Queen Sono : Netflix Original as postfeminist South African spy thriller

Introduction

Netflix’s announcement of the commissioning of its first original series in Africa in 2018 to ‘connect [African] stories with audiences’ (Vourlias, 2018), strategically crafted an altruistic motivation that downplayed its commercial objective to attract ‘South African users and global audiences alike’ as new subscribers in a bid for profitability (Netflix, 2018). Emphasising the diversity in offerings that original African content would provide, Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s global head of TV observed, ‘You are seeing so many people’s different stories told, and people are seeing themselves on screen, which they have not [on] a global scale’ (Littleton, 2021). Certainly, as evidenced in critical, cultural scholarship, there is power in media representations, and absence of representation can result in symbolic annihilation of groups of people, given their perceived insignificance (see Means Coleman and Chivers Yochim, 2008). Yet, Netflix’s interest in cultural difference is not a purely ‘woke’ desire to become more inclusive. Its business practices and strategic communication expose ambitions to retain its position as the ‘world’s largest streaming service’ (Tamanini, 2022), particularly based on projected earnings of 1.2 billion dollars by 2025 solely from its African originals (Charisma, 2020), and significant subscriber growth expected from Japan, Germany, France, South Korea and Italy in the next 3 years (Tamanini, 2022). In addition, Netflix’s loss of more than one million subscribers in North America in the first two quarters of 2022 (Stoll, 2022), and its announcement of a ‘Basic with Ads’ plan, or a ‘lower priced ad-supported plan’ (Peters, 2022), highlight the economic motives for seeking out culturally diverse programming to attract viewers both in and beyond North America, given that Netflix must continually increase profits to satisfy its stockholders as a publicly-traded company (Tamanini, 2022).

Netflix’s embrace of culturally diverse programming that has historically belied profitability, at least for legacy television’s mass audiences, invites an examination of how commercial imperatives are reconciled with cultural specificity, and the impact on cultural production through a case study approach foregrounding Netflix and Queen Sono (2020), a coproduced spy thriller with DiPrente, a South African independent production company. First, Netflix’s position as a subscription video on demand (SVOD) portal is explored, highlighting how ‘direct commissioning’ as a business strategy promotes the diversification of Netflix’s catalogues, and how DiPrente advances the global ambitions of the streamer through such diverse programming. In recognition of how genre can be leveraged by Netflix as a business strategy to market cultural diversity, the genre of the spy thriller and the cultural anxieties it reveals about women are explored in the second section. Representations of women and how they portray diversity in the spy thriller and in African-specific media are contextualised through a discussion of postfeminism as transnational culture. Finally, a textual analysis of Queen Sono examines the significance of this transnational spy thriller through its use of genre, gender and historical context. How are the genre conventions of the spy thriller utilised by Netflix to attract viewers, and how is the formula adapted to the (South) African context? How does the representation of a woman spy protagonist unsettle gender hierarchies in postfeminist media culture? How is the historical context of (South) Africa incorporated to achieve the cultural diversity desired by Netflix and its subscribers? Although Queen (Pearl Thusi) is portrayed as a strong female protagonist with clear moral impulses, her agency is constrained through the generic conventions of the spy thriller and the postfeminist politics of the series. I will argue that Netflix utilises both the spy thriller and postfeminism for commercial purposes in order to attract both a regional audience of African viewers interested in seeing themselves represented and an international audience who are drawn to the programme for its generic and representational strategies.

Netflix, ‘direct commissioning,’ and DiPrente

The rise of subscriber-funded video on demand services (SVODs) in the contemporary media environment begs a re-examination of what is meant by television, its services and content, and the impact of this shift on local production industries. SVODs typically boast a transnational or even multinational reach, introducing new strategies to attract niche audiences who are willing to pay for content. Netflix is the foremost example of an SVOD that has global and commercial ambitions yet invests in culturally specific content, although it is not the only SVOD player in the African market with Amazon Prime and ShowMax, among others, directly competing with Netflix. Unlike US-based Netflix, ShowMax is headquartered in South Africa, owned by Naspers and has been available for streaming since August 2015 while Netflix subscribers had to wait until January 2016 for service. Like Netflix, ShowMax offers both international and African content and is available in more than 40 countries on the continent and over 70 around the world (ShowMax stories, 2017). ShowMax chief product officer, Barron Ernst, distinguishes it from Netflix by noting it has a cheaper subscription rate per month, specialises in local African content and offers local payment options that include prepaid vouchers considering limited credit card use on the continent (Shapshak, 2016). Based on its fast growth in subscribers, particularly those using mobile apps for download, ShowMax is a formidable rival. This article, however, focuses on the case of Netflix whose recent interest in African content and subscribers is featured. A brief description of Netflix’s business model, its strategies of transnational coproductions and ‘direct commissioning’ and an explanation of how these strategies expand catalogue diversity are explored, including examples from Netflix’s relationship with DiPrente.

Describing itself as ‘the world’s leading internet entertainment service … in over 190 countries … across a wide variety of genres and languages’ (Netflix, 2021), Netflix emphasises its distinctiveness from linear television by offering multinational and multilingual content. Netflix provides ‘a personalised television viewing experience made possible through internet distribution’ (Wayne, 2020: 150). Defining Netflix as internet-distributed television, Amanda Lotz (2016: 135) makes the case for categorising Netflix as a ‘portal’ rather than a ‘platform,’ as it acts as ‘a gateway to video content’ and is not limited to any one device. The portal is also multinational based on the locations of subscribers (exceptions are China, Syria and Crimea), offices and employees and programming sources from many countries (Lotz, 2021). Furthermore, Lotz (2021) distinguishes Netflix from legacy television in three respects that need further explanation: attracting subscribers with a ‘value proposition’, providing access to a diverse range of content for mass and niche tastes and aggregating tastes globally.

First, as a subscription service, Netflix appeals to audiences with disposable income and a reliable internet connection. But to attract paying audiences, Netflix has to offer what Lotz (2021: 14) calls ‘a value proposition’ to subscribers, or a service that provides sufficient perceived benefit for the cost of the subscription. Lotz argues that Netflix’s success lies in its ability to distribute programming that appeals to niche tastes that are not catered to at the national level, perhaps because of a small market size or the inhibitive cost of original quality drama. Netflix also presumes subscribers will pay for content not yet freely available where they live or to avoid advertising that interrupts content already available to them. Significantly, in contrast to content on national television, Netflix subscribers also desire titles ‘a bit outside the mainstream’ (Lotz, 2021: 18). Such titles may not be ‘most viewed’ or locally produced programming but may instead be US content not licensed by national channels, as is the case in Australia where very few Australian productions are available on Netflix, yet it attracts a significant number of subscribers (Lotz, 2021).

