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But the thing about this syndrome — which, in its more cringeworthy try-hard versions, comes with protestations that “I really don’t think of myself as American” — is its obvious and painful effort to separate the protagonist from those other Americans, the ones we eagerly join the rest of the world in deprecating, deriding and lamenting.

After all, if it weren't for government-funded research, Musk would be an anonymous failson living off his daddy's money, instead of a billionaire competing with Kanye West for the title of the world's most cringeworthy celebrity.

Musk couldn't even get through the speech without a cringeworthy thumbs-up.

Alongside flattering documentary portraits of such figures as Nancy Pelosi, Stacey Abrams and Adam Kinzinger, or furious late-night segments from John Oliver, Seth Meyers and more, the films and TV series created by these production pacts slipped mostly unnoticed into the modern content mill, as ephemeral, and, at times, as cringeworthy as Texts from Hillary, “Joe-bi Wan Kenobi” or tote bags emblazoned with “Notorious R.B.G.”

More than two decades after “Bridget Jones’ Diary” introduced Renée Zellweger’s saucy, salty book publicist to the filmgoing masses, I recently had occasion to rewatch the 2001 film on a plane, half expecting a cringeworthy collection of dated jokes and dodgy fashions.