In 2019, Netflix officially joined the Motion Picture Association of America, marking that streaming movies have been recognized and accepted by the film industry, which makes the public and researchers re-examine streaming movies as an emerging film art form. This blog will take Marriage Story (2019) which was released by Netflix in 2019 as an example, trying to find the unique aesthetic features generated by streaming distribution.

Compared with traditional cinemas, streaming media platforms make audiences’ viewing activities more free and casual in time and space. The compulsion and ritual of the cinema have vanished, the audience will be more relaxed when watching the movie, and enter the state of equal dialogue from passive “watching”. As a result, the text of streaming movies tends to be more open, allowing for multiple interpretations by the audience, unlike traditional distribution companies, whose main goal is theatrical box office, which try to dominate the interpretation of the audience. For example, the marriage story (2017) does not focus on a single point of view in the narrative, but uses the dual perspectives of both men and women in the marriage, and the text has more space for interpretation, this style is reflected in the two characters’ monologues at the beginning of the film.

In addition, because viewers have more physical mobility when streaming, people tend to focus on other things while watching movies, which need to constantly sharpen the audience’s attention. As can be seen from the marriage story, compared with other American family movies, the number and frequency of dialogue is very large, and it is often accompanied by fast editing and some high-emotion quarrel scenes, which is bound to constantly stimulate the senses and keep the audience immersed in the plot. The structure of the film is also more fragmented, breaking the linear narrative mode of traditional family movies, and showing the contradiction between husband and wife in the accumulation of these fragments of plots

One of the characteristics of the marriage story is the long monologue scenes, which is a kind of private expression, and also corresponds to the private viewing experience of streaming media platforms, it was different from the collective viewing of traditional cinemas, as the lack of group constraints, we have more interaction with the film.

Compared with traditional cinemas, streaming media platforms will inevitably face a wider audience, and the strategy of genre narrative will also change. In contrast to other American family films, such as Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and The Weather Man (2005), traditional American family films tend to focus more on the general life of the American middle class, and marriage story tends to focus on more universal elements. Depictions of divorce and the law tap into modern audiences’ general anxieties about marriage and are less about American cultural elements.

In short, in the context of streaming media distribution, Marriage Story redefines the aesthetic boundaries of family-themed films, showing stronger diversity and inclusiveness, so that the film can touch the global audience.

Reference:

Ford, J. (2019) ‘The netflix effect: Technology and entertainment in the 21st century, Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (eds) (2016)’, Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 10(1), pp. 127–129. doi:10.1386/jdmp.10.1.127_5.

Kinder, M. and McPherson, T. (2014) Transmedia frictions: The Digital, the Arts, and the humanities. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

By Xianglei Pang – 33832771