I looked at my credit-card statement this week and saw Netflix charged me a whole $33 for my monthly subscription, a deranged price considering the company is reportedly rethinking movie budgets and limiting account users to a “household.†(How is my sister’s host family’s nephew in Costa Rica gonna binge Suits now??) Where is this money going, you may ask? To bizarre promotional devices parading the streets of Paris, that’s where. On January 30, a truck decorated with the title of Netflix’s new SofÃa Vergara show, Griselda, appeared to snort lines of a white powdery substance while ambling through the 1st Arrondissement, right in the view of the Louvre, which houses the Mona Lisa. The Wonka-colored truck was huffing the stuff through a cartoonishly big straw strapped to the front of it, as seen in a video posted on X by Netflix France.
While the promo makes sense considering the subject matter of the show — the true story of accomplished drug lord Griselda Blanco and her highly successful cartel — it doesn’t make sense in the realm of politeness. Was the marketing team raised by wolves? Don’t they know most well-mannered people do bumps in the Basement greenroom or the upstairs toilet at Elsewhere? Have they no class? Not only is my wallet offended, but so too are my sensibilities.