"Is Netflix really making us less intelligent? I don't mean in the old school, "TV rots your brain" sense; that hours spent binging episodes of "Bridgerton" or "Squid Game" could be better spent dusting up on your Dostoevsky. I mean: is Netflix dumbing down the dialogue and storytelling in its films and TV shows to suit an audience it knows is barely paying attention?"
"The Duffer Brothers' Netflixseries began back in 2016 as a nostalgic tribute to all things 80s, particularly Stephen King novels and Steven Spielberg movies "Firestarter" meets "E.T." by way of Dungeons and Dragons. But a victim of its own world-conquering success, over nine years and five seasons, the show has become bloated and sluggish. Much of "Stranger Things' early appeal was visual: the clothes, the sets, the cheesy-but-cool special effects, the epic fight sequences."
"Say everything, show nothing "Stranger Things" isn't alone. Spend any time zapping through Netflix originals and a pattern quickly emerges. Characters describe what they are doing or feeling. They remind you of what happened moments earlier. They spell out their goals and motivations, just in case you missed anything the first or second time around. In "Irish Wish," a disposable Netflix body-swap fantasy, Maddie Kelly (Lindsay Lohan) delivers an exposition dump so naked it's almost impressive."
Netflix originals show a growing tendency toward overt exposition and simplified dialogue designed to make plots immediately accessible. Popular series like Stranger Things shifted from visual, atmospheric storytelling to scenes where characters explicitly state actions and motivations. Repetition of plot points and dialogue that spells out emotions appear frequently across Netflix productions. Films such as Irish Wish include naked exposition dumps that eliminate subtlety and demand less viewer attention. This pattern prioritizes clarity and immediate comprehension over showing through action, sacrificing narrative complexity, nuance, and opportunities for audience inference and engagement.
Read at www.dw.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]