A loud, cheerful satire of the roles the world demands we play
From the same mind that produced the horror/comedy show Los Espookys and the heartfelt immigration dramedy film Problemista, the new HBO Max series Fantasmas dials the surrealism up to eleven and makes the screen explode in possibilities.
Fantasmas is set in a world where colorless crayons are a hit idea, where an expressionless robot can become a talented actor, where a performance artist stays in character 24/7, where the letters of the alphabet have distinct personalities, where you can send your dreams to a lab for interpretation, where all men of a certain age secretly share a bottle collection hobby, where doctor appointments last exactly 90 seconds, where Santa Claus is sued for exploiting his workers, where customer service agents are subject to karmic justice, where the TikTok algorithm is a jealous goddess with no love for her faithful, where mind uploading is a viable treatment for a skin condition, where a fashion designer specializes in listening to toilets and dressing them, where gay hamsters have their own dance club, where water speaks, where gossipy mermaids hate Halloween, where an evangelist Smurf made of ceramic is a social media manager, where all online influencers live in the same house, where a portrait of a corgi hosts a trapped demon, where a goldfish runs a private detective business, where a reality TV producer keeps his mother's living brain in a jar, and where being hit by lightning gives you special perceptive powers. Somehow, all this fits in six half-hour episodes.
None of this is treated as strange or unusual. This is the hallmark of magical realism: the noteworthy thing about the social media manager is not that she's a ceramic Smurf, but that she's mediocre at her job and her fees are outrageous. The fact that a demon is trapped in a portrait isn't as interesting as his lack of success on Grindr. We're not expected to focus on the impossibility of a goldfish detective, but on the fact that she's mean to her assistant. This constant realignment of perspective is a requisite for the message contained in Fantasmas. In this world, false things are transparently portrayed as false, even though they continue to have their effects. The absurdity of bureaucracy is highlighted by the way IDs are called: "proof of existence." You can be standing right in front of a potential employer, landlord or doctor, and still they'll ask for your proof of existence.
The set design for the show goes out of its way to draw attention to the artificiality of institutions: the interior of a corporate office, an apartment, a hospital, a school, a courtroom, a restaurant, a jewellery shop will be shown from a wide angle so you can see the false walls that delimit the set. On the other hand, exterior shots use an obviously painted background to represent the streets of New York, another sign of artificiality. The fictitious spaces where the story happens don't bother hiding that they're fiction. Accordingly, this version of New York is populated by image-obsessed aspiring celebrities, Instagram junkies jumping through the hoops of brand promotion, fake friendships, performative social advocacy, commodified identities, staged drama, plastic surgeries, and the occasional murder. It's a voracious place where survival requires compromising more and more parts of your true self.
Which leads us to the hidden heart of the show: a teenage student who resorts to bullying to hide his insecurities about masculinity. By reinforcing in himself the expected norms of male behavior, he's put himself on the road to becoming another bearer of falsehoods. The narrow mental trap he's living in doesn't let him notice the vigorously queernorm milieu that is the adult world. This character has very few scenes in only half of the episodes, but his arc is the whole point of the story.
It takes a while to notice this, because the narration in Fantasmas has an extremely unconventional structure. The random appearance of a secondary character will often prompt a prolonged digression about their personal life and worries and quirks. The trick is that these digressions are so interesting that the viewer never notices that the episode's pacing has been broken. Many of these disparate subplots converge in the season finale, in a manner that may land a bit too conveniently, but the sweet earnestness makes up for it. In the middle of such fierce competition for likes and gigs and sponsorship deals and other substitutes for human validation, the world of Fantasmas still has spaces where true self-expression can flourish.
There's a meaningful blend of magical realism with queernorm in Fantasmas. Latin audiences will recognize the deadpan casualness with which robots, ceramic Smurfs, talking hamsters and incorporeal people coexist with the rest of New Yorkers. Magical realism is all about close familiarity with the fantastic in everyday life. But in addition to it, Fantasmas takes this acceptance of difference and paints it queer: the fact that people of all body types interact without creating arbitrary hierarchies means that there's no single mandatory way to exist. Fantasmas proposes a world where no one raises an eyebrow because your cab driver dresses more fabulously than anyone else in the city, where the undocumented worker delivering your dinner also happens to be the world's most talented tailor, and most importantly, where you shouldn't have to prove to others again and again that you exist.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
