"Warning: Spoilers ahead for the new season of Peacemaker available on HBO Max. The recent episode "Ignorance is Chris" shows the dangers of a narrow worldview and colorblind attitudes, where your upbringing can impede your ability to see inequality and injustice in your everyday life. If you are on social media, you might have seen reactions to the surprising lack of people of color in our early exposure to Peacemaker's/Chris's "ideal" universe."
"The character, so focused on the fact that his family is alive and well, forgets their historic family ties to Nazism and the implications that such history has for a world where that very family is famous. This season prompts us to ask ourselves: What does it mean to belong? And what do we do when faced with stark inequality and exclusion? Would we even notice?"
"To answer these questions, we can turn to Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta's recent book Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities. Dr. Dasgupta is a Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and she introduces us to the wallpaper: the ways local cultural norms influence our society in both subtle and unsubtle ways, from our everyday behaviors to our j"
Peacemaker season two uses dark humor and heart to confront racial inequality and mental health through character-driven storytelling. The episode "Ignorance is Chris" portrays how a narrow worldview and colorblind attitudes can prevent recognition of everyday injustice. Early scenes reveal an absence of people of color in an "ideal" universe and expose a character's failure to acknowledge historic family ties to Nazism and their implications. The season raises questions of belonging, exclusion, and whether people would notice stark inequality. Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta's concept of cultural "wallpaper" is offered as a mechanism for understanding and changing the cultural patterns that perpetuate injustice.
Read at Psychology Today
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