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      Striking Writers Find Their Villain: Netflix

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      Fear of protests prompted the streaming giant to shift an anticipated presentation for advertisers to a virtual event and a top executive to skip an honorary gala.Just over a week after thousands of television and movie writers took to picket lines, Netflix is feeling the heat.Late Wednesday night, Netflix abruptly said it was canceling a major Manhattan showcase that it was staging for advertisers next week. Instead of an in-person event held at the fabled Paris Theater, which the streaming company leases, Netflix said the presentation would now be virtual.Hours earlier, Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, said he would not attend the PEN America Literary Gala at the Museum of Natural History on May 18, a marquee event for the literary world. He was scheduled to be honored alongside the “Saturday Night Live” eminence Lorne Michaels. In a statement, Mr. Sarandos explained that he withdrew because the potential demonstrations could overshadow the event.“Given the threat to disrupt this wonderful evening, I thought it was best to pull out so as not to distract from the important work that PEN America does for writers and journalists, as well as the celebration of my friend and personal hero Lorne Michaels,” he said. “I hope the evening is a great success.”Netflix’s one-two punch in cancellations underscored just how much the streaming giant has emerged as an avatar for the writers’ complaints. The writers, who are represented by affiliated branches of the Writers Guild of America, have said that the streaming era has eroded their working conditions and stagnated their wages despite the explosion of television production in recent years, for much of which Netflix has been responsible.The W.G.A. had been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of all the major Hollywood studios, including Netflix, before talks broke down last week. The writers went on strike on May 2. Negotiations have not resumed, and Hollywood is bracing for a prolonged work stoppage.Last week, at a summit in Los Angeles a day after the strike was called, one attendee asked union leaders which studio has been the worst to writers. Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator of the W.G.A., and David Goodman, a chair of the writers’ negotiating committee, answered in unison: “Netflix.” The crowd of 1,800 writers laughed and then applauded, according to a person present at that evening who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the strike.The last time the writers went on strike, in 2007, Netflix was little more than a DVD-by-mail company with a nascent streaming service. But over the past decade, Netflix has produced hundreds of original programs, helping to usher in the streaming era and upending the entertainment industry in the process.Initially, Netflix was cheered by the creative community for creating so many shows, and providing so many opportunities.Demonstrations over the past week have underscored just how much writers have soured on the company. In Los Angeles, Netflix’s Sunset Boulevard headquarters have become a focal point for striking writers. The band Imagine Dragons staged an impromptu concert before hundreds of demonstrators on Tuesday. One writer pleaded on social media this week that more picketers were needed outside the Universal lot, lamenting that “everyone wants to have a party at Netflix” instead.People were passing out fliers with messages like “Please Cancel Netflix Until a Fair Deal Is Reached” on the picket lines.Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, demonstrators were out in force outside the headquarters. “Ted Sarandos is my dad and I hate him,” read one sign. Another said: “I shared my Netflix password. It’s ‘PAY ME’!”While the writers marched, the veteran television writer Peter Hume affixed fliers to picket signs that read “Cancel Until Contract” and “Please Cancel Netflix Until a Fair Deal Is Reached.”Mr. Hume, who has worked on shows like “Charmed” and “Flash Gordon: A Modern Space Opera,” said the streaming giant was responsible for dismantling a system that had trained writers to grow their careers into sustainable, fulfilling jobs.“I have 26 years of continuous service, and I haven’t worked in the last four because I’m too expensive,” Mr. Hume said. “And that’s mostly because Netflix broke the model. I think they put all the money into production in the streaming wars, and they took it away from writers.”Netflix’s decision to cancel its in-person showcase for marketers next week caught much of the entertainment and advertising industry off guard.The company had been scheduled to join the lineup of so-called upfronts, a decades-old tradition where media companies stage extravagant events for advertisers in mid-May to drum up interest — and advertising revenue — for their forthcoming schedule of programming.Netflix, which introduced a lower-priced subscription offering with commercials late last year, was scheduled to hold its very first upfront on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan. Marketers were eager to hear Netflix’s pitch after a decade of operating solely as a premium commercial-free streaming service.“The level of excitement from clients is huge because this is the great white whale,” Kelly Metz, the managing director of advanced TV at Omnicom Media Group, a media buying company, said in an interview earlier this week. “They’ve been free of ads for so long, they’ve been the reach you could never buy, right? So it’s very exciting for them to have Netflix join in.”So it came as a surprise when advertisers planning to attend the presentation received a note from Netflix late Wednesday night, saying that the event would be virtual.“We look forward to sharing our progress on ads and upcoming slate with you,” the note said. “We’ll share a link and more details next week.”The prospect of hundreds of demonstrators outside the event apparently proved too much to bear. Other companies staging upfronts in Manhattan — including NBCUniversal (Radio City Music Hall), Disney (The Javits Center), Fox (The Manhattan Center), YouTube (David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center) and Warner Bros. Discovery (Madison Square Garden) — said on Thursday that their events would proceed as normal, even though writers were planning multiple demonstrations next week.After Ted Sarandos said he would skip the PEN America Literary Gala, the organization said, “As a writers organization, we have been following recent events closely and understand his decision.”Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesMr. Sarandos’s decision to pull out of the PEN America Literary Gala will not disrupt that event either. Mr. Michaels, the “Saturday Night Live” executive producer, will still be honored, and Colin Jost, who co-hosts Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live,” is still scheduled to M.C.“We admire Ted Sarandos’s singular work translating literature to artful presentation onscreen, and his stalwart defense of free expression and satire,” PEN America said in a statement. “As a writers organization, we have been following recent events closely and understand his decision.”The writers’ picket lines have successfully disrupted the productions of some shows, including the Showtime series “Billions” and the Apple TV+ drama “Severance.” On Sunday, the MTV Movie & TV Awards turned into a pretaped affair after the W.G.A. announced it was going to picket that event. The W.G.A. also said on Thursday it would picket the commencement address that David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, is scheduled to give on the campus of Boston University on May 21.One of the writers’ complaints is how their residual pay, a type of royalty, has been disrupted by streaming. Years ago, writers for network television shows could get residual payments every time a show was licensed, whether for syndication, broadcast overseas or a DVD sale.But streaming services like Netflix, which traditionally does not license its programs, have cut off those distribution arms. Instead, the services provide a fixed residual, which writers say has effectively lowered their pay. The A.M.P.T.P., which bargains on behalf of the studios, said last week that it had already offered increased residual payments as part of the negotiations.“According to the W.G.A.’s data, residuals reached an all-time high in 2022 — with almost 45 percent coming from streaming, of which the lion’s share comes from Netflix,” a Netflix spokeswoman said.“Irrespective of the success of a show, Netflix pays residuals as our titles stay on our service,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the practice was unlike what network and cable television did.Outside Netflix’s Los Angeles headquarters on Wednesday, writers on picket lines expressed dismay that the company was beginning to make money off advertising.“If they make money doing ads, my guess would be that ads will become a bigger revenue stream for them,” said Christina Strain, a writer on Netflix’s sci-fi spectacle “Shadow and Bone.” “And then we’re just working for network television without getting network pay.”Sapna Maheshwari More

