Each week, new unique movies debut on Netflix, Hulu, and different streaming providers, usually to a lot much less fanfare than their big-screen
Each week, new unique movies debut on Netflix, Hulu, and different streaming providers, usually to a lot much less fanfare than their big-screen counterparts. Cinemastream is Vox’s sequence highlighting probably the most notable of those premieres, in an ongoing effort to maintain fascinating and simply accessible new movies in your radar.
Slay the Dragon
The premise: Gerrymandering is eroding our democracy. However Slay the Dragon tells a narrative that exhibits residents can battle it.
What it’s about: Gerrymandering is a fancy factor to do, nevertheless it’s not too exhausting to grasp. Because the movie explains, in about 80 % of states, the state legislature creates the maps of voting districts of their state. The ruling celebration is ready to design a map (with the assistance of specialists) that ensures it’s going to retain energy. It does this by creating as many districts as potential that include voters more likely to vote for his or her celebration, whereas ensuring areas with excessive concentrations of opposition voters are herded into districts collectively. Thus, the ruling celebration can just about guarantee its personal persevering with majority standing, whereas diluting the votes of constituents more likely to vote for the opposing celebration. (If that doesn’t make sense, take a look at this useful Vox video!)
As each the video above and Slay the Dragon reveal, this can lead to bizarre-looking districts that make it pretty apparent even to the typical citizen that one thing fishy is occurring. And most of this map-drawing occurs in strict secrecy, behind closed, barred, nondisclosure-agreement-protected doorways — not precisely promising for individuals who imagine in an open and free society.
Gerrymandering isn’t a very horny matter, and it includes plenty of numbers and weirdly drawn strains on maps, which doesn’t make it an apparent candidate for a gripping movie. However Slay the Dragon expertly and methodically does two issues particularly properly.
First, Slay the Dragon explains the origins of gerrymandering, the outcomes of the follow, and the way American politics, notably since 2008, have been affected. Although each Republicans and Democrats have engaged in gerrymandering after they’re in energy, most gerrymandered states are at the moment within the fingers of Republicans. The movie is very attentive to the sources that Republicans have invested in redistricting, in ways in which have all however ensured Republican victories even in locations the place the demographics are clearly altering (usually coupled with voter suppression efforts similar to voter ID legal guidelines, voter purges, and the rollback of initiatives to make voting extra accessible to all residents, notably African Individuals). All of those strikes are substantiated by interviews with consultants, journalists, historians, Democratic and Republican lawmakers and former lawmakers, and in some circumstances the skilled redistricting consultants themselves.
However Slay the Dragon isn’t a glorified PowerPoint presentation in regards to the historical past of voting. It’s an unabashed activist documentary aimed toward convincing viewers they’ll battle gerrymandering of their dwelling states. So it frames all of this info throughout the inspiring story of the Michigan-based group Voters Not Politicians, which throughout the 2018 election succeeded, towards monumental odds, in ending gerrymandering in Michigan. Led by Katie Fahey, a 20one thing who had by no means labored in politics earlier than, Voters Not Politicians fought to get an initiative on the poll to nominate a residents’ fee (consisting of 4 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 5 independents) to attract electoral district boundaries.
Fahey and her fellow activists quickly discovered themselves up towards a well-oiled and well-funded machine unwilling to surrender management over districting to a fee of non-politicians. They aren’t the primary or the final group to win and eradicate gerrymandering, however their story is especially shifting — a story of a grassroots effort that really paid off.
That makes Slay the Dragon a quite thrilling and hopeful watch, notably in an election yr whereas the world is roiling with uncertainty — to not point out a census yr, the outcomes of which might change the way in which voters are divided into districts as soon as once more in lots of states. And it presents a robust argument towards the follow altogether: In a democracy, voters should get to choose their legislators, not the opposite method round.
Vital reception: Critics have been largely optimistic about Slay the Dragon. On the Hollywood Reporter, John DeFore writes, “As a lot doom as we get right here, Goodman and Durrance discover widespread trigger for optimism as properly — in teams of residents who launch poll initiatives or sue their states straight over maps designed to make their votes pointless.”
watch it: Slay the Dragon is offered on a wide range of cable and on-demand providers; verify the movie’s web site for extra info.