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Nice try, Netflix, I'm not gonna binge a show for non-product-placement.
A mainstream television program is loaded with the makers' political opinions? Never(!)
wow, so sharp and insightful...

except that that's not really what the article is about. it's more about how hard it is for the maker' political opinions to be loaded in the show:

> This plot arc aired in the mid-1990s, when abortion wasn’t really an option for characters on television shows. If a series even openly discussed abortion, it risked the ire of highly organized media watchdogs on the religious right who would lead boycotts and threaten skittish advertisers.

and it's about how the "makers" of the show didn't know it was happening:

> Outside of a select few insiders, no one—including Aaron Spelling, Melrose’s legendary executive producer—knew what it was doing.

> But I have yet to find a single viewer of Melrose Place who has any memory of seeing any of the artworks while watching the show.

Pretty much sums it up. All the effort of thought, hiding it from the producers, thinking themselves so radical, and nobody noticed anyway. They probably should have put their creative effort (not that I think the things listed in this are that creative) into something else.

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> All the effort of thought, hiding it from the producers, thinking themselves so radical, and nobody noticed anyway.

And good for them! In this modern age of rage porn, someone would have noticed, started a twitter storm (or is it X storm now), and more likely than not, some people would have had their career ruined, just for having some fun at workspace.

Sigh.

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If they want fewer people they obviously aren't doing a good job considering the population increases every single year.
The best jokes need to be explained. /s

Honestly, this reads more like a cautionary tale about subtle subversion: sometimes its so subtle it's invisible, and therefore wasted effort. This kind of subversion is "safe" and therefore useless, or worse than useless, since it still gives the catharsis of action without being effective.

Did it actually go unnoticed? Obsessing over your favorite shows and talking about them online happened in the 90s too.
How screens teach us goes beyond what we remember. Much like our views on race, gender, etc, we can’t pinpoint when we were told our “truth” it is an accumulation of sediment. By laying these artworks in there, they guided a little of that sediment for a lot of people, a cumulative effect that is hard to quantify but could be profound.
> By laying these artworks in there, they guided a little of that sediment for a lot of people, a cumulative effect that is hard to quantify but could be profound.

I really doubt they did. It was all too subtle. The effect was next to nothing.