You mean about Abercrombie & Fitch? The company whose former CEO Mike Jeffries effectively spelled out his tactics in a now-infamous profile on the news site Salon, saying: "We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely."[1]
There's a difference between targeting a segment and saying others don't belong.
There's also a difference between reaching out to disadvantaged groups -vs- targeting elites.
As an absurd example, compare a fancy restaurant to a soup kitchen. The fancy restaurant is targeting the elite, and excluding the poor. The soup kitchen is targeting the poor, and it'd be ridiculous for Elon Musk to demand food from them - but they'd probably still serve him if he showed up.
Analogously, it feels like you're trying to use the existence of soup kitchens to defend restaurants.
(To be clear, I'm not saying restaurants are evil, or that clothing brands are an act of charity. Just trying to illustrate why people are going to have different intuitions on Abercrombie -vs- clothes for black people)
Not really. I am saying there is an artificial corporate element of inserting political narratives into much of the programming. Authentic pieces where writers just create a good story typically reverberate better with audiences .. despite the writers political opinions whether they lean left or right.
The opposite is true. If a writer feels or is outwardly coerced that he/she must include certain characters, topics, behaviors.... this comes off an not genuine, propagandized, or even corporate commercially. My personal opinion is much of the Netflix original content falls into this later category.
Exactly. I don't know why is it so difficult for people to understand that you aren't sexist, racist (pick your favourite -ist) for noticing this. The time you take to "educate" viewers about your preferred political agenda is time you are taking from the plot, from character development, from story cohesion... It feels forced no matter what.
Yes, really. A story about Christian values is going to come off as political to Hindu or Muslim viewers.
> this comes off an not genuine
I get the feeling you'd say this even about authentically written content, so it's a moot point. You've drawn a line in the sand that characters and content that don't look like you are bad, and that it's origins must be from seedy beginnings rather than decades of hard work by dismissed groups of people that are now finally getting a chance to write stories about people like them.
>Yes, really. A story about Christian values is going to come off as political to Hindu or Muslim viewers.
Not necessarily. If Netflix had 10,000 shows and some of them were stories about Christian values, some were about Hindu values, and some were about Muslim values, nobody reasonable would have a problem with it. However, if all 10,000 shows made a forced effort to somehow include Christian values, or always had to shoehorn at least one character openly wearing a cross and saying a prayer into every show, it would rub on people the wrong way. That's how it is with Netflix original programming. You can break out your "woke" bingo card for any Netflix original show, no matter what it is purportedly about, and score bingo every time. Not every show has to include a facet of the same political agenda. Even if you happen to agree with that agenda, there is something to be said about diversity (true diversity - diversity of thought, not the fake kind peddling on Netflix).