Second, building on its appeal to subscribers, Netflix looks to license and commission diverse content to satisfy mass and niche tastes, serving transnational, national and local audiences. Netflix catalogues are defined as ‘the corpus of licensed or owned content’ (242) that are ‘temporally differentiated, because they are constantly changing, and spatially differentiated, because users in different countries experience different ranges of content’ (244, Italics in original). The multinational scale and large budget that Netflix can muster for diversification makes it possible to meet ‘unserved and underserved content desires’ that are ‘less feasible for other multinational SVODs’ (Lotz, 2021: 18, 14). Niche content is programming that addresses distinctive audience tastes that are not mainstream preferences (Marconi, 1993). Niche content has always been interconnected with economics, with commercial television providers targeting profitable demographics. Beyond broadcast and advertising-funded television, Trisha Dunleavy (2018) traces how subscriber-funded television, and HBO specifically, pursued new audiences with their original programming from 1996 to 2010, explicitly branding this content as an alternative to broadcast television with the tagline of ‘It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.’

Contemporaneously, Lotz (2017: 26) demonstrates how Netflix has adapted niche marketing to a ‘conglomerated niche’ strategy that ‘does not license or develop a series with the expectation that all Netflix viewers will value it but develops offerings with distinct segments of subscribers in mind’. Netflix thus customises its recommendations to individualise user experiences, not expecting to be ‘one thing to all subscribers’ (Lotz, 2017: 26). Mareike Jenner (2018) describes viewer recommendations, based on algorithms, as an important strategy for developing loyal subscribers. She notes that ‘its familiar tone, the overwhelming sense that Netflix ‘knows’ us and acknowledges and addresses us as individuals, not as mass audience’ personalises the Netflix experience (128). This individualisation is enabled through algorithms that analyse viewer profiles, viewing history, movie ratings and movie and series coding ‘for all conceivable metadata points, from character types to endings’ (Lobato, 2019: 40). Netflix’s interface, from the log in screen, communicates personalisation with taglines like ‘top picks for [subscriber first name]’ and ‘continue watching for [subscriber first name].’ However, as Johanna Blakley (2016: 42) argues, online streaming portals are developing algorithms to ‘recommend appealing new content to audiences,’ that is not aligned with their viewing history. Netflix created a public contest in 2014 to crowdsource a Cinematch recommendation system that would more effectively recommend content subscribers did not know existed but would watch. In other words, recommendation algorithms personalise the viewing experience with taste recommendations that can also suggest new content that is novel and diverse.

When Netflix released Queen Sono worldwide on 28 February 2020, users who had previously watched genre categories of ‘South African’ or ‘TV Dramas’ would have seen the show’s thumbnail on their home page as the portal classifies the series with these labels. Other data points might also have been used to recommend the series to subscribers such as ‘strong female lead,’ or ‘spy thriller’ although these tags were not visible to subscribers when the series dropped. In addition, South Africans were targeted as new Netflix subscribers with billboards advertising the show in Johannesburg as the ‘first script-to-screen production in Africa’ (Kupa, 2020). Finally, subscribers might have been targeted as interested in Queen Sono not based on their viewing history, but instead because they have been identified as potential fans through ‘Netflix’s canny targeting of fan tastes assumed to be transnational’ (Hills, 2019: 222). As Matt Hills argues, fandom is framed both subculturally, with fans self-identifying as a subcultural group, and industrially, with Netflix attesting to subscriber’s potential tastes through big data. The recent commissioning of original content from Africa also exemplifies the objective of drawing in new African subscribers – the series attracted black audiences in Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond (previously untapped markets) – and targets established audiences with niche tastes evident in Queen Sono’s ranking as seventh in the most watched shows in the US in February 2020 (Kimeria, 2020a).

In addition to illustrating a ‘conglomerate niche’ strategy, the case study of Queen Sono highlights Netflix’s diversification strategies of transnational coproductions of quality programming, and ‘direct commissioning’, both examined in more detail below. However, as Lotz (2021: 14) points out, despite this strategy of diversification, ‘it is unclear that such productions play a significant role in driving subscriptions’, as Netflix’s opaque viewership reporting practices outside of the US, until recently, make it difficult to draw correlations between strategies and outcomes. The recent cancellation of season two of Queen Sono (Moore, 2020) substantiates the unclear correspondence between Netflix’s diverse content and new subscribers, specifically in Africa.

Third, Netflix’s multinational scale of operation and analysis of viewership data at this scale enable the commissioning of distinctive content. Derya Özkan and Deborah Hardt (2020: 168) remark on the correspondence between Netflix’s scale of audience measurement and the ‘riskier content,’ or female-led shows, that they commission, arguing that this is one of Netflix’s unique characteristics that enables such distinctive content. Lotz explains how ‘Netflix targets subscribers based on tastes and sensibilities that are often not sufficiently popular to be addressed by services aiming for a national ‘mass’ audience’ (2021: 13, Italics in original). Ramon Lobato’s (2018: 252) research resembles Lotz’s claim by identifying that Netflix audiences might be understood through ‘the prism of transnational class formations rather than the frame of the national audience.’ Rather than segmenting audiences based on their national location, Netflix ‘aggregates’ audience interests across regions, allowing it to categorise subscribers ‘as transnational clusters of tastes and sensibilities’ (Lotz, 2021: 13). This transnational aggregation of audience clusters enables groupings to develop statistical significance as profitable markets. The African market illustrates this clustering of tastes as Netflix anticipates attracting ‘39% of subscribers in the region’, relying on commissioning and acquiring local content that attracts new African viewers (Kimeria, 2020b). However, even as Netflix analyses audience data at a transnational level, the specter of the nation endures because ‘Netflix libraries are often nationally specific, national regulations can dictate the company’s behavior, and national identity likely contributes to content preferences’ (Lotz, 2021: 13).

