MILAN – The new phase of the authorial career of Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino restarts this time from Prime Video with the first season of Swarm, the first of many projects signed with Amazon Studios. The experience of Atlanta, concluded at least on paper, however, seems to continue spiritually in this new series. Twitter, toxic fandoms, R&B music: these are just some of the elements thrown into the cauldron I compose Swarm, the story of Dre (Dominique Fishback) a die-hard fan who would do anything for Ni’Jah, her favorite singer. Even kill. Continuing with the vision, however, the viewer begins to notice a few too many similarities with reality: «This is not a work of fiction», reads the sign at the beginning of each episode. Yes, because all the references and similarities are intentional, word of Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, co-creator of the series and already on Atlanta.
In Swarm everything concerning the figure of the pop star Ni’Jah is inspired by Beyoncé and her career, starting from the name her fans give themselves (Hive, “beehive”, becomes precisely Swarm “swarm”); the very expensive tickets for a concert of her tour; the sounds of her songs; the aesthetics of her video clips; the quarrels with the family (the video of the fight in the elevator between Beyoncé and her sister Solange is famous, filmed verbatim in the series). The series was also inspired by an urban legend: a Beyoncé fan who committed suicide after discovering that Jay-Z had cheated on her wife. Real? False? The incipit is however gloomy: Dre’s fury begins when he finds his sister dead after a spat with her boyfriend; the two should have gone to a concert of their favorite singer. If for Glover Atlanta was “a Twin Peaks with rappers”, Swarm becomes a mix between the psychosexual tension of The Pianist by Michael Hanake and the satire of King for a night by Martin Scorsese, by the singer’s own admission. Yes, but what does it mean?
Atlanta And Swarm they have many things in common (like the creative team, of course), but they differ in the approach they take on the character. Dre is nothing short of a serial killer in all respects, who from episode to episode reaps new victims to the question: «But who is your favorite artist?». Woe not to answer Ni’Jah. The handhold lies in the construction of this modern anti-heroine, magnetic like a Don Draper and despicable like Tony Soprano. His actions take the upper hand and push the figure of Ni’Jah into the background: even when you dig into her past and discover that Dre was adopted for a mere financial benefit at a time when her adoptive family was on the broke, or who is still a virgin because she is probably infatuated with her stepsister, we do not feel empathy towards her, on the contrary, a sense of annoyance grows in us so we cannot help but stop looking. Or follow.
Dominique Fishback’s stage presence is a constant ringing in the ear, like what
seems to hear his character whenever there is justice to be done in the name of the pop star. The empowerment that singers like Beyoncé yearn for is reversed and channeled into a fury
unparalleled murderer. So what is the value of the sentence: «This is not a work of fiction»? We live in a digital age where the most absurd things can happen (also this leitmotif in Atlanta it didn’t seem so far-fetched): is it therefore plausible that the toxicity of fandoms can lead to extreme consequences? Yes. The fury with which Dre defends Ni’Jah is not so different from the famous motto: “Leave Britney alone!”. From that 2007 video, however, there is a substantial difference with the
Glover and Nabers’ vision: the web. The Internet has changed over the years.
Twitter has become a recruiting platform: absurdly the “hive” (or the BTS Army, which already has the word “army” in its name) are not so different from QAnon, for example. Political intentions are certainly and obviously different – needless to say – but don’t they both want the same thing? Defending your heroes by the sword. It is no coincidence then that the name of Malia Obama, the daughter of the former President of the United States, appears among the staff writers. Swarm but it doesn’t seem to be a criticism aimed at anyone in particular, let alone Beyoncé or her people. It is a portrait of post-truth, of those arguments that appeal to emotion and not to objective and truthful reality, with the sole intention of influencing public opinion. This intent in Swarm is clear and precise: to place oneself above any truth to re-imagine the contexts we live in. Online and offline. Atlanta played with the surreal, Swarm but with the odds…
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