starts like a serious crime drama. For a few minutes I thought it was another fake documentary. After about half an episode, I realized that it was the first time I had seen a film of this genre. It can only be said that Netflix has come out to do things again. To describe the style of this film, I would like to define it as a pseudo-social streaming film.
Briefly talk about the plot.
The story starts off "dick" (literally). A case of "madness" has occurred at a middle school in the peaceful California seaside town of Oceanside. Someone vandalized the school's staff parking lot, and spray-painted 27 big chickens on 27 cars! The school soon found out the always naughty bad student Dylan, and there was a proof. So Dylan was ordered to drop out. However, Dylan's classmate Peter felt something was wrong. Together with his good friends, he started interviewing classmates and teachers with a camera, intending to uncover the truth.
In this regard, from the perspective of Peter's team's interviews and collection of videos, this 8-episode unit drama was opened.
There are a few places in this movie that are very interesting.
First of all, although it is a 4K high-definition film, the pictures I see a lot of time make people wonder if it is time to buy a vertical screen when buying a TV in the future?
However, it doesn't feel awkward when you look at it. No way, after all, mobile phones and social networks are such an important part of our lives. Especially for such a group of high school students, it is normal to complain and have sex on the Internet. And even if someone like Dylan looks like two, he is actually an American version of Kuaishou Internet celebrity with three-digit fans. His girlfriend will also play games on live broadcast or something.
Then, with Peter's perspective, we found that browsing social media records may be more useful than interviews when looking for the truth.
After all, people can lie for a variety of purposes, or simply have a bad memory. And Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms, recorded images and videos plus various time-stamped location markers can often provide more and more reliable information. Moreover, things sent by different people are also very convenient to confirm and complement each other.
Although the United States does not have as many surveillance cameras on the streets as China, everyone's mobile phone is a mobile high-definition monitor.
Peter even used the things his classmates posted on social media to completely reorganize the timeline of various details of a party.
In short, let you see the pervasiveness of social media. As long as you dig carefully, the massive amount of information can be "monitored" and "restored" amazing.
Secondly, after watching a few episodes, I found out, but in fact, what I should have thought of early in the morning are these videos made by Peter that the audience has been watching, and also the videos that Peter put on the online YouTube account.
Therefore, the online drama you are watching is actually an online video in the drama. The only difference is that you are watching it as a drama, and the people in the drama are watching it as a fact.
Then, in one episode, Peter starts talking about the "viewer" feedback on the previous episodes. And this feedback, in turn, inspired Peter and drove the development of the plot.
At some point, before the audience realized it, the fourth wall was suddenly broken in a new way.
That's why I want to define this as a fake social streaming film.
So what is this fake social streaming film about? What's more interesting than emphasizing the pervasiveness of social media, the sheer volume of information, and the risk of prying eyes on personal privacy?
Here's the goofy, boring aesthetic of the streaming age represented by all kinds of hilarious prank videos (including China's Kuaishou). The film is silly and funny at times. Painting Tintin on the teacher's car was a silly and funny thing. The tone of the show has also been deviated from here. In the final analysis, it is a prank case like painting Tintin on the car. No killing, no arson, no robbery, no sexual assault. The extension of all stories is based on the "light" and boring side of life. One of the main actors is himself a troublemaker video celebrity, and some clips are from real YouTube clips, so to a certain extent, this also blurs the line between drama and reality again. The comedies that have become popular in recent years are all "embarrassing" comedies, each one is more embarrassing, so embarrassing that you want to cry. And this drama is not embarrassing, it should belong to a stupid comedy that once seemed not high enough. And this time, selling stupid comedies finally made a turnaround in the force.
There's also the sex of young people in the streaming age. How they describe sex, how they view sex, and how that fits in well with social media. For example, would you break up with your boyfriend because he posted an ugly photo of you on your Moments? Conversely, will you get a lot of likes because the photo is funny, regardless of your girlfriend's dissuasion? These are serious issues for young people. After all, even cheating and catching rape may have happened in virtual space.
There’s also the anxiety of relationships and personal identity in the age of social media. This anxiety is more pronounced among high school students who are going through puberty. On the one hand, for these Internet-age Aboriginal people, the use of social media is less a recording than a show about who they are. On the other hand, it is based on this performative understanding that it is easier to develop anxiety about relationships and personal identity.
Finally, it is the portrayal of the power relationship between the old and the new media.
The video surveillance used by schools and teachers is, in modern terms, "slag image quality", and is basically rigid and monotonous, such as the same angle, similar placement and content. This is in stark contrast to the high-definition picture quality of the students, the various new platforms (friends, have you heard of Twitch?) The various hashtags, and all kinds of fanciful camera movements. However, from the very beginning, the old media firmly occupied the high ground of power and had an overwhelming advantage in the right to speak.
However, as Peter's video slowly gained popularity on the Internet, something interesting happened when it suddenly became "popular" one day. As a direct representative of traditional media, local TV news channels need to increase their ratings by taking advantage of online hotspots, but on the other hand, their intervention has also brought about a reverse change in the power situation. The intervention of local TV stations was the last straw to turn the tide. This interaction of social media and traditional media is also a reflection of the current state of media. The world belongs to the young in the end, and as the new media Aboriginal students step out of school, the handover of power is self-evident.
But the new one must be better, right? Another layer of tone of the whole film is a mockery of the popular "true crime" documentaries. After all, no matter what platform it is, videos are made by people and edited by people. The clues of Peter's experience - doubt - overthrow - doubt again, also reflect the screenwriters' suspicion and ridicule of the subjectivity and incitement of streaming media based on grassroots and unconstrained by censorship.
By the end, some truths are revealed, but more truths can only be left open-ended for the audience to ponder.
As a representative of the new streaming media force, Netflix, through this show, undoubtedly blew a new horn in the competition with traditional media content providers.
[Originally published in the Gongzhong account "Australian Northern Chronicle" OutbackNT]
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