The Age of Netflix
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65. Mittell, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television,” 34.
66. Mareike Jenner, “A Semi-Original Netflix Series: Thoughts on Narrative Structure in Arrested Development Season 4,” Critical Studies in Television, June 6, 2013, http://www.cstonline.tv/semi-original-netflix-arrested-development.
67. Ibid.
68. Sobchack, “‘Surge and Splendor,’” 37. Despite this, Mitch Hurwitz suggests the rewards for successive viewing may be genre specific, and perhaps not ultimately suited for comedy if a tired viewer starts missing jokes. This had not occurred to him until in-house test screenings of the completed season. The issue of the genre-specific pleasures of successive viewing is one that warrants future detailed consideration. See Denise Martin, “Mitch Hurwitz Explains His Arrested Development Rules: Watch New Episodes in Order, and Not All at Once,” Vulture, May 22, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/mitch-hurwitz-dont-binge-watch-arrested-development.html. Michael Z. Newman suggests we be wary of this shift in consumption given the loss of connection with weekly viewers watching the same thing at the same time. Michael Z. Newman, “TV Binge, Flow 9.05 (2009), http://www.flowjournal.org/2009/01/tv-binge-michael-z-newman-university-of-wisconsin-milwaukee/.
69. Mittell, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television,” 32.
70. Ibid., 38, 35. See also Mittell, “The Qualities of Complexity: Vast Versus Dense Seriality in Contemporary Television,” in Television Aesthetics and Style, ed. Steven Peacock and Jason Jacobs (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 45–56.
71. It is worth noting, however, that the limited availability of the actors was the deciding factor in the character-specific structure of the fourth season. Lacey Rose, “‘Arrested Development’ Stars’ Surprising Salaries Revealed,” The Hollywood Reporter, May 22, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/arrested-development-stars-surprising-salaries-526530.
72. Martin, “Mitch Hurwitz Explains His Arrested Development Rules.”
73. “Kevin Spacey MacTaggart lecture—video.”
74. Lotz writes, “The U.S. television audience now can rarely be categorized as a mass audience; instead, it is more accurately understood as a collection of niche audiences” and has changed to “a narrowcast medium—one targeted to distinct and isolated subsections of the audience.” See Lotz, The Television Will be Revolutionized, 5. It is on this basis that Netflix uses its considerable customer data to develop niche-directed series such as House of Cards.
75. While House of Cards is predominantly structured to minimize exposition, a noticeable exception occurs when dialog late in the penultimate episode (“Chapter 38” [2015]) of season three is repeated at the beginning of the final episode (“Chapter 39” [2015]), creating a jarring temporal loop when viewed continuously. The predominant Netflix textual model becomes more noticeable in these small moments of irregularity.
76. Timothy M. Todreas, Value Creation and Branding in Television’s Digital Age (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1999), 7. For reasons of scope this article will not delve into the periodization of television history, but a number of scholars chart the transition from TVI (the broadcast era), TVII (sometimes referred to as the cable era), and the current TVIII (the post-network era) in which Todreas locates this shift to content. See Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, and Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000).
77. Robin Nelson uses the term high-end television to denote “big budgets and the high production values associated with them.” See Nelson, State of Play: Contemporary “High-End” TV Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 2; Shawn Shimpach, Television in Transition (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 134–135. For reasons of scope, the full history of “quality TV” as a term will not be extensively outlined here, but rather will remain focused on its relationship with Netflix and binge-viewing in particular.
78. See for example Al Auster, “HBO’s Approach to Generic Transformation,” in Thinking Outside the Box: A Contemporary Television Genre Reader, ed. Gary Edgerton and Brian Rose (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 226–227; Jane Feuer, “The MTM Style,” in MTM: Quality Television, ed. Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi (London: British Film Institute, 1984), 34, 56.
79. Mario Klarer, “Putting Television ‘Aside’: Novel Narration in House of Cards,” New Review of Film and Television Studies 12.2 (2014): 204.
80. John Plunkett and Jason Deans, “Kevin Spacey: Television has Entered a New Golden Age,” The Guardian, August 23, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/22/kevin-spacey-tv-golden-age.