Netflix, along with other SVODs and linear television, has turned to transnational co-productions for original programming in response to rising costs for high-end drama production, the increasing need for distinctive content in exchange for a monthly subscription fee, and the ambitions, at least on the part of US-based premium networks, to expand into international markets. Transnational coproductions are financial and creative agreements between two networks in different countries to produce content in the interests of both parties (Dunleavy, 2020: 344). ‘Direct commissioning,’ a term coined by Dunleavy (2020), is one type of transnational coproduction arrangement. In this approach, a foreign, multinational network or portal like Netflix, finances one or more independent production companies situated in one (or more) national contexts outside of the US, to produce content. This arrangement is distinguished from previous co-production partnerships by the international outcomes that motivate ‘direct commissioning,’ enabling foreign networks to evade national imperatives at the production stage. Differing imperatives include competing objectives for the public good versus profitability and local, nation-building content versus universal themes to attract global audiences. By working directly with a production company in another country (‘direct commissioning’), Netflix can bypass these tensions and advance their multinational objectives. This is not to say that national regulations and mandates do not come into play at the distribution stage, as mentioned above. Netflix’s relationship with DiPrente exemplifies the ‘direct commissioning’ approach: commissioning Queen Sono from DiPrente, Netflix is the multinational buyer and owns the rights in perpetuity while DiPrente is the creative producer. And, although DiPrente is a South African production company, it does not have to meet national mandates, unlike broadcasting companies and other distributors that operate in the country.

More recently, the practice of ‘direct commissioning’ has shifted, at least at Netflix. While the commissioning process was initially overseen by US executives, commissioning agents now tend to be native to, and experts from, the source region. US executive, Erik Barmack, then VP of International Original Series, commissioned Queen Sono in 2018, but by 2019, when the series was in production, Dorothy Ghettuba, a Kenyan filmmaker and producer, had been appointed as the Head of African Originals and took over commissioning African content.

DiPrente is suited to provide diverse and niche content to a wider audience based on their expertise in South African culture and production. Located in Johannesburg, DiPrente was co-founded by three friends in 2009 with expertise in film, television and animated children’s content. Kagiso Lediga is an actor, writer and director; Tamsin Andersson is a producer and executive producer, and Isaac Mogajane is a producer and executive producer. The range of genres produced by DiPrente include comedy, satirical news formats, adventure, drama, and education. Catching Feelings (Catching, 2017), a romantic dramedy film, was acquired by Netflix for international distribution, but Queen Sono (2020) is DiPrente’s first television drama series with a high-end budget.

Although relying on their South African expertise for content, the company’s productions have already enjoyed international distribution and critical reception. In addition to Catching Feelings (2017) and Queen Sono (2020) that are available on Netflix, some of their films, documentaries and series have been exhibited at festivals in the Netherlands, France and the US. More recently, the company refurbished their website, diprente.co.za, emphasising their global priorities and outcomes, such as ‘development, financing and production of television shows and films for a global audience’ (Diprente, 2022) and the nomination of Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola (2010-5) for two International Emmy Awards. Together these details suggest the company has positioned itself to attract further coproductions with SVOD portals like Netflix that target new and transnational audiences with regional content that Netflix can aggregate across world markets.

This discussion has illustrated how Netflix is establishing itself as a transnational portal, expanding its interests into other countries, acquiring content from outside of the US to diversify its catalogues, and directly commissioning content that is more culturally diverse than programming on legacy TV. Prioritising transnational audiences, the company has sought out diverse and novel content to provide subscribers with a value proposition to retain their loyalty and aggregates viewing data at the transnational level to serve niche tastes. These business strategies that give precedence to diverse content and audiences likely influence content production and the modification of genre conventions. The following literature review introduces the classical spy thriller genre, of which Queen Sono is an example, and pays particularly attention to how the inclusion of women spy protagonists shift conventions and expose national security, political, cultural and gender role anxieties.

The spy thriller formula and women spies

The genre of the spy thriller proliferates ‘at moments when social and political change is being felt,’ as Rosie White (2007: 1) illustrates with the James Bond books and films that grappled with new threats in the 1960s but longed for the stability of the past. Thomas Andrae (1996) expands on this idea by demonstrating how US television spy series surged in the era of countercultural protests including the Vietnam war and social movements such as the women’s movement. Representations of women spies likewise appear when gender roles are in flux, and women spies as protagonists became more prominent in the late 1990s (White, 2007).

As several scholars (Britton, 2004; Muñoz González, 2018; White, 2007) have outlined, the classical spy thriller is comprised of a male, heterosexual protagonist who has no family ties or personal life, is loyal only to his comrades, perceives love to be a weakness, is motivated by ‘political ideals or professionalism’ rather than wealth or power (Britton, 2004: 11), works for a government or similar agency, sometimes reluctantly, and deals in moral ambiguities ‘since treachery is intrinsically linked with the spy’s activities’ (Muñoz González, 2018: 122). The genre assumes that the nation is constantly under threat and this vulnerability justifies illegal actions – motivating the need for a spy and their illegal activities (White, 2007). The spy narrative has a predictable plot, which explains the ease of creating spy parodies, with the mission of delivering a code or person, overcoming obstacles to achieve the mission, but never being certain whom to trust, with an inflexible deadline, persons to rescue, escape from and plenty of action that ends the conflict with the protagonist achieving their mission. As White (2007: 3) explains, the spy thriller remains a successful genre because it is elastic enough to allow for ‘an infinite range of combinations and readings.’

Women have always appeared in the spy genre although they have usually been stereotyped as ‘the helpful spy … the innocent … the bad-girl-turned good … [and] the villainess/femme fatale/assassin’ (Lisanti and Paul, 2002: 14–16). If the spies are communist women agents, they appear as either ‘emotionless, authoritarian and desexualised … or the beautiful Mata Hari-type’ (Kackman, 2005: 34), a femme fatale type or villain based on an historical woman executed in the First World War by the French (White, 2007). By the late 1990s the woman spy had become a protagonist in the spy genre although she continues to be ‘the exception rather than the rule’ (White, 2007: 4). Women as professional spies raise the contradictions of traditional gender binaries that limit women to the private sphere as passive subordinates who are emotional and sexual objects. As professionals, women spies are active and engaged in the public sphere, using their sexual bodies to achieve their missions (White, 2007). As Toby Miller (2003: 155) argues, because women spies take on active roles, the narrative ‘usually requires a narrative motivation or justification to explain a woman’s choice to take on an active, action role. In many cases, this choice is presented as the response to trauma or a desire for revenge’. This ‘continuing contradiction between femininity and agency’ draws attention to how women spies transgress feminine expectations by working as spies, while being contained in this role through their femininity – a double bind that serves as a commentary on women’s position in a patriarchy and their legitimacy in a male-dominated genre (White, 2007: 11).

