The end of holiday season is upon us, and a chance to apply a new perspective to life as it slowly returns to boring normality. For a few short weeks, if you were lucky enough, you were able to immerse yourself in a different culture: eating new food; meeting new people; gazing, fascinated, upon new and startling sights as you encountered your Airbnb landlord’s Netflix algorithms.
In my own case, a week in Scotland led me to a lot of American college football documentaries. I now know how Jonny Manziel wrecked his career and exactly how Manti Te’o got catfished; what a “fake punt” and a “pancake block” is; and how pivotal the spread offence was to Urban Meyer’s tenure at the Florida Gators. Don’t tell me travel doesn’t broaden the mind.
Safely back home in the comforting arms of my own viewing profile, I’ve started to seek out more documentaries about sports I previously knew nothing about. (My god, the cobble stage of the Tour de France is brutal, isn’t it?) The algorithms generating my homepage, normally invisible to me, have gone haywire — a fact prompting me to look into exactly how they were constructed in the first place.
To work out what you might want to watch next, Netflix first classifies its programmes into at least 76,897 “microgenres”. These group each product under one or more relatively detailed headings, so that combinations of features which apparently appeal to a viewer in one instance can be quickly found in other cases, and then recommended to her. These include such categories as: “Goofy Comedies about Royalty”, “Violent Foreign Mother Son Relationship Movies”, “Understated Australian Movies”, and “Award Winning Underdog Movies”. It is unrecorded whether any particular programme counts as all four of these at once.
It’s interesting to consider what microgenres do to genre criticism in the traditional sense. Critics often assess the success or failure of an artwork against intended genre membership — if it’s a western or a romcom, for instance. Is it a good example of the genre or a bad one? Is it intended to subvert the genre in question, even? Such questions assume that the creators know which larger categories they are working within, or against.
Microgenres aren’t like this, though. You can hardly blame a director for not knowing, all along, that she was competing against other Dark Dramas for Hopeless Romantics Based on Books. And I don’t see how you could “subvert” microgenres at this level of specificity — you’d just automatically enter a different one.
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SubscribeI am not a Netflix subscriber, but I do listen to the radio when it is my turn to cook. When the BBC plans its content and schedule, it also uses an algorithm. It is based on four heuristics:
[1] Ignore the demographic of the current listeners (largely grumpy old gits, like me),
[2] Pretend that the listeners are in the late-teens-to-mid-twenties demographic,
[3] Assume that the listeners are all proto-luvvies and that, with persistent nudging, they can all be converted to full-blown luvvies and
[4] Take no notice of the fact that Radio 4 has lost over 1 million listeners.
Ever tried Radio 3?
Yes, but that is step-by-step and not-so-silently going the same way as Radio 4. Radio 3 is incrementally increasing its proportion of “world music”, jazz and light music, mixed turn-about with what is supposed to be its mainstay.
Quite right, and the presenters mustn’t ever sound like they know what they’re talking about; more young or ethnic sounding and a bit goofy, as if they turned up in the wrong studio by mistake. Mustn’t patronise you know or claim greater knowledge than the listener. God forbid that you presume to inform anybody about anything at all.
I can’t work out what is worse – the presenters who cannot pronounce any foreign name (there is one who keeps pronouncing ‘Gewandhaus’ as ‘Gewondhaus’ (I suppose he thinks it’a a ‘magic ge-wand’) or one female presenter who is so determined to demonstrate how great her french accent is that every time she tries to pronounce an ‘r’ sound she appears to be drowning in phlegm.
My personal bugbear is a BBC Radio 4 news reader who clearly learnt English as a foreign language in the United States. He says “stoodent”, “Moss-cow”, etc.
I concur! Dreadful.
You’re so right.
Yes, but it still has life in it yet.
It was also excellent during the Covid Scamdemic, none of the hysteria of the others.
