Netflix Series Research Articles

Crime media as cinematic “freak show”: Ableism and speciesism in retelling Dahmer

Grounded in an analysis of the Netflix series Dahmer-Monster, this article offers a theory concerning mass consumption of crime drama. Refracted by scholarship on ableism and speciesism, I argue that Dahmer-Monster (and comparable shows) can be understood as mediated “freak show.” Crime drama offers images of “abnormality” that provide a surface upon which conceptions of normalcy can be (re)inscribed. Audiences are assured of their normality via this process. The article speaks to critical criminologists and critical disability studies scholarship. Consistent with nascent “crip criminology,” it suggests that there is much scope for further dialogue across these areas. As a cultural site, crime media is saturated by ableism, yet it has not been subject to much scrutiny by critical disabilities studies scholarship. And, while much criminological attention is devoted to cultural portrayals of crime, ableism and speciesism have not been central categories to such analyses. This article contributes to efforts to connect critical criminologies with scholarly interest in ableism and speciesism.

Charlotte’s Language Style in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story Series (2023)

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is one of the popular Netflix series in 2023. This series is famous for being the aftermath of the two Bridgerton series that were released previously. The story, which is set in the British Empire at the end of the 18th century, attracts the attention of audiences. It is prominent to apply into the theory used because the various social factors and dimensions in the series can provide the samples of the five types of language styles according to Joos (1967), from frozen styles to intimate styles. The data used in this study are Charlotte’s utterances to the three main supporting characters. Data collection uses the observation method by analyzing the dialogues in the series. There are 373 data found with the style that appears most often is the casual style. This type of language style is usually used in informal situations, with intimate relationships between participants.

7 SPHERES OF ACTION IN NETFLIX SERIES SHADOW AND BONE S1 (2021): A VLADIMIR PROPP’S THEORY PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT
 
 Seven spheres of action is a theory made by Vladimir Propp. The researcher analyzed the role of characters that appear in the Netflix series Shadow and Bone with this theory. The research method used is descriptive qualitative method. The result of this research shows there are six out of seven spheres of action that appear in this story which are: Alina Starkov as hero, King Pyotr as dispatcher, Baghra as donor, General Kirigan and Genya Safin as false hero, Malyen Oretsev, Zoya Nazyalensky, and The Crows (Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghava, Jesper Fahey) as helper, General Kirigan, Arken Visser, Dreesen, and General Zlatan as villain. The spheres of action the princess and her father did not appear in this series.

Değişen Dijital Medya Çağında Değiş(e)meyen Toplumsal Cinsiyet Rolleri: Femme Fatale Bağlamında Bir Netflix Dizisi Olan Lucifer’e Dair Bir İnceleme

Cinema and television series have been functioning as a sort of mirror of almost all societies since their first invention on the ground that they cover various topics concerning human beings. Cinematic thoughts, experiences, and digital and visual images in Television series accompany nearly all transformations which have taken place in any community. However, some issues such as gender roles or stereotypes related to women have not changed positively even though mass media and digital tools in media have been altering considerably and radically. In the digital media era, it is still crystal clear that women have been portrayed as inferior compared to man depiction. In this context, the main aim of this study is to accentuate this issue and emphasize the gender gap and changeless woman roles in changing the digital media age. In line with this purpose, the well-known Netflix series Lucifer has been studied in terms of the notorious character femme fatale with the help of descriptive analysis and it has been seen that woman figures have been depicted as derogatory and diabolic in Lucifer. Thence, it is possible to allege that shifting digital movie and broadcasting trends do not have a noteworthy effect on the representation of women in the cinematic universe.

“From the Series, I See that LGBTQ+ Characters are Ordinary People”: An Audience Study on Netflix Series with LGBTQ+ Themes in 2020–2022

The research focused on how the audience of gender-diverse series in Indonesia reacted to the LGBTQ+ themes broadcasted in some Netflix series aired from 2020 to 2022. It was interesting to discuss, considering that LGBTQ+ issues were still taboo, and that Indonesian society was known to be conventional and religious. By examining the audience’s reactions to the narration of LGBTQ+ themes, the research delved deeper into how Indonesian audience members problematize the LGBTQ+ issues in the Netflix series. The research was conducted with the qualitative research method by asking 70 participants, from whom validated informed consent was retrieved in advance, to answer the questions posed in the online questionnaire employed herein and by inviting them to join Zoom-mediated interviews. Three problematizations are found: Netflix’s ideology related to its LGBTQ+ content, audience perception about the LGBTQ+ community, and audience religiosity before and after watching such a series. There are also varying views on these problematizations according to the various manners in which audience members are reasoning, which are subsequently assigned to several clusters. Ultimately, such problematizations help shed light on how Netflix and its LGBTQ+ content is dynamically perceived by the audience.

