by Cory Barker
36. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 55–57, 66.
37. Freeman, Time Binds, 54.
38. Thomas Schatz, “HBO and Netflix—Getting Back to the Future,” Flow 19 (2014), http://flowtv.org/2014/01/hbo-and-netflix-%E2%80%93-getting-back-to-the-future/.
39. Villarejo, Ethereal Queer, 90.
40. Maria San Filippo, The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 203–204; emphasis in original.
41. See Ben Davies and Jana Funke, “Introduction: Sexual Temporalities.” In Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 3.
42. Sasha T. Goldberg, “‘Yeah, Maybe a Lighter Butch’: Outlaw Gender and Female Masculinity in Orange Is The New Black,” In Media Res, March 12, 2014, accessed January 22, 2016, http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2014/03/12/yeah-maybe-lighter-butch-outlaw-gender-and-female-masculinity-orange-new-black.
43. San Filippo, The B Word, 130, 132.
44. Freeman, Time Binds, 5.
45. See Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” Critical Inquiry 24.2 (1998): 547–566.
46. Quoted in Davies and Funke, “Introduction: Sexual Temporalities,” 9. See also Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
47. This section heading references the Tom Waits track “C’mon Up to the House” that plays over the closing moments of Piper’s furlough episode, when she finds herself alone and alienated from her former life, and thus however improbably drawn back to the new normal of prison (“40 Oz. of Furlough” [2014]).
48. Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place, 154.
49. Aleida gradually redeems herself in expectation of becoming a grandmother, such that Daya “has two mommies”: biological mother Aleida and adoptive mother Gloria (Selenis Leyva).
50. Berlant and Warner, “Sex in Public,” 558.
51. For a cogent discussion of OITNB’s treatment of race, see Jennifer L. Pozner, “TV Can Make America Better,” Salon, August 29, 2013, accessed January 22, 2016, http://www.salon.com/2013/08/29/tv_can_make_america_better/.
52. Matt Zoller Seitz, “Department of Corrections,” New York, June 2–8, 2014, 95.
53. Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History (New York: Routledge, 1989), 2.
54. William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Vintage, 2011), 73.
55. J. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 94.
56. Edelman, No Future.
57. I am referencing the It Gets Better Project, a public service campaign founded in 2010 by Dan Savage and Terry Miller, aimed at preventing suicide among bullied LGBT youth. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 11.
58. Dustin Bradley Goltz, “It Gets Better: Queer Futures, Critical Frustrations, and Radical Potentials,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 30.2 (2013): 139.
59. Dustin Bradley Goltz, Queer Temporalities in Gay Male Representation: Tragedy, Normativity, and Futurity (New York: Routledge, 2010), 151.
60. Freeman, Time Binds, 10, 46, 49.
61. See, for example, Auletta, “Outside the Box,” 61.
62. See Marguerite Reardon, “13 Things You Need to Know about the FCC’s Net Neutrality Regulation,” CNET, March 14, 2015, accessed January 22, 2016, http://www.cnet.com/news/13-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-fccs-net-neutrality-regulation/.
63. Quoted in Wu, “Netflix’s War on Mass Culture.”
64. Aueletta, “Outside the Box,” 61.
Netflix and Innovation in Arrested Development’s Narrative Construction
MAíRA BIANCHINI and MARIA CARMEM JACOB DE SOUZA
In “Development Arrested” (2006), Arrested Development’s (2003–2006) third season finale, Maeby Fünke (Alia Shawkat), then a successful teen Hollywood executive, presents the idea of a television series based on her family to an industry icon, who says, “Nah, I don’t see it as a series. Maybe a movie.” The icon in question was of course Ron Howard, the series’ executive producer and narrator, and this moment hinted at the potential plans Arrested Development’s creative team had for a film sequel to the Bluth’s family story.
Seven years later, in “Señoritis” (2013), a fourth season episode made available first on Netflix, it is Michael (Jason Bateman) who embarks on a journey to get the permission of his family members for a potential feature film. Michael hears from his now unemployed niece about the new promising plan for the project: “I gotta tell you, I think movies are dead. Maybe it’s a TV show.” Taken with Ron Howard’s speech in the original finale, these lines of dialog make explicit reference to the real-life story of how the series was revived after its 2006 cancellation—a creative saga that includes frustrated investments in a feature film and a return as, once again, an episodic series on Netflix.1
Season four’s online distribution makes us wonder about the reasons why Netflix’s executives decided to support Howard’s and executive producer Mitch Hurwitz’s project. The company’s actions in the recent audiovisual multiplatform market show Netflix’s interest in increasing its importance in this sphere, especially, in the field of television series production, a social field where media convergence and participatory culture are strong features. Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer since 2000, has been acknowledged as one of Netflix’s executives responsible for translating his identification of promising series production market trends into consecrated original programming strategies designed for an audience who has proven to be faithful consumers of the aesthetic and stylistic innovations fostered in this context.
