The Pluralistic Worldview of Netflix’s “Unbelievable”
Here at the Integral Cinema Project, we are often asked how to determine what structure of consciousness (typically Mythic, Rational, Pluralistic or Integral) forms a work’s center of gravity. This can be hard to determine, especially when the choice is between Pluralistic and Integral. As an example, let’s look at the new Netflix show, Unbelievable, which is a gripping police procedural with a strong social justice message about how rape victims can be marginalized in a male-dominated police system. [Needless to say, spoilers ahead so I recommend you watch the show before proceeding.]
The show, a very well-received docudrama about several rape victims and how different police departments investigated their crimes, is a good example of Pluralistic storytelling. One key to look for in the Pluralistic worldview is that it sees all of humanity as essentially interconnected, and it tends to value relative truth and have empathy for all human beings. Indeed, that is the case in Unbelievable.
Even though the first set of (male) investigators botches their case and ends up accusing the teenage victim Marie of fabricating her story, the show is quite careful to show that the police meant well and that they genuinely believed their analysis was correct (as did others who knew the young woman). Furthermore, when the lead investigator finds out the truth, that Marie was in fact brutally raped, he feels intense remorse and owns his mistake.
By comparison, the series shows how two female investigators are overwhelmingly compassionate and empathetic when dealing with several rape victims. In this way, Unbelievable shows the Pluralistic view in action, as filtered through a feminine lens of communion and sensitivity. The show never blames the men who botched the first investigation, showing instead how their training and attempt to use logic and reason actually undermines their quest for the truth.
There are no “monsters,” in the classical sense, in Unbelievable. Even the serial rapist, who we only meet near the end, is depicted more as a dysfunctional psychopath than a cartoon evil monster. Other characters, some of whom serve as antagonists to the various leads, are also given their own reasons and motivations. For instance, the adults who punish or penalize Marie (with curfews at her group home, or a reassignment at work) are trying to do their jobs and manage their situations with fairness.
For a show to classify as Integral, it normally has to depict a character or situation evolving through at least 3 structures of consciousness. In Unbelievable, the main character who evolves is the male police officer who led the botched investigation, and he evolves one stage from Rational to Pluralistic. Although he starts out at Rational, his form of Rational has become pathological; he allows his logical analysis to lead him astray because he can’t feel true empathy for the victim. The lack of physical evidence can therefore only lead him to the conclusion the young woman made up her story. It seems likely his HUGE mistake will resonate with him for the rest of his life and career, and make him more careful and compassionate moving forward.
The other major characters are solidly Pluralistic, as is Unbelievable’s center of gravity. The show is careful to show how rape victims can display a full range of emotion, from fear to anger to detachment. And it depicts a wide range of people all contributing to the investigation that ultimately leads them to the perpetrator.
What would the show look like if it were Integral?
This is a big question, and we can briefly look at a few ways Unbelievable could have been a deeper, richer work. This does NOT necessarily mean it would have been a better show, just that it could have depicted a broader tapestry in unpacking the situations of the victims and police.
For instance, Integral theory has a notion of synergistic communication across four quadrants of human experience, these being the Individual Interior, the Individual Exterior, the Collective Interior and the Collective Exterior. Although all these domains appear in Unbelievable, an Integral film will tend to integrate as many quadrants as possible in every scene with the intention of illuminating a multi-dimensional whole. Let’s break these down in clearer terms.
The Individual Interior is the internal, subjective personal experience of the characters. In film, this is most directly depicted as a facial close-up or a point-of-view shot where we are literally looking through the eyes of a character. The Individual Exterior is the objective, external manifestation of the characters that can be seen and quantified. This is the domain of the insert shot focusing on physical objects and actions, and the medium close-up and mid-shot, where we see the characters’ behavior in the world. The Collective Interior encompasses subjective interactions between characters, relationships and culture. The 2-shot is the signature visual depiction of this quadrant, although many other cinematic forms cover it as well. Finally, the Collective Exterior refers to the objective environment, systems and social structures within which the action is happening. This is characterized by the wide shot, which shows a broad view of the conditions and situations in which the action takes place.