Queen Sono (2020) builds on the legacy of the professional female spy, like Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) of ABC’s Alias (Alias, 2001-6) or Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) of The Americans (2013-8). White (2007) describes Bristow as both a femme fatale, an active professional who also kills for a living, and a (feminist) protagonist who is the moral touchstone of the series. While she represents female agency, her femininity is fetishised through the objectification of her thin body and revealing clothing, exposing the paradox of being a woman and a spy. Expanding on this contradiction, White notes Jennifer Garner’s ‘muscular female body’ in much of the series, suggesting that ‘such moments offer a discomforting vision of transgender identities,’ or ‘women out of place, in environments that clearly do not account for femininity but only work on masculine frames’ (2007: 138). White does not claim that this material transgression is synonymous with a feminist protagonist, but instead argues that body ambiguity ‘open(s) up cracks in the façade of heteropatriarchy’ (2007: 138). As a ‘new New Woman,’ or a professional spy rather than a homemaker and mother, Bristow’s agency is nevertheless challenged by personal problems typically absent from the plots of male spies. The insertion of the private sphere and the challenge of having a personal life is also emphasised in The Americans on FX, with Elizabeth Jennings constructed as ‘a communist married woman, a mother and a high-ranking spy character’ (Esther Muñoz González, 2018: 120). Although these concerns expand the conventions of the genre, Muñoz González (2018) argues that The Americans ultimately both transgresses and limits femininity. The generic conventions of the spy thriller and the ways in which this genre has expanded suggest the significance of analysing Queen Sono from a postfeminist perspective that is described in the following section.

Postfeminism and representations of women

In her foundational essay, Rosalind Gill (2007) describes postfeminism as a sensibility, or a sensitivity to what is distinctive about gender representations in Western media. According to Gill, nine elements comprise a postfeminist sensibility: women’s [sexy] bodies define their identities in a media culture that has become highly sexualised; women are constructed as sexual subjects – as long as they fit the dominant expectation of being ‘young, slim and beautiful’ (Gill, 2007: 152) – and willingly use their sexy bodies to their advantage; women’s desire to be sexually attractive is framed as individual and empowering and depoliticises structural inequalities, suffusing choice with neoliberal values of consumption; female bodies and selves are in constant need of monitoring, a quality emphasised in the makeover media paradigm; a discourse of sexual difference between men and women perpetuates gender inequalities but imbues gender differences with sexiness; the use of irony to mask saying or meaning something seriously – often used to disguise blatant misogyny; and feminist ideals that are entwined with anti-feminist messages. The shared orientation of postfeminism and neoliberalism to the individual as ‘rational, calculating and self-regulating’ (2007: 163) highlights the empowered individual as the unit of analysis and the disregard of structural forces that limit individual choices and actions.

Grappling with how postfeminism as a sensibility is not solely a Western cultural construct, Simidele Dosekun (2015) builds on Angela McRobbie’s (2007) and Michelle Lazar’s (2006) theorisation of postfeminism’s links with globalisation. McRobbie (2007) argues that the sexual contract of postfeminism applies to both the ‘career girl’ of the West and the ‘global girl’ factory worker in the developing world, although with differing effects, by addressing young women as empowered subjects even if only as consumers who are sexually liberated, and wage-earners. Similarly, Lazar (2006) demonstrates that postfeminism has been globalised through international media corporations that circulate adverts, for example, for global beauty products in Singapore that are received in similar and different ways to audiences in the West. Significantly, Lazar (2006) notes the exclusivity of the postfeminist ideal of femininity that continues to be defined as able-bodied, heterosexual and conventionally beautiful, even if racially varied. Adding to this literature, Dosekun (2015: 968) argues that postfeminism is ‘transnational’ culture as it crosses national borders and ‘is sold and consumed’ without a ‘feminist history’. Dosekun’s (2015) theorisation intervenes by insisting that class differences are an important category of analysis that McRobbie (2007) and Lazar (2006) neglect. Her case study of career women in Lagos, Nigeria – women who are ‘already empowered’ (2015: 970) - demonstrates the usefulness of analysing postfeminist elements that seemingly apply to these women’s performance of ‘a hyper-feminine style’ and require financial resources for ‘hair extensions, long and manicured acrylic nails, heavy and immaculate make-up, false eyelashes, and towering high heels’ (2015: 970). However, establishing the local cultural contexts of the women, Dosekun notes that their feminine performances draw on the historical practice of women working outside of the home in West Africa long before the women’s movement in the West, and Nigerian women’s desire for ‘sexual respectability’ through financial independence from men that undermine ‘transactional heterosexual relationships’ (2015: 971), unlike the sensibility of compulsory heterosexuality of postfeminism. By analysing the local contexts of these feminine performances and women’s varied access to material means, Dosekun (2015, 2021) both insists on the transnational circulation of postfeminist media cultures and demonstrates that this sensibility isn’t uncritically embraced by women in the Global South (or North) but adapted and integrated into local histories and contexts. Even as Beschara Karam (2018: 52) agrees that postfeminist images travel globally, she critiques its applicability to the South African context as she argues that media should instead address ‘postcolonial and decolonial gender issues’ that impact women’s daily lives rather than uncritically adopting ‘this colonial, Western, postfeminist aesthetic’. A postfeminist aesthetic consists of hyperfemininity (a desire to-be-looked-at), hypersexuality (woman as an empowered sexual subject), heterosexuality (core desire of women to engage in sex with men including romance and marriage), and the exclusivity of this aesthetic that is available solely to young, white, able-bodied women. Karam’s postfeminist aesthetic clearly aligns with Gill’s postfeminist sensibility with both noting the Western orientation of media images. Where Dosekun differs from Karam is in her recognition that postfeminist discourses already circulate in Africa via transnational systems of power, and that African women are adapting these Western discourses to their own values and practices. Queen Sono is an example of the transnational circulation of postfeminist discourses that is adapted to African cultures and contexts. However, Karam’s caution about what Western postfeminism might mean for local African feminisms is worth considering for how postfeminist sensibilities or aesthetics frame African women and their choices. To make sense of how women are represented in Queen Sono, the next section first describes the method, textual analysis, before exploring the series through the lens of the spy thriller genre and how the series conforms and adapts the conventions as a medium for showcasing diversity. Finally, the analysis highlights how women are portrayed, following the sensibility of transnational postfeminism media culture, and how these choices construct Queen as a strong female protagonist even as her agency is limited by genre conventions and postfeminist sensibilities and aesthetics.

