Hi,
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed recently, but discovering stuff on Netflix can be kind of hard.
Sure — you’re presented with a bunch of categories like “Top 10” when you login, but outside of those initial lists, finding things that are compelling and worth your time seems close to impossible. The compelling stuff is there — it’s just buried.
With that in mind, I feel very excited to be able to share two things from Giorgio Angelini, one of my favourite documentary makers.
The first is something I’ve been wanting him to write forever — about what it was like to release his latest documentary on Netflix.
Secondly — Giorgio’s let me publish his new short here on Webworm. It strikes at the heart of what’s going on in America right now. He sent me a cut over the weekend, and I replied with this:
Please take care when watching. It’s nine minutes long, and I’d encourage you to find a quiet space to watch it. If you’re feeling fragile, you can watch it when you’re feeling more together. It’s a really honest, hard take on what’s happening — and it’s my belief we shouldn’t have our heads in the sand.
If you like what he made, you can sign up to his brand new newsletter Fever Dream Nation. He’s planning to make more video essays like this one.
Let me know what you think. It floored me.
David.
Democracy Dies in Dank Memes
by Giorgio Angelini.
Earlier this year, Netflix quietly released a documentary called The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem. It was a wily and powerful indictment of the internet machinery behind the collective delusion that has beset this country. It tells the story about how unwitting nerds back in the mid-2000s started a website called 4chan.org as a way to build community over a shared love of anime and—well—porn. Lots and lots of porn.
What they created ended up becoming the engine of innovation in the burgeoning bullshit industrial complex. It’s the place where QAnon was first seeded into the digital fantasies of the terminally online. And it became the meme factory that undergirds the vast majority of conservative propaganda. The film explains so much about how and why we got to this moment.
But you probably didn’t see it.
Because Netflix got cold feet and buried it in their library, ensuring no one would ever find it. So much so, that one of the guys who made it didn’t even see it pop up on his “recommended” list on its premiere night. And when he clicked through to the documentary section, it wasn’t there either. He had to type out the title, “T-H-E A-N-T-I-S-O-C-I-A-L N-E-T-W-O-R-K (COLON) M-E-M-E-S T-O M-A-Y-H-E-M” in order to find it.
I know this, because that guy was me.
When Netflix bought the project, the idea for the film had spun out of a previous indie project I made with Arthur Jones called Feels Good Man, a documentary about the creator of Pepe the frog and his fight to take back control of his creation from the grips of neo-nazis and online trolls. The film received a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and went on to win a News & Doc Emmy.
So when Netflix bought our story pitch for what would end up becoming The Antisocial Network, it felt like I had graduated from indie obscurity to “legitimate” filmmaker. Netflix promised a full festival run, awards PR, and marketing support.
That was in 2022. But by the time the film finally came out in April of this year, it was a different Netflix.
In the time it took us to make The Antisocial Network, their stock price had dropped in half, there were huge layoffs, and the company had decided to refocus its brand away from “marquee” documentaries. There was no more budget for supporting heady, artistically ambitious works. It was all about celebrities and death, sometimes both at once.
Boohoo. “Filmmaker doesn’t get the love and support from his distributor like he had hoped.” It’s not a unique experience in Hollywood, I realize. But what is perhaps more important to recognize here than my own hurt ego is what that moment back in April portended. We are now in the early stages of a monumental silencing of political speech of all kinds.
As the film and television industry has consolidated, monopolized, and cannibalized itself, it’s transformed into a machine most interested in retaining its fragile subscriber base, and it’s become far more risk averse.
Just two weeks ago, when Jeff Bezos squashed the Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, it came as a shock to staff and readers alike. The Los Angeles Times had done the same just a few days before. Those decisions, and Netflix’s decision to bury our film, underscore a scary truth about what may come next: fascism is self-perpetuating and exponential, like a black hole sucking all the energy that surrounds it.
Fascism tends to flourish in moments of extreme wealth concentration. Strong men come to power promising to ease the woes of the working class through populist rhetoric. But in the end, their platitudes only serve their true mission: to ensure the further concentration of oligarchic wealth at the expense of the working class.
As their monopolies grow, straddling multiple, unrelated industries, the downside risk of offending the despot-of-the-moment becomes existential. Industry begins to cower to the whims of the despot, for fear that he’ll inflict his wrath on their ever-widening fiefdoms. And here we are.
Donald Trump has been afforded unbelievable powers no president before him has ever known. Thanks to a conservative supermajority Supreme Court, he now has legal cover to direct the Justice Department’s activities, turning federal prosecutors into an extension of his own fragile ego and insatiable need for retribution. And these monopolies have clearly taken notice.
Trump has long fantasized about his desire to “fix” libel law. And now, controlling the Senate, and most likely the House, with a totally deferential Supreme Court, he’ll be more emboldened than ever to unleash the full power of the federal state on anyone who speaks ill of him, legitimately or not. Many media companies will capitulate, and many already have.
What this moment calls for is unwavering and brave, genre-breaking storytelling like Fahrenheit 9/11, Time, and The Act of Killing. But who will fund these titles now? Who will put them out?
Inevitably, the “legitimate” film business will double down on producing salacious gruel to be force-fed in the form of 4-part murder porn. What we need, though, is to develop new forms of distribution, to get ahead of what’s to come, to find ways of rebuilding an independent film industry that’s been decimated by the global pandemic and the rapid consolidation that followed.
But hey! Chin up, comrade! In the meantime, search for “T-H-E A-N-T-I-S-O-C-I-A-L N-E-T-W-O-R-K (COLON) M-E-M-E-S T-O M-A-Y-H-E-M” in your Netflix search bar, and check out a film that can help shed some light on reality during this otherwise delirious moment.
While it’s on the platform, anyhow.
-Giorgio Angelini.
Giorgio also has a brand new newsletter called Fever Dream Nation, where he’s going to be experimenting with more video essays. Also keep an eye on his upcoming work on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. And you can try finding The Antisocial Network on Netflix.
David here again.
Netflix is a very different beast today to what it was in 2016 when we released Dark Tourist (for anyone asking, this was what we’d planned for S2 that never happened).
The user experience is very different, to the point where I barely use it. Scrolling their lists is limiting, and I’m rarely being served anything I want. Just some Ryan Reynolds action film no-one will ever talk about again, or the latest true-crime 20 part series that benefits absolutely no-one.
I know there are thousands of thousands of titles on there that are great — you’ll just never find them. Communities like Letterboxd (born and bred in New Zealand) become essential for curation and discovery. This is my profile there, if you’re curious.
I’d love to know about your experience in finding things on streaming sites, Netflix or otherwise.
And I want to know how Giorgio’s video essay hit you. I can’t stop thinking about it, and will be watching out for more of his stuff on Fever Dream Nation.
Stay safe, and stay sane,
David.
PS: The free Webworm tickets for Tickled in Melbourne went pretty quickly and the whole show is sold out — but the Nova cinema has added a second screening on December 6. You can buy tickets for that here (I’ll do a Q&A after, too).
A few tickets are also left for Sydney on November 27.
Proceeds all go to the beautiful indie cinemas I’m doing these screenings at.
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