The Age of Netflix

by Cory Barker

  Repurposing Television Conventions

  Making its in-house seasons available all at once, Netflix organizes its program structure and delivery to channel and prioritize a particular form of viewing experience based on the assumption that a high percentage of its customers are going to continuously watch multiple episodes. Most notoriously, in 2012 Netflix set up the “post-play” default system to automatically keep playing from episode to the next.52 The end credit sequence, traditionally a paratext that marks the end of the text to lead into the next, is cut short so that you can keep watching.53 The credits are there if you want them, but they are deemed unnecessary (to the irritation of some customers who felt the feature spoilt the pace and mood). As a result of the backlash, in January 2014 Netflix enabled viewers to turn the feature off if they desired. Post-play is simply one of a string of methods to keep us watching. Before VHS, DVDs, time-shifting technologies, and full-season streaming, “narrative pull” would be designed to keep viewer interest from one week to another, including the use of formal devices such as a cliffhanger ending to an individual episode or a season, to make viewers come back.54 In an era when viewing can be what Lotz refers to as “deferred” and/or “successive,” these same cliffhangers might also prompt a viewer to simply keep watching in the same session, particularly if post-play is still enabled.55 In this case, a traditional structuring device has simply been reapplied to fit streaming, while others fall by the wayside. This is not a profound departure from the formal structures currently being used by all manner of serialized productions. Rather, cliffhangers and narrative pull are relied upon to achieve a related yet slightly different outcome: to make Netflix’s model of continued viewing in the same sitting appear more desirable than continued but delayed viewing the following week for new content available elsewhere.

  Netflix encourages customers to think of its products as best experienced in their overall epic duration. In the early days of broadcast television, sustained viewing meant watching a succession of different segments (including advertisements and news breaks) as part of what Raymond Williams famously termed television “flow.”56 Thus Williams argued that watching television actually meant watching television flow, not watching a particular program.57 Contemporary binge-viewing, by contrast, tends to be associated with watching one episode after another of the same series. Hills suggests DVD box sets separate the television program as individual text, removed from this broader context of traditional broadcast flow.58 Box sets are thereby able to isolate the viewer’s attention. A post-play enabled season on Netflix is similarly able to maintain viewer focus (although at the end of a season it will nonetheless suggest another program to move on to). A television program designed for ad-free streaming has no need for mini-cliffhangers before an advertisement break, and the way traditional episodic structure fits into broadcast television flow becomes irrelevant. Original Netflix content need not fit into a broadcast schedule (as one marketing tagline proclaims, “watch TV on your schedule”), and does not need to have stable episode or season lengths.59 The heightened association between Netflix’s in-house productions and binge-viewing rests partly upon its ability to optimize the structure of its series to fit its delivery model, minimizing repetitive exposition and maximizing what we might think of as a form of streaming flow. This form of optimized streaming flow encourages us to view (conceptually and literally) the television text as an expansive whole. If, for Sobchack, the broadcast miniseries fragments and thereby reduces the epic and its overall “temporal field,” then I would suggest that the cultivation of binge-viewing through the formal and technological devices employed by Netflix shifts its temporal field outwards once more.60 Contemporary epic-viewing is predicated on the (encouraged) perception of television texts in their overall, epic entirety.

  Catering to this form of viewing is increasingly becoming a financial imperative, resulting in changes to television conventions. Epic-enabled series not only appeal to the majority of U.S. viewers who now watch television in successive episodes, but also facilitate the movement of a program from an initial weekly broadcast, to later continuous viewing.61 As a result, many writers for network and cable television now attempt to structure their series to cater for both types of viewing—weekly and continuous.62 This is particularly important to secure a secondary market, including licensing through providers such as Netflix. In practical terms, this means being ever more vigilant about continuity, given that errors stand out more in successive viewing. As Jason Mittell argues, “bingeing on DVD can highlight narrative redundancies designed for weekly viewers,” such as recaps at the beginning of episodes, and explanatory exposition within episodes.63 They may, therefore, become either annoying repetitions, or welcome signposts if we have lost concentration along the way.64 It is financially advantageous for contemporary producers and writers to negotiate these competing demands, but Netflix is able to avoid this dilemma through its immediate delivery of its in-house products.

