Variety: Over the last year or two, Netflix corporately has been talking much more about diversity than we have historically in the past. Not just with an eye toward diversity in Silicon Valley, but certainly here in our own offices in Los Angeles. We like to extend our entire corporate culture to the producing teams that we work with, whether it be our “freedom and responsibility” culture, or our commitment to diversity.
4 comments:
It looks like Netflix still has a ways to go before their directing staff is diverse but I think that's less important than their content. What people are watching and the people they see on the screen is much more influential. Thousands of people watch the shows I would bet a much smaller number pay attention to who directed them. With shows like Orange is the New Black and Super 8 being big hits, they are spreading views of equality. Super 8, at its core, is even about diversity. It takes people from all sorts of different backgrounds and has them working together. Minorities are more and more being shown equally on tv. So while we have a ways to go behind the scenes, equality on the screen is becoming the norm.
The article makes it sound like Netflix is doing this amazing job at having as much diversity as possible in their directors, but they are actually doing quite badly. Sure, the season before they only had five people directing that weren't white men, and this season they got a few more white women and non-white men, but they still have 77% white men. In another article I read earlier this week, jobs that have less than 25% of women are considered to be male dominated positions, so Netflix really have nothing to be actually proud of. This article is just patting themselves on the back for being slightly diverse. When everything is equally split - at least 25% in all the categories listed if not actually splitting up the “non-white” category into all the different races then they will be close to diverse. Because the non-white category is almost the same size as whites in general - Hispanics and African Americans and Asians (and even like Chinese and Japanese and all of their different nationalities) make up huge portions of the population.
Netflix is truly a progressive company. They pretty much single handedly (along with illegal streaming) put Blockbuster and other movie rental places out of business. Ten years ago the idea of paying a flat fee and renting as many movies as you could consume was mind blowing. Companies like Hulu and Netflix make it possible for me to not own a TV and still feel like I’m connected to the cultural world. I think Netflix is the future of TV, not only do they distribute other studio’s products, they also produce their own work. With their commitment to diversity they are giving forward thinking millennials the kind of entertainment they want. Embracing diversity is leading to the younger fan base who will keep supporting Netflix way after their conservative parents die off. This is also a “yay-rah” moment for women. This company is actively working their way towards accurately portraying the demographics of our world.
I definitely appreciate what Netflix is trying to do, but I don't really like the article itself (or rather the interview in the article). The DGA stats of the 2012-2013 season compared to the stats of the 2014-2015 season has little to no difference at all to me. The number of episodes directed by non-white women remain to be zero, and the number of episodes directed by white men is still significantly dominating over the rest. These are tiny baby steps, yet the interviewer is already praising Netflix for its "directorial ranks [getting] more diverse" and asks if they are "ok with where Netflix's director statistics are now". I'm glad that Netflix's response is no, but I do think that people should stop constantly praising others for making tiny baby steps - we should keep pushing and try to get as close to equality as we can. If we keep making a big deal out of every little baby step we take, then we are way too easily satisfied and missing the big picture.
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