Towards the end of Netflix’s new show Kaos, Zeus (Jeff Goldblum) hosts a watch party. At it are his wife Hera (Janet McTeer), son Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), and brother Poseidon (Cliff Curtis). He has called them over to witness Minos, ruler of Crete, disprove a prophecy that foretold that he (Minos) would be killed by his child.
In this world, imagined by the show’s writer-creator Charlie Covell and inspired by classical Greek mythology, every human is born with a prophecy. Zeus, who was once mortal, fears his because it predicts that he will eventually lose power. Even though he has cast aside his humanity, recent incidents make him suspect the prophecy has been set in motion, and he spirals into paranoia and cruelty.
These are gods as we rarely see them. Over and over, they dismiss humans as weak, contemptible and puny. It is only when we learn the roots of their own immortality (something they already know) that Kaos’s core irony is revealed: it is the essence of humanity that makes the gods divine.
Returning to the watch party: Minos (Stanley Townsend) is ordered to disprove his prophecy so that Zeus may be reassured that prophecies can be defied. And so the gods gather to watch him kill his son.
This is when a curious parallel unfolds. As they watch Minos on a live video feed, the audience watches the gods (and Minos). What we as viewers see mirrors what the gods of Kaos watch in Olympus, creating an Escher-esque illusion of screens reflecting screens. If Minos and other mortals are idle entertainment for the Olympians, then Zeus, Hera and the others in Kaos are the same to audiences around the world.
They’re trying to dazzle Netflix subscribers in the hopes of being renewed for successive seasons; much like the humans in Kaos live in hope of “renewal” or rebirth. Covell and the show’s directors, Georgi Banks-Davies and Runyararo Mapfumo, create an equivalence between their audiences and the gods of Kaos, both of whom want to be pandered to, and want to be entertained.
Kaos quickly makes clear that though the gods revel in being supra-human, they have little under their control. The situation is similar for us, off-screen. The importance given to views and box-office earnings suggests that audiences are powerful, but we have limited influence over what is commissioned and released.
Just as Zeus devours news coverage of events in his honour and natural disasters he has unleashed, and just as Hera, queen of the gods, listens in on people in confessional boxes, we as viewers turn to art with a sense of entitlement, and yet depend on it for comfort, distraction and more.
Of course, being a consumer of culture doesn’t have to be as exploitative.
Over the past two weeks, my family and I have grappled with the jarring reality of my father being diagnosed with cancer. We are living in hope that the disease can be beaten into remission. At the end of each of these impossibly long days, my parents and I found ourselves turning to art in various forms.
Earlier this week, Mohammed Rafi sang Main Zindagi Ka Saath Nibhata Chala Gaya to us. It’s a song from Hum Dono (1961). Literally everything associated with that film is long gone. Yet here we are, drawing comfort from Rafi’s voice and Jaidev’s music, as though they were in the room with us.
The song from Hum Dono is eternal because it is just a click away and loses nothing with new listens. If anything, it is a little more alive because new memories are made around it.
The solace that such art offers us reminds me of a line spoken by a character in Kaos: “All the best things are human.”
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
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