Netflix’s new six-part documentary The Diaries of Andy Warhol is a grotesque thing that reduces a complex genius to his sex organs.
Because I’ve pretty much given up on new movies and television shows, if I bother to watch Netflix anymore it’s for the documentaries and true crime.
The problem with new movies and TV shows is that almost everything new is gay-gay-gay-gay-gay-woke-woke-woke-woke-trans-trans-trans-trans-gay-trans-woke-trans-gay-woke. It’s off-putting. It’s anti-entertainment and just a tad icky. There was this one show I dipped into where a guy with a mustache was running around a cool-looking spaceship. This might be good, I thought. Then I saw that the guy with the mustache was wearing a dress and high heels. For a second, I forgot myself and started laughing. I thought it was a comedy.
It wasn’t.
Why is it that women in TV shows never wear dresses and high heels, but men do?
Why is it that Lizzo is celebrated for shaking her two-car-garage-sized-ass, but if an attractive girl does it, it’s condemned as “the male gaze” and “objectification?”
For those reasons and many others, true crime, documentaries, and my personal home video collection are where you’ll find me hanging out these days.
So, the other day I see that Netflix has a new documentary… The Andy Warhol Diaries. What I didn’t see was that Ryan Murphy produced it, a guy who hasn’t produced anything worth a shit since that O.J. Simpson miniseries. But I like Andy Warhol. He was a fascinating and complicated man. What’s more, there’s nothing I enjoy more than deep-diving into a person’s biography. I read 30 to 40 biographies a year. All kinds of people. People are endlessly interesting, especially people like Warhol who lived lives far beyond anything I’ve ever experienced or, frankly, would want to experience.
The thing about a biography is that if it’s done well, you almost always discover a shared humanity. No matter how flawed or different this person might be from you, there’s that common human bond. Now, there are exceptions… Hitler, Stalin, Mao, serial killers… But other than those fellas and Kurt Cobain (a total reprobate), I’ve never closed a biography without having a more sympathetic view of that person.
Having read at least two Warhol biographies, I knew he was perfect for a long-form documentary. All the contradictory traits that make for a fascinating character can be found in Andy Warhol. He was painfully shy and insanely ambitious. He was a homosexual and a devout Catholic. He was a trendsetting genius who ended up chasing trends to remain relevant. He was an intensely private person who couldn’t stand to be alone. I could go on and on… Unfortunately, none of that is found in Netflix’s putrid Andy Warhol Diaries. At least not in the first 2.5 hours I suffered through before it so bored me and grossed me out I had to shut it off.
Ryan Murphy and Netflix took a deeply complex genius, a fascinating character, and reduced him to his sexuality, to his penis. Rather than explore his personality, his personality is presented as his sexuality. This is especially outrageous when you’re talking about a man who specifically kept his sexuality a secret in order to remain mysterious and not have the hoopla around it overwhelm his work.
Well, if you suffer through The Andy Warhol Diaries… It’s only about his sexuality. Warhol lived this mammoth, consequential life and all the documentary does is dwell on his sex and love life to the point of repetitive tedium. A short fling with a movie producer is treated like The Great Love Of His Life… On and on and on this segment goes… one interminable video/talking head/home movie/recreation after another.
I finally shut it off during the endless drag sequence. Here’s a man who created countless masterpieces and The Diaries of Andy Warhol dwells forfuckingever on this one time he dressed himself and some other weirdo guys up as women.
No one’s saying this stuff should be left out. All these things were part of the characteristics that made Warhol Warhol. But the documentary dwells on this sex stuff to the point it gets boring and tediously repetitive. Forty-five minutes on one project where Warhol and others dressed in drag?
Warhol and we deserve better, but most especially Warhol.
But this is Hollywood today, an industry that is no longer about enlightening or inspiring, but rather about degrading and perverting, tearing down and dehumanizing. It’s an industry dedicated to exposing us (and most especially our children) to ugliness, depravity, and perversity while presenting it as normal and enlightened and inspiring.
It’s just narcissistic, boring as hell, and, well, icky.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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