Queer Eye and Saudi Arabia: What Netflix’s Globalizing Content Means
What does Netflix’s international expansion mean for viewers?
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It’s an exciting time for Netflix. The Obamas are producing a comedy series about Trump, Harry and Meghan are making a special, a spy series featuring Arnold Schwarznegger is set to debut…actually, who isn’t having a Netflix show?
Netflix has only just begun to scratch the surface of the world’s stories to be told. With over 73 million US subscribers as of Q3 2020 and its cemented status as the SVOD player in the US market, the media giant hungrily eyes its ascent abroad. As someone whose parents seem to be on a never-ending rotation of various Korean dramas for the past several months, I can attest that the impact has been felt. So what does this all mean for our Netflix screens?
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As an aside, the topic of global storytelling is one that lies close to my heart. My first love has always been stories and their ability to inspire, to draw humanity, to evoke emotion.
When I was thirteen, I enlisted two friends — one in Greece, another in Pakistan — into making a blog/website called Amor Mundi, with an ambitious aim to tell news in local perspectives for a global audience to combat the biases of Western media, particularly in response to the coverage surrounding the Greece debt crisis and “Islamic” terrorism.
Although it never quite reached scale, I learned many a lesson about the challenges of creating and distributing local content for global audiences. (A note to younger self: do not rely on Google Plus as a primary distribution channel.) For example, I learned that the who matters because the who informs the why: why is this story being told? Who is this story being told to? How will the message be conveyed to resonate most effectively with its intended audience?
In Netflix’s case, the who has gotten much more complex. As the streaming service has expanded to over 190 countries worldwide, Netflix faces the challenge of expanding its content libraries to both appeal to local consumers and engage audiences on a global scale. Netflix has increased its investments in local content, relying on partnerships with local production companies in markets in Japan, Korea, India to push out originals like Hindi language drama “Sacred Games” or the Japanese hit “The Naked Director” (by Netflix’s own account, the most watched title in Japan the past year) — a trend that has paid off so far with the Asia-Pacific region comprising nearly half of all new subscriber growth in Q3 and one that will only accelerate through 2021 as Netflix looks to double its spending in Asia.
International growth is all well and good, right? More diverse content, more audiences, more eye-candy Asian actors finally getting the recognition they deserve…well, it turns out it’s all a little more complicated.
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Enter: The Dissident, a documentary by Bryan Fogel (director of 2017 Oscar-hit Icarus) covering the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and the Saudi Royal family’s role. Despite positive acclaim at the film’s premiere at the Sundance festival, none of the major distributors picked up the film — not even Netflix, which took Fogel’s Icarus under its wing. (Pun not intended).
So why didn’t the company that gave Fogel the platform to uncover the Russian doping scandal — and won an Oscar Award and widespread critical acclaim in the process — leap at the chance for another hit? In large part: shifting business priorities. Netflix is a company that has always spared no reservations in reshuffling its organization to reflect its ambitions, even ousting 17-year-veteran former VP Original Content Cindy Holland in favor of local language originals exec Bela Bajaria.
Back in 2017 when Icarus was released, Netflix had 100 million subscribers and was hungry to attract top talent — hence its appetite for taking creative risks to win awards and lure top Hollywood directors. Now, Netflix has nearly double the subscribers and is focused full-steam ahead on international expansion. In Saudi Arabia alone, Netflix recently signed a five-year partnership with animation studio Myrkott and a multi-picture partnership with digital media studio Telfaz11. A movie such as Icarus could threaten the inroads that Netflix has been making in the Middle East, which at present outweigh the allure of a potential Oscar.
This isn’t the first time Netflix has felt the burden of balancing creative artistic freedom and appeasing global audiences. In 2019, Netflix received pushback for removing an episode of The Patriot Act where Hasan Minhaj accused Saudi Arabia of covering up the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and mocked the Crown Prince. In exchange, the country agreed to host shows such as Queer Eye, Orange is the New Black, and Sex Education, which feature characters and themes counter to the country’s ultra-conservatism.
As is most often the case in business, the ethics are never quite black-and-white. Viewed through a cynic’s point of view: a corporation bowing to a dictator’s censorship. Viewed through a more optimistic lens: one episode in exchange for hundreds of thousands able to view LGBTQ+ representation and sex-positive messaging onscreen in a country where such actions are punishable by death. A minor victory, perhaps, but one with the potential to reverberate across the entire cultural fabric and empower viewers with the language to broach new conversations about identity, love, and acceptance with loved ones.
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I’ll close with a final thought. Hollywood has long been considered the prima force for exporting American culture abroad. When I studied abroad in China (not a country known for being the most US-friendly), my host parents took me to see Spiderman, where I had the surreal experience of being (likely) the only person in the entire theater to comprehend the movie without the extra seconds of processing subtitles.
Now more than ever, the needle is moving in the other direction — and to think a company whose primary business model was once mailing DVDs would be leading the way! With the increasing investments in production in Asia and elsewhere, our Netflix screens one year from now will likely look vastly different from today. One can only imagine what stories will be told, what the characters we fall in love and cry over will look and sound like, and how our conversations about these stories and characters will unfold.
