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GLOW on Netflix


Dolfan in NYC

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

It would be cool if another service would pick it up. Come on Prime, Hulu, hell, even Apple.

Is it owned directly by Netflix? Because I'm not sure they'd allow it to go elsewhere if so.

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6 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Hmm.

 

 

This doesn't surprise me at all.  This show spent a lot of time putting the minority characters in a position where they played stereotypical characters on the "show," but never really fully fleshed them out on the show.  I liked the show, and understand where they were trying to go, but asking someone to play a stereotype for most of their screen time kind of means their playing a stereotype.  

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I'm not sure what to say about that.  I mean it's wrestling.  We still have stereotypes NOW and it's been 30+ years since GLOW.  Akira Tozawa has a team of ninjas.  R-Truth is dumb as a post but you should see him dance.  I thought the show did a decent job of contrasting the stereotypical roles the workers were playing vs their real lives, especially in the episode where they all changed places.  But the actresses know better than I do and if they feel like things could have been done better, then they definitely should be talking about it. 

My cynicism toward the intersection of filmmaking and business tells me that Netflix was probably on the fence about keeping the show going, thought about their actresses speaking out, and decided to just drop it all and not deal with this in public.

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1 minute ago, Technico Support said:

I'm not sure what to say about that.  I mean it's wrestling.  We still have stereotypes NOW and it's been 30+ years since GLOW.  Akira Tozawa has a team of ninjas.  R-Truth is dumb as a post but you should see him dance.  I thought the show did a decent job of contrasting the stereotypical roles the workers were playing vs their real lives, especially in the episode where they all changed places.  But the actresses know better than I do and if they feel like things could have been done better, then they definitely should be talking about it. 

I think the problem with the stereotypes in GLOW were that they were done to make a point about how racist the wrestling industry can be, but then didn't spend the time to properly dispel the stereotypes.  The show was basically Allison Brie and Betty Gilpin, the white women who were playing the least offensive stereotypes, getting 75% of the screen time.  The rest of the cast, who were put into the most offensive characters, had to share the remaining 25% of the screen time.  So instead of playing strong women dispelling stereotypes, most of their time was spent playing the stereotypes.  As a minority, I'd take a job that was about me dispelling a stereotype, but would turn one down if I was asked to play a stereotype.  These women were put in a position where they were supposed to be dispelling stereotypes, but most of their time was spent playing the stereotype they were supposed to be dispelling.  There is a reason why pretty much every minority released a statement about it.

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Awesome Kong got that really excellent episode, but you didn’t really get anything comparable for Carmen, Arthie, and Jenny. A fourth season might have helped with Carmen’s story, but there wasn’t much promising on the horizon for the other characters.

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I could swear GLOW's whole format was each episode focused on one particular character and that would be the A story and the B story would be the more serialized content. Brie and Gilpin had more episodes dedicated to them because they're the main characters of the series, but even then, I thought nearly everyone was covered.

 

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8 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I could swear GLOW's whole format was each episode focused on one particular character and that would be the A story and the B story would be the more serialized content. Brie and Gilpin had more episodes dedicated to them because they're the main characters of the series, but even then, I thought nearly everyone was covered.

 

Yes and no.  I feel like the show did an OK job with the minority characters, but I don't think they did nearly as well as a show like Orange is the New Black.  By the time I stopped watching that show, I hated when Piper was on the screen because they did such a great job with the rest of the cast.  This show was less of a ensemble and more Brie and Gilpin and their minority friends.  It just never felt like they reached the point where the minority characters were fleshed out in the way they needed to be to accomplish the goals of the show.  

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Well, it’s worth noting that OITNB was an hour-long show, and GLOW was only a half-hour.  Just way less real estate to go around.  By my count, there were 17 core cast members by the 3rd season.  You can’t service that many people equally in 30 minutes and have a show that makes any kind of sense.  So, you kind of had to pick your spots to highlight people, and I thought the show did a really good job of that, and that they did reckon with some of the racial implications of these characters when it fit the story.  In season 3, there’s an episode built around Melrose doing a Very Racist take on Fortune Cookie during the show where they swapped parts, which gives Jennny a chance to talk about losing family members in the Killing Fields and all her family sacrificed so she could come to America and end up playing a stereotype, just as one example.  And, of course, one of the best episodes is the one about Tamme being ashamed of her son finding out she’s Welfare Queen.

I almost wonder if these complaints are more specifically about the scripts for season 4?

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