Media students book

The Media
Student’s Book
The Media Student’s Book is a comprehensive introduction for students
of media studies. It covers all the key topics and provides a detailed, lively
and accessible guide to concepts and debates.
Now in its fifth edition, this bestselling textbook has been thoroughly
revised, reordered and updated, with many very recent examples and
expanded coverage of the most important issues currently facing media
studies. It is structured in three main parts, addressing key concepts,
debates, and research skills, methods and resources.
Individual chapters include: Approaching media texts • Narratives
• Genres and other classifications • Representations • Globalisation •
Ideologies and discourses • Media as business • ‘New media’ in a
‘new world’? • The future of television? • Regulation now • Debating
advertising, branding and celebrity • News and its futures • Documentary
and ‘reality’ debates • From ‘audience’ to ‘users’ • Research: skills and
methods.
Each chapter includes a range of examples to work with, sometimes
as short case studies. They are also supported by separate, longer case
studies which include: Slumdog Millionaire • Online access for film and music
• CSI and crime fiction • Let the Right One In and The Orphanage • Images of
migration • The Age of Stupid and climate change politics.
The authors are experienced in writing, researching and teaching across
different levels of undergraduate study, with an awareness of the needs of
students. The book is specially designed to be easy and stimulating to use,
with:
• Margin terms, definitions, photos, references (and even jokes), allied to
a comprehensive glossary
• Follow-up activities in ‘Explore’ boxes
• Suggestions for further reading and online research
• A supporting website with popular chapters from previous editions, extra
case studies and further resources for teaching and learning,
at www.mediastudentsbook.com
• References and examples from a rich range of media and media forms,
including advertising, cinema, games, the internet, magazines,
newspapers, photography, radio and television.
Gill Branston is Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Journalism,
Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.
Roy Stafford is a freelance lecturer, writer and examiner in media
education and training.

Praise for this new edition
‘This book does precisely what you want a textbook to do. It brings students to a wide range of concepts, issues and
debates in media studies and sets them within critical, yet accessible, contexts. Through a guided and fully illustrated
tour of textual, political, economic, social, technological and regulatory concerns, the reader is encouraged to grasp
the fundamentals of the field. It is littered with both contemporary and classic examples, links to online resources
and probing questions to both cement understanding and challenge assumptions. It is effortless to read and should
be the bread and butter of every media student’s diet.’ Natalie Fenton, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

‘The fifth edition of The Media Student’s Book is the best textbook on the media available on the planet today. It is an
invaluable resource not just for students, but also for scholars of media and cultural studies. Beautifully produced,
with full-colour images, informative sidebars and information boxes working in tandem with Gill Branston and Roy
Stafford’s engaging text, the new edition addresses every and any topic in media studies today: documentaries, new
media, globalization, advertising, news, and media regulation. With a key chapter on research methods and
innumerable ideas for activities, assignments and projects, this book will find a home in media studies courses
everywhere.’ Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada

‘A terrific new edition, a re-write which takes on the challenges of Web 2.0 and uses it to explore and analyse the
complexity of media production and use. A brilliant introduction to media studies with a range of accessible and
up-to-date examples and student exercises which are thought-provoking and engaging. The re-design presents the
material vividly and the cross-referencing to the companion website makes this a superb resource. Case studies
provide an excellent basis for course activity while the clear advice on research methods and references is invaluable
support for project work. The editors are experienced teachers and it shows.
Branston and Stafford’s enthusiasm for a wide range of media is infectious but they don’t shy away from tricky
issues like media ownership, regulation and environmental impact. In such a fast-moving world, updating this classic
textbook was an almost impossible task; to do it so well is a tremendous achievement.’ Christine Geraghty, University
of Glasgow, UK

‘Branston and Stafford still offer the best, one-stop resource for media studies with an incredible range of material
and contemporary case studies presented in a conversational style. The book links itself to the broader mediasphere
through the archiving of additional material online and references sending students to YouTube clips and short films,
encouraging students to be active participants in the process of learning about media rather than simply passive
readers of the text.
Through the expansive coverage, information distilled and ideas on display, The Media Student’s Book will remain
a valuable resource for students throughout their studies, as well as for many academics and those involved in the
analysis and creation of media more generally.’ Jason Bainbridge, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

The Media
Student’s Book
Fifth Edition
GILL BRANSTON
with
ROY STAFFORD

First published 1996
by Routledge
Second edition first published 1999
Third edition first published 2003
Fourth edition first published 2006
This fifth edition first published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© 1996, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2010 Gill Branston and Roy Stafford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
Branston, Gill.
The media student’s book / Gill Branston with Roy Stafford. – 5th ed.
p. cm.
1. Mass media. I. Stafford, Roy. II. Title.
P90.B6764 2010
302.23–dc22
2009049055

ISBN 0-203-85064-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–55841–7 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–55842–5 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–85064–5 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–55841–9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–55842–6 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–85064–0 (ebk)

Praise for previous editions

Fourth edition
‘The best introduction I know to media studies with an extraordinary range of examples
and highly effective suggestions for student activity. Brilliantly updated, making great use
of web resources, the new sections . . . show how cleverly the authors take the pulse
of media culture.’
Christine Geraghty, University of Glasgow, UK

Third edition
‘Brilliantly conceived and executed, this is simply the best introduction to media studies
we have.’
Toby Miller, University of California at Riverside, USA

‘What is by now evident … is the authors’ exceptional genius at modernising their text,
examples and case studies... As a set text, this is now in a class of its own.’
David Lusted, Southampton Solent University, UK

Second edition
‘A book which no college or first year undergraduate student of media studies can afford
to ignore . . . indispensable.’
Andrew Beck, Coventry University, UK

‘Finally! A textbook especially designed for a critical introductory course in media studies
. . . It is the perfect introduction to complex concepts and the authors do a wonderful
job of explaining key critical theories in terms accessible to undergraduate students. I
am a passionate fan of this book.’
Clemencia Rodriguez, University of Texas, San Antonio, USA

First edition
‘Imaginative, accessible, comprehensive and shrewd – all textbooks should be like this.
No student could read it without coming away thoroughly prepared for the pleasures,
pitfalls and challenges of media studies, and no teacher in the field could fail to find it a
superb and timely source of ideas.’
Andy Medhurst, University of Sussex, UK

‘An exemplary textbook for media studies . . . they write in a lively, engaging style . . .
they offer a strong sense of argument, debating the ideas of referenced authorities by
asserting their own sense of where their positions lie . . . They deal with the widest
imaginable, exhaustive and enviable range of references . . . they are not frightened to
explore the most difficult theories and they do so with enviable explanatory skill,
constant references and exemplification . . . An extraordinary feat of writing for an
audience at this educational level. I’ve no doubt future publications will be judged by the
standard it sets.’
David Lusted, English and Media Magazine

Guided tour
Part I Key Concepts provides an excellent toolbox of analytical approaches to indispensible terms and
aspects of media analysis such as semiotics, narrative, representation, genre and discourse.
Part II Debates provides a comprehensive overview of current major media debates, many involving digital
and social media, as well as approaches to teaching them.
Part III, with its dedicated chapter Research: Skills and methods, provides you with useful guidelines, from
questions of approaching theory and individual research methods to the key issues of the reliability of internet
sources and plagiarism.
M

title pages
Illustrated title pages for the three main parts of the textbook clearly outline the chapters
and stand-alone case studies for ease of location.

Part II

Debates
8 ‘New media’ in a ‘new world’? 239

12 News and its futures 334

9 The future of television 261

13 Documentary and ‘reality’
debates 358

10 Regulation now 285
11 Debating advertising, branding and
celebrity 309

14 From ‘audience’ to ‘users’ 379
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8 ‘New media’ in
a ‘new world’?
THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Ownership and control
Figure 7.1 The iPad – on the way
to becoming the all-in-one
portable media player?

An internet application (Wordle) stylises our use of some key terms in these chapters.
Q: Which key term(s) do you think are missing, or wrongly sized here?
Q: How big would you make them?

yellow boxes
Key concepts, biographies of major thinkers,
discussion points, useful terms and worked
examples offer clarity and further understanding.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

‘Scripts’ and performances

‘The pink cotton T-shirt’s
lettering reads: “So many
boys, so little time.” . . . But
. . . this T-shirt is a “5–6
years” size . . . What about
the thong for 7 year olds . . .
or the padded bra for a 9year old?’ (Christina
Odone, ‘Sexy Kids’, New
Statesman, 15 July 2002). See
http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk.

Whatever approach we take to current gender imagery, it appears hugely

seems unlikely, but the ecological questions about which industries
will survive, which will mutate and how the dynamics of the media
environment can be managed, require us to consider a whole range of
concepts taken from economics and business studies, sociology and
politics, management studies and psychology.

The MSB5 website
provides up-to-date
information on
current media organisations
and some historical material
to provide context.

• graphic tabloid reports of rape are placed alongside adverts for
lap-dancing clubs and phone sex lines;
• the ages at which young girls are addressed as sexual beings, who need to
be aware of their appearance and dress, seems to get ever younger;

‘Newness’ and histories

•

New media, old metaphors

•

Academic approaches

•

•

Openness, collaboration and
‘users’

‘New media’, vanishing
resources

•

Conclusion

•

‘The long tail’

•

References and further reading

•

Digital copies and the
‘enclosure’ of information

Most of you, reading this, will have grown up in a digital and online
world – or at least, experienced the world that way since the time you
began to access media products and services for yourself. You are called
‘the internet generation’ or ‘digital natives’ because you are presumed to
be unprecedentedly familiar with such forms, and to expect an ‘anytime
anywhere’ media, always ‘on’ (however far that may be from your
experience). Some recent theories have suggested that Web 2.0, as this
degree of interactivity is called, requires completely new theories of
media. We’re not exactly arguing for this, but equally we refuse some
easy media panics suggesting that ‘new media’ are the end of civilisation
as we know it.
We want to explore what is exciting and truly new about interactivity,
as well as what existing theories can best be adapted to understand it,
and to celebrate its enjoyments and potential, as well as its ‘darker side’.
This has to include questions about the many different ways in which
gadgets ‘work’ for us – as enablers of sociability; as training media (some
games); as fashion accessories; as parts of domestic arrangements. The
many uses of such media involve fears and hopes for broadly cultural
developments, as ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘new media’ shape the relations of
public/private, work/non-work, home/outside-home spaces and
activities.
The term ‘postmodernism’, emerging in the 1980s, can in retrospect
be seen as an attempt to get to grips with changes we can now begin to
grasp as materially rooted technological change within capitalist systems.

On ‘digital natives’ myths and
issues, see the link to Moby
What?! on PBS’s Digital
Nation section:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
pages/frontline/digitalnation/
learning/literacy/moby-what?.

Figure 8.1 Arguably mobile
phones are often put to ancient
purposes – weaving social
connections, arrangements, gossip.
But social networking sites can
shape a quite new sense of privacy,
as they report rows and intimacies.
Q: What do you tell your mother
(or son) if s/he wants to be your
‘friend’ on Facebook?

Ownership and control
Political economy was the
original term from the early
nineteenth century for what
we now think of as
‘economics’. Political
economists were interested
in who owned land, labour
and capital and what the
political consequences of
their actions in using these
resources might be.

contradictory. As Ros Gill (2006) suggests:
• ‘confident’ expressions of ‘girl power’ (pole dancing?) are displayed
alongside reports of ‘epidemic’ levels of anorexia and body dysmorphia;

The ecology metaphor approach also has its critics who argue that a more
adequate image would be one of capitalist markets. Words like ‘landscape’
and ‘ecology’ are argued to perform a ‘softening’ function compared with
more commercially based ones.

•

206

Questions about public/private ownership and control have always been
paramount for media theorists from a political economy background.
They have been concerned about the possibility that concentrated
ownership of media companies by small groups of ‘major players’ or
control by government agencies could have a detrimental effect on the
range of goods and services available to users.
This fear stems from the economics of monopoly supply (or more
correctly, oligopoly supply – the control of a market by a few large
organisations). By the early 2000s it seemed that the free-market
capitalists who successfully lobbied to loosen regulatory controls and

239

chapter menus
A summary box indicates the main
areas covered by the chapter.

• the re-sexualisation of women’s bodies, often displayed in public space,
and in near-soft-porn forms, goes comparatively unremarked – except by
those from other, less ‘liberated’ cultures.
Many women feel that the balance of representation has tilted back,
towards sexist images and language, and that this is not ‘liberation’ but
‘rretro-sexism’. The ‘alibi’ use of irony (‘I was only joking. No sense of
humour?’); the ‘laddishness’ of music radio (including some female
presenters), or magazines like FHM; the use of women in traditionally ‘sex
object’ poses with ‘playful’ captions – all seem to point to this.
The term ‘post-feminism’ suggests that women are now ‘beyond’ the
need to struggle for gender equality: ‘postmodern’ playfulness or irony is
said to be the proper response to all that. Young women are said to take for
granted equal pay, contraception and the other freedoms struggled for by
earlier feminists. ‘Freedoms’ are now defined differently, in consumerist

Figure 4.6 A 2009 controversial
shot of 20-year-old model Lizzie
Miller, said to be ‘overweight’
because of the small roll of fat
round her middle. She had
hundreds of messages of support,
and of relief at seeing a ‘normal’
body in such contexts.

terms – ‘post-feminists love shopping/have plastic surgery/go binge drinking
like the men’. Meanwhile persistent inequalities of pay and job opportunities,
as well as women’s anxieties about their body shapes, are ignored.

EXPLORE 4.7
Q: Have you come across the term ‘post-feminism’? How adequate do you
find it to describe women’s experiences now? Might ‘retro-sexism’ be a
better term?
Q: How far can such images of women always be read ironically?
Q: Research and discuss the arguments around what has been called ‘the
pinkification’ of young girls’ dress, shops and culture in recent years. You
could start with www.pinkstinks.co.uk.

Figure 4.7 A relevant Leeds
postcard. Some would argue that
we are now living in
‘neopatriarchy’, in both Arab and
Western societies. Google the
term, and see if you agree.

118

explore boxes
A wide range of activities (some simple, others more complex) to encourage independent
study and to aid learning. These explorations will help you to answer the probing
questions that your media studies course will present you with.

M

CASE STUDY

Visual and aural signs
•

ANALYSING A POSTER, AND NOTES ON TWO
PHOTOS

•

VOICES AND SOUND SIGNIFIERS

•

AUDIO-VISUAL MOVING IMAGES

•

CONTENT ANALYSIS

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

This case study takes media images (still visual ones;

case studies
Stand-alone case studies provide in-depth
analysis of contemporary and key issues.
Shorter, embedded case studies (also
highlighted in green for ease of reference)
present a more condensed look at
fascinating topics in the context of individual
chapters.

moving audio-visual; and sound). It tries to give you
confidence in analysing them, using both qualitative
and quantitative approaches. We suggest other
elements that go into the textual ‘weave’, including
histories of production, and the sleuthing and discussion
which are often now the context for high-profile images.
Such discussions have become part of the meanings of

Figure 1.13 This poster
became the 2008 campaign
image for the first mixed
race, African-American
president of the United
States, Barack Obama.

many images for far larger audiences than in the past.
This shapes the kinds and number of connotations
they hold.

ANALYSING A POSTER, AND NOTES
ON TWO PHOTOS
Figure 1.12 photo, 27 April 2006 (Mannie Garcia/Press Association
(PA)) of then-Senator Barack Obama at a National Press
Association meeting on Darfur. Cited by Shephard Fairey as
the original for his poster (Figure 1.13) for the Obama 2008
presidential campaign, though this origin is debated (see Figure
1.14).

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Hollywood: the brand(s)

Figure 11.6 and Figure 11.7 Two front pages, published close to each other (June and
April 2009) and showing the endless stretch of celebrity speculation on the basis of little
evidence. ‘Cool’ blank expressions (if visible behind enormous sunglasses) allow almost any
caption to seem credible, however much it contradicts other coverage. The careful use of
words inside the magazine (‘it seems that’, ‘sources close to x suggest that . . .’) not only
avoid legal action but, again, can fuel readers’ enjoyable speculations. The photographing
of ‘doubles’ can also start some temporarily profitable rumours.

32

4 At the core of such star/celebrity material now is the use of paparazzi
photos. These go far beyond catching stars in compromising or simply
private moments. Magazines such as Heat and Closer patrol bodies and
behaviour, using photos which, in earlier times, would have been rejected.
This produces coverage of celebrities who are drunk or violent, or getting
out of a car and revealing some cellulite (female celebs these, of course,
and in shots often grotesquely magnified), or simply looking tired and

marginal notes
Key terms, theorists, questions, definitions,
jokes, and links to further online viewing,
reading and research are outlined here.
online resources
Links to the companion MSB5
website for new and updated
material. All the web links from
inside the book are also included
on the website for ease of use
(so there is no need to type them
out!).

•

Basics

•

•

Textual approaches

•

Samples

forms

•

Focus groups

•

Fear of ‘theory’

•

‘Ethnographic’ methods

•

Using the internet, and print

Methods

•

Footnote: Wikipedia

•

Qualitative and quantitative

•

References and further reading

This chapter will explore how you can best research the media, and
theories of media. You already have skills for ‘basic’ academic work such
as essays, which we will briefly recap and develop. Some of this chapter
may also help your preparations for practical projects – a short film, a
radio programme, or even ‘practice-related’ academic coursework.
Most people feel qualified to comment on many aspects of media. But
you have chosen to study and research them in more systematic ways.
These involve:
• Learning how to find and use the resources available in your college
(we’ll use ‘college’ as shorthand for ‘college or university’ here). We
can only give general guidance, and Web 2.0 has helped transform
many of the resources available. Any worthwhile course will offer
you specific help in using their libraries and their resources
(books, journals, online databases, DVDs, etc.). We have also here
recommended some excellent, more detailed guides to researching.
• Basics, such as how to reference correctly, and why this is important;
how not to be afraid of the word ‘theory’; why formulating your
‘question(s)’ and designing your research carefully is important,
and so on.
• Key methods for media research, many involving distinctions such as
qualitative and quantitative methods, already broached in Chapter 1.
Take a look at some of the recent articles listed in references, to gain a
sense of what you could aspire to in your writing. We hope the rest of the
book has already helped you with some of the skills and methods needed.

involve a kind of shame (see Rose 1998 for interesting discussion). This
seems especially perverse since, at the same time, in other sets of photos,
celebrities are visualised as models of bodily control and perfection, which
we are invited to envy, and to emulate, via consumption of the
appropriate products.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

References and further reading

•

Figure 12.9 Journalists often
encounter state violence.
See responses to the murder
of the Russian journalist Anna
Politkovskaya in 2007. (Photo from
a silent demonstration to protest
against her murder and see also
http://www.indexoncensorship.
org/.)

the decline in advertising revenue, much of it now available
free online. Advertising has previously funded all except either
part-privately financed news outlets (like Al Jazeera or The
Huffington Post) or public service news (such as the BBC’s).
These, and changes in the culture of audiences more widely (such as the
demands on attention in a media-saturated environment, and on time,
during people’s attempts to survive a recession), pose a key question:
who is going to pay for, and demand, serious reporting, on which many
news sources, ‘old’ and ‘new’, draw, and comment, and on which
democracies, and our activities within them as full citizens, depend?
There seems to be a crisis of authority or trust in news, and in forms
of authority more broadly, which is not limited to ‘tabloid’ forms. News,
especially at senior levels, is usually enmeshed with other forms of
power. There have been shocking recent examples of the failure of many
reporters to challenge official versions of events such as the decisions
to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, or to question bankers’ versions of
how sustainable was the ‘bubble’ of the US housing market (see http://
www.cjr.org). Equally there are examples of heroic journalism across
the world. In the UK recently journalists were able, by a mixture
of investigative and cheque book forms, to crack open a huge UK
Parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009. And some internet news
websites contributed in innovative ways to the election of Barack Obama.
We have tried to deconstruct, via an updated account of ‘news values’,
the grander claims to ‘objectivity’, or ‘being the first draft of history’,
sometimes made by journalism in the past. But we do not want to destroy
them as ideals. The aspiration for accuracy, for reliable accounts of the
social and political world, is fundamental both to good journalism and
to new democratic forms where quality debates and investigations on
behalf of all our futures can take place.

References and further reading
Allan, Stuart (2010) News Culture, third edition, Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Chambers, Deborah, Steiner, Linda, and Fleming, Carole (2004) Women
and Journalism, London: Routledge.
Cottle, Simon (2009) Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age,
London and New York: Open University Press.
Davies, Nick (2008) Flat Earth News, London: Chatto and Windus.
Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse, London: Arnold.
Fenton, Natalie (ed.) (2009) New Media, Old News: Journalism and
Democracy in the Digital Age, London: Sage.

See MSB5 website
for updated material
on production.
356

references and further reading
The book provides a wealth of
references, both to print and internet
sources. These are made doubly
accessible by the combination of
systematic further reading lists at the
end of each chapter and case study,
plus links to further material located in
the marginal notes and yellow boxes
within the text.

M

Glossary of key
terms

407

research: skills and methods
A dedicated chapter on research
methods, skills and references
will help you to prepare for
essays and dissertations.

of feeling evoked for readers are often argued to be sadistic, and even to

326

Radio also plays a part, and
it is suggested that local
news has slightly growing
audiences. See RAJAR
(http://www.rajar.co.uk), the
official radio audience
measurement site, and, as
before, http://www.amarc.
org/wccd/index.php on global
community media initiatives,
especially radio.

15 Research: skills
and methods

ordinary, or perhaps not quite recovered from a pregnancy. The structures

glossary
Key terms are highlighted in bold in
the textbook when first used, and are
collated here in a handy reference.
The glossary has been designed to be
used in conjunction with the index,
contents list, chapter menus and
MSB5 website to easily locate the
information you are after.

