Binge, noun, “a period of excessive or uncontrolled indulgence”.

Last night I finished watching season 3 of hit Netflix show Stranger Things. It was lots of fun – scares, humour and plenty of endearingly nerdy characters. There are some pacing issues but it’s a stylish adventure, with heartfelt themes of friendship and empathy overcoming darkness.

But although I finished only 11 days after it was released, I already felt something of a latecomer with all the spoiler-filled analysis and discussions I had to avoid online. The show broke records with 18 million viewers watching the 7 hour plus series within the first four days.

But recently some people whose views I respect have been questioning the value of watching TV, and particularly the kind of entertainment gluttony encouraged by the convenience of services like Netflix.

For example, Matthew Lee Anderson recently wrote in his newsletter encouraging people to quit Netflix, and doubled down in the face of pushback with Seriously, Quit Netflix:

I still have the temerity to think that everyone should up and quit Netflix. Seriously, do it. It’s liberating; it’s freeing; it will make you inordinately happy. You will discover not only that you have time, but that you have the mental freedom that arises from not caring about the latest eye-candy that Hollywood has bestowed upon us.

More to the point, my concern about Netflix is the moral ecology that such consumption creates within homes and communities. If I may speak with some concern about the college students I have taught, they not infrequently will stay up until 2 AM Netflixing (even if they don’t ‘chill’ as well). They have none of the arts of resistance to such addictiveness that someone who remembers life before Netflix might have. Netflix and televisions in the home have changed almost everyone’s default behaviors when we are tired or interested in being entertained. Even when people are intentional, as the professional movie critic (and friend!) Brett McCracken doubtlessly is, having the medium present as an option means the temptation to indulge in the time- and energy-stealing form of entertainment is far stronger than it would otherwise be. 

It’s worth distinguishing the artistic merits of movies or TV shows, considered individually, from the all-you-can-eat, bottomless buffets that Netflix and Amazon Prime provide. While binge-watching goes back to the time of video boxsets, the streaming era of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like has truly brought it into its own. I remember realising back in the early days of streaming, when iPlayer was new and LoveFilm still posted out DVD rentals, that it wouldn’t be long before you’d be able to stream on any device at any time, picking up your progress across devices, and shows would have release dates rather than airing episodically. That’s all become normal, and it’s now as easy to carry a movie or the equivalent of a TV boxset in your pocket as it is a book, which traditionally was the most convenient medium for portable entertainment.

If we grant the value of TV and movie as art forms, does the streaming model help or hinder a healthy engagement with them? Matt makes some very valid points about how easy Netflix makes it to passively consume entertainment, to the detriment of our engagement with other people, or with other media such as novels which demand more engagement from us and give more back to us.

I love storytelling in all its mediums, but it seems to me that we rely on mass entertainment to bear an enormous cultural weight to which it is ill-suited: as a common language and basis for social interactions and friendships, as currency for identity-formation, and as a substitute quasi-religion giving us some kind of shared framework for meaning and moral reflection.

Just look at the devotion on display at Comic Con in the last few days, that place of pilgrimage for the devoted. I’ve very much been a part of fan culture and there’s a lot of good in the community people find in their shared loves. But when there are so many pressing personal, social and political needs facing us individually and as a culture, is the amount of energy put into pop culture healthy and proportional?

I wonder how much the easy availability of so much entertainment at the press of a button into our homes has hollowed out communal interactions: how many hobbies, clubs, trips to the pub, meaningful conversations are lost to the ubiquity of our screens?

I also find it concerning the degree to which it is controlled by big corporations. Think how much of our imaginative life is the property of Disney, from its own characters through to Marvel and Star Wars and Pixar. While I enjoy a lot of its output, there is a safeness and sameishness to entertainment precisely calculated to maximise box office returns and inter-brand synergies.

Part of why this critique resonates with me is my current stage of life: now I’m a father of two small children, I have much less free time available, and so prioritisation is much more of a necessity. Back in my twenties, I could play video games, watch TV and movies, post on social media, and still have time left over for books and for real-life friendships.

Now I have to choose, and with that comes the reflection that perhaps I should have chosen more wisely sooner. All that time I used to have, what could I have done with it if I’d been less of an entertainment glutton?

The key, it seems to me, is to gain a better awareness of the costs of entertainment. One way to do that could be for me to ditch the streaming services, and pay as I go for the particular shows and movies I really want to watch; psychologically, paying for individual items might help me count the costs more.

But perhaps it’s enough to gain an appreciation of the value and potential of each moment. If we remember the creativity that we can exercise when we give it the time to flourish, then mere passive consumption seems less appealing. If we appreciate activities that bring us into direct contact with other human beings, from meals shared, to conversations, to games, then perhaps we will spend more time on those than sitting in silence together in front of screens. If we remember that we live in a world full of great needs and great opportunities to make a difference, then perhaps we will do more to step up and step out to do good to our communities and societies.

And perhaps in the course of a fuller, more meaningful week, we might choose to kick back with an hour or two of entertainment just for fun, actively choosing something really good to watch as a treat, rather than passively sliding into watching whatever as a stale habit.

If the unexamined life is not worth living, then how much less is the unexamined Netflix queue worth watching. Let’s consider our habits wisely.