- This video is brought to you by Full Sail University.
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What's up, guys?
Michael here to talk about
the original content behemoth, Netflix.
Once chiefly a purveyor of movies in red envelopes,
Netflix has quickly established itself
as the film studio of the future,
releasing a staggering 129 original films in 2021 alone,
and the pipeline isn't slowing down any time soon.
But as you get flooded with trailers
for their latest movies, maybe you've wondered,
"Do all of these films kind of look the same?"
Don't worry, you don't need new glasses.
Netflix does tend to hew to a unique look and feel.
And, what's more, the Netflix aesthetic
has real implications for the film medium at large.
We'll explain in this Wisecrack Edition:
How Netflix is Changing Film.
But before we get into it,
I wanna tell you about today's sponsor,
Full Sail University.
What's up, guys?
I am in Winter Park, Florida today at Full Sail University.
We are here for their Hall of Fame Celebration Week
and let's go check it out.
Full Sail University specializes
in preparing students for careers
in the entertainment industry,
emerging technologies, and gaming, to name a few.
And because they have so many successful graduates,
they spend a full week every year celebrating these alumni
during Hall of Fame Week.
We were lucky enough to spend some time at Full Sail
during the Hall of Fame Celebration.
The campus was absolutely buzzing with activity.
As students were checking out panel discussions
with new Hall of Fame inductees,
enjoying an afternoon at the silent disco,
and prepping for the annual cosplay competition.
We also checked out some of the amazing resources available
to Full Sail students.
They also unveiled their brand-new virtual production studio
during Hall of Fame Week,
and we were lucky enough
to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony,
as well as get in the exclusive tour
to see Studio V1 in action.
This is the same type of technology used
to make shows like "The Mandalorian,"
and Full Sail students will have the opportunity
to use this studio in their own creative projects.
I even got to jump on their Hall of Fame livestream,
which they run throughout the week
to highlight all the alumni and special events.
Okay, guys, if you wanna learn more
about everything happening here at Full Sail,
head to fullsail.edu or click the link in the description,
and now, back to the show.
Over the past few years,
Netflix has solidified its move
from giant movie platform to gianter movie maker,
adding plenty of popular
and profitable titles in its library.
And they've got range:
from foreign language prestige pictures
like Ramin Bahrani's "The White Tiger,"
to action westerns like "The Harder They Fall,"
to the vaguely disturbing "Gerald's Game."
At first glance, these films
don't seem to have all that much in common.
But dig a little deeper,
and you'll find plenty of aesthetic similarities.
Take the cinematography.
It tends to feel very slick, manufactured, and smooth.
Even Bahrani, who previously made a name for himself
directing gritty, realistic dramas,
essentially subsumed his style into this cleaner look.
Netflix films also tend to share a similar color scheme,
with deeply-saturated hues
that render the actors practically phosphorescent,
and make the slums of India or a Wild West saloon
look almost as lush as the mansions in "He's All That."
At the same time, the images are relatively low-contrast,
making them easy, even pleasant, on the eyes.
Even the use of focus tends to be pretty uniform,
often evoking a glamorous softness
that would have been standard fare
for, say, a 1940s melodrama.
So what is this look really amounting to?
Let's examine the sum of the parts:
slick, functional cinematography;
low-contrast lighting;
saturated, matte colors;
and simple, no-nonsense compositions.
This all makes for an easy, comfortable,
non-confrontational aesthetic.
Which is to say,
it's basically ideal for passive consumption
while folding your freshly-laundered collection
of Wisecrack T-shirts.
The passivity these films mostly engender
seem to be part of the point.
As Matt Singer writes for ScreenCrush,
"It's not that these Netflix movies can't be enjoyed
while you are distracted by your phone or your tablet;
it's that they are undeniably better that way."
Of course, there are exceptions.
For example, prestige films made by big-name directors
like Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman"
or Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma."
But, more than anything,
these exceptions only make the overall house style
of the platform stand out even more.
Compare the richness of the colors
in "The Irishman's" film photography,
or the expansive scope of "Roma's" wide-screen framing
to your average Netflix original,
and you'll see just how different these movies are
from the norm.
And the Netflix norm when it comes to style of filmmaking
is actually ideal for how the site itself is built.
