<em>Hollywood</em> Fails to Sell Its Own Fairy Tale
Ryan Murphy’s Netflix show presents a fantasy in which marginalized people get to make the film they want. But the fun thought exercise curdles into earnest nonsense.
The following contains spoilers through all seven episodes of Netflix’s Hollywood.
In Netflix’s Hollywood, Ryan Murphy envisions a major studio production that never existed in the 1940s: A black gay writer and a half-Asian director make a film starring a black actress—a film that becomes a box-office hit and the Best Picture winner at the Oscars. What if, the series asks, Hollywood had been a haven for marginalized voices rather than a club shutting them out?
That thought exercise leads to fun results—at first. Alongside his co-creator, Ian Brennan, and co-executive producer, Janet Mock, Murphy, one of TV’s biggest provocateurs, puts some tantalizing spins on the classic Hollywood fairy tale.
