In which I become the 4,263,769th writer to weigh in on "What's Wrong With Netflix"
There has been a lot of theorizing about what might have gone wrong with Netflix that has caused them to have the Earth-shattering minimal dip in subscriptions that they recently reported, causing them to have a 35 percent drop in market capitalization because investors are flighty idiots. (Not that I blame them, I’d be nervous too if I had two nickels to rub together in this ghoulish Late Stage Capitalism nightmare economy.)
Anyway, I want to get in on this whole theorizing thing myself, because I think I have a theory that is more all-encompassing than most other theories, which tend to run along the lines of “Netflix is failing because it isn’t making the kind of movies/shows I like any more.” My theory is more theoretical, more all-encompassing, explaining why Netflix fails to make or buy engaging content for its subscribers most of the time.
My theory is that the Netflix execs, the producers, the showrunners, the directors, set designers and decorators, costume designers and the writers are all members of the Professional Managerial Class (or PMC) or are at least PMC wannabes.
First of all, what do I mean by PMC glasses? I mean the people who make Netflix productions see the world from the viewpoint of one of the top 10 percent of American society, or world society. They are the affluent, the comfortable, the successful. They aren’t angry about anything. They aren’t upset about anything. They may have their causes and their viewpoints, but they’re comfortable causes and comfortable viewpoints.
And I’m not claiming that all these people being members of the PMC class or PMC wannabes is the result of any conspiracy. No one deliberately gave all those jobs to people just because they were PMC class members. Instead they gave people who are successful in film and television money, plenty of it, enough to propel them into the PMC class. By the time they got to the point where they were cutting deals with Netflix, they had been successful for a while. Members in good standing of the PMC class.
That’s why Netflix comedies aren’t funny. To be really funny, humor needs an edge provided by anger, by outsider outrage, which is generally in short supply among the very comfortable PMC class.
For example, one of the most successful, if not the most successful offerings on Netflix recently was “Don’t Look Up!” in which a planet-killer asteroid approaching Earth is an obvious stand-in for the climate crisis. It is edgy it is angry it is full of the sort of stuff that PMC types might find disturbing, looking at politics, politicians, the military and the media with a very hard, cynical eye. It has a downbeat ending and it portrays the mighty on Earth as a bunch of self-obsessed, greedy idiots who are too busy money grubbing and power grabbing to save themselves.
“Don’t Look Up!” would seem prove me wrong, except it had some outsider outrage going from David Sirota who co-wrote the script with director Adam McKay. Sirota was a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential campaign, and prior to “Don’t Look Up” was primarily known as a leftie commentator. He wasn’t a Marxist-Leninist, but he could fairly be described as a Social Democrat like Bernie Sanders.
It was Sirota’s leftist outrage over climate change and his in-depth knowledge of the duplicity of the media and politics that made the barbs sharp and nasty. “Don’t Look Up” succeeded by borrowing its outrage from a political outsider, Sirota. The instincts of most PMC types would be to moderate the anger and the rage, replacing it with merely clever wordplay and very broad satire, leaving “Don’t Look Up!” in the vicinity of funny. Sirota’s knowledge and anger kept it right on target.
This rarely happens on Netflix, and I think that’s what makes the service dull. Once Netflix started getting up to 100 million subscribers, its major preoccupation became finding entertainment that wouldn’t offend its enormous base, rather than entertainment that would make them glad they were subscribers.
This impulse, combined with the PMC goggles that want to make everything look comfortable and safe makes everything dull and interesting. The comedies aren’t funny (lookin’ at you, “Yes Day” “Bad Trip” and “Starsky and Hutch”) the romances aren’t all that romantic and definitely not sexy (lookin’ at you, all of Netflix’s recent romcoms) and the action/adventure stuff is vigorous and active but not at all compelling (lookin’ at you “Red Notice,” and “Eagle Eye”) and sometimes they’re just godawful (lookin’ at you “Spenser Confidential”).
The sexuality stuff is also indicative. They can’t even match softcore porn in their sex scenes. It’s all ladylike porn, if you know what I mean. There are a lot of articles on the Internet about movies and shows that have porny scenes and content, and I’ve watched some of them, and they’re a bunch of nothingburgers compared to actual porn. They’re not porny, they’re kinda sorta in a way pornish, at best.
Do an image search of such notably “porny” movies and shows as “365 Days,” “Bridgerton,” and “Sex Education” if you like, you’ll see what I mean if you’re familiar with actual porn. There’s not much of it, it’s underlit, and most of the good parts get blacked out. It’s PMC porn, in short, nothing to offend someone too much and yet give them the impression that they saw something sexy.
The problem is, the PMC vision doesn’t “see” the vast majority of Netflix subscribers, who are definitely not part of the PMC class. They don’t connect with their subscribers psychologically, intellectually or emotionally. Netflix’s PMC types may have some demographic data, but they have no idea who their subscribers are are or how they live, other than “not as well as me.”
