Inside the Writers Rooms: Netflix and Social Movements
By: Jasmine S., Jessica V., and Elia M.
With Netflix’s recently added collections of television shows and films titled “Black Stories” and “Asian American & Pacific Islander Collection,” subscribers of the platform could assume that Netflix is rapidly changing its interface and inner workings to actively highlight stories from underrepresented communities in entertainment. However, a brief overview into the sociopolitical movements that have been happening across the United States calls into question the intentions that lie behind streaming platforms’ recent interest into uplifting non-white voices.
Netflix’s integration of activism into its brand can best be seen through their utilization of social media, a valuable tool where a number of sociopolitical movements have been able to spread awareness quicker and to a broader audience. Netflix launched multiple sub-brands and collections through the use of social media first: Strong Black Lead in 2018, Con Todo (a Latinx-driven focus) in early 2020, the Black Lives Matter Collection in mid-2020, and the newest addition has been their Asian American and Pacific Islander collection in 2021, after waves of increased violence against Asian people in the United States. However, the role of these sub-brands seems to stay more so on the social media platforms rather than on the actual streaming platform, calling into question the exact benefit and purpose of these different initiatives. Needless to say, it is clear that Netflix executives, as well as other entertainment industry players, have seen the viewing and buying power that underrepresented communities hold.
With these initiatives, Netflix has historically gone outside of its own platform to bring in viewers. The streaming giant first introduced Strong Black Lead through its short advertisement, “A Great Day in Hollywood,” — where 47 Black creatives employed by Netflix were showcased — at the BET Awards in 2018. In the summer of 2020, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests and demands for racial justice, the BET Awards’ viewership soared exponentially with 3.7 million people tuning in, a feat that is not easily achievable these days. With proof that the general public is eager for voices and stories that have not been properly given space, media companies began to use the Black Lives Matter movement as a form of showcasing allyship with the Black community first, and then with other communities of color, effectively building their own brand through activism. With the rapid incorporation of activism into brand marketing, one has to question whether these companies are following through on their statements of increasing diversity not only within their products, but also increasing diversity behind-the-scenes. If not, are these brands simply engaging in performative activism to capitalize off of the desire to see more people who deviate from the standard of White protagonists that has been set by the entertainment industry for years?
Netflix is constantly named as one of the top three streaming platforms on the internet, and for good reason. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone in your immediate life who subscribes to Netflix or who shares passwords to access the account — much like cable once was a staple for entertainment, Netflix has managed to integrate itself into daily consumer life. In our lives, as we three come from underrepresented communities, we are no strangers to the ways in which our differing identities have been used as marketing tools throughout the years. Due to this, we are interested in seeing the direct ways in which Netflix promised to increase diversity in these recent years.
Our main question in this research project is: Has Netflix increased the presence of people of color not only in their film releases, but specifically within the writer’s room? Representation has been reduced to just having people of certain identities on the big screen but a major component of increasing diverse representation lies in who exactly is curating these narratives. Are the people writing understanding and knowledgeable of the characters they are creating and writing for? Do they share the same identity?
With the creation of BLM as a micro-genre in Netflix amongst the other 76,000 genres and categories it already has, it’s important that Netflix does more to help restructure the lack of representation within the TV and film industry. To hold Netflix accountable we chose to look at the most recent Netflix releases about one year after the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement in Summer 2020 to inform current Netflix subscribers if the streaming platform has been a true ally or if their actions are performative.
Consumers of color hold power in the money they choose to dispense. For example, U.S. Latinxs’ buying power was reported to be around $1.6 trillion in 2015, holding one of the highest rates of film attendance than any other ethnic demographic in the United States despite being one of the most underrepresented groups in film. It is obvious why companies like Netflix are eager to capitalize off of certain demographics, but it is crucial to affirm that major companies are aware of their pitfalls in terms of diversity, and to make active and continuous efforts in fixing these flaws. Not only that, we hope that the findings of this research will provide concrete data for social activists who work with issues of diverse representation and communities of color. Netflix makes sure to hide information regarding the race and ethnicity of creatives and employees, as well as information about the racial makeup of the characters of the media they hold in their archive. Without data like this, major media companies like Netflix can continue to hide behind words of allyship without actually executing any change.
Dataset
On November 14 , 2014 Netflix officially closed down its public API, leaving public API developers unable to access Netflix content. APIs allow data to be pulled from an online source in a structured manner. Due to lack of API access, developers like Ashisha Gupta have looked at alternative methods of collecting Netflix content data to analyze the content Netflix puts out. Gupta received his doctorate degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University in 2008 and is currently the Co-founder of Polymer Search, a non code spreadsheet to web application form.
Despite having no access to Netflix’s API, Gupta was able to gather data from other website APIs in order to explore the content of Netflix. In our study we used Gupta’s dataset “Latest Netflix Data ‘’ from Kaggle that combines data sources from Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes, IMBD, posters, box office information, trailers on Youtube and other APIs. Luckily, Gupta’s dataset is updated on a monthly basis with its most recent update being April 27th, 2021. Gupta’s dataset included about 29 columns that described each film or series on Netflix dating all the way back to 2015.