Authorial (audio) description

Abstract The unprecedented growth of audiovisual translation practices in the creative industries has boosted the role of creativity which has taken centre stage and become the emblem of global cultural policies. The study addresses the role of creativity in the digital space of Netflix as a means of cross-cultural mediation and communication, and as a multidimensional tool in audio description (AD), in order to provide the end-users (the blind and visually impaired audiences) of digital audiovisual products with participatory and engaging forms of access to the audiovisual ‘planet’. The aim is to investigate whether and how creativity is used to transmit culture-specific references (CSRs) from a translation perspective within a highly discussed TV series streamed on Netflix. To do so, the rendering of the most significant CSRs in the Korean Netflix series Squid Game (SG) as transferred into the English and Italian ADs will be examined.

Who sits at the Chef’s Table? Food criticism and the spectacle of elite gastronomy

The discursive mediation of “elite taste” is a central ideological production of food critics, cultural arbiters of what entails “good food,” as well as who entails a “good cook.” In this paper, we employ a mediatized critical discourse analytic approach to scrutinize one brand of “elite taste” as mediated by food critics in the Netflix series Chef’s Table. Specifically, we identify the role of the white critical voice in legitimizing and problematizing the featured chefs and their food. We present an in-depth analysis of two episodes of Chef’s Table and argue that the program is undergirded by a Debordian spectacle in which white critics attempt to blur the boundaries between chef, audience, and elite food, but ultimately reproduce extant distinctions evidenced in the consumption of food along classed, raced, and gendered materializations of “taste”.

Rewriting the queer potential of She’s Gotta Have It

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the 2017–2019 comedy-drama Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It attempts to rewrite the past represented within the 1986 feature-length film of the same name through its portrayal of Black women’s sexuality. While lauded, the film was met with criticism of Spike Lee’s portrayal of women in the film as ultimately misogynist and homophobic, evidenced by Lee’s decision to show protagonist Nola Darling being punitively raped by one of her sexual partners as well as by the flat and stereotypical construction of the Black lesbian character, Opal Gilstrap. In contrast, the 2017 series introduces us to Nola Darling as a pansexual and polyamorous Black visual artist in a rapidly gentrifying Fort Greene, Brooklyn. This paper identifies sexual politics and self-representational strategies as two sites of nostalgic re-construction in which elements of the past are both reproduced and revised. For instance, Nola’s self-identification as pansexual and her sustained relationship with a reimagined and more robustly characterized Opal illustrate that Nola’s sexual desires are not bound by heteronormativity. At the same time, the series echoes the film in that the primary sexual and romantic conflicts revolve around the ways Nola’s Black femininity is juxtaposed with the Black cis masculinity of her three primary suitors. The use of self-representational strategies, primarily Lee’s signature 4th wall breaking, provides a sense of continuity through its nostalgic callback to Lee’s earlier works, while also allowing Nola to articulate the ‘new’ identities of polyamory and pansexuality which depart from the language used in the ‘86 portrayal. Relatedly, Nola’s work as a visual artist allows the show to prioritize Nola’s perceptions of her lovers and herself. Overall, this paper mobilizes Black feminist, lesbian, and queer analyses in service of identifying and complicating Lee’s efforts to recuperate misogynist and heteronormative gendered portrayals in a contemporary medium.

The Power of Chaos

The Power of Chaos

Reading Sense8: Visual Interchangeability and Queer Possibility in a “Post-Racial” World

The science-fiction Netflix series Sense8 features eight “sensates” across the world who suddenly become telekinetically connected, able to inhabit each other’s bodies. I put forth the term visual interchangeability to explain these cinematographical swaps, when audiences perceive one character temporarily standing in for another. Able to experience each other’s arousal, the sensates partake in transglobal orgies: As bodies of different races interchange with one another, individual sensates’ sexual orientations and preferences are seemingly rendered irrelevant. Praised for its LGBT + representations, and particularly of trans identity, Sense8’s utopic implications suggested by the sensates’ apparent pansexuality and raceblindness is undermined by its essentializing, inaccurate depictions of non-White and non-Western cultures.

In rhetorical sense(s): exploration of difference reflected through Black Mirror

ABSTRACTThis article attempts to expand the world in which rhetorical scholarship exists in general, and the positionality and subjectivity of the rhetorical scholar who engages in theory building specifically. Aiming to create a decolonial space to imagine a better world, I explore the tempo-spatial opening between epistemology and subjectivity as the space to realize our ontological potential. I employ the conception of Otherwise—those different ways of knowing and being – in order to enter into and grapple with this liminal space. An episode of the Netflix series, Black Mirror was used both to analyze and to illuminate one way in which rhetorical scholars can engage in liberatory rhetorical theorizing. This article, thus, ultimately offers a different way of thinking and being rhetorical scholars.