The decision to bring back showrunner Hurwitz and his creative fellows for a fourth season of Arrested Development illustrates Netflix’s expertise in combining the series’ captive fan base with the creative team’s interest in remixing the American sitcom form. In its original run, the series was recognized for its formal inventions, including the absence of laugh track, a single camera (as opposed to three camera) set up, “cinéma verité” documentary-style aesthetics (with handheld cameras, the presence of a narrator, and the use of captions, voiceovers, and collages), and, most importantly, its self-conscious, multi-layered, and complex mode of storytelling.2 Thus, Netflix demonstrates how to be in tune with a series’ fan community cultivated online, a connoisseur group of spectators skilled at appreciating the production’s operational aesthetics and bold stylistic choices made by the anthological, radically fragmented narrative construction of the fourth season, with episodes focusing on different perspectives of the same story.3 The structure of the season’s comic effect, through temporal alternations and narrative fragmentation, was designed by exploring the possibility of continuous viewership of the 15 episodes—utilizing the binge-watching behavior associated with Netflix’s distribution model. Such a decision ultimately resulted in a radicalized puzzle-like design of the narrative.
This essay examines the intricate relationship between the ideas of Netflix’s executives and Arrested Development’s creative agents. Such ideas and decisions generated, at once, an aesthetic renovation of the series, an appreciation of the creative team, and the company strengthening its position in the scripted television marketplace. To examine such relations between the company’s executives and Arrested Development’s creative team, we rely on Pierre Bourdieu’s research, which enables a better understanding of these agents’ actions through a relational analytical approach of the logic governing the disputes for distinction and recognition in the history of the television series production field.
The concept of a social field of television series production is applied here to show how television series are created according to specific rules and logical principles which enable a system of both partnership and competition relations amongst the agents—from company’s managers to creative professionals working on such products—involv
ed in the processes of original programming production and distribution. The principles that encourage these agents’ actions are the result of the field’s historical autonomization process, which can be observed in the disputes over power to define and legitimize a series format and quality as well as the power to evaluate, recognize, and consecrate the agents that produce them.
Therefore, in the history of the production, distribution, and consumption of television, a market of economic and symbolic exchanges is formed and governed by shared structural dimensions, homologous positions in relation with other fields (such as the dominant/dominated positions and these poles’ intermediate positions found in the economic and political fields); meanwhile, private and autonomous dimensions are formed and structure the conflicting social positions over the definition of an original, innovative, and quality television series. The central premise of this analytical perspective shows how the poetic choices orchestrated by Arrested Development’s creator Hurwitz tend to be guided by the dispositions, interests, and positions he occupies within the television industry, both at the time the series aired on Fox and at its revival on Netflix.
Position-Taking and Autonomy in Television’s Social Field
Before Arrested Development, Hurwitz had a career in traditional multi-camera sitcoms, most notably on The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and he found the format to be outdated. Hurwitz’s conditions to experiment with new forms of comedy storytelling were made possible through some synergistic thinking by Hurwitz, Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer, and Imagine Entertainment chief David Nevins in 2002. As Hurwitz said, “The idea was that this documentary style could inform the storytelling, that instead of everything being consecutive, tell the story in a non-linear way. It became stylistically this great way of moving the story along.”4
Arrested Development’s emergence in this scenario inspires analysis on the performances of the production and distribution companies in the industry. The degree of autonomy granted to series creators generally depends on the history of autonomization in the field and on the symbolic and economic capital accumulated by such creators. What this notion inspires is an examination of how those working within media industries respond to external (like the need for commercial success) and internal (a production field’s specific defining criteria for quality and formal aspects) hierarchies. Following this direction, this essay employs a broader analysis of the professionals working in companies responsible for producing and distributing media content products within the concept of the social field. Entrepreneurial social agents are specially fascinating to observe, as they dedicate themselves to fostering industrial competitiveness, enhancing communication skills and marketing strategies, and bringing together experts who illustrate a combination of “economic dispositions which, in certain field’s sectors, are totally alien to the producers, and intellectual dispositions similar to those of the producers, from whom they may exploit the work only to the extent they know how to appreciate and value it.”5 Such executives tend to adopt a legitimation stance regarding creative and innovative ideas.