Queen Sono – the African woman spy

This study uses textual analysis as a method to explore the meanings of Queen Sono, the significance of the genre of the spy thriller, and the representation and disruption of gender hierarchies in the post-Apartheid context of the series. Textual analysis is informed by critical race and feminist theories, among others, which explains its concerns with social issues and inequalities. It also centers on ‘how meaning is revealed and experienced, with an emphasis on sense-making, description, and detail’ (Smith, 2017: 3). Textual analysis of popular culture, in this case, a Netflix African Original series, consists of five steps which this analysis followed: first, I approached Queen Sono as a text illustrating the increasing interest in cultural diversity by streamers such as Netflix with curiosity about how this diversity (racial, regional and gender) is represented and integrated into a male-dominated and Western genre. Second, I conducted a literature review regarding the spy genre and female spies, and studies defining postfeminism as the representation of women and their social status in contemporary media culture. This literature provided categories such as the professional spy, the femme fatale, agency and containment, gender binaries and stereotypes, hypersexualisation of women as a form of empowerment, etc. that I used in the third and fourth step for coding and analysing the series. As the last step in the textual analysis process, I present this article with my analysis of Queen Sono. After introducing the plot, cast and reception of Queen Sono, the rest of the section details how the series engages with and expands the concerns of the genre, and how gender is constructed in contradictory ways from a postfeminist perspective.

According to a promotional review, Queen Sono ‘tells a spy story from a South African point of view,’ (Yohannes, 2020a), featuring strong women as protagonists and antagonists and making an argument for why South Africans should watch the show. Pearl Thusi, the titular character, plays an undercover spy in this six-episode action-adventure series, a role stereotypically reserved for male action heroes in franchises such as James Bond (1962-present), Mission Impossible (1996-present), or Jason Bourne (1988-2019), although there are female precedents such as Diana Rigg and Jennifer Garner in the television series, The Avengers (1961-9) and Alias (2001), respectively (Andrae, 1996; Britton, 2004; Muñoz González, 2018; White, 2007). Queen’s backstory includes an activist mother who was assassinated while working to overthrow the Apartheid government and this past provides motivation for Queen’s spy work, as well as her desire for revenge against the assassin(s). The series also highlights Queen’s own activist impulses to protect her country by working for Special Operations Group (SOG), a South African intelligence agency, and further establishes her legitimacy by mapping out her past in flashbacks that explain her motivations and her role as the moral touchstone of the series. As a black woman from Africa, Queen often wears her hair in an Afro style, switches between African and Western fashions, is educated and street-smart, and speaks multiple African languages. Queen is also hypersexualised in her role as spy – willingly exploiting her body to accomplish her undercover operations, although she longs for a stable and monogamous romantic relationship with Shandu Magwaza (Vuyo Dabula), whose commitment to liberating Africa is put into question when he accepts the financial backing of Russian-owned Superior Solutions. The series features other strong women including Mazet (Abigail Kubeka), Queen’s grandmother, who criticises her granddaughter for not doing enough to honor Queen’s mother, Safiya’s memory. Miri Dube (Chiedza Mhende) serves as second-in-command at SOG, a group designed to protect the continent against political and military threats, even though her competence is criticised by Queen because of Miri’s lack of experience. Kate Liquorish’s Ekaterina Gromova is the antagonist, an ambitious (empire-building) Russian woman whose family-owned Superior Solutions (SS) provides private security services in Africa. Queen Sono was well-received and ‘shot to number one in viewership in several African and Caribbean countries’ (Kimeria, 2020a) and was ‘the seventh most watched show in the United States, Neflix’s biggest market’ when it premiered in late February (Kimeria, 2020b).

Queen Sono both complies with and extends the conventions of classical spy thrillers, adapting the genre to the setting of South Africa and the demands of a female protagonist. Following historical precedent in which the genre proliferates during social and political disruptions (White, 2007), Queen Sono references multiple concerns on the African continent including the troubling legacies of colonialism, post-Apartheid government corruption, exploitation of black African labour and xenophobia against migrants, among others. With these threats to the nation (and continent), the intervention of the professional spy is warranted, even if the agent is a woman. Illustrating the moments of change that Queen Sono examines, Queen signs on with an undercover South African government agency, SOG, to contain the threat of corruption that she unwittingly exposes as part of a security detail for the deputy president (1:4). This plot point legitimises the use of illegal activities that Queen and her colleagues undertake to fight government corruption and protect the continent from terrorism and other dangers. Monitoring SS’s illegal arms dealing with two terror organisations, Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Queen flies to Tanzania, intercepts a meeting between the arms dealer and an SS representative and steals valuable intelligence to avert future terrorist attacks (1:1). Justifying her crimes while on the mission – including donating a government-owned vehicle to Watu Wema and stealing money from the terror organisations that she keeps for herself, Queen tells Fred (Loyiso Madinga), her computer geek colleague, like ‘Q’ in the James Bond films, that ‘I risk my life to catch these bad and powerful people. At the end of this job … I have to disappear. Only the South African president and the Head of State Security know that we even exist. If anything happens to us on these missions, we’ll be lucky to even get a decent funeral.’ The risks that Queen takes to protect her country and government justify the need for her illegal activities – a typical convention of the spy genre.