Subjective destitution, love, and rebellion in pandemic times: Theorizing with Hot Skull

Dystopian visions of global pandemics, political crises, and human suffering abound, from fictitious television shows to the ongoing ravages of COVID-19. When we witness isolated instances of suffering and collective struggle, and identify their relationship to large-scale social crises, we are unveiling pieces of the totality. Things which might otherwise be portrayed as a local problem are instead viewed as a part of a larger social system. The Turkish Netflix series Sıcak Kafa (English title: Hot Skull) offers a story of pandemic lockdowns, rebellion, love, and subjectivity, touching upon important issues of radical political theory and action. This article connects key moments in Hot Skull to several important Marxist and psychoanalytic concepts, showing how the collective struggles in this Netflix series can help us identify concrete instances and attempts at overcoming violence in the modern world-system. By comparing the events of Hot Skull to our current predicament of living through a deadly pandemic, this article reaches an important conclusion: Our ability to radically change our circumstances through chance encounters with love and political rebellion remains real, potent alternatives to living in a persistent state of isolation and despair.

Misrecognition and Missed Opportunities

The six episode Netflix series, Stateless, represents a missed opportunity to engage in vital public framing of statelessness. Rather than focusing on the lack of legal nationality, the series falsely equates statelessness with other rights issues central to migration detention. In this collaborative work between a stateless activist and an academic researcher, the authors use Stateless as a starting point for a broader conversation about words, definitions and representation. First, statelessness has partially emerged on the international human rights agenda, yet film and television attention could further foster mainstream understanding of this oft-ignored issue. Second, a critical assessment of the Stateless series highlights how it does (and mostly does not) engage with the issue of statelessness. Third, reflections and recommendations relate to why the series’ title is so problematic, what the media can learn from stateless people and what this conversation means for advocacy.

REPRESENTATION OF CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN THE BRIDGERTON SERIES

This paper is an attempt to analyse the implicit and explicit rendering of cultural diplomacy in the popular Netflix series Bridgerton. This series is written by Chris Van Dusen and two seasons of the show titled Bridgeton have been premiered, the latest release of the series is Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. The television series is an adaptation of the Bridgerton novel series written by Julia Quinn and is produced under Shondaland productions. In this paper, the second season of the series is taken into consideration, in which the representation of Indian culture and its portrayal during the Regency period in England is intricately analysed. Cultural Diplomacy refers to the idea of the exchange of culture, art, language so on between nations that can result in diplomatic relations between countries. The series re-tells the history of the British Empire during the Regency period. The recurrent themes in the series are love and courtship. This paper analyses Cultural diplomacy as well as the neo-colonialist tendencies demonstrated through the series. Cultural diplomacy can be achieved through cinema and various film studies have proven its effect on the people. The cinema also serves as a medium of capitalism in disguise of art. This paper looks into the nature of relation existing between the former colonizer and its former colony. Also, to know about Capitalism as a form of Neo-colonialism, and to understand its part in Cultural Diplomacy. This research paper tries to understand the Bridgerton series as part of Culture and Capitalism.

God Was Never there God and the Shoah in the Netflix Series Jaguar

Abstract On September 22, 2021, the Spanish series Jaguar was released on Netflix. Its six episodes of season one (a second season is yet to be confirmed) focus on a fictional band of Nazi-hunters in Spain, somewhere in the 1960s, calling themselves “Jaguars” (hence the series’ title). All but one Jaguar member are survivors of several German concentration camps, and dedicate their lives to bring Nazi war criminals, who are spending their days in luxury under the protection of the Franco regime in Spain, to justice. One of the Jaguars is Marsé (Francesc Garrido), a bearded man in his forties, and the team’s dedicated driver. Step by step, the viewer of Jaguar learns his background story: ordained a Roman Catholic priest, he renounced his faith after having witnessed and experienced the horrors of the Nazi regime in Dachau concentration camp. Marsé still struggles with his former faith and occasionally shares his theological insights with his teammates, especially with the series’ protagonist Isabel Garrido.

