ZERO: A Superhero Story About Immigrants

The word ZERO has an exceptionally metaphorical meaning. The message of the series is unambiguous – immigrants, especially those black ones whom white people consider to be ZEROS, are capable too. They are important. They can mean a lot in the local community. They can even be quite artistically gifted. And they have found themselves in such and no other social situation due to the harassment by people motivated by fear of what is different in the cultural and ethnic sense.

To show this, the creators of the series decided on an interesting marriage of superhero cinema elements and socially engaged storytelling. Additionally, they made young people the main characters – their dilemmas have a chance to reach a younger generation of viewers who have not yet succumbed entirely to the ossified and shortsighted way of thinking of nationalists.

The main character is a young boy, Zero (Giuseppe Dave Seke), a son of immigrants from Senegal born in Milan. He works as a pizza delivery boy and lives in a poor district with his father and sister. The father wants at all costs to preserve the memory of his roots, but Zero is not interested in this. He only wants to survive, leave, draw comics – as far away as possible from the poverty he has next door. It so happens that the poor district where he lives is to be sold and the houses demolished. But first something has to be done with the people.

The developer thus comes up with the idea to force the residents of the district – consisting mainly of immigrants and poorer Italians – to move out by means of threats, harassment on every level, drastic rent hikes, power outages, and even robberies and murders. Returning to Zero, we could use such a superhero, an immigrant with the ability to be invisible and inaudible, and also to turn objects and living organisms he touches invisible, as well as to influence the recording of image by recording devices.

As I wrote earlier, the series uses only elements of superhero cinema, so we should not expect many special effects or elaborate action scenes involving the main character Zero. The visualization of invisibility is modest but successfully sufficient for the purposes of the story told in this way. To be Zero is not only to be invisible in the sense of possessing a superpower. It is also not to be noticed through one’s social role. Who cared about a black pizza delivery boy? The creators of Zero want to break with this stereotype of judging others at all costs.

For these ZEROS sometimes hide an interesting story. Fortunately, the defense of the district against the evil developer is not the only plot of the series. It is worth waiting for episodes 7 and 8 to feel an incredible desire for another season. The episodes are not long. They last an average of 25 minutes. They are constructed very matter-of-factly, without unnecessary monologues, but with engaging music such as young rebels listen to – but let us not pigeonhole. I am not that young, and yet I sometimes listen to a good rap track.

Whether it is good in the series is not for me to judge, as I am rather an occasional listener of rap and R&B, but the atmosphere built by the soundtrack allows the viewer to better enter the described community of black immigrants living in Italy. In a sense, not only Zero with his ability to be invisible is a superhero. Those people who have managed to survive in a foreign land and become in the eyes of the locals something more than thieves, drug addicts, the homeless, and generally various kinds of dirty people are also superheroes.

So before we criticize, let us think twice how we would behave, living in a closed, regularly harassed community, without chances for a better life, but with the stigma of being outsiders. Perhaps we would also go down the wrong path, automatically giving an argument to those who hate us that they act toward us exactly this way because we are a dangerous underclass. And yet they themselves created the conditions for the development of this pathology. Such is the main humanistic message of the series, and besides that, the superhero thread develops interestingly in the last two episodes.

So does the skin color of the characters matter? At this point in history, yes, crucially, yet the authors of the screenplay did not forget that anyone who is perceived as alien can find themselves in a similar situation. He may be white but not have money. It is a bitter reflection that money can decide the value of a person and his skin color. Such is the two-faced nature of racism.

Who is Zero for? For viewers entering adulthood and those adults under thirty. Of course, for all the rest of the adults too, only to the younger ones the most awareness-raising and educational message is directed, including elements of superheroism. I would complain about the one-dimensional black villain, but the story has been played out in such a way that this would be nitpicking.

I will not reveal anything more, as this is the greatest treat of the series. I give a strong 7 for the unusual idea of presenting the problem of racism and xenophobia toward immigrants.