81. Newman and Levine, Legitimating Television, 36.
82. Ibid., 141.
83. Sobchack, “‘Surge and Splendor,’” 29–30, 37.
84. Alexandros Maragos, “Andrew Geraci Interview. Netflix—House of Cards: The Making of the Opening Sequence,” Momentum: Visuals, Aesthetics, Sounds, February 2013, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2013/02/andrew-geraci-interview.html.
85. Ellis, “Whatever Happened to the Title Sequence?” Critical Studies in Television, April 1, 2011, http://www.cstonline.tv/letter-from-america-4. Compare also Ellis’s earlier work on the broadcast era where he calls the television title sequence “a commercial for the programme itself.” See Ellis, Visible Fictions, 119–120.
86. Indeed, for some programs, such as Netflix original Grace and Frankie (2015–), the post-play function automatically skips the title sequence, except upon returning after a break on another day.
87. Ivan Radford, “10 Things We Learned from the House of Cards Director’s Commentary,” Vodzilla: The UK’s Only Video On-Demand Magazine, January 5, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://vodzilla.co/blog/features/10-things-we-learned-from-the-house-of-cards-directors-commentary/.
88. For a side-by-side comparison of shots, see David Friedman, “House of Cards Season 2 Opening Credits Comparison in Animated GIFs,” Ironic Sans, February 21, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.ironicsans.com/2014/02/house_of_cards_season_2_openin.html.
89. In the United Kingdom, the government has made the link between cinematic television and high-end costs overt, planning tax breaks to what it calls “cinematic television dramas” such as Downton Abbey, defined as “those that cost at least £1m an hour to film.” Brett Mills, “What Does It Mean to Call Television ‘Cinematic’?” in Television Aesthetics and Style, ed. Steven Peacock and Jason Jacobs (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 64.
90. We might similarly include Netflix’s promotion of high profile directors and actors, such as Sense8 (2015–) creators Lily and Lana Wachowski, or Brad Pitt’s involvement in War Machine (2017).
91. Mills, “What Does It Mean to Call Television ‘Cinematic’?” 64. See also Robin Nelson, who equates the “cinematic look” of quality TV with increased budgets and technological equipment to achieve a comparable visual aesthetic. Nelson, “Quality TV Drama: Estimations and Influences through Time and Space,” in Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, ed. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 43, 48.
92. Deborah L. Jaramillo argues, “‘Cinematic’ should be a contentious word in the field of television studies.” See Jaramillo, “Rescuing Television from ‘The Cinematic’: The Perils of Dismissing Television Style,” in Television Aesthetics and Style, ed. Steven Peacock and Jason Jacobs (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 67.
93. Mills, “What Does It Mean to Call Television ‘Cinematic’?” 63.
94. David Carr, “Barely Keeping Up in TV’s New Golden Age,” New York Times, March 9, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/business/media/fenced-in-by-televisions-excess-of-excellence.html?_r=0.
95. John Ellis similarly argues that on demand television can leave us with “choice fatigue” and “time famine,” an anxious feeling of not being able to fit everything in. See Ellis, Seeing
Things, 170–171.
96. The press has conveniently picked up on this branding. See for example Ken Auletta, “Outside the Box: Netflix and the Future of Television,” New Yorker, February 3, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/03/outside-the-box-2.
97. Jaramillo, “Rescuing Television from ‘The Cinematic,’” 68.
98. Ashley Lee, “NYTVF: Arrested Development’s Mitch Hurwitz Wants a Bluth Movie and Season 5 at Netflix,” The Hollywood Reporter, October 22, 2013, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nytvf-arrested-developments-mitch-hurwitz-650002. Such comparisons are by no means new. Writing in 1999, Vincent Canby at the New York Times suggested that surely when conceived as a whole, with its expansive narrative arc, The Sopranos should not be seen as a television series at all, but rather a “megamovie” on the scale of epic novels and films. Vincent Canby, “From the Humble Mini-Series Comes the Magnificent Megamovie,” New York Times, October 31, 1999, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/31/arts/from-the-humble-mini-series-comes-the-magnificent-megamovie.html. See also Robert Thompson, “Preface,” in Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, ed. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), xix–xx. More recently, scholar Mario Klarer has made similar claims of House of Cards, comparing the series to a novel or “an epic movie.” See Klarer, “Putting Television ‘Aside,’” 215.
