Monday, December 21, 2020

Netflix is at it again. It says a lot about us that we allow them to get away with it

 

Readers will doubtless remember the scandal over the movie "Cuties" on Netflix back in September.  It portrayed young, pre-teen girls in blatant, highly sexualized acts and attitudes.  At the time, I wrote:


This is nothing more or less than an entertainment industry-sanctioned depiction of pedophile fantasies.  It can't possibly be labeled as anything else, despite vigorous efforts by those promoting it to claim that the movie has redeeming values.  If it does, then monkeys picking excrement out of their butts and flinging it at each other is also morally uplifting.

. . .

I've been particularly sickened by Netflix's call for us to watch the movie before we judge it.  Their arguments are self-serving and specious.  Friends, if I want to judge the efficiency and effectiveness of our city's sewage plant, why would I swim in the raw effluent to do so?  So, too, this movie.  It's entertainment sewage.  Why should I let it splash all over me?  I have more self-respect than that.

This is yet another example of the entertainment industry trying to condition our minds to accept the unacceptable:  to move the "Overton window" of social and cultural acceptability from where it is, to where they want it to be.  It's the latest in a long, long line of such developments.  In the past century we've seen it move from eugenics, to birth control, to abortion, to pornography, to homosexuality, to transsexuality, and now to the legitimization of pedophilia.

If, after becoming aware of this movie and what it portrays and seeks to normalize, you still have a Netflix subscription (or are considering getting one), you're either so deaf, dumb and blind to reality that you deserve pity, or you've allowed yourself to be conditioned for so long that your conscience is no longer functional.

Why has Netflix not already been forced to withdraw this movie by its outraged customers canceling their subscriptions?

And what does that say about our society?


There's more at the link.

Well, it says even more about our society that after such a movie, Netflix is still a major force in the entertainment industry.  Now they're doing it again.


Netflix’s “Tiny Pretty Things” viewers have branded its explicit sex scenes “soft porn.”

The more people tune in to see what all the fuss is about, the more Twitter has been flooded with comments about how explicit the show is.

One even tweeted: “Maybe it’s me, but there is no need for Tiny Pretty Things to literally be softcore porn.

“There is no need for these actors/actresses to be naked all the time or for all the explicit sex scenes, especially while portraying teenagers.”

Another added: “Tiny Pretty Things by @Netflix had so much potential for a story about a Black woman striving to succeed in a white, privileged sport.

“But instead it’s just a show about sex. Why is Netflix so obsessed with sexualizing minors and pushing student-teacher affairs.”


Again, more at the link.

I understand I'm speaking from a perspective - traditional Christian ethics and morals - that is not widely shared these days, even among Christians.  I also admit that I didn't always live up to that perspective myself when I was younger.  Hormones have always been with us, and teens are particularly subject to hormonal drives, as we all remember.

Nevertheless, what Netflix appears to be doing is deliberately pushing the edges of the envelope, trying to accustom people to a radically de-moralized view of society and humanity.  If anything goes, and everybody's doing it, how can we possibly object to Netflix (and others) portraying it?  The answer, of course, is that everybody's not doing it - but Netflix would like them to be, because that way it'll make more money.  Hence, the push to normalize what is most emphatically not normal at all.

If you doubt that, look at any society that isn't being hyper-sexualized by its entertainment industry and social media.  In such parts of the world, teenagers and children have to exist among the realities of life;  hard work to earn a living, struggling to make ends meet, working together as a family to put food on the table and keep a roof over everyone's heads.  There's simply not enough time in the day - or enough energy, after everyone's worked hard all day long - to get up to such antics in the evenings.  Neither is there sufficient privacy.  There's also the fact that birth control is not exactly ubiquitous in such societies, so the risk of pregnancy is always very real.  Netflix never mentions any of those realities, because most of its target audience is cut off from them, insulated by birth control pills and a society that's lost its moral roots and ethical foundations.

Personally, I'd be more than happy to see every Hollywood studio and every TV giant - including Netflix, Disney and all the others - driven out of business.  They won't be, of course.  Too many people simply don't care what they produce.  They'll watch it anyway, and call it "entertainment".  I call it moral sewage.  I'd hate my children to be brought up on a diet of that dreck.  It would make my job as a parent far too difficult to have to counter such insidious propaganda, day in and day out - but I'd have to, because if I loved my children, I wouldn't dream of abandoning them to such hedonistic nonsense.

