Netflix and revolution?: The Social Transformations That Will and Will Not Be Broadcast

Scene 1: It’s an interim year between 1922–1966. The Hays Office is ceding ‘morally inappropriate’ expressions of reckless abandonment in visual media to Protestant values via the uncannily religiously-influenced, Hollywood generated terms set out in The Motion Picture Production Code. Circumventing a government-imposed code situation, these suffocating guidelines are agreed to; it’s meant to keep the industry self-regulated. Controversial filmmakers are challenged to creatively squeeze subtle hints, jokes, and insinuations into their visions; a doublespeak of insubordination that can be cloaked as innocence if someone with regulatory authority should press bans or censure. This is true for director-writers such as Alfred Hitchcock as well as director-writers-actresses such as Mae West. There is subversion to read between the lines of approved script — impressive pushing of boundaries, really — but, the revolution will not be televised. Or will it?

Scene 2: It’s the original Woodstock, 1969, smack in between the years of 1955–1975. Nearly half a million hippies revel in ecstasy, streak, mud-wrestle, smoke joints, and rally with deafening impact against the war machine, pulsing in waves set to tempo against the deployment of forces to Vietnam. This massive fandom event, 400,000–500,000 people deep…