Group cinema set. Credit: guruXOOX/iStock.
Beef was filmed in California, including Santa Barbara and Camarillo. What do those locations reveal?
The country club was apparently a combination of the Montecito Country Club in Santa Barbara and another country club in Camarillo.
Santa Barbara and Camarillo are almost a tale of two cities. Santa Barbara is a very wealthy coastal enclave. Camarillo is a different kind of community and is relatively poor compared with Santa Barbara.
By mashing up those two locations, you lose the sense of the difference between the regions. One is much wealthier than the other.
That is interesting in relation to a show about competition, class inequality and people whose appearances of success do not necessarily match their economic reality.
The geography also raises questions about affordability. Even many faculty members who teach at UC Santa Barbara cannot afford to live in Santa Barbara. So it is worth asking where the characters could realistically afford to live in relation to the affluent spaces they occupy.
Can a television show have progressive content while its production still contributes to inequality?
Absolutely. That is an important part of my research.
I sometimes analyze programs with content that seems liberal, progressive, feminist or anti-racist. The ideas and representations onscreen can be admirable.
But the production behind the scenes can still be exploitative and can materially reproduce inequality through transfers of public wealth.
Sometimes the progressive content becomes a shiny object: Look over here at the message onscreen rather than at what is happening behind the scenes.
People sometimes talk about Hollywood as the radical left. The content may sometimes look that way, but Hollywood is also an industry and a business.
What should viewers take away when they watch these Emmy-nominated shows?
Viewers do not have to stop appreciating the shows. They can enjoy the performances, writing and visual worlds while also asking what those worlds leave out.
With Widow’s Bay, that means noticing the bargain between local leaders and outside investment, as well as the Indigenous history missing from its founding story.
With Pluribus, it means seeing how television draws visual and economic value from New Mexico while also largely excluding Indigenous presence.
With DTF St. Louis, it means recognizing that Georgia supports and hosts the production while being made to look like somewhere else.
And with Beef, it means considering how the series blends Santa Barbara and Camarillo — two communities with different levels of wealth — into one seamless coastal setting, obscuring the economic distance between them.
Each show tells a fictional story. But each production also tells a material story about land, labor, public money and who ultimately benefits when Hollywood comes to town.
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