چكيده
Russian Doll is an eight- episode, Emmy winning, mystery series which was directed and produced by Natasha Lyonne and released by Netflix in Feb 2019. Russian Doll’s plot follows the story of a range of people who are stuck with existential crisis and experience various circumstances. Nadia, the leading character, keeps dying and relieving the night of her 36th birthday party. To break out these loops Nadia moves on in different direction after each death, and each direction takes her to several trains of events, making her meet new people and get a new insight to her own decisions and choices. It is in one of these paths, that she meets Alan, another leading character who is experiencing his own vicious cycle. The highly symbolic series with witty and intellectual dialogues is a great reminder of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir’s Existential notions.
In his philosophy, Sartre, put his focus on humans’ subjectivity and freedom. He developed a philosophy in which humans are completely and solemnly responsible for their choices and actions. Sartre considers humans as free beings and regarding this very freedom he evolved his Existential ideas and provided reasons and explanations for dread and despair humans experience in their lives. Following Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir admitted Sartre’s notions and developed a kind of Existential ethics based on individuals’ consciousness of their freedom. In their philosophy, Sartre and de Beauvoir discussed the journey of human beings from an objective, plant-like state to an authentic self who is aware of the consequences of his choices.
This work is going to study the Russian Doll series based on this Sartrean and de Beauvoir’s approach. The characters and their circumstances, as well as their choices and relationships are studied based on ideas of Sartre and de Beauvoir’s and the journey that the leading characters, Nadia and Alan, take on to step towards their authentic self is assessed. The work does not exclusively study the leading characters but it also discusses other minor characters since in Sartrean and de Beauvoir’s philosophy, the relationship between individuals is of great importance and plays a vital role in gaining consciousness and subsequently freedom and authenticity.
