The entire place is awash with preternaturally attractive blondes in pastel pink. Paltrow’s office reminds me not to call her an actress; she is, at best, an entrepreneur and at worst a con artist.
Launching her lifestyle company Goop in 2008, it began as a mere recommendations newsletter. Currently reported to be worth around $250 million, it has now spawned a website, a hoard of stores, a magazine, a podcast, cookbooks- and now, a six-episode series on Netflix that is both the apotheosis and the downfall of the unsupervised capitalization of fame.
1. Article Summary
The first episode of The Goop Lab opens in Jamaica, with the rays of the sun, pellucid water and a group of Goop staff sitting cross-legged in a circle. Then, under the supervision of three psychedelic elders, they each drink a mug of psilocybin tea (a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms).
This Netflix show uses scepticism as its runway. It isn’t science- it is something much more lucrative. “We’re here one time, one life,” says Paltrow in the first episode, addressing her staffers from Goop headquarters in Santa Monica, California.
“How can we really milk the shit out of this?” Although she’s referring to the show’s approach to self-optimization, she could just as easily have been talking about her business strategy.
2. Is it worth watching?
Considering each of the following episodes feels a bit like navigating the surrealism of psychedelics without a certified instructor to guide you through, it only fits that the first episode began the way it did.
There are moments of absolute absurdity; a woman is brought to tears by a psychic reading that involves a donkey; in another episode, a series of vulva portraitures flash onscreen.
By the end of all six episodes, the viewer may feel the way one Goop staffer describes a work-related mushroom trip, ”really drained, both physically and emotionally.”
I. Plot
As the title indicates, the series turns a lifestyle company into a travelling laboratory. The Goopers, however, are not the scientists themselves but are the guinea pigs (which is, incidentally, also Paltrow’s initials and what they call her).
In the name of “self-care”, staffers from throughout the Goop hierarchy from beauty editors to IT guys, and assistants to executives, try out a variety of alternative therapies.
This includes exercises, workshops, diets and even psychedelics. Episodes open with a disclaimer that reads along the lines of the series meaning to be merely a “form of information and entertainment and not to provide medical advice” which sounds like some very dodgy lawyering.
All of this occurs while Paltrow herself sits back on a glossy couch interviewing guest experts wearing fabulous necklaces. Perhaps the most powerful episode is the one devoted to women’s sexual health, which aims to reduce the shame women have surrounding their own bodies.
In addition to dishing out some upsetting statistics (that of labiaplasty increasing to an alarming 45% worldwide between 2015 and 2016), it swiftly recognizes that most of the young women at the intimacy workshop have never discussed intimacy with anyone for fear of judgement.
This dispels the Sex and the City notion of women loving nothing more than chatting about little other than sex.
II. Cast
All of the above being said, there is an occasional burst of worthwhile purpose in this naïve, sun-baked, long drawn out infomercial. On the third of the six episodes entitled The Pleasure Is Hers, we are introduced to sexpert Betty Dodson.
She is a 90-year-old New Yorker and old school feminist who has been her part spreading sex positivity by conducting masturbation workshops for half a century.
Dodson’s blunt cheerfulness immediately justifies her own Netflix series unpacking the pornographic industry and labiaplasties and gendered lies about sexuality with nothing but straightforward sassiness and humour.
Another memorable figure is Lexi, a Goop accountant who grew up in Shanghai, China, where any talk of sex and sexuality was considered taboo. Now an out lesbian, she realized her need to address the discourse surrounding sex and sexuality when it started to affect her relationships.
Admittedly, watching Lexi be vulnerable on screen and work up the courage to confront centuries of cultural stigmas she grew up with for the sake of her personal fulfillment and development is genuinely affirming. The show also, as previously mentioned, stars Gwenyth Paltrow and her staff as themselves.
III. Music and visuals
The soundtrack for this series includes the works of Reem, Tony K, PeleBoY, Doja Cat, and Alan Walker.
Popular artistes Camilla Cabello, Brockhampton, Harry Styles, Tiesto, and Kehlani also feature their compositions in this show. Billie Eilish, Lewis Capaldi and Kesha are other artists in the mix.
Visually, the six-episode series holds montages of what are presumably meant to resemble “the lab” that showcase previously mentioned pastel-pink-wearing blondes hard at work busily typing, brainstorming and meeting- but not too hard; for the ethos of the series must come through.
3. Final thoughts
The Goop Lab, with its lowbrow TV and highbrow production values, has proven to be the most unsettling kind of sponcon there is; the soulful kind. All six episodes are meticulously devoid of product placements;.
At the same time, I expected the office to be strewn with prominently placed Goop merchandise, the desks are just cluttered with the usual workplace detritus of coffee mugs, Post-its and an array of pens.
The series is inherently understood to promote the sort of claptrap feeding into the thinking behind eating disorders. All the while promulgating the narrowest beauty and fitness aesthetics, thus contributing to the notion that those who have wealth, capital and leisure will be given more health, life and happiness.
The only thing remotely caught my attention (to my surprise) was the rock and roll technique of masturbation demonstrated by Dodson in her workshop, and the lack of fetishism it held.
Everything said the capitalization of supposed shortcomings with unscientific healing practices for the sake of the privileged to purchase merchandise and put money into the pockets of the 1% cannot be ignored.
All the show does is put into pictures, what I am told is called the Paltrovian bubble, and the amount of ignorance it takes to find bliss once you’re in it.
4. Grading
Story: F
Cinematography/Animation: B
Acting: B
Music: B
Direction: C
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