#ciaonetflix: Suburra. La serie as “International Patrimony”

Abstract

This chapter offers an introduction to the Internet entertainment service Netflix, which premiered in Italy in 2015, focusing on Netflix’s promotional strategy, personalized platforms, and transnational drawing power. It puts forward that, to hook and retain Italian clients, Netflix turned toward a local-content model that has worked well for Sky, i.e., producing a factually based criminal sagas told principally from the perspective of attractive and alluring antiheroes, for example in the first-ever Netflix original series Suburra. La serie (2017–) which has both a local and a global appeal. It also investigates fascinations surrounding glamorized criminals by looking at how recent Italian history and queer bodies are represented, negotiated, and received in Italy’s first made-for-Netflix series Suburra. La serie (2017–). It positions the series as both a distinctly Italian production and a transnational production, paying attention to the series’ interesting marketing strategy that draws attention to fictional/historical consistencies, before addressing the physical allure and charisma of criminal antiheroes. Suburra. La serie’s singularity as a transnational co-production allows for a unique representation of gender and sexuality on small screens, as it tells stories from the perspective of a non-normative sexual orientation. Suburra. La serie engages in a representation of queer masculinity that is distinctive in relation to Italian serial drama.