To nie jest OK

Carrie à la Netflix? Sort of, yes, but mostly a good coming-of-age story where the supernatural (not clearly defined at first) serves as a metaphor. And then there's Sophia Lillis in the lead role. She's great, and I almost can't believe she's the same girl who played the incredible Beverly in It. Hats off to her. (11.04.2020)

On the one hand, I Am Not Okay with This offers superbly depicted moments of adolescence, the search for oneself and navigation of the minefield of high school and family. On the other hand, however, IANOWT is essentially a formulaic series created on the basis of algorithmic results. Netflix knows exactly what people want, and it is not in any way stupid to ostentatiously play that up to the point that it slaps viewers in the face. Everything follows the checklist, from characters and stylisation to conflicts and the means of storytelling and layering individual episodes. There is not a shred of creativity or distinctiveness in it. Rather, it is just the fulfilment of the template spat out by Netflix’s algorithms involving viewer preferences and habits. It is absurd and, at the same time, inevitably telling how Netflix transformed its long-proclaimed progressiveness and creative freedom into completely formulaic and depersonalised pigeonholes that flawlessly target perfectly profiled viewer niches. IANOWT could have been an outstanding original series, but algorithms should not determine that viewers love ’80s retro and Stranger Things more than, for example, Ghost World. So, a contemporary story from indie comics is stuffed as far as possible into ’80s allusions and stylisation, the culmination of which is an utterly autotelic episode copying The Breakfast Club that, despite the proclaimed advantages of allegedly high-quality TV, does not come anywhere close to the original with its complexly developed characters. It remains only a quirk that degrades the many excellently observed anxieties of adolescence. IANOWT is the essence of what I like. However, that essence is not derived from empathy and creativity, as was the case with the films that inspired it, particularly those by John Hughes, but from statistics and analyses of proportions of popular works. Culture abandoned its reproductive cycles of remakes and retro that still had something distinctive and likable, and advanced into the era of algorithmic engineering, which produces perfectly pleasing replicants. The time has come to introduce the concept of the uncanny valley to culture. (02.04.2020)