Namely, the fact that Netflix hinges
on a very specific type of cinematic experience:
one that never ends.
How many times have you just finished
watching a great movie on Netflix,
soaking it all in as the credits roll,
only to be snapped out of it
the moment the trailer for "Tall Girl" pops up?
Obviously, Netflix wants people to watch
as many of their films as possible,
so auto-playing a new flick ASAP helps with that.
This all leads into the effects
of Netflix's algorithmization of its films.
You already know about Netflix's famous embedded algorithm
that tracks the content you watch, among other things,
so that it can recommend other movies and shows
you're also likely to enjoy.
And what's an easy,
and almost subconscious, way of convincing you
that you'll enjoy the next recommendation?
If, at first glance,
this new film looks like the last thing you watched.
And that's what makes this trend
towards homogenous aesthetics such a valuable tool.
Now, there is an argument to be made that algorithms
can actually be more democratic than curation.
Instead of relying on critics
or that film school hipster you went on a date with,
AI uses your own personal taste
to determine what movies are worth your time.
But while this sounds great in theory,
the actual result doesn't always work out that way.
In practice, algorithms often skew rather conservatively.
That is to say, they tend to rely
on a known quantity of data they have about you,
rather than risk surprising you with an outlier
that might not suit your taste.
In other words, if the platform detects
that you have previously enjoyed films like "Mystic River,"
"Se7en," and "The Shawshank Redemption,"
then the algorithm will take a lot of factors into account
in order to cater to your tastes.
Which probably means they won't suggest you watch,
say, "Paddington 2," which is a shame,
because that movie is a masterpiece.
And when we say they'll take a lot of factors into account,
we are not kidding.
As Todd Yellin, Netflix's VP of Product told WIRED magazine,
the algorithm is able to split users
into 2,000 different taste groups
based on the explicit and implicit data
that each user had shown.
That includes both data actively given by you,
like a thumbs up rating, or passive data collected,
like your infinite scrolling through Oscar-contenders,
or the time you binged "Squid Game" in one week.
Now, this system sounds sophisticated enough,
but it can still easily fall prey to algorithmic bias.
It's pretty convenient and generally pleasant
to receive more movie recommendations that remind you of...
- [David Mills] What's in the box?
But it can also lead to a feedback loop.
Scholar Dal Yong Jin argues
that the algorithm's goal of serving up a new movie
that you're certain to like
functionally limits your opportunities
to explore films in a variety of genres or themes.
What's more, the algorithm
typically keeps viewers culturally confined by,
for example, mostly recommending American films
to American viewers.
What's the point of paying for access
to a gargantuan library
if you're functionally never going to expand your horizons?
But when this starts feeling even more sus
is the fact that the algorithmization of Netflix
extends far beyond your personal queue.
It can actually affect the new works of art
that are being produced.
Way back in 2018,
former VP of original content Cindy Holland told Vulture
that Netflix was greenlighting projects
based on 70% human analysis
and 30% data from the algorithm.
Data including specifics
like how long you watched a given film,
whether you stopped watching because it was too scary,
and whether you stuck around
to start yet another scary movie
only to step away like a little coward...
or maybe that's just me.
Anyway, we suspect that data has been given
an even more privileged position at Netflix in recent years,
but call that speculation.
Now, it's one thing when film tropes
evolve naturally through popular culture.
But when the computer starts playing storyteller,
we get a little shiver down our spine.
It's not that it's dystopian.
I mean, it might be, but it's also often bad.
Take the new Ryan Reynolds film "The Adam Project,"
which Vulture perfectly described as
feeling like a fake movie,
designed to check as many genre boxes as possible
to maximize its chance of success.
But critical misfires
like superhero-time-traveling-Ryan Reynolds
encountering his childhood self
can't stop Netflix's algorithm,
estimated to be worth a cool $1 billion.
It's clearly seen as valuable
for its ability to predict what people will want to watch
based on what they've previously enjoyed.
And, to state the obvious,
this isn't entirely unique in the entertainment industry.
Studios have always used past successes and failures
when deciding what to make next,
or when predicting box-office hits.
But obviously, Netflix has the great gift of big data
to make those decisions more approximate, more scientific,
and ultimately, less risky.
Which is why some of the rest of Hollywood
has been taking note and starting to consult AI
during the film development phase.