  The Netflix model of the epic-enabled program does not involve a radical departure from traditional television structuring devices, but rather their reapplication to continued streaming. This is evident in Arrested Development’s shift from Fox to Netflix. Seasons one through three of Arrested Development on Fox featured long-running gags that ran across episodes and seasons and therefore required an attentive viewer.65 Nonetheless, by comparison Mareike Jenner suggests the series embarked on a more free-form narrative structure when it moved to Netflix for season four, “often creating mini-cliffhangers in the middle of a scene that are not resolved until several episodes later.”66 Although Mittell notes this long-form joke structure in the earlier seasons, the Netflix season four represents a heightening of the device in the reformulation of its entire episodic logic. Through season four, we gradually learn the reasons for the Bluth family’s absence from matriarch Lucille Bluth’s (Jessica Walter) trial, in a series of overlapping narratives and timelines rather than in a linear progression. As this structure becomes clear, the viewer soon realizes that each episode viewed in isolation does not fully reveal its significance and the way it fits into the other narratives, creating an ongoing puzzle we are invited to put together across the season as a whole. Jenner suggests that this structure of interspersed mini-cliffhangers was intended precisely “to encourage ‘binge-viewing’” across multiple episodes.67

  While Sobchack suggests that the epic requires a feat of spectator endurance—through which our experience of bodily temporality becomes heightened—season four of Arrested Development is structured to reward this endurance not only through the narrative puzzle as a pleasure in its own right, but also in its contribution to the show’s genre-specific pleasures—that is, the way that the narrative special effect underpins the comedic “coincidences” across the series.68 The Netflix season of Arrested Development becomes the most recent form of what Mittell has termed contemporary “narrative complexity” in television that reflects “a shifting balance” between “episodic and serial forms.”69 Season four adopts the puzzle narrative structure, but also employs what Mittell terms “the narrative special effect. These moments push the operational aesthetic to the foreground, calling attention to the constructed nature of the narration and asking us to marvel at how the writers pulled it off.”70 Given that Mittell cites the intersection of plot strands in earlier seasons of Arrested Development by way of example, we should see Netflix season four as a further amplification of the narrative special effect, restructuring the program in its formation of character-specific episodes with overlapping timelines that we can keep track of more easily if we watch them in close succession.71 The viewer who consumes season four of Arrested Development in Netflix’s encouraged and preferred continuous mode is thereby rewarded for their intense investment of time by being better placed to piece together its complex overlapping narrative and temporal web, even as they may struggle to both physically endure the experience and mentally maintain concentration (an issue about which series creator M
itch Hurwitz has since expressed concerns).72

  A desire to reformulate the narrative structure of episodes also partly explains why Kevin Spacey, along with his fellow executive producers, ended up taking House of Cards to Netflix. David Fincher, Beau Willimon, and Spacey had tried taking the concept to the other major networks, but every one of them demanded a pilot before going ahead. Spacey and his colleagues wanted to avoid the level of exposition and arbitrary cliffhangers that the pilot format requires, preferring the extended time frame of the series as a whole to let the characters and plot lines play out more gradually.73 Netflix purchased the series without a pilot, basing their decision instead on their audience data. This is a narrowcast niche audience approach rather than a broadcast mass audience approach of the past, albeit with Internet-enabled broad distribution potential.74 While Netflix approved the slower narrative exposition for House of Cards, the series still leaves the ramification of key events (such as a murder at the end of season one) to the following season to play out, an old-school cliffhanger method to bring viewers back. The Netflix approach thereby means texts can be designed to be tighter in their minimizing of exposition, and yet more freeform in their pacing, while still using (or reworking, in the case of Arrested Development) traditional narrative devices such as the cliffhanger.75 We should ultimately be wary of considering these narrative strategies as particularly new when viewed in the context of the narrative complexity of cable programming, exemplified in older programs such as The Sopranos (1999–2007) or The Wire (2002–2008). Encouraging viewers to return for future episodes or seasons is standard. Encouraging viewers to watch a whole, uninterrupted season is epic. Put simply, why wait?

