Critique Dead in 2021: the fake-document totally misses its satire

Usually, a feeling of déjà vu can cause a slightly intoxicating dizziness, a certain pleasure in frowning at the questioning of this feeling of familiar strangeness. When the end card hits Dead in 2021, however, only one emotion invades us: disgust. Sprinkled with a hint of anger.

The mock documentary put online by Netflix on December 29 has the luxury of embodying both everything that goes wrong in the Covidian era with a nearly repulsive near-first degree, but also in a Hollywodian cultural industry that relies more on his reboots and sequels than on his original ideas.

Dead in 2021 is a sequence, therefore, that of Death to 2020 (unstoppable arithmetic logic), the satirical film which had surprised us at the end of the previous year with a clairvoyant representation of the few months which had rocked the planet, remained haggard in a whirlwind of health panic.

At the time, it was judged that its unofficial subtitle could have been: ” It’s funny, because it’s true “. For this new component, we could easily reverse the statement: it’s not funny, because it’s true. But also: it’s not funny, because the writing was sloppy. Or again: it’s not funny, because it’s exactly the same thing, only less well.

The characters in Death to 2021 are caricatures ofcaricatures

Where we find almost the same protagonists, stripped of their nuances, become vulgar caricatures of caricatures. The racist housewife is now of course anti -ax (and participated in the invasion of the Capitol), the acerbic English professor is nothing more than an old idiot whom the journalist repeatedly laughs at. The influencer? A little jerk who tests a “homemade” vaccine live on YouTube.

Only William Jackson Harper stands out, as the boss of an enlightened social network, defending the “freedom” of users to prefer false information to facts, even if it pushes them to death. “ Truth and lies are just contrary data flows “, He rationalizes, before continuing:” We have realized that keeping users in a constant state of limitless rage keeps them engaged, and if they are engaged they are sure to be having fun, even if they are desperately unhappy! “

When Netflix is ​​staring at its navel

This propensity for incisive exaggeration as a satirical tool is unfortunately far too rare in the new mockumentary. Dead in 2021 is actually only obsessed with two things: American politics and Netflix.

Joe Biden, who took power at the start of the year, is portrayed as a phantom politician: the narrator multiplies the jokes about his advanced age and his lack of charisma, as if the last four years spent commenting on the slightest breath of ‘a gesturing leader had taught us nothing.

Then comes the year 2021 seen through the cultural prism, or rather, how Netflix places Netflix at the center of the world. Apart from a few minutes dedicated to the James Bond event, Dead in 2021 speaks only of the shows of the SVOD platform… which produces it exclusively. Wow. “ The first success of the year is Bridgerton », Strikes the voice-over, and if you do not agree, it is the same. ” I bunged the series in one go », Another character tells us, omitting to specify that the only merit of this degrading production was to make us forget a cruel and exhausting year 2020.

But as the mock documentary itself says, “2021 is the year that would make 2020 look like a simple prologue », Without realizing that he himself is the worst example. Especially when he then talks about the success of Squid Game, another ultra-popular (and yet uncomfortably evil) Netflix series portrayed as a scathing critique of capitalism that would have engendered shares of “ hilarious memes »On social networks.

We will let readers judge the degree of hilarity caused by situations like: “When you want to quit your job but still want your bonus “. Ah, yes, a lot of money. Okay.

We come out of these 59 minutes wrung out by so many rehearsals, lengths and stretched schoolboy jokes (we have not always recovered from the somewhat simple-minded Englishwoman who assures us that her mother has never done the love of his life) (ah, humor is funny). But above all, we end up overwhelmed by so much bitterness.

It was already difficult, last year, to manage to laugh at a parody so close to our world. Dead in 2021 pushes the cynicism to its paroxysm and suffocates its spectators already on the edge of the abyss, doped for two years with push notifications, stimulated by curves-which-start-to-rise and drowned under the acronyms PCRSARSCOVFFP2.

Even if it means hurting yourself by contemplating the misfortunes of the world, you might as well watch France TV’s selection of VUs on a daily basis, at least that’s smart.

And for catharsis, we’ll come back.