There's an interesting contrast to be made here with earlier forms of text-based mass media that also worked on a "consumption" model, if not strictly an addiction model. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, left behind hundreds of those small paperback romance novels when she died. I never even knew she read them. My grandpa reads the Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey western paperbacks, which are I suppose a sort of masculinized version of the same market proposition: make cheap, predictable, non-challenging narrative product that keeps the consumer comin' back. To my mind the second-biggest contrast (after text- vs. screen-based product) is that these cheapo paperbacks *had closure*, unlike just about any TV series I can think of, where, as you say, the basic structure is "keep going ... forever? or until we stop getting funding".
I wonder how much of this has to do with where creative control is. Louis L'Amour may have had to produce a certain kind of product for the market, but at least he still had full control of how the things got put together. The studio system, from what I've heard, has only taken more and more creative control out of the hands of any one individual.
Well put. As I’m sure people have gathered now I have no opposition to what you might call ‘trash’- lurid paperbacks, fast and loud rock and roll, manly men eighties tv series that always feature helicopters, that sort of thing. I say that the best road is to mix proper highbrow and lowbrow and to avoid the middle ground entirely. So Louis L’Amour would fit that paradigm perfectly.
Narrative closure is the point, as you say. Spending an afternoon reading a potboiler is all well and good but spending most of your free time for several weeks bingeing the hot new Netflix show that goes nowhere is a problem.
And yes, I suspect that as long as he stuck to the genre, hit his deadlines and made the publisher a certain profit, old Louis L’Amour could probably write what he wanted. Not a bad life really.
Great piece. As far as I'm concerned you embodied like a war correspondent, going deep in the trenches for us. Two lines stand out in particular.
i. I log into my sisters account.
I just love this line. It makes no fucking sense, but it is the most sensible thing all the same. Netflix has the most advanced VPN restriction I've ever come across. Do we really think they couldn't shut this whole practice down if they really wanted to? They don't care. They just want you to watch.
ii. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once proudly said ‘We [Netflix] actually compete with sleep. And we’re winning.’
Good lord, he's right. I would say one front is sleep, the other is productivity. We are the conscripts, and he'll take as many as they can get. Which is why we can use our first cousin twice removed's account. Who has been dead for four years.
Haha, thanks Charlie. I’m trying to increasingly treat this thing like I’m a travel writer or anthropologist and the weird alien culture I’m observing is my own.
It’d be nice to actually travel somewhere but with the world being how it is right now...
I didnt even know about this "play something" function. Really telling, as you say. The product itself matters less than the act of watching it, as if the respite and temporary oblivion of ourselves was the main goal (which is a perfectly fine definition of opium btw).
I don't have Netflix but I torren... hum, watched 2 episodes of the series you're talking about (to know what all the fuss was about). There was something in the violence extravaganza that troubled me. Not that I'm particularly sensitive (as a teenager I watched almost every slasher I could get my hands on), but this time it hit different. The violence had no meaning at all. It wasn't the usual catharsis/bloodbath type after a long crescendo in tension. It wasn't some outrageous, over the top stuff like Peter Jackson' Braindead. It was just a cold, clinical filming of people getting butchered. I didn't see any particular art nor meaning attached to it. Maybe we've become so desensitized to violence that only genocidal levels of it can shock us now (like they say you can only get hard after years of exposition to porn by seeing extreme depraved stuff), but it didn't even feel like it. No, I had the impression that ultra-violence had become the only way to "re-engage" people and keep them watching in an era where no one is "just" watching a movie anymore. Everyone checks their phone multiple times and multi-tasks while in front of the TV, so getting a bunch of actors chopped, shot and blown to pieces (with digital blood effects added in post-prod, cause it's cheaper than old-school fake blood) is the last mean to get the viewer's attention back and - metaphorically - get him hard. Don't know how this will still work in 10-15 years though.