  Aesthetics of Expense

  The reconfiguration of the television text to fit the Netflix model, and both cultivate and reward the endurance of its viewers, has also become part of an ongoing discourse around hierarchies of quality and taste, and the various ways in which these values may be deliberately promoted as a branding exercise. Timothy Todreas has argued that in the era of digital television we have seen a “great value shift from conduit to content.”76 With the renewed attention paid to content, comes the focus of selling individual titles along the lines of what has variously been described as high-end television, and more often as quality television. Although this latter term has a rather complicated history that precedes the current streaming era, for our purposes here it is worth noting that there has been an intersection between the discourses of quality TV and perceived binge-worthiness.77 Among its many debated characteristics, quality television has been associated with high-budgets, critical acclaim, and also with a programming and marketing strategy to pitch television to a desirable, high-income audience, particularly viewers who might not otherwise watch the medium.78 Mario Klarer writes that “unlike one or two decades ago, today almost every single network or premium channel” wants a “flagship” high-end serial drama “in their portfolios,” not only to draw a particular demographic but also to raise the status of their brand.79 The Netflix in-house productions are premised on this brand-building marketing strategy. Thus Spacey, perhaps somewhat immodestly, sees House of Cards as belonging to a current “Golden Age of Quality Television.”80 As Newman and Levine argue, it is only certain types of programs that are identified as quality in each supposed “Golden Age.”81 Bearing this qualification in mind, we might see quality TV in terms of a type of market-driven (high-end) production and promotion strategy that may be present across different eras, even if it enters periods of heightened use. Because texts must be deemed worthy enough to warrant sustained attention, continuous viewing has become particularly linked with the notion of “quality TV.”82

  Netflix has used the immediate delivery of its flagship products (such as House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black [2013–]) as its point of branding difference in a competitive market. Netflix’s original content is in the minority when compared to its far more numerous licensed items, which viewers could also be watching continuously on demand. Despite this, advertising focuses primarily upon Netflix original products as part of the trend towards premium brand creation. Given that other providers also have high-end original products, Netflix tries to position itself as intrinsically superior because its premium products can be enjoyed all at once, immediately, in one grand, expansive, epic-viewing experience. Even as its competitors tentatively start to copy this model, the public discourse surrounding such releases is always tied back to Netflix, and as such Netflix currently maintains its public profile as the home of this new model of delivery and spectatorship.

  Sobchack notes that while extended duration is the primary means through which the epic employs excess temporality, there are nonetheless many ways in which temporal excess itself can be signified.83 The title sequence to House of Cards features 37 time-lapse photography sequences of Washington, D.C., by photographer Drew Grace, chosen from 120 shots taken in High Dynamic Range (HDR, which can register the large variations in luminosity between day and night shots) over a six-month time span.84 Time-lapse photography captures an expanse of time and compresses it, its mastery over time being the site of its formal and aesthetic pleasures. John Ellis notes that while network programs are frequently reducing titles to a mere title card, more expensive cable productions use an extended title sequence as an overt marker of quality.85 For a Netflix full-season epic experience, a long, repeated title sequence each episode would seem largely redundant, as the viewer does not need to be reminded that their series is starting, and may simply skip the opening sequence.86 Titles nonetheless continue to contribute to quality branding, and thereby prime our anticipation of the text even into a new era in which their role might otherwise be undermined. The House of Cards time-lapse images embody the investment of time and money that produced them, and thereby assert the worthiness of the program as a whole to receive our own investment of time and money.

