Microdramas are taking over the internet. But are they art – or products?
The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband. Break Me, Princess. Married the Mafioso I Saved. These are all titles of microdramas that are taking the internet by storm. In case you haven’t heard, microdramas are often campy shows with short, minute-long episodes. The first few episodes get posted to social media for free, but viewers must go to another site where they can pay to watch the whole thing. And a lot of people do. It's an industry that started in China and is already worth several billions of dollars – so Hollywood is getting in on it. Issa Rae’s microdrama called Screen Time got nearly 75 million views in its first week, and now, Peacock, Fox, and Disney are producing their own. But this microdrama boom raises a few questions: who are these stories for, and what makes them so popular? And is the microdrama a new art form – or is it solely a product?
Brittany is joined by
Chang Che, a freelance writer who wrote about microdramas for
The New Yorker, and
Xochitl Gonzalez, author and contributor at
The Atlantic, who wrote about them there.
For more episodes on what we’re watching and why, check out:
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