Amazing Digital Circus
There's a scene in the pilot episode of The Amazing Digital Circus where Pomni (a character that I identify with more than I'd like to admit) is running through a series of endlessly identical exit doors only to arrive in the same room Ad nauseam: it's a darkly accurate visual metaphor for anyone who currently feels stuck in their life, but it also sets the deliciously grim tone for one of the deepest, most profoundly disturbing TV series of the last decade. Here’s why I think it’s so important…
For anyone who isn't familiar with the show, it's based - on the surface, at least - around a virtual world and a nervous, perpetually stressed jester character called Pomni who has put on a VR headset as a form of escape but now wants out of a world she is unable to leave. In this world (The Amazing Digital Circus itself), she immediately meets Jax (a cynic with a purple rabbit avatar), Ragatha (a tired but optimistic ragdoll), Gangle (a comically tragic drama mask with a ribbon body), Kinger (an old and slightly demented chesspiece who is the most long-term resident of the Circus) and Zooble (a strangely apathetic and regularly unpredictable shape creature).
So - I'm basically describing a wacky, zany kids' cartoon, right? Not quite: it's loosely inspired by Harlan Ellison's demonically bleak 1967 SF story 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', where a crazy and insanely vengeful AI traps a bunch of humans inside a VR landscape that is effectively an eternal cosmic prison - a sort of purgatory where the subjects are tormented at the whim of the controlling power...
...which, in the case of The Amazing Digital Circus, is a rogue AI called Caine. The regularly entertaining and always slightly frantic ringmaster (who resembles one of the Maitland facial disguises from the original Beetlejuice movie and is basically a set of teeth and two glaring eyeballs) often lapses into a form of frozen terror himself, indicating moments of despair at the top of the chain that often radiate down to the hapless victims in the game, who are all clearly - with few exceptions - young people who for whatever reason felt lost in the real world, either out of place in their own bodies or out of place in the space or society they occupied.
That last description is pretty important, I guess... and definitely goes some way toward explaining just how disenfranchised the younger generation feels in modern life, stripped of a voice that has any impact on the world around them and drowned in hopeless feelings of permanent bewilderment at the actions of the people in power.
Each episode of The Amazing Digital Circus is basically a tour of some aspect of feeling ‘outside’ the world, or of the equally introspective process we go through as we try to discover who we actually are via the differences we encounter in the people around us. There are some genuine horrors on display here: characters who can’t handle the mental pressure of the perpetual daily grind at the circus ‘abstract’ into chaotic, shapeless forms that wander the corridors, ultimately either attacking their former friends or confined by Caine to a basement level that seems to be a form of Pandemonium (or, as Juno would describe it, ‘death for the dead’). Two of the most interesting characters - Kaufmo the clown and Ribbit the frog) are both drawn retrospectively through the memories, at times both nostalgic and bittersweet, of the existing ‘residents’. It’s completely engrossing in terms of narrative delivery and has more to say in each episodic segment than most shows manage in an entire series. My personal favourite, an instalment set entirely during a shift in a fast-food restaurant, is an absolutely beautiful exploration of how quickly proximity can change the dynamics in any relationship and a brilliant piece of scripting in its own right.
My advice, if you have kids who love or loved this show, is to watch The Amazing Digital Circus. It will educate you more about the generation devoted to it than any other series on TV. It will teach you how goddamned smart they are, too.
