The supremacy of Netflix on gender, politics and the future of television- The conception of a new era

The media, owing to its resourcefulness has evolved as an indispensable manifestation in the modern world. The countless media platforms used by the civilians to demonstrate their sentiments, procure information about events and garnish their awareness with all that is transpiring universally is a matter of much notability, underlining the crux of the article. According to a review by the Broadcast Audience Research Council Report 2019, the conviction of web-series enjoys the strength to captivate the essence of a diverse range of cross- cultural and socio-anthropological issues in the civil society. What is, commendable here is the versatility of clientele and audience that such –Over the top (OTT) platforms seduce because of the variety in the catalogue of genres of the shows. 

Speaking of the OTT platforms, one very flexible element that makes it an alluring ingredient in the digital world is the 24 hours browsing facility. The media and communication have precisely, rose up as paramount constituents in framing the roles of gender and sexuality comprehended by the society itself. The gender roles are often, illustrated flamingly in this arena of web-series, with cavernous burrowing in the psychological corral of human beings. Let us take of a tour of such visual representations, setting the groundwork for designing the concepts pertaining to gender, politics and other facets of socio-cultural norms within the society itself.

The modern world is being equated with a digital world. The concept of binge- watching and Netflix are correspondent to each other and is a celebrated term especially among the teenagers. Here, one must not refrain from accepting that these trends are not a part of every teenager lifestyle because of the issue of accessibility. The fact that remains domineering is that those who have the accessibility to such platforms are not satiated to put up with conventional and recurrent programming schedules.

The Chronology of audience-The digital world observes diversity with respect to the age group of the spectators. The Gen- Y is the category comprising of people between the age group 18 to 34 whereas the Gen Z comprise of those young people born post the year 2005. The audience of the digital world commenced the fashion of subscription- based viewership on various-Over the Top Platforms and the multiracial of all is the one called – Netflix. Now, let us promptly glance at the survey report of Pricewaterhouse Coopers 2013, which denotes 63 percent of households avail oneself of video streaming and delivery services for instance the Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime. Another report by the Leichtman Research Group excavated that 22 percent are streaming Netflix every single week of the year from these respective households. Taking the- English Canada residents as an exemplar, it can be conferred that, relatively 20 percent have signed up for Netflix. The figure boosts up to 33 percent in households concerning children under the age group of twelve. The Indian scenario of Netflix is also moderately fascinating to look at, due to its partnership with Reliance Jio that has bestowed the American Streaming service 4.6 million paid subscriptions in India as per a current research by Media Partners Asia- an independent, advisory & consulting services across media, telecom, sports and entertainment industries in Asia Pacific region. This alliance has also inaugurated a well marketing strategy to offer a free mobile subscription to post- paid subscribers. 

Identity formation & Popular Culture and The Sphere of Influence –The genesis of identity formation, attributed to the wave of popular culture often traverses the path of non-confirmative desires, gender manifestations along with some restricted fantasies amongst the young protagonists of these television shows. To study the broader dimension of the Netflix culture, we must indulge in assessing the genesis of the post television era. The wave of media consumption accelerated, by newer generations have paved way for transitions in the industry. Let us try to understand the scenario in a liquidated manner by taking instances from the plethora of choices that such Over the top platforms such as Netflix endows the spectators with. House of Cards is one such Netflix original series that reinforces itself as a prepossessing political web-series, having an aura of edifying magnitude of power reflexes coupled with gender. Now, what most of us will comply to is that the superlative way to infer the dynamics of power, one needs to comprehend the “Sphere of influence” that power as an axiom propounds. The enfranchising of geopolitical narratives is a pre-requisite for media to exert this power of influence. The ambit of geopolitical literature is the one containing dialects of geo-strategy and imperialist geopolitics ordained with a cluster of geography blended with ingredients pertaining to military and politics. The doctrine of sphere of politics can often unsettle the impulses of justice and equality. The question emerging at the juncture is why does the nomenclature of influence subjugates the notions of such virtue. The reason is the enforcing of directorial roles to the states conceived to be celebrated and illustrious. The unraveling of the breaking down of power in terms of the sphere of influence shall advocate the uncrating of the echelons and what better than gender as a contraption can donate to this undoing the entire process. Now what we must be able to decipher is that the gendering of the states blossoming the premonitions of masculinity and femininity thereby erecting the gender grading to endure it.