Listed below are some of the key terms we have used, with short
‘thumbnail’ definitions. Some common words are referenced only
when they have special meanings in media studies. Use this glossary in
conjunction with the index, contents list chapter menus and, of course,
the online resources on the MSB5 website, to find the material you want.
analogue a form of representation which works by registering a
physical change in a measuring agent (e.g. the silver nitrate on
photographic film which changes colour in response to light). See digital.
anchoring (1) written or spoken text (e.g. caption, voice-over) used to
control or select a reading of a visual image; (2) also a person (‘anchor’)
who introduces news items and often conducts interviews – both roles
which can try to secure interpretation of news, one way or another.
arbitrary signifiers term used in semiotics; signifiers with no
resemblance to the referent or the signified; see iconic, indexical and
symbolic.
authorship approach originating in film studies which places
emphasis on an individual author (usually the director) rather than the
collective and collaborative nature of production.
avatar a computer user’s computerised representation of her/himself,
as in Second Life or other online environment.
back catalogue library or archive material, mostly in the music
industry, but also films, where artists will expect to sell previous
recordings for many years through re-releases and simply keeping copies
‘in print’ (now as digital copies).
behaviourism/behaviourist movement in psychology which sees
human behaviour as something which can be moulded by punishment
and reward.
blog shortened form of ‘web log’: a web-based publication consisting
primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order).
Can often exist as coverage of news.

429

More praise for this new edition
‘This is an excellent core text for first year undergraduates, offering breadth, balance and a wealth of guidance
towards further reading and research.’ Christa van Raalte, Teesside University, UK

‘The fifth edition of The Media Student’s Book is the best edition yet. Its reorganized and revised contents make the
material more accessible and also provide valuable updated overviews of contemporary developments in both new
and longer-standing forms of media. One of the book’s major strengths is its combination of detailed up-to-date
accounts of contemporary media forms together with a deeper historical and theoretical perspective. The widespread
inclusion of discussions and case studies on media texts and genres which have emerged since the fourth edition also
ensures the book’s continuing ability to dialogue with media students and to provide a focused account of the
contemporary media landscape.’ Hilary Dannenberg, University of Trier, Germany

This book breaks down the discipline into concepts, then shows how each one links to others. It makes sense of the
huge interdisciplinary area of media studies by providing clear definitions of key concepts, illustrated with up-to-date
examples and a wealth of external links. The language is simple and direct without being patronising. As well as
allowing students to understand different approaches within media studies, this book will be a useful tool in essay
writing and other assessment projects. Perhaps most importantly, because of the range of examples used and its
thought-provoking style, I think after reading this, students will apply what they read and through that at least begin
to understand the media around them. I think both lecturers and students will find this interesting, stimulating and
very useful.’ Carole Fleming, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Student feedback
‘The new edition is great! It is accessible and easy to relate to. The use of normal everyday examples that a student
will have come across instead of academic (probably unseen) ones makes understanding difficult theories and
philosophies easy and straight-forward. It is like somebody your age is explaining it. I like how it acknowledges the
change in the way people learn, with a greater reliance on the internet and absorbs this into its design and layout.
The “Explore” sections are also really well put together as they make you aware of all the media things that saturate
your day-to-day life that you have grown to ignore or take for granted, and they make you take a step back and
critically analyse them.’ Charlotte Dean, media studies student at St Andrews University, UK

‘I think that the new edition is fantastic. It’s very comprehensive and the examples used are very relevant to the topics
discussed. I like the side information as it explains key concepts for readers who may not be aware of their meaning.
Also, the extra websites and exercises I feel will enhance learning and allow the student to interact more with the
topics covered. In the introduction, I like how readers can feedback to the authors directly by email. I think it displays
two-way media and new media culture very well.’ Anna Jordan, media studies student at Stirling University, UK

Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements

xv
xxv

Introduction

1

Part 1: Key concepts

7

1

2

Approaching media texts
Semiotic approaches
Structuralism, difference(s) and oppositions
Denotation and connotation
The social nature of signs
Debates
Content analysis
Conclusion
References and further reading

9
11
18
21
23
25
26
30
31

Case study: Visual and aural signs
Analysing a poster, and notes on two photos
Voices and sound signifiers
Audio-visual moving images
Content analysis
References and further reading

32
32
36
38
39
41

Narratives
General theories of narrative
Narration, story and plot
Narratives in different media
Long-running ‘open’ narratives
Conclusion
References and further reading

42
42
51
57
60
63
64

Case study: CSI: Miami and crime fiction
The classification ‘crime fiction’
Plot/story

66
66
68

CONTENTS

3

4

x

Applying Todorov
Applying Propp
Applying Barthes
Applying Lévi-Strauss
Narratives, institutions, ideologies
References and further reading

69
70
70
70
71
73

Genres and other classifications
Classifying films: Thelma and Louise (US 1991)
Repetition and difference
Case study: Formats and genres
Repertoires of elements
Status and genres 1: ‘escapism’, gender and verisimilitude
Status and genres 2: the cultural context
Formal classifications
Conclusion
References and further reading

74
76
77
80
83
86
88
93
95
96

Case study: Horror as popular art
The child in the horror film
Global and local audiences
Style and the Gothic: different repertoires
Authorship and promotion
Distribution strategies
Conclusion
References and further reading

98
98
99
101
103
104
105
105

Representations
‘Representation’ now
Stereotyping and ‘scripts’
Case study 1: US plantation stereotyping
Scripts and performances
Case study 2: Representations and gender
Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates
Comedy, fantasy and questions of representation
Historical and institutional processes
Conclusion
References and further reading

106
106
108
110
114
115
119
123
125
126
127

Case study: Images of migration
Discourses and stereotypes of ‘migration’ and other kinds of travel
News media

129
130
132

CONTENTS

5

6

The ‘grain of truth’ in stereotypes?
Varieties of media representations
Conclusion
References and further reading

133
134
137
137

Globalisation
Your experiences of globalisation
Global histories
Approaches to globalised media
Global–local flows
Global futures?
Conclusion
References and further reading

138
139
139
144
149
151
160
161

Case study: Slumdog Millionaire: Global film?
The background to a global hit
The production of the film
Distribution
The Bollywood connection
Controversies in reception
After the Oscar ceremonies . . .
Conclusion
References and further reading

163
163
165
166
167
167
170
171
171

Ideologies and discourses
‘Ideology’ and its histories: Marxist approaches
Post-Marxism
Identity politics and critical pluralism
Discourses
Lived cultures
Conclusion
References and further reading

172
172
180
182
185
189
191
192

Case study: The Age of Stupid and climate change politics
Context: images and discourses
The term ‘propaganda’
Textual approaches to the film
‘Cinema’ and its ‘everyday practices’
Conclusion
References and further reading

194
194
197
198
202
203
203

xi

CONTENTS

7

xii

Media as business
Studying business organisations
Ownership and control
The experience of conglomerates
New players in India and China
Public or private funding
Public and private in filmed entertainment
The new digital environment
Business models
Conclusion
References and further reading

204
205
206
208
212
215
218
219
223
226
227

Case study: Music and movies – digital and available
The challenge of copying
Piracy
Changing business models in the film industry
References and further reading

228
229
231
233
236

Part II: Debates

237

8

‘New media’ in a ‘new world’?
‘Newness’ and histories
Academic approaches
Openness, collaboration and ‘users’
‘The long tail’
Digital copies and the ‘enclosure’ of information
New media, old metaphors
‘New media’, vanishing resources
Conclusion
References and further reading

239
240
242
247
251
254
255
256
258
259

9

The future of television?
Ownership and control in the television industry
Paying for television
Business models for television broadcasting
Case study: HBO
Case study: Channel 4
Conclusion
References and further reading

261
263
265
271
279
281
283
284

CONTENTS

10 Regulation now
Politics and media economics
Regulation and ‘freedom’
Historical background
Changes in the ‘orthodoxy’ of economic policies and new models
Deregulation, liberalisation and media institutions
The contemporary regulatory environment
A ‘free market’ for classification, censorship and sex and violence?
The public gets the media it deserves?
‘Free choices’ and ‘free speech’?
Conclusion
References and further reading

285
288
289
291
293
296
298
302
303
304
307
308

11 Debating advertising, branding and celebrity
Advertising, marketing and branding
Debates
Histories
Hollywood and branding
Hollywood: the brand(s)
Case study: ‘Brangelina’
Citizenship and consumption
A note on ‘spin’
Conclusion
References and further reading

309
311
313
315
320
322
324
328
329
331
332

12 News and its futures
The importance of news, and views of ‘the public’
The construction of ‘news’
‘Impartiality’ and accuracy
‘News values’
Debates on the influence of news
Futures: ‘new’ news?
Conclusion
References and further reading

334
335
337
337
342
350
352
355
356

13 Documentary and ‘reality’ debates
Recent issues in documentary
Documentary and assumptions about ‘realism’ and truth
Verisimilitude and ‘performance’
‘Performance’ in documentaries
Ethics and documentary
Recent hybrids 1: ‘pranksters’

358
358
359
362
365
367
368

xiii

CONTENTS

Recent hybrids 2: ‘reality TV’
Recent hybrids 3: forms of ‘drama documentary’
Conclusion
References and further reading
14 From ‘audience’ to ‘users’
The effects model
The uses and gratifications model
From ‘effects’ to ‘influence’: factual forms
‘Cultural’ approaches
Re-mediating audiences
Discussion: hybrid forms and Mamma Mia!
Conclusion
References and further reading

379
382
388
389
393
394
399
401
402

Part III: Research methods and references

405

15 Research: skills and methods
Basics
Using the internet, and print forms
Fear of ‘theory’
Methods
Qualitative and quantitative
Textual approaches
Samples
Focus groups
‘Ethnographic’ methods
Footnote: Wikipedia
References and further reading

407
408
409
410
411
414
414
416
419
420
424
427

Glossary of key terms
Index

xiv

370
374
376
377

429
445

General theories of narrative

Illustrations
The images below have been reproduced with kind permission. Whilst
every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain
permission, this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions
brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.
0.1

0.2

British Library Chair ‘Sitting on History’ – Bill Woodrow,
Sitting on History, 1995. Bronze (100 3 107 3 300cm).
© the artist. Photo courtesy of Bill Woodrow.
Shark Attack. A composition of two photographs using
photo manipulation. Source: Anonymous.

Part title: Media scrum at Barcelona Football Club © Jordi Cotrina/
El Periodico. Courtesy of Jordi Cotrina.
1.1
The ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign launched at the outbreak
of the Second World War. © Imperial War Museum.
1.2
Rose image. Courtesy of Gill Branston.
1.3
Pictograms designed by Holmes Wood.
1.4
Ian Tomlinson, G20.
1.5
London Anti-War Rally, organised by CND, 2001.
© Toby Melville/PA Archive/Press Association Images.
1.6
Penélope Cruz in Broken Embraces/Los Abrazos Rotos
(Pedro Almodóvar, 2009). Courtesy of The Kobal
Collection/Universal International Pictures.
1.7
Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) in her last completed movie,
The Misfits, directed by John Huston, 1961. Photo by
John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images. From the Hulton
Archive Collection.
1.8
Police photo of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, 1966.
Photo by Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images.
Titanic (James Cameron, 1997) © Paramount Pictures/
1.9
20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection/Merie W.
Wallace.
Mad Men (AMC, 2009).
1.10
1.11
From How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff,
illustrated by Irving Geis. © 1954 and renewed © 1982

1
2

7
10
13
14
15
16

17

17
18

20
22

xv

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.12
1.13
1.14
1.15

1.16
1.17
1.18
1.19

1.20
2.1
2.2

2.3
2.4
2.5

2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
2.10
2.11

xvi

by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis. Used by permission
of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Senator Barack Obama and actor George Clooney, 2006.
© Mannie Garcia/AP/Press Association Images.
Hope Poster © 2008 Shepard Fairey/ObeyGiant.com.
Barack Obama © 2006 Mannie Garcia/AP/Press
Association Images.
Andy Warhol, Marilyn, 1967 © The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York/DACS, London 2009.
Day of the Heroic Guerrilla, October 8/Olivio Martinez.
Havana: OSPAAAL, 1978. © OSPAAAL.
Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe in Sharpe (ITV,
1993–2008).
The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007)
Universal Pictures.
Beyoncé performs for President Barack Obama and
first lady Michelle Obama, 2009. © Elise Amendola/AP/
Press Association Images.
National dailies. © New Statesman Ltd, 2004.
BBC weather map
Noora, a Superhero inspired by Islam, from The 99.org.
Courtesy of Teshkeel Media Group S.K.C. © 2009 All
rights reserved.
Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) Touchstone
Pictures.
Om Shanti Om (Farah Khan, 2007) Red Chillies
Entertainment/Eros Labs.
How Special Forces Could Swoop on Bin Laden.
Graphic by Sharon Leach and courtesy of Lawrence
Goldsmith and Nick Cole. © Mirror Syndication
International.
Desperate Housewives, Season 6 (ABC, 2009).
The narrative structure of Wuthering Heights shown
as a graph.
Final shot from Michael Jackson’s music video for
Thriller, released in 1984 by Epic Records.
The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)
Orion Pictures.
Polar bear cartoon © Benjamin Piggott.
The Photography Reader, edited by Liz Wells
© Routledge, 2002.

28
32
32
33

35
35
37
38

38
40
45

45
46
46

48
51
52
53
53
55
58

ILLUSTRATIONS

2.12
2.13
2.14
2.15
2.16
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7

3.8
3.9
3.10
3.11
3.12
3.13

3.14
3.15
3.16

4.1

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. © 1986 DC Comics.
All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
59
Playboy cover featuring Marge Simpson.
59
The Return of Sherlock Holmes in Collier’s Weekly,
1905.
67
Ocean Drive and South Beach, Miami. © Panoramic
Images.
71
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2009).
72
Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) MGM.
76
BBC Network Television Hours of Output by Genre,
2008/9.
80
Big Brother logo licensed by Channel 4.
80
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (20th Century Fox Television).
82
Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) Summit
Entertainment.
82
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)
United Artists.
83
Mills and Boon, The Sheik’s Love-Child. Cover Art
Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.
Cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin
Enterprises Limited. ® and ™ are trademarks owned
by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated
companies, used under licence.
84
Duplicity (Tony Gilroy, 2009) Universal Pictures.
85
Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming,
1940) MGM.
85
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007) Universal Pictures.
85
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) Universal Studios.
86
Director Kathryn Bigelow on the set of The Hurt Locker.
87
© Maple Pictures Corp. All rights reserved.
The Gospel According to St Matthew/Il Vangelo Secondo
Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964) Titanus Distribuzione
S.p.a.
93
El orfanato/The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona,
2007) Warner Bros.
99
Spanish promotional posters for El orfanato/The
102
Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007) Warner Bros.
Let the Right One In (Thomas Alfredson, 2008)
Magnolia Pictures/Sandrew Metronome/Momentum
Pictures.
103
Refraction image. Photography © Peter Cade. From the
Digital Vision Collection. Courtesy of Getty Images.
107

xvii

ILLUSTRATIONS

4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
4.8
4.9
4.10
4.11
4.12
4.13–16
5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.5
5.6
5.7
5.8

xviii

‘Mammy’ and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (Victor
Fleming, 1940) MGM.
Advertisement for Elmo Tickle Hands by Fisher Price.
Dick Bruna cartoon. © Mercis b.v 1978.
Men’s Fitness magazine. Reproduced with permission.
Lizzie Miller, as pictured in Glamour magazine
© Walter Chin/Marek & Assoc./trunkarchive.com.
Leeds Postcards, ‘Post Patriarchy’ © Christine
Hankinson/Leeds Postcards.
CBeebies Presenter, Cerrie Burnell © BBC. Courtesy
of BBC Photo Library.
Stephen Gately – Photo © 2009, Shirlaine Forrest/
Wire Image. Courtesy of Getty Images.
California Cornucopia. Courtesy of The Granger
Collection, New York/TopFoto.
Leeds Postcards, ‘Thick Paddies’ © Bob Starratt/Leeds
Postcards.
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud,
2007) Sony Pictures Classic.
In This World (Michael Winterbottom, 2002) Sundance/
BBC.
View of the Earth from space. © NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center. Image by Reto Stöckli. Enhancements by
Robert Simmon.
Objects in orbit around the Earth. AFP PHOTO/The
European Space Agency (ESA)/HO. Courtesy of Getty
Images.
The Eastern Telegraph Co. System showing the
undersea telegraph cabling. From ABC Universal
Commercial Electric Telegraphic Code, 5th edition, by
William Clauson Thue, 1901.
The Wonder Book of Children of All Nations, postcard,
Ward Lock Ltd/Acme Postcards. Cover painting by
Margaret Tarrant.
Prasad Imax cinema in Hyderabad, India, 2007.
© Mahesh Kumar A/AP Photo/Press Association Images.
Banksy, I Hate Mondays. © Pest Control Office, 2009.
Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2009 Report. Courtesy
of Interbrand.
Opening Ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, 2008.
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images. From the Getty
Images Sport Collection.

110
113
115
117
118
118
126
126
131
134
135
136

138

138

141

142
148
149
152

153

ILLUSTRATIONS

5.9
5.10
5.11

5.12
5.13
5.14
5.15

5.16
5.17
6.1
6.2

6.3

6.4
6.5

6.6

6.7
6.8

6.9
6.10

South Africa 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP™. © 2005 FIFA™.
Map showing global internet connections.
© TeleGeography www.telegeography.com.
FESPACO (Panafrican Film & Television Festival),
Burkina Faso, Africa, 2009. Photo © Georges Gobet/
AFP/Getty Images.
Migrant Surfers. Photograph © Martinez De Crioan/
EPA.
Coltan mining. Image © Mvemba Dizolele, Pulitzer
Center on Crisis Reporting.
Severn Road welcome sign. Courtesy of Gill Branston.
Jamal on the set of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
From Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008) Pathé
Pictures/Celador/Film 4.
Private security personnel stand in front of the poster
of Slumdog Millionaire, 2009. © EPA/PIYAL ADHIKARY.
Posters of Slumdog Crorepati, the Hindi version of
Slumdog Millionaire, 2009. © AP Photo/Ajit Solanki.
Creation (John Amiel, 2009) Icon Film/Newmarket
Film.
A poster depicting President Barack Obama as Heath
Ledger’s ‘Joker’ character from The Dark Knight.
Source: Anonymous.
Julia Roberts on location for Eat Pray Love (2009).
Photo by Elisabetta A. Villa/FilmMagic. Courtesy of
Getty Images.
‘Lost’. Street child, c. nineteenth century. © Barnardo’s.
Posy Simmond’s cartoon © Posy Simmonds by
permission of United Agents Ltd. (www.unitedagents.
co.uk) on behalf of the author.
Leeds Postcards, ‘Fish Fingers’ by Angela Martin.
Sponsored by the Civil and Public Servants Association
(CPSA), 1986. © Angela Martin/Leeds Postcards.
Banksy, Rickshaw. © Pest Control Office, 2009.
‘History Makes Poverty’ advertisement. Reproduced
with permission of Philosophy Football. © Hugh Tisdale
at www.philosophyfootball.com.
Kate Moss, on the cover of UK Vogue, September 2006.
© Condé Nast.
Second World War poster, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.
With thanks to Barter Books – home of the original
‘Keep Calm’ poster. www.barterbooks.co.uk.

154
155

156
157
159
160

164
167
169
173

174

175
181

183

183
184

188
189

189

xix

ILLUSTRATIONS

6.11
6.12

6.13
6.14
6.15
6.16
6.17
6.18
6.19

6.20

7.1
7.2

7.3
7.4

7.5

xx

VE Day in London, 8 May 1945. © Imperial War
Museum.
Toyota Prius Advert, ‘Solar’. Saatchi & Saatchi LA
Creative Credits: ECD: Mike McKay, CD: Andrew
Christou, CD: Ryan Jacobs, Art Director: Nick Luckett,
Copywriter: Michael Zulawinski, Account Director:
Marisstella Marinkovic, Freelance: Sean Farrell,
Simon Mainwaring and Tito Melega, Photographers:
Mark Holthusen, Vic Huber, Print Producer:
Cindy Rowe. Courtesy of Saatchi & Saatchi LA and
Toyota.
A polar bear on a tiny iceberg east of Edge Island.
© NÃS^ vra, Arne/Scanpix/Press Association Images.
Fallout® 3 © 2008 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax
Media company. All Rights Reserved.
The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004)
20th Century Fox.
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008) Walt Disney Pictures/
Pixar Animation Studios
An electric plant in southern Spain. Photograph
© Michael Melford.
Dig on for Victory Poster, Second World War. Artist:
Peter Fraser (INF 3/96) 1938–9.
Age of Stupid artwork featuring the Sydney Opera House.
From Age of Stupid (Franny Armstrong, 2009) Dog Woof
Pictures. © Martyn Pick/Spanner Films. Courtesy of
AgeofStupid.net
Pete Postlethwaite in Age of Stupid (Franny Armstrong,
2009) Dog Woof Pictures. © Karen Robinson/Spanner
Films. Courtesy of AgeofStupid.net.
The iPad. iPad is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.
Courtesy of Apple.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michael Gondry,
2004) © Focus Features/The Kobal Collection/
David Lee.
The London flagship of the Vue cinema chain.
Courtesy of Roy Stafford.
Filmed entertainment figures for 2008 and projected
for 2013. Source: UK Film Council Statistical Yearbook
2009.
A Mexican multiplex built by Cinépolis, a major
Latin-American chain.

190

195
195
196
196
196
197
198

199

200
206

207
211

214
215

ILLUSTRATIONS

7.6
7.7
7.8
7.9
7.10

7.11
7.12
7.13

The e-paper edition of Mail Today. © Mail Today /
The India Today Group.
Playing a console game. Courtesy of Jessica Wood.
The Metro newspaper.
An early industry campaign against copying.
Reproduced with permission.
Album and single sales in the UK, 1999–2008,
showing the shift to digital. BPI/Official Charts
Company.
A ‘demo’ page on The Pirate Bay website.
‘pop’ DVD kiosks at Piccadilly Station, Manchester, UK.
Courtesy of Roy Stafford.
Loveleen Tandan, co-director of Slumdog Millionaire,
arriving at the premiere in Mumbai, India, 2009.
© EPA/STR.

