Discussion: Has Netflix Finally Been Legitimized?

Is This The New Legitimate Era of Netflix?

Though Netflix remains the controversial behemoth that it is - loved and hated in equal measure - this past weekend at the Academy Awards, the streaming service finally won big time... like really big time. During Sunday's awards show, the Mexican feature, Roma, directed and written by Alfonso Cuaron won three acclaimed Oscars for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography and Best Director.

Now, Netflix has been nominated in the past and has actually won before, all of the wins and most of the nominations being in documentary categories. But with Roma, the implicit acclaim of the awards it received boosts Netflix's credibility, most notably, to the naysayers within the film industry who continue to pan Netflix and other streaming services for diminishing the 'film experience', arguing that such services' content should not be eligible for film festivals or awards. Well, this past weekend's awards have pretty much closed the door on that argument. (Side note: Amazon technically beat Netflix to the punch when its film, Machester By The Sea, won Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay a few years back).

Another issue that people have taken issue with when it comes to Netflix is the unrelenting amount of content that it is constantly throwing at its subscribers. In essence, this would absolutely be a positive and not a criticism. However, it is the fact that a significant amount of its content is... well, objectively not the best. Many of its features and series go live only to very quickly fade into the ether of whatever the digital/cloud graveyard looks like. It is not uncommon for regular productions (film or tv) to simply fail upon release, as well, there will always be film and tv made that are of lower quality. The troubling part here is that many see Netflix churning out this high-rate of content as a means to simply quash their competitors by buying out productions or co-producing everything they can get their hands on in order to out-produce all of its competitors. This may ultimately lead to a dangerous monopoly in the industry, one similar to what we are seeing with the other ever-increasing giant, Disney.

The counter-argument here is that Netflix has also made some phenomenal content along the way. Roma has obviously already been mentioned. For films, there have been Mudbound, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Beasts of No Nation, among many others, all three of which were nominated for Oscars. For television, there have been a plethora of great series, including House of Cards, Stranger Things, Bloodline, Jessica Jones, The Crown, Bojack Horseman, Russian Doll, Orange is the New Black, Chef's Table, and arguably, many many more. So the argument that Netflix only releases crap is not very strong. I have not done it myself, but it would be interesting to see some relative statistics on the rate of successes versus failures for the streaming service. But, then that just leads to another issue, which is that Netflix is notorious for not releasing data on its content or, generally speaking, what its subscribers watch (for the most part it only releases (limited) figures to public for its big successes). This astonishingly also includes close-to-no data being given to the actual makers of the shows and films!

It is an intriguing and a little bit frightful of a time for the industry. I don't think there are many who would have ever thought that the day would come when Scorcese's next feature, featuring some of the greatest actors of all time, would be released on a service like Netflix. One can only dream of where we're heading from here...