Not the commenter you're responding to, but I've found quite the opposite. Content on Netflix is increasingly trending towards one narrow "woke" way of seeing the world, and nothing that falls outside of the narrow, American left perspective, or encourages any diversity of thought is available anymore.
Can you proviede some examples of this narrow way of seeing the world? TV shows tell stories. Occasionally those stories aren't going to be towards one's liking.
For example, Amazon Prime is constantly spamming me with ads for Jack Ryan. My take is that they do so because they paid a lot for the IP. Not because it's trying to shove the benefits of American militarism abroad down my throat.
They're shoving the agenda down our throats. A lot of shows become overly politicized, with messages of trans rights, BLM, and other stuff being injected to such a degree that it becomes too much and frankly artificial.
I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show. We see that in extreme levels at the moment.
Is "the agenda" not a bit of a conspiratorial way of looking at it though?
It's been notoriously difficult for creators to find mainstream outlets to tell stories about, to use your examples, trans and black lives, that aren't watered down out of fear of alienating a white, heterosexual audience. It's politicised in so much as defending your right to exist in the public sphere is always political, but is that a problem?
I love that we're starting to see stories that show more perspectives. It doesn't mean every show or movie will be amazing, but when has that ever been true? I don't think it follows that doing this "takes away" from the quality of the writing. A badly written show is a badly written show.
> I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show.
I think if you replace the last part of this with "as long as it doesn't bother me" then your statement is probably more accurate. From my experience bad shows are bad because of terrible writing overall, not because one of the characters is a minority.
> We see that in extreme levels at the moment.
Compared to a decade or more ago when you weren't seeing trans people on TV, I guess you could say it's "extreme" nowadays.
I'm going to front-load this by stating that I 100% agree that representation matters, and absolutely welcome a diversity of perspectives in media. Furthermore, I do believe that much criticism of "woke" media is a knee-jerk reaction to new, unfamiliar values and shifting power.
That said: Netflix's deployment of "wokeness" can feel completely shoehorned in and utterly arbitrary, a cynical technique that affirms the viewers' perspective, thereby increasing engagement.
I'm not "outraged" by it in the slightest. It tends to align with my own worldview. But at the end of the day it just makes for crummy content.
