Sunday, April 19, 2009

Netflix unintentional bias

So it occurred to me this evening to see if you could find foreign language films on Netflix by searching for the language in question. As it turned out you can, sometimes, which is not so surprising or funny. But the part that left me cracking up and searching for more was the "Related Genres" section of the results. For example:


Searching for French we get Homework Help and Language Instruction and Romantic Movies (standard issue Parisian bias there on the last one, no?). But we also get Sexual-Awakening Movies (why does this get a hyphen?), Steamy Movies, and Revenge Movies. Revenge Movies?

Ok, let's try another language:


Relatively commonly learned language, so we still get Homework and Instruction. And Romantic. Fair enough. But now we also get Dark Movies, Spy Movies, Suspenseful Movies, and Visually-striking Movies (Are they not allowed to have more than two separate words in their database?) Are German movies more often visually striking than their French counterparts?

English:

Apparently English movies (or movies with the word English in the title, of course) are more likely Feel-good, Goofy, Heartfelt, or feature Mistaken-Identity or a Strong Female Lead. Really? Is this just the ocean of movies about female royalty? And I thought I was on to something about the reason for hyphenation until we hit "Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead"

Irish? (Sorry, couldn't help it...):


So much for the language learning aspect now, but we have the relatively upbeat Comedies, Con-Game, and Music, but the rest of it is Dark, Independent, or Suspenseful. And nixy nixy on the romance and steaminess.

And apparently Japanese movies are understated and may involve wilderness survival.