Casual Viewing
December 20, 2024 at 06:04AMGranted, Netflix has given us some pretty great television shows (even if you’re not counting I Think You Should Leave). But something is seriously up with the movies coming from the streaming platform (even if you’re not counting Hot Frosty). For n+1, Will Tavlin peels way the disruptor mythology to lay bare what’s really going on. Read it now, so when “Netflix and chill” means “try unsuccessfully to find something decent to watch from among the AI slop masquerading as cinema” you’ll be able to say you saw it coming.
For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats. Netflix’s audiences watch from their homes, on couches, in beds, on public transportation, and on toilets. Often they aren’t even watching.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/12/19/casual-viewing/
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