by Thinus Ferreira
Netflix staff are in revolt with over 1 000 planning to stage a protest walkout next week over shocking comments from their boss and co-CEO Ted Sarandos and his horrible handling over the transphobic Dave Chappelle comedy special.
Angry and upset Netflix staffers across the world are planning to stage a public protest and virtual walkout on Wednesday 20 October.
It comes after Ted Sarandos inflamed an already bad situation inside the video streaming company with yet another aggressive memo to staffers saying that Netflix won't remove the shockingly transphobic comedy special The Closer by Dave Chappelle in which he mocks gender identifies and defends J.K. Rowling's transphobic remarks.
Last week Netflix
abruptly suspended 3 of its staffers who criticised Netflix over its transphobic content after they attended a virtual executives meeting that they were send a link for to join.
Days later Netflix
lifted their suspension following growing controversy and increasing public backlash over Netflix's misguided handling of the inflamed situation.
Bloomberg reports that Netflix staffers
raised serious concerns inside the company before the shocking transphobic content was released, with the damaged Netflix and its tone-deaf bosses now confronted with the biggest internal revolt from staff in its history because of its offensive material.
It was Bela Bajaria, Netflix's global head of TV, and Ted Sarandos who both decided that the transphobic content is fine for Netflix to push out to its millions of subscribers.
During next week's Netflix walkout, over a thousand staffers won't be doing any work and will focus their efforts on donating to charities and engaging with content that support the trans community.
The Netflix walkout has been organised and is being led by the trans employee resource group inside Netflix but they are being joined by hundreds of other Netflix staffers who share their sentiment and who are all extremely upset at Ted Sarandos after his statements in two internal staff memos.
"Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organisation, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content" a staffer
wrote in a message. "We can and must do better!"
Organisers of the Netflix walkout wrote that "As we've discussed through Slack, email and text our leadership has shown us they do not uphold the values to which we are held".
"Between the numerous emails and non-answers that have been given, we have been told explicitly that we somehow cannot understand the nuance of certain content."
"I encourage us to state clearly that we as Netflix employees are stunning not simply when we are doing the work that our roles demand of us, but also when we challenge the very principles of our company."
The growing backlash and walkout comes after Ted Sarandos issued a first memo to staffers in which he said that Netflix won't remove The Closer because it's popular and that Netflix can have it as content since it does "good" content as well to balance it out.
Ted Sarandos then wrote a second memo to staff on Monday, this time claiming that "content on screen doesn't directly translate to real-world harm".
"The strongest evidence to support this is that violence on screens has grown hugely over the last 30 years, especially with first party shooter games, and yet violent crime has fallen significantly in many countries."
"Adults can watch violence, assault and abuse - or enjoy shocking stand-up comedy - without it causing them to harm others."
In his memo Ted Sarandos says "We know that a number of you have been left angry, disappointed and hurt by our decision to put Dave Chappelle's latest special on Netflix" and that Netflix is "working hard to ensure marginalised communities aren’t defined by a single story".
The LGBTQ+ advocacy group, GLAAD in a statement commenting on Ted Sarandos' second Wednesday mem, slammed Ted Sarandos and said that "GLAAD was founded 36 years ago because media representation has consequences for LGBTQ people".
"Authentic media stories about LGBTQ lives have been cited as directly responsible for increasing public support for issues like marriage equality."
"But film and TV have also been filled with stereotypes and misinformation about us for decades, leading to real world harm, especially for trans people and LGBTQ people of colour. Ironically, the documentary Disclosure on Netflix demonstrates this quite clearly."
The queer author Preston Mitchum wrote on Wednesday
in an opinion piece that "Make no mistake: Chappelle's alleged jokes do not impact hypothetical people; they, in fact, cause real harm to transgender and nonbinary viewers and black LGBTQ youth who may have once looked up to him as a role model".
The Los Angeles Times on Thursday slammed Ted Sarandos
in an opinion piece, noting that his memos on Dave Chappelle "is a masterwork of gaslighting" and "a master class in psycho-villain monologuing".
"Ted understands that Dave Chappelle's tale of beating up a lesbian, which begins with him explaining that he thought she was a man and ends with him pounding her breasts like they were 'chicken fillets', or his apparent belief that all queer people are white might upset a few staff members," The Los Angeles Times notes.
"As Dave Chappelle knows all too well, lots of people are bigoted; lots of people think anyone who doesn't look like them should just shut up and take it. Many people will watch The Closer for the same reason they watch Fox News. Because it validates the way they already feel. That's the problem."
Netflix in a statement on Wednesday about the looking walkout and internal Netflix staff revolt said that Netflix encourages its workers to "disagree openly".
"Dave Chappelle's specials are consistently the most-watched comedy specials on Netflix, and have earned many awards, including both an Emmy and a Grammy for Sticks and Stones. We support artistic expression for our creators. We also encourage our employees to disagree openly."
Read Ted Sarandos second memo to Netflix staffers issued on Monday below:
"We know that a number of you have been left angry, disappointed and hurt by our decision to put Dave Chappelle’s latest special on Netflix. Also, we have many new colleagues who want to better understand the principles that guide our team’s content choices, especially with challenging titles like this.
Our goal is to entertain the world, which means programming for a diversity of tastes. This member-centric view has driven our growth over the last 20 years, despite all the competition, and remains Netflix’s north star today.
We also support artistic freedom to help attract the best creators, and push back on government and other censorship requests.
Our Entertain the World and Strategy Bets memos, which we’ve debated extensively, are clear about both principles – including the trade offs, i.e. that we’ll always have titles some members and employees dislike or believe are harmful.
With The Closer, we understand that the concern is not about offensive-to-some content but titles which could increase real world harm (such as further marginalizing already marginalized groups, hate, violence etc.) Last year, we heard similar concerns about 365 Days and violence against women. While some employees disagree, we have a strong belief that content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.
The strongest evidence to support this is that violence on screens has grown hugely over the last thirty years, especially with first party shooter games, and yet violent crime has fallen significantly in many countries.
Adults can watch violence, assault and abuse – or enjoy shocking stand-up comedy – without it causing them to harm others. We are working hard to ensure marginalized communities aren’t defined by a single story. So we have Sex Education, Orange is the New Black, Control Z, Hannah Gadsby and Dave Chappelle all on Netflix. Key to this is increasing diversity on the content team itself.
In his special, Chappelle makes harsh jokes about many different groups, which is his style and a reason his fans love his comedy and commentary.
Stand-up comedians often expose issues that are uncomfortable because the art by nature is a highly provocative. As a leadership team, we do not believe that The Closer is intended to incite hatred or violence against anyone (per our Sensitive Content guidelines).
We've had these operating principles around pleasing our members and artistic expression for many years, and the team’s decision to put The Closer on our service was consistent with them.
The variety and quality of our content is what members value most. Our hope is that you can be hugely inspired by entertaining the world, while also living with titles you strongly believe have no place on Netflix. This will not be the last title that causes some of you to wonder if you can still love Netflix. I sincerely hope that you can.
-Ted"
