The British miniseries Collateral, which premiered on Netflix last Friday after an initial run on BBC Two last month, is to a post-Brexit United Kingdom what recent seasons of American Horror Story: Cult, American Crime, and even Broad City are to a post-Trump United States.
Aside from the sheer entertainment of the series, Babylon Berlin offers its new American audience the warning it needs in 2018. As the plot progresses, Rath must choose between his morals and nationalism—something Americans struggle with often in the 21st century. But Babylon Berlin shows us how a progressive nation can crumble when it allows bigotry and intolerance to fester.
Netflix’s new six-part documentary series is an enthralling take on cons and corporate malfeasance, from money laundering for cartels to the Trump Organization.
The Punisher is a lot angrier and a lot more incisive than it looks. The Punisher is a story about what violence means to white men.
Netflix's Ozark brings capitalism's corrosive effects to middle america through the lens of a financial adviser and money laundering. Right from the opening monologue narrated by star Jason Bateman, Netflix’s new drama “Ozark” makes clear it doesn’t just want to depict a financial adviser up to his neck in danger. It’s out to convey profound truths about money.
Battle for the Net says that on July 12 it will provide tools for all participating companies and groups to make it “super easy” for their followers and visitors to take action.
One of Orange Is the New Black's greatest accomplishments in Season 3 was exploring the Litchfield guards' inner lives just as deeply, richly, and with just as much complexity as it has the inmates' lives. Rather than set up a false dichotomy where the prisoners are the "good guys" who just got themselves into a bad situation and the guards are the monsters, Season 3 shows us that the guards have it tough, too. So tough, in fact, that they decide to unionize.
Rather than just as solely a psychologically tortured individual, it’s probably more useful to see the Punisher as a cipher onto which we collectively project our ambivalence about veterans.
Context is crucial to the politics of a narrative, always. In the context of the #BlackLivesMatter protests, and the increasing public focus on police brutality toward particularly African American communities in the U.S., it is important to ask how the fantasy of Luke Cage – a black man who is “unbreakable” – fits into the current socio-political landscape.
The series is a nice reminder that although comic books are derided as a kids’ medium, their supernatural setups can provide us with clarifying thought experiments that allow us to approach our present dilemmas with fresh perspectives.
Spread the word