Where are my struggles!? - Hollywood on Netflix - Review

I think one of the most important things I have learned in my Literature classes in school was one simple but effective rule: If you want your story to be interesting it needs conflict. There needs to be something your characters are going through that the audience wants to hear about.
The new Netflix show Hollywood had the perfect material for this rule to come into effect, a gay black writer writing a script to be directed by a half Filipino director, produced by a studio lead by a Jewish woman and a gay producer and a black actress and a gay actor competing for roles in 1940s Hollywood, with the topic of prostitution thrown into the mix - and then it dropped all that potential. Everything goes perfectly smooth, somehow everything is magically made possible, the black actress gets the main role, the writer, director, producer, studio boss, everyone just gets to do their job, and while I get the sentiment that it's amazing to see marginalized folks succeed - it does not make a great plot. In fact, it makes this story not only feel boring and overly polished, it also makes it feel unrealistic. A bunch of white studio executives just agreeing that of course the very talented black girl is the perfect cast for this major motion picture? I honest to god doubt that this would be realistic in 2020 Hollywood, let alone the 1940s. Now it is mentioned a lot that all these controversial choices the studio makes would cause trouble - characters discuss protests, murder threats, the KKK, people not getting any more work after coming out as gay, but nothing actually happens. Not only is this not a struggle or conflict, it also breaks the other very basic rule of writing, especially scriptwriting, "show, don't tell", and more importantly: It makes those very real problems that are imminent even now, 80 years later, seem like something marginalized people make up, they are shown as something people are afraid of but that are not actually real. That's what I'd call wasted potential because if all those issues were fleshed out more, this would have been an amazing and important story to tell. Additionally, because of the missing struggles, all of the characters become incredibly two-dimensional, which in itself is a waste of a very talented cast. What could have been a masterpiece has instead been a utopia, lovely to see, but hard to believe and harder to keep in mind. Personally I will easily forget this whole story in just a couple of days now, and I think that is sad.
Dear Netflix, you had gold in your hands here - I would love to see this rewritten as more than a beautiful but forgettable dream. Give me the harsh reality of 1940s Hollywood. Give me the harsh reality of a world where racism was even more imminent than nowadays, where homophobia was up another level, where sexism was a more profound issue than figuring out the details - don't give me a feelgood story that I couldn't ever believe no matter what decade it was set in. Give it a rewrite. Because the base material does deserve it. This can be done so much better.

Special - Review

Diversity in entertainment media is one of the biggest discussions of our time. After several centuries of the dyacis heterosexual white able-bodied male perspective being pre-dominant in out books, movies, tv-shows, voices get louder for more representation for other people. What we do, as humanity, is baby-steps, as usual - we as a society are still struggling to give dyacis heterosexual white able-bodied women some screentime and just let them have a win every once in a while, or any other group with just one of those factors changed from the aforementioned norm. The problem with that is: It's everything but an accurate portrayal of life.
Now while we are slowly (oh so very slowly...) getting better at this on the gender and race side, one of the groups still being let down on a regular basis are disabled people, and that is a shame.
Luckily, another baby-step was walked by Netflix who just released their new show "Special".
"Special" is the story of young Ryan Hayes, a gay man who also has a mild form of cerebral palsy, resulting in him having a limp and trouble coordinating his hands. He is living with his mum who fully lives for taking care of him. After a car accident, he decides to take his life into his own hands and to become independent. He starts an internship at an online magazine (very similar to Buzzfeed). All of his colleagues assume that his limp was a result of the car accident and instead of correcting them, he writes his article about exactly that.
The show is based on "I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves" by Ryan O'Connell who also wrote the script for the show, executive produced it and plays Ryan Hayes on it - and he does all of that brilliantly.
Apart from the refreshing portrayal of layered minority identities (we also have Ryans best friend Kim who is fat and Indian - almost as if people can be more than one of those things) and the absolute honesty about gay and disabled realities, "Special" captivates with its unbreakable humour that really doesn't take prisoners and yet manages to walk the fine line between being gallows humour and being disrespectful.
That is also what makes "Special" an absolute fun thing to watch - none of this is a sad, tragic petty story so we can all feel sorry for someone, its a wonderful portrayal of someone's reality with all the downs, yes, but also all the ups, the happy moments, the friendships, the love. Dear media producers, please give me much, much more of that!

Disentchantment - Review

Yes, this is it: My first review for a tv show! So far, the reason I never did one was that most of the time, I am hella late to the party. Not this time, though - Disentchantment was released on Netflix on August 17th, and we binged it over the weekend real quick.

Disentchantment is about Princess Bean, the princess of Dreamland, a fictional medieval country located on a cliff. The whole setting is based on epic fantasy franchises like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, but in old Matt Groening fashion, it takes the piss out of it. Princess Bean is a teenager, rebellious against her strict father, prone to drinking a lot and simply willing to have a good old time with booze and sex. Also, she misses her mother who got killed when she was a child, and feels very distant from her stepmother Una, who is some kind of fish-creature. The story starts with her getting married to a prince to form an alliance. Disguised as a wedding gift, she is sent a personal demon, Lucifer, who encourages her to go after her urges, and drunk Bean ruins her wedding and runs away. In the middle of it all we also meet Elfo, the elf (duh), who left the Elf Kingdom because everything was too happy and peaceful for his taste. Basically, Elfo and Lucifer act as the shoulder angel and devil for Bean, even though Elfo isn't very good at his job as the voice of peace. Beans dad thinks Lucifer is a speaking cat, and allows Elfo to the castle because with the help of his elf blood, he hopes to be able to find immortality.

While the first one or two episodes aren't that good, the story quickly picks up pace. The initial set-up, character introduction etc. is a bit lame, but it is worth to stick through that for the more interesting stuff. While I have to say that so far, I enjoyed The Simpsons and Futurama way more than Disentchantment, there is a lot of potential, and it is an overall enjoyable tv show after all. And as long as I enjoyed a thing, why should I not say it?