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      Whose Queen? Netflix and Egypt Spar Over an African Cleopatra.

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      Egyptians say the influential streaming service is dragging an ancient queen into a modern, and decidedly Western, debate — about Black representation in Hollywood — in which she has no real place.On this much, at least, everyone can agree: Cleopatra was a formidable queen of ancient Egypt, the last of the Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Alexander the Great, who went on to even greater posthumous fame as a seductress, immortalized by Shakespeare and Hollywood.Beyond that, many of the details are fuzzy — which is how one of the world’s dominant streaming services ended up in an imbroglio with modern-day Egypt recently, called out by online commenters and even the Egyptian government for casting a Black actress to play Cleopatra in the Netflix docudrama series “African Queens,” which airs on Wednesday.Soon after the show’s trailer appeared last month, Netflix was forced to disable comments as they turned into a hostile, and occasionally racist, pile on. Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the government agency in charge of heritage, declared the show a “falsification of Egyptian history.” A popular television host accused Netflix of trying to “take over our Egyptian culture.” An Egyptian lawyer filed a complaint demanding that the streaming service be shut down in the country.For the show’s makers, the four episodes about Cleopatra were a chance to celebrate one of history’s most famous women as an African ruler, one they portray as Black. But for many Egyptians and historians, that portrayal is at best a misreading, and at worst a negation, of Egyptian history.Despite her Macedonian Greek lineage, the producers of the show say question marks in her family tree leave room for the possibility that her mother was of another background: The identities of Cleopatra’s mother and grandmother are unknown, leading some experts to argue that she was at least partly Indigenous Egyptian.“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them,” Jada Pinkett Smith, who produced “African Queens,” said in a Netflix-sponsored article about the show.Cleopatra was descended from a line of Macedonian Greek kings who ruled Egypt from 323 B.C. to 30 B.C., when it was annexed by Rome, and many scholars say she likely had little, if any, non-Greek blood. The Ptolemies — as all the dynasty’s kings were called — tended to marry their own sisters or other relatives, leaving few openings for new blood, though there is some evidence that she had a Persian ancestor, according to scholars.A sculpture of Cleopatra in the workshop of the Egyptian artist Ibrahim Salah in Giza in 2020.Mohamed Hossam/EPA, via Shutterstock“Statues of Queen Cleopatra confirm that she had Hellenistic (Greek) features, distinguished by light skin, a drawn-out nose and thin lips,” Egypt’s government said on Twitter on April 30.Modern battles over Cleopatra’s heritage and skin color have erupted time after time, finding fresh fuel with each new Hollywood casting, from Elizabeth Taylor, who played her in 1963, to Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga and Gal Gadot, all recent contenders to portray her in various projects.Netflix’s casting of Adele James, a biracial British actress, is a reflection of Western arguments over Black representation in Hollywood and whether history is too dominated by white narratives that revolve around European primacy.But it stirred up a very different debate in Egypt, where many view identity and race through another lens. For many Egyptians, the question is whether Egyptians and their ancient ancestors — geographical location notwithstanding — are African.“Why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?” the show’s director, Tina Gharavi, wrote in a piece defending the casting in Variety last month. “Perhaps it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that.”Egypt sits on the northeast corner of Africa. Its relationship with the continent, however, is deeply ambivalent.Today, it holds membership in the African Union and other continental groups. But in Greek and Roman times, historians say, Egypt was seen as a major player in the Mediterranean world, the gateway to Africa, rather than fully African.Since Arabs conquered Egypt in the seventh century, bringing the Arabic language and Islam with them, Egyptians have shared more cultural, religious and linguistic ties with the predominantly Arab and Muslim Middle East and North Africa than with the rest of Africa.Elizabeth Taylor during the filming of the movie “Cleopatra” in Rome.Associated PressThe ancestors of today’s Egyptians include not only Arabs and native Egyptians, but also Nubians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Circassians, Albanians, Western Europeans and other conquerors, traders, slaves and immigrants who landed in Egypt at various points over the last two millenniums.For all its diversity, Egyptian society often prizes light skin and looks down on darker-skinned Egyptians. But many Egyptians and historians say the racist slurs hurled online at Ms. James, while abhorrent, distract from the real issue. The show is dragging an ancient queen into the middle of contemporary Western debates in which she has no real place, they argue.