I used to listen to Radio 3 all the time. Now I only listen to specific works in programmed concerts. The daytime output is steadily going downhill towards “bleeding chunks”.
Radio 3 is engaged in non-stop shameless promotion of the Chineke Orchestra, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, , Florence Price, Joseph Chevalier de Saint-Georges and the Kanneh-Mason family (for the longest time I thought was Fabulous Kanneh-Mason). What are they thinking?
The standard anti-White schidt.
It is, in musical terms, the full Samuel (a pile of Scheidt.)
Don’t forget the communist youth orchestra of Venezuela.
ABC Classic in Australia promoting the same artists!
With regard to the Chineke orchestra, I totally fail to understand why we are being asked to approve of, applaud and fund, an organisation which selects its members based (effectively) on the colour of their skin. I find that most offensive!
Not forgetting bloody Hildegard of Bingen. You never hear just ordinary plainsong, but she pops up all the time
I used to listen to BBC Radio 3 to escape from the Woking Class propaganda on BBC Radio 4 an BBC Radio 2. But in recent years I’ve ceased accessing BBC Radio 3 which is as wokewashed as its stablemates.
I am sick of the BBC’s incessant efforts to brainwash its audience via every sort of programme it delivers. It is a rotten, arrogant organisation, largely populated and managed by Oxbridge elites – unaccountable and living off billions of pounds of annual taxation (euphemistically called the ‘licence fee).
Classic FM is much better
We wish you’d written the article, you’re spot on.
Kathleen Stock is my favourite Unherd contributor. She could write about anything and make it interesting and stimulating. (But thanks, anyway!)
Does anybody listen to radio anymore? I mean, my understanding was that video had killed the radio star.
Yes, every day.
My statisitc of the one million lost listeners for BBC Radio 4 comes from RAJAR. In Q2, 2022, BBC Radio 4 had 10.2 million listeners and in Q2, 2023 it had 8.9 million listeners. So the numbers are falling fast, but there are still quite a few. BTW, a person does not have to listen for very long to be counted as a listener.
Can they count we who are listening via the ‘net in foreign climes? Actually, I’m listening less and less to the BBC and now skip around stations in various countries … anything to escape wokedom. (The ABC is even worse).
Here in Canada, CBC seems to have followed the same heuristics with the addition of the State (i.e. Trudeau) mandated ‘race’ targetted programming.
Yank Anglophile, here. An artificial, overly dramatic bore.
Allison, you are correct. Originally, I think it referred to the way that some Brit actors talked in public: a pretence of being caring and sharing. On reflection, my use of “luvvy” was not right. I should have said that the BBC programne creators think of their audience as being passively woke. Sorry for causing confusion.
‘Passively woke’! I love that!!
A ‘swish” white male,snobbish, patronizing, posh, eliteist, of dubious sexuality, and for whom everything is precious.
Guilty as charged on five counts!
Innocent on two counts.
As for “everything is precious”, for my good self, NOTHING is precious, nor ever will be.
Which are the two?
One and seven.
Oh really! How perfectly British of you.
That’s a bit unfair. The archetypical luvvie is Emma Thompson – not male, not (as far as I know) of dubious sexuality. I grant you the rest (though I am sure not all luvvies are necessarily white).
The other prime luvvie is Stephen Fry, who ticks all your boxes, was once described (rather well) as “a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like”.
I concur. Emma really has become insufferable. The movie ‘Good Luck to you, Leo Grande’ was totally cringe worthy. But years ago in ‘Carrington’ she brought me to tears. I don’t know what happened.
The acting profession has many examples of skilled performers who do not seem to be particularly pleasant individuals when not playing a part. To take my particular bugbear, Stephen Fry the actor was brilliant playing Jeeves : it’s when he is playing Stephen Fry the ‘personality’ that I cannot bear him (and I used the word ‘playing’ deliberately in the second instance.)
Hear, hear, he’s grossly obese BBC ‘luvvie’ toad, who’s vanity far exceeds his intellect.