So the PMC types turn out generic stuff that doesn’t really interest their subscribers. The bland, comfortable stuff that suites the PMC vision doesn’t work for the angry, increasingly impoverished bulk of Americans locked in alienating, dead-end jobs that bore them and which they hate, while also taking great pleasure in gaming and social media of various sorts that the PMC types typically do not understand well.
If Netflix and its content providers wanted to appeal to their actual audience, if they could actually SEE them, they’d have more characters who were out-of-touch seniors doing and saying stupid things. They’d have more characters who were horrible corporate bosses making their employees’ lives miserable. They’d have more characters who were lovable slackers outwitting their horrible bosses and having sex with all the pretty girls and making the lives of those around them more rewarding, though generally not in monetary ways.
Climate change would be a huge theme in a lot of stories. Housing would be a theme, mostly not being able to get it. The way the PMC and the oligarchs rip off middle class and poor people would be a steady background theme to the stories, and often the main theme.
Homeless people would be portrayed as people, not drugged-out zombies. And most people would be living in cramped apartments, often with roommates to make paying the rent possible. And the struggle to keep the rent paid would be a much bigger thing.
PMC types would say such stories are boring and distressing, not the sort of thing people want to watch to be entertained. But the real truth is that the “people” they’re describing are the PMC class, because they can’t see the rest of us, and don’t want to.
And they would really HATE stories about how they economically oppress everyone else except their oligarch masters, and which detail how horribly managers treat employees as a group, because they instinctively dislike any story that reveals just how much better off their lives are than those of the middle class and poor people they systematically oppress.
So Netflix, its management and content creators consisting only of PMC types, don’t show these things or anything like them. They have shows about wealthy people, often members of the PMC class and oligarchs who lead “interesting” lives. Even when they portray members of the poor and middle class they do so through PMC lenses. The middle class and poor people on Netflix live in housing that is much nicer than real middle class and poor people could ever afford. They generally wear clothing and have possessions that are nicer than most middle class and poor people can afford. In fact, they tend to live like upper middle class and lower upper class people do – PMC types pretending to be poor and middle class, in short.
When Netflix does attempt a realistic or gritty depiction of poor or middle class people, they tend to go way too dark. For example “Hillbilly Elegy”is a gritty depiction of how tough people in Appalachian mountain country have it. It was presented in the PMC-controlled mainstream media as a sympathetic portrayal of Appalachian mountain people. But very quickly reviews came out saying that the movie was actually poverty porn, focusing only on the miseries of the Appalachian poor, creating a misleading view of who they were as people. Even when the PMC types are looking hard at the middle class and the poor, they cannot see them as they are.
Wouldn’t pay them to, you know.
I hope I haven’t given you the impression that the PMC are conspiring to exclude and misrepresent the poor and the middle class. It’s just a case of shared interests leading to a shared vision, one of those unwritten cultural things that’s invisible and would be denied by most members of the PMC.
But there are some members of the PMC who do intentionally lie and mislead about the economic oppression of the poor and middle class. Academics and media people often know enough to know that the wealth of the oligarchs comes from the economic oppression of the poor and middle class, but you’ll never hear it from their commentating and the media enterprises they work for.
And if PMC commentators do somehow attempt to tell a progressive message, especially on political or economic topics, they are very rapidly fired. For example, when MSNBC hired Dylan Rattigan, Krystal Ball, Ed Schultz and Cenk Uygar to give a progressive “edge” to their coverage, then fired them all when it turned out they had spines.
How does this all relate to Netflix’s woes? Netflix, with its hundreds of millions of subscribers and its PMC staff and oligarch management can’t see its subscribers, and by “see” I mean understand. What’s more, they don’t WANT to see their subscribers. What they really want to do is feed the subscribers bland, feel-good escapism and works that support the status quo, even when they claim to be edgy, challenging work.
(That’s why Netflix, and ALL the streaming media are so ecstatically happy with comic book movies. Movies about spandex-clad idiot good guys flying around and foiling the plans of spandex-clad idiot bad guys are just the pablum they want to serve to subscribers to keep them docile and unaware.)
This is why virtually all the entertianment options on Netflix rouse only half-hearted interest among subscribers, if they rouse any interest at all. Netflix and every streaming service and cable provider would LOVE to provide entertainment that will have audiences absolutely rapt over what they’re watching and eager for more. Many may actually believe they are doing just that. Some people do love a lot of Netflix productions. And some of them are good. (“Don’t Look Up!” “The Witcher” “Stranger Things” “Travelers” and some others.) But generally they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the huge swirling mass of mediocrity that is most of Netflix’s (and most other streaming services’) productions.
There’s a reason for that. Netflix’s content isn’t made for us. It’s made by PMC people, for PMC people, though many of them think they are making shows for us. They aren’t. That’s why they aren’t any good. They’re not supposed to be good. They’re supposed to be tranquilizers. Soma. And they are. Netflix’s collection of merely tolerable films isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
See you at work tomorrow, bright and early!