For each movie and series there were 29 columns to describe them. The columns included each of the following:
Title, Genre, Tags, Languages, Series or Movie, Hidden Gem Score, Country Availability, Runtime, Director, Writer, Actors, View Rating, IMDb Score, Rotten Tomatoes Score, Metacritic Score, Awards Received, Awards Nominated For, Boxoffice, Release Date, Netflix Release Date, Production House, Netflix Link, IMDb Link, Summary, IMDb Votes, Image, Poster, TMDb Trailer, and Trailer Site.
The dataset also has over 1,581 rows in the spreadsheet data set, showing the extensive amount of movies and TV series on the platform.
Ethical considerations
Our main question depends on the knowledge of the race and ethnicity of the creatives that are employed by Netflix. While race and ethnicity information is easier to obtain for featured actors and actresses, this information is widely inaccessible for many behind-the-scenes players. This information was not included in Gupta’s dataset, requiring for us to conduct our own independent research into each writer to place a racial and ethnic label to their name to make our data easier to understand and analyze. However, for many of Netflix’s writers, the only information that exists for them is their names or their professional images, if that. Often, the only thing that is available about these employees is their name. While this presents itself as a big ethical consideration in our data, as correlating one’s racial and ethnic identity to their visual phenotypes or their written name can often prove to be inaccurate, it also leads us to consider another great pitfall of the entertainment industry: self-marketing.
Much like our question of how Netflix chooses to market its films and television shows in diverse markers, it is also extremely telling how the screenwriters that are contracted by entertainment companies choose to market themselves. As race continues to be a considerable barrier in entering the work field, many writers, producers, and directors opt out of explicitly naming their ethnic backgrounds if it can be avoided. For many writers who are from underrepresented and marginalized communities, they choose to showcase their racial and ethnic backgrounds through the work that they do and the programs that they’ve worked with prior. For example, one Latinx writer in our data chooses to use phrases that are politically and socially tied to Latinidad, such as growing up in a “border town” and the mentions of Latinx companies like mitú. Their direct ethnic lineage, however, is never directly mentioned — instead, they are encompassed by a ubiquitous “Latinx” label.
To circumvent the ethical dilemma that is presented, we take the self-identified label of race and ethnicity that writers have chosen for themselves. We analyzed personal websites and company biographies to determine the racial and ethnic marker for our data. As we continue in our research and findings, we are completely aware that a writer’s race or ethnicity in our data may not be one-hundred percent accurate but we have done the best we can with publicly available information.
Methodology
We used pandas as a form of analyzing the dataset we looked at and conducted our own independent research by searching up the race/ethnicity of writers. We decided to look specifically at movies/ hows that were available to stream in the United States due to its origins with the Black Lives Matter movement, as the creators of the movement resided in the U.S. We recognize, however, that the Black Lives Matter movement is not inherently just a western issue but one that is global. Likewise, with Netflix itself pledging $100 million in 2020 to Black organizations and communities across the United States, it seems fitting to focus our research in the U.S. We choose to look at the 20 most recent Netflix releases to learn more about the content Netflix is releasing post the calls for racial justice in 2020.
Main Findings
We surveyed the twenty most recent Netflix releases before and after Summer 2020’s insurgence of racial justice action to compare the race and ethnicity of the screenwriters involved in the films that were added. In comparing these different time periods against each other, we hoped that Netflix would have begun fulfilling its promise of showcasing diverse stories with a diverse staff behind them. This hope is fueled by the fact that Netflix has been very vocal in utilizing the Black Lives Matters movement– and other calls for racial justice, spearheaded by local activists on the ground–for commercial gain. However, despite an increase in surface-level marketing, Netflix’s writing rooms continue to overwhelmingly employ White people to craft and produce stories over any other race.
Prior to Summer 2020, the twenty most recent Netflix releases we sampled featured a predominantly White staff. We looked into the race and ethnicity of the thirty-three writers involved in these films. While racial minorities were lower in numbers, the ethnicities of White writers seemed to vary: one identified as French, five as Jewish, one as Danish, and three as Finnish. For the non-white writers, one identified as Ojibwe, one as Latinx, one as South Asian, and two as Black. In simpler terms, 68% of the writers of the films surveyed identified as White, 15% identified as racial minorities, and the rest (three) were unknown. This can be seen in the graph below.
Following Summer 2020, the twenty most recent Netflix releases in 2021 did not show much improvement within the writer’s room. Of the thirty-four writers that we looked into, only six identified as Black, one as East Asian, and one’s race was unavailable to the public, totaling to seven writers identifying as a racial minority. The remaining twenty-seven writers are all White with differing ethnicities. From publicly available information, two identified as Jewish, one as Cypriot, and another as Spanish. When viewed by simple indicators of White or Minority, as seen in the graph below, our data shows that after 2020, 79% of the writers in these films identified as White.