My own favourite is “battery acid throwing“ Jo Brand, another wretched BBC ‘luvvie’ who should have been dismissed years ago.
That is, sadly, so true. But it’s only since television shows and interviews that more has been expected of them than to just act.
‘Hypocrite’ is another word that should apply (e.g. Emma Thompson).
Not to mention ‘smug’ and ‘pretentious’. I could go on (my wife says I usually do : she has taken changing TV channel whenever Stephen Fry is on, to avoid the full rant)
Why is she a hypocrite?
One example: She travels by private jet, yet lambastes the air transport industry for its carbon footprint.
If you’re familiar with the film Withnail & I, a good example is Uncle Monty.
Well, quite. Did you hear the one about BBC comedy?
Netflix is deliberately distorting history by placing ethnic minority characters in historic English dramas. This is ideological
Did you omit to type your final word ‘nonsense’?
I consider it malicious and nonsense does not convey the character of the underlying intent
It is malicious, combined with a form of toadying. And it never happens in the reverse (except that if they ever make a biopic about Queen Ranavalona, they’ll claim she was actually white and cast Claire Foy).
When they portray the Nazis on film they do not infiltrate any ethnic minority characters.
Exactly, what about a jet black Adolph for starters?
Would he have a white moustache?
Grey would be better.
Fair enough!
Let’s not forget how Netflix also loves to dabble in the remake of perfectly good films—turning them into ideological slop that erases historical differences between the generations.
Absolutely!!! That’s my pet peeve. Why oh why. I can longer watch them they’re not authentic. It’s that damn Shondra Rhimes making a fortune out of distorting history.
The spouse and I *tried* to watch Bridgerton after it came out to (near universal) acclaim.
Not only did we find the casting absurd (and absolutely ideological — talk about “nudging”!), but the writing was So. Horribly. Bad. It was like middle school students trying to be Jane Austin (and failing miserably, as they would).
After about fifteen minutes, we exchanged glances, shook our heads, pressed <exit>, and gave it a “thumbs down”. Farting against thunder; it’s been a massively successful series…god knows “good” and “writing” seldom come together in contemporary entertainment.
“Netflix is deliberately distorting history by placing ethnic minority characters in historic English dramas.”
The BBC and ITV (including Channel 4) have been doing this for years, though with increasing frequency and enthusiasm in recent post BLM times. Quite apart from the programmes themselves just consider the plethora of multi-ethnic TV advertisements. And docu-dramas are another fertile ground for such egregious misrepresentation (one BBC docu-drama on the Norman Conquest featured black lords on King Harold’s English advisory council pre-1066!). Indeed, every facet of radio and TV programming is now infected with ‘blackwashing’. It is understandable that some (many?) find this process insulting and patronising.
It is easier for them to get away with this pernicious crap on the radio for obvious reasons. But those of us with finely-tune aural facilities are not generally fooled!
It was earlier in 2023 that BBC Radio 4 News reported (somewhat gleefully, it seemed to me) that within 30-50 years, possibly earlier, whites will be a minority of the UK population. Perhaps the BBC et al. are simply doing us a favour by preparing us for the inevitable.
That’s what it’s all about. Preparing us and preventing a backlash
“Goofy Comedies about Royalty”, “Violent Foreign Mother Son Relationship Movies”, “Understated Australian Movies”, and “Award Winning Underdog Movies.” It is unrecorded whether any particular programme counts as all four of these at once.
Royal Ruck: The hilarious and heartwarming tale of a young Prince Charles (Harry Styles) who during a trip Down Under discovers an heretofore unknown talent for Australian-rules football and must now balance a double life as both the heir to the British throne and the starting ruckman for scrappy gang of ragtag sports misfits the Borroloola Thunder, keeping it a secret from his outrageously overbearing mother the Queen (Eddie Izzard) while also romancing the initially standoffish club manager (Florence Pugh). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll believe a Windsor can take a running bounce.