Part title: Wordle image. Courtesy of www.wordle.net.
8.1
Facebook logo is reflected in the eye of a girl. Photo
by Chris Jackson/Getty Images, 2009. © Guardian
News & Media Ltd 2009.
8.2
ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency
Network).
8.3
The White Rabbit, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland. Illustrated by Sir John
Tenniel (1820–1914). Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty
Images. From the Hulton Archive.
8.4
Norton Online Living Report, 2009, © Symantec.
Stuff magazine © Haymarket Magazines 2009.
8.5
8.6
Google as Devil image. © Daniel Mackie.
8.7
An undersea fibre optic cable, bringing broadband
internet connectivity to east Africa, 2009. © STRINGER/
AFP/Getty Images.
8.8
Samsung Pebble MP3 Flash Player. Courtesy of
Samsung.
8.9
Wikipedia Logo. © Wikipedia Foundation ®.
8.10
Amazon.co.uk warehouse, Milton Keynes.
© Bruno Vincent/Getty Images.
8.11
The internet as a super-distribution system, from
www.kk.org.
Fallout® 3 © 2008 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax
8.12
Media company. All Rights Reserved.
8.13
Stung Meanchey, the municipal waste dump in Phnom

215
221
225
229

230
231
233

234
237

239
240

243
244
246
246

247
250
250
252
254
256

xxi

ILLUSTRATIONS

8.14

9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
9.5
9.6
10.1
10.2
10.3

10.3 a
10.3 b
10.4
11.1
11.2
11.3
11.4
11.5
11.6
11.7
11.8

xxii

Penh, Cambodia. © Alessandro Vannucci/Demotix
Images.
Samsung as Chelsea sponsor. Frank Lampard of
Chelsea FC, 2009. Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Stringer/
Getty Images. From the Getty Images Sport Collection.
Anna Paquin and Rutina Wesley in True Blood
(HBO, 2009).
TV revenue sources. OFCOM, International
Communications Market: 4, Television, 2008.
Watching live football online. Courtesy of Matt Wood.
Granada Reports is one of ITV’s regional news
programmes. © ITV Granada, 2009.
November 2009 schedule of programming for HBO.
© HBO, 2009.
Red Riding 1980 (Revolution Studios, 2009).
Advertising in France is regulated by the ARPP.
Publisher: Joseph Besnainou.
A typical street market in Italy. Courtesy of
Gill Branston.
The websites of the broadcasting regulatory authorities
in Nigeria (www.nbc.gov.ng) and Jamaica
(www.broadcastingcommission.org).
© National Broadcasting Commission of Nigeria, 2007–9.
All Rights Reserved
© 2008 Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica.
All Rights Reserved.
BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time, BBC,
22 October 2009.
Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2002) Dreamworks/
20th Century Fox.
Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2009 Report. Courtesy
of Interbrand.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk TV advert. September 2007.
© Rex Features/Cadbury’s.
Interior of Debenhams. Courtesy of Gill Branston.
Advertisement for Tipalet cigarettes, 1969.
Brangelina, Grazia, 6 April 2009. © Bauer Media.
Reproduced with kind permission.
Brangelina, Hello, 2 June 2009. Reproduced with kind
permission of Hello magazine.
Britney Spears, 2007. © Kevork Djansezian/AP Photo/
Press Association Images.

257

258
262
265
270
276
279
282
287
295

299
299
299
306
310
312
315
317
322
326
326
327

ILLUSTRATIONS

11.9
11.10

11.11
12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4
12.5
12.6
12.7
12.8
12.9
13.1

13.2
13.3
13.4
13.5

13.6
14.1

Suffragette board game. Reproduced with kind
permission of Bonhams, the auction house.
A 16 foot high sculpture of a polar bear and cub passes
in front of the Houses of Parliament on the River
Thames in London in January 2009. Photo © Oli
Scarff/Getty Images.
Exxon image. © Greenpeace.
All the President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) Warner
Bros.
Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy
Central, 2009).
Al Jazeera website. www.aljazeera.net/english 2003–9 ©.
Cody Hoax, February 2005. Photo © Brady Miller/
Associated Press/Press Association Images.
Reuters Building, New York. Licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 3rd edition by Stanley
Cohen © Routledge, 2002.
Screengrab from the Today programme webcam.
BBC Radio 4.
A child whose body is covered in lesions. Photograph:
Issouf Sanogo/AFP. Courtesy of Getty Images.
Silent demonstration to protest about the murder of
Anna Politkovskaya. © Karri Ojanen.
Bicycle Thieves/Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio di Sica, 1948)
Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche/Arthur
Mayer and Joseph Burstyn.
The Zapruder film of the JFK assassination,
22 November 1963.
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) Paramount
Pictures.
Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore, 2009)
Overture Films/Paramount Vantage.
Sacha Baron Cohen as ‘Brüno’ at the 2009 MTV Movie
Awards. © Kevin Mazur/WireImage. Courtesy of Getty
Images.
Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009)
BBC Television/IFC Films/Pathé.
It Felt Like a Kiss, Punchdrunk, Adam Curtis, Damon
Albarn. Directed by Felix Barrett. Film by Adam Curtis.
Original music composed by Damon Albarn.
Commissioned by Manchester International Festival

329

330
331
338
338
341
343
343
346
348
354
356

360
364
368
369

370
375

xxiii

ILLUSTRATIONS

14.2

14.3
14.4

14.5
14.6
14.7
14.8

and the BBC. Produced by Manchester International
Festival and Punchdrunk. Courtesy of Punchdrunk.
A monument marking the fictional landing site at
Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, made famous in Orson
Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds.
Square-eyed baby, from the cover of G2, The Guardian,
14 October 2009. © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2009.
Two lovers at the Palace Theatre kissing in the front
row at the cinema, 1944. Original Artwork: Taken with
infrared negative. Photo © Weegee (Arthur Fellig)/
International Centre of Photography/Getty Images.
Premium Archive Collection.
Image of the bored TV consumer, reduced to their
‘zapping’ fingers. BBC.
Capture Wales logo. © 2002 BBC Cymru Wales.
Liverpool fans make their feelings known . . .
© Action Images/Michael Regan.
The cast and members of Abba at the premiere of the
movie version of the musical Mamma Mia! in Stockholm,
2008. © Mats Andersson/Scanpix/Press Association
Images.

Part title: Images courtesy of Cardiff School of Journalism, Media
and Cultural Studies (JOMEC), Cardiff University
15.1
Insight Gallery, courtesy of the National Media
Museum, Bradford.
15.2
The Reading Room at the BNF, Paris. Bibliothèque
nationale de France, salle ovale, site Richelieu.
Photo © Magali Corouge/BnF.
15.3
Sea Island survey diagram,
, first
written of by the Chinese mathematician Liu Hui
during the Three Kingdoms era (220–80 CE). 1726,
Liu Hui, Tu Shu Ji Cheng
15.4
Opinion polls cartoon. © www.CartoonStock.com.
15.5
Cartoon © Benjamin Piggott.
15.6
Margaret Mead. Reproduced by permission of the
American Anthropological Association. Not for sale or
further reproduction.
Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) United Artists.
15.7
15.8
Apple iPhone. iPhone is a registered trademark of
Apple Inc.
15.9
Wiki Wars – The Dark Side of Wikipedia. Courtesy of
Bodyspacesociety.eu.

xxiv

384

386
387

388
393
397
398

399

405
409

413

413
416
419

421
423
424
426

Acknowledgements
Thanks, for many different kinds of contribution, to Ralph Beliveau,
Duncan Bloy, Jean Bool, Paul Bowman, Alison Charles, Simon Cottle,
Cath Davies, Rian Evans, Bob Franklin, Jeremy Hawthorn, Val Hill,
Anne Hubbard, Renee Lertzman, Jo Littler, Daniel Meadows,
Glyn Mottershead, Paul Murschetz, Linda Pariser, Andres Schipani,
Salvatore Scifo, Gillian Swanson, Tom Tyler, Richard Walker, Claire
Wardle, Tana Wollen. From Roy, thanks to all the education staff and
projectionists at the National Media Museum, Bradford, Cornerhouse
Cinema, Manchester and other venues for help in understanding at least
one media business.
To the usual mob, love and thanks from Gill for support and laughs
through most stages of all of this: Lucy, Rob, Ruby and Lily BranstonSeago; Lauren, Alistair and Ben Bryan; and Alison and Paul O’Rourke.
From Roy to Marion, heartfelt thanks for all your support.
To Natalie Foster, to Sarah Mabley, to Aileen Storry and to Moira
Taylor (once more) many thanks, for patience, practicality and
enthusiasm when it was needed – which was often, during such a
complex production process. And for being generally a pleasure to work
with during the many hours spent on images and design, a special thanks
to Charlotte Wood.
Finally, and emphatically, yet again, none of this would have been
possible without the help and questions of the students, teachers,
researchers and media practitioners with whom we have worked over
the years.

xxv

Introduction
Previous editions of this book have always tried to work with the ways in
which media studies both
• relates very intimately to the sharpest contemporary cultural
pleasures, and
• draws on a range of sometimes difficult theories and approaches in
order to explore, debate and locate these experiences.
Writing this edition we’ve been even more aware of huge recent changes
in the media – and the other – worlds that we all navigate. But equally
we’re struck by the excitability and scale of recent claims made for media
technologies themselves, for their impact on the world of work and
business, and for the form which media studies has to take now because
of this. These are respectively sometimes called Web 2.0 and Media
Studies 2.0.

As well as the internet, the
impact of ‘9/11’ has reshaped
the world, and the uses of
internet technologies, both
for surveillance and for kinds
of protest. We argue that
awareness of such political
contexts is key for study of
media now.

Modern media
You have most likely grown up in environments saturated with media
experiences. In countries with reliable and widespread electricity
supplies (and even broadband), as well as the provision of basic needs,
including literacy, these experiences are interfused with everyday life
itself, especially through the internet. One theorist wrote, decades ago,
that ‘TV now escorts children across the globe even before they have
permission to cross the street’ (Meyrowitz 1985: 238). This seems even
truer today of global media which are ‘always on’ and instantaneous – for
some. Portable and interactive media like ‘mobiles’ or cell phones can
now keep children in touch with parents, and friends, and indeed the
world, as they cross the street.
The familiarity and embeddedness of media, their easy pleasures,
comforting habits and routines, as well as the terrors that they trade in,
and inflict, create problems for any textbook. Interactive media compete
for your attention. Colleges often have to forbid the use of mobile phones
in classes, and the internet has transformed the activities of researching
and writing at all levels.

Figure 0.1 Interactive global media
are a long way from the chained
books of early print forms, which
are here played with in a sculpture
at the British Library in Wetherby.
Our book explores some of the
links to, as well as the differences
from, this kind of print ‘media’.

1

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

You are living through very interesting times. And you probably know that the
saying ‘May you live in interesting times’ was an old Chinese curse.

Figure 0.2 Web 2.0 has capacities
for hoaxes, such as this, to be
globally distributed. CGI
(computer-generated images) can
construct the new voyage of the
cinematic Starship Enterprise, or a
visual character assassination of a
politician or celebrity.

For an outline of the Media
Studies 2.0 approach see
http://www.theory.org.uk/
mediastudies2.htm and for
discussion http://twopoint
zeroforum.blogspot.com/.

The name ‘Twitter’, like
‘Wikipedia’, signals the
informality of many new
media forms. The originators
‘wanted to capture . . . the
sensation that you’re buzzing
your friend’s pocket . . . we
. . . came across the word
“twitter” . . . “a short burst of
inconsequential information”
and “chirps from birds”
[which described] exactly
what the product was’.

2

Our students are often surprised, in diary work, at the amount of
media usage they discover they have made in an average week, from
the personal soundtrack of music on their iPods, to TV viewing, to
the hours that can vanish while surfing the internet and playing
computer games. They certainly know more than we do about the use
of some of these forms. We can’t hope to compete (in either written or
spoken appearances) with the vividness of the best educational TV
or blog, or the sheer pleasure of discovering, let alone producing, a clip
on YouTube,
or perhaps making a comment which is immediately circulated to global
millions via a newsblog, or fanblog, or via Twitter. You may have quite
sophisticated experience of interactive learning through computers, at
home and at college, and ‘smart’ ways of working, through trial-and-error
problem-solving, pattern recognition and strategic thinking, often honed
in computer games.
Indeed some would argue that books are now an outdated way of
‘delivering’ the study of media. Writing the book this time it became clear
that the design was always influenced by internet possibilities, especially
the potential of the marginal material to entice readers into extras and
by-ways to the main arguments. So we have reshaped the printed book to
give it a closer relationship to the expanded accompanying website. Most
of the production- and industry-related chapters in the last edition have
now been moved there, where information can easily be kept up to date,
along with other new material, and some popular case studies from
previous editions. But there are advantages to a book, such as portability,
independence from computer power sources, less eyestrain, and many
would argue general ease of use.
What can such a book, and its website, offer in an age of Web 2.0? The
so-called ‘Media Studies 2.0’ approach argues that you are empowered
users (not audiences) of media, much more familiar with Web 2.0 forms
than are your academic tutors, who simply ‘add on’ Web 2.0 material to
books and textbooks. These are said to be based in ‘broadcast’ approaches
(one to many), as are teaching methods such as lectures, rather than the
interactivity of the internet now, with its deliberately informal and even
frivolous-sounding names – ‘tweeting’ on ‘Twitter’ is apparently
especially irritating for some people.

INTRODUCTION

Our experience of students and teaching suggest that
a this is something of a caricature of good media studies teaching, now
and before Web 2.0;
b students do not always feel like ‘digital natives’, a rather patronising
term anyway for your assumed skills in the ways of interactive media.
And another term, ‘the digital generation’ manages to squash together
highly differentiated levels of skill and confidence, let alone age – are
all ‘young people’ from thirteen (or five) to eighteen (or twenty) likely
to have similar levels of digital skills and tastes?
c one of the reasons why students enrol on media courses is therefore to
explore broader frameworks for understanding and expansion of their
uses of media, and perhaps to help to shape them, through their own
productions and interventions;
d the celebration of the business and political potential of the internet is
often exaggerated. It fits with other ‘neoliberal’ pronouncements that
‘big power’ is gone, and we can all influence anything now, as ‘wise
crowds’, etc. Meantime the capacity to win attention, to be listened to as
well as to ‘have a voice’, is as unequally distributed as global incomes;
e just as neoliberal cheerleading makes it harder to object to global
inequalities, so it perhaps becomes difficult to state occasional
boredom with some Web 2.0 forms, or a sense that voices are not
being listened to, or perhaps that you’d simply like to know more
about using some media;
f ‘old’ approaches to different sets of power still produce valuable ways
of exploring media forms, for use in these times of unparalleled
inequalities, of several kinds, and of dangers, as well as opportunities.
Of course some of the founding theories originated several decades in
the past, and we usually indicate this and try to update them here. But
you will find it useful to know a little of the history of your chosen
area of study, and perhaps to appreciate why these approaches have
been important;
g ‘old’ and new combined can produce the most amazing campaigns,
discussions, films and so on. See Chapter 12’s account of the recent
Trafigura case, which combined use of Twitter, a liberal British
newspaper in print and internet forms, a principled MP, and a
rhetorical appeal to an eighteenth-century radical’s campaigning.
But enough of trying to summarise the book’s arguments!
We hope you enjoy using this edition of a book. It has fewer chapters
than the previous edition, but this has given us a chance to go into key
concepts and debates in more detail. As we mentioned before, these are
richly supplemented on the MSB5 website, along with other popular
material from previous editions (a narrative study of Psycho, science

See the thoughtful report
by Ranjana Das (2009),
‘Researching Youthful
Literacies’ at
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/dasr/
DAS_POLIS_Summer_
Report.pdf which gives voice,
and attention, to some young
people’s difficulties and
discontents with internet
usage.

Neoliberalism is a term
describing a socio-economic
combination of privatisation
and deregulation and an
accompanying ideological
celebration of ‘free trade’ and
‘free markets’.

3

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

A third of people know that
their communications devices
consume more power now
than they did two years ago.
But fewer than four in ten
consider the impact on the
environment when buying
devices. This is much lower
than for ‘white goods’, for
example, where more than
half said the environment was
a factor in their decision
(summarised from Ofcom
2008 Communications Market
Report).

‘Mind Blowing Speculations
about the Internet No. 569’:
previously it’s been argued
that ‘forgetting’ or ‘tuning
out’ was a human norm for
dealing with information flow,
making decisions, etc. But
Mayer-Schönberger (2009)
argues that the internet
‘remembers’ everything,
and this may give others,
perhaps long in the future,
informational power over
you.

4

fiction, Pulp Fiction, including a debate around the term ‘postmodernism’,
and a genre case study of the western), as well as brand new work (we’re
hoping to include a case study from New Zealand on the media
treatment of ‘swine flu’ there, for example).
This edition is still designed not as a course or syllabus guide, with
model essays, answers, learning outcomes and so on, but as, hopefully, a
trusted and non-patronising guide to what are still key conceptual areas.
Media studies is rich and exciting partly because it is interdisciplinary,
drawing on social sciences, literary and visual approaches, computer
studies, economics, communications theory of many kinds, cultural
studies and so on. We hope to help you understand and apply what can
sometimes feel like a jungle of theories, terms and approaches. Don’t be
surprised if you find things that aren’t on your syllabus. Dip into them
anyway – we hope you’ll find that they increase your understanding of
the key concepts (and they may well be required, or will be enriching for
the next module or course you take).
We’ve suggested a wide range of ‘EXPLORE’ activities, some simple,
others more complex. Most of these you can pursue on your own and
there are no ‘right answers’, though the chapter will point you to relevant
material for them. We hope they are enjoyable and worthwhile in their
own right. Think of The Media Student’s Book as a rather special toolbox.
The Visual Preface demonstrates these pedagogical features and online
resources, so you can familiarise yourselves with them before you start
to read.
We’ve also developed further material from previous editions. There
is an even greater emphasis on questions raised for media studies by
environmental politics, as well as updated work on the changing
business and other practices of media, the nature of ‘new media’, and
the latest impacts of globalisation and of celebrity-related media forms.
Newer debates, such as the moves to think of us always as ‘users’ rather
than as ‘audiences’, are also broached. And we have occasionally floated
metaphors of listening, which seem an interesting new way of thinking
about some media activities, rather than the more usual ‘giving people
voices’ emphasis, since voices only matter if those who can act on them
are listening. Along with that goes an interest in: who has the power to
remain ‘silent’, elusive, not having to answer or allow use of certain
material?
The two of us ‘combined’ have worked, over the years, in both further
and higher education, and in media education generally. We entered the
area because we enjoyed popular culture in many forms, and recognised
its cultural and even political importance and pleasures. We still feel that
media studies should be challenging and fun. Whatever your interest, in

INTRODUCTION

passing an exam or playing an informed part in the cultures you inhabit,
we hope you enjoy reading and working with the book. Do let us know,
by writing to the publishers about your ideas for improving it. Even
better, email us direct with your comments: [email protected]
and [email protected].

References and further reading
Das, Ranjana (2009) Researching Youthful Literacies: Concepts, Boundaries,
Questions, http://personal.lse.ac.uk/dasr/DAS_POLIS_Summer_
Report.pdf.
Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor (2009) Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the
Digital Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985) No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media
on Social Behaviour, New York: Oxford University Press.

5

Part I

Key concepts
1 Approaching media texts 9
Case study: Visual and aural signs 32

5 Globalisation 138
Case study: Slumdog Millionaire: global film? 163

2 Narratives 42
Case study: CSI: Miami and crime fiction 66

6 Ideologies and discourses 172
Case study: The Age of Stupid and climate
change politics 194

3 Genres and other classifications 74
Case study: Horror as popular art 98
4 Representations 106
Case study: Images of migration 129

Media scrum at Barcelona Football Club © Jordi Cotrina/El Periodico

7 Media as business 204
Case study: Music and movies – digital and
available 228

1 Approaching
media texts
•

Semiotic approaches

•

Debates

•

Structuralism, difference(s) and
oppositions

•

Content analysis

•

Conclusion

•

Denotation and connotation

•

References and further reading

•

The social nature of signs

The media are not so much ‘things’ as places which most of us inhabit,
which weave in and out of our lives. Their constant messages and
pleasures seem to flow around and through us, and they immerse most
of our waking lives. So there’s usually little problem with immediate
understanding or enjoyment of them. Yet precisely because of their
taken-for-grantedness, many people have seen it as important, and
enjoyable, to try to analyse the roles and consequences of this part of
everyday lives. And because most of us have learnt their ‘codes’ so
thoroughly, they can be hard to stand back from, to try to ‘unpick’.
In this chapter we focus broadly on two examples of the two main
approaches to media ‘texts’: qualitative and quantitative, looking at
semiotic and content analysis methods. As their names suggest, these
are broadly interested, respectively, in:
• exploring the qualities of individual texts, and
• registering what can be discovered by counting repeated patterns or
elements across groups or quantities of texts.
Some perceive an opposition between these approaches, and they are
indeed different. But they can fruitfully be used together, and each of
them is best used with an awareness of the other one as supplementing
some of its own weaknesses.
Note: You will probably need to spend some time on all this. The
terms you’ll be trying out are now part of the bloodstream of much media
study, and thus not explicitly used all the time, though they often
structure many media scholars’ work. Semiotic approaches (part of
qualitative methods) have been hugely qualified and debated in recent
years. Yet broadly semiotic approaches, with an awareness of how

9

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
Figure 1.1 A famous image from
the Second World War, urging
the British to convert their
gardens, flowerbeds, parks, etc. to
vegetable growing resource (see
The Age of Stupid case study). The
interesting thing for this chapter is
how few viewers perceive that
there is only one leg shown – it is
an ‘impossible’ image. But culturally
formed habits of perception
ignore this, perhaps because of the
focus on the verbal message, the
clouded skies, and the powerful
combination of all three.

Part of the ‘taken-forgrantedness’ of broadly
semiotic or constructionist
approaches is media
discussions of spin, or PR
(public relations). News
media often make minute
interpretation of signs,
debating what a celebrity’s
facial expression or a
politician’s choice of
phrasing ‘really’ signifies.
See Chapter 11.

10

meanings, images, etc. are ‘constructed’, are part not only of this subject
area, but also of mainstream media. This is especially true in comment
on fashion and politics. You may find you already know more about
semiotic approaches than you at first imagine.

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Semiotic approaches

EXPLORE 1.1

•
•

When you have read this chapter, look through a few magazines and
newspapers for discussion of fashions, politicians’ or celebrities’ dress, gestures
and even speeches.
How do such discussions relate to semiotic theories of ‘signifying practices’?

A note on the terms ‘text’ and ‘readers’
The word ‘text’ originally referred to sacred writings, such as the Bible, and
a written passage from them on which a sermon might be based. Then it
came to specify the ‘words on the page’ as in ‘the actual text’ of a speech –
or, more recently, of a ‘text message’. But for semiotic and structuralist
approaches, used in the study of media and culture, a text can be anything
which is to be investigated – a haircut, hip-hop lyrics, a dance, a film.
The term comes from the Latin word meaning ‘tissue’. Barthes
emphasised that narrative texts were not one thing, but a weaving together
of different strands and processes. Some of these are ‘internal’ to the story;
others make connections to its ‘outside’ or the rest of the real; some refer to
other texts in the process called ‘intertextuality’. This ‘weave’ approach
can be usefully applied to all texts. It is the very opposite of the original sense
of something with a single, sacred meaning which is to be carefully discovered.
Within semiotic analysis we, the audience, are called ‘readers’, partly as
a way of emphasising that we are dealing with something learnt rather than
‘natural’ and partly to indicate the degree of activity needed to make sense of
signs.

