One Good Thing: Money Heist, a joyful TV series

Money Heist : Infrequently has a television show inspired similar wide, global rebellion as Casa de Papel. Set in Madrid, the now- five- part series tells the story of a group of stealers who steal from Spain’s Royal Mint and, latterly, the Bank of Spain, taking hostages along the way. The whole thing is conceived and led by “ El Profesor, ” the nearly ostensibly smart and well- organized fatherly figure who hatches and directs the topmost thievery Spain has ever seen. doubly.

I ’m not generally into straight action sequences, but the bones
in plutocrat pinch, as it’s called in English, are invested with the running themes of the show love, fellowship, frippery, and, most importantly, resistance. Gunfire- ridden combat is interspersed with flourishing harangues from the women protagonists who do more for la revolución than any of the macho displays of physical dominance which is lucky because there’s substantial badass feminist energy in this show.
What’s unique and eventually most inspiring about plutocrat pinch is its revolutionary impact on real- world demurrers. In the series, citizens line the thoroughfares girding the Royal Mint and the Bank of Spain, chanting their support for the stealers and booing the state’s violent policing tactics. In real life, protesters in countries similar as Lebanon, Iraq, France, and others have espoused motifs from the show in their struggles for emancipation, police invalidation,anti-authoritarianism, andanti-capitalism.

In the first season, I clapped my hands together in gaiety when I realized the stealers, who are all codenamed after metropolises, blagged their way inside the physical root of capitalism’s inequality. Of all places for a pinch, the Royal Mint! I virtually jumped off my settee when it came clear they were there to do further than just steal plutocrat — they were going to publish it. also, in season three, they decide to drop€ 140 million of it from an inflatable hovercraft over Madrid’s most crowded shopping road.

The show’s main downfall is its elision of ethnical and gender analysis, both in the fictional world of plutocrat pinch and in the casting. There’s no citation of how race and class intersect, despite the whole plot revolving aroundanti-capitalism andanti-authoritarianism. This is no small rejection; it’s a abecedarian excrescence of the show. This also carries over to the casting The character Nairobi is the only person of color in the entire show( the actor who plays her, Alba Flores, is of Romani heritage); and the character Manila, who’s trans, is played by a cisgender actor. These risks render the show a shamefully deficient take on the issues it else portrays so directly and poignantly.

Each new note the stealers produce becomes a emblematic act of defiance. They prove the superficiality of wealth creation and the ease of redivision in a world of class scales, where this gang has frequently set up itself at the bottom. Moscow, for illustration, is a working- class Asturian miner whose woman
left him and his son Denver( also a member of the gang) amid a haze of medicine dependence . Moscow’s participation in the pinch is driven by his desire for a better life for himself and his son, a way out of the challenging mining life and a chance to move up the socioeconomic graduation.
Nairobi, an incomparable hustler, is a single mama living in poverty who sells medicines to pay for living charges. Upon discovering this, a child services agency takes down her son and prohibits her from visiting him. Her commitment to the pinch is embedded in her belief that, armed with the thousands of euros they ’re set to publish and steal, she can get him back. Her enthusiasm as she directs the hostages in publishing the bills is sustained by an hot conviction that she can defy the power structures that led to having her child taken down. Her plutocrat is her power. In what’s really my favorite scene of the entire series, she beams from observance to observance, encouraging and praising the hostages ’ sweats as she recites her aphorism, “ Joy, party, and stopgap! ”

A man in a Salvador Dalí mask demurrers President Sebastian Piñera’s government in Santiago, Chile, in October 2019. Claudio Santana/ Getty Images
The way these dispatches have told demurrers is clear in how constantly the stealers ’ eye- catching costume of bright-red jumpsuits and masks have been making appearances at demurrers around the world. also, the show has revived the old antifascist Italian kick hymn “ Bella Ciao, ” which appears at pivotal moments of success and defiance. It’s long been considered a kick hymn in numerous corridor of the world — in Iran, in Turkey, and on Wall Street but the show has really brought it to a wider public.

Of course, it’s in Italy that the song’s significance is felt deepest. Matteo Salvini, the leader of theultra-right-wing nationalist political party Lega Nord, seems to be, relatively hilariously, met by crowds singing it at him wherever he goes on the machine, at requests, during speeches. It also accompanies numerous other progressive movements in Italy and beyond Poojan Sahil’s Punjabi interpretation of the song has gone viral in India, the videotape set against the background of the Indian growers ’ demurrers, which remain ongoing.
In the show, the song has also been used in celebratory moments, like when Moscow discovers he has reached the soft soil subcaste of the escape lair he’s been digging. The colorful members of the platoon join him one by one, begirding out the song together in exaltation. The most poignant performance of “ Bella Ciao ” comes in the season one homestretch, where we see El Profesor and Berlin sing it together in a flashback to the night before the pinch begins. Gashes stream down Berlin’s face in recalcitrant expectation of success. The moment was so emotional, I felt my own gashes fall as well.

In real life, a particularly moving piece of footage shows settlers saved by the NGO Open Arms as they sing “ Bella Ciao, ” jumping up and down in joy and relief at having reached dry land in Barcelona. In March 2020, when Italy began to suffer the loftiest number of Covid- 19 deaths in Europe, a community in the German city of Bamberg performed the song from their own rooftops in solidarity, another moment that brought gashes to my eyes.
In 2020, Nissan workers in Spain took to the thoroughfares dressed as the Casa de Papel characters to protest the government’s decision to close Nissan shops across the country. They were also drawing attention to commodity bigger the rights of workers and the imbalance of power between commercial elites and workers.

Puerto Ricans slipped the same costumes to call for the abdication of looseGov. Ricardo Rosselló, using the word “ Somos la puta resistencia, ” which translates to “ We’re the fucking resistance ” — a reference to a speech made by El Profesor in season three, combined with arguably the most iconic line in the whole five seasons, the Nairobi quotation “ Soy la puta ama ” — “ I ’m the fucking master. ”( Okay, so it’s a bit more profound in Spanish.)
The notion of police and state corruption has been a longstanding element of Spanish life. 15- M is the country’santi-austerity movement, said to have inspired Occupy Wall Street. Beginning on May 15, 2011,( which is where the name 15- M comes from) following a huge profitable crash, demurrers took place in the center of Madrid and away in the country to demand better living conditions, weal and employment support, and an end to political corruption.

Although Casa de Papel came out several times after 15- M began, the movement is considered an station in Spain, a way of being in society in resistance to austerity and exploitation. As someone with a background in social justice work, I find it laborious and frustrating to watch shows that replicate dangerous socioeconomic structures, similar as those that praise bobbies
and the service without any reference to the violence and destruction they leave in their wake. It’s beautiful to see the kinds ofanti-state ideals bandied within activist circles being depicted in one of Netflix’s most popular series of all time. The alternate part of season five — slated to be the show’s final season — is set to release on December 3. Then’s hoping that the series can inspire further revolutions, further resistance, and further emancipation in the times to come.
Plutocrat pinch is streaming on Netflix. For further recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing libraries.