I don’t think the show is explicitly pro-communist either, but it’s very very critical of American Exceptionalism. The entire point of the scene I described is to show how absurd the main character is for trying to do what she’s doing- she just immediately thinks that her way of seeing things is correct, without considering that other people might have other points of view and see the situation differently. (And the dramatic irony is that even the bloody hivemind gets that.)
And sure there’s a line about “being the worst mass murderer since Stalin”, but that line is coming out of the mouth of our American brain-wormed white-splaining main character, who is err… not portrayed as an authority on anything, really. Rather the opposite, like she’s Harry DuBois levels of complete fuck-up.
My interpretation of the show so far is that it is a character piece about how the average American would react to their society changing drastically (whether the societal change depicted in the show is an allegory for communism or A.I. singularity stuff that other commenters pointed out in this thread is kinda left to the viewer’s interpretation). It’s an examination of exactly how many of their fears of change are legitimate issues of identity and consent/rights, and how many are knee-jerk reactionary fears born from a lifetime of capitalist and American propaganda.
The show is not exactly kind to the average American, in my opinion.
I felt ashamed at causing Discourse the way I did (no investigation no right to speak) so I watched up to the last episode. I think it’s fine, it’s worth viewing. It does a decent job of making the question of joining the plurbs actually hard to decide. There isn’t really an obvious political allegory, and while I think the show might be commenting on AI as some people in this thread have said, I think there’s a lot of other clear symbols and allusions to other themes that I don’t think it’s just a commentary on LLMs. The commentary on American Chauvinism, similarly, is definitely there but it’s not the meat of the show. The meat is the thought experiment and the character drama.
I don’t think the show is anti-communist.
I don’t think the show is explicitly pro-communist either, but it’s very very critical of American Exceptionalism. The entire point of the scene I described is to show how absurd the main character is for trying to do what she’s doing- she just immediately thinks that her way of seeing things is correct, without considering that other people might have other points of view and see the situation differently. (And the dramatic irony is that even the bloody hivemind gets that.)
And sure there’s a line about “being the worst mass murderer since Stalin”, but that line is coming out of the mouth of our American brain-wormed white-splaining main character, who is err… not portrayed as an authority on anything, really. Rather the opposite, like she’s Harry DuBois levels of complete fuck-up.
My interpretation of the show so far is that it is a character piece about how the average American would react to their society changing drastically (whether the societal change depicted in the show is an allegory for communism or A.I. singularity stuff that other commenters pointed out in this thread is kinda left to the viewer’s interpretation). It’s an examination of exactly how many of their fears of change are legitimate issues of identity and consent/rights, and how many are knee-jerk reactionary fears born from a lifetime of capitalist and American propaganda.
The show is not exactly kind to the average American, in my opinion.
thanks. I like his past work enough to at least give this a shot
I felt ashamed at causing Discourse the way I did (no investigation no right to speak) so I watched up to the last episode. I think it’s fine, it’s worth viewing. It does a decent job of making the question of joining the plurbs actually hard to decide. There isn’t really an obvious political allegory, and while I think the show might be commenting on AI as some people in this thread have said, I think there’s a lot of other clear symbols and allusions to other themes that I don’t think it’s just a commentary on LLMs. The commentary on American Chauvinism, similarly, is definitely there but it’s not the meat of the show. The meat is the thought experiment and the character drama.
Yeah, Breaking Bad is probably my favourite American tv serial too, tho maybe it’s a toss-up with True Detective S1.
Altho to be fair my friends have yelled at me for not having seen the Wire, dunno if I’ll ever get round to that lol