  The title sequence to House of Cards also raises an expectation of on-location shooting, and therefore speaks both to the (high) budget of the series and the perceived (high) quality associated with it. D.C. is shown from the Capitol to barrels of waste dumped on the river’s edge; a seat of political power along with its discarded filth, presented with the same beautifully lit, crisp HDR photographic aesthetic that manages to make waste look good. The images mirror the political drama in which the ability of the Underwoods to manipulate appearances proves more powerful than the less palatable realities of their lives. It is a landscape that speaks to the literal eradication of people in the titles and the narrative—as people captured in the time-lapse shots were painted out of the title sequence to create the right tone.87 For season two, this sterility is amplified in the subtle shift to winter images with bare trees, a harshness of environment suited to the Underwoods’ increasingly ruthless machinations throughout the season.88 By drawing on the genre associations and thematic concerns of a particular program, a full title sequence such as House of Cards (as opposed to its literally poorer cousin, the brief title card) can become part of our viewing ritual that conspicuously asserts its quality in its images and sounds as a form of pleasure.

  As part of this imagery of expense, we should also add star persona, as Oscar-winning actors such as Kevin Spacey in House of Cards or Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey (2010–2015) are overtly paraded markers of quality.89 Attracting award-winning actors from the cinema into high-cost television productions helps foster the perception of a “cinematic TV” hybrid, and add brand equity.90 Indeed, Brett Mills notes that the term “quality TV” is often found alongside cinematic TV, tending to equate simply with a program that looks expensive, in that imagery “is foregrounded as an element of a programme that audiences are invited to take pleasure in.”91 The concept of cinematic TV is one that has gained traction among scholars and the popular press, and yet is also coming under increased criticism.92 As with the concept of quality TV, Mills points out that “it’s clear that the term ‘cinematic’ is one associated with hierarchi
cal ideas of quality, and is perceived to be a compliment when appropriated for television.”93

  With this focus on the overt markers of high-end production as signs of both aesthetic and cultural value, David Carr of the New York Times proclaimed “the vast wasteland of television has been replaced by an excess of excellence” that viewers can have difficulty keeping up with.94 Carr argues that this overwhelming supply of (what he calls) quality television has brought with it “intellectual credibility” such that you don’t feel culturally guilty for watching television, rather you feel embarrassed if you have not kept up with the latest paragon of excellence.95 While this suggests a shift in the media hierarchies of taste, our continued use of the terms cinematic and binge in relation to these texts tells a different story, a lingering from a previous era, in which the cinema is positioned above television, and sustained viewing of a television text is given the same term used for guilty, unhealthy overindulgence in junk food or alcohol.

  Netflix has ostensibly sidestepped this hierarchical approach as well as the negative connotations of “binge” by marketing its form of program delivery as “the future of television.”96 This elevation of streaming television contrasts notably with HBO’s former tagline as “not TV” but (by implication) something better.97 In trying to explain the distinguishing features of the Netflix format and mode of delivery, its creative staff nonetheless repeatedly falls back on comparisons to older media forms. Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz says the series’ shift to Netflix means “what it had become was a novel.”98 Similarly, House of Cards showrunner Willimon compares the program to a novel, which can be read in one hit or dipped into at will.99 Such comments form a continuation of the remediation of television that has been in play since its inception, but also indicate an attempt to conceptualize the oscillation between grazing and intense viewing in the current era. The use of terms such as novelistic and cinematic nonetheless circulate within discourses of quality and taste that can be seen partly as an attempt to recuperate the negative tinge of the term “binge-viewing,” and more broadly the practice of continuous television viewing itself. In the specific case of Netflix’s in-house products—texts designed at the outset to be enjoyed as one very long, post-play epic text—the perceived (and asserted) qualities of the text itself and our particular rituals of engagement with it intersect. Both the epic-enabled text, and our sustained engagement with it are positioned as the premium “future of television.”