Science Fiction Double Feature: Film Platypus
There are two innovative bits of cinema I've been watching over the past week. Each deserves attention as works of art, but also as pieces that authentically put women and minorities to the fore of a genre in which they have been all too often absent or exploited. The first is Netflix's Dutch horror series, Ares . Ares follows the biracial and poor Rosa's initiation into an elite college fraternity with connections to the highest circles of Dutch society. The portrayal of the the way in which elite groups draw in their members, separate them from their families and values, make them complicit in the group's guilt, foster predatory competition, and ultimately claim to offer absolution from the corruption through radical loyalty to the group works as well for cults and political factions as it does for honors colleges and classics programs. I can't speak to how it actually portrays race and gender in Holland, but I can affirm that this is what it feels like to be a...