Netflix’s “All of Us Are Dead” raises controversies over school violence and sexual assault
Netflix’s original series “All of Us Are Dead” has been embroiled in controversies since the first day of its release.
This is because excessive sexual violence descriptions regardless of the content development were aired without any censorship. “All of Us Are Dead” tells the story of students, who are trapped in their school where the zombie virus began, struggling to survive together while waiting for a rescue. It was first released on Netflix on Jan 28th.
Immediately after its release, various online communities poured out articles pointing out sensationality over some scenes in episode 1. In the controversial scene in the middle of episode 1, male students who commit school violence take off one female student’s school uniform and order another male victim to film her by mobile phone. In this scene, the schoolgirl is wearing only skirts and covering her breasts with her hands.
At this time, the main male student Lee Soo-hyuk (Park Solomon) appears. He tries to bring the two victims out, but the perpetrator threatened, “You came out XX sexy. I’m a Facebook friend of your mom. Should I send this to your mom?” The victim girl eventually shakes off the hand of the student who saved her. She takes off her clothes in front of the perpetrators with a resigned face, saying, “If you go on like this, you will get it twice tomorrow.”
The scene draws criticism for sexual objectification of minor victims in the drama. Netizens commented, “When handling crime-related stories, hurting victims is not art, but an offense”, “To criticize sex crimes, the scene itself should not be portrayed like pornography. I don’t know the reason why the scene made it into the final cut..”
Some netizens expressed concerns that school violence and sexual assault could be seen and copied through scenes that were portrayed in an uncensored way. Above all, the controversy intensified as the scene did not appear in the original webtoon. ‘All of Us Are Dead’ tells the story of zombies appearing in a school and students struggling to survive. Critics pointed out that unnecessary settings have been included by adding excessively provocative scenes that are not related to the overall narrative of the drama.
‘All of Us Are Dead’ was released simultaneously in 190 countries on Netflix on January 28th. It is adapted from a webtoon of the same name published on Naver from May 2009 to November 2011. The original was extremely popular, ranking first in views on every release date. The drama also inherited the popularity of its webtoon counterpart. The number of views on the official trailer released on January 14th exceeded 12 million, drawing great attention.
