Crime Fiction and Video on Demand Platforms: Exploratory Reflections from the Netflix Catalog (Argentina, 2018-2021).

Abstract

We study the presence of crime fiction on Netflix (a task that is part of a broader concern about the intersection between discursive genres and the availability of audiovisual content on streaming on demand platforms). First, we establish three initial frames of reference: theories on discursive genres, studies on crime fiction narratives, and studies on digital platforms. Second, we contemplate a series of problematic dimensions that Netflix content presents for an academic approach: the self-classification, the transient availability, the tension between the global and the local, and the possibility of a formal analysis. Third, we move forward in the examination of a corpus of six Argentine Netflix Originals contents (four serial fictions, Edha, Apache: la vida de Carlos Tévez, Puerta 7 and El reino, and two films, Crímenes de familia and La corazonada, all of them released between 2018 and 2021), with emphasis on six cores of relevance, including technical, aesthetic, representational and linguistic aspects. Among the conclusions, we reach, on one hand, to a methodological research option that could be replicated in future studies on corpuses in other countries and regions; on the other hand, the specific analysis of the selected corpus allows us to notice a set of significant particularities of Argentine Netflix contents, such as the inclusion of established casts and directors, the aesthetic and linguistic disambiguation or the treatment of current affairs. This last perspective calls for a cautious analytical principle, far from interpretations that only highlight the standardization of contents, as well as those that only insist on the revolutionary nature of the platform.