A major example of qualitative approaches seeking to relate texts to their
surrounding social orders has been semiotics (now less often called
‘semiology’, Saussure’s term). Content analysis, on the other hand, tries
to explore what seem to be patterns or omissions across many of these
‘texts’, and is a prime quantitative method.

Semiotic approaches
Media, especially news and factual media, have often been thought of as
kinds of conveyor belts of meaning between ‘the world’ and audiences,
producing images ‘about’ or ‘from’ this or that debate, event or place.

Roland Barthes (1915–80)
French literary theorist, critic
and philosopher who applied
semiotic analysis to cultural
and media forms, famously in
Mythologies (1972, originally
published 1957), a collection
of essays wittily working with
ads, wrestling, Greta Garbo’s
face and so on.

Intertextuality: the variety
of ways in which media and
other texts interact with each
other, rather than being
unique or distinct.

Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913) French linguist
who pioneered the semiotic
study of language as a system
of signs, organised in ‘codes’
and ‘structures’. The Russian
theorist Volosinov, however,
suggested the term ‘decoding’
tends to treat language as a
dead thing, rather than a
living and changing activity.

11

Semiotic approaches

The word ‘media’ comes
from the Latin word
‘medium’ meaning ‘middle’.
‘Media’ is the plural of this
term.

Semiotics is a theory of signs,
and how they work to
produce meanings, or the
study of how things come
to have significance. This
includes signs devised to
convey meanings (language,
badges) as well as ‘symptoms’
(as in ‘that’s the sign of swine
flu’).

You may find Daniel
Chandler’s glossary and
discussion of key media
studies terms useful here, at
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/
Documents/S4B/sem12.html.

Structuralism: an approach
to critical analysis which
emphasises universal
structures underlying the
surface differences and
apparent randomness of
cultures, stories, media texts,
etc.

12

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Sometimes this involves news, or the hidden secrets of celebrities.
But it has often been assumed that the task of such communication
is simply to tell ‘the truth’ about what it reports. Semiotics, however,
does not assume that the media work as simple channels of
communication, as ‘windows on the world’. Instead they are seen as
actually structuring the very realities which they seem to ‘describe’
or ‘stand in for’. This disturbs powerful notions of ‘a truth’ to the
complex worlds we inhabit which can be straightforwardly accessed
and ‘brought back’.
When the media were first seriously studied, in the late 1950s,
existing methods from literary, social science and art criticism
were routinely applied to them. Value was set on ‘good dialogue’,
‘convincing characters’, ‘truthfulness’ and ‘beautiful compositions’. As
well as comfortable assumptions about ‘truth’, high value was set on
‘individuality’ (usually of a very limited group of writers, artists). But it
soon became clear that simply to discuss a film or television programme
by such methods was not enough. People began to question the critical
terms used and to ask: ‘original’ or ‘truthful’ or ‘beautiful’ according to
what criteria? For whom? Experienced by whom?
At this same time semiotics and accompanying theories from
structuralism were brought into play. They asked radical questions
about how meanings are constructed in and by different languages and
cultures. These approaches tried to ‘hold off’ questions of the value
of different stories or images in order to explore the ways in which
meanings are constructed. Some, though not all, developed these
theories to insist that because meanings are constructed by humans,
they can be changed, in progressive ways, by them.
Semiotics is defined as the study of signs, or of the social production
of meanings and pleasures by sign systems, or the study of how things
come to have significance. In later versions this social aspect was
emphasised by calling such study ‘social semiotics’. It draws largely on
the work of the linguist Saussure, the logician Peirce and the literary
theorist Barthes.
Saussure argued that a sign consists of a physical signifier (gesture,
words on the page, music) and an immaterial signified (the idea
associated with this gesture, words, etc.). He was a linguist, and thus
mostly interested in language signs.
• First, Saussure argued that words, as verbal signifiers, have an
arbitrary relation to their signifieds. They are sometimes marks on
paper (R-O-S-E), sometimes sounds in the air (the spoken word ‘rose’).
There is nothing about actual roses which determines that the sound
‘rose’ or the equivalent marks on the page have to be used to name

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

them. Any pronounceable combination of letters could have been
originally decided on (as is clear if you know a language other than
English). Hence different languages have different words for ‘rose’.
One reason many people find semiotics difficult is that languages
have been learned over years, by individuals brought up in a
community of users of the same language. Many years ago, somehow,
‘rose’ was settled on as an agreed signifier among this one group of
language users.
• Second, a sign refers to something other than itself. This is called the
signified and it is important to grasp that it is a concept, not a real
thing in the world. Though it’s probably hard to separate the sound
of the word ‘rose’, when you hear it, from your concept of a rose,
semiotics emphasises that there is a distinction (see Peirce below).
Third,
semiotics emphasises that our perception of reality is itself
•
constructed and shaped by the words and signs we use, in various
social contexts. By having divided the world into imaginative
categories, rather than simply labelling it, the language we inherit
and use partly determines much of our sense of things, rather than
it being the other way round, with ‘the real’ determining things in a
simple way.
The most famous example of language giving imaginative access to
the real is through conceptions of snow. English mostly uses only a few
nouns – snow, slush, sleet – to differentiate snowy conditions. But the
Inuit (Eskimos), living in a much closer and more crucial relationship to
it, developed a language which made detailed distinctions between kinds
of snow – ‘light’, ‘soft’, ‘packed’, ‘waterlogged’, ‘shorefast’, ‘lying on
surface’, ‘drifting on a surface’ and so on. You may be able to think of
examples from your own knowledge of different languages of how they
‘divide up’ or shape real experiences differently (see Hall 1997).
Saussure, then, was mostly interested in language, arguing it was a
cultural creation rather than ‘natural’. Peirce took the argument further.
He suggested a third term, the referent, to emphasise that the ‘signified’
is itself a culturally shaped concept. The referent is what both the
signifier and the signified refer to: real roses, in all their different colours
and shapes, which inevitably differ from the single, rough and ready
concept any one of us conjures up when we see or hear the word. Peirce
also argued that there are three kinds of sign, symbol, icon and index,
depending on the relation between the sign and what it stands for. Signs
for which the relation is arbitrary (such as language) he called symbols.
There is no necessary connection between the word ‘rose’ and real-life
roses. Knowing other languages, where different words signify the same
real-world referents, usually makes this clear. Also counting as arbitrary

Semiotic approaches

Figure 1.2 This photo signifies
‘rose’, as does the printed word,
but in the case of the photo a
specific rose (here a yellow one)
has to be used – an iconic signifier.
The printed or spoken word ‘rose’,
however, as an arbitrary signifier,
allows you to imagine your own
signified ‘rose’.

Arguably, thanks to the island
climate, English has a rich set
of words related to rain. Can
you think of some? And of
other areas of the world
which have developed rich
vocabularies out of their
geographical location? Desert
cultures and camels perhaps?

Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839–1914) American
philosopher, logician and
scientist. Usually quoted in
semiotics for his distinctions
between different kinds of
sign – iconic, indexical,
arbitrary and symbolic – and
also for introducing the idea
of the referent to Saussure’s
two-fold ‘signifier–signified’
concept of the sign.

13

Semiotic approaches

Some students are confused
by a more common use for
the words ‘icon’ and ‘iconic’,
which are now widespread
terms for ‘hugely famous’.
This is a good example of the
changing connotations or
polysemy of a particular sign:
the word icon.

Go to www.portablefilm
festival.com and watch
Airport, a short film telling a
story entirely via motivated
signs from airports, with no
verbal signifiers.

14

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

signs would be the colours of traffic lights (why should amber signify ‘get
ready’?) or the design of many national flags (why red, white and blue?).
Iconic signs are those which resemble what they stand for, as in a
drawing or photo or film of a rose – or perhaps those little expressions
‘drawn’ on text and typed messages :-0). One additional feature of iconic
signifiers is that a picture of a rose always has to show a particular rose –
or dog, or cup. Unlike the word ‘rose’ or ‘dog’ or ‘cup’, as arbitrary signs.
Another term you will come across here is ‘motivated’, which simply
means there is some aspect of the signifier which corresponds to the
signified, as in airport signs.

Figure 1.3 Because of the number of people with different verbal languages using most airports,
there is a need for clear non-verbal signifying systems – Peirce would say for iconic or motivated
signs.

Finally, indexical signs are those in which there is a causal link
between the sign and that for which it stands. A runny nose is usually
the indexical sign of a cold; smoke is an indexical sign of fire; specialised
detectives look for indexical signs of a murder in their forensic
explorations. In practice of course these different kinds of signs are often
combined, especially if we take ‘language systems’ to include gesture,
clothing, architecture and so on. Barthes investigated some of these,
using semiotic approaches, in his book Mythologies (1957/1972). This
tried to relate visual codes to the broadly ideological connections of texts,
though Barthes used the less political term ‘myth’ for this order of
meaning.

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Semiotic approaches

Discussion points on evidence and construction
Celluloid film stock was argued by André Bazin (see Chapters 8 and 13) to
have a special ‘reality effect’ through its status as a kind of ‘trace off’ the real,
like a ‘death mask’ as he once put it. He meant that there had to have been
actual light falling on to celluloid for a photo or film shot to be made, hence
the ‘trace’ or direct connection to the real.

See http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY
for a remarkable scene in US
drama series Mad Men
(2007–) set in the 1960s in
the world of US advertising,
where a ‘pitch’ for a slide
projector pays powerful
tribute to the links between
memory, longing and
photographs.

EXPLORE 1.2

•

Can you jot down in what sense this could be argued to make celluloid
film shots both iconic and indexical signifiers?

Discussion: Viewers often assume that ‘blurring’ shows a photo or shot is
‘truthful-because-not-polished-looking’. This is partly because pieces of
photojournalism, including the kinds of shots taken by mobile phones at
demonstrations, are necessarily sometimes blurred because they are
occasionally snatched between the photographer avoiding injury, or even
saving their own life, and taking the footage. There’s an indexical as well as an
iconic link between the event and the photo, if you like.
Figure 1.4 A classic,
recent example of
an image ‘snatched’
and therefore not
ideally composed,
lit, clear, etc. –
Ian Tomlinson just
before his death at
the G20 London
demonstrations,
2009.

But this blur can be faked or constructed, as in several notorious (celluloid)
examples of ‘arranged’ war footage, or, more recently, in film and TV codes
such as the deliberately awkward, documentary ‘snatched’-looking filming of
ER or the Bourne series.

15

Semiotic approaches

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

How do we read ‘realist’ codes? What do we take as (indexical) evidence
that something ‘really’ happened? Digital media complicate this
question, since they are infinitely changeable and do not have to be a
‘trace off the real’. Games and SF films can create totally unreal but very
convincing worlds. Here’s a typical comment on cinema’s current digital
processes, from Dante Spinotti, cinematographer for Public Enemies
(US 2009): ‘You can go in and separate the layers, erase the grain, give
more sharpness to a character who happens to be on the corner of your
image.’
To some extent (and especially in an era when images can be faked
by computers) we have to rely on evidence from outside the photo, or
‘text’, to answer these questions of ‘realism’. For example, we rely on the
trustworthiness of the institution which produced and circulated it (see
Chapter 13 on documentary and ‘reality TV’).
Commutation is another term which has been loosely applied to
media. In verbal language it refers to the substitution of one element for
another, and the crucial change that can cause: ‘the ‘d’ in ‘dog’ if replaced
by ‘f’ to make ‘fog’ makes a whole change of meaning. Figure 1.6 is a
publicity still of the Spanish film star Penélope Cruz in Broken Embraces.
She is best known for her strong roles in the ‘arthouse’ films of Pedro
Almodóvar, as well as for her lustrous dark hair and eyelashes, used in
global advertising campaigns.

Figure 1.5 An eloquent kind of
evidence (both iconic and
indexical) of numbers on one of
the demonstrations against the
2001 US air strikes against
Afghanistan.
• It is constructed: the angle and
positioning of the camera,
and choice of lens enables
the huge scope of the image.
• But this construction was in
order to provide a kind of
evidence – of a visibly huge
demonstration. We could
almost say ‘definite evidence’
for institutional, as well as
textual, reasons. A digital fake
on this topic, with so much
other evidence, elsewhere, of
the size of the march, for the
front page of a reliable
newspaper, is highly unlikely.

16

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Semiotic approaches
Figure 1.6
Penélope Cruz in a
production still from
Broken Embraces
(Spain 2009).

Figure 1.7
Marilyn Monroe in
The Misfits (US 1962)

17

Structuralism, difference(s) and oppositions

Figure 1.8 Peroxide blonde
signifies differently in this 1966
police shot of accomplice to
child murder Myra Hindley
(1946–2002). The dark roots,
and brows, were used in the
‘Other-ing’ of Hindley as a
particularly ‘unnatural’ killer, owing
to her gender.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Several stars (e.g. Madonna) have played with the resonance of
Monroe’s glamour which was inextricably linked, in the 1950s, to the
new technology of peroxide dyeing of hair. This was usually used by
white female stars whose original hair colour was darker, as (indexically)
signified by brows, and often skin tone. It comes as a slight shock to see
the ‘Latin’ Cruz with this ‘glamorous’ hairstyle and colour, combined with
the ‘eyeball’ earrings, evoking Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain/Mexico/US 2006),
a hit fantasy/horror film by a Mexican director.
The image can be usefully discussed via the loose concept of
‘commutation’. The platinum blonde wig, perhaps styled to resemble
Monroe’s hair (figure 1.7) in The Misfits (US 1962), her last film, marks a
crucial difference between the two stars. The wig, and Cruz’s expression,
may evoke ‘Monroe: tragic and glamorous Hollywood star’, so different
in image to Cruz’s own independent, Latina image. It may simply evoke
‘showbiz glamour’ of a kind not associated with ‘arthouse’ cinema. The
white-blonde dyed hair has become much more widespread in such
contexts, and in everyday life.
You may have experiences related to it, as a signifier, especially if you
use it yourself.

EXPLORE 1.3

•

•
•
•

Look at the eight-minute film Oracion or Prayer for Marilyn Monroe (Cuba 1984);
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6pYZQBEHys. You may need to do this
several times as it is a Spanish-language film with a rich image track, and varied
connections between images and voice-over/soundtrack. It uses montage,
where contrasting signs/images/shots are put together to produce new, and
often surprising, sets of meaning. These are often political, but advertising also
frequently now uses montage.
How does Oracion use the sign ‘Monroe’? Take three shots and say how their
juxtaposition produces a surprising new set of associations for her image.
Is ‘commutation’ applicable?
Research who Ernesto Cardenal is. How, and why, does his poem work to try
to re-anchor (see p. 24) the star-related film clips of Monroe?

Structuralism, difference(s) and oppositions
So, semiotic theory argued that language and other signs, by which our
perceptions of the world are organised, work by means of differences.

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1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Structuralism, difference(s) and oppositions

Another good example of this process is colours. Some colour categories,
such as brown, do not exist in some cultures. Other cultures may have
several signs with which to divide ‘blue’. This is not because of faulty
eyesight, but because a particular culture has not named that part of the
spectrum, and thus, it is argued, that part is not perceived, because of
the power of naming.
Structuralism is a name for a set of ideas and positions which flowed
into parts of semiotics. These broadly emphasised two positions.
1 Firstly, important nineteeth-century thinkers argued that all human
social order is determined by large social or psychological structures
with their own irresistible logic, independent of human will or
intention. Freud and Marx began to interpret the social world in this
structured way. Freud argued that the human psyche (especially the
unconscious mind) was one such structure. It makes us act in ways
of which we’re not aware, but which are glimpsed in the meanings of
certain dreams, slips of the tongue and so on. Marx argued that
economic life, and particularly people’s relationship to the means
of production (do they own them, or do they work for the owners of
them?), was another, which shaped political sympathies and
dominant power structures. Within both models, and structuralism
more generally, there are often problems with thinking how change
occurs; how can people make a difference if such huge impersonal
structures actually determine everything?
2 Secondly, and later, structuralists argued that meanings can be
understood only within systematic structures and the differences or
distinctions which they generate. For example, structuralist
anthropology might study how a culture organises its rules on food as
a system:
• by rules of exclusion (the English see eating frogs and snails as a
barbaric French custom);
• by signifying oppositions (savoury and sweet courses are not eaten
together in most Western cuisine);
• by rules of association (steak and chips followed by ice cream is
OK; steak and ice cream followed by chips is not OK).
Only within such rules would particular combinations or menus be
valued, or seen as ‘wrong’, or as rebellious, or eccentric. Lévi-Strauss was
a structuralist anthropologist whose work greatly influenced semiotics.
He emphasised the importance of structuring oppositions in myth
systems and in language. These are sometimes called binary oppositions
because the qualities can be grouped into pairs of opposites, and they
produce key boundaries or differences within cultures, usually with
unequal value attached to one side of the pairing.

Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939) hugely
influential Austrian founder
of psychoanalysis, a theory
and practice of treating
neuroses. Theories of
‘normal’ unconscious mental
processes, revealed via
dreams, etc., have been
suggested from its
procedures.

Karl Marx (1818–83)
German philosopher,
economist and journalist,
analysing and seeking to
overthrow, by revolutionary
means, the emerging
industrial capitalist order of
nineteenth-century Europe.
See Chapter 6.

Claude Lévi-Strauss
(1908–2009) French
anthropologist (not the
inventor of the jeans). Most
active from the 1950s,
studying myths, totems and
kinship systems of tribal
cultures in North and South
America. One of his
Mythologiques volume titles,
translated as The Raw and the
Cooked (1964), gives a sense
of his work.

19

Structuralism, difference(s) and oppositions

Feminists, for example, have
argued that the ‘feminine’
side of such oppositions is
often the devalued one, while
it has been argued that
Native Americans are the
devalued part of such a set
of oppositions in many
westerns. See The
Western on the
MSB5 website.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Saussure applied this to the ways in which language produces
meanings, often through defining terms as being the opposite of other
terms: black/white; hot/cold; etc. We know that the word ‘man’, for
example, means different things in different contexts. It can be opposed
to ‘boy’ (‘act like a man not a boy’), or to ‘woman’, or to ‘god’, or even to
‘beast’ (‘are you a man or a mouse?’). So ‘woman’ is almost always
defined in relation to ‘man’, and ‘femininity’ is usually defined through
its perceived differences from ‘masculinity’.

Examples
Example 1 : The film Titanic (US 1997) Working with semiotic/
structuralist approaches involves first trying to see which elements in any
‘text’ seem to be in systematic opposition. For example, the narrative of
Titanic (US 1997) works partly by differences such as upper deck/lower deck;
upper class/lower class; American/European. These are worked through in
the signifiers of types of music, of degrees of formality, dance, dress, colours,
sets and so on.
Using structuralist emphases we might explore the extent to which
one side of a persistent opposition (or binary, as it’s sometimes called)
is always valued less than the other. In this case, the lively, egalitarian
‘lower-deck/lower-class’ passengers, represented by Jack/DiCaprio, are in
contrast to the upper classes on the upper decks, but are valued more highly
by the film’s narrative in terms of characterisations, attitudes, responses to
disaster and so on. This set of oppositions is part of why Rose/Winslet’s
development and decisions through the plot are given such weight. The
Figure 1.9 In addition to the
narrative oppositions embodied by
this frame, it works formally also
to oppose the danger of the rising
waters and the remnants of the
ship’s life via the composition,
which splits between the two. See
Rose (2001) on compositional and
other non-semiotic approaches to
visual media.

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1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Denotation and connotation

character is constructed as throwing in her lot with a more democratic future
through this system of difference.
Example 2 concerns advertising campaigns. In planning meetings there will
often be ‘brainstorming’ sessions where the valued qualities, which the
campaign workers want to have attributed to the product (or celebrity, or
campaign), are contrasted, in a classic list of binary oppositions, to qualities
which are ‘not-Levi’s’ or ‘not-Mercedes’.
Example 3 In news coverage of the ‘Middle East’ (an interesting verbal
signifier all on its own), there is often a binary constructed between ‘modern’
and ‘fundamentalist’. It came as a shock, to some, to have this binary cut across
by those who talked of Islamic and Christian fundamentalisms, in the George
W. Bush years. See Women Against Fundamentalism (www.womenagainst
fundamentalism.org.uk) for a lucid discussion of how this term (or sign) is used.

The structuralist emphasis on oppositions helps explain semiotics’
insistence that signs are fully understood only by reference to their
difference from other signs in their particular representing system or
code.
One final point: this ‘system’ often ignores the ways in which signs are
‘unstable’, they have relationships among themselves, histories, as well
as representing parts of the world. For example language is full of
unnoticed dead metaphors – ‘blind’ marking; factory ‘hands’; ‘windfall’
taxes – all severed from their original meanings, as language responds to
users’ use of it. Signs can be played with, they can ‘float free’ of meaning,
and this is often part of the pleasure of some texts. Words can rhyme or
be punned upon, often just for fun, as in limericks. Colours can be
echoed (or ‘rhymed’) across a music video, an ad or a film (as red is in
Don’t Look Now (UK 1973)). Early semiotic theorists came out of language
and literary studies, and focused on meaning. But we need to update
some of these theories by the sense that pleasures and fun, as well as
meanings, are produced by signs – including language.

The terms through which
geographical areas are
signified are often ‘dead’
metaphors. Thus the ‘Middle
East’ denotes an area which
is east of Europe, but not
so far east as other places.
‘Western’ has worked in
a similar way, though now
it has connotations of
‘progresss’, ‘modernity’: ‘the
West and the rest’. See
Bennett et al. 2005: 372–4).

Denotation and connotation
Signs, then, signify or name or denote different aspects of our
experience or of the world. The word ‘red’ denotes a certain part of the
colour spectrum, differentiated by language from other parts (such as
‘blue’ or ‘pink’) within what is, in fact, a continuous spectrum, with

21

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Denotation and connotation

colours merging into one another. But signs also connote, or link things.
They may link things by repeated association with broader cultural
concepts and values, as well as with meanings from personal history and
experience. Let’s explore this.

