Sitting in Dublin’s city centre bus station last week, my eye was drawn to the giant billboard advertising the recently released new season of Orange is the New Black (OITNB) (2013-) on Netflix. The poster was relatively non-descript, unlike the range of other promotional materials that feature characters and guiding taglines. The billboard was, one would speculate, intended to capture as wide a market as possible. In comparison, a few weeks prior to the release of Season 2, OITNB was categorised in more specific terms via its recommendations system. In March 2014, for example, Netflix tagged OITNB under ‘TV Programmes Featuring a Strong Female Lead,’ suggesting a more narrow market. In fact, the excessively specific categories developed by Netflix have become a running joke of sorts. While the ‘strong female lead’ tag might seem somewhat broad in comparison to ‘Cerebral Military Movies based on real life’ one might question the purpose and meaning of the gendering of television programmes that, in terms of genre, have little else in common with each other.
The list of television programmes under the ‘strong female lead’ tag include ‘teen mom’ reality shows, crime thrillers, comedy series and period dramas. Given the proliferation of television shows tagged in whole or part with ‘strong female lead’ it would seem, therefore, that Netflix has adopted a gendered mode of address in terms of how it uses demographic factors to determine recommendations, if not in its use of subscriber personal information, then in its presentation of recommendations via its database of content.
Netflix has stated explicitly that it uses extensive data to track how viewers watch. This is based on user activity called ‘events’ such as pause, play, navigation and skip. But Netflix does not draw upon the user account data to construct a ‘schedule’ for its subscribers. So it does not base recommendations on a subscriber’s gender. For example, it bases the recommendation of ‘TV Programmes Featuring a Strong Female Lead’ only on previous viewing patterns, not on whether the user has identified themselves as male or female. This implies a sort of neutrality whereby Netflix’s only reference to gender would stem from patterns of subscriber viewing. Netflix also does not release much information on viewing trends or figures and it does not publicly state how many people watched, who watched, or the gender of viewers. Again, this might infer that Netflix does not concern itself with gender positioning.
However, as much as we might see a ‘positive’ framing of gender in terms of ‘strong female leads’, we could equally note the relative invisibility of textual references to ‘male leads’ -strong, weak or otherwise – in the same category. In other words, there are ‘Crime Dramas Featuring a Strong Female Lead’, whereby those without strong female leads are simply crime dramas. There are some Netflix categories for ‘strong male leads’, for example, “Dysfunctional Dramas Featuring a Strong Male Lead” but the predominant reference to gender tends to be about ‘female leads’.
While the individual shows might work to challenge certain reductive gender representations, the textual framing of them implies that this is, in and of itself, against the ‘norm’. It is not necessarily the case that strategies of gendered looking are deployed within individual programmes or films; it is more a case that the interface enacts or presumes these strategies. The written text of ‘strong female’ this or that normalises male representations. It does this by highlighting the gender identity of female characters. Strong females are structured as a ‘niche’ category. Vicky Ball (2012) refers to such a tendency within television more generally, whereby the diversity of female representation is presented and received in overtly gendered terms and often subject to criticism as a consequence. Critics and academics such as Christine Geraghty (1991) note the way in which the categorization of ‘female’ genres or modes work to imply a common set of traits among women and she goes on to suggest that the programming of women’s genres offers women a space within the television schedule but also works to ghettoise women. Where broadcast television has particular techniques that work to establish gendered frames (for example, in terms of show sponsorship and promotion), Netflix does so through its interface.
In her book The Body and the Screen (2006), Michelle White notes the way in which technology, including internet technology, is coded in terms of gender. For her, an assessment of interfaces reveals that technology is implemented in a way that produces gendered modes of address. Given the variety of content that might appear on any one page or internet space, it is possible to see a range of modes of address. E. Ann Kaplan’s (1987) reference to the multiple gazes offered by television is useful here. For her, the particular address of television – with its diversity of sequences and texts – allows viewers to take on multiple identifications. Television is not addressed solely to one gender. But despite the diversity of subject positions offered, it is possible to see how these are typically split along gender lines that promote and perpetuate conservative notions of gender identity. Netflix might seem to present these ‘multiple gazes’ via the diversity of content. Diversity is implied by the vast database of microgenres whereby the range of labels and identifiers offered to subscribers is far more comprehensive than those used within regular television promotion and reviewing. Alexis C. Madrigal’s article in The Atlantic earlier this year identified nearly 77, 000 of these microgenres. But the terminology of the microgenres is split along gender lines. Despite the sense of a more individuated viewing experience, there exist structures of address that work to frame modes of viewing and to determine and construct gendered subject positions – and even viewing and navigation choices – even if these are resisted by subscribers.
Netflix can, therefore, offer the perception of ‘multiple gazes’ and, at the same time, direct subscribers to content that is more ‘personalised’. This is achieved by Netflix’s extensive analysis of subscriber behaviour that, in turn, is used to produce a personalised recommendation system. It uses its recommendation system to enact a mode of direct address to the subscriber, whereby ‘you’ make decisions that Netflix can respond to. As a result, it facilitates the production of a sense of ‘I’ as the author of the interface and schedule. Therefore the ‘I’ that is addressed in terms of a ‘strong female lead’ would seem to emit from ‘me’ and my choices, not from an algorithm that is already constituted through gender discourse. This sense of the personal and the autonomous has at times been treated as one of the positive aspects of online viewing. Netflix suggests a kind of freedom afforded by its model when it advertises to subscribers ‘watch TV programmes & films anytime, anywhere.’ It differentiates itself from scheduled broadcast by promoting the way in which it liberates the subscriber from broadcast networks’ stranglehold. In the UK, in particular, there had been and continues to be a challenge against the paternalistic nature of public service broadcasting more generally and scheduled broadcast to an extent. Although the viewing figures for broadcast TV remain significantly higher, it has been accused of imposing notions of culture and taste on the public. The user-defined nature of Netflix would suggest personal liberation for the audience, who is free to decide upon viewing content.
