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Michael's avatar

Good to know I'm not the only falang expat who gets the rolling eyes treatment from his ( Thai?) wife for complaining about the digital wallpaper. Mine's got me pegged for a racist and transphobe based on my knee-jerk grunts of anguish when watching British TV which routinely depicts my old homeland as a rainbows and unicorns paradise of mixed race wedded bliss, flaunting at least one gender-bending family member. No prizes for guessing why I haven't been back for eight years!

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Jennifer Depew, R.D.'s avatar

Great post about predictive programming in movies Nicholas.

I would like add a spoiler take on a one season made for Amazon FreeVee TV series - Sprung. It is more post programming - normalizing the CoV era by both mocking it and embracing some of the silly things like social distancing isolation bubbles. It was poor white trash kind of focused, petty crime dysfunctional non-bio family sit com. CoV let out convicts early so this ragtag bunch stayed at one of their mom's house and she was an old feisty rebel with 70s themed stuff still from her parents supposedly. One of the female white characters said bluntly "I don't like white men anymore but maybe someone will like you." She dated a black man and married a Hispanic man. A Black family were the well to do characters and the sexy black man had been the older mom's love interest but turned out his dad had lied and used his son's picture. The son had a super sexy black female partner. Trans topics didn't make it into the series but the icky Easter Bunny costume head from the 70s was a central image and prop in a few episodes.

The protagonist hero *the white man, and his love interest *Hispanic, didn't make it to a happy ending - she had different goals from him - stay in crime but get richer and urban. He wanted to teach and help his parents.

Breaking up traditional families is a constant theme and mixed-race couples are being promoted. Racial division and dislike are being incited subtly or openly too.

The older woman and a different love interest did work it out and had a cameo moment at the end where they got CoV jabs together.

The series was funny and sexy and highlighted negative stereotypes for whites except the white man hero was nice and liked by everyone, just ended up single while others got the happily ever after.

Propaganda in disguise.

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