Yes, Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies trailer is not relatable for most Indians. But what goes your father’s?
India Today
The teaser-trailer of Zoya Akhtar’s forthcoming film has been criticised for being difficult to identify with, carrying forward the debate of Netflix increasingly becoming a ‘woke’ destination. But does it really have to be anybody’s headache other than Netflix’s?
Netflix, the Apple of online streaming services when it comes to in-your-face, take-it-or-leave-it high pricing, should be renamed Wokeflix, according to a section of the Internet that has been raging about the platform’s ‘out of touch with audience’ content.
For some time now, Netflix has been criticised for producing ‘woke-safe’ content so married to political correctness and social justice that, at times, it ends up being moral discourse instead of entertainment. Netflix, as Internet favourite Elon Musk put it, suffers from the "woke mind virus". It chooses to live in a dream world that is far separated from the lives of its audiences.
A form of that critique was on display in India this weekend. The trigger was the release of the teaser-trailer of Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies. There was nothing politically incorrect about the trailer, but the criticism it attracted followed the same refrain: Yet another Netflix release that is oh-so-out-of-touch!
To be fair, it's hard to imagine many Indians connecting with the minute-and-a-half-long cast announcement video. The yellow-tinted teaser-trailer (for nostalgia’s sake, I guess) had a bunch of teenagers bouncing about in an orchard, picnicking with burgers-cupcakes pulled out of wicker baskets and cool summer drinks sipped from mason jars. The Archies, based on the evidence till now, screams South Bombay and its favourite picnic destination, Alibag.
That got the people’s goat (the fact that three of the six leading cast members are star kids also got the people’s goat, but that’s a debate for another day). From Zoya Akhtar making yet another movie of the rich people, by the rich people, and for the rich people to Netflix wasting production money on a show/film that a majority of India wouldn’t watch or identify with, the criticism was swift and severe.