There are two great reasons not to watch that film, Harry Styles and Eddie Izzard. Oh, forgot the third, it mentions the Royal Family. Nothing funny there!
Comment of the year!
I only need two categories: Woke and Non-Woke. Funnily enough, none of the streamers do this. I substitute it by watching nothing made after the turn of the century.
Sounds a bit narrow minded.
While there are some productions of the 2010s and early 2020s that are worth watching, these are rare; very rare. I tend to fall back on material produced before 2010 and from the 20th Century as being more watchable and not wokewashed.
Try the film “Living” (2022, d./ Oliver Hermanus. It’s like a throwback to the wonderful 1980s British films.). I can’t believe it made it through the film industry intact.
I will try that Apo. Thanks.
Nicely written, as always, but this article is basically about 2 things which I’m unconvinced are really problems.
First, Netflix and their algorithms.
Obviously recommending programmes you’ll probably like on the basis of what you’ve watched before makes sense from their point of view. But my suspicion is that they’re probably overstating how complicated this needs to be or even is.
I used to work for a software company. One of our products looked for risk of fraud and error in benefit applications. We made a big deal of how finely tuned the algorithm was but what was mainly driving the risk scoring was simply how complicated the claim was. If, for example, you’ve had multiple short periods of employment in the last year, then the chances you’ve made an error somewhere in your claim naturally go up.
My guess is something similar is going on at Netflix. For all the talk of thousands of microgenres, the practical upshot is that if you watch a lot of horror movies, you’re going to see the latest Annabel film in your recommendations. Ultimately its up to you whether you watch them or not.
The second thing is the decline of TV as a shared experience and the role of the critic.
Technology changes our relationship with the world. We lose some things and we gain others. Almost 50 years ago literally half the UK population watched the Morecombe and Wise Christmas Show and, yes, in a way its a shame we’ve lost that communal aspect. At the same time how many of us would ever have even heard of Squid Game without streaming platforms? In the last few decades global communities have grown up around music, sport, film, gaming etc etc, which would be all but impossible without internet-enabled services. So we’ve gained as well.
Of course it’s true to say that this has changed the role of the critic. They’ve been stripped of the authority which comes from privileged access and platforms. Inevitably for the reader its harder to find the good writing among the general swill of social media commentary. Will we ever again see a collected works of TV criticism as brilliant as Clive James produced over a decade at the Guardian? Probably not. But there’s still good writing about TV and film out there.
Well I disagree. I think it is a problem. Whilst we certainly have gained as you say unfortunately we have also lost as KS points out. I also think we have lostmore and unnecessarily because this space is dominated by US companies.
The space may be dominated by US companies but thanks to streaming, Freeview, YouTube etc the space is exponentially bigger. There’s more British made content available than ever. Certainly more than back in the “Glory Days” of 3/4 channels.
Not only are the main terrestrial channels still putting out original British content, but their subsidiary channels like ITV3/4 or Dave primarily broadcast repeats of British shows and films. And that’s just on basic Freeview, throw in the paid for streaming services like Britbox and you can watch British made content round the clock without ever troubling Netflix or Disney+.
Bingo! Thanks to BritBox, Acorn, Freeview and others, I rarely watch anything on Netflix anymore. And nothing on television as American television is truly a vast wasteland.
Except fo CNN.
Great for international news and documentaries. Christiane Amanpour is a gem.
I’ve still never heard of Squid Game. Happily.
If you haven’t heard of it how do you know you are happy not to have heard of it?
I think it’s where the phrase ‘a damp squid’ comes from………..
Apparently you have !!
I miss Siskel and Ehbert. I Hardly ever agreed with them but it was interesting to hear their knowledge of film. I also miss Paule Kaal in The new Yorker. Her reviews were usually better than the movie.
