“Kitz” is Netflix’s new teenage hit! Coming straight from Austria, this Netflix series has the air of Gossip Girl and Elite, with a dose of Pretty Little Liar… But better! We explain why in Pop it, our pop decryption of the week.
You thought you had seen everything about this golden youth so far from our daily lives? The Elite series, on Netflix, did not tell everything and even less the cult Gossip Girl. Since December 30, 2021, another teenage series of the genre has pointed the tip of its nose on Netflix. It is Kitz, directed by Nikolaus Schulz-Dornburg and Vitus Reinbold. Against all odds, this series coming straight from Austria has met with great success and has risen to the top 10 of the most watched series and films on the streaming platform.
Head to Kitzbühel, a small resort in the Austrian Alps, with Kitz on Netflix. We discover Lisi, a 19-year-old waitress ready to do anything to avenge the death of her brother who died a year earlier. To unmask and trap the culprits, she joins a gang of wealthy teenagers whom she holds responsible. In Kitz, jet set, sex, money, bling bling atmosphere but above all revenge and class struggle are at the center of the plot. Which makes it a much deeper novelty than a gossip girl superficial or Elite sometimes disappointing. Here’s why.
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Kitz, Netflix, and class struggle
Kitz is not a series immersed in a bourgeois and unattainable world served by stereotypes seen and reviewed. The Austrian series brings more depth by featuring characters from different social backgrounds. The flashy world of daddy’s girl influencer Vanessa and her friends is not depicted on the surface, because Kitz confronts the problems of its characters, whose everything opposes, by plunging Lisi, a brilliant young girl from the middle class, into a privileged environment.
Under its air of thriller, the series of Nikolaus Schulz-Dornburg and Vitus Reinbold compares the inequalities of chance of success, but also the questionings of a golden youth. By interpreting Vanessa wonderfully, Valérie Huber avoids the clichés that Serena and Blair have already served us, for example, in gossip girl. A breath of fresh air for the teenage and bling bling series.
In Kitz, an inclusive cast that serves the plot
However, Kitz is not just a pitch “rich versus poor”. The series is much more ambivalent than it seems on the relationship of domination between social classes. It highlights the experiences of racialized people. If Dominik and Kosh, for example, grew up in a privileged environment, they are nevertheless, very often, reduced to their origins by those around them. And if it’s not central to the plot, it’s alluded to, making Kitz a series with an inclusive cast, but not “colorblind” however.
At no time do the screenwriters turn a blind eye to the deeply racist behavior that these two young men face, but that’s not all. Kitz also recalls the generation of racialized people to which they belong, those of the children of immigrants. Because, when they are not victims of discrimination, it is indeed within their family that the pressure is felt: the duty to show independence despite what their parents have offered them, starting from nothing, in terms of education and chances of success.
No doubt that Kitz, if it does not revolutionize the genre, has the merit of being the good surprise of this beginning of the year on Netflix.
Mélanie deciphers pop culture with a societal angle and questions the female gaze in films or even series, because it’s all about the look, she …