5 ms·

> One of the issues is how much Netflix content just reflect whatever crap is a fad in California politics. I am not even from US, I don't want to hear about Ca

> One of the issues is how much Netflix content just reflect whatever crap is a fad in California politics. I am not even from US, I don't want to hear about Californian political themes in the media I consume What are some examples of this? Of all the issues Ive seen people have with Netflix, this is definitely a very new one.

recursive 5y ago
Not OP, but this may be an extrapolation from "Don't Look Up"
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Don't Look Up is obviously (intentionally heavy handed) political satire, but it's not at all particular to California politics.
Barrin92 5y ago
not the OP and not so much politics but I found it decidedly weird how Sex Education which is set in a fictional town in the UK, is filmed in Wales, with an almost exclusively British cast is completely Americanized. As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto some weird fairy tale version of the British aristocracy in the worst way imaginable. edit: another thing I just remembered, Netflix removed what is probably the best episode of Community from its catalog because of a blackface character, despite the fact that the character is explicitly used to address racism in the fantasy genre.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics You write this as if the same questions of racial and gender politics are not also significant in other parts of (a) the anglosphere (b) western europe.
- jerojero 5y ago
  Really? I thought bridgerton was extremely problematic. I mean, from a feminist perspective it shows women's dependency on marriage and it barely has a critique for it. The one character that outright critiques the practice still ends up revolving around a guy that "she chose" but is lower class. Why did she need a man? Not only that but the show is all about 15yos marrying 20 something dudes? Just creepy. On the other hand I thought sex education was great with how it deals with social issues surrounding sex. I do enjoy the aesthetics of it, never really found it weird but its definitely an "american 80s" aesthetic, though that is also how young people are dressing, at least over here. Personally I dont see an issue with exploring social questions at all, but it does most of the time a superficial analysis just ends up ignoring too many things to be of any use and ends up simply as a performative action. I think this is the case for Bridgerton but not Sex Education. In any case, what angers me with Netflix is the way they cancel shows without giving them a way to wrap up their stories in a final season. Sure, if you have 2 seasons and you were planning 5 it might be difficult to wrap everything on a third season but it is surely better than simply leaving the story open.
- thebigman433 5y ago
  > As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto I mean how do you say any of this is American politics and not British/Western European politics? Racial inequality, women's rights, and class structures are not just American things.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    The problem isn't the questions, it's the answers. With Bridgerton you get the impression the aristocracy wasn't so bad as long as half of it is black. There's no classism or anything structural in that show. It's escapist alt-history that even romanticizes what it depicts. In that sense it's no different than Hamilton, where you had, ironically enough, an almost all POC cast represent not a single POC character. superficial diversity in place of actually talking about race, class, and so on.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > With Bridgerton you get the impression the aristocracy wasn't so bad as long as half of it is black I think your mistake is reading Bridgerton as utopian political fiction and not a romance film with a fantasy drawn around combining exaggeration of a few specific facts of Regency England with a couple things drawn from modern Western race and gender politics is the context and engine of conflict. > There's no classism or anything structural in that show There is fairly intense classism in the show. > In that sense it's no different than Hamilton, where you had, ironically enough, an almost all POC cast represent not a single POC character. Minor nitpick: Hamilton, in fact, has a single explicitly-named on-stage POC character, though the part has no lines. Major nitpick: you...did not understand a few layers of metaphor in Hamilton. > superficial diversity in place of actually talking about race, class, and so on. Hamilton rather directly talks about race, class, “and so on”.
