House of Cards
Mar. 17th, 2013 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupFirst, a review: I liked it. Some of that is because it required exactly the amount of attention I wanted to give it, but it's also well acted, well directed, and a pretty good plot. It rewards thought. Totally worth your time, but no The Shield or Mad Men. Yet.
Part of the problem is that it ended at the wrong spot. The British version ends with the Francis Underwood equivalent (Francis Urquhart) killing the Zoe Barnes equivalent (Mattie Storin). It's his moral event horizon. His other previous acts were forgivable, but they put him in a position where he will be ruined if he doesn't kill Storin. The US version ends with Underwood going out for a run and missing an important call, presumably we'll find out what it is in season 2.
I was going to give the US version credit for having more female agency, but I think it's really a shift from a show focused around a single individual to an ensemble show. At the same time, the show widened its discussion of power tremendously. The only man who consistently understands power is Underwood. Other men are either his victims or his unquestioning helpers. There is a single act of male rebellion in the very last episode, and the perpetrator is black*. Meanwhile, the women are shown to be playing the game, and to either be good at it or getting better. Underwood's wife is as skilled as he is. Each of them try to manipulate a young woman to serve their own ends, and each is facing serious consequences for it by the end of the series.
*Underwood dismisses this man as trading power for money and not understanding the difference in an early episode. He was wrong.
The other interesting this is what this means for long form visual-auditory storytelling in the long run. It can hardly be called TV at this point- Netflix put in title and closing credits every hour, but it might as well have been a 13 hour movie with bookmarks. And I didn't use them.
All old people have dismissed Netflix choice to release all 13 episodes at once as stupid.* Reading this, I feel roughly the same as I did when my dad told me he liked tapes over DVDs because you could pause them on VCR, move them to another, and start at the same place. It's technically true, but is inextricably linked to a tremendous downside.
He makes two different points, one of which is actually valid. Releasing it all at once means there's no way everyone watches it at the same pace, and thus limits episode-by-episode discussion. I felt this especially acutely around episode 8. On the other hand, this is even more true for everything else I watch, ever. If I manage to watch a show while a friend still remembers when they watched it, or convince someone else to watch it while I do, I consider that a victory. The only way any of my friends watch a show at the same pace as someone else is if they're watching it with them, possibly but not always as a prelude to sex. This is honestly more annoying for video games than it is for long form movies, because some of my friends do play blockbuster games together at release time. And yet I still wouldn't be caught dead buying the new SimCity, which is a travesty against nature.
The other point is something about how drawing it out gets you more media attention. Even if that were true, it's a terrible thing to base decisions on. Base decisions on making your customers happy, and the money will follow. Which is even more true in this case because Netflix can recommend its original content to all of its subscribers already, which almost a tenth of the population. More, when you consider account sharing**. Additionally, Netflix does not actually give a shit if anyone watches any of their content, they care if the content drives people to start or create subscriptions. One big burst of initial buzz, followed by a long tail of livejournal reviews read by the writers' immediate friends, is actually pretty good at that.
*Actually, it's one old person, but he's at the New York Times, and if there's one things the Times has taught me, it's that one person = irreversible trend.
**Holy Shit.
Part of the problem is that it ended at the wrong spot. The British version ends with the Francis Underwood equivalent (Francis Urquhart) killing the Zoe Barnes equivalent (Mattie Storin). It's his moral event horizon. His other previous acts were forgivable, but they put him in a position where he will be ruined if he doesn't kill Storin. The US version ends with Underwood going out for a run and missing an important call, presumably we'll find out what it is in season 2.
I was going to give the US version credit for having more female agency, but I think it's really a shift from a show focused around a single individual to an ensemble show. At the same time, the show widened its discussion of power tremendously. The only man who consistently understands power is Underwood. Other men are either his victims or his unquestioning helpers. There is a single act of male rebellion in the very last episode, and the perpetrator is black*. Meanwhile, the women are shown to be playing the game, and to either be good at it or getting better. Underwood's wife is as skilled as he is. Each of them try to manipulate a young woman to serve their own ends, and each is facing serious consequences for it by the end of the series.
*Underwood dismisses this man as trading power for money and not understanding the difference in an early episode. He was wrong.
The other interesting this is what this means for long form visual-auditory storytelling in the long run. It can hardly be called TV at this point- Netflix put in title and closing credits every hour, but it might as well have been a 13 hour movie with bookmarks. And I didn't use them.
All old people have dismissed Netflix choice to release all 13 episodes at once as stupid.* Reading this, I feel roughly the same as I did when my dad told me he liked tapes over DVDs because you could pause them on VCR, move them to another, and start at the same place. It's technically true, but is inextricably linked to a tremendous downside.
He makes two different points, one of which is actually valid. Releasing it all at once means there's no way everyone watches it at the same pace, and thus limits episode-by-episode discussion. I felt this especially acutely around episode 8. On the other hand, this is even more true for everything else I watch, ever. If I manage to watch a show while a friend still remembers when they watched it, or convince someone else to watch it while I do, I consider that a victory. The only way any of my friends watch a show at the same pace as someone else is if they're watching it with them, possibly but not always as a prelude to sex. This is honestly more annoying for video games than it is for long form movies, because some of my friends do play blockbuster games together at release time. And yet I still wouldn't be caught dead buying the new SimCity, which is a travesty against nature.
The other point is something about how drawing it out gets you more media attention. Even if that were true, it's a terrible thing to base decisions on. Base decisions on making your customers happy, and the money will follow. Which is even more true in this case because Netflix can recommend its original content to all of its subscribers already, which almost a tenth of the population. More, when you consider account sharing**. Additionally, Netflix does not actually give a shit if anyone watches any of their content, they care if the content drives people to start or create subscriptions. One big burst of initial buzz, followed by a long tail of livejournal reviews read by the writers' immediate friends, is actually pretty good at that.
*Actually, it's one old person, but he's at the New York Times, and if there's one things the Times has taught me, it's that one person = irreversible trend.
**Holy Shit.