I also wonder if the popularity of Netflix isn't also simply economical: in 2021, a boys' night out rarely costs less than 30-50€. Dinner at a nice place with your loved one is easily in the 50-80€ range (at least here in France). With the average salary around 1400-1700€/month for 22-28 years old, I can understand the appeal of endless Entertainment for 7€/month. It's less that they like to spend 5 nights a week watching TV than the fact that they can't afford that many other activities after work. Same case could be made for videogames.
Anyway. Thanks for the article Tom, and I hope we'll see a Netflix series review in your next movie- review newsletter :)
Funny how without naming the show, you knew what I was talking about and I in turn know that you know without you naming it either. This seems very telling.
Without going down a paranoid conspiratorial tangent, I do feel that things that make the Netflix top ten do not do so organically and are therefore deliberately chosen. And the reason does seem to be some kind of propagandising/demoralisation attempt, almost. Ultraviolence and progressive politics are seemingly strange bedfellows yet here we are.
To your point, the cheapness of Netflix is surely part of its appeal. It reminds me of those big box stores that move in on the edge of town, aggressively undercut the competition until they all go out of business, and then when they are the only shop left they can start doing all sorts of dodgy practices with impunity. In difficult economic times it is tough to go for the more expensive option out of principle and ethical considerations.
Finally, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to reviewing a Netflix series but there is simply nothing that appeals to me. And they enjoy enough publicity and hype. Whereas there is over a century of cinema that goes largely, if not wholly, ignored. And so that is what I am drawn to.
It reminded me Odysseus’s visit to the lotophagi island. Inhabitant of this island were eating a flowers of lotus tree and then slept peacefully in apathy. After you eat it, you forget your home and loved ones and there’s no way back because you stop caring. Odysseus, however, didn’t take the drug and was the only sane person left. He saw what lotus did to his men and forced them to the ships to leave the island.
A perfect comparison. Makes me realise that I actually need to sit down and read Homer rather than rely on the bits and pieces of it that I have imbibed over the years from films and cartoons. Need to get my act together. Cheers Ivan.
I was thinking of and delighted to see the nutritious food analogy. I work on "reintroducing" fresh, wild native fruits to adults and youth and it is an uphill battle. One major danger is that if you stay on potato chips (or binge Netflix) too much your old taste buds (and synapses) atrophy and rejuvenation is tough. The mind, and yes the tongue, miss the old dopamine/high fructose corn syrup rush and have to be reconditioned to the "slow worthiness" of a meaningful satiety. Moreover, if youth never experience satiety, they may spend their lives blindly looking for it but not knowing what they yearn for-and as such angst emerges. I lament that you ask most American elementary school kids what an "apple" should taste like they ruefully describe the processed "green apple candy flavor" that their tongue has been hijacked by and they have binged upon. It is wrongfully viewed as "artsy/elitist/hipster"-ish to hope that young taste buds could one day see beyond the horizon to a locally produced apple, tree ripened from a produce stand that has real taste and substance. Yet again though, the produce stands are going the way of Blockbuster video. Immensely enjoyed the essay, if for no other reason to know "we" are not alone, as Sebastian hinted in your comment of the week.
You’re doing the lords work with that native fruit introduction. Fascinating stuff. And yes, though they deserve some mockery, the hipster types can be a great force of conservation and so are probably necessary for the wider eco system. I need to remind myself of this more often.
Keep up the good work, mate, and if I ever decide to write an essay on fruit (because why not?) I’ll hit you up beforehand. Cheers.
Thanks Charles. The idea came to me because I’ve been doing a lot of fasting punctuated by clean eating as part of a weight loss bet I’ve got going on in the social club. Anyway I realised while eating a steak that if someone offered me three more whole steak, for a total of around 2000 cal I wouldn’t be able to eat them all. But 2000 cal worth or cheese pizza or cereal? No problem.
And then I made the connection to all forms of consumption.