The Recital of Gender Narratives in Television Series– The charisma of popular geopolitics is such that it narrates the geopolitical dialogue encapsulated within the mundane life of individuals. It is in the year July 2013, that the television series called Orange is the New Black made its appearance and since then attracted much of the attention of the media. The plot swirls around a fictional prison located in New York accompanied by the analyzing of patterns of studying the ingredients of race, gender and sexuality. The feminist erudite contemplate on the patterns located within the series magnifying the dominant ideologies within the culture that made them germinate. The series engulfs within itself a diversifying range of characters such as Piper Chapman, Sophia Bursett, Dayanara Diaz, and Carrie Black. Talking about the variant characters, we see that Piper is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant from an upper middle-class family and is subjected to eighteen months of confinement for consigning a bag filled with drugs money. The series demonstrates the multifaceted flavors of gender such that the Transgender actress Laverne Cox, playing the character Sophia Bursett, Dayanara Diaz is a Latina woman confined with her mother in the Litchfield Prison for drug related crimes. The characterization of these women has been draconian but one thing that must not be overlooked is the fragility that these characters have been thrown into, for instance Dayanara Diaz, while her tenure in the detention indulges in to an emotional and physical alliance with John Benett who is the correctional officer at the Prison. This alliance results into Dayanara being expectant of a child but without disclosing the name of the man. Carrie Black, known as the Big Boo being represented to have sexual affinity towards the same gender that very well annihilates the shackles gender stereotypes. Let us first try to decipher the connotations associated to gender identity. It is primarily an individual’s discrete in interior sense of being male or female outside the archetypal categorization. It was Crenshaw, (1989), who catapulted the mutuality to define the series of intermeshed patterns of oppression, dominance and discrimination that the humans are constantly combating.  There are several such depictions of gender and the theory of social construct enticing a row of audience to binge-watch on such over the top platforms such as the Netflix with shows like Bombay Begum, Unorthodox, The queen’s Gambit, The Crown, Grace and Frankie, Gilmore Girls, Stranger Things, to name a few, advocating narratives of popular culture in cementing the scaffolding of gender and politics simultaneously with an array of other convictions such a both societal and human menace. The society forms a riveting element of human inquisitiveness and the significance of gender lies at the crux of our fraternity. The metamorphosis of gender could not occur in a state of vacuum and much of it federated to the unfolding of urbanization, emanating the standards of living to transmute. One must not refrain from contemplating on the structure of families such that the emergence of nuclear families, catering to such norms of urbanization. The altering patterns of family enforced the women to equate with the men of the household in sharing the economic burden, further refashioning the dynamics of a man and woman alliance. The rationale of such perspectives sets in by carrying out a cavernous investigation into the trench of art and culture establishing the kernel for human presence.

 Conclusion- Netflix was blossomed in the year 1997 in the Scotts Valley propounded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings whereby the website was officially flagged in 1998 with a strength of 30 employees and the basic idea was to send DVDs via mail. The customers were provided the flexibility to pay on a rental basis. It was in the year 1999 that a monthly subscription format was introduced. In the year 2000, Netflix initiated their movie recommendation service.  In the year 2007 the company introduced video on demand streaming  and this was actually a benchmark ingenuity because it catered to the whims of every customer by entitling them with the privilege to watch the kind content they want and according to their own preference of time. Netflix proposes a revolutionary recommendation system allowing the customers to welcome contents adhering to their respective interests. People have started enjoying the flexibility that these non- conventional platforms of media gifts one with creating a more cohesive global audience. 

References

Vandana Kanwar, Dr Meenakshi Singh – Emerging Gender Role Representation in Indian Media – Thematic Analysis of Four More Shorts Please Web Series, Journal of Content , Community and Communication, Vol- 13, Year 7, June 2021,pp- 411 – 413 from https://www.amity.edu/gwalior/jccc/pdf/jun_34.pdf .

Sidneyeve Matrix- The Netflix Effect; Teens, Binge Watching and On Demands Digital Media Trends- Jeunesse Young People Texts Cultures 69(1)pp – 119-138 from  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270665559_The_Netflix_Effect_Teens_Binge_Watching_and_On-Demand_Digital_Media_Trends 

Lucia- Gloria Vazquez Rodriguez , Francisco Jose Garcia Ramos and Francisco A. zurian- Te Role Of Popular Culture for Queer Teen Identities Formation in Netflix’s Sex Education- Media and Communication (ISSN ; 2183-2439 ), 2021, Volume 9 , Issue 3, pp 198- 208, from https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/download/4115/4115 

Vaishnav V.S – Portrayal of Female Identity in Digital Media, An Investigation Based On Selected Indian Web-series – International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts, Vol 9, Issue, 3 March 2021, from  http://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2103677.pdf 

Susanna Hast (2018); Bodily States on Screen, Gendering Spheres of Influence in House of Cards, Geopolitics, – Taylor and Francis group in Geopolitics, from   https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/312163 

Michael Robert Chavez- Representing Us All? Race, Gender and Sexuality in Orange is the new Black – Cornerstone – A collection of Scholarly and Creative works for Minnesota State University , Mankato from https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=etds 

 Alokananda Nag

Intern, Asia in Global Affairs