Statistically, one can see that diversity did not increase significantly after Summer 2020. Instead, it seems to have worsened. Our data, however, is impacted by the lack of public data actually available on the racial makeup of Netflix’s writers. While this information remains safeguarded by the company, our estimates of racial makeup are impacted. For example, it could be that our statistical findings prior to Summer 2020 could actually account for more White films employed by Netflix, as we have three writers whose racial and ethnic identity is completely unknown to us. Something similar could be said about the lone screenwriter whose racial and ethnic information we are missing from the 2021 data.
Regardless of these barriers in our data, it is abundantly clear that, for the most part, Netflix continues to lack diversity in its writing rooms. While Netflix lauds itself for holding space for only screenwriters of marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds for its special projects like Family Reunion (2019) or Gentefied (2020), this diversity is limited to just special projects. In turn, these special films and television shows are marketed all over the sub-brands that Netflix created for racial and ethnic minorities (Strong Black Lead, Con Todo), pushing the image that Netflix itself is immensely diverse in its hiring. For ordinary releases that are continuously added to its platform, like the ones we analyzed, this diversity is hard to find. Through the data we’ve found, it seems as if White narratives continue to be pushed almost daily, as Netflix’s catalogue continues to expand with these releases, whereas non-white stories must wait an incredible amount of time to be added to Netflix. This itself is tied to an inherent disinterest in seeking these stories out, which is not hard at all — there is an abundance of creators of color who have either already created their projects or who are ready to begin writing new projects.
Zooming In: How to be a Latin…. What?
One specific example of how Netflix may present a POC story without acknowledging that it was written by a White person is How to be a Latin Lover, a comedy directed by Ken Marino and written by Chris Spain and Jon Zack (all non-Hispanic White). The title says enough. While the protagonist, Eugenio Debrez, is a well known Latino actor the content of the movie plays into stereotypes that are overused in Hollywood. Viewers might see the Latino actor and assume nothing wrong about the movie because it’s a Latino man playing a Latino man but in reality they don’t see the underlying issues. Without a clear explanation or disclosure about the film it is unclear if the writing material of the movie was created in conjunction with actual Latino men.
Zooming In: Genre Choices
Lastly, when looking carefully at the data we also found that the 20 most recent writers of color were only represented in the genres of Comedy, Action, and Documentary. For the most recent 20 releases written by White people they fell under a variety of genres including: Horror, Drama, Comedy, Family, Game Show, Thriller/Crime, Documentary, and Action. This data showed that while there were writers of color, they seemed to be constrained to just 3 genres (comedy, action, documentary) whereas for White writers they wrote across 8 different genres. This information highlights how people of color tend to fall under categories of comedy relief, as also seen in the movie How to be a Latin Lover. Likewise, action as another genre that writers and actors of color are shoved towards is not very surprising, given the amount of stories of color that revolve around gang life or cartel life. If anything, viewing the stereotypical movies that are available revolving around marginalized people showcases an implicit bias that remains within Netflix’s catalogue.
Future Work
Taking a closer look into Netflix’s marketing strategy in general would prove to be beneficial in adding onto the work that has been done with this research project. We’ve highlighted the importance of Netflix’s racial and ethnic sub-brands, where much of the promotion of films and shows centered around communities of color go. However, in comparison to Netflix’s main social media platforms — and even Netflix’s platform-wide marketing campaigns on their website and application — how often are these products marketed and pushed by the main Netflix marketing platforms? Are White subscribers of the streaming service also being encouraged to consume these films and shows? Marketing within Netflix, at the end of the day, tells a lot of the racial biases that are integrated deep within the entertainment industry. Especially when various films and shows centered around characters of color have been discontinued from the streaming service due to low viewership, it is critical to see how diverse narratives continue to be invisible through systematic choices.
Concluding our analysis, we hope that the research that’s been done can help users or potential Netflix users to be aware of the promises Netflix has made in regards to achieving more diverse content and storytelling. Further questions into this specific field of research could look into what specific barriers lie within film genres and how these barriers can explain the lack of writers of color in these genres. The dearth of writers of color in specific genres is so palpable that successful releases by writers of color in predominantly white genres immediately cause people to wonder why this hasn’t been done before. As we’ve seen, writers of color are often constrained to specific genres within Netflix’s catalogue, while White writers are able to navigate between different genres with relative ease.
Increasing the amount of writers of color that are contracted by Netflix will also require further work done by social activists, as Netflix continues to be a predominantly White company that is interested more in capital gain than anything else. In particular, as Netflix attempts to recruit more writers of color, it is crucial that said writers of color also have legal ways of protecting their work during the process. Netflix UK’s screenwriters’ fellowship, for instance, requires prospering screenwriters to release the right to sue the company if they use any material that an applicant submits with their application, which requires them to submit a script. It is clear that Netflix’s legal department, much like any other entertainment company, has found a way of recruiting diverse stories from diverse creators without having to actually employ them. Clearly, diversifying the writer’s room at Netflix is not solely a problem that lies in a refusal to employ diverse staff. To promote diversity, Netflix must rework its inner structure to provide more protection and acknowledgement to the creatives that are holding their company up.