“How can someone who’s not even from my country claim my heritage just because of their skin color?” said Yasmin El Shazly, an Egyptologist and the deputy director for research and programs at the American Research Center in Egypt.Ancient Egypt and its wonders have long been a trophy in Western culture wars. In 1987, Martin Bernal’s book “Black Athena” argued that European historians had erased Egyptian contributions to ancient Greek culture. Though many scholars agree that much of the evidence it cited was flawed at best, the book became one of the canonical texts of Afrocentrism, a cultural and political movement that, among other things, seeks to counter ingrained ideas about the supposed inferiority of African civilizations.According to some Afrocentrists, ancient Egypt was the Black African civilization that birthed not only African history and culture, but also world civilization until Europeans plundered its technologies, ideas and culture. The pyramids and the pharaohs became sources of pride for these Afrocentrists — and Cleopatra, for all her Greek blood, a potential heroine of the movement.“Cleopatra reacted to the phenomena of oppression and exploitation as a Black woman would,” according to the Hamilton College classicist Shelley Haley, a professor of Africana and an expert on Cleopatra who consulted on the Netflix show. She argued that Cleopatra’s potentially mixed background made her a person of color: “Hence we embrace her as sister.”A still from “Queen Cleopatra,” which stars Adele James.NetflixThis kind of thinking frustrates many Egyptians, historians and Egyptologists. Egyptians, too, are fiercely proud of the pyramids and the pharaohs, even if they are two millenniums removed, and they would like Afrocentrists who hold such views to back off.For many Egyptians, the pharaohs — whose skin color and ancestry are still a matter of scientific debate — were Egyptian, not African. The Black American comedian Kevin Hart was forced to cancel a planned show in Egypt in February after an uproar over his past comments that the pharaohs were Black Africans.It does not help that some Afrocentrists hold that modern-day Egyptians descend from Arab invaders who displaced the Black Africans of ancient Egypt, a theory many Egyptians consider both offensive and inaccurate.“An African-American who’s never been to Egypt saying that ‘this is our heritage and modern Egyptians are these Arab invaders’ is very insulting,” Ms. El Shazly said.Some historians say the modern fixation on whether Cleopatra looked more like Elizabeth Taylor or Ms. James would have felt alien to the ancients.In Cleopatra’s time, Alexandria, the capital of her kingdom, was a cosmopolitan port city bustling with Greeks, Jews, ethnic Egyptians and people from all over who, the Cambridge University historian David Abulafia said, largely saw themselves as part of the Hellenistic world. They identified by culture and religion, he said, not by skin color.“Race is a modern construct of identity politics that’s been imposed on our past,” said Monica Hanna, an Egyptian Egyptologist. “This use and abuse of the past for modern agendas will just hurt everyone, because it’ll give a distorted image of the past.”Though Egyptian critics of the show have denied any racist motives, some Egyptian commentators say their society’s internalized racism and inferiority complexes turned up the volume of the Cleopatra outcry.Unable to take pride in modern-day Egypt’s political repression and cratering economy, some Egyptians “link their identities to ancient glories” or attempt to signal their superiority to the rest of Africa by emphasizing their European roots, said the Egyptian writer AbdelRahman ElGendy.Seizing the chance to whip up Egyptian pride, government-owned media dedicated airtime on three different evening talk shows recently to slamming “African Queens.”The same day, a government-owned media conglomerate announced that it would produce its own Cleopatra documentary. Its film, it pointedly noted, would be based on the “utmost levels” of research and accuracy. More