  - the_omegist 5y ago
    The obsession with them and the ideology that drives them clearly are.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Okay, so first, you are conflating America with California... Yes, like most American content sources, the content tends to be flavored by American culture. > As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto some weird fairy tale version of the British aristocracy in the worst way imaginable. I would say it has fairy tale versions of racial and gender politics (which are not, insofar as they connect with real world versions, any less connected to British than American ones) bolted on to a weird fairy tale version of early 19th Century British aristocracy; it's very American, but less in the politics than the style of romance story for which the setting provides the context.
DaltonCoffee 5y ago
There are a host of "woke" modern themes that find their way into western media in general. I sometimes wonder if the next star trek crew will be all David bowies and Barclays. Hard to say Netflix is worse for this than various other Hollywood studios tho. (to clarify in anticipation of downvotes, I welcome and enjoy some of the media about trans people etc, I am just answering your question, to elucidate this issue with the services' content that some people have. Definitely not a rare or new issue, I've been listening to people go on about it for years)
- thebigman433 5y ago
  > There are a host of "woke" modern themes that find their way into western media in general I dont see how stuff like this is complained about though, especially since most shows dont actually have more than token representation anyway. Whats the actual complaint here? That the average cast of a show is slightly different now than it was 10 years ago? People complain about "woke" themes but I hardly see concrete examples of them, and explanations as to whats wrong or what should be done differently. And fwiw I think using Star Trek as an example is funny* since the show has historically been based on diverse groups of people.
  - xyzzy123 5y ago
    I don't think it's the identity of the characters per se, it's more subtle than that, a kind of fetishisation of identity? In Star Fleet the fact that someone happens to be a polygamous tri-sexual trans-species cat person should pass mostly without comment. But modern sensibilities set up a dynamic where nobody is just a character. Everyone is seen as representing "their team" - a race, or a class. This is a big responsibility, so everyone has to take themselves super seriously. I think we're in a transitional phase for TV. Representation is a priority (great!) but the industry isn't fully confident with it yet. It's OK, TV has always been about the zeitgeist as much as the show. Perhaps what we need is also more diversity among writers/producers. Right now it feels like a lot of writers are handling their "diverse" characters with kid gloves which can leave them a bit wooden and gets in the way of telling a good story.
deleted 5y ago
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undersuit 5y ago
I would say American media has always been California centric. The majority of screenwriters lived in CA near the majority of media studios and produced the majority of our media. The complaints about CA politics in Netflix are new complaints to me.
- Kye 5y ago
  I've enjoyed occasionally seeing places I recognize, either in terms of aesthetic or in that I've actually been there, with Georgia's film and TV scene developing.
deleted 5y ago
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stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's not really new. Conservatives tend to have a 1:1 mapping of liberal issue with "california issue", although it is an odd way of putting it.

