Selected Work: The 100 Season 2 (TV series)
The 100 is a science fiction drama television series whose story setting is 97 years after nuclear holocaust devastated almost life on Earth. There mainly three races in season 2: Sky people who lived in a space station orbiting Earth, Ground people who are survivals on Earth after nuclear holocaust, Mountain people who locked themselves in fortress before the nuclear holocaust. Sky people have high-tech and plan to transfer from the space station to Earth. Ground people are almost primitive and brutal. Mountain people have high-tech, but they must stay in the fortress or wear suit because they cannot survive from radiation on Earth. The number of 100 stands for the 100 young criminals exiled to Earth from the space station.
The topic of the story is the conflicts between these three groups. When the 100 teenagers first come to Earth, they are attacked by Ground people because Ground peoples’ culture teaches them to kill any possible threats. In Ground peoples’ viewpoint, the 100’s identity is different from that of them. However, as de Beauvoir indicates in The Second Sex, “the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim”. Ground people are also othered by the 100 because they are brutal and primitive. After all Sky people land on Earth, they take over the lead of the 100 because they have more weapons and people. The 100 are stilled othered because they were criminals.
Mountain people arrest Ground people and extract their blood for survival and “other” them because Mountain people think Ground people are brutal and they are not the same kind of species. And the advanced technology enables Mountain people to treat Ground people as others, like de Beauvoir discusses how power relation constructs the concept of Othering. However, Mountain people initially want to make friends with Sky people because they think they all have many similarities and the same culture. The identity in their views is culture-defined.
However, when the conflicts between Sky people and Mountain people grows, Mountain people are exterminated at the end of the story by the united army of Sky people and Ground people. There are many innocent people are killed.
The story focuses on group difference. Every group has its own problem of survival and has to harm other groups in order to solve the problem. They all have “goodness” in human nature, but they have to do something “evil”. I think the author wants us to take away is: when there is no conflict, people define identity based on the number of similarities. However, when a conflict grows as a group issue or race issue, identity will be redefined. The final winner of the conflict is the one has much more power. And there will be many innocent people involved and being killed which is injustice and unavoidable.