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      Hollywood Writers Strike Is ‘Going to Be a While’

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      The writers and entertainment companies remain far apart on several key issues, including money, and the standoff could last for months.It’s not just posturing: As screenwriters continue their strike against Hollywood companies, the two sides remain a galaxy apart, portending a potentially long and destructive standoff.“Any hope that this would be fast has faded,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “I hate to say it, but it’s going to be a while.”The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, went on strike on Tuesday after contract negotiations with studios, streaming services and networks failed. By the end of the week, as companies punched back at union in the news media, and striking writers celebrated the disruption of shows filming from finished scripts, Doug Creutz, an analyst at TD Cowen, told clients that a “protracted affair seems likely.” He defined protracted as more than three months — perhaps long enough to affect the Emmy Awards, scheduled for Sept. 18, and delay the fall TV season.The W.G.A. has vowed to stay on strike for as long as it takes. “The week has shown, I think, just how committed and fervent writers’ feelings are about all of this,” Chris Keyser, a chair of the W.G.A. negotiating committee, said in an interview on Friday. “They’re going to stay out until something changes because they can’t afford not to.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, streaming services and networks, has maintained that it hopes “to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry.” Privately, however, member companies say they are prepared to weather a strike of at least 100 days. The most recent writers strike, which began in 2007 and ended in 2008, lasted that long.“It’s fair to say there’s a pretty big gap,” Bob Bakish, chief executive of Paramount Global, told analysts and investors on a conference call on Thursday. Paramount and its CBS subsidiary are prepared to “manage through this strike,” he added, “even if it’s for an extended duration.”Among the writers’ demands is that studios not let artificial intelligence encroach on writers’ credit or compensation.James Estrin/The New York TimesBoth sides have insisted that the other needs to make the first move to restart talks. None are scheduled. For the moment, media companies have turned to contract renewal negotiations with the Directors Guild of America, which start on Wednesday. That contract expires on June 30.Like writers, directors want more money, especially regarding residual payments (a type of royalty) from streaming services, which have rapidly expanded overseas. Before streaming, writers and directors (and other creative contributors, including actors) could receive residual payments whenever a show was licensed, whether that was for syndication, an international deal or DVD sales. In the streaming era, as global services like Netflix and Amazon have been reluctant to license their series, those distribution arms have been cut off.In addition to raises, however, writers want media companies — Netflix, in particular — to make structural changes to the way they do business. The companies — Netflix, in particular — say that is a bridge too far.The W.G.A. has proposals for mandatory staffing and employment guarantees, for instance. The union contends that the proposals are necessary because entertainment companies are increasingly relying on what is known in Hollywood slang as a miniroom. In one example of a miniroom, studios hire a small group of writers to develop a series and write several scripts over two or three months. Because they have not officially ordered the series, studios pay writers less than if they were in a large, traditional writers’ room.And given the relatively short duration of the position, those writers are then left scrambling to find another job if the show is not picked up. If a show does get a green light, fewer writers are sometimes hired because blueprints and several scripts have already been created.“While the W.G.A. has argued” that mandatory staffing and duration of employment “is necessary to preserve the writers’ room, it is in reality a hiring quota that is incompatible with the creative nature of our industry,” the studio alliance said in a statement on Thursday.Writers responded with indignation. “We don’t need the companies protecting us from our own creativity,” said Mr. Keyser, whose writing credits include “Party of Five” and “The Last Tycoon.” “What we need is protection from them essentially eliminating the job of the writer.”Writers also want companies to agree to guarantee that artificial intelligence will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation. Such guarantees are a nonstarter, the studio alliance has said, instead suggesting an annual meeting on advances in the technology. “A.I. raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everyone,” the studios said on Thursday. “It’s something that requires a lot more discussion, which we have committed to doing.”Mr. Keyser’s response: Go pound sand.“This is exactly what they offered us with the internet in 2007 — let’s chat about it every year, until it progresses so far that there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. In that case, have fun on the picket lines, studio executives have said privately: It’s going to be hot out there in July.Over the last week, media companies conveyed an air of business as usual. On Thursday, HBO hosted a red carpet premiere for a documentary, while the Fox broadcast network announced a survivalist reality show called “Stars on Mars” hosted by William Shatner.“3 … 2 … 1 … LIFT OFF!” the network’s promotional materials read.With the exception of late-night shows, which immediately went dark, Mr. Bakish assured Wall Street, “consumers really won’t notice anything for a while.” Networks and streaming services have a large amount of banked content. Reality shows, news programs and some scripted series made by overseas companies are unaffected by the strike. Most movies scheduled for release this year are well past the writing stage.Shares climbed on Friday for every company involved with the failed contract talks; investors tend to like it when costs go down, which is what happens when production slows, as during a strike. If the strike drags into July, analysts pointed out, studios can exit pricey deals with writers under “force majeure” clauses of contracts.“The sorry news for writers is that, in declaring a strike, they may in fact be helping the streaming giants and their parent companies,” Luke Landis, a media and internet analyst at SBV MoffettNathanson, wrote in a report on Wednesday.Writers, however, succeeded in making things difficult for studios over the first week. Apple TV+ was forced to postpone the premiere of “Still,” about Michael J. Fox and his struggle with Parkinson’s disease, because Mr. Fox refused to cross a picket line. In Los Angeles, writers picketed the Apple TV+ set for “Loot,” starring Maya Rudolph, causing taping to halt. In New York, similar actions disrupted production for shows like “Billions,” the Showtime drama. Other affected shows included “Stranger Things” on Netflix, “Hacks” on HBO Max and the MTV Movie & TV Awards telecast on Sunday, which went forward without a host after Drew Barrymore pulled out, citing the strike.“The corporations have gotten too greedy,” Sasha Stewart, a writer for the Netflix documentary series, “Amend: The Fight for America” as well as “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore,” said from a picket line last week. “They want to break us. We have to show them we will not be broken.”Writers went into the strike energized. But a rally at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Wednesday seemed to supercharge the group, in part because leaders from other entertainment unions turned out to support them — and in fiery fashion. During the 2007 strike, writers were largely left to stand alone, while a union representing camera operators, set electricians, makeup artists and other crafts workers blasted the writers for causing “devastation.”Ellen Stutzman, chief negotiator for the writers, received a standing ovation from the estimated 1,800 people who attended the rally. During the session, writers suggested expanding picket lines to the homes of studio chief executives and starting a public campaign to get people to cancel their streaming subscriptions.Some writers realized that Teamsters locals, which represent the many drivers that studios rely on to transport materials (and people), would not cross picket lines. So they started to picket before dawn to intercept them. (The W.G.A. has advised a 9 a.m. starting time.) At least one show, the Apple TV+ dystopian workplace drama “Severance,” was forced to shut down production on Friday as a result of Teamsters drivers’ refusing to cross. More

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      ‘The Glory’ Was a Hit. Now Netflix Is Spending More on K-Dramas.

