TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Unique Joy’: Netflix, Pleasure and the Shaping of Queer Taste
AU - Bradbury-Rance, Clara
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this article, whose encouragement helped to steer its final version, and to Maria San Filippo and Matt Connolly for their thoughtful edits. Thanks to my King’s College London colleagues on the organising committee of the symposium Algorithms 4 Her, where I first presented this material. Thanks to Club de Femmes for publishing a short provocation on the theme, and to So Mayer for the fun and stimulating exchange their editing provides. And thanks to EJS for keeping me at my desk in 2020; this article simply wouldn’t have got written without you.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023/5/30
Y1 - 2023/5/30
N2 - This article discusses the ‘Netflix imaginary’ and how it shapes our understanding of queer taste and legibility in contemporary visual culture. While Netflix has promoted itself as a bastion of LGBTQ inclusivity and other forms of ‘diversity’, this article considers the platform not on the basis of celebrated LGBTQ ‘Netflix Originals’ such as Sex Education or Queer Eye but rather on how our navigations of the platform’s content throw our queer attachments and recommendations into pleasurable chaos. If the ‘Netflix imaginary’ is built around personalisation–that is, the promise of knowledge and insight–it more often generates bewilderment and surprise. But the article argues that this uncanny algorithmic meddling also has the potential to generate its own source of fun, entertainment and queer pleasure. By analysing what consumers are led to understand of the site’s dependence on and commitment to collaborative filtering, algorithmic signposting and customer agency and choice, I consider how we might employ a queer method for engaging subversively with Netflix’s representational inconsistencies and inadequacies–how we might see Netflix itself as a queer method for reconfiguring queer taste.
AB - This article discusses the ‘Netflix imaginary’ and how it shapes our understanding of queer taste and legibility in contemporary visual culture. While Netflix has promoted itself as a bastion of LGBTQ inclusivity and other forms of ‘diversity’, this article considers the platform not on the basis of celebrated LGBTQ ‘Netflix Originals’ such as Sex Education or Queer Eye but rather on how our navigations of the platform’s content throw our queer attachments and recommendations into pleasurable chaos. If the ‘Netflix imaginary’ is built around personalisation–that is, the promise of knowledge and insight–it more often generates bewilderment and surprise. But the article argues that this uncanny algorithmic meddling also has the potential to generate its own source of fun, entertainment and queer pleasure. By analysing what consumers are led to understand of the site’s dependence on and commitment to collaborative filtering, algorithmic signposting and customer agency and choice, I consider how we might employ a queer method for engaging subversively with Netflix’s representational inconsistencies and inadequacies–how we might see Netflix itself as a queer method for reconfiguring queer taste.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85161987144&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2023.2193521
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2023.2193521
M3 - Article
SN - 1740-7923
VL - 21
SP - 133
EP - 157
JO - New Review of Film and Television Studies
JF - New Review of Film and Television Studies
IS - 2
ER -