muphiekins Reviews

American Greed (2007–2023)

Good information and very interesting, but narration and interviews often overtly sexist

[7/10 · 29 May 2018]

I really enjoyed watching this series, however, I did notice a pattern in how certain women were talked about. There was one episode (Family Fortune Feud) in which one of the fraudsters married an adult entertainer. One of his friends is interviewed, and says that he didn't think she would have the qualities to be a good wife or mother, specifically because of her line of work.

I understand that he's free to say what he wants. However, the network has a responsibility to not promote casual sexism. They likely had plenty of interview footage to work with, but chose to use the "juiciest" parts. There is another episode where a woman they interviewed said she would never have invested with him (the fraudster) if she'd known what she (his wife) did for a living. The fraudsters wife was a stripper.

Men are also not spared. Multiple episodes go into great detail about how unattractive certain men were, or how short they were, almost as if to say, "so you understand why they'd..."

Even worse is the narration, when employs various outdated phrases to describe a variety of women who don't fit the oblivious homemaker mold.

It was very interesting to see a show explaining essentially that you can't trust someone based on what you see and what they say, while still enforcing the antiquated cultural ideas of who should and shouldn't be trusted.

So, yes, this was very interesting. I would not, however, recommend it to children or teenagers without context because of the casual sexism.

Life After: Chernobyl (2016 TV Movie)

Like if Ghost Hunters went to Chernobyl, but still thought they were hunting ghosts

[2/10 · 29 May 2018]

This documentary was silly at best. The anthropologist and biologist featured direct much of the focus to the danger they're facing, rather than how life in the Exclusion Zone has changed in the years since the accident. Not to say it's not valuable to state the danger, but rather than stating the danger in a scientific way, they would speak in almost panicked voices about the danger, as if to build up suspense. It really took away from what could have been a good documentary.

In addition to being over-dramatic and under-informative, the documentary doesn't take advantage of the interesting things they do find. For example, when they find the very large catfish and collect its DNA, we are told that the DNA was different from others of that species of catfish. But that's all we are told. We are not told how. Nor are we told why the voles had smaller organs (other than "effects of the radiation")--even if this isn't something that's known at this point, it would be more interesting to explore the mystery.

So, if you want to watch something that's only a couple baby steps above Tanked, I suppose this is the documentary for you.