The opening scene of the “3 Body Problem,” which became a political litmus test.
Ed Miller/Netflix
In physics, the three-body problem is tricky. If there are one or two objects exerting a gravitational force on an object, the object will move in a predictable pattern. Add a third and its mess.
In 2024, the three-body problem in media is that in every work of art there is a creator, a consumer, and a politics. So, when Netflix’s sci-fi series begins, 3 Physical problems Anti-Awakened Crusader and others who debuted on March 21st V.C. Marc Andreessen and Andrew Chen He only appeared in one scene before posting that it was pretty cool to put an end to far-left politics. Two days after the show ended, a16z VC Andrew Chen said: Posted on X, “The opening scene is just a punch in the face. IRL cancel culture promoted by high school and college students. Politicizing science and academia. Breaking with the past. Etc.” As one Marc Andreessen said: Posted Similar idea.
The scene they are referring to took place in China in 1966, when a frothing Maoist mob fatally beats a professor who refuses to refute scientific facts on the grounds that they were discovered in the West. I’m rooting for you.
For George Salantopoulos, a Republican political operative and entrepreneur, this brutal scene was very similar to the American college students who are currently canceling conservative professors. I posted the scene with comments on X: “We cannot allow history to repeat itself in America.” It has been viewed approximately 700,000 times.
“We’re witnessing a cultural revolution on social media. So what does it take to pursue physicality? There’s not a lot of it at the moment,” he says. It turns out that Sarantopoulos hasn’t actually watched the show since the first scene someone sent him. But he read the book. And it scared Bejies and took away the soul of the Republican Party. Sarantopoulos said the scene of a kneeling professor wearing a dunce hat and being forced to admit he was wrong is very similar to today’s college campuses. “The far left is very interested in humiliating and ostracizing people. I don’t think they would do that under Franco. They would just kill you. There are additional steps.”
While most of the comments under Sarantopoulos’ post were supportive (“lockdown coming soon”), he also received some backlash. He said, “I got a personal attack. It was like, “This person would naturally have this opinion because of the way they look.” I’m 50 years old. Comments about being overweight won’t hurt. My wife is attractive and she’s 11 years younger, so she doesn’t care about anything,” Sarantopoulos explains. He says he’s particularly concerned about left-wing authoritarianism in America because his hot wife’s parents lived through the Cultural Revolution. And apparently it’s spicy too.
When the liberal wife saw the scene, the three-body problem caused confusion again. To her, it was a clear warning to anti-science MAGA fanatics who ban books, claim vaccines don’t work, and take away abortion rights.
My friend Michael Green is a co-author. Blue Eyed Samurai, Blade Runner 2049and loganHe also interpreted the politics of 3 Physical problems as a progressive work. “As brilliantly as they landed the opening sequence, the overt politics of a scene in which an alien species seeking our destruction confidently promises success by ‘killing your science’ is born from. The ideas in this book are expertly highlighted on screen and are the most incisive commentary. To fight science is to fight survival. ”
Rob Long, one of the few Republican screenwriters, wasn’t surprised by the mixed reaction.Long, former showrunner cheers Who are you writing this column for? National Review, And the co-founder of the conservative podcast company Ricochet easily described the scene to “screaming undergraduates on Yale’s campus and furious law students at Yale (again!) Law School.” I thought I could make an analogy. In case you forgot, I went to Yale University.
“It is the fear in the eyes of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was asked what it meant to be a woman and realized that the answer he would have given a year ago was no longer acceptable.For some conservatives, the Cultural Revolution While all that is happening, we are censoring, eliminating, redefining words, rewriting the past, be it pronouns, race, climate, cancellation, etc. For some conservatives, that spectacle is today: And now it is.”
But Long also said that for him, a Republican who is not a fan of President Trump, his first scene with the president was 3 Physical problems Conservatives who insisted that January 6 was not a protest were also expelled from the party. Or, free market economists say, big tariffs are great policy now that President Trump wants them. “Some of us watch that scene and think it’s Mike Pence in a dunce hat tweeting the truth about 2020 while a mob demands his head. Masu.”
When Netflix announced its next plans in 2020, 3 Physical problems, it wasn’t a Republican darling. Five Republican senators jointly sent a letter to Netflix asking it to reconsider making a movie named after novelist Liu. new yorker In his profile, he defended China’s brutal treatment of Uyghurs.
What also makes the new conservative interpretation questionable is that it wasn’t what the people who made the show intended. game of thrones Co-creators David Benioff and DB Weiss are anything but conservative. According to Open Secrets, Benioff donates very extensively only to Democratic candidates (though not as much as his cousin Marc Benioff). He and Weiss directed Leslie Jones’ 2020 Netflix comedy special. Jones became a liberal hero after surviving a harassment campaign orchestrated by far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.Benioff and Weiss even asked Barack Obama to appear in a cameo role. 3 Physical problems. (He sent a memo saying that help should be saved for an actual alien invasion.) And Benioff said plainly: hollywood reporter“This is not a commentary on cancel culture.”
Thomas Petersen, CEO of AI company Faktory, says he leans to the right, but he doesn’t see the opening scene as a critique of the left.he 3 body-head, I not only read the novel, but also watched all 30 episodes of the original Chinese series on Amazon. “This is not a left-wing critique,” he says. He knows this because, as he posted on X, he feels the entire show is a woke disaster, far inferior to the Chinese series. “All the rest of the show he follows from DEI. Casting is not in the DEI book,” he says.
Cultural commentators argue that the demise of network television is increasing partisanship as we become demographically siloed into unique, algorithmically curated programming. However, it turns out that even if you’re watching the same show, you’re rarely watching the same thing.
