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It’s rare for a Netflix series to be controversial. What’s even rarer is when an innocuous date announcement video is the source of controversy. That’s the position Netflix found itself in when it announced that one of its newest comedies, Dear White People, would premiere on April 28th. Now that fateful day has arrived. Show and movie creator Justin Simien has some thoughts to share with people who are outraged by his series.
Adapted from the movie of the same name, Dear White People follows a group of underheard black students who attend a fictional Ivy League college. The original movie dwelled heavily in satire, skewering almost everyone in its story of fictionalized academia, and the series follow up promises to do the same. However, when Netflix first released a 30-second teaser for the comedy, the video was heavily downvoted with many claiming the show promoted “anti-white discrimination.” The alt-right section of the internet then launched a trolling campaign, downvoting the video even further, posting photos of cancelled Netflix memberships, and giving birth to the hashtag #BoycottNetflix. In an interview with The Daily Beast’s Matt Wilstein, Simien explained what it was like to see the negative response.
It took a while for Simien to realize that his show had been the victim of organized trolling. ”Once I started to understand what I was seeing and facing, I just couldn’t not respond to it,” he said. The show creator responded to the hashtag in a Medium post. “It’s not new to attempt to vilify the minority that speaks about their oppression. That’s not a new thing. But the ways in which they did it were so organized and nefarious, I had to come to terms with that.”
I actually think a lot of the trolls will really identify with the show, because we sort of put everyone on blast
When asked if he had anything to say to the people who trolled him, Simien said that the #BoycottNetflix crowd might be surprised by the series. “I actually think a lot of the trolls will really identify with the show, because we sort of put everyone on blast. No one is really safe from the satire of the show,” he said.
“But also ultimately the show is about a group of people who feel clinically underheard. And if you’re willing to create a hundred fake profiles and pull mugshots off of Google as your profile picture, clearly you feel chronically underheard. So I actually think that they, strangely enough, will identify not only with these characters, but with black people in general in ways that will surprise them,” Simien said.
The show creator also thinks that many of the same people who were so quick to boycott and criticize the teaser trailer will actually end up watching the series. “I have a feeling there will be a lot of secret views on Netflix from these people,” he said. In the full interview, Simien discusses the rapid-fire shooting schedule of Dear White People the movie, what it was like working with Netflix, and how the series adaptation of Dear White People is a sort of clapback to the Trump presidency. You can read the full interview here.
