Skip to main content

Netflix and Kill with Lady Macbeth


With Netflix there is endless streaming of your favorite movies, TV shows, miniseries, and more. There must be something to suit everyone's taste, right?

Let's find out if there is really something out there for everyone. Let's pick a person and see what they would watch. That person doesn't even have to be real. Let's say....... Lady Macbeth, what would she watch on Netflix? Here are the recommendations:

Recommendation #1: Reign

Right off the bat this may seem to be an obvious choice. A queen of Scotland? Sounds like Lady Macbeth to me.

Reign follows the rise to power of Mary Queen of Scots. She arrives in France at the age of fifteen, and is set to marry Prince Francis in order to unite the kingdoms of France and Scotland under a treaty. However, Mary finds dark forces against her, when Nostradamus has a vision that Prince Francis will die, and the cause of his death will be Mary herself. Now in the grab for power, the prince's mother does not want her son to marry Mary, because she does not want him to die. However, she does want him to be king. What will she do to ensure her son's rise to power? In the treacherous world of the French court, there is regicide, fierce opposition, and dark forces. 

Lady Macbeth would likely find this kind of drama very appealing to her tastes. After all, she herself has been involved in the death of a king, and also had experience in dark forces working against her rise to power. This would reveal Lady Macbeth's inner hunger for power, and her desire to see herself and her husband in power, no matter what stands in their way. She is not above murder, sabotage, or treachery to get what she wants. This highlights to us Lady Macbeth's ambition, and her frustration with supernatural forces that conspire against her.

Recommendation #2: Pretty Little Liars

In Pretty Little Liars, viewers experience the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania. In this town, four girls (Aria Montgomery, Hanna Marin, Emily Fields, and Spencer Hastings) watch as their social group dissolves after the disappearance of their leader. The friends are later reunited when a mysterious figure "A" threatens to expose their secrets, including the cover-up of a murder. Show follows the girls as they try to figure out who "A" is while also trying to protect their inner dark secrets.

Lady Macbeth would likely enjoy some Pretty Little Liars due to its strong emphasis on protecting secrets and past regrets. This show would reveal Lady Macbeth's more sensitive side, and her internal struggle with the murder of Duncan. This show would reveal to us that even Lady Macbeth is not immune from guilt (which we find out later in Macbeth when she kills herself). From this recommendation viewers would understand that Lady Macbeth is beginning to feel her own past catching up with her, and would be desperate to ensure that that does not happen.

Recommendation #3: How to Get Away with Murder

How to Get Away with Murder follows the live of Annalise Keating, who is a law professor at a Philadelphia university. Suddenly she, along with five of her most trusted students, become involved in a murder plot, and they soon find themselves falling into an unending series of murders. In this show, everyone is a suspect and everyone is hiding something. Can the one at fault truly get away with murder?

I would like to think that Lady Macbeth would be a sucker for any good murder mystery. She was a part of one herself, with the murder of Duncan, and witnessed her husband going on a murderous spree himself. All of it was supposed to happen behind closed doors (literally in the case of Duncan) and without anyone ever knowing who really did it. This show may reveal to us just how paranoid Lady Macbeth begins to feel about the murder of Duncan. Immediately after it happened? She was fine. However, she slowly becomes more and more aware that someone may eventually unveil the truth, especially with her husband going on a murder spree via murderers-for-hire. This recommendation would lead viewers to realize why Lady Macbeth begins having sleepwalking sessions reliving the murder of Duncan, because she is afraid they did not hide it well enough. Lady Macbeth is afraid that she may not get away with murder.

Recommendation #4: 1922

The fourth and final recommendation on Lady Macbeth's Netflix list. End your binge-watching session with a good old fashioned horror film, based on a novella by Stephen King. 1922 tells the story of a proud farmer, Wilfred James, who sudden goes down a dark path by murdering his wife for financial gain. He enlists the help of his son in performing the murder and in helping to hide the body. Just when Mr. James thinks he has gotten away with it, he and his son are plagued with supernatural and weird occurrences. The murder of his wife begins to weigh on him, and Wilfred James must soon face the consequences for his actions.