Examples
The word ‘red’ denotes or classifies one part of the colour spectrum. Broadly
(merging sometimes into pink, purple or orange) it denotes blood, fires,
sunsets, blushing complexions. This perhaps indicates why, in certain cultures,
the colour and the word have gathered connotations of fierceness, passion,
danger.
1 In Pretty Woman (US 1990) there is a scene where Vivien/Julia Roberts
wears a red, quite formal dress (after her multicoloured hooker’s gear in
the first scene, and before a black, more formal dress in a later scene). At
this point in the film it could plausibly be argued that the red dress signifies
or denotes a growing confidence and passion in her feelings for
Edward/Richard Gere. But ‘red’ does this, for readers familiar with the
codes, by several means:
• its ‘passionate’ or ‘heated’ associations;
• its deliberate difference from the colours of her other costumes in that
film;
• the cultural awareness of (competent) viewers that red is unlikely in
this film to denote ‘communism’ or ‘Manchester United’ or ‘danger’ –
as it might in other structures of meaning.

Figure 1.10 From title of Mad Men

22

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

The social nature of signs

2 A still from the title sequence of the US series Mad Men. This dealt
with the apparently glamorous world of Madison Avenue advertising
executives, their wives, secretaries and other women, in the 1960s. The
title sequence is centred on an animated version of what turns out to be
the central character, Don Draper, who walks slowly into, and then falls
from, high up in a New York skyscraper office. The use of stylised
animation (rather than film) means that the sequence’s strong if
ambiguous links with ‘9/11’ are ‘cooled’ or distanced. The sight of people
falling from the Towers was a terrible one, and at first only non-US
magazines and news published photos of it. This particular connotation,
or resonance, marked out Mad Men from the start as likely to be
controversial and unconventional in the connections it made. It also
deploys a certain kind of what is called ‘modality’, or relation to the real –
here, via animation rather than live action.
3 Green is now a hugely connotative colour because of its association with
environmental politics, sometimes simply called ‘green’ politics.
White is also coming to signify in related ways, especially for car and
computer ads (see Apple, Prius, Lexus ads). It draws on long Western
traditions of signifying ‘purity’.
Find adverts or other widely circulated images which seem to draw on
these, or other, kinds of colour connotation.

However, though these terms are useful for indicating the social
connections of signs, two criticisms can be made of them:
1 they suggest that the ‘connotations’ of any sign can be
comprehensively listed, whereas a sign may have wildly different
connotations for most people (depending on personal memories,
sub-cultural knowledge and so on);
2 the internet has vastly increased this meaning potential, so the
capacity for signs to have many attached values pretty much defies
analysis and ‘counting’. A broader cultural approach to the social
existence of signs is needed.

The social nature of signs
So signs, far from ‘naturally’ or simply ‘labelling’ the real world, are
socially constructed, and never as ‘natural’ as they seem. Semiotic
approaches rightly suggest there is no neat boundary between the real
and the imagined, indeed that they interpenetrate one another. In such
ways semiotics has been enormously useful in rethinking the key social

23

The social nature of signs

Obscure joke to test how
you’re doing so far: Umberto
Eco, semiotics professor,
once said, ‘I would still earn
my living as a semiotician
even if it was called
something else.’

24

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

activity of meaning-making. But semiotic and post-structuralist
emphases have often contributed to a crippling sense of powerlessness
in the face of modern political and social developments. Language and
representation have been emphasised as being only untrustworthy,
slippery, and their relationship to the rest of the real world consistently
downplayed.
It is worth emphasising the broad cultural or social agreement
(or even force) which is needed for meaning to be produced, and
reproduced, even though it remains arbitrary and slippery. Yes, we learn
to read signs in relation to wider systems of meaning, to which the term
‘codes’ is often given. But these have to be broadly shared, as well as
relying on ‘difference’. The choice of ‘green’ for the traffic sign meaning
‘GO’ is arbitrary, and could indeed be replaced by ‘pink’, but only if that
were the agreed colour for ‘GO’. We learn to associate words, and media
products, with each other, as well as to differentiate them.
Some post-structuralists argue that no shared meanings are possible
because everything is understood only through difference. But it’s also
important to note that meaningful differences (e.g. black/white)
differentiate things that also share certain qualities. Both ‘black’ and
‘white’ are parts of the colour spectrum, for example (see Andermahr
et al. 2000). Later in this book we use more political words, such as
‘ideologies’ and ‘discourses’, to discuss important struggles for meaning.
One of the dangers in using the word ‘code’ is that it can make
communication sound like a conspiracy on the part of the mysterious
‘encoders’. A couple of points to bear in mind:
a signs are not fixed, or stable, but always polysemic, or capable of
having several if not many meanings and associations. Control is
attempted over the ambiguity of visual images, especially for news
and advertising purposes, through the use of captions or voice-over
commentary. Semiotics calls this anchoring – an image drawn from
the way that an anchor tries to limit the movements of a boat or ship
in the sea. It’s less directly related to news ‘anchors’ (a newish
signified for that word), though it’s worth thinking of the power those
figures have to frame or secure interpretations of news stories in some
directions and not others, especially in the US;
b signs are struggled over by those who have something to gain from
anchoring, or re-anchoring, or resignifying them in particular ways.
Signification is never ‘secure’ or fixed: many struggles can take place
over signification, over how a sign is to be ‘officially’ or dominantly
read.

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

Debates

Examples

•
•

•

•

In the 1960s the centuries-old negative connotations of the word
‘black’ in US culture were challenged by the US Civil Rights movement
with the slogan ‘Black is Beautiful’.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), Indian political and spiritual
leader during his country’s struggle for independence from British
rule, was once asked what he thought of Western civilisation.
‘I think it would be a good idea,’ he said, neatly resignifying the
emphasis of the question to imply that Western civilisation did not
yet exist.
Fans will sometimes produce internet versions of favourite media
products (such as Lost or Dr Who) which are wildly different from
those officially circulated, and sometimes help shape the official
product.
Oppressed groups have often taken the derogatory verbal signs of
their oppression and turned them into defiant signs of identity: gays
began to call themselves ‘queer’ in the 1980s, for example.

Debates

•

•
•

•

A kind of scientific certainty is often implied by the tone and
vocabulary of some semioticians’ writing. ‘Code’, for example, with
its roots in signals technologies, often seems to imply a much more
traditional concept of communication. But how far can such slippery
matters as ‘interpretation’ and ‘meaning’ be objectively and
scientifically mapped? Better to say that ‘texts’ offer a meaning
potential, not a fixed ‘code’ to be cracked once you’ve learnt it, like
semaphore or traffic signs.
We’re now likely to have a more relaxed sense that ‘textual analysis
[is] an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that
might be made of [a] text’ (McKee 2001).
Semiotics’ heavy emphasis on ‘meaning’ ignores the pleasures and
irrational play possible with, and within, texts, and the often
mischievous misreadings of audiences, especially on the internet.
Though semiotics is a textual approach, whose domain is not audience
study, nevertheless it is striking how uninterested classic semiotic
theorists have been in the ways in which real users actually engage
with ‘texts’.
Semiotics uses an elaborate, even over-elaborate, terminology.
Sometimes this can be confusing or even unnecessary (see Rose 2001:
97–8 for helpful comments).

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Content analysis

•

The idea of binary oppositions can be a very useful way into texts. But
in assembling and numbering all the ‘white/black’ or ‘male /female’
oppositions in a text it can ignore ambivalences and shadings in texts,
and by extension the world outside them.
• Along with this, the huge emphasis on ‘difference’ tends to corrode
other, valuable concepts such as identification, or involvement, or
solidarity.
• The necessary social ‘agreement’ needed for signs to work means we
can never produce completely private languages of our own, however
characteristic our individual language use will always be, in blogs or
photos. To put it rather grandly, language (including media) is both
constructed afresh, and also inherited by people using it within
existing cultures.
Semiotic approaches spread partly through some vivid detailed readings
of individual images (Barthes 1972; Williamson 1978) which were
attractive to use in teaching and debate. But they raise questions about
the representativeness and replicability of its analyses. How
representative of ads in general are those chosen by Williamson, or
Barthes? Would someone else necessarily have come up with the same
conclusions? This is one place where quantitative analysis can be
usefully combined with qualitative or textual approaches.

Content analysis

Empirical: relying on
observed experience as
evidence. A controversial
term, often caricatured to
imply an approach opposed
to any kind of theory, and
said to rely on sense
experience of simplistic
‘quantity’ of information and
facts. ‘Positivist’ is sometimes
used to mean almost the
same.

26

This is a quantitative method, and as such does not offer the detailed
interpretations of individual texts of semiotic and other textual
approaches. They often look for ‘hidden’ meanings in texts, while
content analysis (hereafter called CA) is based on counting the manifest
or ‘open’, ‘apparent’ meanings in large numbers of texts. It tries to
discover repeated processes of representation that might help structure
beliefs and feelings. As such it offers ways to generalise and make a case
about representations from the gathering and analysing of empirical
evidence. Importantly it can sometimes affect policy and public opinion,
since it has the weight of numbers behind it.
For you, on a smaller scale, it can also be a good way of checking
out the ‘hunches’ which may be the starting point for your research
(see Chapter 15 for more detail). Like any analytical method, it has
drawbacks, and areas outside its scope, which we briefly outline.
CA is a major empirical method. It uses observable evidence or
experience as its material, and seeks to avoid bias as far as possible.
It works by counting the frequency of relevant elements in a clearly

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

defined sample of texts, and then analysing those frequencies (see Rose
2001: 56). You might want to explore, for example, how often the word
‘immigrant’ is used to mean the same as ‘asylum seeker’ in a sample of
newspapers. Content analysis (perhaps using LexisNexis or SPSS
software) could help you to do this. First, the selected quantities (of, say,
newspapers or ads) must be ‘coded’. This means a set of descriptive
categories or labels are attached to them, such as ‘headlines involving
the words “asylum seeker” ’. These should be unambiguous, such that
‘different researchers at different times using the same categories would
code the images in exactly the same way’ (Rose 2001: 62). This is meant
to make the process replicable.
It’s a useful method because, as one set of researchers into magazine
photos commented: ‘It does allow . . . discovery of patterns that are too
subtle to be visible on casual inspection and [also allows] protection
against an unconscious search through the magazine for only those
which confirm one’s sense of what the photos say or do’ (Lutz and
Collins in Rose 2001: 89). Closer textual interpretation of individual texts
is often needed at other stages of a research project, if there are enough
resources, to explore or confirm or supplement the apparent findings.
For example, counting will tell us whether one side in a conflict has been
interviewed many more times than its opponents. But the tempting
assumption is that this side has been advantaged. This needs to be
checked: the style of the interviews might be generally hostile or
sarcastic. Likewise the frequency with which words, or even systematic
oppositions of words, are used will not give you the tone of their usage,
or of their combination with photos, music, captions, for which textual
analysis is needed.

Content analysis

Replicability: the
unambiguous quality of a
research method, so that
‘different researchers at
different times using the same
categories would [interpret]
the images in exactly the
same way’ (Rose 2001: 62).
It cannot be absolutely
guaranteed, but it an
important research ideal. See
also Chapter 15.

EXPLORE 1.4

•
•
•
•
•
•

Conduct a simple content analysis research into TV car ads.
Count how many car ads are there on any one or more TV channels on Friday
or Saturday night between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. (when large male audiences are
assumed).
How many of these take place in deserted, remote country roads?
How many show gridlock, or traffic jams?
Use textual approaches to suggest what is the tone of these ads – openly
fantasising? Humorous, in ways which ‘magic away’ experiences of gridlock?
Or are they very serious about the product, signified as ‘hero’ or as ultra-cool?

27

Content analysis

Figure 1.11 The question ‘what’s
missing?’ is a key one when
compiling or considering statistical
data.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

An important area for the method can even be the systematic absence
of certain terms or topics in media discussions. Jay Katz (1999) reminds
us that many news items fail to give the gender of actors in particular
stories. By simply headlining ‘school killers’, news stories miss the
chance to discuss the naturalised link between masculinity and violent
behaviour. It is in fact overwhelmingly males who commit road rage
offences, or school shootings in the US. And often, in more harshly maledominated cultures, the overwhelmingly male presence in violent
demonstrations goes unremarked.
Content analysis is popular partly because numbers, unlike languages,
form a universal ‘currency’. Such analysis is seen as more ‘scientific’,
more full of ‘hard facts’, than other approaches. Though this is only
partly true of CA, it does, as a result, operate as a powerful, often
well-funded model of research into audiences.

Example: ‘Violence and the media’
The ‘numbers game’ here is
notoriously unreliable. Rape
statistics are shaped by the
latest changes in definition of
rape, in how far women are
encouraged to report the
crimes and so on. See also
the excellent BBC4
programme More or Less
(website or podcast) on
general problems of statistical
accuracy and clear current
examples.

Many accounts of ‘stranger
danger’ ignore the fact that
‘the home’ is the location of
most violence and child
abuse. Instead attention is
focused on ‘monster-ing’
extreme cases (e.g. Josef
Fritzl). The harder questions
of unemployment, alcohol
and other drug abuse in
families are not seen as
‘newsworthy’.

28

A dangerous jump is sometimes made from quantitative or content analysis
research findings to media speculation about ‘obvious’ evidence of the
supposed effects of the media.
The ‘violence debate’ is full of such ‘countings’. Rightly concerned when
horrible murders, apparently higher numbers of rapes and assault take place,
campaigners then make the huge leap of arguing that these might be
prevented by censoring ‘violence in the media’. This often means countable
acts of ‘media violence’ and ignores broader political and social questions, as
well as closer textual ones. For example:
• The problem of defining the ‘violence’ that is to be counted. It may
seem quite a simple thing to decide what to count as ‘violence’ or
‘violent acts’ in TV, rap music or computer games. Yet the question of
what, in our culture, is perceived as ‘violence’ is a huge one, even outside
media. Some kinds of activity are labelled ‘violent’ and others aren’t.
Gender expectations, and also ‘invisible’ official violence, help structure
words and phrases like ‘restraining’ or ‘keeping the peace’ or ‘boys will
be boys’.
• The differences (qualitative) between the many kinds of media
representations that are counted, and different audience perceptions of
them. Is the ‘violence’ in a Tom and Jerry cartoon or a computer game the
same as the violence in a news bulletin? Controversies over the possible
effects of games imagery have been particularly sharp at times (see Dovey
and Kennedy 2006 and Lister et al. 2009).

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

It is important to combine quantitative with qualitative issues, and indeed
each of them often, already, includes a sense of the other. Barthes and others
implicitly suggest their individual texts do have some kind of typicality, or
relation to quantities of other such ads, posters, etc. And in CA the quality
of the questions asked, and the conclusions drawn, is a key factor. These can
be more complex for audio-visual forms than for printed ones. As with any
media text, the counting of elements that can be counted can be a circular
process. It sometimes ignores the ways codes and resonances of meaning are
combined, let alone what ‘readers’ might be doing with ‘texts’. In the case
of film or television, for instance, research would have to combine the ‘act of
violence’ with interpretative questions for individual texts such as:
• its place in the narrative;
• the stance that the audience is invited to take up in relation to it
(by camera movement, narrrative positioning, editing, costume, casting
(is a sympathetic star involved?), lighting, set design, etc.);
• the likely audience which can be assumed from how the text is circulated
(Sky Sports primetime? local campaign group leaflet?) and therefore likely
interpretations for it;
• intertextual reference (is a joke being made about another text which
somewhat changes the status of the ‘act of violence’, as can happen in The
Simpsons?);
• the historical stage of its genre (e.g. is it a horror film/game, whose
twenty-first-century audiences are likely to be blasé about special effects
around violent death?);
• the full social context in which it ‘plays’ (e.g. are guns widely available and
seen as normal possessions, as in the US?).

EXPLORE 1.5

Content analysis

Research the British Board of
Film Classification (BBFC)
website(s) on how the Board
takes decisions to request
cuts to material involving
easily imitable acts of
violence, such as head
butting. These involve quite
detailed textual decisions on
context, as well as research
into possible effects.

Barker and Petley (2001)
have some striking discussion
around this area for UK
contexts, though see
Huesmann and Taylor (2008)
for quite different views.

Take a recent film or television programme labelled ‘violent’. Decide what
genre it belongs to; a factor which mediates the violence. Go through the
above list and decide:
• What would you say is its ‘message’ about violence?
• How precisely would you argue this? (use checklist above)
• How might this text seem to: (1) an audience experienced in its genre,
(2) an audience not experienced in its genre? Research internet
discussion, and say from which of these two groups the discussion seems
to emerge.

29

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Conclusion

Some vivid representations of violence may have not negative but positive
effects in the revulsion they invite us to feel, for example at certain kinds of
assault, or military power, or bullying. Content analysis of the prevalence
of sanitised images of war and audiences’ responses to them, whether in films
or news, might back arguments that ‘Western’ viewers need to see more of
the damage done to human bodies (and minds) by war if movements to try
to stop wars are to flourish.
Some recent research on viewing revisits the qualitative/quantitative
debate into broader social contexts for viewing, especially by young people,
by assessing the empirical evidence of some effects on audiences (see
Huesmann and Taylor 2003 and 2006, and internet discussion of their
positions). Though moderated by the social context and influence, like gender
and class, some experts suggest that such imagery is both a short- and a
long-term ‘health risk’. But this takes us into the material of Chapter 14 on
Audiences.

Conclusion
Media studies valuably emphasises that the meanings of representations
are never ‘given’ but are always going to be socially constructed, slippery
and contestable. This goes against both suggesting that meanings are
‘natural’ and ‘obvious’, and saying they can mean anything the audience
wants them to. However slippery, and encrusted with different meanings
for particular audience members, texts do have characteristics, and
associations, which can sometimes rightly be called dominant.
We’ve presented two important approaches, which need to work more
closely together. Even the most close-textured analysis of a single text
needs to consider how typical that text is, and how else its users might
engage with it. Equally, even the best-funded, largest content analysis
needs to be aware of the complexities of the texts it is summarising, and
the quality of its questions. Both need to bear in mind how users’ possible
responses complicate matters.
Bear these questions in mind as you test out these approaches.
The rest of this book takes them into much wider arenas of power and
battles to secure (or ‘spin’) one meaning or pleasure for a song, a flag,
a slogan, over others. One of the challenges of this area is balance:
a) appreciating some audiences’ subversive, or simply ‘knowing’
interpretations, and b) exploring how texts themselves (textual quality),
as well as easy availability (industry quantity) of some images, but not
others, do encourage some meanings and pleasures, and try to cut off or

30

1: APPROACHING MEDIA TEXTS

References and further reading

marginalise others. The next chapter explores their classification into
genres, as one powerful way of preparing us for such pleasures and
habits.

References and further reading
Andermahr, Sonya, Lovell, Terry, and Wolkowitz, Carol (2000)
A Glossary of Feminist Theory, London and New York: Hodder Arnold.
Barker, Martin, and Petley, Julian (eds) (2001) Ill Effects, London:
Routledge.
Barthes, Roland (1972) Mythologies, London: Paladin (originally published
1957).
Bennett, Tony, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Morris, Meaghan (eds) (2005)
New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London
and New York: Blackwell.
Dovey, Jon, and Kennedy, Helen (2006) Game Cultures: Computer Games
as New Media, London and New York: Open University Press.
Eagleton, Terry (1983) Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford:
Blackwell (esp. Chapter 3).
Hall, Stuart (ed.) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and
Signifying Practices, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage.
Huesmann, Rowell, and Taylor, Laramie D. (2003) ‘The Case against the
Case against Media Violence’, in Gentile, D. (ed) Media Violence and
Children, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 107–30.
Huesmann, Rowell, and Taylor, Laramie D. (2006) ‘The Role of Media
Violence in Violent Behaviour’, Annual Review of Public Health, 27:
393–415.
Katz, Jay (1999) Tough Guise, Amherst, MA: Media Education Foundation
video, available on YouTube.
Kitzinger, Jenny (2004) ‘Audience and Readership Research’, in The Sage
Handbook of Media Studies, London: Sage.
Lister, Martin, Dovey, Jon, Giddings, Seth, Grant, Iain, and Kelly, Kieran
(2009) New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn, London and New
York: Routledge.
McKee, Alan (2001) ‘Introduction: Interpreting Interpretation’,
Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 15, 1.
Rose, Gillian (2001) Visual Methodologies, London: Sage.
Spinotti, Dante (2009) interviewed in Sight and Sound, April, p. 27.
Williamson, Judith (1978) Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning
in Advertising, London: Marion Boyars.

31

CASE STUDY

Visual and aural signs
•

ANALYSING A POSTER, AND NOTES ON TWO
PHOTOS

•

VOICES AND SOUND SIGNIFIERS

•

AUDIO-VISUAL MOVING IMAGES

•

CONTENT ANALYSIS

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

This case study takes media images (still visual ones;
moving audio-visual; and sound). It tries to give you
confidence in analysing them, using both qualitative
and quantitative approaches. We suggest other
elements that go into the textual ‘weave’, including
histories of production, and the sleuthing and discussion
which are often now the context for high-profile images.
Such discussions have become part of the meanings of
many images for far larger audiences than in the past.
This shapes the kinds and number of connotations
they hold.

Figure 1.13 This poster
became the 2008 campaign
image for the first mixed
race, African-American
president of the United
States, Barack Obama.

ANALYSING A POSTER, AND NOTES
ON TWO PHOTOS
Figure 1.12 photo, 27 April 2006 (Mannie Garcia/Press Association
(PA)) of then-Senator Barack Obama at a National Press
Association meeting on Darfur. Cited by Shephard Fairey as
the original for his poster (Figure 1.13) for the Obama 2008
presidential campaign, though this origin is debated (see Figure
1.14).

32

CASE STUDY: VISUAL AND AURAL SIGNS

Analysing a poster, and notes on two photos

Figure 1.14 You may feel there is a mini-second difference here (argued via tiny differences
in expression and angle of Obama’s gaze). Fairey said he googled the photo in 2008, but
Tom Gralish (in http://blogs.phillynews.com/inquirer/sceneonroad/2009/01/ found_again_
the_poster_source.html found another, differently framed original. Others have claimed the
original was taken by Jim Young. See also http://community.livejournal.com/obey_giant/).