The construction of Ekaterina as the antagonist in the series perpetuates two additional spy conventions from the Cold War period. First, it maintains historical geopolitical animosities familiar to audiences around the world, reinforcing the binaries of good (West, capitalism) versus evil (East, communism) (White, 2007; Wark, 1998). In the African context, however, the incursion of communism has served as a threat to former colonisers and their governments, with the Soviet Union, among other international powers, supporting African groups fighting for liberation from colonial countries. Pitting communism against capitalist ideologies, and African organisations against colonial European governments, the Soviet Union supported the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army with training to overthrow the white-minority government of Rhodesia in the 1970s (Savage, 2018). Similarly, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Angola supplied weapons, military vehicles and troops to Nambia’s South West African People’s Organisation in its fight for independence from Apartheid South Africa. And, in Angola’s liberation fight from Portugal, the Soviets provided weapons, troops from Cuba and military transportation to the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Savage, 2018). Queen Sono’s employment of the Russian-headed SS to represent the geopolitical threat of a foreign invasion reinforces the spy genre’s convention of the East versus West binary and alludes to the historical liberation of Africa from colonial powers through support from the East.

The binary of East versus West, portrayed through the figure of Ekaterina, and SS, also introduces ‘the oriental other,’ a discriminatory ideology constructed by the West to justify the colonialisation and exploitation of the East based on its inferiority (Said, 1993). Ekaterina’s imperialist ambitions to ‘rebuild this [African] continent’ (1:6), discussed in more detail below, allude to the trope of ‘darkest Africa’, an historical metaphor of the continent that resembles Edward Said’s (1993) concept of ‘the oriental other,’ warranting domination of Africans based on their inferiority to colonialists (or imperialists), even by a Russian woman, in this case study, for her own gain. Henry M. Stanley, an explorer best known for his attempts to find the source of the Nile River, first referred to Africa as the Dark Continent in his writing, but the persistence of the metaphor demonstrates its power to construct Africa as ‘Other’ through oppositional categories such as ‘light/dark, found/lost, life/death, civilised/savage, known/mysterious, tame/wild’ (Jarosz, 1992: 106; see Conrad, 1972). The stereotype of ‘darkest Africa’ abounds in Queen Sono through multiple references to corruption on the continent that range from greedy individuals to institutional corruption. In her rookie SOG days, Queen is assigned to the deputy president’s detail and intercepts an ambush. When she learns that the deputy president has been taking personal bribes, Queen becomes a spy with SOG to combat such governments and structural corruption that perpetuates exploitative practices from colonial invasions (1:4). Similarly, reacting to the death of his friend in the exposé of government corruption, Shandu turns to SS to give Watu Wema a larger stage to expose ongoing tyrannies in Africa such as exploitative white owners of a conflict diamond mine who perpetuate neocolonial theft of resources from Africa; a manipulative black preacher in Zimbabwe fraudulently soliciting parishioners’ money as a form of domination neocolonial greed (Márquez Duarte, 2022: 129); and African government leaders who ‘sold your birthright for trinkets’ (1:5), and ‘sell your country off to the highest bidder’ (1:6). All of these are references to structural ‘neocolonial schemes [that] have further perpetuated poverty, inequality, racism, corruption, and oppression of the African people’ (Márquez Duarte, 2022: 129). Pablo González Casanova’s (1965) concept of internal colonialism illuminates how colonial practices in Africa endure despite independence from European colonisers in the 1960s. Illustrating the racial and economic domination by elite Mexican mestisos (mixed race) of Mayan Indians in Latin America, González Casanova elucidates how elite Africans justify dominating and exploiting other Africans that they see as inferior to themselves, internalising European colonial ideologies of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ or the ‘oriental other’. González Casanova argues that ‘internal colonialism corresponds to a structure of social relations based on domination and exploitation among culturally heterogeneous, distinct groups’ within the same society, country, or region (1965: 7). While the concept has its detractors, internal colonialism illuminates how the dominant racial group does not have to be white to be exploitative and can be of the same racial or ethnic group as those they exploit (see Hind (1984) for a comprehensive overview).

González Casanova’s concept of internal colonialism can also be extrapolated to explain contemporary accusations of corruption in South Africa. Jacob Zuma, president of the country from 2009–2018, was ousted after accusations of state capture, defined as ‘a form of corruption in which businesses and politicians conspire to influence a country’s decision-making process to advance their own personal interests’ (Husseini, 2022). In the six-part Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture report, Zuma is accused of being manipulated by members of the Gupta family into awarding state contracts to their companies and conspiring to fire and appoint cabinet members in the Gupta’s and Zuma’s financial interests, thereby draining state resources (Arun, 2019). As much as $82.6 billion is alleged to have been funneled out of state coffers, representing up to 25 percent of the country’s GDP, and contributing to the almost complete collapse of the country’s electric grid, the reduced capacity of the national airline and the outdated railway services, among other damage to the economy (Husseini, 2022). Jacob Zuma’s alleged betrayal of South Africans can be understood as an internalisation of the colonial ideology of the ‘othering’ in which Zuma advanced his own and the Gupta’s interests at the expense of ‘other’ South Africans and state institutions. The prominence of corruption, colonialism, imperialism and political discrimination in Queen Sono establish the cultural context of the country and continent, but this discursive emphasis can also reinvigorate the metaphor of ‘darkest Africa’ and, in contrast, the ‘moral and institutional superiority of the West’ based on the pervasiveness of corruption in Africa, justifying foreign interventions and incursions (Márquez Duarte, 2022: 131).

Ekaterina’s portrayal also depicts a second historical trope that prescribes how communist women agents are incorporated into the conservative and patriarchal genre. As a Russian female villain, Ekaterina is represented as ‘emotionless, authoritarian and desexualised’ (Kackman, 2005: 34). Her villainy is initially established through Russian-accented English that sets up her position in the geopolitical binary as evil, as does her imperialist vision to ‘rebuild this continent’ that she outlines to Shandu. Promising that ‘I’ll make you an emperor when it’s born again’ (1:6), Ekaterina’s empire-building speech to Shandu insinuates the neocolonial threats to the continent, with the SS exploiting human and other natural resources for profit and power. When her father rejects her plea to take over SS, Ekaterina smothers him in his hospital bed, cementing her role as a femme fatale. For his part, Shandu characterises Ekaterina as heartless and ambitious, descriptions that reinforce spy thriller norms of the Russian woman agent, contrasting Russian female villains with Western female protagonists. When Ekaterina plants a bomb at a fan-packed soccer stadium to compel the South African President to meet her demands, Shandu exclaims ‘those are human beings. But why would you care? Huh? ‘Cause you only worship money and power. You know what? I actually don’t blame you ‘cause I don’t think you know any better. I pity you’ (1.6). Although the moral standing of Shandu’s objective of liberating oppressed black South Africans is in doubt by partnering with SS, he voices his shock at Ekaterina’s lack of compassion (emotionlessness) for the hundreds of innocent lives she is willing to end as ‘collateral damage’ to achieve her vision (1:6).