However, the consequence of such personalised viewing is the eradication of diversity. Where Kaplan had noted the ‘lots of views’ and potential range of identifications offered by scheduled television, the navigation model offered by Netflix instead leads to a narrowing of views, perspectives and identities. And, in terms of the way it uses the genres and themes ‘with a strong female lead,’ this suggests that such narrowing takes place in terms of gender too. In other words, where broadcast TV – especially public service broadcast – has a responsibility to provide a diversity of representations, choices, and points of view (regardless of whether people take these up or not), the Netflix model facilitates and produces a much narrower range. However unintentional it may be, the recommendation model, coupled with its ‘ghettoising’ of women, results in a mode of address that assumes the masculine and marginalises the feminine.
So while individual viewers and subscribers might feel a sense of autonomy in their use of Netflix, this is, in fact, enabled through very detailed and famously sophisticated audience analysis. Ien Ang (1991) assesses the implications of such audience analysis in terms of the way in which it decontextualises the audience and produces demographics that are as much a construction as a reflection of social reality. She asserts that media industries claim a scientific knowledge about the audience that enacts a form of power over, and disciplining of, audiences. The scientific discourse produced by statistics and data enacts a ‘truth claim’ about audiences, as if they can be accounted for simply through patterns and demographics. The viewer, when they are reduced to simple (or even complex) data, becomes the audience – a knowable or relatively knowable body of people that can be controlled.
And through the measurement and analysis of such audiences – in terms of pre-established categories of knowledge such as race, age, gender – these categories are also reinforced. In other words, as much as such categories might exist in social reality (or the articulation of them), TV audience measurement works to institutionalise them through programme offering and mode of address. While Netflix maintains a distance from demographic categorisations it nonetheless produces gender categories in the way that it articulates and presents recommendations. This is particularly clear in precisely the highlighting of ‘female leads’, versus the non-visibility of male leads for the same genre such as the crime drama already mentioned above.
Those within Netflix have hinted at this use of audience analysis in their discussions of the commissioning of serial drama. Where they say that they don’t draw upon subscriber demographics, they do, at the same time, suggest that their shows are commissioned and structured to address audiences in gendered terms. Ted Sarandos stated that those at Netflix were initially surprised that female audiences were watching House of Cards (2013-), perhaps because it had a ‘strong male lead’ rather than a ‘strong female lead.’ In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter last year he noted that women liked the show due to the presence of Robin Wright and Kate Mara. When asked how he knew this is why women watched, he answered “You see it in what else they watch — the algorithmic similarities to what else they’re watching and why they’re watching. And then we can very directly focus-group with them and survey them about what their attractions are. So we found that there’s overlap with Gossip Girl and House of Cards.” Therefore, although they claim to be responding to socially constituted gender identities, at the same time, they work to exploit and reinforce them in how they address viewers. And where the monitoring of data events and subscriber activities points towards a degree of objectivity, Netflix nonetheless operates within the discursive framework of traditional demographics. Thus, while Netflix does not need to lure advertisers with audience demographics, it both understands and speaks to its audience in gender-coded language. As an example, responding to this recognition of a female audience, Netflix produced a number of trailers that focused on the female characters of the show. For example a 30-second trailer of Claire Underwood smoking was devoid of the wider political context of the show.
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The assumption here seems to be that women need a female point of identification in order to enjoy or appreciate the series. This assumption has been challenged by critics and researchers who question the way in which statistical analysis – and we might include the use of data analysis here – has produced narrow readings of viewing patterns and behavior. Annette Kuhn (1992), for example, asks what the notion of ‘a female audience’ means? And she criticises these attempts to suggest that female viewers are a sub-group of the social audience. David Gauntlett and Annette Hill (2002) draw upon a five-year study of 500 television viewers to suggest that audiences – whether male or female – resist and reject gender positioning offered by television programmes. In other words, while it is possible for those at Netflix to assess the viewing habits of their gender-defined programmes, it reveals little about the pleasures of viewing as experienced by audiences or whether these are, in fact, gendered.
This is not to suggest that audiences conform to traditional gender roles or that they radically undermine them in viewing habits. Instead, I want to point out that online viewing technologies are not gender neutral. Even where individual shows or films might seem to offer diverse representations of people and experiences, the route to these seems to be somewhat determined by gender on Netflix’s platform. This does tend to produce a contradictory experience – one where women are championed in the use of the term ‘strong female lead’ but equally differentiated from the ‘normal’ protagonist or indeed from the average or weak female or male lead. While Netflix could be commended in some respects for rendering shows with female leads visible, at the same time its recommendation model ensures that this visibility only pertains to pre-existing patterns of content consumption.
Sarah Arnold is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Falmouth University. She is currently working on the book Television, Technology and Gender: New Platforms and New Audiences for I.B. Tauris. Her previous books include Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood (Palgrave) and the co-authored book The Film Handbook (Routledge). Her research focuses on viewing spaces and environments of, and within, television and film.