What's more, Netflix arguably
has more sway and influence over the industry
than just about any other company.
That's perhaps why we see its aesthetic
making its way into the industry at large.
So, what does it mean when Netflix
makes its content decisions in tandem with an algorithm
that's predicated on your previous cinematic taste?
Well, when you're more worried about holding attention
and keeping butts on couches
than you are about making good art,
you arguably lose much of what makes cinema so important
in the first place: the risk factor.
See, most films that are truly provocative and compelling
probably wouldn't make it through the old Netflix algorithm.
The reason cult classics are usually delightful
is their sheer shock value.
(everyone screaming)
Would Netflix greenlight a film starring an unknown actor,
about a curly-haired weirdo in Idaho
who plays tetherball all day?
Heck, would a retelling of the "Odyssey"
set in Depression-era America sound sexy to an algorithm?
And how would something as weird as "Tree of Life"
ever possibly make it past Netflix's head of content?
Now, it's no surprise that in our TikTok-happy culture,
commercial filmmaking in general
has become more preoccupied
with keeping you from looking away
via high-voltage special effects,
laser-fast editing cuts, and so on.
But we think algorithms take it one step farther
when they assume that we're only down to watch
what we've already watched, but regurgitated.
Of course, there's a decent argument to be made
that much of cinematic history
has been somewhat self-cannibalizing.
And you don't have to look at four generations
of "A Star is Born" for evidence.
The assembly-line logic that fueled Hollywood's golden era
often meant rearranging your contract actors
in various trope-ish roles like strong silent type,
or the manipulative vamp,
or the plucky young innocents.
These characters would then, almost inevitably,
go through storylines of lost love, love regained,
and hey, maybe there's a peppy musical number in there, too.
Still, Hollywood nonetheless exhibited
what scholar Janet Staiger called,
"A drive towards product differentiation,
stressing novelty, and innovation
in order to lure audiences to the cinema again and again."
They needed people to be actively excited to watch.
Netflix doesn't have the same burden.
It's often the background soundtrack to your domestic life.
And arguably what keeps you from turning it off
is familiarity or sameness.
That is, entertainment that reminds you
of previously-enjoyable entertainment,
or as we like to call it: algortainment.
Is that not catchy?
Is it not?
Well, okay, I'll never say it again.
We can understand this
via the philosophical movement of Postmodernism,
and its application to aesthetics,
which has been percolating in academia since the '70s.
Postmodernism is predicated
on the notion that society has become so fragmented
that there's been a breakdown in subjectivity,
i.e., there is no longer any consistent and universal truth
that grounds how we view art or our own subjectivity.
If we used to all have a loose agreement
on what counted as art, or cinema,
we're now in a free-for-all,
where a TikTok is as valid as a Scorsese film.
This comes with challenges.
As literary critic Fredric Jameson explains,
"If, indeed, the subject has lost its capacity
to organize its past and future into coherent experience,
it becomes difficult enough
to see how the cultural productions
of such a subject could result in anything
but heaps of fragments."
In other words, when it no longer feels
like there are universal truths and concepts
that help you make consistent sense of experience over time,
it's harder to turn your unique experiences into art.
And it's even harder for a bunch of folks
with disparate experiences and perspectives
to all agree on what art even is in the first place,
let alone, agree on what art is actually good.
So, where do we get the raw material
to create those heaps of fragments?
We start pillaging dead artists, of course!
As Jameson puts it, in the postmodern era,
"The producers of culture have nowhere to turn
but to the past: the imitation of dead styles,
speech through all the masks
and voices stored up in the imaginary museum
of a now global culture."
He calls the practice of invoking
or straight-up reviving old styles of art, pastiche,
and considers it a fundamental tool
of making postmodern art.
Of course, pastiche isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Without pastiche, you wouldn't have "Pulp Fiction,"
or the novels of Thomas Pynchon,
or the sparkly '60s camp of "Hairspray."
The postmodern turn reveled in the idea
that no piece of art is purely creative,
that we're all cross-inspired by other artists:
past, present and future.
And postmodern artists used various techniques
of ripping each other off to make truly groundbreaking work
as wide ranging as "Blue Velvet"
and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
But not all works of postmodern art can be brilliant.
Jameson acknowledged that postmodernism
necessarily implied a sort of cultural stasis.