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      As the series, which focuses on bullying and revenge, became the latest global sensation to emerge from South Korea, Netflix announced it would spend $2.5 billion more on Korean content.“Somebody please help me!” Dong-eun, a high school student, screams as a classmate sears a hair curler into her arm while two other tormentors hold her down.The gruesome scene in a school gymnasium is one of the early, pivotal moments of “The Glory,” the 16-episode drama centered on bullying, social status and revenge that has become the latest in a succession of South Korean mega hits for Netflix. Its breakout sensation, “Squid Game,” became the streamer’s most popular series of all time.“The Glory,” which was released in two parts in December and March, is now Netflix’s fifth most popular non-English television offering ever. Executives said they were somewhat surprised to see how well the show did internationally, noting that it reached the top 10 non-English TV list in 91 countries.It was one of the Korean hits, along with “Squid Game” and “Physical: 100,” that Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, cited last month when he met with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea. There he announced a $2.5 billion investment in South Korean content over the next four years and noted that stories created in the country “are now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.”Don Kang, Netflix’s vice president of content for Korea, said it had been exciting to see the show take off globally. “‘The Glory’ is a great example of a story that resonates authentically with local audiences, but also depicts themes of human psychology and social issues, which audiences everywhere can relate to,” he said in a statement to The New York Times.“The Glory” revolves around Moon Dong-eun, who makes it her life’s mission to seek revenge on the people who bullied her in high school. Her scars serve both as physical reminders of the pain she suffered at the hands of bullies and as the motivation behind her yearslong quest for vengeance. As she ages and develops her complicated payback scheme, she transforms from victim to perpetrator.In braiding together the themes of bullying and revenge — plot devices that have animated dramas for centuries — “The Glory” lured droves of justice-hungry viewers in South Korea and beyond, even without the grand sets and striking visuals that propelled the popularity of “Squid Game.”Netflix officials said they were pleased to discover that a show focused on story line and characters could travel as well as it did. They said they decided early on to release the episodes in two batches in part because of the weightiness of the content.In a country where traditional broadcasters still censor smoking, Netflix is among the platforms that have opened a path for content creators to delve into topics that have long been considered too risqué, said Yu Kon-shik, an adjunct professor of communications at Konkuk University in Seoul and part of the production planning committee at the Korean Broadcasting System.Fans of “The Glory,” some of whom recalled their own experiences with bullying, admitted that they found it gratifying and cathartic to see Dong-eun upend the lives of her enemies, even when she did things they would never consider.“‘The Glory’ is this slow burn of a vengeance,” said Amy Lew, of Temple City, Calif., whose children have been bullied in school. “That’s everyone’s dark side, right? You want to see the underdog win.”“Squid Game” became Netflix’s most popular series of all time.NetflixThere is a reason so many people can relate. Almost one in three students reported being bullied in 2019, according to a UNESCO report, which also found that the prevalence of bullying has increased in almost one in five countries. And although reports of school violence in South Korea are relatively low — about 2 percent of students report being victims, according to its Ministry of Education — the actual figures could be higher because many students are afraid to speak up, said Kim Tae-yeon, a lawyer in Seoul who specializes in the subject.The resonance of “The Glory” and its themes parked the show on Netflix’s Global Top 10 list for non-English television for 13 weeks. (It has spent only three weeks on the list of leading non-English programs in the United States.) It became one of four Korean series among Netflix’s 10 most popular non-English TV offerings of all time, along with “Squid Game,” “All of Us Are Dead” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.”Now the company is hoping to build on those successes by releasing more than 30 Korean series, films and unscripted shows this year alone. At the end of March, just three weeks after the release of the second batch of episodes of “The Glory,” Netflix offered up another new Korean thriller: “Kill Boksoon.”It has spent the past five weeks in Netflix’s top 10 for non-English films.The global success of Korean productions demonstrates the international reach of Netflix — which can subtitle or dub shows in more than 30 languages — but also of the growing power of Seoul as a creative hub, Kang, the Netflix vice president, said.“Korea is a storytelling powerhouse with the ability to showcase uniquely Korean culture and issues,” he said, “while conveying universal emotions that resonate with people around the world.” More

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      Film and TV Writers on Strike Picket Outside Hollywood Studios

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      Those in picket lines at the headquarters of companies like Netflix were critical of working conditions that have become routine in the streaming era.Ellen Stutzman, a senior Writers Guild of America official, stood on a battered patch of grass outside Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles. She was calm — remarkably so, given the wild scene unfolding around her, and the role she had played in its creation.“Hey, Netflix! You’re no good! Pay your writers like you should!” hundreds of striking movie and television writers shouted in unison as they marched outside the Netflix complex. The spectacle had snarled traffic on Sunset Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, and numerous drivers blared horns in support of a strike. Undulating picket signs, a few of which were covered with expletives, added to the sense of chaos, as did a hovering news helicopter and a barking dog. “Wow,” a Netflix employee said as he inched his car out of the company’s driveway, which was blocked by writers.In February, unions representing 11,500 screenwriters selected Ms. Stutzman, 40, to be their chief negotiator in talks with studios and streaming services for a new contract. Negotiations broke off on Monday night, shortly before the contract expired. Ms. Stutzman and other union officials voted unanimously to call a strike, shattering 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood, and bringing the entertainment industry’s creative assembly lines to a grinding halt.“We told them there was a ton of pent-up anger,” Ms. Stutzman said, referring to the companies at the bargaining table, which included Amazon and Apple. “They didn’t seem to believe us.”The throng started a new chant, as if on cue. “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This corporate greed has got to go!”Similar scenes of solidarity unfolded across the entertainment capital. At Paramount Pictures, more than 400 writers — and a few supportive actors, including Rob Lowe — assembled to wave pickets with slogans like “Despicable You” and “Honk if you like words.” Screenwriting titans like Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “Lost”) and Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married,” “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”) marched outside Amazon Studios. Acrimony hung in the air outside Walt Disney Studios, where one writer played drums on empty buckets next to a sign that read, “What we are asking for is a drop in the bucket.”Another sign goaded Mickey Mouse directly: “I smell a rat.”But the strike, at least in its opening hours, seemed to burn hottest at Netflix, with some writers describing the company as “the scene of the crime.” That is because Netflix popularized and, in some cases, pioneered streaming-era practices that writers say have made their profession an unsustainable one — a job that had always been unstable, dependent on audience tastes and the whims of revolving sets of network executives, has become much more so.The streaming giant, for instance, has become known for “mini-rooms,” which is slang for hiring small groups of writers to map out a season before any official greenlight has been given. Because it isn’t a formal writers room, the pay is less. Writers in mini-rooms will sometimes work for as little as 10 weeks, and then have to scramble to find another job. (If the show is greenlit and goes into production, fewer writers are kept on board.)“If you only get a 10-week job, which a lot of people now do, you really have to start looking for a new job on day one,” said Alex Levy, who has written for Netflix shows like “Grace and Frankie.” “In my case, I haven’t been able to get a writing job for months. I’ve had to borrow money from my family to pay my rent.”Lawrence Dai, whose credits include “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “American Born Chinese,” a Disney+ series, echoed Ms. Levy’s frustration. “It feels like an existential moment because it’s becoming impossible to build a career,” he said. “The dream is dead.” More

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      Stream These 6 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in May