Two discussion points
1 Such debates about origins may seem trivial, but they now form a fascinating part of how ‘texts’ circulate and
what they mean in the age of ‘Web 2.0’ where comments on images are much easier to distribute. The issues
of copyright, authorship and potential rights to a famous image are now a part of this poster’s connotations for
many.
2 Though such production details are not technically part of textual approaches, they can often form valuable
confirmation of a ‘reading’. When analysing photos (and many films) you will often have to guess at some
production details: exactly what shutter speed or focal length has been used. You may be able to find out,
especially with internet research of course. See http://www.flickr.com website for more, including the
specifications (number of pixels, camera type, etc.) given on photos there.
The date of the image, the context (celebrity or news photo?) and the overall ‘look’ may suggest whether
significant digital alteration (‘airbrushing’) has taken place, especially on older photos – most images now go
through Photoshop to fit them for their destination via cropping, etc. For though ‘photoshopping’ is
sometimes used to mean ‘significant airbrushing’ of an image, it does not only signify that.

EXPLORE 1.6

•
•

Try the quiz ‘Spot the fakes!’ on the http://www.urbanlegends.about.com website.
Note what your reasons were for assessing a hoax, or a ‘real’ shot, in this digital era – were they ‘textual’ or
did they depend on ‘contextual’ knowledge? For, as Chapter 3 on Genres argues, we never encounter
images in isolation, outside expectations and contexts.

33

Analysing a poster, and notes on two photos

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

The poster itself was designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los

camera angle, distance from the subject, what is

Angeles-based street artist. It resembles the ‘silkscreen’

included and excluded. Ask: why was this framing

process which Andy Warhol used for many of his

decision made, rather than others which were

celebrity portraits/posters in the 1960s. When you

possible? Such selections are called paradigmatic

analyse photographic texts, consider the sets of ‘codes’

choices by structuralist theory. In Figure 1.12 these

at play:

involve celebrity codes of camera distance, etc., via

• lighting (here the context of a political meeting
delivers artificial, easily legible lighting, for media

the inclusion of George Clooney, who is lending his
stardom to the event.

coverage);
• use of colour or black and white. ‘Natural’ looking
colour is used here. Deliberate use of black and white

EXPLORE 1.7

might suggest an evocation of nostalgia, of ‘history’
or of ‘hard’ realist codes such as were used in 1930s
and 1940s documentary photography;

1 In cinema and photography, once colour stock
became available the signifying potential of black
and white film stock changed. Choosing to make
a film in black and white, like Schindler’s List (US
1993) or Dead Man (US 1995), was clearly a
deliberate choice, not simply a necessity. It could
signify ‘pastness’ or ‘seriousness’.
2 Interesting, here, is the long time it took for the
development of film stock which was sensitive
to dark skin. This was part of the unequal
allocation of high-status roles for black actors
until quite recently, dependent as those roles
are on close-up, specific lighting, and clearly
perceptible facial gesture (see Dyer 1997).

We’ve given two photo originals for the poster as they
illustrate key decisions on framing.
Q: What difference does the second framing, of
Obama alone, in a head shot, make to the image?
A: It shifts the effect of sharing the frame with George
Clooney, which might suggest second ‘celebrity’
place to then-Senator Obama, within a paradigmatic
choice of ‘celebrity support for Darfur’. (The wider,
first framing also allowed attention to drift towards
whatever Obama is doing with the green wristband.)

For the poster consider these questions:
a What elements of the photo which Fairey cited
(Figure 1.12) have been heightened, and how?
b What do the poster’s chosen colours contribute to
the image? What codes do they draw on?
c What other codes, related to broad cultural and
aesthetic frames of reference, are at play in the
poster’s style?

• the kind of focus used. Here the priority seems to be
on getting the face(s) in focus. Though the US flag is

a The focus and frame is emphatically on Obama’s face

slightly blurred as a result, it is still visible, and the

(though a badge has been added to his lapel). Fairey

angle may have been determined by the desire to

interpreted the upwards gaze as: ‘He is gazing off into

include it as background;
• production techniques which have exaggerated
certain qualities of the image, by airbrushing of a

the future, saying, “I can guide you”.’ (Washington

Post interview). Even though Fairey knew the
denotation or simplest meaning of the image (Obama

digital image, for example. These seem not to have

listening to a speaker), he chooses this much grander

been used;

connotative meaning or association. The word ‘Hope’

• framing decisions (also called cropping) including

34

Suggested answers to the above questions:

anchors the image in this kind of meaning.

CASE STUDY: VISUAL AND AURAL SIGNS

Analysing a poster, and notes on two photos

The ‘code’ of the upwards gaze has a long history

on from his print of Campbell’s soup can labels, are

in Western stained glass, painting and sculpture.

often taken to embody the ‘mass-ness’ of mass

It originates in religious views of the world, with

celebrity culture (‘Monroe’s image is in some ways

‘heaven’ (rather than just ‘the sky’) above it, from

churned out like that of a can of soup’). The typical

which the ‘great man’ or holy figure is assumed to

slight flaws of printing in Figure 1.15 add to this – the

gain inspiration.

colours look ‘slipped’, as happens in industrial mass

b The poster colours are often recalled as red, white

processes, but not in individual paintings.

and blue, and called ‘patriotic’. In fact (and there are

Consider secondly, posters from earlier workers’ and

some simple facts in textual analysis) there are two

revolutionary movements, and street posters. These

shades of blue, and the ‘white’ is a kind of beige. But

often stylise and simplify their meanings, so as to be

they serve to concentrate the image further (rather

seen clearly from a distance, and because they were

like the use of black and white in films, photos, etc.)

(are?) often addressing people with few literacy skills.

than even the framing does.
c The use of the ‘silkscreen’ style brings two artistic

Figure 1.16 Cuban
poster by Olivio
Martinez, 1978,
commemorating the
death of Che Guevara in
1967. Though simplified
in outline, like much
Cuban campaigning art,
the poster’s sundrenched
colours also seem to
reference Western ‘Pop
Art’ of the 1960s, such as
that of Warhol and Roy
Lichtenstein (1923–97).

codes into play for those who may recognise them –
or come to learn of them through the internet.
Consider firstly, that the celebrity portraits of Andy
Warhol (1928–87), also often based on actual photos,
used the simplified outlines of screen-printing, as well as
the codes of comic books and advertising (celebrated
by the movement known as ‘Pop Art’ in the 1960s).
Interestingly though, his earlier work, like the famous
multiple copies of a Marilyn Monroe silkscreen, following

To summarise: the ‘Hope’ poster weaves together
several codes. It brought to the campaign of the
little-known candidate:
• a memorable, clear image, which the artist made
freely downloadable and was widely distributed via
the internet;
• an image which was different to previous political
imagery; it could be said both to ‘modernise’ Obama
in the direction of ‘cool’ street posters and the now
fashionable work of Andy Warhol, and to link it with
previous reforming and radical social movements;

Figure 1.15 Andy Warhol, Marilyn, 1967 © The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New
York/DACS, London 2009.

• an accompanying controversy about ‘originating
image’, copyright, etc. which kept it in debate across
the many ‘new media’.

35

Voices and sound signifiers

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

This poster was later imitated by Republican and other opponents of Obama, in a chain of signification and
connotation. In particular a ‘white face’ image of Obama was used (see p. 174), disturbingly reminiscent of
‘minstrel’ performances, with the lipstick grin of Heath Ledger’s Joker scrawled across it, all anchored by words
such as ‘Socialism’. This was in opposition to proposed healthcare and other reforms. The ‘wolf in sheep’s
clothing’ connotation is a particularly dangerous misrepresentation. See http://henryjenkins.org/2009/08/
unmasking_the_ joker.html for a good account of both the image and the mystery of its origins.

VOICES AND SOUND SIGNIFIERS
Signifiers and ‘images’ need not always be visual. Sound
is coded, and signifies in ways as complex as visual
images, though, after decades of developed analysis,
the visual image is more readily recognised as ‘made
up’. Sound is difficult to discuss: we can’t offer you a
sound ‘text’ on this page, for one thing, as we can a
photo. Yet music, sound effects, etc. in the background
can be key to how voices signify within films and
television

• Rhythm or cadence: does the voice rise and fall (or
perhaps rise at the end of sentence, in a way which
seems to have spread across much of the world from
Australian soap operas)? Or does it keep a
continuous or even monotonous pace and tone?
Other key components of voices will also be in play:
• accent, which usually refers to pronunciation (and
often rhythm, cadence) and inflection. Every
language has accents, but they are usually perceived
very clearly by those within a larger culture – and
perhaps less noticed by those close to them;
• dialect: everyone in the UK speaks a dialect, a
sub-language. This differs from so-called ‘standard

EXPLORE 1.8

English’, also called ‘received pronunciation’ or ‘BBC
English’, which is better described as the dialect of

•
•
•

Try adding a sound effect ‘behind’ a recording of
your own voice.
Note how a particular ‘soundtrack’ on your iPod can
‘interpret’ your walk to work, or though a park, or a
darkened urban landscape.
Can this sometimes make you feel a bit as though
you are ‘starring’ in your own film?

To ignore sound, for audio-visual media, can mean that
a whole dimension is missing from analysis and
appreciation (see Deacon et al. 2007, Chapters 12 and
13). Listen to a recording of someone’s speaking voice.
What does it signify for you?
• Pitch: is the voice ‘high’ or ‘low’?
• Volume: ‘loud’ or ‘quiet’?
• Texture: ‘rough’ or ‘smooth’, ‘soft’ or ‘hard’?
• Shape: ‘round’ or ‘flat’?

36

the southern English upper middle class. Dialects
have differences of vocabulary (‘wicked’, ‘nesh’),
syntax and pronunciation.

Voices: examples from popular film and
music
1 From the 1930s to the 1950s many UK
audiences had to endure the dominance of
upper-class voices in most British films, perhaps
most irritating when imitating the voices and
accents of working-class people, coded as
‘Cockney’ or grotesque versions of ‘Irish’,
‘Scottish’ and ‘Welsh’ accents. This helps
account for the perceived and popular
‘classlessness’ of US movies for UK audiences.

CASE STUDY: VISUAL AND AURAL SIGNS

Voices and sound signifiers

They were not classless, but the ‘codings’ of Bronx, posh New York, Deep South, etc. were much less familiar.
Note: Hollywood too managed spectacularly careless accents, for example in How Green Was My Valley
(US 1941).
2 As well as ‘kitchen sink’ social realist films of the 1960s, the Scottish accent and brusque delivery of lines by
Sean Connery in his first appearance as James Bond in 1962 signified change. The ‘modern’ social world of
‘Bond-as-scripted-and-performed-in-the-Broccoli-films’ replaced the upper-class ‘John-Buchan-type-hero-inthe-Cold-War’ agent of Fleming’s novels, and films of them. Connery’s voice is arguably as important to this
reinvention of Bond as his working-class, rugged physical presence. Connery’s voice now is often gently
mocked (‘Shir Shean Connery’), perhaps as that ideal of masculinity gives way to different ones.
Q: How do you think the voice and star image of Daniel Craig alter the signification of the character? Who would
you cast as ‘the new James Bond’? Would voice be a part of this choice?
Q: Why do you think a particular voice-over for the British series of Big Brother was chosen (flat, male, north-east
English accent, ‘deadpan’)? How did it try to ‘anchor’ that series’ image in relation to gender, class, regional
stereotypes?
Singing voices are different again, and always signify within a
particular music genre, and, we could argue, in relation to speaking
voices. Operatic singing would then be one extreme, and a singing
which is as close as possible to kinds of everyday speech (of course,
shaped by gender, age, class, region and ethnicity) another. For
singers like Lily Allen the ‘everydayness’ of her lyrics is ‘doubled’ by
the casual speech-like delivery of the singing and, for some, the
emphatically English accent, as opposed to a ‘mid-Atlantic’ one.
Others object to a ‘mockney’ quality of impersonation in it –
internet comments often mention nepotism. It’s at a far remove
from opera but derives from forms such as reggae, ska and ‘two
tone’. Frank Sinatra, though working with very different lyrics, was
also ‘new’ in the 1940s for performing with a casual, almost speech- Figure 1.17 Sean Bean in one of his most famous
roles, Richard Sharpe. His Yorkshire accent was a
like delivery and phrasing.
key part of the signifed ‘bluff honesty’ of this role,

EXPLORE 1.9

•
•
•
•

as well as being his own original
accent. He has since done
advertising work where his very
recognisable voice has been
used to similar effect.

Listen to a track by your favourite singer.
Try to describe their voice in terms of the discussions above.
How do those qualities and their performance (phrasing, volume, emphasis,
etc.) work with the instrumental parts of the track to produce your pleasure
in it?
Does knowledge of their social background shape your response, or anchor
these signs, as happens, for some, with Lily Allen?

37

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Audio-visual moving images

Unlike most of the voices we encounter at college or at

We hope that these brief ideas about a ‘semiotics of

home, the technical quality of voices in radio and music

sound’ will help you think about voices and maybe also

has been highly ‘coded’, even digitally shaped. What we

help you with choosing and recording voices for your

hear is a reproduction of the original voice, dependent

own productions.

partly on ambience (the size of the studio, its acoustics:
a room with hard, shiny surfaces will produce a harsh,
‘bright’ edge to the voice; one with absorbent surfaces

AUDIO-VISUAL MOVING IMAGES

will soften the voice), on technical codes, such as the

Watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-pzlZPRvx8

choice of microphone, and on the engineer’s processing

recording Beyoncé’s performance of At Last at the 2009

of the signal, for example in an echo chamber, or a

Inaugural celebrations (here called a ‘Neighbourhood

deliberately distorting process, when anonymity is

Ball’) for the new President Obama. Make notes on it,

needed.

and repeat the screening – several times if you need to

Such institutional and technical codes can also shape

check details.

the image of stations. Radio 5, for example, has a
different mode of address to its listeners from Radio 4,
partly through the voices of presenters and callers,
especially those with distinctive regional accents.
The ways in which voices are handled, especially in
debates, can also characterise stations and programmes
differently. The overlapping of voices, the amount of
shouting permitted, sometimes to the point of being
briefly inaudible, can signify ‘realism’.

Figure 1.18 Bourne poster

Figure 1.19 Beyoncé

EXPLORE 1.10

•
•
Q: Does this resemble the way the ‘illegibility’ of
some fast-cut, shaky camera work in filmed
action sequences can, for some, signify ‘realistic’?
(See http://flowtv.org/?p=1587 for John Cline’s
comments, and also David Bordwell’s blog on
The Bourne Ultimatum.)

Jot down how this short sequence combines moving
image and sound codes.
Check if you agree with what we suggest here.

Camera work: several (at least three) cameras seem to
be used, with well-rehearsed movements (give evidence,
e.g. where they stop, what they seem to ‘catch’). They
range from an opening sweeping crane shot from
behind Beyoncé towards the presidential couple,

38

CASE STUDY: VISUAL AND AURAL SIGNS

Content analysis

combined with a short dissolve to a long frontal shot of

the space of the action, but the editing only later reveals

Beyoncé, poised, and another shot of the couple

the big screen of the whole performance.

seeming nervous and giggling at their coming
performance.

Performance: movements, gestures as
choreographed by editing, lighting, etc. Though clearly
rehearsed, given that it is such an important event, all
three central participants give impressively achieved

EXPLORE 1.11

performances. This may have been particularly tricky
for the new ‘First Couple’ of the USA, who need both

We’ll stop here, but you could elaborate on the codes
deployed, for example:
• How do the camera movements combine with
framing choices, such as when to use close up, and
for what purpose?
• What other camera style could have been used?
Judging from the size of the audience there must be
hundreds of very different, choppy, badly lit mobile
camera films made of the event.

to perform a slow, formal dance, with a capacity for
dignified ritual, and to display a kind of intimacy as a
new ‘celebrity’ pair within twenty-first-century media
cultures.

Soundtrack: finally, for this brief account, this
‘anchors’ the footage in a shifting way. The love song

At Last was originally performed by Etta James (1938–),
a great blues, soul and jazz singer and songwriter. For
many in the audience that resonance alone would have
evoked the days before the African-American Civil
Rights movement (1955–68) aimed at outlawing racial

The level of what is filmed: for example, costume,
lighting, set design, performance. For fiction films this

discrimination and disenfranchisement in the US.
But the use of it here, and some of Beyoncé’s

would include casting. Here the choice of Beyoncé and

gestures, as well as the audience’s carefully

the resonance of her star image is worth considering.

orchestrated presence on the soundtrack, gives it a

Etta James was reported to be annoyed not to have

second meaning, a political one – ‘at last there is

been asked to perform the song associated with her (see

a non-white President for the USA’. The chorus of

below). Suggest other performers, and songs, which

the audience at the end – ‘O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma’ –

might shift the overall combination of codes here.

modulates the whole event into a political celebration.

Codes of formality are embodied in the dress of the
singer, and in that of Michelle Obama: formal but
relaxed (the materials are soft, not stiff,
or jewel-encrusted, other possible choices). Overall
the combination of black and white outfits for the
(mixed-race) President and his wife, Michelle, signifies
a kind of elegance, and (expensive) simplicity, in such
powerful figures.
The setting is striking, the darkness concealing

This is the briefest example of moving image
analysis. An excellent source of more detailed
reflections on the form of films is David Bordwell’s
blog http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog. It is not,
however, interested in theorising these in ways
related to broader areas such as politics, which
semiotics attempted.

hundreds of party-goers; the ceiling a bit like the sky,
with small cameras flashing throughout; the presidential
seal occasionally visible, and so on.

Editing (the choice of how shots are combined):

CONTENT ANALYSIS

this produces small surprises within what could be a

Content analysis (CA) does not offer the detailed

repetitive text. An opening ‘establishing shot’ sets up

interpretations which semiotic and compositional

39

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Content analysis

approaches can, looking as they often do at ‘hidden’

its limitations. So Davies asks: ‘What do you mean by

meanings in texts. CA is a quantitative method, based

space? Tabloid pages have fewer words, bigger pictures,

on examining the manifest or ‘open’, ‘apparent’

bigger headlines than broadsheet pages . . . Pages also

meanings in large numbers of texts.

contain adverts, and sometimes a mixture of sports. So

Figure 1.20 summarises the findings of one example,

we had to count column inches.’ They also counted how

which you might try to apply to other areas.

many first-person columns by players there were, and

Hunter Davies (2005), a writer on football, thought

how much coverage of the Premiership as opposed to

that the best football coverage was to be found in the

other leagues. But to supplement this quantitative work,

broadsheet papers, not the tabloid press (or ‘red-tops’).

they also give a qualitative, more subjective account of

‘But have I made up this wisdom, based on . . . glimpses

such aspects of coverage as:

of one or two papers? Yeah, actually.’ So, to check it,
he employed a postgraduate, on work experience, to

• how opinionated different papers are: e.g. do they
include abuse and ‘rude quotations’ such as ‘the ref.

analyse every national newspaper’s sports pages for

was full of bull’ (for you, such research could and

a typical Monday, one with no big international match

should involve online responses and blogs);

to skew the coverage. The question was: which devoted

• how witty and amusing the coverage is – a very
subjective area!

the most space to football?
As always with CA, what you find always partly
depends on what you ask, and how aware you are of

Figure 1.20 National dailies
Newspaper

Total number
of pages

Number of
sports
pages

% of total
devoted to
sports

Number of
football match
reports

% of sports
coverage
devoted to
football

Second most
covered sport

Third most
covered sport

The Guardian

126

32

25

17

51

racing (13%)

Daily Star

72

27

38

39

70

racing (12%)

Daily Mail

88

23

26

17

58

Sun
Daily Mirror

88
80

41
36

47
45

38
40

85
85

rugby union
(12%)
racing (4%)
racing (6%)

rugby union
(11%)
greyhounds
(7%)
athletics (10%)

120

40

33

44

60

Daily Express

80

20

25

23

59

Independent

108

22

20

12

60

44

12

27

19

40

The Times

Daily
Telegraph

Source: Hunter Davies, ‘The Fan’, New Statesman, 14 February 2005, pp. 58–9

40

rugby union
(8%)
racing (10%)
rugby union
(13%)
rugby union
(20%)

cricket (4%)
rugby union
(3%)
cricket (3%)
rugby union
(9%)
racing (11%)
racing (10%)

CASE STUDY: VISUAL AND AURAL SIGNS

References and further reading

EXPLORE 1.12
Although it is often suggested that there is a deadly enmity between qualitative and quantitative methods, the two
can be combined, as above, and as in this activity.
1 Take four issues of your favourite magazine. Apply one of the content analysis methods outlined here to discover
what proportions of it consist of:
• adverts
• celebrity coverage
• a mix of those two, and
• what the average of these kinds of content is across the magazine issues which you chose.
2 Assess (noting your textual methods) how many of the images are hostile or sympathetic towards the celebrities
involved. This will involve qualitative approaches.

This is a very brief account of different kinds of textual
analysis. Further chapters and the Further Reading
section will give you more examples.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Crisell, Andrew (1994) Understanding Radio, 2nd edn,
London: Routledge.
Davies, Hunter (2005) ‘The Fan’, New Statesman, 14
February.
Deacon, David, Pickering, Michael, Golding, Peter, and
Murdock, Graham (2007) Researching
Communications, 2nd edn, London and New York:
Hodder Arnold.

Dyer, Richard (1997) White: Essays on Race and Culture,
London and New York: Routledge.
Fleming, Carole (2002) The Radio Handbook, London
and New York: Routledge.
Hesmondhalgh, David (2006) ‘Discourse Analysis and
Content Analysis’, in Gillespie, Marie, and Toynbee,
Jason (eds) Analysing Media Texts, London and New
York: Open University Press.
Rose, Gillian (2001) Visual Methodologies, London: Sage.
Wells, Liz (ed.) (2002) Photography: A Critical
Introduction, 2nd edn, London and New York:
Routledge.

41

2 Narratives

‘Narrative’ is a specialist term
referring to the ‘telling’ of a
sequence of events organised
into a story. This shapes
the events, characters,
arrangement of time, etc., in
very particular ways, so as to
invite particular positions
towards the ‘story’ on the
part of audience members.

Think how you would
respond if asked by a new
friend about your childhood.
Would you try to connect
actions and events, rather
than stringing together a set
of impressions? How would
you turn your life events so
far into a narrative?

Bear these kinds of repetition
and difference in mind, as
well as the historical and
industrial ‘embeddedness’ of
different narratives. Read this
chapter along with Chapter 3.

