Breaking News: Netflix Declares Capitalism Dead

Gaten Matarazzo

A tsunami of coverage crashed this weekend following news that Netflix was launching a prank show, entitled Prank Encounters, targeting people looking for work. Hosted by Gaten Matarazzo, the curly-haired lisping kid from Stranger Things, Netflix promises a “terrifying and hilarious prank show takes two complete strangers who each think they're starting their first day at a new job.” In other words, it ridicules working-class people for needing jobs.

Much coverage regarding this announcement has focused on how this show’s premise innately punches down. A well-compensated Hollywood star, who first appeared on Broadway at the unlikely age of eight, openly considers non-famous people targets of public ridicule for their need for employment. (I make a distinction between employment and work.) But I’m more interested, here, in how Netflix, a private corporation, brazenly spits in the eye of capitalism.

Capitalism’s defenders claim their system’s morality depends on every interaction being strictly voluntary. There’s some truth to this: if I dislike one proffered interaction, like one job offer let’s say, I could hypothetically go find another. But this reasoning only goes so far. I can reject one individual offer, but I cannot abstain from all capitalist interactions, unless I intend to reject society altogether and live in a wickiup in the forest.

Therefore, so long as capitalism obtains in North American society, I cannot forego employment. Believe me, I’ve tried. As someone currently stuck in employment beneath my qualifications, I know the frustration of needing better work, that is, work which better accords with my abilities and economic needs. I’m not alone, either, as millions enter America’s workforce every year yoked with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.

By treating such struggling would-be workers as public jokes, Matarazzo and Netflix submarine one of capitalism’s supporting principles: trust. I absolutely must trust my employer to pay me fairly, work me reasonably, and protect me against my job’s innate hazards. This show, however, broadcasts that nobody can trust any job offer anymore, no matter how solemnly extended, because employment is now essentially a source of amusement for the comparatively well-off.

Now I say that, knowing trust is routinely undermined in employment. My bosses have punished workers for discussing our wage (which is illegal). They’ve taught employees how to work around OSHA-mandated safeties, and ordered us to do so. Anybody who thinks America’s management class doesn’t conspire to keep wages depressed hasn't watched the news recently. Capitalism regularly undermines trust, though in ways usually invisible.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

By turning employment into a source of amusement, though, Netflix has taken that usually covert undermining and made it explicit. They’ve openly declared that the rich who control Hollywood consider you, and your need for paying employment, funny. Even laying aside how that’s flagrantly punching down, I can’t get past the necessary contradictions. Capitalists tell us we must trust the system’s morality, then billboard that we can’t trust them one goddamn inch.

As Stranger Things enters its third season, young Matarazzo, aged sixteen, makes an announced $200,000 per episode, making him among streaming entertainment’s best-paid stars. Besides hosting Prank Encounters, Matarazzo also executive produces, so I don’t hold him exempt from this show’s moral depravity, despite his age. Per episode, Matarazzo makes nearly four times America’s median annual household income—then turns around and mocks his audience.

Even youth doesn’t excuse poor choices, because Matarazzo didn’t do this alone. A media corporation like Netflix has enough riding on individual productions that they implement multiple approval processes before anything gets produced, much less announced. Capitalism at that scale is notoriously risk-averse. Multiple executives, putatively reasonable adults, must have rubber-stamped this idea before it hit the public. There’s trust for you.

So, at an age when many youths get their first burger-flipping jobs to subsidize their meagre dating lives, Matarazzo uses the platform his celebrity provides to mock and belittle non-celebrities looking for work. Even if nobody gets hurt, I’d call this violent, because it involves a famous person, backed by a $25 billion corporation, using their combined might to humiliate the less advantaged. That’s some Marie Antoinette-level shit, friends.

Surely we all understand, to some degree, that we cannot trust our employers. We’ve all witnessed the growing gap between management and labor: the way, for instance, Jeff Bezos has become Earth’s richest human, while his warehouse workers can’t afford potty breaks. But this makes everything explicit. Capitalists look down on you because you need their almost-feudal patronage. Friends, maybe it’s time to walk away from a broken economic system.