There's an interesting contrast to be made here with earlier forms of text-based mass media that also worked on a "consumption" model, if not strictly an addiction model. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, left behind hundreds of those small paperback romance novels when she died. I never even knew she read them. My grandpa reads the Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey western paperbacks, which are I suppose a sort of masculinized version of the same market proposition: make cheap, predictable, non-challenging narrative product that keeps the consumer comin' back. To my mind the second-biggest contrast (after text- vs. screen-based product) is that these cheapo paperbacks *had closure*, unlike just about any TV series I can think of, where, as you say, the basic structure is "keep going ... forever? or until we stop getting funding".
I wonder how much of this has to do with where creative control is. Louis L'Amour may have had to produce a certain kind of product for the market, but at least he still had full control of how the things got put together. The studio system, from what I've heard, has only taken more and more creative control out of the hands of any one individual.
Well put. As I’m sure people have gathered now I have no opposition to what you might call ‘trash’- lurid paperbacks, fast and loud rock and roll, manly men eighties tv series that always feature helicopters, that sort of thing. I say that the best road is to mix proper highbrow and lowbrow and to avoid the middle ground entirely. So Louis L’Amour would fit that paradigm perfectly.
Narrative closure is the point, as you say. Spending an afternoon reading a potboiler is all well and good but spending most of your free time for several weeks bingeing the hot new Netflix show that goes nowhere is a problem.
And yes, I suspect that as long as he stuck to the genre, hit his deadlines and made the publisher a certain profit, old Louis L’Amour could probably write what he wanted. Not a bad life really.
Cheers, Andrew.
Great piece. As far as I'm concerned you embodied like a war correspondent, going deep in the trenches for us. Two lines stand out in particular.
i. I log into my sisters account.
I just love this line. It makes no fucking sense, but it is the most sensible thing all the same. Netflix has the most advanced VPN restriction I've ever come across. Do we really think they couldn't shut this whole practice down if they really wanted to? They don't care. They just want you to watch.
ii. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings once proudly said ‘We [Netflix] actually compete with sleep. And we’re winning.’
Good lord, he's right. I would say one front is sleep, the other is productivity. We are the conscripts, and he'll take as many as they can get. Which is why we can use our first cousin twice removed's account. Who has been dead for four years.
Haha, thanks Charlie. I’m trying to increasingly treat this thing like I’m a travel writer or anthropologist and the weird alien culture I’m observing is my own.
It’d be nice to actually travel somewhere but with the world being how it is right now...
I didnt even know about this "play something" function. Really telling, as you say. The product itself matters less than the act of watching it, as if the respite and temporary oblivion of ourselves was the main goal (which is a perfectly fine definition of opium btw).
I don't have Netflix but I torren... hum, watched 2 episodes of the series you're talking about (to know what all the fuss was about). There was something in the violence extravaganza that troubled me. Not that I'm particularly sensitive (as a teenager I watched almost every slasher I could get my hands on), but this time it hit different. The violence had no meaning at all. It wasn't the usual catharsis/bloodbath type after a long crescendo in tension. It wasn't some outrageous, over the top stuff like Peter Jackson' Braindead. It was just a cold, clinical filming of people getting butchered. I didn't see any particular art nor meaning attached to it. Maybe we've become so desensitized to violence that only genocidal levels of it can shock us now (like they say you can only get hard after years of exposition to porn by seeing extreme depraved stuff), but it didn't even feel like it. No, I had the impression that ultra-violence had become the only way to "re-engage" people and keep them watching in an era where no one is "just" watching a movie anymore. Everyone checks their phone multiple times and multi-tasks while in front of the TV, so getting a bunch of actors chopped, shot and blown to pieces (with digital blood effects added in post-prod, cause it's cheaper than old-school fake blood) is the last mean to get the viewer's attention back and - metaphorically - get him hard. Don't know how this will still work in 10-15 years though.