Broadening the genre’s masculine norms, Queen expands the narrative of the series with her role as an active female agent in Africa. The actress, Pearl Thusi, who plays Queen, addresses the significance of a woman in this role through her claim of ‘girl power’ to describe the series with an emphasis on performing her own stunts – except for falling through a glass ceiling in the first episode (AfricaOnNetflix, 2020). Director Kagiso Lediga explains his vision for Queen as, ‘I wanted to have women see themselves or see another female that’s empowered and maybe that could make a difference [for women’s equality]’ (Martin, 2020). Although women protagonists have appeared in spy thrillers in recent decades, Thusi’s lead role in an African Netflix Original is cast in feminist terms, albeit in promotional material, that are not typically used to discuss the spy genre, although there are some exceptions (see Mahoney, 2019; Muñoz González, 2018; White, 2007). As a female agent Queen extends the focus of the spy genre to include a personal history, connections to family, and a romantic interest that ironically serve as obstacles to accomplishing her missions – part of the genre’s ideology to limit women’s agency. Although spies don’t normally have a past, flashbacks of Queen’s mother being assassinated for her anti-Apartheid activism while Queen is a young child provide motivation for Queen’s career choices. Moreover, the trauma of witnessing and violently losing her mother at a young age serves as ‘justification to explain a woman’s choice to take on an active, action role,’ as Cat Mahoney explains about female spies in general (2019: 78). Queen’s grandmother, Mazet, also raised her and the first episode establishes their ongoing and close relationship. Important to the genre conventions, Queen’s family loyalties jeopardise her spy work when Ekaterina shoots Mazet to punish Queen for thwarting a plot to destabilise the South African government. Male spies typically avoid such family complications and eschew romantic relationships as chinks in their armor (Muñoz González, 2018). But a female spy broadens the scope of the genre, and Queen, with her shared ideology of liberation, welcomes Shandu into her bed (1:1; 1:4), and watches videos of Shandu on her phone when she is lonely (1:1). The integration of a past, family and romance humanises Queen, introduces more narrative complexities (and obstacles), and ‘open[s] up cracks in the façade of heteropatriarchy,’ centering women and their lives in the genre (White, 2007: 138). However, as discussed below, Queen’s romantic longings also reassert a conservative ideology and stereotype women as prioritising personal relationships and the domestic sphere, reducing the threat of the active woman spy in a male-dominated genre. As such, Queen Sono illustrates the double bind of asserting agency as a spy and ‘being contained in this role through [her] femininity,’ as White (2007: 11) explains about women spies, a contradiction that is examined below through a postfeminist lens.

Queen Sono’s feminist messages were broadcast before audiences had even seen the show. Netflix executives and creators of the series celebrated the subversive presence of a black woman as lead in a male-dominated genre, referring to Queen as a ‘boss babe’ (AfricaOnNetflix, 2020), ‘a strong female hero coming out of Africa’ (Kriel, 2020) and a ‘badass’ (Yohannes, 2020b). These descriptions emphasise the powerful images of the female protagonist, even if they were tagged in promotional materials and by production and creative personnel. But Queen’s portrayal also encompasses the sensibilities of postfeminist media culture, including an emphasis on hyperfemininity and Eurocentric ideals of beauty, the hypersexualisation of her body as a female spy in a male world, compulsory heterosexuality evident in an ongoing male love interest, and a focus on individual, empowered woman, discussed below, thereby rebuffing the need for developing political solidarity among women.

Queen’s bodily portrayal flirts with Western notions of feminine beauty informed by her light-skinned blackness, her model-thin-and-tall proportions, her access to middle-class resources, and her youth – the preferred attributes of postfeminism outlined by both Gill (2007) and Karam (2018). While on a recon mission at the gala dinner for the Zimbabwe president’s 95^th birthday, Queen exploits her hyperfemininity (to be looked-at-ness) and hypersexuality to catch an illicit arms dealer in the act. Wearing a long pink formal dress with a waist-high slit that reveals her long legs, Queen oozes heterosexual availability, making sure to catch the eye of Elton Davenport (Ekaterina’s brother who uses an alias) as he enters the room. Emphasising a willing exploitation of her hypersexuality as a tool to manipulate Davenport and assume a sexual subject position (Gill, 2007), Queen reminisces as she applies red lipstick, ‘You know it’s been so long since I got to dress up’ (1:2). Executive producer of Queen Sono, Tamsin Anderson, remarks on the postfeminist sensibility in the series, although not using this term, noting ‘So, in times where, say, [Queen] may have to use her sexuality, she very much is in charge and owns it’ (Kriel, 2020). Sexual subjecthood, however, is exclusively awarded to ‘young, slim and beautiful women’ in postfeminist media culture, and these are also the women valued in a patriarchy because of their attractiveness to men (Gill, 2007: 152).

Queen’s hyperfemininity is further displayed when she engages in hand-to-hand combat at the gala dinner despite being dressed in a revealing backless gown and strappy high heels. Posing in a leg-revealing squat over a male opponent she has wrestled to the ground, she uses his own revolver to shoot him and another man before covering her escape with gunfire. This portrayal of Queen’s hyperfemininity, despite her superior martial arts skills, references research on other female spies like Sydney Bristow in Alias and Purdey (Joanna Lumley) in The New Avengers (1976-7) whose hyperfemininity is highlighted to limit their threat to the patriarchal hierarchy despite their professional and lethal prowess (White, 2007). Even as Queen’s performance of hyperfemininity confirms the pervasive influence of postfeminist media culture, choosing to wear her hair in an afro style or under a decorated African head scarf, selecting clothing made from African-designed fabric, speaking fluently in multiple African languages – as well as English – interrogates the hegemony of postfeminism with its aesthetic that has prioritised white beauty standards and practices. In line with Dosekun’s theorisation of black women’s embrace of hair weaves as ‘an unhappy technology of black femininity’ (2016: 68), or a way of performing black femininity that does not lose sight of Africa’s white colonial and racist histories, Queen’s feminine performance draws from varied cultural norms and rebuffs the simplistic presumption that ‘the beauty black women come to desire is “white beauty”’ (2016: 64). This is not to say that the adaptation of postfeminism’s sensibility to a local context and history is not informed by Queen’s middle-class positioning with ‘material, discursive, and imaginative capital to access and to buy into [postfeminism]’ (Dosekun, 2015: 966).

