Hamish Steele, the creator of Netflix‘s animated series “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” has been posting his thoughts on BlueSky as conservatives on X call for people to cancel their Netflix accounts due to his show featuring a trans character. The Netflix original streamed for 20 episodes across two seasons in 2022.
While Netflix canceled “Dead End: Paranormal Park” in 2023, a clip of the protagonist, Barney Guttman, saying he is transgender during the show’s second episode has resurfaced on X in recent days via accounts such as Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok. The accounts noted the show was aimed at children (Netflix has it rated TV-Y7, meaning suitable for 7 year olds or older) and called for people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. Musk tweeted “This is not okay” and “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids” while also re-sharing posts to his X profile calling for people to ditch Netflix.
“It’s probably going to be a very odd day,” series creator Steele posted on BlueSky after Musk shared a post from Libs of TikTok that included the clip from “Dead End: Paranormal Park” and a caption saying Netflix “is pushing pro-transgender on children” and the show is “being promoted on Netflix Kids now.” The creator fired back at the last point by writing: “It’s all lies and slander! Netflix is NOT promoting at the moment!”
Netflix had no comment on the matter when contacted by Variety. The show is not being actively promoted by the streamer, but all episodes remain available to stream on the platform following the series’ 2023 cancellation.
“I have mostly been very ok today and found it all quite funny, while really appreciating everyone who has reached out, but the extremely nasty weird homophobic and antisemitic emails have started rolling in and it is getting a little scary so I apologize if I take longer to respond to stuff,” Steele posted later in the day as conservative backlash on X accelerated.
A few hours after Musk posted “cancel Netflix,” Steele told his BlueSky followers that he would be taking a social media break by posting: “I will just say today is much much worse and I am going to basically be on the down low for the foreseeable. My apologies.”
Musk’s pleas for people to cancel Netflix over the “Dead End: Paranormal Park” clip has continued via various re-tweets, including one post from the Maga Voice account that reads: “IT’S TIME TO CANCEL AND BOYCOTT NETFLIX.”
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From Variety US