With a large part of the world spending more time at home on-the-clock than ever before, social modes of entertainment take a backseat, giving way to the rise of streaming giants such as Netflix; it now has unprecedented user levels and unwavering exposure to its audience. One might expect such brands to finally take their cultural impact with a bit more weight, but evidently this is not the case.
Despite the racially volatile atmosphere created by the Covid 19 pandemic across the world, Netflix’s new comedy special “Schulz Saves America” betrays stand-up comedian Andrew Schulz’s inability to read the room or consider the consequences of his words. This collection of racist remarks loosely bundled together as “jokes” starts off by calling coronavirus “the Asian parasite” within the first minute. Throughout the duration of the show, he conflates people of different ancestry under the umbrella term “Asian”.
Author, Jessica Valenti, took to Twitter to call Netflix’s carelessness with such a sensitive issue out, pointing out that such remarks thrown around have real effects on the lives Asians around the world pass. Twitter user, Jen Chung, summarises quite well, “The anti-Asian, anti-Chinese rhetoric in this “comedy” special is what makes me afraid to walk outside and take the subway.”
It is high time that corporations start acknowledging that the sway they hold over pop culture brings with it a great deal of ethical responsibility that they must shoulder; if they don’t, democracy will eventually uproot their reign, no matter how deep their monopoly may run.