•

General theories of narrative

•

Long-running ‘open’ narratives

•

Narration, story and plot

•

Conclusion

•

Narratives in different media

•

References and further reading

Making stories, or narratives, is a key way in which meanings and
pleasures are organised, and made vivid both in and outside the media.
Both factual and fiction forms are subject to this kind of shaping. Even
the word ‘history’ comes from the Greek word for narrative: historia.
Most of us spend a great deal of time telling stories: gossiping about
friends; telling jokes; ‘day dreaming’; constructing blog characters as well
as ‘Second Lives’ for ourselves on the internet. All cultures make stories,
as involving ways to create sense and meanings. Indeed storytelling has
been said to be one of the defining features of what it is to be human.
Two points about systematic study of narrative in modern media:
• Narrative theory suggests that stories, in whatever media and
whatever culture, share certain features.
• But particular media and cultures are able or driven to ‘tell’ stories in
different ways. This partly involves theories of re-mediation, of how
older media forms (e.g. theatre) enter newer ones (e.g. cinema – see
Chapters 8 and 14). It also involves the specific qualities of particular
media forms – print or spoken language, TV or song, cinema and
literature. And you will hardly ever encounter a story separate from
expectations about it, usually about how it fits with genres and other
forms of classification.

General theories of narrative
This chapter explores the main narrative theories used in media studies.
They offer explorations of the devices and conventions governing
how stories (fictional or factual) are organised into sequence, and the
invitations these may make to audiences to become involved in some
ways, but not others. Such study suggests that these quite ordinary

42

2: NARRATIVES

activities are usually so taken for granted that they stay unexamined. It’s
also interested in how media narratives are often connected to dominant
sets of values and feelings.
Most of media studies is not involved in trying to create stories – a
wildly unpredictable process, hard to reduce to a formula. Instead it has
tried to understand critically the possible social roles of stories, which
includes their pleasures, fantasy structures and so on. A good definition
of narrative for these purposes (which applies to both fiction and nonfiction forms) is given by Branigan, who argues it is ‘a way of organising
spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events with a
beginning, a middle and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of
those events’ (1992: 3 emphasis added).

General theories of narrative

Like most semiotic
approaches, these isolate
texts from their context
and use, for the purpose of
analysis. In fact very few
of us see a film or TV story
without any knowledge
of its genre or star, or the
expectations set up by
reviews.

EXPLORE 2.1
Think of the structure of the last ‘single’ or ‘closed’ (i.e. not serial) story you
experienced.
• How did the ending reflect back on to your feelings and understanding of
the rest of the narrative? Genre will play a part here, with the ending of a
thriller expected, by audiences, to be more surprising than that of a
romantic comedy or a war movie. This in turn shapes what the makers
assume they can do.

Important theorists have included Propp, Barthes, Todorov and LéviStrauss, who often worked with myths, novels and folk tales to explore
how narrative structures or shapings act within particular cultures. Here
are the bare bones of these influential structuralist approaches to
narrative.
Propp, in the 1920s, examined hundreds of examples of one kind of
folk tale to see whether they shared any structures. He argued that
whatever the surface differences (i.e. whether the stories dealt with poor
woodcutters or princes) it was possible to group its characters and
actions into:
• eight character roles (or ‘spheres of action’ as he called them, to
indicate how inseparable are character and action);

Vladimir Propp
(1895–1970) Russian critic
and folklorist whose
influential book on narrative,
translated as Morphology of
the Folk Tale, was first
published in 1928.

43

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

General theories of narrative

EXPLORE 2.2
Think about this. How much of what you know of the ‘character’ of friends have
you learned apart from through their ‘actions’?

•

The very terms ‘prince’ and
‘princess’ are much more
than job descriptions. They
come to us loaded with
narrative expectations and
connotations. The same is
true of ‘a man on horseback’
as echoing much older (often
medieval, but then ‘cowboy’)
figures of ‘heroes’.

thirty-one functions (such as ‘a prohibition or ban is imposed on the
hero’ or ‘the villain learns something about his victim’) which move
the story along, often in a highly predictable order. For example, ‘the
punishment of the villain’ always occurs at the end of a story. And
what is apparently the same act can function in different ways for
different narratives. The ‘prince’ may build a castle (or a spaceship)
as:
• preparation for a war
• defiance of a prohibition
• solution of a task.
Roles or spheres of action, Propp argued, made sense of the ways in
which many different figures (witch, woodcutter, monster, etc.) in the
tales he studied could be reduced to eight character roles – not the same
as the actual characters since one character can occupy several roles or
‘spheres of action’. These are:
1 the villain
2 the hero, or character who seeks something, usually motivated by an
initial lack – of money, or a mother, for example
3 the donor, who provides an object with some magic property
4 the helper, who aids the hero
5 the princess, reward for the hero (though see margin) and often object
of the villain’s schemes
6 her father, who rewards the hero
7 the dispatcher, who sends the hero on his way
8 the false hero.

Notes on Propp’s terms now
1 Propp’s approach tried to uncover structures beneath the apparently
haphazard differences of widely circulated, popular forms. It reminds us
that, though characters may seem very ‘real’, especially in forms such
as cinema and in some computer games, they must be understood as

44

2: NARRATIVES

constructed characters. These can be pretty rudimentary, in ‘shooter’
games, for example. But even so, these games often structure the various
tests of gaming skill into a kind of narrative, rather than simply organising
them like a sports event, or an exam.
In films characters are played by actors (real or virtual), cast and visually
‘designed’ to resemble perceptions of their character (‘princess-like’ or
‘wise’ or ‘villainous’ looking). But they have roles to play for the sake of the
story and often are perceived very quickly, if unconsciously, by audiences,
in these roles – as ‘hero’, ‘villain’, ‘helper’ and so on. We tend to feel it very
sharply when the person we thought was the hero or helper turns out to
be the villain, as in The Usual Suspects (US 1995) or in Psycho (US 1960)
where, to the shock of its first audiences, the female hero (and star) is
killed off a third of the way through the film, and the shy young man who
seemed to be a helper turns out to be something very different.
2 Such narrative theories are inevitably bound up with the times which
produce them and their study object. Propp’s original study worked with
fairy tales, told in times when many women died in childbirth. Thus the
role of stepmother could be a shared reference point for audiences, and
‘wicked’ ones a thrilling asset to a narrative. The longstanding Cinderella
story draws on this. The related figure of ‘the witch’ is alive and well in
enjoyable Western Hallowe’en parties and rituals.
3 ‘Hero’ is one of those terms that does not mean the same within narrative
theory as it does in life outside, where ‘hero’ usually refers to a male, and
‘heroic’ has moral connotations of ‘admirable’ or ‘good’. Here the words
are closer to describing someone who actively carries the events of a
story, whether that’s Bella Swan or Bart Simpson.
Today the ‘hero’ can often be an active female character like Lara Croft, or
Noora in the Islamic superheroes story The 99. Such use of ‘hero’ can sound
awkward (as ‘actor’ sounds to those who call a female actor an ‘actress’). But
the word ‘heroine’ is inadequate, signifying as it often does a character who
hangs around looking decorative until the hero sweeps her away (as in
Propp’s ‘princess’ role).

General theories of narrative

Figure 2.1 Language can construct
narrative ‘roles’ and thus
‘characters’ even in weather
forecasts. Watch for the isobars
which are ‘to blame’ for ‘bad
weather’ or the warm front
‘coming to the rescue’ – even
though both might be better
understood as part of a disturbing
global warming ‘narrative’.

The title of Heroes (2006–)
announces its play with
several, equally prominent
central characters, rather
than one ‘hero’. The twist is
that they themselves do not,
at the outset, realise their
‘superhero’ powers or the
‘end of days’ narrative they
are part of.

Figure 2.2 The distributors describe this as ‘Noora: a superhero inspired by Islam’.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8127699.stm for an account of the
aspirations of this series, soon to be an animated film. The writer says he wanted to ‘take
back’ Islam from militants who had taken it hostage.
Figure 2.2

45

General theories of narrative

Figure 2.3 A controversial
re-mediation of the Cinderella
story, with a prostitute as ‘hero’.
Can you identify the Wicked
Sisters, Helper and Prince roles –
and the Magic Slipper equivalent?
Are any extra ‘roles’ added?

Figure 2.4 This poster for Om
Shanti Om (India 2007), a muchloved Bollywood blockbuster, gives
an idea of the narrative priorities of
musicals, Eastern and Western.
Tzvetan Todorov (b. 1939)
Bulgarian structuralist
linguist, publishing influential
work on narrative from the
1960s onwards.

For specialists: the five codes
are the action or proairetic;
the enigma or hermeneutic;
the semic; the symbolic;
and the cultural or referential
code. See http://www.aber.ac.
uk/media/Documents/S4B/se
miotic.html for a useful guide.

46

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Fairy tales, or versions of them, are still familiar, whether the immensely
profitable Disney animated versions (Cinderella, Snow White, etc.) or
more broadly the narratives of the Star Wars series, Harry Potter or The
Lord of the Rings books and films, with their stories of male initiation,
good versus evil, and so on. The Shrek films commented neatly on
Disney, and fairy-tale conventions more generally, as well as on the ways
these flow into contemporary ‘beauty cultures’. Other stories, from real
life, are regularly given fairy-tale shapings – think of celebrity ‘rags to
riches’ tales, and many news stories (see Chapter 12).
Some narrative forms (the Mahabharata from Indian culture; Western
musicals and ‘women’s films’) take pleasure in much less action-driven
or puzzle-driven narratives. Instead they use convoluted patterns
(often circular) and several climaxes. Spectacle and fantasy are given
real narrative weight – for example, in musical and ‘Bollywood’ forms,
other events are sidelined to allow them to take place.
Todorov, another structuralist, argued that all stories begin with an
‘equilibrium’ where any potentially opposing forces are ‘in an opening
balance’ – the ‘once upon a time’ moment. (It is not the same as a ‘quiet’
state; indeed it could be in the middle of a war. This is one of the ways in
which the language of narrative theory differs from everyday usage,
where equilibrium denotes a perfect balance.) This is disrupted by some
event, setting in train a series of other events, to close with a second, but
different ‘equilibrium’ or status quo.
His theory may sound just like the cliché that every story has a
beginning, a middle and an end. But it’s more interesting. ‘Equilibrium’
labels a state of affairs, a status quo, and how this is ‘set up’ in certain
ways, and not others. How, where and when else any story (especially a
news story) could have begun are always good questions to ask. What
difference would it make, for example, to include the devastating recent
history of Somalia as starting point for a news story covering ‘pirates’
around its coast?
Barthes suggested that narrative works with five different codes
which activate the reader to make sense of it. This is an intricate theory,
using deliberately unfamiliar terms, and Barthes is not at pains to make it
accessible. We have opened it out a little to apply it to CSI: Miami in the
case study. Particularly interesting is his suggestion that an ‘enigma code’
works to keep setting up little puzzles to be solved (and not only at the
beginning of the story) so as to delay the story’s ending pleasurably.
In Twilight, for example, how will Robert Pattinson’s character get out
of this predicament? Have characters x and y been in love all along?
An action code will be read by means of accumulated details (looks,
significant words) which invoke (and reinforce) our knowledge of what

2: NARRATIVES

are often highly conventional ‘scripts’ of such actions as ‘beginning to
fall in love’ or ‘first being tempted into a robbery’. Barthes is a key figure
in both audience studies and textual studies for this early attempt at
building the possible involvement of readers and their culturally formed
expectations into a model of how narratives ‘work’ textually. Though
very text based, his model does try to explore not just how the narrative
works ‘internally’ but also how it evokes for its ‘reader’ connections to
the world outside the text, via cultural references and so on.
Narrative involvements still matter, however much may be given
away in media publicity (and some trailers do make you feel you don’t
need actually to see the film). But the urgent notices about ‘spoilers’ in
some articles (‘WARNING: STORY AND PLOT REVEALED’), and the
convention that even serious discussion and reviewing should not reveal
the ending of a film, book or TV programme, ignore the fact that serious
discussion of the construction of any narrative has to consider how the
ending ‘closes’ or ‘ends’ it (rather than it simply ‘stopping’).

General theories of narrative

‘Scripts’, in this specialist
context, are ‘shared
expectations about what will
happen in certain contexts,
and what is desirable and
undesirable in terms of
outcome’ (Durkin 1985: 126).
See Chapter 4 for more
discussion.

EXPLORE 2.3

•
•
•
•

Take your favourite recent film or TV drama. Survey a few reviews of it to see
if/how the ending has been treated.
Draft your own brief review of it,
• first without any reference to the ending,
• then feeling free to discuss the ending.
What does discussing the ending allow you to engage with in the rest of the
narrative?
How does not mentioning it limit what you can discuss in the narrative?

Such structuralist approaches have been applied not just to individual
fictions but also to non-fiction forms such as major news stories, to see
whether narrative drives ‘set up’ certain expectations and puzzles, or
look for (and in fact construct) tidy ‘beginnings’ and ‘endings’, etc. This
widespread process can mean that complex historical and political
explanations are structured out of news storytelling.

47

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

General theories of narrative

CASE STUDY: APPLYING TODOROV AND
LÉVI-STRAUSS TO WAR NEWS
‘During the Iraq War, there
was a civil servant at the
Foreign Office whose official
title – you could ask for him
by it at the switchboard –
was head of story
development.’ (Hyde 2009).

Important events such as wars finish. But narratives don’t just come to a halt,
or stop – they end, or close, in a way which ‘rounds things off’, assigns blame
and praise, etc. (so as to form the ‘new equilibrium’). The news media have
often structured the end of wars so as to leave out stubborn elements that
don’t stop, but go on happening: soldiers’ and civilians’ injuries and posttraumatic stress syndrome; the continuing arms trade, which feeds wars and
terror; corrupt regimes left in power after ‘democratising’ invasions. So deep

For bitingly funny satire of
the narrative and other
‘taken-for-granted’ habits
of ordinary, as well as
extraordinary, news
reporting of ‘stories’, see
BBC’s Charlie Brooker’s
Newswipe, extracts available
on YouTube.

are the satisfactions of ‘an ending’ or ‘closure’ that newsrooms, and many
of those involved, will try hard to find signifiers which suggest a return to
normality – very like the ‘and so they all lived happily ever after’ of the fairy
tale.
Sometimes it may take the shape of a correspondent making his way
into the now-said-to-be-liberated war zone, like the BBC’s John Simpson
entering Kabul in November 2001. Sometimes it will be footage like that
of the tumbling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, with reporters

Figure 2.5 In the days immediately after ‘9/11’ in 2001, news images such as this drawing
were used to offer a comforting narrative into which the event might be fitted.

48

2: NARRATIVES

commenting, ‘It is absolutely, without doubt, a vindication of the strategy’,
and ‘This war has been a major success’, as though the Iraq ‘problem’
had been ‘solved’ and was now finished. In this particular case the image
echoed older but hugely resonant 1989 footage of the Berlin Wall coming
down as Eastern bloc state socialist regimes began to fall. A kind of

General theories of narrative

See http//www.information
clearinghouse.info/article
2842.htm on the probable
faking of the statue incident.
It has nevertheless become
a powerful signifier of
‘democracy coming to Iraq’.

re-mediation?
In the past, the ‘happy’ conclusion of war has typically been signified
by ships sailing back home; soldiers talking of their pride at a job well done;
and eventually the welcome home by ‘women and children’. This last sign
strongly genders such stories, via repeated imagery of an all-male armed
force and ‘waiting’ women, even where many women are serving in armed
forces, or may not be ‘waiting’. This sense of an ending is much more difficult
to achieve for such a nebulous and far-flung process as the ‘global war on
terror’, especially when some strategists suggest it will go on for decades. The
sad spectacle of soldiers’ coffins carried to funerals when they arrive ‘home’
is very far from functioning as a ‘happy ending’.

Lévi-Strauss, another structuralist, argued that an abiding structure of
all meaning-making, not just narratives, was a dependence on binary
oppositions, or a conflict between two qualities or terms. Usually one of
these terms is much less valued than its opposite. He was less interested
in the order in which events were arranged in the plot (called its
syntagmatic relations) than in looking ‘beneath’ them for deeper or
paradigmatic arrangements of themes. Though this theory can be applied
to individual stories and can act as a useful ‘way in’, strictly speaking it
should be applied to sets of narratives, across a number of news stories
on the same theme – or in genres. Westerns and their narratives, for
example, are still hugely influential on how the US imagines itself. The
different sheriffs, cowboys, schoolmarms, Native Americans and so on in
hundreds of westerns can be analysed through Propp’s terms – ‘white
hats’ and black hats’; Native Americans as thrilling villains, their motives
often withheld.

Syntagm: an element which follows another in a particular sequence. A much
used example: imagine choosing from a menu. Paradigmatic elements are
those from which you choose (starters, main courses, desserts, and within
those maybe soup, risotto, chocolate pudding). The syntagm is the sequence

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General theories of narrative

Some celebrity chefs are
famous for ‘scandalously’
mixing these borders, as with
Heston Blumenthal’s bacon
and egg ice cream.

into which they are arranged. It is not usual in the UK, for example, to have
dessert before the main course.
Sometimes these structuring patterns in narratives are treated as
‘horizontal’ (across time – the syntagmatic) and ‘vertical’ (along values –
the paradigmatic) aspects of narratives.

They could also be seen as organised, over time, according to
systematic oppositions, including, among others:
See the Classic Case
Study The Western on
the MSB5 website.

See Branston (2006) on how
the story of the ‘capture and
rescue’ of Private Jessica
Lynch in Iraq, 2003, was
handled, including gender
assumptions about female
soldiers and links to
(re-mediations of?) powerful
US myths of ‘the US frontier’
and of ‘Red Indian’ abductions
of ‘white women’ or
‘maidens’.

50

homesteaders
Christian
domestic
weak
feminine
garden
inside society

Native Americans
pagan
savage
strong
masculine
wilderness
outside society

Interestingly some of this same structure, with its complex construction
of an ‘Other’ whom those in the favoured list must often be prepared to
destroy, is perceptible in modern wars, and in the construction of some
figures in media panics. For media coverage of recent wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, structuring oppositions include:
East
barbarism
feudal
despotism
fundamentalism
(2001) backward ‘dirty’
weapons
chaotic terrorism
‘backward’ cultures,
especially via women
wearing the burka
evil

West
civilisation
modern
democracy
freedom
modern ‘clean’ weapons (‘surgical
strikes’)
‘shock and awe’ tactics (Iraq 2003–)
‘modern’ cultures, often signified
through women wearing ‘Western’
dress
good

2: NARRATIVES

Narration, story and plot

EXPLORE 2.4

•
•

Research current coverage of Middle Eastern wars and decide whether any or
all of these binaries still apply.
Has the long-running-ness and assumed global spread of these wars shaped the
ways news narratives can ‘tell’ them? Do they seem less clearly structured than
previously?

Narration, story and plot
The term narration describes how stories are told, how their material is
selected and arranged in order to achieve particular effects with their
audiences. This partly involves how much knowledge we are allowed to
have – think of the importance of ‘secrets’ in soap operas. The narrative
theory term ‘restricted narration’ refers to how information about
events and characters is distributed – withheld or supplied for the sake
of the story. More on this later.
The distinction which narrative theory makes between plot and story
is key here. ‘Story’ is defined by Bordwell and Thompson (2008: 76)
as consisting of ‘all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly
presented and those the viewer infers’. The plot, on the other hand, is
‘everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us’, including
all the story events directly depicted.
There is one special aspect to this in audio-visual fictions (cinema,
TV, some games) which can be useful in analysing sound. These kinds of
fiction usually include elements related to what’s called the diegesis, a
term for the world of the story, which can include music (say in a biopic
of a rock star). But in the plot, the film on screen, there will often be nondiegetic music. The soaring crescendo as characters reach the top of a
mountain is not usually made by an orchestra waiting there for them.
Think of the story as something you are able to assemble once you
have experienced the end of the narrative. It would imply routine
events, like waking up in the morning, which we assume carry on
happening during many stories, but would be a tedious part of the plot.
It may also include material we find out only at the very end of the story,
having been busy trying to piece things together throughout, such as the
identity of a key figure in The Usual Suspects (US 1995). Figure 2.7
provides a helpful graph.

Figure 2.6 The comedy-drama TV
series Desperate Housewives (US
2004–) is constructed emphatically
around secrets, gossip and power
struggles. Music often playfully
alerts viewers to a potential secret.
Repeated imagery of immaculate
front doors came to signify
concealed secrets, crimes and
despair.

A useful distinction was
developed by Russian
theorists in the 1920s
between syuzhet (plot) and
fabula (story). The Russian
words are often used, partly
because the meanings of the
two English terms are often
slippery and became confused
with one another.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Narration, story and plot
Figure 2.7 Wuthering Heights
graph

This graph indicates the complicated narrative structure of the novel Wuthering
Heights (1847). The pages of the book, representing the flow of the final, plotted
narrative, are listed on the right. The dates of events in the ‘story’, which we are able
to piece together by the end, are listed along the top. (You would substitute
minutes of the action on the right-hand side if applying this to a film or TV narrative.
A less precise equivalent could use DVD ‘chapters’.)
Our sympathies towards characters can be moved not only by their actions,
and comments on them, but also by plot. For example, at a time towards the end of
the plotted narrative (c.1800) when Heathcliff seems almost monstrous, the book
goes into flashback via accounts of his childhood as a poor and bullied orphan.
Readers’ knowledge of this period has been restricted until now by the limited
narrative information released .Their sympathies are likely to swing towards him,
complicating an otherwise simple sense of his ‘villainy’ at this stage.

EXPLORE 2.5

•
See MSB5 website
for a Classic Case
Study on the
narrative structure of Psycho.
The case study of Slumdog
Millionaire in this book also
applies narrative theory to a
film.

52

•
•
•

Note how any recent version (TV, film) of this novel, or perhaps of another
novel you enjoyed, has arranged its events for the sake of narrative pleasures.
Take a classic film employing flashback, such as Psycho or, less dramatically,
Saving Private Ryan (US 1998). Imagine how its narrative would work if told
without flashbacks.
In the case of Psycho, what genre would it fit? Biography of troubled young male?
What kinds of pleasures would be lost in a ‘straightforward’ telling?

2: NARRATIVES

Other writers have explored this area in terms of the knowledge which
the ‘reader’ has, compared with that of the characters: is it the same or
more? When more, when less? How much more? How has this been
contrived? For example, we should feel at the end of a good detective
story or thriller that we have been enjoyably puzzled, so that the
‘solution’, our piecing together of the story in its proper order out of the
evidence offered by the plot, will come as a pleasure. We should not feel
that the plot has cheated; that parts of the story have suddenly been
revealed which we couldn’t possibly have guessed. The apparently
innocent secretary cannot, at the last minute, suddenly be revealed to
be a top-class poisons expert.