If you still have a Netflix subscription, may I suggest that says quite a lot about you as a person?  You're enabling this moral degradation to be foisted on our society with every dollar you spend there.  You're voting with your wallet.

I don't care how many other "good" programs may be on Netflix.  It's like the old saying warns us:


If you add a glass of wine to a barrel of sewage, you've got a barrel of sewage.  If you add a glass of sewage to a barrel of wine, you've got a barrel of sewage.


Netflix is moral sewage, IMHO.




Peter


19 comments:

jen said...

I'm glad somebody else noticed this. I thought it was just me. Well put, Peter, thank you.
Jen

Maniac said...

I bought a Roku and was thinking about subscribing to them for streaming content. Nope.

Tina said...

Well said, Peter. We gave up our Netflix subscription many years ago.

We do still use YouTube, on which, for free (and not even signed in), we can watch all kinds of great content. My husband is seriously disabled and depends on streaming for most of his daily "activity", so all of the independent channels made by ordinary people, and great documentaries (also often by ordinary people), enrich his life without him having to compromise with Hollywood. There are other video sites, such as Brighteon, that are independent and are building a good following of content producers, and we enjoy those too.

We also buy used DVDs of series and movies that we want to see: some of the series's we rotate back through on a regular basis. The Andy Griffith Show and Agatha Christi's Poirot never go out of style :-)

boron said...

They're just trying to foist their mental illness onto the general population in this country.

mobius said...

Always was, they're just hitting bottom.

Sam L. said...

I had thought about Netflix, but decided against it. "Cuties", though, told me I was right not to have Netflix.

Beans said...

Well, after watching the commercial that wouldn't go away while reading the NYPost article... whooooo... it's about a black ballerina who 'breaks' into white ballet. Along with sex, drugs, and all the other things.

Which maybe were topical in the 70's, but now, when we have black ballet dancers and black choreographers and black artistes galore?

I wouldn't watch it just for that reason. Add on a side serving of underage sex and what looks like plot elements from "How to get away with Murder" and it looks especially barfy.

Hey, Netflix, how about some original content. "Fame" has already been done. So has the exclusive ballet version, both in movies and in tv shows.

And so, once again, after someone harps at me about getting Netflix, I can use something other than "They fully supported and paid bigly the Obungos and their Cabinet members over the last four years" as an excuse not to have that dreck grace my abode.

Yaknow... There's a reason that so many people are fascinated by the Duggar Family on tv, and it's because these relatively clean-cut, non-sexualized, nice people are more what many Americans want to watch than sexed up children.

Gah.

A pox on all their houses, and personal parts....

McChuck said...

"Big Mouth" was an animated series about pre-teens going through puberty. Netflix original programming, began several years ago.

The Hays Code (1922-45) existed to protect America from Hollywood. And Hollywood from America.

dangerdog said...

I would like see how much money comes from partnerships like T-Mobile since if you have a T-Mobil account you have a "free subscription" to Netflix. I also wonder what the terms of payment are for T-Mobile and other companies.

Nick Flandrey said...

Am I the only one that remembers that there was a whole genre of movies called the 'teen sex comedy' in the 80s?

Porkies anyone? EVERY slasher horror film had teen sex and nudity. Revenge of the Nerds has full frontal female nudity and jokes about oral sex (hair pie!) and revenge porn, and one of the scenes would be considered rape under today's standards. 16 Candles? From panty sniffing, Long Duck Dong and his 'sexy american girl friend' to the guy giving his passed out girlfriend to the kid to molest? Risky Business is about nothing BUT kids having sex with prostitutes. Weird Science? The kids build themselves a sex toy...

Granted that the sex itself wasn't as explicit, and it was WAY more 'vanilla' than today, there was still plenty of it. And when did the movie Lolita first air?

I agree that it seems the perverts in Hollywood have an agenda, but that agenda is nothing new and is across all aspects of society.

Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and a host of others are the tip of the iceberg for film.

Science Fiction had and has a number of pedophiles and molesters, and the con culture was full of (I don't have a good word for it, perhaps 'questionable') sex. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Samuel Delany, George Takei are all tainted or apologists for child molesters. Those are just the ones that jump into my mind.

Sex, especially incest, mixed with horror had a great run in novels during the 70s and 80s, vis Lawrence Sanders and VC Andrews to name just two. No era was without filth and perversion.