Women and Crime: A Sociolinguistic Study of the Use of Language in the Netflix Series’ Unbelievable

Profession, status, philosophy, economy and gender play a vital role in the use of language. Role and gender is reflected through language and the analyses of such relationship are the domain of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics tries to reveal the relationship and effects of these variable over language and vice versa. The current research tries to explore the relationship of gender and language by adopting Lakoff’s (1973) model as theoretical framework. Lakoff’s (1973) model is known as ‘Women Language Features’ which is further divided in 10 sections. For the current research, descriptive qualitative research methodology is used to achieve the objectives related to language and gender; to know the features of women language and to evaluate the change in language style of women when they discuss or talk about crime in Unbelievable. All the features of women’ language suggested by Lakoff (1973) were found except the feature of hyper correct grammar, super-polite forms are use, but in the conversation of female police officers impolite and harsh vocabulary was used, which suggests that women in the profession, which generally associated with men as police, judge, chairman, batsman also effect language to great extent.

EFL Teachers’ Perception Self-Directed Professional Development Toward Oral Language Maintenance

This case study presents an EFL teacher's perception of self-directed professional development aimed to maintain and enhance her oral language proficiency to support her professional growth. Semi-structured interviews were used as the primary guides to extract information concerning EFL teachers' self-directed professional development (PD) activities associated with the maintenance and enhancement of oral language proficiency. The participant of this study was an EFL teacher who experienced oral language attrition and has motivation to maintain her oral language proficiency. Data were analyzed descriptively to result in EFL teacher perceptions of self-directed PD activities that demonstrates a positive attitude towards improving and maintaining her oral language skills as an integral aspect of her professionalism. The result indicated that self-directed professional development activities had a significant impact on the participants' recognition of the importance of maintaining oral language skills. These activities also emphasized the need to continuously improve and enhance their oral language proficiency, highlighting the benefits it brings to both teaching and learning. One specific example mentioned was the participant's engagement in self-directed PD activities using Netflix series, which proved to be highly beneficial for improving linguistic features. These efforts contribute to her long-life growth as a language teacher, enabling her to provide effective language instruction and create an engaging learning environment for her students. The study highlights the importance of self-directed professional development in supporting EFL teachers' language maintenance and the positive impact it has on their professionalism.

Poland as Gilead. Pop culture fiction and performative protests in the era of the pandemic

The use of iconic popular culture symbols is an increasingly common strategy applied by social protest organizers. The Guy Fawkes mask from the ‘V for Vendetta’ comic book became a symbol of the Anonymous group, and later of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Salvador Dalí mask, popularized in the ‘La casa de papel’ Netflix series, was used in street protests in Spain and Italy. Motifs taken from the HBO adaptation of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ novel gained high visibility in thousands of women’s protests against the introduction of the de facto abortion ban in Poland. Basing on images documenting the Polish protests published in social media, we demonstrate how popular culture symbols are transformed into cultural codes which bridge on-street and online protest actions. This connection has become crucial in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using qualitative visual content analysis, we prepared a classification of the symbols employed. Our contribution to the theory of performative protests is to reveal the importance of analogies with the political series that Polish protesters have used by means of the general connotation: Poland is Gilead.

Netflix, Instagram, celebrity and fashion: A brave new convergent world?

This article examines the Netflix series La casa de papel and Élite as examples of ‘media convergence’ in which content flows between several industries and creates synergies that cannot be fully explained by a television studies framework of analysis alone. By the same token, the methodological tools of traditional star studies may not provide the best lens for analysing how the actors of these series, most of them unknown until recently, have suddenly become global stars. I argue that these two series have made prominent the formation of a new paradigm of stardom, which I call ‘Insta-flix celebrity’, that compels us to develop new conceptual frameworks to theorize how multiple media – in this case Netflix, cinema, Instagram and fashion – participate in a transmedia ecology that has altered established relationships between production and consumption of media texts. Insta-flix celebrity is a phenomenon that affords audiences novel opportunities to interact with media content. With their active participation, consumers decide which stars to follow and which clothes to buy while also engaging with the series’ content and adding their own two cents – comments and social media discussion that can make or break a star, a show or a fashion brand.

When they say they are a K-drama fan, but their first drama is Squid Game: What is an authentic K-drama?

This article investigates the evolving definition of the term ‘K-drama’ and its authenticity. Using a case study of the Netflix series Squid Game, I examine fan discourse surrounding the series and the extent to which it fits within the traditional K-drama framework. By analysing performative commentaries from TikTok users, as well as non-users who encounter TikTok content on other social media platforms, I aim to understand how audience engagement and platform-specific features contribute to the redefinition of K-drama. Additionally, this article discusses the broader implications of the ways in which platforms like TikTok shape the visibility and understanding of K-dramas among global audiences. Viewers’ attempts to (over-) analyse the drama through the lens of Korean culture connect this debate with orientalism, cultural essentialism and gatekeeping from Korean popular culture enthusiasts.