99. Verini, “Marathon Viewing Is Forcing Showrunners to Evolve.”
100. Vinnie Mancuso, “Creators and Cast of ‘Marco Polo’ Discuss Their World-Spanning, $90 Million Show,” New York Observer, December 11, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://observer.com/2014/12/creators-and-cast-of-marco-polo-discuss-their-world-spanning-90-million-production/.
101. Emily Steel, “How to Build an Empire, the Netflix Way,” New York Times, November 29, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/business/media/how-to-build-an-empire-the-netflix-way-.html?_r=0.
102. Todd Spangler, “‘Marco Polo’ Premiere: Netflix Launches Bid for 13th Century Empire to Conquer the Globe,” Variety, December 2, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/marco-polo-premiere-netflix-launches-bid-for-13th-century-empire-to-conquer-the-globe-1201368034/.
103. Ibid.
104. Sobchack, “‘Surge and Splendor,’” 29; emphasis in original.
105. Ibid., 31; emphasis in original.
106. Ibid., 41–42.
107. Ibid., 30.
108. Brian Lowry, “TV Review: ‘Marco Polo,’” Variety, November 25, 2014, accessed June 1, 2015, http://variety.com/2014/digital/reviews/tv-review-marco-polo-1201360750/.
109. Sobchack, “‘Surge and Splendor,’” 27.
110. Ibid., 35.
111. Lewis’s comments about Transparent mirror those discussed in this essay around Netflix titles: “It’s novelistic; it’s not episodic…. We’ve never looked at this as anything but a continuous piece of five-hour entertainment.” Joe Lewis, quoted in Philiana Ng, “‘Transparent’ Team Talks Binge Viewing.”
Streaming Culture, the Centrifugal Development of the Internet and Our Precarious Digital Future1
JOSEPH DONICA
We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.—David Clark to the Internet Engineering Task Force, 1992
There are moments when the quantitative becomes qualitative.—Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 2014
In his history of the Internet, Johnny Ryan describes the “defining pattern of the emerging digital age” as the “absence of the central dot.” Webs and networks have replaced that center. “This story,” he says, “is about the death of the [center] and the development of commercial and political life in a networked system. It is also the story about the coming power of the networked individual as the new vital unit of effective participation and creativity.”2 The problem that early engineers of what would come to be called the Internet tried to solve was the centripetal nature of existing communications systems. Not since Bell and Edison, both of whom worked on centralizing communications based on telegraphy, had communication been so radically reconceived. But with the developments that allowed the Internet to come into existence there was also an idea that communication should be a public utility and one that should operate on centrifugal principles. The idea of a centrifugal communications network as a public utility arose from the citizenry’s growing desire to pull away from the center in the post–World War II era. Centrifugal force is simply the force that draws a rotating body away from the center of rotation. This movement away from the center in the development of the Internet has frustrated both big business developments as well as governments—both of whom are only beginning to find ways of subverting the centrifugal nature of the web.