And in that stasis,
"The supreme value of the new and of innovation
fades away against the steady stream
of momentum and variation
that at some outer limit seems stable and motionless.
Where everything now submits to the perpetual change
of fashion and media image,
nothing can change any longer."
So you get a lot of sameness,
and a lack of new coherent artistic styles.
Simultaneously, as Jameson explains,
"What has happened is that aesthetic production today
has become integrated into commodity production generally,"
and now faces "The frantic economic urgency
of producing fresh waves of ever-more-novel-seeming goods
at ever greater rates of turnover."
In this way, whereas art objects
used to have value relative to their beauty
or aesthetic style,
they are now simply commodities to be produced and sold.
It's not shocking that Jameson
once defined postmodernism as,
"The cultural logic of late capitalism."
So, just as originality has slumped to a crawl,
demand for production has skyrocketed.
And who does that remind us of?
Our good red-enveloped friend, of course.
Now, to be clear, Netflix hasn't dedicated itself
to the postmodern project
the way that the cool kids at art school have.
They're just trying to get more eyes on their movies
for longer periods of time.
To be clear, we're not saying
all movies used to be masterpieces.
Some cinema used to try to be art,
while some was content being popcorn blockbusters.
And Netflix has tried both strategies
to amass its giant portfolio of original work,
all in attempts to achieve its supreme goal
of maximizing watch time.
It's not even up to us to say
if that came at the expense of quality,
because Netflix's COO Ted Sarandos
has implied as much himself.
In response to critics panning Netflix's film "Bright,"
Sarandos defended the film,
saying that critics, "Speak to specific audiences
who care about quality,
or how objectively good or bad a movie is, not the masses."
Implying, of course,
that the masses don't care about objective quality,
and that Netflix is okay not actually delivering it.
This reminds us of philosopher Theodor Adorno's critique
of mid-20th century popular music.
As scholar C.W. Smith explains,
Adorno believed that people were listening to popular music
without actually listening
because they were experiencing what he called,
"A breakdown in mediating subjectivity
or the intersubjectivity of the experience
between the subject and the piece of music."
That is to say, people were so inundated
with homogenous pop music
that they started consuming it mindlessly,
rather than engaging with any single song thoughtfully.
For Adorno, this was about more
than just spacing out, though.
He contended that this sort of
undiscerning consumption of art
indicated a broader social tendency towards obedience,
even an acceptance of authoritarianism,
which can prevent us from becoming free-thinking,
reflective individuals.
That is to say, when we stop thinking critically
about the art we consume, we become less autonomous
and instead more pliable, suggestible, and easier to coerce.
The interminable sameness Adorno observed, he believed,
led to both a, "Regression in quality of hearing,"
and "The more or less stunting of experience,
such that the listener was docile
and afraid of anything new."
And that sense of safety in familiarity
sounds pretty familiar when we think about Netflix.
As we've discussed, Netflix films are made
for the sort of watching-non-watching Adorno diagnosed
in mid-century music listeners.
And there's reason to believe viewers
might indeed be afraid of anything new.
Stephen Follows, founder of VOD Clickstream,
which analyzes Netflix data,
argued in a podcast that when people watch Netflix,
"They're sitting down
and watching stuff that is comfortable,
that is easy to understand, that won't challenge them."
The appeal of the algorithm
is its infinitely watchable lack of confrontation.
And look, we're not monsters,
we love us some easy-watching
as much as we love Frank Sinatra.
Lord knows, I've watched the episode of "The Office"
where Dwight quotes Mussolini about 76 times.
(podium thudding)
- Blood alone moves the wheels of history!
- But does constant easy-watching
come at the expense of our ability to really watch?
And when arguably the world's
most powerful media corporation commits itself
to making movies we're all-but-guaranteed to half-watch,
does it change the way we engage with the medium overall?
And when we consider the algorithmization
of most aspects of our modern lives,
the problem starts to feel way scarier.
But hey, at least we get to watch "Is it Cake?"
But what do you guys think?
When it comes to Netflix films,
are we actually getting the cinema we want,
or merely the cinema the algorithm thinks we want?
What's more, are we inadvertently creating
our own cinematic hell when we hate-watch
some of Netflix's more mediocre content?
Let us know in the comments.
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And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
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