• Media concentration / Conglomerates / Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) – When a company owns multiple companies under it
• Vertical Integration – Own production, distribution and exhibition (cause the building is vertical)
• Horizontal Integration –
• Gatekeepers – filter and process info and workers
• Regulation / Deregulation – Rules to stop companies from creating monopolies too large
• Free market vs Monopolies & Mergers

David Hesmondhalgh

the distinctive organisational form of the cultural industries has considerable implications for the conditions under which symbolic creativity is carried out’ The Culture Industries (Sage, 2019, p.99) – organisations control the conditions of people

He argues that major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise chances of commercial success. In relation to online products, he argues that major IT companies now compete with the more traditional media conglomerates within the cultural sector.

Is a way of seeing world – characterized by RE-IMAGINING, PASTICHE, PARODY, COPY, BRICOLAGE

Often copies other things and is REFERENTIAL 

Parody vs. Pastiche

Pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist

Parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play

Intertextuality – self conscious inclusion of references to other texts

‘their preoccupation with visual style‘ (Shuker) – good examples of post-modern texts

Bricolage ‘involves the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237)

Surface and Style over Substance

‘in a postmodern world, surfaces and style become the most important defining features of the mass media and popular culture‘ (Strinati: 234)

Meaning and interpretation is obtuse, disguised, removed and difficult to apprehend – living in a post-truth world.

Context

In 1959, Hoggart notes the shift on ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46). Urry suggests that people don’t produce anything but only consume.

The focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

The loss of a Metanarrative

Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

Jean Baudrillard

He describes as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative

Simulacrum – simulations of reality

Hyperreality – the simulation is more real than reality.

Habermas

He traces the decline in the public sphere identified already in this process through a range of societal shifts:

• the increased globalisation of economic trade,
• the transformation of citizens into consumers
• the increase in digital communication technologies
• the dominance of a small economic elite over global economic, political and cultural exchange

Concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION

Narrative of white supremacy created during slavery – 40,000 to 435,000 slaves in Alabama

ORIENTALISM

Edward Said

‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3) – culture sets normative values

‘the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism‘ Culture and Imperialism – The Orient (Asia) can’t tell their own stories and so only the white experience can be told about.

‘The East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.’ (Barry, 2017:195) – portray aspects that Westerners do not want for themselves such as cruelty and sensuality.

‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238)

The Orient could not represent themselves – fixed narrative

Jacques Lacan – Theory of the ‘Other’

Mirror stage – can’t see ourselves as a whole and use a reflection to understand who we are/ are not

The West tries to work out the ‘Other’ (East) but also the East are tries to work out the West – duality

Louis Althusser – ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

Ideological state apparatus (ISA) is a concept where societal structures such as education and cultures but also family, religion are used to make people believe something by the state.

We are socially constructed by ‘the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’,’ (2014:245).

‘Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing.

Frantz Fanon – The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ (McLeod 2000:20)

In the chapter ‘On National Culture’ (pp;168-178) Fanon presents three phases of action ‘which traces the work of native writers’:

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46) – reclaim past
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’ – erode colonialist ideology
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

How culture is not fixed and how culture changes with ideas and actions such as N.W.A disobeying police orders to play their music.

Power relations = hegemonic struggle through culture.

Paul Gilroy (W.E.B. Dubois) – Double Consciousness

Multiple identities (hybridisation) such as being black and British etc.

Feminist usually links with Sexism

This operates at an institutional level (making films about women by women is hard) in positions of power

Also, a personal level, such as Weinstein making women sleep with him to produce their film etc.

1st Wave Feminism – Suffragettes in mid 1800’s – wanted vote

2nd Wave Feminism – 1970’s – the Women’s Liberation Movement – exposing mechanisms of patriarchy (Barry 2017) and conscious raising (Wandor 1981)

Laura Mulvey

‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ – about the male gaze – objectifying women in films. Imbalance of active male and passive female.

Based on Freud’s ideas of scopophilia (pleasure of looking) and voyeurism (sexual pleasure gained in looking). Also, fetishism (parts of female body that are cut up to look out such as legs).

Also draws on Jaques Lacan, children form a consciousness throughout childhood. The ‘mirror stage’ where a child understands they are a person and will never know our self but just a reflection – the Other.

Sut Jhally

Draws a connection between pornography and conventions of the music video.

Modern Feminism

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism coined by Naomi Wolf – Early 1990’s – rebellion of younger women to older feminists due to a ‘sex negative’ approach. Also, a larger scale of race, sex and gender.

‘They are powerful owners of their own sexuality’ Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50)

4th Wave Feminism – staying connected, sharing and developing new perspectives such as #MeToo and the Free the Nipple campaign

Intersectionality – Queer Theory

Judith Butler

‘Gender as performance’ –

Van Zoonen

Bell Hook

‘Power relationships between black and white women’.

Ideas of Intersectionality intersect with other concepts, ideas and approaches.

Based on Structuralism – narratives have things in common and have structure.

Narratives are about time and space – usually linear and sequential. Structured around a theme.

Aristotle said that ‘a whole must have a beginning, a middle and a end’

Story – associated with themes and meaning – mise-en-scene etc.

Plot – how the things are arranged – the order

Theorists:

Todorov – Tripartite structure – Equilibrium leads to Disruption then a new Equilibrium – somebody is murdered and then I am on my own – blood on me at start and end.

Levi-Strauss – Binary Oppositions – Good vs Bad etc. – Loneliness vs Friendship

Propp – Character Types – Stock characters such as the hero who saves the day.

Chatman – Satellites and Kernel – Satellites are developments (non-essentials) and Kernels (essential elements such as characters)

Pastiche – an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.

Bricolage – a collection or collage of different media text which forms one text

Intertextuality – the relationship between texts, especially literary ones

Implosion – when people begin to believe the simulation due to media

Cultural appropriation – the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society

Parody – work that imitates another work with irony

Metanarrative – when their is more surface than substance

Hyperreality – the simulation is more real than reality

Simulacrum – simulation of reality

Conumerist Society – when people only consume rather than producing

Fragmentary Identities – increase of consumption

Reflexivity

I wanted to emphasise the loneliness by using very empty space with the people being at MS to XLS. I also used empty places to show that there is nobody else around.

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COLONIALISM– When a country is acquring control over another country, often occupying it with settlers.

POST COLONIALISM– studying something set in a colonized country or deals with post colnialism issues such as economic, political or cultural.

DIASPORA– the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland.

BAME– a UK term used to refer to the ethnic minority groups (black, asian etc)

DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (GILROY)– the internal conflict experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society.

CULTURAL ABSOLUTISM / RACIAL ESSENTIALISM– a belief in a genetic or biological essence that defines all members of a racial category

CULTURAL SYNCRETISM– When aspects of different cultures merge together to make something new and unique.

ORIENTALISM (SAID)– 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author developed the idea of “Orientalism” to define the West’s historically patronizing representations of “The East”

APPROPRIATION– (Cultural) is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture by members of another culture.

CULTURAL HEGEMONY– The domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class

THE PUBLIC SPHERE (HABERMAS)– he public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

THE ROLE OF PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING IN TERMS OF FAIR REPRESENTATION OF MINORITY GROUPS / INTERESTS– Public service broadcasting (PBS) can be biased when representing ethnic minority groups which causes society to create stereotypes and misunderstandings. Their role is to represent minorities correctly.

Games

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Consoles

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Other (Book and Competition)

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