithraic faithful. Along the way they begin to unravel the secrets of the planet, which may not be as uncolonized as they first believed.

The shows main conceit is steeped in the arguments currently raging in bioethics. Raised by Wolves goes out of its way to tackle questions like the legitimacy of artificial wombs, surrogacy, and fringe ideas like artificial intelligence as parents. This isnt new to sci-fi and might even be behind the curve, considering the trends at industry soirees like the Hugo Awards, and as a result comes across as hackish. After a compelling and competent first two episodes directed by executive producer Ridley Scott, the show turns into a bioethics sitcom. Mother and Father awkwardly argue about gender roles while the primary conflict of the episode rages around them until things wrap up and they reconcile. Imagine you took an episode of Family Mattersand dipped it in a vat of whatever H.R. Giger was drinking. The result is a hamfisted look at the complicated world of parenthood in the 21st century.

The familial themes reach fever pitch when its revealed that a young Mithraic is pregnant with a child conceived in rape. Mother, who is unable to have children as an android, tries to convince her to keep her baby. You can imagine what happens next. The Mithraic girl claims mother cant possibly understand her position. Mother retorts that she has been given a great gift. The girl renounces her religion and tries to kill herself and resents Mother for saving her life. Eventually, what should be a very serious and legitimately complicated situation goes off the rails when (spoilers) Mother conceives of a child through supernatural means.

This leaves the viewer wondering how Guzikowski imagines they should take this.

Despite all of the intellectual groundwork that pro-life scholars and activists have laid, Guzikowski is under the impression that an unexpected pregnancy can complicate the worldview of even the most ardent advocates. And on cue the typical HBO audience member, used to a steady diet consisting of shows featuring oversexualized teens with depression, nods their head in agreement.

The pretension continues into his treatment of the God portion of the infamous duo.

In one of his more creative moves, Guzikowksi revived an obscure Roman cult to serve as his monolithic church. However, the Mithraic are little more than a parody of faith that more closely resembles whatever Neil deGrasse Tyson imagines religion is than any actual worldview. They routinely refer to unbelievers as impure, relish the blanket genocide of unsaved souls, and latch on to every unexplained phenomenon as if Sol (their god) himself is speaking to them. They galivant around the planet like peasants following a goose on crusade and are easily swindled by a pair of atheist infiltrators who mutter simple aphorism and claim that Sol is talking to them directly.

In an interview on the official Raised By WolvesPodcast, Guzikowski claimed that he finds science and religion equally suspect. And one does get the feeling that he views himself as an opponent of dogmatic belief more than any particular worldview. But in his quest to critique the religion half of that equation, he builds a straw man. When the dust settles and both religion and atheism fail to produce a utopia, he can stand back and laugh because they might have reached that utopia if they just saw that both sides have problems. You can hear I went to twelve years of Catholic school in every line of dialogue.

Despite all of this, I still recommend Raised by Wolves.

Is the show good? Not really. Middling performances and painful writing drag it into mediocrity. But theres nothing else like it on television. Sex and God are well worn topics that America isnt really concerned with right now. Well, maybe sex, but certainly not God. And anything related to the eternal questions warrants attention. Even though I cant help but scoff with every clunky line delivered by a child actor, I keep watching. And now that the show is back for its second season, Ill be watching every week. Its so rare to find a show that handles the issues youre concerned with, even if it goes out of its way to make your worldview look like a joke.

In the spirit of the genre, Raised by Wolvesis didactic. And even if its less War And Peacedidactic and more Animal Farmdidactic, at least its trying to teach something worthwhile. Thats all we can ask for right now.

Shadrach Strehleis a freelance audio producer and hesitant young professional.

Editors Note: This piece has been updated to correct a misidentification of L. Ron Hubbards Battlefield Earth.

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Raised By Didacts - The American Conservative