The Sisters of Mercy – Webseries Trailer
Farmer Vision Media, a collective of young Canadian filmmakers, recently released the trailer for their upcoming webseries, The Sisters of Mercy. The group made a conscious decision to have their projects reflect the ethnic diversity seen in Toronto, where the series is filmed. The Sisters of Mercy specifically addresses the lack of female superheroes and the two leads are women of colour.
The titular sisters, Jules and Simone Reeve, share an interdimensional superpower, Jules can control time while Simone controls space. The series looks to mix elements of comedy and drama, action and sci-fi with relevant social issues.
Interest in the series jumped last week when none other than Stan Lee linked to the site through his World of Heroes Fantastic Finds playlist.
Even Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood retweeted Farmer Vision’s link to the trailer.
Having a daughter, I love what co-creator Lindsey Bradford-Ewart said about making the series: “When my daughters watch superhero shows they look for ‘the girl,’ often not finding her. We wanted to make a show where ‘the girl is front and centre. I know from experience that representation matters.”
With regards to the title, taken from a Leonard Cohen song, Farmer Vision’s Cameron Maitland joked, “as Canadians we are legally obliged to hat tip to Mr.Cohen at least once a project or have our citizenship revoked.”
Writing this editorial, I was reminded of something Junot Diaz said about minorities in geek culture when he came on the podcast (about 43 minutes in):
“Without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as people of colour, nothing about fan boy and fan girl culture makes sense. What I mean by that is, if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the extermination of so many indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn’t make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works and it is about time that we understood that we are The Force that holds the Star Wars universe together, we’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, in the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things, erased and yet without us, we are essential.”
We commend Farmer Vision for their approach and look forward to watching The Sisters of Mercy.
