Netflix recently made the announcement that “The OA” would not be renewed for a third season, but the show’s fans have something to say about that.
Emperial Young, 35, has not had anything to eat since August 16 as she stands from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. outside the Netflix office on Sunset Blvd to protest the end of the show.
“‘The OA’ isn’t like most shows. The sincerity, the philosophy. It’s just such an important show to so many people,” the currently unemployed writer told IndieWire. “It deals with so many important issues, trauma and grief and mental health. It’s also this relentlessly creative, amazing experience, and the storytelling is just incredible.”
The show was the brainchild of Brit Marling who also played OA.
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This is Young’s first time protesting anything but lists the streaming giant’s “mentality” as the reason she is standing up for the show,
“Netflix has this mentality of starting a bunch of shows, but some good things are slipping through the cracks. Most TV is just entertainment, and it was so great that Netflix gave a platform to creators who are trying to tell a story as special as ‘The OA,’ but for them to then take the platform away after two seasons because of metrics, I think that they’re thinking too much in the short term,” Young added.
“At the end of the day, they’re trying to build a content library, and who’s going to want a content library of half-finished stories?”
Other fans have joined Young and some have even started to perform “the movements” that the characters would do to hop dimensions.
Young told the publication that she plans to strike for as long as it takes.
“I’ll go as long as I have to. Gandhi did a lot of fasts, the longest he did was 21 days, but most of his were five-six days. I’m going to see how far I can go, if I have to do,” she said.
As for why the show is so special: “Life is a story that we tell ourselves and, an external story can help us process issues and experiences that we go through by providing a framework. ‘The OA’ has been that for a lot of people, and it has helped them process things throughout their lives.”
The hunger strike caught the attention of Marling, who posted a lengthy note on Twitter.
“We’re humbled, to be honest floored, by the outpouring of support for ‘The OA’,” Marling’s message started. “Your words and images move us deeply. Not because the show must continue, but because for some people its unexpected cancellation begs larger questions about the role of storytelling and its fate inside late capitalism’s push toward consolidation and economies of scale.”
“You are standing on street corners in the hot sun to protest,” she wrote. “You are meeting new people in strange recesses online and sharing stories about loss and renewal that you never thought you’d tell anyone. You are learning choreography and moving in ways you haven’t dared moved before. All of it is uncomfortable … All of it is worth something.”
“The other day [‘The OA’ showrunner] Zal [Batmanglij] and I pulled over to offer a bottle of water and food to a young woman who has been protesting the cancellation of the show on a street corner in Hollywood,” Marling said of Young. “As we were leaving she said, ‘You know, what I’m really protesting is late capitalism.’ And then she said something that I haven’t been able to forget since: ‘Algorithms aren’t as smart as we are. They cannot account for love.’ Her words. Not mine. And the story keeps going inside them.”
Young later clarified that Marling has not “endorsed” her. “I am an individual exercising my autonomy, and my actions do not reflect on them in any way.”
