Big problem with 'dangerous' new Netflix show Hollywood

Netflix's starry new drama Hollywood brings together an impressive cast. Photo / Netflix

COMMENT:

We need to talk about Hollywood – the most dishonest, delusional, self-important and potentially destructive alternative-reality TV series to be spat out by Netflix during this endless pandemic.

How could show creator Ryan Murphy, backed by a stellar cast including the awesome Darren Criss, hilarious Jim Parsons and Broadway veteran Patti LuPone, get this tale from Hollywood's Golden Age so insufferably wrong?

Set in the world's film capital circa 1947, the show does a top-down rewrite of the soul-crushing, heart-stomping, life-threatening evils that ruled over Tinseltown back in the day.

It's as if some magic wand descended from the heavens and – poof! – eliminated the homophobia that prevented movie star Rock Hudson from openly living as the gay man he was.

Gone is the anti-Asian racism that denied a meaningful career to the tragic Anna May Wong. And erased to the point of ludicrousness is the unhinged sexism that drove actress Peg Entwistle to jump to her death from the iconic Hollywoodland sign.

This all really happened. But Murphy & Crew simply sprinkle fairy dust over the California swamp, and so much ugly history simply vanishes or is changed beyond recognition.

Everything that was (and maybe still is) wrong with La La Land is simply wished away. And then, by extension, all the isms and phobias that have plagued America and the rest of the world follow suit, and disappear, too, as Hollywood leads the planet into evolving into one big woke and diverse utopia by the time the end credits roll.

What a crock.

Hollywood, which seems destined for a number of self-congratulatory Emmy Awards, got a whole lot of things criminally wrong.