Swarm Review: Social Media, Fandom, and Murder
Swarm is a seven-part limited series created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, each episode of which begins with the statement, “This is not a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead, or actual events, is intentional.” To those is in the know, the actual events mentioned refer to the pop star Beyoncé, her fan army the BeyHive, and the alleged suicide of a fan which went viral. In Swarm, the character based on Beyoncé is called Ni’Jah, and, in case you hadn’t guessed, Ni’Jah’s fans call themselves the Swarm. However, these true events are really just the catalyst for Swarm’s main story, which involves a Ni’Jah super-fan, Dre, going completely off the rails after the suicide of her friend, and travelling around the country on a killing spree. Her victims are those guilty of insulting her friend, or Ni’Jah, or both, on social media.
Swarm’s story, though relatively simple in construction, makes for a compelling watch. The show plays out like a kind of solo Badlands for the generations who have grown up under the influence of social media. This leads to a rich vein of ideas, as Swarm seems to be commenting on the negative impact living life on social media can have on a person, with its casual nastiness, and absolutist attitude – either you’re with me, or you’re scum. Frankly, one could easily draw parallels between Dre’s worship of Ni’Jah, fostered by her social media interactions, and religious fundamentalism. Dre is a character loosing contact with real-life and replacing it with life online. Indeed, she is often told what to do by her phone, which, in her delusional state, she is treating like an oracle. She makes plenty of new friends throughout her murder road-trip, and yet the only group she identifies with are the Swarm. As such, anyone who disagrees with her that Ni’Jah is a living goddess, deserves death. It’s as if a kind of virtual fanaticism has come crashing murderously into real-life.
If all of this sounds grim – it is and it isn’t. Aesthetically Swarm has kind of off-kilter grittiness, but Glover and Janine’s show is also rather funny for those with a taste for the deadpan, the absurd, and the deeply macabre. A lot of credit for successfully walking the line between the horrifying and the darkly amusing must go to Dominique Fishback, who plays Dre. Fishback’s performance is disarmingly gawky, wide-eyed, and physically awkward. For example, her attempt at pole-dancing in a strip joint to a slow Ni’Jah song is a masterclass in understated physical comedy. Most impressively, Fishback manages to keep Dre as a somewhat sympathetic character, despite her deplorable acts of violence. This is because she makes her seem so genuinely innocent. Even when she is lying to gain access to people and places normally closed to her, she does so with such spontaneity that she never seems calculating or evil. The show revolves around Fishback’s performance and she is more than equal to the task.
Nabers and Glover have concocted an intriguing, true-ish crime show that is at once off-beat, shocking, and darkly entertaining. They have also provided a psychological portrait for a time in our history when we are at once at our most connected and our most detached.
Swarm is available on Amazon Prime Video