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      A couple of comedies, a couple of coming-of-age tales and more are leaving for U.S. subscribers next month. Catch them while you can.This month’s mix of titles leaving Netflix in the United States include two coming-of-age comedy dramas, a twisty thriller throwback, a wrenching Holocaust documentary and two uproarious comedies (one of them smuggled into an animated family film). Give them a stream before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the last day a title is available.)‘Side Effects’ (May 16)The director Steven Soderbergh is always a little bit ahead of the curve, and back in 2013, years before the current vogue of nostalgia for the erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, he assembled this steamy, twisty story of sexual deception and left-field double-crosses. (It was the early 2010s, so there is also a healthy dose of villainy for the health-care and pharmaceutical industries.) The final film before his short-lived retirement, it had Soderbergh reuniting with several of his previous stars, including Jude Law (“Contagion”), Catherine Zeta-Jones (“Traffic”) and Channing Tatum (“Magic Mike”), who are joined by Rooney Mara in a femme fatale turn that is alternately sensuous and scary.Stream it here.‘The Last Days’ (May 18)The first film released by the Shoah Foundation, and executive produced by no less a major name than Steven Spielberg, “The Last Days” won the Academy Award for best documentary feature of 1998. It tells the story of a grim and lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust: how German troops invaded Hungary in March of 1944, long after it was clear that World War II was lost, and proceeded to murder hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews anyway. This chronicle of pure evil is told by the director James Moll as a story of survival and perseverance, focusing on five survivors of the Holocaust and the inspirational ways they spent their spared lives.Stream it here.‘Edge of Seventeen’ (May 31)One of several gay-themed coming-of-age comedy-dramas of the late 1990s, this earnest and truthful tale from the director David Moreton and the screenwriter Todd Stephens has become something of a classic in the queer canon, and for good reason. Set in Stephens’s hometown, Sandusky, Ohio, circa 1984, it beautifully captures a moment when both explicit and coded gay content was becoming part of the mainstream, and when its sensitive teen protagonist, Eric (Chris Stafford), was finding out that his romantic ideals were not quite reflected by his Midwestern, mid-80s reality. Moreton’s direction deftly approaches its rom-com conventions with uncommon candor.Stream it here.‘Galaxy Quest’ (May 31)This wry and witty cult comedy from the director Dean Parisot mixes two wonderful comic ideas well. It is, first and foremost, a winking satire of not only “Star Trek” but also the entire (and, at the time of its 1999 release, comparatively nascent) fan-catering “geek” culture, focusing on a short-lived “Trek”-style television show that has become an obsession object for a generation of super fans. And it is also a swashbuckling comic adventure of its own, playfully borrowing the “Three Amigos” model of fictional characters mistaken for real heroes, as the cast of the sci-fi show is drafted to prevent a real alien invasion. Sigourney Weaver is having a blast, Tim Allen invokes the bloated ego of his Shatner-esque star with ease and Alan Rickman steals the show as the classically trained Shakespearean thespian saddled with the show’s Spock role.Stream it here.‘My Girl’ (May 31)Every generation has its own story about the movie that unexpectedly reduced them to a weeping mess. And if their parents were ripped to shreds by “Old Yeller,” most ’90s kids can tell you their own sob story about heading to the multiplex for what looked like Macaulay Culkin’s charming follow-up to “Home Alone,” only to find … well, not that. Let it suffice to say that the future fast-talking, foul-mouthed “Veep” co-star Anna Chlumsky (the film’s actual star; Culkin’s was a minor supporting role) is charismatic and sympathetic as a young woman going through one of those summers where everything changes, while Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis provide both warmth and comic relief as the grown-ups in her life.Stream it here.‘Rango’ (May 31)The Disney juggernaut (and, to a lesser extent, the Illumination Entertainment invasion) has become so pervasive in family entertainment that it’s easy to miss kid-friendly entertainment that appears without that imprimatur. But this 2011 adventure from Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures is a delight, offering as much entertainment for parents as for kids — or perhaps more, as the screenwriter is the “Gladiator” scribe, John Logan, and his clearest inspiration is the decidedly adult ’70s classic “Chinatown.” Gore Verbinski directs his “Pirates of the Caribbean” leading man, Johnny Depp, in the title role of a lost chameleon who becomes sheriff of a small animal town in the desert; the similarly adult-friendly supporting cast includes Ned Beatty, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton and Ray Winstone.Stream it here. More

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      ‘Baby J’ Review: John Mulaney Punctures His Persona