“My god, the cobble stage of the Tour de France is brutal, isn’t it?”
Not entirely the point of the article, I realise, but do yourself a favour and seek out A Sunday in Hell. It’s a 1976 documentary about Paris-Roubaix, one of the cycling one-day “Monuments” which includes 26 sections of cobbles, some of which are little more than farm tracks unchanged since Napoleon’s day. The title comes from the longstanding nickname of the race as “The Hell of the North”.
Better still, watch the racing itself. I hope you’ll be pleased to know they introduced a womens version a few years ago, the inaugural edition was won by Britain’s Lizzie Deignen with a 30km solo attack. I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I shouted encouragement so loudly at the TV that day that my wife felt it necessary to check I wasn’t badly injured.
Love a movie recommendation, thanks.
I already had bad taste.
I never find anything suggested by Netflix that I actually want to watch. I find this annoying, but perhaps I should be reassured.
An interesting point; and likewise, across a whole range of media where algorithms are supposed to “know” what i like. I set great store in escaping being captured in them.
I find their recommendations terribly helpful. Whatever they recommend I will definitely not want to watch. Switch to Premier or even ITVX and follow my tastes.
Thanks to innumerable YouTube uploads, I discovered William Shatner was constantly working all over TV and theater well before his StarTrek fame. Netflix, like HBO, are filth factories. Kicked them out of my house long ago.
Filth factories! That sounds a bit “Mary Whitehouse” to me. Netflix has got way too many programmes that all replicate each other, presumably because of algorithms. However HBO is almost universally credited with having produced some of the best ever TV series. This is the home of The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Band of Brothers, Succession, My Brilliant Friend, Veep, Deadwood, Chernobyl and loads more for goodness sake. If that is filth I have thoroughly enjoyed wallowing in it for many years.
Yes, you’re right. My husband gave me the boxed set of “Band of Brothers”, and I thank HBO for having aired it. But it also gave us “Oz”, which was so utterly depraved and graphic I cancelled my subscription – one I’d held since the early 80s.
We didn’t have HBO when “The Sopranos” aired, but we watched all of it obsessively. I can’t think where: A&E?
You sound a bit fearful which leads to being narrow minded.
What a patronising comment! Uggh!
“Patronizing” to someone who thinks Neflix is a “filth factory”?
Good grief what a drastic reaction, “Filth” I hardly think so. They have some very informative, in-depth documentaries. I always find something interesting as I have eclectic taste. Isn’t it download not upload?
They used do the “since you watched this you’ll probably like this” which was really annoying, because nine times out of ten I had only watched a few minutes of “this” and realized it wasn’t for me.
Try Korean drama – there’s much more to it than Parasite and Squid Game.
Beautifully written, filmed and acted with great stories and none of the tiresome social justice lectures which infect Western dramas.
Agreed! In fact I’ve re-watched many of them but sometimes ‘jumping’ along the story line to the bits for the characters I enjoy most. Mind you it does help that very few of their ‘romance’ storylines see people engaged in a running striptease to the bedroom. Quite what meaningful satisfaction or relationship anyone would get from such liaisons is beyond me.
I also love their eclectic take on religion.
Mind you IF I ever travel to South Korea, I’ll make sure I avoid like the plague any heavy tipper trucks. Their drivers all seem to be incompetent speed merchants in trucks with no brakes or else paid hit men. NOR will I EVER talk to anyone who has Chaebol links. Upsetting them seeming to inevitably lead to a rendezvous with such a tipper truck.
Finally, I’ll carefully enquire about any paranormal activity before I visit anywhere.
The only sad news is that in reality, given the sexual indiscretions reported in the press, they seem much like the rest of us.
Actually, a running striptease to the bedroom can be rather fun.
When the Boat Comes In and I Claudius are currently being rerun on BBC4
I’d like to live there. Anything to escape the torture of drab didacticism and self-hate. Not being able to speak Korean would only enhance the relief.
