Netflix and the Transnationalisation of Teen Television

Abstract

With the renewed popularity of teen television, SVOD services such as Netflix are increasingly investing in the production and distribution of teen series. Netflix is one of the first SVOD service to have adapted the genre outside of the western world. This transnationalisation of teen television is, we argue, infused with the streamer increasing emphasis on diversity. Based on a qualitative analysis of Netflix’s teen series trailers, this contribution explores how the streamer (a) challenges existing televisual conventions and (b) establishes its cultural authority through distinct negotiations of the global and the local. We highlight four dimensions of Netflix’s transnationalisation of teen television and conclude that, more than mere diversification of its catalog, Netflix managed to encapsulate different dimensions of diversity within the teen genre as part, on the one hand of its transnational strategy of expansion, and, on the other hand, its cultural politics.