‘Orange Is the New Black’ not canceled, satire site instead stirs up trouble
Is it really curtains for “Orange Is the New Black” after two seasons on the air? Of course not, and this story is more ultimately about the internet reaction to satire on the internet.
The rumors regarding the Netflix series being canceled came courtesy of a “report” from satire site Empire News, which claimed that a fight between Jenji Kohan and the streaming service’s head Reed Hastings over the lack of male leads on the show was the reason why. Also, they claimed that Hastings “told” a reporter the following outside of Netflix headquarters:
“A woman’s place is in the home, in the kitchen, taking care of children … A woman in jail? How does anyone even watch this show in the first place? It’s like we took everything bad about OZ, and make this show with the leftovers.”
We don’t think it takes too much to figure out that the entire story is bogus; Netflix is currently filming the third season of “Orange Is the New Black” right now, and the show just got nominated for a ton of Emmys. There is no way that it’s going anywhere in the near future.
What is more notable are the attacks that are coming at the site who posted the “report” in the first place, in particular those who claim that the satirist is being overly misogynistic. This is a tricky subject for almost any comedy fan, since you eventually start to police whether or not comedy should be allowed. This is something that “Opie & Anthony” are dealing with right now, or that Gilbert Gottfried found out more about when he was fired from Aflac for his tsunamic jokes on social media.
At the end of the day, if you are going to cross the line into potentially-offensive humor, we feel like there are three basic requirements:
- Make it obvious you are joking.
- Make sure that your jokes are so funny that no one will remember to be offended.
- Make sure you don’t do it on social media, that way you can ensure that the context is understood that you are mocking ignorance and on the same side ultimately as some of your attackers.
Unfortunately for the site, they only really fulfilled the first and partially the third requirement. The context wasn’t good enough, and it definitely was not funny enough. So instead of being funny, the entire stunt just comes across as somewhat icky and desperate.
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Photo: Netflix