“… the torture of drab didacticism and self-hate.”
I love it!
It’s a matter of taste. I love having the choice because I remember the days of two channels on tv that ended a midnight. How joyous it is to be able to watch a movie on a sleepless night. How boring it must have been to have to live to be a hundred with no tv or movies. Imagine that your housebound with only the radio for company. Of course people who are blind or deaf deal with that all their lives.
It occurs to me that Netflix probably has enough collected personal info and preferences data to be running a dating app.
The said truth : very few attractive offerings on Netflix
If you can find the strength of will to sieve through 49 out of 50 offerings, though, you can find some absolute gems. Consider for instance ‘The Watcher’ or perhaps it’s just called ‘Watcher’. A clever, witty, realistic yet slightly surreal take on many small communities and particularly one we had just experienced that was quite remote. Even ‘The Windsors’ was not only amusing, but very precisely foretold the future of the Royal Family. For which they have received no credit.
Not true not even “said” true!
Come back, Benny Hill! All is forgiven!
I didn’t think KS was old enough to remember Benny Hill. Also not univerally aclaimed – the Yanks seemed to think it was full of smut. There’s no accounting for taste.
Probably, and yet it got broadcast in Provo, UT in the 70s!! An area notoriously disinclined to (public) consumption of smut.
Dude! The yanks loved it! I still watch snippets on YouTube
Did they, are you sure about that?
It’s the algorithms stupid, give me a break. Netflix isn’t giving us bad taste; we watch Netflix because we already have bad taste. Television has been making us dumber since its inception, the algorithms just speed up the process. Before algorithms there was Nielsen, at least in the US. The people who serve up the garbage we watch have always taken their cues from us and we have always blamed them for our bad taste.
You don’t have to watch what they tell you to, don’t blame them because you are lazy. We have all been Slouching toward Bethlehem for a long time now. (See, I love Joan Didion too, and I’d rather spend time reading her than watching Netflix!)
One can do both. I’d never read Didion but after watching the documentary I ordered a couple of her books from the library. So please don’t say”we” when making a criticism it’s very annoying. Instead say I, and take ownership of your observations as projections.
We take ownership of the observation that you are a ninny.
That’s actually funny! But who are “we”?
I love how beautifully Kathleen writes. I read her, regardless of topic, just for the beautifully formed sentences, paragraphs, and structures.
E.B. White would be so proud.
And, personally, I think Netflix has an over-arching category it uses to make recommendations to me: predominantly horrible crud.
Which is why I do not fear AI in the least. How can we possibly take it seriously? It’s like going to the pub around 11ish on Friday to get credible opinions about just about anything.
Happy Friday all.
I am not a Netflix subscriber, but I listen to the radio when it’s my turn to cook. The BBC “algorithm” for content creation is based on these heuristics: [1] Ignore the demographic that actually listens (i.e. grumpy old gits like me) [2] Focus on the demographic that you would like to be listening (typically mid-teens to early 20’s), [3] Assume that the audience comprises proto-luvvies who, by constant nudging, can be converted to full luvvy-hood.
Dr Stock does not need an algorithm to select the subject of her next article. She can write about anything and make it interesting. Thanks, as always.
‘Proto-luvvies’ should enter our lexicon, like ‘virtue-signalling’. Maybe also ‘halfawoke’ to ‘fullyawoke’?
And perhaps “asleep” or “unconscious”.
To the contrary, Clare, it is the non-woke who are awake, and the woke who are like the living dead.
I’d love to be able to supplement the algorithms with crude filters.
E.g. “British, 20th century”.
A couple of side notes here – firstly I do think there’s genuine cause for concern that we are all prey to the whims of the various tech platforms’ algorithms. I’m thinking more of YouTube than Netflix when I write this, but I do have to wonder (tinfoil helmet alert!) how far those algorithms are purely reactive (YouTube in particular seems to think I want to watch pretty much exactly what I’ve already watched) and how far we might be ‘nudged’ towards (or more pertinently, away from) particular types of programming.
