An open letter to Netflix
To Netflix, Reed Hastings, CEO;
Dear Reed,
First of all let me say how much I enjoy your service. Watching movies that I don’t own without having to drive to the video store or subscribe to cable TV is well worth whatever it is I pay you on a monthly basis. Also, thanks for leading the way on delivering video content via the internet. Now I can catch up on all of those episodes of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe that I miss out on by not having cable. What? No? Okay, well, get on it then. But you still managed to put the other guys out of business by doing what they do better. That’s the creative destruction of the market at work, and truly the essence of the American Dream.
But unless you’re looking to hire someone to watch movies all day and write summaries of them, I’m not here just to heap praises upon you. I’m here to discuss your site’s use of genre.
As I see it, there are two genre-related problems on Netflix: On the queue page, the genre is comprised of one or two words so general that they often fail to convey anything meaningful about the movie. On the title entries and recommendations page, on the other hand, genre is so slippery and flexible that any movie is only six degrees of separation from any other. Really, Westworld is in the same genre as Enter the Dragon?
As to the latter issue, I will only say that when I was in high school, a friend was frustrated because he could only find one comic book title that he liked: Steel. I suggested that he check out Iron Man, because, y’know, they both wear hi-tech armor. And now I’m a writer.
Now let’s take a look at some of the least helpful genre categories on the queue page:
Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Alright, this move has robots/magic, no need to worry about any important themes it might contain. Next!
Television: Parker Lewis Can’t Lose? Put it over there with The Sopranos, Star Trek Voyager, the Flintstones, I Love Lucy and Planet Earth.
Classics: Basically just means old. How old? Near as I can tell, it’s about 1974. I wonder how people born prior to that would feel about being called classic?
Foreign: Did you ever see Rashomon? Kurosawa’s masterpiece about deceit, human weakness, and the emptiness of truth? The people in that movie sure talked funny.
Independent: Apparently distribution models count as genres now?
Look Reed, the act of adding a move to my queue is an indication that I am at least aware enough of it to decide that I want to see it. Which means that I already know more about what to expect from it than a one-word category is going to tell me. You want to put something really useful on the queue page? How about runtime.
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while genre is indeed a millstone that should be set to grind corn, you can’t blame netflix for not being more specific. it’s damn hard to come up with accurate general categories, as generality undermines accuracy.
there are lots of sci/fantasy movies with broad interest themes, no doubt, but costuming and related tropes are included because they’re a draw of sorts, much like a period piece drama. helps them stand out from all the other movies with, you know, themes.
if i’m looking for a tv show, i would look under television. i think that one’s fine.
you have a point about foreign and independent. on the other hand, as general categories, they’re being set aside by their most broad shared characteristic. for an american rental agency, a broad category of “foreign” makes sense.
classics will never be very useful because, as you point out, each cohort has a different understanding of what counts as “classic”. on the other hand, “old movies” makes people angrier. :)
“Classic” movies cover only black-and-white movies and The Wizard of Oz.