As a father of two young girls I'm horrified by the current glorification of lewdness and deviant sex acts. I'm shocked when I consider how far the window of what's acceptable has moved (Look up 2liveCrew and contrast that case with Megan 3Stallion and W.A.P. now.)But it's nothing NEW.

Every medium invented has been used for sexual purposes.

I'm not saying I support it, I condemn it, particularly the sexual exploitation of kids.

I recognize though that Hollywood exists to make money, and teens are about the only ones who still go to movies or 'consume media' and they are the target demographic because of their ability to spend money freely. Teens are sexual creature. For years, about all they do is driven by wanting to have, thinking about having, or worrying about not having sex. That desire is what Hollywood feeds with shows like that. If ADULTS are watching because they want to see kids having sex, then the problem is with the adult.

There are thousands of things I don't like, and that I'd really prefer didn't exist. I don't boycott the internet because it (especially high speed service and video compression) was driven by porn. I watched VHS tapes, even though that format won the war because they licensed to porn publishers. I read books, even though there are many, including whole genres that I find offensive.

I just do my best to avoid the stuff that I don't want to see and I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. I take some small comfort in knowing that the pendulum swings, and there will likely be a pull back and backlash coming. And if I live long enough, I'll see it swing again.

nick

I'll add that even though I'm guilty of it above, "Netflix", "Hollywood", "movies" are no more single entities or monoliths than "republicans" or "conservatives" or "Christians" or "gays" or anyone other company or group. They are all made up of individual people with individual goals and beliefs.

stencil said...

It seems, more and more often, that there are people, some of them American, who feel that the world, and they, would be better off if the United States were not as rich nor as powerful as it now is. Demoralizing the population would be a good way to achieve this.
.

dogsledder said...

We have NO cable TV. We have Roku. We formerly had net-flix but cancelled when they gave the Obamas a $60 million contract as a way to make them super rich for supposedly pulling some excrement out of their butts and putting it on the screen. We have also removed the U-tube channel from our Roku menu. We get our news from the Newsmax channel and the internet. BTW, there are many entertainment options that are FREE on Roku.

Peteforester said...

I served in the military for 21 years. During the entirety of that time, I LIVED government-run healthcare.

YOU.DO.NOT.WANT.GOVERNMENT.RUN.HEALTHCARE!

tomtcos said...

Never watched Cuties or the Obama stuff on Netflix.

Also discovered that a lot of the stuff I did want to watch was no longer available.

So cancelled account in October.

I assume that every organization will have/do/sell stuff that I am not interested in. As an example, CBS publishes Seal Team, which I really like, but also puts out bushels of drek & drivel. Like the evening news...

But the balance of good and bad in Netflix made it no longer worth the monthly fee.

DaddyBear said...

We dropped Netflix last year and I haven't really missed anything. I'll just leave it at "I'm not their target demographic".

We've watched some on Amazon Prime, but are highly selective there. Disney+, of course, because I'm an American who can still vaguely remember Uncle Walt on the TV and I like Star Wars.

Have had really good luck with Sling for streaming things. Lots of older, good things mixed in with the over-sexed dreck. Yeah, I'm separating the wine from the sewage there, but it's not as hard to do as it was with Netflix.

Orvan Taurus said...

Netflix keeps saving me money. Every time I had even begun considering spending money on them, they went and did something that made me go, "No, not right now." This time I wasn't even thinking about it anymore!

Jimmy the Saint said...

The key is to look at the big picture and how it plays out in the long run. Stuff like sexualizing children is a *GREAT* tool for tearing down a society - it's one of the many that has been in use for years. But, for all the fans thereof who think it will continue once society has been torn down are in for a rude awakening. All of a sudden, morality (of some sort) is going to come roaring back, as the new society no longer wishes to be torn down. No more tolerance for any form of deviant behavior, post takeover.

John said...

Pluto (free) which has both movies, entertainment and news channels on its own app you can get by itself isn't bad though it pushes to the Left.

Steve said...

Cancelling my Netflix subscription in 3 . . . . . .2 . . . . . 1 . . . .. .

who could forget this?
https://redstate.com/setonmotley/2018/05/28/obamas-netflix-cronyism-comes-full-circle-n90248

Take a look at the board of directors here
https://ir.netflix.net/governance/Leadership-and-directors/default.aspx