In Unbelievable, the Individual Interior appears as the brief subjective flashbacks where the rape victims remember the traumatic events they lived through. An example of where the Individual Interior is integrated with other quadrants is when Marie has flashbacks while she is trying to interact with others, giving the viewer a visceral feel for the way the trauma has ramifications way beyond the event itself, and the way certain interactions can actually be re-traumatizing. We see how her PTSD (Individual Interior) makes her distracted or jumpy (Individual Exterior) and interacts both with her interpersonal relationships (the Collective Interior) and with the systems in which she is operating (the Collective Exterior), like the police and the social work bureaucracy.
When all four quadrants are reflected interdependently, as in the above example, a work has more power to affect the consciousness of the audience. An Integral work will tend to communicate its premise and themes across all four quadrants as often as possible, showing how they interrelate and affect one another, and ultimately how they coevolve. The result is a kind of rich tapestry in which different types of audiences at different stages of development and with different life experiences will have a “way in” to the characters and situations.
Unbelievable, with its Pluralistic worldview, stops short of any deeper systemic analysis and its effects on the other quadrants. For instance, most of our government systems are solidly based in the Rational worldview, with forms and procedures that try to quantify even things that shouldn’t be quantified. With the best of intentions, the system fails Marie again and again because it doesn’t have compassion or empathy built into itself. Only a remarkably lucky coincidence during the investigation gives this story a happy ending. But this happy ending (which is true, in this particular case) also serves to let the system off the hook and obviates the need to look at the deeper structural issues that surround the story and characters.
Similarly, the two female investigators discuss how a remarkable 40% of male police officers are domestic abusers. They point out that most of the investigations of their abuse complaints are run through Internal Affairs rather than the criminal justice system, meaning they are never made public and a large percentage of the perpetrators remain active on the police force. But the film never unpacks this lesson to suggest it indicates a deep vein of corruption at the heart of the modern police system. It is framed as simply a problem of localized misogyny rather than a broader indication that the police systematically cover up the violence of their own.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that Unbelievable needed to address every problem with the police, or every problem with our system of governance. Sometimes, a show working at the Pluralistic level can illuminate a specific issue quite well. In Integral theory, there’s a term called “horizontal development,” which indicates development or evolution within a structure. Many solidly Pluralistic men genuinely support equality and compassion towards women in their cognitive line of development without truly understanding it or feeling it deep in their gut. A show like Unbelievable can definitely help wake men up to the ways in which patriarchal structures are deeply embedded into our systems.
But ultimately the problems of patriarchy, or police violence, or even police indifference to the suffering of rape victims cannot be separated from the culture and society in which they emerge. The more different domains of human experience that can be shown interacting within any given scene, the more complex the communication and the deeper the unpacking goes. Although gender privilege is unpacked somewhat in Unbelievable, race goes unmentioned…even though gender politics is inextricably linked with racial politics…and the foundational structure of late-stage capitalism can’t really be separated out from either.
Also unexamined is the way our lives can be ground down by mundane jobs that rob us of our dignity. Marie applies for one demeaning job after another; there seems to be no chance she could find meaningful employment that could raise her self-worth and even — imagine! — give her joy and fulfillment. It’s hard to heal from a trauma when the routine life you have to go back to is so structurally grim.
We can’t change structural injustice if we can’t see all the moving parts, and how they interrelate. An Integral film will tend to look at all the different viewpoints of an issue and tease out the truth in each, often within individual scenes, and ultimately give us a big picture “integrated” perspective of the whole. Although I greatly enjoyed Unbelievable as a terrific police procedural and admired its strong social justice message, I still have a soft spot for works that engage us in deeper and more integral ways.
