‘Intimacy’: why is the Netflix series so successful? | keys


From time to time there are series or television programs that generate a great social debate and invite reflection on issues of our day to day. It happened, for example, a year ago with the successful docuseries about Rocío Carrasco broadcast by Telecinco, which helped to incorporate expressions such as vicarious violence and gaslight, and it’s happening now again with ‘Privacy’the new Spanish Netflix series, which raises the consequences of the leaking of sexual videos on the networks without the consent of its protagonists.

The fiction, which premiered on June 10, has climbed this Tuesday to number 1 of the most watched on Netflix in Spain, snatching the position from the almighty fourth season of ‘Stranger things’. Worldwide, it has become the fourth most watched series on the non-English language platform, with 15,900,000 hours watched, and is also in the Top 10 of Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Portugal, Serbia and Kenya.

But a few days ago the production created by Laura Sarmiento (‘Slaughterhouse’, ‘The area’) and veronica fernandez (‘Hache’, ‘Caronte’) has been ‘trending topic’ on social networks, coinciding with the scandal of Santi Millana case very similar to the one narrated in the series starring Itziar ItunoVeronica Echegui and Patricia Lopez Arnaiz. What are the keys to your success?

‘Intimacy’ raises an interesting debate about the thin line that separates public life from private life, something that has become extremely topical as a result of the leak of the sexual video of the presenter of ‘Got talent’. The series delves into fear, guilt and shame that it entails about the victims (in the case of fiction, women) and leads us to reflect on the complicity exercised by all those who, even though they were not behind the publication of the images, have helped spread them.

The starting point is the viralization of the sexual videos of two women. One is A politic with a promising future in the Bilbao City Council (Ituño) and the other, an anonymous factory worker Basque (Echegui) who, after the scandal, cannot bear the pressure and ends up drowning on the beach.

The pull of the Santi Millán case

The idea of ​​the creators was to address a “story about women who faced certain difficulties together despite their differences” through a theme “that has a lot to do with the here and now,” as Sarmiento points out. “There have always been gossip, scandals, but the possibility of viralization and damage he is so much older now. Before, a rumor had its action limited in time and space, but now it is something brutal, and it seemed pertinent to talk about it”, emphasizes the screenwriter.

What they could not imagine was that the news was going to put them in the spotlight, as a result of the Santi Millán case. “Unfortunately, it’s a sad coincidencebut it is an issue that is there”, emphasizes Sarmiento. But has this scandal led to multiply the pull of the series? “I want to think that there is not such a radical influence”, insists the creator. “If seeing her The root of the news serves to make us think about it instead of feeding more curiosity, because perhaps it is a positive consequence, not so much because of the number of views, but because of the reflection that you can reach”, adds Sarmiento about a issue such as the violation of privacy, on which the citizenry still has many gaps.

It’s a crime? What penalties does it entail? How do we become accomplices? “The important thing is not to point to the guy who started this, but that the rest of us look at each other and see how we participate, how we generate that violence from our small trials, because things can change a lot if you don’t click ‘click’ when you the video arrives,” says one of the actresses in the series, Patricia López Arnaiz.

According to another of the interpreters, Ana Wagener, the violation of privacy “is a subject that has been little dealt with, being the central focus of a series, despite the fact that it is something that we live with daily and that causes a lot of damage to many people. “. Because, as she rightly points out, there are cases that come to light, “the most mediatic”, but others that will never be confessed “because of the shame, fear and guilt” that the victims feel.

Olvido Hormigos and the Iveco employee

Although ‘Intimacy’ is not based on a specific real event, it does have reminiscences of stories that have occupied the pages of the newspapers in recent times. That of Ituño reminds us of that of Oblivion Ants, a socialist councilor from Los Yébenes, a town in Toledo. His publication without his consent of a sexual video, in 2012, put an end to his political career, although it opened a path for him on television sets, especially Telecinco. He got to participate in ‘Big Brother VIP’and took advantage of the media pull to publish an erotic novel, ‘El abrazo infiel’, and be on the cover of ‘Interviú’.

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The plot that Echegui stars in, for his part, bears many similarities to that of the Iveco truck factory woman who committed suicide in 2019 in Madrid. The 32-year-old mother of two young children could not bear the pressure when she went viral among her co-workers, through a WhatsApp group, a sexual video. Although she reported the events to the company, she soon ended up hanging herself.

The case was closed without finding a culprit, because the Labor Inspection determined that the victim “was not affected” by her colleagues seeing the images, and that she only feared that her husband would know. The creator of ‘Intimacy’ acknowledges that the story of the Iveco employee was taken into account, because it occurred just when they had just started the series “and because of the harshness of what happened.”


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