YouTube is already notorious for shadow-banning content it deems problematic, so I can easily see the likes of Netflix covertly weaning us off the things we signed up for and actually enjoy, and steering us towards cheaper and perhaps more ideologically acceptable forms of entertainment….
Secondly, I take exception in Kathleen’s otherwise excellent article to her referring to a critic as “she”. I find the opinions of trusted critics / bloggers indispensable in providing me with my next movie/TV fix (and as a lifelong film fan I have a fairly large appetite) but with apologies to the Sisterhood, the ones whose opinions and insight I respect are exclusively male. I got sick of female critics with shallow opinions spouting the usual ideological nonsense, so if anyone can enlighten me with some names, feel free!
PS I thought I was the only one who watched that Joan Didion documentary…
Why would you think you’re the only one who watched the Joan Didion documentary?
“That’s silly.”
Now you’re resorting to ‘school-marm’ put-downs! Why make your ad hominem attack on that one line of Mona’s (probably intentionally tongue-in-cheek) and ignore the expanded points (rather well made) she makes in her post?
Try the Critical Drinker?
Netflix doesn’t want us to think that much about what we’re watching. You stop noticing details after two episodes and most Netflixers believe either they watch the show in one go, either their genitals will fall off. The idea is to watch series after series in a zombified way, so criticism isn’t required by the studio.
” Most Netflixers believe they either……….” How do you know what most Netflix watchers believe?
“These include such categories as: “Goofy Comedies about Royalty”, “Violent Foreign Mother Son Relationship Movies”, “Understated Australian Movies”, and “Award Winning Underdog Movies”.”
This is more than a tad reminiscent of the arcane and recondite board game shop in Little Britain.
I really enjoyed this especially since it is now known that Marc Bernays Randolph, co-founder and CEO of NetFlix, is the great nephew of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda (who was also the nephew of Sigmund Freud). A little peek into the history of Edward Bernays ought to raise some questions about how far his genre of ‘influence’ is still alive and well in modern entertainment with its algorithm driven ‘choices’.
Netflix seems to getting an unduly bad rap on here. Sure it has the same % of dross on it as other media sources – but it also has gems. Sadly they seem to be harder to unearth – but they are definitely there.
Exactly and great documentaries. If don’t you don’t know about hoarders the docs on them is a real eye opener.
‘You can hardly blame a director for not knowing, all along, that she was competing against…’
‘… it also gave the professional critic a power that is now fast disappearing. She could, with some authoritative pull on her readership’s attention…’
This usage grates. Traditionally the masculine has been the default third person pronoun. ‘He’ also embraced ‘she’. Some might decry that, but is it any better to make the feminine pronoun the default? ‘She’ doesn’t embrace ‘he’ in common parlance, so the reader is given the false impression that directors and critics tend to be female. What are we to do? Please don’t say the answer is ‘they’.
In many academic contexts and other leftist enclaves, “she” has replaced “he” as the default pronoun. Why do I object to it? The same reason conservatives object to everything… because the way things have been reflects an accretion of social wisdom, folk insight, etc. And they should only be changed with specific purposes and discrete outcomes envisioned. It is the wisdom of “Chesterton’s Gate.”
The medium is the message with Netflix. As the moving image goes, his is a comparatively new visual medium comprising of:-
-Poor ‘green light’ commissioning decisions with regard to script quality, leading to the ‘Netflix look’ of perfunctory direction and flat storytelling at a level that would not pass in a heritage Hollywood studio
-These same in-house productions are financially competitive as Netflix studio features take up a portion of the budget of TV series that have spiralled in the last 20 years. It’s more important that the platform has its branded product, much as has been copied by Sky in recent year
-The commissioning of modern auteurs to produce features or series with a strong left-liberal slant gives Netflix an immediate ideological position in the progressive socios
-A huge emphasis on teenage storytelling reflecting the cheap, mass access of the young to the plaftform. This has somewhat marred the platform’s attempt to revive the fantasy/horror genre for the small screen – all but Mike Flanagan have been outclassed by bigger budget, better funded Apple productions.
