Created by the team of actor/writer Brit Marling and director/writer Zal Batmanglij, and starring Marling in the role of Prairie Johnston, the Netflix Originals series The OA (2016 -) has aired for two seasons so far. Season 1 (2016) was, like Marling and Batmangilj's earlier collaboration, the 2011 film Sound of My Voice, generically ambiguous. In both, Marling is portrayed a potentially unreliable narrator, the veracity of whose claims has consequences for the generic status of the narrative: if her characters are sincere then Sound of My Voice and The OA can be read as science fiction texts; if they are lying, then both film and series can be re-categorised as psychological mystery thrillers.
The sincerity of Marling's character is left unconfirmed in both the film and season 1 of the series; however, the second season of The OA (2019)appears to affirm Prairie's claims that she has learned the secret of inter-dimensional travel after a near-death experience and subsequent imprisonment at the hands of a deranged scientist obsessed with that phenomenon. However, the second season finale complicates matters further by entering into the territory of metafiction and representing Prairie, and other characters, as roles performed by the cast who also play versions of themselves in a fictional drama.
This study of The OA will discuss the series's particular thematic concerns of identity, belief and the nature and construction, of reality in the context of Marling and Batmanglij's earlier collaborations – the films Sound of My Voice and the thriller The East (2013) – as well as the science fiction film Another Earth (2011) starring Marling, which she also co-wrote with its director, Mike Cahill. The OA will be discussed too in terms of identifiable influences on it, such as the work of David Lynch, particularly the TV series Twin Peaks (1990-2017) and the films Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006), and comparable texts such as the Netflix Originals series Sense8 (2015-18) and Maniac (2018); the fantasy writings of Jorge Luis Borges; and the work of science fiction writer Philip K Dick.
The discussion will be supported by a of sources from the fields of media and social theory, including the work of Jean Baudrillard, Steven Shaviro, Jodi Dean, Mark Fisher and Shoshana Zuboff, among others, as well as my own earlier writing on Marling and Batmanglij. If possible, interviews with Marling and/or Batmanglij will also be undertaken and quotations included in the finished text. Negative criticisms of The OA will also be addressed, such as accusations of superficiality, like Jack Seale's claim in The Guardian that the series is 'just an unending stream of WTF bunkum' (2019) or the many dismissals in online forums of Marling and Batmanglij as 'hipsters', opportunistically appropriating elements of genre fiction in order to establish their own, lucrative, cult franchise. These criticisms will be considered alongside the themes of deception and manipulation identifiable in The OA specifically, and in the duo's wider oeuvre.
Works Cited
Seale, Jack, 'The OA season two review – the psychic octopus is the final straw', The Guardian [online], theguardian.com, 22nd March, 2019, accessed 3rd May, 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/22/the-oa-season-two-review-netflix-brit-marling
