The Four Color Media Monitor

The BBC is writing about a musical film produced on Netflix, said to be based on Archie, or an India-based variation on the comics, also telling the history of how Archie comics became significant in India, and predictably, this article ends up being sugarcoated about what went wrong with how comics like these were produced. First:

The comic is back in the news, with Netflix set to launch The Archies, a musical adapted from the comic, later this year.

The coming-of-age film is based in 1960s India and explores teenage themes of love, heartbreak and rebellion through the lens of the Anglo-Indian community. The trailer has already been viewed over 800,000 times on YouTube.

The news of the film has sparked a lot of conversation among fans of the comic.

Some say the comic will benefit from having a more Indian context, while others have criticised the film for having characters that "don't look Indian". While the jury's still out on the film, there's no denying the influence Archie Comics once had over city-bred youngsters in India.

But Netflix isn't the place to broadcast it. They've produced so much content that's potentially PC-woke, and why should we assume this couldn't screw up the same way? This BBC article certainly does by the time it gets around to the following history:

By the time the comic became popular in India, it had gone out of fashion in America. Comics were popular in US in the 1950s and 60s - in fact, Archie made his debut in December 1941 - but sales began dropping towards the end of the century.

Publishers have tried to reinvent Archie Comics by adding diverse characters, including the first gay character; exploring darker plotlines tied to current issues like gun control, body shaming, recession and even the challenges of sustaining long-term relationships like marriage.

The art has evolved - the highly stylised drawings of the 50s and 60s morphed into softer, more realistic cartoonish drawings in the 90s. In the 2000s, artists experimented with digital artwork to give the comic a more modern look.

Umm, doesn't this give strong hints why the Archie franchise plummeted by the turn of the century? They resorted to LGBT ideology, and last time I looked, were still fully willing to remain nailed tight on it, and darkness is another letdown. The part about gun control is also quite telling where things have been going lately. And by body shaming, do they mean obesity? Let's be clear. Obesity is nothing to mock. But if we're not even allowed to criticize how unhealthy it can be, especially for women, then it's hard to comprehend what this is all about. Though the part about marriage is certainly eyebrow raising. In an age where marriage is being devastated all over the place, who knows if they even take an objective approach to that?

Some like Reneysh Vittal say they miss the playfulness and simplicity of the older Archie Comics. "Our generation was lucky enough to experience life just before the internet took over and for me, Archie Comics will always represent that pre-internet age of innocence," he says.

Regrettably, with the way wokeism took over their company, right down to the horror-themed stories they emphasized in recent years, there's no chance they'll ever be willing to return to a format free of the politicized themes they've forced onto the franchise. Maybe one day, if it all becomes public domain, somebody will have what it takes to conceive Archie stories in better taste than seen now. But that day is, most unfortunately, still a long way off. And again, it's not a good idea to produce movie adaptations on a network like Netflix.

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