Research on the development of American television series illustrates the creative experience that includes the collective work of producing a series, headed by a showrunner (a professional with a high degree of autonomy to manage the key areas of writing, producing, and directing), depends on the conditions offered by the companies’ executives.6 Showrunners are able to increase their degree of autonomy and control over the complex process of production to the extent that they can accumulate symbolic capital and encounter homologous positions amongst executives from broadcast networks, cable and premium channels, and, most recently, online streaming companies.7 In this context, showrunners know the higher the power to negotiate and interfere with the process, the better the conditions to choose the resources and strategies employed. This may provide the recognition of their authoring features, which tend, in turn, to be associated with producing companies’ brands. A remarkable example is HBO’s original programming from the 1990s and early 2000s. Showrunners such as Tom Fontana (Oz, 1997–2003), David Chase (The Sopranos, 1999–2007), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, 2001–2005), David Simon (The Wire, 2002–2008), and David Milch (Deadwood, 2004–2006) exercised the creative freedom enabled by the premium cable channel and created some of the most critically acclaimed dramas in television history, which subsequently helped elevate HBO’s brand in the field of television production.8 Executives use brand identity strategies to establish their companies, investing in original programming and selecting series that, preferably, find a convergence point between aesthetic quality and audience ratings.9 Innovative series thus seem to demonstrate a tendency to become an object of adoration to niche audiences.
This essays considers how, in the field of television production, the increasing recognition and consecration of executives, creative writers, and producers along with specific genres and formats, come together to stimulate innovative processes in the spheres of creation, distribution, and consumption of programming. Such innovations show how the current state of the field’s autonomization allows legitimized series to become aesthetics reference points in American television. Thus, key moments of the main social agents’ trajectories are presented throughout the essay. Such agents include: Arrested Development’s creator and showrunner, Hurwitz; producers and executives of Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and David Nevins, who bet on the narrative and aesthetic style of the series from its inception; and Ted Sarandos, one of the executives responsible for the fourth season on Netflix who encouraged the series to further explore its previous innovations.
The social trajectory of a showrunner, associated with the network’s executives that legitimize them, tends to be a privileged locus of observation of the association efforts towards the creation of distinctive brands that stand out in both the serial production’s work and in the wider sphere of practices conducted by the companies involved.10 Analyzing the social consecration trajectory of these companies and entrepreneurs therefore enhances the understanding of efforts to promote their position in the markets in which they operate.
The business strategy of creating favorable and autonomous conditions for showrunners to work demonstrates that the creation context for successful television series can also be a circumstance that consecrates the company. This attitude is risky but necessary, particularly in a time of change in such fields, where the results from risky bets may positively reflect on the rise of newcomers in competitive spheres, like Netflix in the television production and distribution market.
The purpose of the reflection here is to indicate the perspective these companies advocate for regarding innovations in television sitcoms, which can be observed in the narrative strategies employed by Arrested Development. This essay also illustrates that the actions of the social agents involved have repercussions on the expansion of quality programming. In their success, these social agents strengthen the value and autonomy of creative and original content, and aid in the rise of new entrepreneurial agents such as Netflix in a moment of intense changes in the field.
“The future of television is here”: Netflix in the Field of Television Series Production
The expansion and diversification of how television content is distributed and consumed has significantly altered the dynamics of the field of television production. Companies like Netflix, which at first only offered a new distribution platform, have begun original series production. Netflix has projected itself into a field that was, until recently, restricted to production companies, networks, and channels. When acting in this field, Netflix has employed familiar industry strategies, with HBO’s strategic planning as main reference—as stated by Netflix’s co-founder and CEO, Reed Hastings.11 Such companies deal with at least three associated features: (1) international market expansion; (2) the creation of a system to regionally and globally identify, attract, assess, retain, and expand subscribers; and (3) the combination of a set of products that live up to the div
ersity and wishes both of its wider and its niche audiences. In such cases, the goal is innovative original content, recognized by consecration instances represented by experts in the field (critics, producers, authors), and the specific audience-related recognition (fan communities, websites, specialized blogs).
The strategies employed by Netflix demonstrate how the use of a new technology modifies the positions of the field’s players. The analytical perspective developed by Bourdieu highlights the newcomers’ tendency to alter the balance of forces significantly in a given historical moment, an essential aspect of the field’s logic and operating dynamics. In recent years, new agents have entered the field of series production, with the significant focus on the emergence of online streaming platforms. Along with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Yahoo have all invested in original programming strategies, achieving varying degrees of success and recognition. While Amazon’s Transparent (2014–) received Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy attention, Yahoo lost over $42 million with its original content, including the revival of cult NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015).12 The field’s symbolical capital is in constant negotiation, favoring the ascendance of agents who better combine strategic planning and creative potential in the space of choices made available in this field of production.
The way Netflix positioned itself within the field of series production and distribution companies, achieving recognition for the quality and innovation of its series, demonstrates that we are facing a new configuration of disputes and power relations in the multi-platform ambience. Netflix displays an ability to grasp the principles of the social field’s logic and to identify changes that destabilize the dynamics of existing operations—regarding technologies and content distribution systems under development, the expanding global market, the rise of new audiences, the harbor of audacious creators, and new state regulations, among others. Executives know how to evaluate this new context, and they implement action strategies that put them in a new position while competing with players who have been on the market for decades, that need, in turn, to renew and innovate their business models in light of these systems’ intrinsic logic.