Queen is constructed as a heterosexual female spy who uses her sexuality to exploit men as well as to romantically attract them. Commenting on Sydney Bristow’s use of heterosexuality as a professional spy, Muñoz González (2018: 127) characterises Russian and other foreign spies as ‘sexually depraved and morally corrupt the moment they use sex as a tool to get information,’ while Bristow ‘would never cross the line that separates sex from her work.’ Resembling Bristow, Queen utilises her heterosexuality on assignment, but does not engage in sex to solicit information even though she flirts to accomplish her missions. Indeed, unlike male spies, Queen does not play the field or envision sex as a reward for her efforts, as typical in the James Bond films (Muñoz González, 2018). Instead, Queen is restricted to a monogamous heterosexual relationship with Shandu, participating in consensual sex several times over the series. And while she at times questions Shandu’s commitment to liberating Africa from corruption and neocolonialism, she maintains this romantic and conventional relationship as the moral center of the series. The heteronormativity established in Queen Sono that extends beyond Queen to include her friends, colleagues and even the Russian Gromova family serves as ‘a marker of postfeminism with other choices negated or excluded’ (Karam, 2018: 47). As an exclusive and limiting aesthetic, heteronormativity reinstates conservative and patriarchal ideals. Moreover, heteronormativity contains the threat of Queen’s feminine power by preserving her sexual availability and attractiveness to heterosexual men, and by restricting her to stereotypical feminine concerns of romance, marriage and domesticity. Although series one does not end with a marriage proposal, the heteronormativity of the series alludes to this outcome with Shandu. However, as a professional spy, it is possible that, like James Bond, Queen will maintain her single status, despite the heterosexual temptations, or continue a monogamous, yet not married, relationship with Shandu.

The conflictual relationships that Queen cultivates with her female colleagues perpetuate the stereotypical rivalry between women in the workplace. Addressing stereotypes of black women in novels and movies, bell hooks (2013: 48) states ‘despite women’s liberation, in the world of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, women must compete to be chosen as the embodiment of perfect womanhood and that such competition must be encouraged to continue so as to prevent bonds of solidarity between women across class and race.’ Although hooks writes specifically about political solidarity between white and black women, a similar dynamic can also exist between women of different classes, ethnicities and ages. In what might be characterised as a ‘cat fight,’ Miri, the second in command of SOG, accuses Queen of insubordination to which she responds ‘You know what? I’m not going to partake in this “pull a sister down in the workplace” crap!’ (1:1). Sid, the male director of SOG, intervenes, alluding to the women’s refusal to support each other. When Queen expresses skepticism that Miri can put a stop to Ekaterina’s arms dealings (1:5), the two women again engage in competition and defensiveness. Compensating for a lack of female collegial support, Queen develops supportive relationships with her male colleagues, like Fred, and Viljoen, a white SOG colleague who engages in an easy camaraderie with Queen. The contrast between Queen’s female professional relationships and those she enjoys with male colleagues highlights a postfeminist sensibility that prioritises individual choices (Gill, 2007) over ‘common bonds’ with female colleagues who can organise against exploitation in the workplace (hooks, 2013: 49).

To undermine the status quo constructed by the spy thriller genre and the postfeminist aesthetic contained in Queen Sono, Karam (2018: 52) argues that cultural texts ‘should be used as a means of addressing postcolonial and decolonial gender issues rather than simply embracing this colonial, Western, postfeminist aesthetic’. This textual analysis has begun this process by examining how the conventions of the spy thriller are both maintained and broadened to incorporate a female spy and the local context of (South) Africa. In addition, the analysis examines the elements of a transnational postfeminist sensibility that are infused in the series, while also highlighting how Queen Sono critically engages at times with its adaptation of these elements to the historical and geographical context.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated how Netflix has recently added ‘direct commissioning’ to its business strategies to attract culturally diverse content. The portal has also begun appointing executives with regional knowledge to contract with local production companies, shifting away from a centralised strategy of US executives commissioning content in regions outside of the US, utilising its viewer data to commission programming that meets ‘unserved and underserved content desires’ (Lotz, 2021: 18). In an interview with C21Media (2019), Kelly Luegenbiehl explains that viewers of Netflix desire something new – ‘concepts the world hadn’t seen before’ and ‘stories that haven’t been told before,’ and content that is not in their native language, providing motivation for commissioning more culturally diverse content. Skeptical of this transparent industry discourse, Lobato (2019: 128) remarks that Netflix also turned to producing original content because ‘securing licensing rights to popular content remains an issue for Netflix in virtually all countries.’

Regardless of what Netflix says about its motivations, commissioning culturally diverse content draws attention to how genres can be used to take advantage of diverse contexts and cultures. Queen Sono leverages the generic conventions of the spy thriller by exposing colonial legacies that continue to plague the continent, Russian threats of imperialism, and corruption by African governments and elites, justifying the need for an undercover (female) agent. Replacing the traditional white male spy, the series raises the threat of black women as protagonists and antagonists in the genre. To reduce this threat to white patriarchy, Queen is given a backstory of childhood trauma to explain her motivations and revenge, and her interior life is complicated with family and romantic expectations that are typically absent from male spy stories. Queen is compellingly portrayed as a strong woman in her role as an undercover spy in a male-dominated world. However, transnational postfeminist inflections lead to her hyperfeminisation that reduces her threat because she is so clearly a desirable female body. Importantly, Queen Sono also adapts postfeminist aesthetics to the context of Africa, portraying Queen as choosing technologies of performance from both black and white norms of beauty. As a black woman lead in a male-dominated genre, Queen is constructed as a heroic protagonist, empowered to protect her country and continent while simultaneously contained by her hypersexualisation. Such constraints are typical of transnational postfeminist media representations, suggesting that this series, while a ‘first’ African Netflix Original, may not be quite so original.