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      In his highly anticipated new Netflix special, the comic changes his pace to deliver bristlingly funny material about addiction, rehab and what it means to be likable.In his new special, “Baby J,” we hear John Mulaney before we see him.“In the past couple years, I’ve done a lot of work on myself,” says one of the most distinctive voices in comedy, as a black screen transitions into an empty backdrop of a stage. “And I’ve realized that I’ll be fine as long as I get constant attention.”Then in a glamorous, swirling shot orchestrated by the theater director Alex Timbers, the camera gives the comic what he needs. It retreats to reveal Mulaney, 40, in a maroon suit, before circling to give us a picture of the commanding power of stardom. Shot from behind, we see his perspective: a hazy mass of people underneath chandeliers in between an ominous series of statues inside the Symphony Hall in Boston.It’s a striking image setting up a series of bristling comic vignettes that dig into Mulaney’s drug addiction, intervention by friends and stint in rehab. One is tempted to say this is his most personal work, but that isn’t quite right. That first shot tips us off to a theme: You can be invisible in front of a crowd. Mulaney’s comedy, however, has become spikier, pricklier, sometimes slower while remaining as funny as ever, like he’s a pitcher who learned to mix up speeds. He has performed versions of this material throughout the last two years, and this special arrives on Netflix so meticulously honed that the polish doesn’t even show.At some point in the last decade, John Mulaney stopped being merely a very successful comedian and transformed into something larger in the culture: the boyish sweetheart in a scene full of creeps, the wife guy who doesn’t need children to be happy, the aspirational theater kid. I didn’t grasp this shift until, in a short period of time, he checked into rehab, got a very public divorce, and had a child with the actress Olivia Munn. Judging by the reaction online, not to mention the texts on my phone, people had feelings about this — lots of them. Mulaney made the word “parasocial” go mainstream.For comics, being in the news like this can be tricky terrain, both a problem and an opportunity. “Likability is a jail,” Mulaney says at one point in “Baby J,” and his self-deprecating punch lines about his own vanity could be viewed as a prison break. He recalls that when he was young, he would feel jealousy toward the kid who had suddenly become the focus of his classmates’ sympathies when his grandfather died. “Did you ever, like me, hope …” he says, abruptly pausing his cadence to let the audience anticipate his embarrassing thoughts about the possible benefits of the death of grandparents.Mulaney has always spoken at a rapid if precise clip, heavily influenced by Spalding Gray, the pioneering confessional monologuist. (“If story rhythms were legally protected like song hooks, I would be in prison,” Mulaney once tweeted about Gray.) Mulaney’s rat-a-tat-tat delivery demanded you keep up with his thought process. It still does, but his cadence has become more intricate, and the biggest laughs in this new special come from making the audience think they are ahead of him, placing an idea in their head, then slowing down to a pause or stammer to let it percolate.This tactic requires patience and deft timing but can produce an intense response, the comedy equivalent of letting you hear the scratching under the bed while postponing the reveal of the monster long enough to let your imagination run amok.Some of Mulaney’s biggest laughs in “Baby J” come from making the audience think they are ahead of him, placing an idea in their head, then slowing down to a pause or stammer to let it percolate.Marcus Russell Price/NetflixThe stories he tells here present a desperate man, including one about a very sketchy doctor who gives him prescription drugs in exchange for some low-level deception and the removal of his shirt. Mulaney has such a chipper affect that he can put across grim material without weighing the show down, a superpower these days when ambitious comics are often expected to do more than tell jokes.His description of his intervention is a comic highlight, with act-outs of Nick Kroll and Fred Armisen. He’s hilariously flattered by the intervention’s star-studded attendance, “a ‘We Are the World’ of alternative comedians over the age of 40.” And when the woman running it says that she heard he was nice, he corrects her: “Don’t trust the persona.”The funniest part of the special, which at over an hour and 20 minutes is longer than most released by Netflix these days, is an elaborate description of a text he got in rehab from Pete Davidson that a nurse woke up him to read. “Some people suggested we did drugs together because he has tattoos and I am plain,” Mulaney says, a gentle poke at the shallowness of the media and public.This story takes off when we learn that Mulaney had put Davidson’s number in his phone under the name Al Pacino, which gives Mulaney a chance to perform the scene a second time from the nurse’s perspective, including an amazing impersonation of late-era Pacino. I can’t do this justice, except to say that the phrase “daddy khaki pants” made me laugh out loud.Silliness has long been central to Mulaney’s humor, and part of it comes from the incongruity of his seeming either younger than his age or much older (he favors archaic words like “nay” instead of “no”). The titles of his specials tell a Benjamin Button story: “New in Town,” followed by “The Comeback Kid” and “Kid Gorgeous,” followed by “Baby J.” The way it’s going, “Fetal Position” could be next.This is a highly anticipated special, and the modern stand-up event tends to be about something more messy than jokes. When Jerrod Carmichael came out of the closet, he ended his special abruptly, with loose ends; Chris Rock flashed raw emotion in his vengeful response to being slapped by Will Smith. Mulaney remains a tightly controlled performer. His special mostly avoids his divorce and new child, focusing instead on his drug addiction.That story has a happy ending, with him going to rehab and emerging not only sober, but also no longer needing the approval of others. It’s a dramatic, abrupt evolution. “What is someone going to do to me that’s worse than what I would do to myself?” he asks, hinting at his own self-destructive tendencies. “What, are you going to cancel John Mulaney? I’ll kill him.”That’s not the Mulaney his fans thought they knew. But it’s worth noting that if you revisit his first special from 2012, you’ll find a story about lying to a doctor to get drugs (Xanax in that case) as well as a confession that he had a drinking problem that started when he was 13 that he had since kicked.How much has changed with him is something we can never truly know. But we, the audience, can be naïve about our entertainers. We assume we understand them, and when they do something at odds with their persona, we feel betrayed, even angry. Yet no one ever asks us to take accountability for getting it wrong. You would think by now we would approach show business with a little more skepticism. But the truth is that we don’t want to, and great performers intuitively understand that. They’re gifted at creating intimacy with the viewer, at making us believe.John Mulaney appears to have become, as many veteran comics do, more cynical about this relationship, and speaks to it after relating an anecdote that makes him look bad. “As you process and digest how obnoxious, wasteful and unlikable that story is, just remember,” he says, eyes glassy, “that’s one I’m willing to tell you.”This suggests he has done even more unlikable things, but also that whatever you might think, you don’t really know him. An artist who respects his audience less would state this directly. John Mulaney lets the mind wander. More

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      ‘Indian Matchmaking,’ It’s Time to Break Up

