The Netflix Effect: Impacts of the Streaming Model on Television Storytelling
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Wesleyan University The Honors College The Netflix Effect: Impacts of the Streaming Model on Television Storytelling by Romil Sharma Class of 2016 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors from the College of Film and the Moving Image Middletown, Connecticut April, 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………….............…...... iii INTRODUCTION: NOW STREAMING ...................................................................... 1 1. THE TRAJECTORY OF TELEVISION................................................................... 8 VIEWER CHOICE ...................................................................................................... 8 DISTRIBUTION ........................................................................................................ 15 AUDIENCE FRAGMENTATION .................................................................................. 22 CREATIVE FREEDOM .............................................................................................. 26 SURVEILLANCE AND ANALYTICS ............................................................................. 33 GLOBAL REACH ..................................................................................................... 37 2. THE AESTHETIC TOOLBOX OF NETFLIX ........................................................ 43 EPISODE ONE ....................................................................................................... 46 SEASON STRUCTURE ............................................................................................. 57 GLOBAL STORYTELLING ......................................................................................... 68 COMPLEX COMEDY ................................................................................................ 72 AUTHORSHIP AND CREATIVE CONTROL .................................................................. 81 CASE-STUDY ANALYSIS: SENSE8 3. SENSE8 AND SEASON-LEVEL STORYTELLING ............................................ 88 ACT STRUCTURE AND SEASON-LEVEL PLOTTING .................................................... 91 NARRATIVE ACCUMULATION AND VIEWER COMPREHENSION ................................. 121 4. SENSE8 AND EPISODE-LEVEL STORYTELLING ......................................... 142 CONTRASTS ........................................................................................................ 145 PARALLELS ......................................................................................................... 151 SENSATE CONNECTIONS ..................................................................................... 157 MOMENTS ........................................................................................................... 165 CONVENTIONS ..................................................................................................... 180 CONCLUSION: TV, DISRUPTED .......................................................................... 187 SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 196 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Above all, thank you to my advisor Scott Higgins for helping me whittle down my grandiose musings on the television industry into a project that I could sink my teeth into. Your feedback and support have been invaluable throughout this process. Thank you to Jeanine Basinger, Steve Collins, Lisa Dombrowski, Tony Scott, Catherine Licata, Marc Longenecker, Lea Carlson, and the entire Wesleyan Film Studies Department. A special thanks to Marc Longenecker and Betsy Traube for helping shape the way I think about television storytelling. Thank you to my parents for conceiving me and for supporting me during this process, even if you couldn’t fathom why I would willingly put myself through it. Thanks to Ayesha for keeping me humble and being my feminist voice of reason. Thanks to Ramos, Ron, and Rowland for your company in the struggle. iii Introduction. Now Streaming Television is a relationship. It asks for our time, commitment, and trust and, in return, provides certain pleasures and payoffs through its storytelling. In many ways, this relationship is one-sided. The control largely remains in the hands of the viewer, and the show alone carries the burden of satisfaction. The affair begins, as many do, with a courtship. Perhaps, we meet online or through a friend’s recommendation. As the show makes its case for why it merits our attention, we flirt with the idea of settling down. A high-maintenance series may require more attention on the part of the viewer, asking that we tune in each week to remain involved. Others might take a more laid-back approach, allowing us to occasionally drop in at our leisure. We expect a show to know what it wants out of this relationship and to follow through on those intentions. After setting up certain expectations, the show risks disappointing us if they are left unmet. Some missteps may be forgiven in light of the greater benefits, but others could be deal-breakers. Enter: Netflix. The streaming service releases entire seasons of its shows all at once, a strategy that arguably encourages creators to reconsider or reallocate emphasis within this viewing relationship. If a show fails to woo us on episode one, the next episode is a mere 15 seconds away from starting. Why not give it the benefit of the doubt? Without a week in between each installment, the Netflix model potentially extends the courtship period. With each episode right at our fingertips, a relationship with a series that 1 requires consistent viewing no longer seems so high-maintenance. At the same time, the level of access that comes with the streaming catalog suggests that if this series disappoints us, moving on could prove to be simpler than it once was. These relationships hardly exist in a vacuum. Rather, they are subject to external forces that guide the mass medium. Technological and industrial shifts have continually modified the ways in which series are produced and delivered since the birth of television. In turn, these changes have impacted how creators tell stories and how viewers receive them. Recently, the rise of streaming has been a prominent development in the television landscape. Streaming technology has been around for some time, but the inciting force that disrupted the status quo arose through industry rather than technology. A key player came to the fore and realigned the way that people think about television. On February 1, 2013, Netflix premiered the political drama House of Cards (Willimon, 2013-present) as its first exclusive original series, signaling a watershed moment in the growth of streaming television. By no stretch was Netflix the first service to stream original content. Instead, with House of Cards, it ruptured the barrier between web television and traditional television. Within the context of this project, the term “traditional television” refers to linear platforms and particularly their scripted programming. Broadcast networks, basic cable channels, and premium cable networks are all linear platforms, meaning that their shows are distributed, often weekly, through 2 time slots on a live schedule. House of Cards, through its high production values and a narrative format that resembles a traditional drama series, paved the way for Netflix to earn a seat at the television table. At the 2013 Primetime Emmy Awards, Netflix became the first web television service to be nominated in a major category, garnering 14 nominations and three wins. After the nominations were announced, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos acknowledged this mark of legitimacy from the industry, praising Emmy voters for “eliminating the line between Internet and television and saying that television is about what’s on the screen, not what size the screen is or how the content got there.”1 This emphatic step into original programming by Netflix established its role as the preeminent streaming platform. Well before the release of House of Cards, Netflix has kept an eye on the horizon of content distribution. It was founded in 1997 as an online DVD rental service, at a time when DVDs were still a new format. In 1999, the company adopted a subscription model, allowing viewers to pay a single monthly rate for unlimited rentals. Netflix began streaming licensed content in 2007, a move that the New York Times called “a radically different approach to Internet movies.”2 In a premature step to devote attention to its streaming business, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced in 2011 that its DVD-by- mail service would be spun off into a separate company called Qwikster. 1 Marisa Guthrie and Lacey Rose, “Networks Scramble to Boost Live Programming as DVRs Shift Audiences,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 22, 2013, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- feed/emmys-14-nominations-netflix-earns-634244. 2 David Pogue, “A Stream of Movies, Sort of Free,” The New York Times, January 25, 2007, http://nyti.ms/20j6nL2. 3 Following an outcry from subscribers and a 60% drop in the company’s stock price, Hastings reversed his decision.3 This rare but serious misstep reflected the company’s desire early on to reorient around streaming for its core business. In recent years, the streaming service has drifted away from studio output deals and non-exclusive content, placing emphasis instead on originals and exclusive titles. In 2011, Netflix bought the exclusive North America distribution rights for