My wife and I get endless amusement out of Netflix’s algorithmic inspired recommendations for us; the result of us all (me, her, grandchildren, etc) identifying as the the same person in the ‘Whose viewing’ tab.
I don’t even watch TV now.
I had two epiphanies a few years back and they put me off popular culture in general.
1. As Stock describes, it is frequently our dumb, impulsive limbic system that is targeted, because it is more predictable and shouts more loudly than the cerebral cortex. It knows what we want, but not what we will value. As that famous philosopher, Alex James from Blur understands, ‘Getting what you want doesn’t make you happy, it just gets you what you want.’
This trend towards instantly accessible but not necessarily good art has been progressing at least since Classical overtook Baroque.
2. There’s just too much of everything for me to sit and consume entertainment; there’s also so much to do, learn and think about. This is a wonderful time for those who can independently curate their own lives; a terrible time for those who outsource the task.
I think there is a subtle shift taking place – from the superficial, consumerist and materialistic individualism of the Twentieth Century – to a more considered individualism that focuses more on the relationship between the self and the outside world.
It’s only just starting, but top-down curation and influence simply can’t survive in the face of the individual’s new ability (and necessity) to define things for himself.
What is NETFLIX anybody?
What do you mean?
“To work out what you might want to watch next, Netflix first classifies its programmes into at least 76,897 “microgenres”…. In any case: after humans classify all the available products into microgenres, machine learning takes over…”
I don’t think this is right. My understanding was that the microgenres are the output of – not the input to – the linear algebra algorithm, which identifies the so-called ‘principal components’ of the data simply using the set of preferences given by each user. I daresay the names given to the microgenres are supplied by humans – though in the new ChatGPT world even that might no longer be true – but the microgenres themselves (ie the overlapping categories into which the films naturally divide) are derived objectively by decomposing the matrix of data in the right way. Something something something eigenvectors.
Yup. Same magic used by the Twitter community notes feature. But if we expected journalists to understand the algorithms they opine on how would they ever find enough things to write about? 🙂
“the microgenres themselves are derived objectively by decomposing the matrix of data in the right way”
Huh? Using the word “objectively” here gives the very false impression that this process is not influenced by individual human judgments. But the creation of the “matrix of data” was itself the result of human judgment. And however the algorithm itself was created, was the result of human judgment.
For example, Netflix doesn’t have categories like this: “Sitcoms where red clothes predominate.” It doesn’t have categories like that because the stories, the categories, everything about all this artform, is the result of human decision-making (and costume color isn’t of interest to us). It’s all people choosing things according to their intuitions, artistic lights, whims, desires, etc. It’s the opposite of “objective.”
Holy God! what an awful boring article – practically unreadable and utterly irrelevant.
Gave up reading word for word after the first 5 or 6 paragraphs. Skipped to the end hoping for something even vaguely rational or meaningful to emerge. Nada, nothing.
Just shows most of academic ‘philosophy’ has lost it’s way. Or, should I say, to be appropriately woke, academic philosophy has lost HER way.
Awful, truly awful rubbish.
BTW apologies to all for being so diffident in expressing my true feelings.
One more thing: basketball documentaries are a personal addiction and I have hoovered up all of them as well as any feature films that have hoops as a theme. While you’re getting into sports-based culture, I can highly recommend this niche in sports entertainment because basketball is so much more than a game… and I’d start with ‘Hoop Dreams’. It is highly addictive so beware!
More than a game, how so? Can’t one say that of all sports?
It’s just big girls netball
So are you now going to the Arizona-Jacksonville game @Wembley Oct 1?