Netflix has reportedly taken a revenue hit with market cap falling $15 billion, after Elon Musk’s call to boycott the platform over ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’.
The backstory: Why Elon Musk wants Netflix boycott over ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’
At the eye of the storm, among other things, is the animated series ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’. Musk feels the show, featuring transgender characterisation, is not suitable for children. Notably, the OTT platform’s certification of the show is U/A 7+.
“Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids,” wrote the Tesla CEO on his verified X handle, @elonmusk, in reaction to a meme posted by an X user named DogeDesigner that had the caption: “Protect your kids. Cancel Netflix.” Following Elon Musk’s call for the boycott of Netflix, his followers have been actively campaigning on the social media platform, too, to cancel the OTT platform over the show ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’.
The irony about Elon Musk’s boycott call of Netflix over ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’
There is an element of irony, however, about Elon Musk’s boycott call of Netflix over ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, and that is irrespective of which side of the ideological fence you sit on – whether you agree or disagree with the Tesla CEO’s contention that Netflix is a platform of social engineering that pushes transgender ideals, among other woke agenda, and therefore should be cancelled.
It’s this: the streaming platform itself had cancelled ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ after two seasons. Netflix dropped 10 episodes of season one on June 16, 2022. Season two of ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, also featuring 10 episodes, was launched on October 13, 2022. No further extension was granted to the animated series in the past three years.
In a guest article he wrote for Gizmodo on January 17, 2023, creator Hamish Steele stated while discussing the cancellation of ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’: “The politics of TV production means that you’re never guaranteed to end things on your terms.”
Why did Netflix’s ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ draw Elon Musk’s ire after 3 years?
The show was done and dusted, after Netflix cancelled it. Honestly, there was not much of a hype around it upon release, either. There have been just nine critics’ reviews of ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ on Rotten Tomatoes in all these years, and though the cumulative critical score is 100 per cent, popular reception for the show has been far less enthusiastic. ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ has managed to garner just 69 per cent rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, which gauges audience reaction. On IMDb, the show’s audience-driven rating is 6.2 out of 10 stars.
Social media reaction also underlines lack of much awareness about ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, despite the show airing on Netflix. Sample these Reddit posts:
u/shalowa: “Didn’t even know this existed”
u/Thigh_Low_Scene: “I saw a little bit of it while taking care of the nieces. It was all right but nothing amazing. Went for the same kind of feel as Gravity Falls but didn’t nail it nearly as well.”
Many users have compared ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ to the animated mystery comedy series ‘Gravity Falls’, which airs on Jio Hotstar, and found the Netflix show falls short.
u/brassninja writes on Reddit: “Gravity Falls was kind of lighting in a bottle, can’t easily be recreated. It managed to stake its own claim while competing with other cartoon juggernauts like Adventure Time and The Regular Show while also being on a separate channel that wasn’t well known for more “high brow” cartoons like Cartoon Network.
So what drew Elon Musk’s attention to the show only now, and led to a subsequent boycott call of Netflix after so many years? It all started when X user Libs of TikTok posted a clip from ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ that has the show’s protagonist Barney Guttman declaring his transgender identity.
The revival of social media interest in Barney, and in effect ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, thanks to the viral post by Libs of TikTok is what has concerned Elon Musk, who seems to suggest that the renewed interest in the toon character and the show reiterates Netflix’s attempt at social engineering. Hence his response urging followers to “cancel Netflix for the health of your kids”.
About Netflix’s ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’: Show that enraged Elon Musk
The animated Netflix series ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’ is a horror comedy based on show creator Hamish Steele’s graphic novel ‘DeadEndia: The Watcher’s Test’. At the core of the plot is Barney Guttman, a 17-year-old gay, transgender Jewish American boy beset with family issues, who gets a job as a security guard at Phoenix Parks, a theme park in the lines of Dollywood. Also employed at the park is Norma Khan, a 17-year-old autistic and bisexual American-Pakistani girl. A thousand-year-old demon named Courtney and Barney’s dog Pugsley also feature in their adventures, after Barney and Norma enter the Paranormal realm.
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