(by Connor Tomlinson | The American Spectator) – Conservatives have been quick to laud Netflix as a supporter of freedom of expression ever since the company defended Dave Chapelle’s recent stand-up special, The Closer. But don’t be fooled, binge-watchers: the streaming giant still wishes you ill. In the new season of serial-killer sympathy drama You, Netflix endorses the wholesale slaughter of the unvaccinated. (SPOILERS AHEAD: though, having suffered through all ten episodes, I’m doing you a favor…) There seemed to be hope that the financial backing of free speech would win out at Netflix. Dear White People showrunner Jaclyn Moore quit after kicking up a fuss on Twitter.
about Chapelle’s special. Another employee, Terra Fields, was suspended when Fields intruded on a director-level meeting to protest. Despite these controversies, co-CEO Ted Sarandos stuck by Chapelle, stating the comedian earned his $20 million keep, and has not incited hate nor violence.
However, as the old adage about broken clocks goes, Netflix isn’t likely to renew this rare principled stand for another season. Paired with lectures about “Missing white woman syndrome,” the institutional racism of America’s justice system, and how “White men get all the second chances they want,” You dedicates its second morally ambiguous murder to an “anti-vaxxer.”
I’m predisposed to like the show. A book collector with horrendous taste in girlfriends? I’ve never identified with a main character more. But, as the culture war wages on, the writers of Netflix’s original series metamorphose their characters into the propaganda mouthpieces of the progressive establishment.
Likewise, You has always attempted to make its serial-killing stalker a socially liberal ally. Joe’s close friends and dating pool are disproportionately “diverse”: non-white, disabled, and LGBT. His internal monologues are peppered with scorn for Trump voters and anti-feminists. But the primary tactic employed by writers to make viewers compromise their moral unease with vigilantism was to make Joe’s victims all awful people. Cheaters, wife beaters, murderers, mob enforcers, stalkers, pedophiles. Quite the rogues’ gallery concocted to tempt a viewers’ appetite for vengeance.
This track record primes us for when, in season 3, suburbanite father Gil gets Joe and Love’s new son ill because his children aren’t vaccinated against meningitis. (A move very out of character, given Gil hosts a science-themed birthday party for his kids an episode prior.) To add insult to injury: Gil’s bludgeoning with a rolling pin is a blow softened when we learn he covered for his son’s repeated sexual assaults, and that he embezzled church funds during an extramarital affair. But these later sins are revealed after he has already been beaten and imprisoned for his anti-vaccine views.
Gil’s confessions break the creative writing 101 convention of “Show, don’t tell.” Having characters monologue their topically relevant backstories shows that the scriptwriters are more committed to bolstering an extra-textual narrative than telling an authentic story. Joe & Love’s anti-“anti-vaxxer” soliloquies likewise bear the hallmarks of the writers’ ideological possession. But the biting irony is that having serial killers side with your political convictions isn’t the ringing endorsement you think it is. The protagonists of You are horrible people, no matter how attractive and intelligent they are. Nobody should take lectures on social responsibility from characters who moonlight as murderers. Read Full Article >
