There’s a YouTube Red series coming out called “The Thinning”. The basic premise, for those who haven’t seen the trailer, is that overpopulation is an issue, so a standardized high school test is put in place to test the intellectual capabilities of the population. The ones who fail the test are put to death, and the ones who pass are allowed to live. My thoughts are a bit messy, but here they are.
There are already some pretty glaring problems with this. For one, a system like this would primarily target lower and middle class people, POC, and developmentally disabled people (much like standardized testing does in real life). This becomes especially problematic when you take into account the language they use to refer to the people who fail: specifically, they call them “parasites”. This language is commonly used to refer to marginalized people in real life, especially to justify why they should be killed (which is of course, the plot).
Now, they could have taken the above point and incorporated it into their plot, thereby making it an insightful commentary into our current social structures and how they could/should be changed. Instead, they chose to make the protagonists two white, conventionally attractive, upper class abled people, one of whom is the son of the President.
Honestly, at this point I’m not surprised YouTube is pulling this shit. There are probably a lot more problems with it, but these are the ones I gleaned from a two minute preview.
- Mod Òðinn.
@waluigitheanti @informative-feminist @heartandstride @socialjusticeolivia anything you guys want to add, I’m open to hearing, or just spread this around.
That's actually a really good point - I hadn't thought of that. While I'm (pretty) sure it wasn't intentional on the part of the producers, that's exactly the issue - unintentional things like this serve to perpetuate the already harmful stereotypes and beliefs society holds about marginalized people.















