Oh right, I’ve pretty much always been this cynical.
I’m watching two new trailers for shows coming up soon – Netflix’ new take on “Lost in Space” and Amazon Prime’s interpretation of “Dangerous Books for Boys” and I can’t just sit back and enjoy these sci-fi fantasy romps… I’m distracted by what seems like the dated all-white casts. And I’m not saying that to be “woke”. I’m not saying that to show you how aware I am of privilege or anything like that, I’m saying it because it seems so tone deaf and backwards for these two ultimate players in new media to focus on white suburbia and white escapism in the midst of all the progress that’s being made.
Of course, it would be kind of amazing if the new Lost in Space (replete with token possibly-adopted one-of-these-things-doesn’t-look-like-the-other daughter) actually played with this cynical outlook… here’s the white family escaping from Earth and maybe it’s not the rising seas? I mean, who’s going to get off the planet first as the planet dies out from under us?
White flight escaping from those urban centers suddenly deemed to simply be too replete with dangerous dark men writ species-wide – if Netflix tackled THAT (“Danger Will Robinson, Danger! That man is wearing a hoodie!”) that would be kind of stunning. The undermining of that bastion of what people are thinking about when they’re wearing their MAGA hats : late 50s early 60s wholesome white America… that would be kind of especially delicious. A kind of updated Pleasantville with a spaceship.
But having just completed Altered Carbon (so pretty – but so much a product of the exact themes it’s pretending to tackle in a meta kind of way) I don’t really have any faith that Netflix is that deep.