The reasoning behind choosing this movie for Lady Macbeth's watch list is fairly similar to How to Get Away with Murder. Lady Macbeth is beginning to feel the guilt and regret of her past actions push her further and further into insanity and depression. This movie choice reveals to us why Lady Macbeth began to become so paranoid and fell ill, because she was afraid of ending up like her husband and seeing ghosts of those she has wronged. This reveals to us the contrast between Lady Macbeth's cool and collected exterior, and her anxious interior. 1922 is the perfect fit for the person who has something buried deep in their mind (or in the ground) that they would wish to forget about, but just cannot get rid of.

Comments

  1. I enjoyed reading this blog post a lot. I don't really watch any American tv shows so it's really interesting learning about their plots and noticing the differences between cultures. Nonetheless, I also liked your interpretation of Lady Macbeth. It matched up to a lot of other people's well, and matched up with mine too. The only thing that I noticed to be new is 1922. The way you described it made it an interesting story, something that Lady Macbeth would've liked.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Merry christmas senor, I was really impressed by your PLL choice as you made a strong correlation to Lady Macbeth's secretive nature. I also really liked your 1922 choice as it is a something I have been meaning to watch. The supernatural haunting the living seems to be a perfect way to encourage characters to self reflect and show their true beliefs. Additionally, it leads someone like Lady Macbeth to enclose herself in her mind and suffocate .

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange Case of Dr. Kalluru and Mr. Vogel

Chapter 3: "To this rule...This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop" (pg. 12-13) (Keerti) In this excerpt, Mr. Utterson talks to Dr. Jekyll for the first time in the book. Dr. Jekyll is characterized as a large, good-looking man of around 50 years of age. He is described as caring and kindhearted, especially towards his friend Mr. Utterson. When Utterson talks to Jekyll about the will, Jekyll brushes it off and seems to be very lighthearted about the topic. He tries to deviate from it by bringing up his thoughts about Dr. Lanyon and their disagreements. Utterson, however, is very serious about the matter. When Utterson questions Jekyll about Hyde, the panic is clearly visible on his face and he becomes cold and reserved in appearance - "The large, handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes". This shows Utterson that there is definitely something suspicious about the matter. In comparison...

It was all for you... and yet it was all because of you.

When I say you, I am talking to every single one of you that will read this, and even then those who will never read it. I never know what to expect from you all, sometimes I find myself thinking about Gatsby or Walt Whitman, a sense of being within and without. I will probably cover it later in this blog post if I remember to get to it... I have a lot a want to cover but don't know how to say all of it. Normally I'm very good at making myself sound way smarter than I am, and writing like I always know what I'm talking about. You all probably knew me first as Chris Vogel, the really smart dude, or Chris Vogel, that quiet nerd that was in some class I had freshman or sophomore year. Yeah that was... or is me. It's hard to tell if I'm anything like that kid some of you may have first met. I keep losing track of time. I get ahead of myself or fall behind. I get distracted, I miss out on things, I make mistakes. I try not to but often times I blame myself and end up...

A Cover Story

Shown above are four alternate covers for the novel Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Each cover represents its own element of the story and does so in its own way. Particularly with the use of color, each cover prefaces the book with a different tone.  The first image (the one in the top left) pictures an orange/tan background, resembling old paper/papyrus. In front of this background color is a blurry image of what appears to be a girl. This image suggests motion as if the girl in the image is spinning in one direction. Her face cannot be seen she appears to be in a blue dress of some sort. This cover may serve to allude to the theme of identity and individuality present throughout the novel, as shown by the girl in the image being faceless. By not giving the girl a face, the artist is intentionally preventing the girl from having an identity, and thus she becomes just another model for a girl, not any specific character. The motion in the image may suggest t...