The controversy over Netflix’s talks with Comcast that would have caused the video streaming service to begin paying for access to Comcast customers sparked widespread protest and catalyzed conversation about “net neutrality”—the idea that all content providers should have equal access to users and those users should, in turn, have equal access to content. The primary issue on which net neutrality hinges is how governments should treat data shared on the Internet. Supporters of net neutrality want governments to treat all data equally regardless of the user’s identity or her status with her service provider. In 2003, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu coined the term in conjunction with his work on “common carriers.” Common carrier is a concept in media law that places responsibility on the carrier of a good to ensure its delivery without regard to the party requesting the delivery. Wu argues that the Internet should be regulated just like any other utility—the underlying disagreement he has with supporters of a tiered Internet. The concept is applied to the Internet this way: companies providing the “plumbing” of the Internet, such as cables and modems, should not have the ability to restrict how people use it.3 Jeff Sommer of the New York Times describes the high stakes involved in the debate. According to Sommer:
The [Federal Communications Commission] has signaled its intention to grant cable and telephone companies the right to charge content companies like Netflix, Google, Yahoo or Facebook for speeding up transmissions to people’s homes. And this is happening as the [FCC] is considering whether to bless the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which could put a single company in control of the Internet pipes into 40 percent of American homes.4
The responses from major players in the debate have been mixed, but Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg stressed the coming changes in access by stating, “It’s not sustainable to offer the whole Internet for free.”5 The Netflix neutrality case is important because it gives insight into the debates that are shaping the digital future. Netflix is a huge player in the development of that future. The history of the development of the Internet—the rise of Netflix being central to that history—helps us understand the radical changes that have occurred in these modern debates, fundamentally reshaping a previously decentralized and largely unregulated Internet.
Even before Netflix made the deal with Comcast—a deal that the FCC eventually struck down—the company was criticized for the supposed anonymized information it kept about users. Hackers, unsurprisingly, easily found ways to de-anonymize the profiles and access user information. Thus, even before the calls for true net neutrality, Internet activists called for an openness that would still protect user data. But what do policies that ensure that the Internet will remain open to all users while still protecting that data look like? Two high-profile leaks showed the public that government-controlled sites and government use of the Internet do not ensure the protection of user data. This makes it unlikely that policy will eventually side with the protection of all user data. Chelsea Manning’s leak of classified information through WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden’s release of National Security Agency (NSA) documents to Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Ewen MacAskill, and Barton Gellman revealed that the citizen’s ro
le in the age of big data is tremendously complex. This complexity arises from the fact that citizens, most times unwittingly, release so much data to state agencies and corporations during the course of conducting basic commercial transactions. One need look no further than the terms of service agreements consumers sign just to use new software and complete day-to-day tasks: downloading music and podcasts, filing taxes, or shopping with an online retailer. Some organizations and policy makers are working on open data initiatives that would in some ways counteract the restricted Internet model proposed by Comcast and Netflix.6 Nonetheless, data is the most valuable commodity in the digital age, and companies have a major stake in acquiring as much of it as they can. Netflix’s position on net neutrality provides key insight into the digital future, primarily because Netflix is a major player in that future. But the role the company will play in keeping the Internet the open, democratic—sometimes chaotically so—space it has been since its creation is uncertain. This essay addresses that uncertainty.
Centrifugal force is helpful in describing the development of the Internet as we know it because it defines the decentralized experience of the Internet. Centrifugal force, a concept used primarily in physics and classical mechanics, refers to the tendency of an object moving in a circular motion to be pushed out from the center. The only force on the object is its own gravity, so the greater the size of the object, the further the object will be pushed from the center. Think of a child versus an adult on a merry-go-round. A child spinning on a merry-go-round will be pushed away from the center of it with some force, and an adult on a merry-go-round will be pushed away from the center with even greater force since the adult’s weight produces more force away from the center.7 Translating the concept of centrifugal force into a digital and cultural concept to describe the trends in computer engineering and software development that created the Internet as we know it, I first examine several ways in which an “open Internet” that remains safe for users can develop from within the processes and the structures of the Internet itself. Next, I review the development of the Internet as a centrifugal communication outlet meant to destabilize the control of data in any one center and how this influences a reading of the debate over the deal between Comcast and Netflix that was eventually struck down. Finally, by examining Netflix’s corporate culture—a culture that encourages the “hacker ethic” by hosting a hack week at its headquarters, and yet is criticized by the hacking community for undermining the basic protocols on which the Internet was built, I demonstrate the way Netflix is altering the course of the Internet. Although the Occupy Wall Street movement has called for Netflix and Google to take a stand for a more open Internet and the FCC seems to be holding to that standard, the future of the Internet is unclear and largely up to enormously powerful companies like Netflix to determine the outcome.