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      The Netflix dating show claims that tradition can find love where modernity has failed. But all it does is reinforce age-old prejudices.“In India we don’t say ‘arranged marriage.’ There is ‘marriage’ and then ‘love marriage.’” Of all the platitudes — and she spouts a lot of them — issued forth by Sima Taparia, the self-anointed top matchmaker of Mumbai and breakout star of Netflix’s “Indian Matchmaking,” none land more true than this one. It’s not as if finding husbands and wives for unpaired offspring hasn’t been a fixation of anxious parents across centuries and civilizations, even if in Europe and the United States, love may have finally entered the chat and stayed long enough to become unexceptional. But for older generations in India, parents’ finding spouses for their children has been the norm for so long that the idea of those same adult children’s marrying for “love” is still alien enough for it to occupy an entirely separate category — now a reality-TV show.“Indian Matchmaking,” whose third season premiered on April 21, follows the immaculately coifed, highlighted and bejeweled Taparia as she steamrolls through the lives of unhappily single men and women of Indian origin mostly living in America. She promises to find them the spouses of their dreams, as long as they don’t dream for too much. The cast varies (with some fan favorites and villains occasionally brought back) but most are seemingly well-off young people, urbane and cosmopolitan, who run their own businesses and attend boutique workout classes. This season’s standouts include an emergency-room doctor named Vikash, whose god complex extends to referring to himself in the third person as Vivacious Vikash and performing solo dances to Hindi songs at his friends’ weddings (and allowing video of himself doing so to be broadcast on the show); he wants a tall Hindi-speaking girl because he’s really attached to Indian “culture.” There’s Bobby, the over-energetic teacher who performs a math-themed rap that ends with him snarling “mathematics, boiii” at the screen. Arti from Miami lists weekly visits to Costco as her hobby.The activities that these aspirant matchees choose for the dates they go on (wine tastings, yoga with baby goats) are straight out of gentrified Williamsburg. Interspersed in between these scenes are cameos from their stony-faced parents, astrologers dispensing sex advice, face readers, tarot-card readers and Taparia’s own peremptory admonishments reminding them that they’re never getting everything they want in a partner, so they better start lowering their expectations now.She promises to find them the spouses of their dreams, as long as they don’t dream for too much.That she has not yet made a single match resulting in marriage over the course of two seasons and 16 episodes has deterred neither Taparia herself nor the makers of the show from continuing this Sisyphean journey into a third. She is not one to suffer from impostor syndrome or even, apparently, introspection, so her matchmaking methodology remains resolutely unchanged. The only big departure this time around is the expansion of her hunting grounds to Britain, where she commences her reign of terror in London by telling a 35-year-old divorcee named Priya that she “should not be so much picky.”To people like me, who grew up in this third-party matchmaking milieu, Sima Taparia or Sima Aunty (a nickname she gives herself) is just that — an aunty, an archetype we’ve known and avoided all our lives: the obnoxious and overbearing relative, neighbor or acquaintance with zero sense of boundaries. But to the global audiences who eagerly lapped up “Indian Matchmaking” during the early months of the pandemic, Taparia was a delightful novelty, in one moment tossing bon mots of conjugal wisdom with the serenity of an all-knowing sibyl (“You will only get 60 to 70 percent of what you want; you will never get 100 percent”) and in the next moment ordering a female client to get rid of her “high standards” with the brusqueness of a guidance counselor breaking it to an overzealous student that they’re not getting into Harvard.In India, the business of parents seeking brides and grooms for their children is a cruel and cutthroat one, having originated as a way to preserve caste endogamy.Throughout history, the coming together of two people in matrimony (holy or otherwise) has never been just about the union itself — it is the broader institution that reveals the deepest anxieties (financial, religious or racial) undergirding a society. “Indian Matchmaking” bills itself as just any other show about the caprices of trying to find love in a hostile world. It is predicated on the idea that seeking the help of someone as quaintly old-fashioned as a matchmaker is superior to the travails of dating online, where one must undergo far worse indignities like being ghosted or breadcrumbed. Here, at least, relationship expectations are mutual, and after all, what is a “biodata” (a curiously-named document Taparia uses in her practice) if not the same exaggerated dating-app profile but in résumé form and with fewer wince-inducing mentions about loving tacos and pizza.But in India, the business of parents seeking brides and grooms for their children is a cruel and cutthroat one, having originated as a way to preserve caste endogamy, and it continues to be fraught with violence from every side, a reality that is at odds with the show’s portrayal of the process as a decorous, civilized exchange that takes place over tea and manners. The most pernicious aspects are hidden behind a flimsy veneer of fabricated gentility, apparent in the many euphemistic phrases in which Taparia, the singles she is matching and their parents communicate. The show’s title itself reads like an awkward, faux-anthropological translation, when in reality, the Indian here in “Indian Matchmaking” is merely a stand-in for outrageously wealthy, landed upper-caste Hindus (with an exception here and there).Caste, one of the most malicious forces still dictating India’s social fabric, is gingerly intimated by low-voiced mumblings of “same community.” Openly declaring that you want to marry someone filthy rich would be uncouth, so the words “good family, good upbringing” are uttered frequently. Women cannot afford to be “picky.” Women have to be “flexible.” They must also learn how to “compromise.” My personal favorite of these, though, is “adjust,” one of the hardest-working euphemisms in Indian English, whose meaning linguistically can range from the squeezed addition of a third backside on a bus seat meant to fit only two, to a man’s parents’ demanding that the girl foredoomed to marry their son give up her professional career to pursue full-time daughter-in-law activities. Curiously enough, the men are spared the brunt of such exhortations.“In marriage, every desire becomes a decision,” remarked Susan Sontag in 1956, a strikingly trenchant line that I recalled when watching the show’s participants being quizzed about their “criteria” for a potential spouse. Initially, they start out reciting millennial-speak straight out of the 2012 twee-internet era: the desire for someone “kind” with a “sense of humor.” But upon further prodding, out come tumbling the real demands, the decisions that display that their modernity hasn’t yet overcome the inherited prejudices that govern this entire phenomenon. Costco-obsessed Arti cannot help mentioning that her father would have really, really, really loved for her to marry someone from her “community.” Vivacious Vikash, meanwhile, for all his insistence on Indian “culture,” forgot to specify that he wanted a Hindi-speaking girl from America (a “same community” of its own) and not the “very Indian” woman with the Indian accent that Sima Aunty found for him.Source photographs: NetflixIva Dixit is a staff editor at the magazine. Her previous articles include an appreciation of eating raw red onions and an exploration into the continued popularity of “Emily in Paris.” More