Amazon’s new comedy series Upload doesn’t hide its anti-capitalist, pro-communist message and sadly it kills what could’ve been a decent show.
Let’s face it, Upload is not a revolutionary television series; the idea of the afterlife and the preservation of the human consciousness is nothing new — but still — it is an interesting concept which deserves more exploration. Sadly, the new Amazon Original series cheapens this with pointless political hot takes.
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Capitalism is evil. Communism is good… or at least that is what Upload wants us to believe. Strangely enough, something so blatantly Anti-Western or Anti-American would have not made it to public broadcast several decades ago. The film makers would have been labelled as Russian spies and interrogated by the CIA for pushing communist propaganda. However, freedom of speech now protects this kind of media. Amazon’s Upload is exactly this kind of media.
Upload is set in the not too distant future; 2036 to be precise, and Oprah Winfrey is POTUS and Kamala Harris is Vice President.
Amazon Original Upload doesn’t hide political agenda and shows Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris 2024 presidential poster against capitalism.
Despite looking absolute dodgy and unpractical, tech has seen some major developments one of which is the ability to be upload your consciousness to a super computer that acts as this kind of Utopian future world or ‘heaven’ for this user.
However, this futuristic idea of heaven is ruined because of… yep, you guessed it; capitalism.
The rich people, who are all white old men, get access to the premium features of this new heaven while the less fortunate get almost nothing. This is something the show’s bumbling antagonist Nathan Brown, played by Robbie Amell, vows to change. Just unfortunately, he’s an idiot white guy who has a rich white girlfriend whose paying for his stay in this digital heaven. So Nathan Brown relies on the shows real hero, a low income earning black lady who works as a costumer service representative for the ‘digital heaven’.
The real capitalism fighting heroes in Upload is a sassy black female version of Snoop Dogg and and Andy Allo; together they are like Oprah and Kamala.
These customer servers agents are referred to by the uploaded individuals as ‘angels’ and, in this very particular case, Nathan Brown and his ‘angel’ fall in love with each other. Aside from the fact that Nathan’s existence relies on his rich white girlfriend, there’s another issue when the angel’s father tells her that she is not right for her because… well, too put it plainly… he’s a rich white guy that would never really understand her.
Nathan’s girlfriend is portrayed as a villainous dumb bimbo who had something to do with his death. During one of the flashback sequences Nathan is at her parent’s place and she is flirting with him by telling him about all the powerful people her family knows one of who is former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. While the camera pans across a bunch of framed pictures we see a Photoshopped picture of current U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.
In Upload the ideal future means Mike Pence is the bad guy and Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris take over and eradicate capitalism.
The showrunner thought it would be clever to link a picture of Mike Pence to the ‘evil rich white family’ in Upload that conspired to have Nathan Brown killed because he and his buddy designed a freeware version of this digital heaven that, according to the show, would have bankrupt the billion dollar Upload industry.
Towards the show comes yet another, what I can only assume the creators want us to assume, is another huge revaluation. Spoiler alert; the white protagonist is just another filthy colonist capitalist who screwed over his black friend to become even wealthier. Her daddy was right; the white man really is the devil.
Like I mentioned earlier, there is nothing inherently new about Upload; it’s pretty much Downsized meets The Good Place, but it just seems to be written by some Berkeley University undergrad with little to no grasp of real world politics and even less knowledge on tech.
If, like the creators, you dream of a future where Oprah and Kamala are the future leaders and believe capitalism, and every republican — even Mike Pence — is pure evil… then Upload is right up your alley.
Does this sound like a show that you might be into? Let us know in the comments below.