recursive 5y ago

Not OP, but this may be an extrapolation from "Don't Look Up"

dragonwriter 5y ago
Don't Look Up is obviously (intentionally heavy handed) political satire, but it's not at all particular to California politics.

Barrin92 5y ago

not the OP and not so much politics but I found it decidedly weird how Sex Education which is set in a fictional town in the UK, is filmed in Wales, with an almost exclusively British cast is completely Americanized. As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto some weird fairy tale version of the British aristocracy in the worst way imaginable. edit: another thing I just remembered, Netflix removed what is probably the best episode of Community from its catalog because of a blackface character, despite the fact that the character is explicitly used to address racism in the fantasy genre.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics You write this as if the same questions of racial and gender politics are not also significant in other parts of (a) the anglosphere (b) western europe.
jerojero 5y ago
Really? I thought bridgerton was extremely problematic. I mean, from a feminist perspective it shows women's dependency on marriage and it barely has a critique for it. The one character that outright critiques the practice still ends up revolving around a guy that "she chose" but is lower class. Why did she need a man? Not only that but the show is all about 15yos marrying 20 something dudes? Just creepy. On the other hand I thought sex education was great with how it deals with social issues surrounding sex. I do enjoy the aesthetics of it, never really found it weird but its definitely an "american 80s" aesthetic, though that is also how young people are dressing, at least over here. Personally I dont see an issue with exploring social questions at all, but it does most of the time a superficial analysis just ends up ignoring too many things to be of any use and ends up simply as a performative action. I think this is the case for Bridgerton but not Sex Education. In any case, what angers me with Netflix is the way they cancel shows without giving them a way to wrap up their stories in a final season. Sure, if you have 2 seasons and you were planning 5 it might be difficult to wrap everything on a third season but it is surely better than simply leaving the story open.
thebigman433 5y ago
> As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto I mean how do you say any of this is American politics and not British/Western European politics? Racial inequality, women's rights, and class structures are not just American things.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  The problem isn't the questions, it's the answers. With Bridgerton you get the impression the aristocracy wasn't so bad as long as half of it is black. There's no classism or anything structural in that show. It's escapist alt-history that even romanticizes what it depicts. In that sense it's no different than Hamilton, where you had, ironically enough, an almost all POC cast represent not a single POC character. superficial diversity in place of actually talking about race, class, and so on.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > With Bridgerton you get the impression the aristocracy wasn't so bad as long as half of it is black I think your mistake is reading Bridgerton as utopian political fiction and not a romance film with a fantasy drawn around combining exaggeration of a few specific facts of Regency England with a couple things drawn from modern Western race and gender politics is the context and engine of conflict. > There's no classism or anything structural in that show There is fairly intense classism in the show. > In that sense it's no different than Hamilton, where you had, ironically enough, an almost all POC cast represent not a single POC character. Minor nitpick: Hamilton, in fact, has a single explicitly-named on-stage POC character, though the part has no lines. Major nitpick: you...did not understand a few layers of metaphor in Hamilton. > superficial diversity in place of actually talking about race, class, and so on. Hamilton rather directly talks about race, class, “and so on”.
- the_omegist 5y ago
  The obsession with them and the ideology that drives them clearly are.
dragonwriter 5y ago
Okay, so first, you are conflating America with California... Yes, like most American content sources, the content tends to be flavored by American culture. > As far as politics goes Bridgerton is probably the best example which has American racial and gender politics bolted onto some weird fairy tale version of the British aristocracy in the worst way imaginable. I would say it has fairy tale versions of racial and gender politics (which are not, insofar as they connect with real world versions, any less connected to British than American ones) bolted on to a weird fairy tale version of early 19th Century British aristocracy; it's very American, but less in the politics than the style of romance story for which the setting provides the context.

DaltonCoffee 5y ago

There are a host of "woke" modern themes that find their way into western media in general. I sometimes wonder if the next star trek crew will be all David bowies and Barclays. Hard to say Netflix is worse for this than various other Hollywood studios tho. (to clarify in anticipation of downvotes, I welcome and enjoy some of the media about trans people etc, I am just answering your question, to elucidate this issue with the services' content that some people have. Definitely not a rare or new issue, I've been listening to people go on about it for years)

thebigman433 5y ago
> There are a host of "woke" modern themes that find their way into western media in general I dont see how stuff like this is complained about though, especially since most shows dont actually have more than token representation anyway. Whats the actual complaint here? That the average cast of a show is slightly different now than it was 10 years ago? People complain about "woke" themes but I hardly see concrete examples of them, and explanations as to whats wrong or what should be done differently. And fwiw I think using Star Trek as an example is funny* since the show has historically been based on diverse groups of people.
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  I don't think it's the identity of the characters per se, it's more subtle than that, a kind of fetishisation of identity? In Star Fleet the fact that someone happens to be a polygamous tri-sexual trans-species cat person should pass mostly without comment. But modern sensibilities set up a dynamic where nobody is just a character. Everyone is seen as representing "their team" - a race, or a class. This is a big responsibility, so everyone has to take themselves super seriously. I think we're in a transitional phase for TV. Representation is a priority (great!) but the industry isn't fully confident with it yet. It's OK, TV has always been about the zeitgeist as much as the show. Perhaps what we need is also more diversity among writers/producers. Right now it feels like a lot of writers are handling their "diverse" characters with kid gloves which can leave them a bit wooden and gets in the way of telling a good story.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

undersuit 5y ago

I would say American media has always been California centric. The majority of screenwriters lived in CA near the majority of media studios and produced the majority of our media. The complaints about CA politics in Netflix are new complaints to me.

Kye 5y ago
I've enjoyed occasionally seeing places I recognize, either in terms of aesthetic or in that I've actually been there, with Georgia's film and TV scene developing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It's not really new. Conservatives tend to have a 1:1 mapping of liberal issue with "california issue", although it is an odd way of putting it.