I also wonder if the popularity of Netflix isn't also simply economical: in 2021, a boys' night out rarely costs less than 30-50€. Dinner at a nice place with your loved one is easily in the 50-80€ range (at least here in France). With the average salary around 1400-1700€/month for 22-28 years old, I can understand the appeal of endless Entertainment for 7€/month. It's less that they like to spend 5 nights a week watching TV than the fact that they can't afford that many other activities after work. Same case could be made for videogames.
Anyway. Thanks for the article Tom, and I hope we'll see a Netflix series review in your next movie- review newsletter :)
Funny how without naming the show, you knew what I was talking about and I in turn know that you know without you naming it either. This seems very telling.
Without going down a paranoid conspiratorial tangent, I do feel that things that make the Netflix top ten do not do so organically and are therefore deliberately chosen. And the reason does seem to be some kind of propagandising/demoralisation attempt, almost. Ultraviolence and progressive politics are seemingly strange bedfellows yet here we are.
To your point, the cheapness of Netflix is surely part of its appeal. It reminds me of those big box stores that move in on the edge of town, aggressively undercut the competition until they all go out of business, and then when they are the only shop left they can start doing all sorts of dodgy practices with impunity. In difficult economic times it is tough to go for the more expensive option out of principle and ethical considerations.
Finally, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to reviewing a Netflix series but there is simply nothing that appeals to me. And they enjoy enough publicity and hype. Whereas there is over a century of cinema that goes largely, if not wholly, ignored. And so that is what I am drawn to.
Cheers, Sebastien.
It reminded me Odysseus’s visit to the lotophagi island. Inhabitant of this island were eating a flowers of lotus tree and then slept peacefully in apathy. After you eat it, you forget your home and loved ones and there’s no way back because you stop caring. Odysseus, however, didn’t take the drug and was the only sane person left. He saw what lotus did to his men and forced them to the ships to leave the island.
Great piece, Tom. Cheers!
A perfect comparison. Makes me realise that I actually need to sit down and read Homer rather than rely on the bits and pieces of it that I have imbibed over the years from films and cartoons. Need to get my act together. Cheers Ivan.
I was thinking of and delighted to see the nutritious food analogy. I work on "reintroducing" fresh, wild native fruits to adults and youth and it is an uphill battle. One major danger is that if you stay on potato chips (or binge Netflix) too much your old taste buds (and synapses) atrophy and rejuvenation is tough. The mind, and yes the tongue, miss the old dopamine/high fructose corn syrup rush and have to be reconditioned to the "slow worthiness" of a meaningful satiety. Moreover, if youth never experience satiety, they may spend their lives blindly looking for it but not knowing what they yearn for-and as such angst emerges. I lament that you ask most American elementary school kids what an "apple" should taste like they ruefully describe the processed "green apple candy flavor" that their tongue has been hijacked by and they have binged upon. It is wrongfully viewed as "artsy/elitist/hipster"-ish to hope that young taste buds could one day see beyond the horizon to a locally produced apple, tree ripened from a produce stand that has real taste and substance. Yet again though, the produce stands are going the way of Blockbuster video. Immensely enjoyed the essay, if for no other reason to know "we" are not alone, as Sebastian hinted in your comment of the week.
You’re doing the lords work with that native fruit introduction. Fascinating stuff. And yes, though they deserve some mockery, the hipster types can be a great force of conservation and so are probably necessary for the wider eco system. I need to remind myself of this more often.
Keep up the good work, mate, and if I ever decide to write an essay on fruit (because why not?) I’ll hit you up beforehand. Cheers.
Your line—"it is impossible to binge on something that is truly excellent"—is one that I'll carry around for awhile.
Thanks Charles. The idea came to me because I’ve been doing a lot of fasting punctuated by clean eating as part of a weight loss bet I’ve got going on in the social club. Anyway I realised while eating a steak that if someone offered me three more whole steak, for a total of around 2000 cal I wouldn’t be able to eat them all. But 2000 cal worth or cheese pizza or cereal? No problem.
And then I made the connection to all forms of consumption.