The special case of suspense, and the thriller
‘Thrillers’ are said to be broadly distinguished from ‘horror’ films by displaying:
• less emphasis on gory or ‘bodily extreme’ special effects;
• an overlap with crime films;
• ‘thrilling’ or suspenseful qualities which are possible in moving images,
especially via editing in combination with music.
Thrillers often play with narrative knowledge, putting the audience in the
(enjoyably) agonising position of knowing what perils and time constraints
face the hero. In this sense the thriller is a pleasurably masochistic genre for
audiences. This is perhaps present in the slogan in the woods which Jodie
Foster runs through in the opening scene of The Silence of the Lambs ‘Hurt –
Agony – Pain – Love it’. Charles Derry argues that this kind of suspense is not
necessarily related to the solving of narrative puzzles or the ‘vague question of

Narration, story and plot

Figure 2.8 Michael Jackson’s turn
to camera at the end of the Thriller
video is a classic ending to such a
narrative, revealing something
which changes our sense of the set
of events before it.

Entertaining ‘cheats’ are
possible. Sunset Boulevard
(US 1950) and Desperate
Housewives (US 2004–)
told their stories through a
first-person narrator who is
dead in the plot’s ‘present’,
and only gives some of their
knowledge to the viewer.
The Usual Suspects (US 1995)
relied for its surprise on a
long, misleading flashback.

Masochism: broadly, a
medical/psychoanalytic term
for the pleasure or
gratification of having pain
inflicted, or of being
controlled. In film theory it
has been explored to explain
some of the perverse
pleasures of cinema.

Figure 2.9 From the opening
scene of The Silence of the Lambs
(US 1991) – a knowing wink
towards the audience about the
masochistic pleasures they hope
for in a horror-thriller?

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Narration, story and plot

what will happen next’ (Derry 1988: 31). It depends on the expectation that a
specific action might take place.
During those moments when suspense is operative, time seems to extend
itself, and each second provides a kind of torture for a spectator who is
anxious to have his or her anticipation foiled or justified. (p. 32)
If you like thrillers, you like this agonising torture.

Explore how the unavoidable
use of mobile phones
(cellphones) in many
narratives has altered how
they must be shaped. The
Departed (US 2006) is a
striking film example of how
the phones are used a)
without ruining a thrillershaped plot and b) so as to
relate to one of the film’s key
themes, the disappearance of
an earlier form of masculine
‘community’ in Boston.

The opening captions
to Terry Gilliam’s film
The Adventures of Baron
Munchausen (1988) play with
this convention. They begin:
‘The late eighteenth century,
The Age of Reason,
Wednesday.’

54

EXPLORE 2.6

•
•
•

Can you think of any scenes from recent films, or other media, where this
kind of enjoyable ‘torture’ of the viewer takes place?
How exactly is it managed, in terms of manipulation of time and of
narrative point of view?
Does it apply at all to games?

Another part of the construction of narratives, and of restricted
narration, involves the ‘voice’ telling the story. A first-person narration
will use ‘I’ as the voice of the teller, and should not give the reader access
to events which that ‘I’ could not have witnessed or known of – a kind of
enjoyable restriction. A third-person or impersonal narration, however,
refers to a story which seems to ‘get itself told’, as in ‘Once upon a time
there was a prince . . .’ It’s often called the voice of the omniscient
narrator, since it knows everything to do with the story. Though cinema
and many television or video narratives begin with a literal ‘voice-over’
telling the story from a personal point of view, they usually settle into
the mode of impersonal narration – no voice-over, just seeming to unfold
before us.
The voice-over is often by one of the characters in a story, an
underestimated area of narrative study. Characters ‘work’ on the basis
of appearance, clothing, gestures, star image, etc. and often embody
‘typical’ traits, especially if they are only needed for background actions.
Corrigan and White point out how, although movies aim to create
broadly realistic characters, most of them are a blend of ordinary and
extraordinary features (rather like stars). This makes for characters who
are ‘recognisable in terms of our experiences and exceptional in ways

2: NARRATIVES

Narration, story and plot

that make us interested in them . . . Even [with] . . . characters [like] the
. . . heroine of Alien (1979) understanding them means appreciating how
that balance between the ordinary and extraordinary is achieved’
(Corrigan and White 2004: 224).

EXPLORE 2.7

•

Try out these theories by looking at how ads work, with their short, easily
followed narratives. (Non-narrative ads do exist. They often consist simply of a
set of claims about a product – a supermarket listing its best prices – or a car
setting up a glamorous aura around itself by various mood shots.)
• Classify the next few ads you view into narrative and non-narrative kinds.
To revise: if using narrative form, an ad will
• group its events in cause and effect order;
• even in a few seconds, create a sense of characters, action and perhaps enigma
codes through economical use of signs and typifying traits – blonde hair, certain
glances, etc.
Ads work as Propp suggests: the same traits both build a sense of characters, being
like ‘real people’, and are also crucial for the action, the furthering of the plot.
There will be a discernible ‘hero’ who carries the plot along, though often the
‘hero’ is the product – solving the problems of the main characters. There will
be, as Todorov suggests, some sense of an initial situation, which is disrupted or
altered and then happily resolved – usually, of course, through the ‘magical’
intervention of the product being sold.
You will also probably be able to distinguish the story as you can reassemble it,
having gone through a narrative, and the plot which seeks to involve you. Even if
flashback is not used, try to imagine the same events told differently, from the
point of view of another character, for example, or with different amounts of
time, and therefore emphasis, given to different parts of the narrative.

Scripts and narratives
If you are on a scriptwriting course, focused on production rather than
analysis, you may know other ways of thinking about the telling and writing
of stories. A few names frequently come up. Joseph Campbell was a US
anthropologist interested in myths, or ancient stories which can be argued to
be shared across cultures. His book Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
argued that ‘eternal’ myths or stories are shared by all cultures. He is said by

Figure 2.10 Of course, audience
members will make different sense
of narratives, depending partly on
how far they feel they resemble or
identify with certain characters.

Joseph Campbell
(1904–87) was influenced by
Carl G. Jung (1875–1961)
who argued that certain
myths and symbols represent
‘archetypal’ patterns which
have been central to human
existence (e.g. the anima or
‘feminine’ side of men, etc.).

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Narration, story and plot

Charlie Kaufmann’s film
Adaptation (2002) included a
character called ‘Donald
Kaufmann’, who is writing a
formulaic serial-killer movie,
based on McKee’s theories,
for which he is paid a huge
sum. McKee has few
film-writing credits, but the
character is assumed to be
based on him (see Ravenhill
2007).

film-makers like George Lucas to be a key influence on films such as the Star
Wars series.
Some have suggested his fashionable theories:
flatten
differences between the ways myths and stories work within varied
•
cultures;
• are used to give high cultural and quasi-religious meanings to commercially
powerful products (e.g. the Star Trek or Star Wars series); and
• conveniently avoid offending lucrative global audiences by not being too
specific about exactly which ‘god’ or religion is being invoked.
(Hollywood loves to give ‘universal’ explanations for the global success of its
products, rather than outlining how they avoid ‘offence’ by too much specific
reference; or by having the power to be massively distributed and marketed.)
Campbell’s theories influenced such scriptwriting ‘gurus’ as Syd Field
and Robert McKee (1941–), who has made his career via the book Story
Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (1st edn 1999) and
worldwide public seminars based on it. Some writers describe his ‘perfect
blueprint’ (involving ‘universal values’ and ‘archetypes’) for scripts as being
most valuable for studios who want a smooth production line from writers.
This is similar to other ‘Fordist’ production methods, rooted in the 1920s.
when the Ford motor company produced cheap, reliable, standardised cars
via a production line, a method later applied by McDonalds and others. Mark
Ravenhill (2007) comments:
I’ve read it . . . and learned some valuable things from it . . . But now . . .
writer delivers script, goes in for meeting. ‘I’m missing the initiating incident
on page 23’ is a note you’re likely to hear in our Story-centred world.
Rarely ‘Why are we making this?’

EXPLORE 2.8

•

•

56

Research the theories of McKee (or Field, if your course uses him) and
compare them with older Western theories of drama, including that of
a ‘three-act structure’, as pioneered by the Greek writer Aristotle
(384–322 BC).
Explore how far these theorists of film scripts:
a take account of other audience pleasures in films (e.g. stars, context,
etc.);
b focus heavily on the writer as author.

2: NARRATIVES

•

Do they avoid much account of the rest of the key processes in making
films, such as the role of direction, design, casting, product placement,
marketing and generally Hollywood’s power to get certain stories shown,
and publicised?

Narratives in different media
As we said at the beginning, narrative theory suggests that stories, in
whatever media and whatever culture, share certain features, but
particular media and cultures are able or driven to ‘tell’ stories in different
ways. This is worth bearing in mind if you’re involved in a project which
asks you to choose a medium in which to make a story. You will be
asking: what can x medium do (strip cartoon, say, or radio) that y cannot,
and vice versa? These differences are partly due to the nature of
different media and technologies (‘re-mediation’) as well as the different
audiences who use and enjoy them. We’ll quickly summarise a few of
them.

Narratives in different media

‘Once upon a time it was a
small gathering of people
around a fire listening to the
storyteller with his tales of
magic and fantasy. And now
it’s the whole world . . .
It’s not “domination” by
American cinema. It’s just
the magic of storytelling,
and it unites the world’
(Steven Spielberg, Variety,
7 December 1993, p. 62).
A classic statement of
Hollywood’s myth of itself.

Stories in words
There’s no space to deal with literary or other verbal narratives, though
this brief application highlights their capacities, compared with audiovisual or other forms.

EXPLORE 2.9

•

See if you can storyboard this sentence, for adaptation to film or TV.
How can you convey in images and sound what is put here in words?
‘In years to come, Harry would never quite remember how he had managed to
get through his exams when he half expected Voldemort to come bursting
through the door at any moment.’
(from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1997, p. 191)

•

What questions does it raise about adaptations from words to screen in
general?

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Narratives in different media

Photography
There is debate among some
feminists as to whether
people who have been raped
should be called ‘victims’ or
‘survivors’. Part of what’s at
stake is a very different sense
of the ongoing ‘narratives’
these terms seem to be
part of.
Q: How might this work
through photos?

This might seem an odd example of a narrative form, since it deals in
frozen moments of time (like stained-glass windows or drawings).
But often the impact of a powerful news or advertising photo lies in
what it invites us to imagine has gone before or is about to happen, or
both. Narrative is often signalled by angle, visual information given,
construction of imagined characters – and whether or not black and
white film stock is involved (often signalling ‘pastness’ in a story). You
can find more on all this in the case study for Chapter 1.
See Liz Wells’ guides to this area (Wells 2002).

EXPLORE 2.10

Figure 2.11 Cover of
Wells (2002). Each of
the four parts of this
single photo seems to
suggest a different
character and even a
narrative. How would
you describe them?

58

2: NARRATIVES

Narratives in different media

Comic strips and animation
Comic strips (and by extension animation films and serials) tell their
stories by a compelling combination of
• words (including thought bubbles);
• line drawings. These can streamline and exaggerate characters and
events more than even the highest-budget movie. You never have to
worry about spots on the star’s face or problems with lighting in comic
strip and animation;
• flashpoint illustrations of key moments involving extreme angles and
exaggerations.
Animation often represents worlds which differ from our own: as in the
four-fingered, yellow-skinned inhabitants of The Simpsons, with their
unlikely ‘local media’, babies that never grow up, far-flung storylines and
pain-free violence. But most viewers relish this exaggeration/difference,
which partly allows the series its ‘double address’ to both child and adult
viewers. They also may enjoy the ways that characters and storylines
(and particular lines of dialogue) do relate to ‘our’ world, with bitingly
satirical comments on real-life political or cultural issues, relatively
unlimited by budget constraints.

Figure 2.12 The extreme and
stylised dynamism of comic books
and graphic novels has been
re-mediated during the past forty
years by the makers of audio-visual
forms such as movies. This is a
1986 Frank Miller comic image
from Batman: The Dark Knight
Returns © 1986 DC Comics. All
Rights Reserved. Used with
permission.

Figure 2.13 In a controversial
move, ‘Marge’ ‘appeared’ on the
cover of Playboy in 2009.

See the debate summarised in Churchwell (2009) around whether The
Simpsons was escalating its satire or selling out. The character of Lisa in
particular has long been seen as a ‘feminist role model’.
What would she say?

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Long-running ‘open’ narratives

Radio
Radio uses sounds and silence (in particular the signifying capacities
of voices), and this affects the way it can handle narrative. It has to
construct the illusion of space between characters, and time between
segments, through the use of voices, noises, sound effects and silence.
It will not devote much time to features on which cinema might want to
linger, as visual evidence of how the movie has spent its resources (say,
the display of special effects (FX) or costumes).
Characters cannot stay silent for long periods of time (like the Tim
Roth character, mostly silent, dying ‘onstage’ in Reservoir Dogs (US
1992)), since they would seem to have ‘disappeared’. Since radio’s
signifiers are relatively cheap and easy to produce, it is free to construct
the most bizarre and exotic stories, from time travel to a play about
memories flashing through the head of a drowning woman.

Cinema

For more detailed discussion
of film texts, see Chapter 1
case study, Chapter 13, and
the Chapter 6 case study on
The Age of Stupid.

Like video and audio recordings, this is a ‘time-based’ medium,
manipulating time and space via camera movement and editing, as well
as by images or words. The average feature film length of two hours, if
audiences view it all at one sitting, can give it some of the intensity of a
short story. With DVDs some choose to replicate this experience with
‘special’ DVD screenings at home and even box set ‘power viewings’ of
series before the next comes along. Large-screen TVs (often sold by the
same corporations) seem to be strengthening this tendency. It involves
an experience different from that of more open-ended fictions, like
soaps, serials or novels, read or viewed over days, weeks, even years,
woven into our lives while we do other things in between.

Long-running ‘open’ narratives
So, differences between the ways stories are told in different media, or
re-mediated, are partly to do with the material (sound, celluloid, digital
media, line drawings, spoken or written words alone) of that medium.
But they are also to do with institutional or industrial demands.
Soaps can be defined as open-ended, multi-strand serial forms,
broadcast across fifty-two weeks of the year. They developed first on US
radio in the 1930s as a cheap way of involving housewives, whose buying
choices the detergent manufacturers (and other businesses) wanted to
influence. It seemed an ideal form both for commercial television in the
1960s, keen to sell the promise of audiences’ regular attention to

60

2: NARRATIVES

advertisers, and for the BBC to revive in 1985 with EastEnders, wanting
to boost its early evening audiences. This was partly in the hope that
they would stay with the channel all evening, and also to help the BBC
produce evidence of large audience numbers when making its arguments
for the level of the next licence fee.
Major soaps have acted like big news programmes, and major serials
as ‘flagship programmes’, which can help to brand channels. Though
‘soap opera’ is one of the most familiar and discussed forms of media, it
is not just ‘one thing’. Even on British terrestrial television there are
Australian, US, Welsh, Scottish and other soaps, made within different
kinds of broadcasting institutions (public service broadcasting,
commercially funded, etc.).
These in turn divide into high- and low-budget products, and have
different relationships to documentary forms, to sitcom, romance,
regional identities, and to different audiences.

Long-running ‘open’ narratives

Branding seeks to associate
products with certain
desirable meanings and
emotions, and to establish
something called a USP or
Unique Selling Proposition
for them. (See Chapter 11.)

The director of The Wire, in various interviews, suggested (2009) strategies to
maximise audience impact/pull and build a sense of almost ethnographic
realism/insight, etc. in the narrative of this much-praised serial:
1 don’t explain anything to the audience. Let the characters engage with
each other in their real idiom and the audience will find the thread and
enjoy putting it together;
2 let some characters behave in unexpected ways, ‘out of character’,
enhancing a sense of human complexity; and
3 every now and then insert a tiny insight/gem that only real people living in
those conditions/contexts would know. But don’t ever explain anything!
(Thanks to Simon Cottle for this).

Nevertheless, we can generalise. One of British soap’s attractions for its
producers has been that costs can be kept down, partly because narrative
can be centred on a few key or ‘nodal’ locations (e.g. the hotel, pub,
launderette or café). These are meeting places, one of the staples of the
narrative, and also key to soaps’ economies and production needs. Since
soaps usually air on two or three nights a week, many storylines are
necessary. Particular ones can swing in and out of prominence, allowing:
• time for rehearsals, and for actors’ holidays, pantomime contracts,
pregnancies, illnesses;
• a wide appeal, through several stories happening at once so as to
involve different sections of the audience. If you’re impatient with
one ‘strand’, you know that another, which interests you more, will

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

probably be along in a minute or so. The ‘nodal’ meeting places give a
chance for storylines to meet and switch, but also coherence and the
feeling of ‘community’ so central to soap’s pleasures. These have been
extended recently through viewers’ ability to contact the programme
makers, through blogs and so on, with suggestions, queries, etc.
Soap narratives may also change as a result of attempts to shift the
composition of their audiences – and advertisers. Over the past few
years several UK soaps have moved ‘upmarket’ in terms of their sets,
costumes, situations and some character types, as part of the attempt to
sell more expensive ad slots addressing more affluent audiences. After
the success of Brookside, other soaps tried to attract male audiences to
this traditionally female form, as happened with hospital series, which
became tougher through gory special FX and certain storylines. The
characters and storylines of The Bill, for example, fall between soap
(continuous production, never a ‘closed’ ending to an episode) and
series (self-contained storylines each week, as in ER). Serials (including
‘classic’ serials) and ‘mini-series’ (often a pilot project) are other narrative
forms which are longer than a single narrative, but not ‘open ended’ as
soaps are.
Soaps have also often covered controversial themes in order to
aggregate audiences. A quick look at the website list of charities
consulted by EastEnders for such storylines suggests the care that is often
taken (see Chapter 4). It also seems that soap’s very long-running
narrative has advantages over more prestigious drama forms in treating
traumatic happenings. The long-term, often invisible consequences of
dramatic ‘social issues’ (such as rape, child abuse, the trauma of serving
in a war) can be dealt with, and resurface for a particular character, over
many years – as they do in real life.

The Royle Family (BBC
1998–2008) series, unlike
soaps, was in one sense
very ‘realistic’: in its
representation of TV viewing.
Wikipedia warns ‘Not to be
confused with the Royal
Family.’

Of course soap opera has limitations to its ‘realism’. When have you ever
heard characters in a soap discussing real-life political campaigns or figures,
the news, or even rival television soaps, as most of us do?
Explore why these absences occur.

Radio soaps, because cheaper to produce, can work slightly differently.
The Archers is well known for the up-to-date-ness of its agricultural
storylines, able to respond swiftly to real-world farming events. Foot
and mouth disease, in 2001, with its devastating consequences for
farming, was mentioned by the end of the first week in which it was
reported.

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2: NARRATIVES

Conclusion

Q: Why exactly might this have been more difficult for a TV soap to
achieve?

Conclusion
‘Narrative’ has long been a key theory helping us understand the
workings of media forms, both ‘factual’ and fiction, both pre-modern
media and in some, but only some, Web 2.0 interactive forms. We discuss
later (Chapter 6) its expanding uses, for example into a kind of substitute
for ideological position, as in ‘the management narrative in the postal
strike is that . . .’
A final example may focus this area of media theory, which for so
long has been based in very textual approaches, using narratives
assumed to be ‘told to’ audiences. Though some computer games use
aspects of stories – characters, ‘chained actions’ and endings – the
‘reader’ or rather user should feel right in the middle of them, immersed.
And a ‘given’ ending does not operate in the ways we’ve suggested for
single narratives. For example, the player may have met challenges
which halt or even stop the game/narrative.
It is hard to generalise about games, firstly since there are so
many kinds (sports games, racing games, MMPORGs (massively
multiplayer online role-play games), single-player fantasy adventure
RPGs (role-playing games), first-person shooters and so on. Secondly, in
their detailed setting, and often the ‘blockbuster’ genres they stay with
(war films and action adventure especially), the narrative-related ones
can seem like a more immersive version of cinema. But they tend
to operate differently, with such narrative pleasures as taking on a
character role, or performing a skilled task. Indeed, the question of how
far narrative theory applies to them is controversial (see Dovey and
Kennedy 2006).
Such ‘immersive’ cultural forms, like all media, are best understood
by a range of theories, especially those of play and of gaming. In
multiplayer online games the forking-path narrative structure, where
player choices continually direct the narrative, is obviously much more
extreme and open-ended.

Study of theories of play is
called ludology, from the
Latin word for game or play
‘ludus’. See Charlie Brooker’s
Gameswipe (BBC4 2009) on
the BBC i-player for an
entertaining and refreshingly
unpatronising account of
games.

See Chapter 8 for much
more discussion of ‘new
media’ and how they invite us
to rethink, as well as replay
existing theories.

63

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

References and further reading

EXPLORE 2.11

•
•
•
•
•

List your four favourite games.
How many of them are narrative related, i.e. their appeal is partly the
‘narrative’ or character that a player may hope to be immersed in, but also
active within?
How would you describe your involvement with, and distance from, any
avatars?
Are characters important? Sound effects (as ever a highly neglected area of
media analysis)? The visual representation of avatars?
For those involving narrative play, how far do you agree with this statement by
Sarah Roberts (1995, in Dovey and Kennedy 2006: 48): ‘the illusion that goes
along with interactivity is a kind of democracy . . . that the artist is sharing the
power of choice with the viewer, when actually the artist has planned every
option that can happen . . . it’s a great deal more complex than if you [the user]
hadn’t had a sort of choice, but it’s all planned.’

This takes us to Chapter 3 ‘Genres and other classifications’, and how
narrative expectations are prepared, and played with, in classifications
known as genres.

References and further reading
Barthes, Roland (1977) Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,
London: Fontana.
Bordwell, David, and Thompson, Kirstin (2008) Film Art: An Introduction,
8th edn, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Branigan, Edward (1992) Narrative Comprehension and Film, London:
Routledge.
Branston, Gill (2006) ‘Understanding Genre’, in Gillespie, Marie, and
Toynbee, Jason (eds) Analysing Media Texts, London: Open University
Press, pp. 75–6.
Campbell, Joseph (1949) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, new edition,
Fontana, 1993.
Churchwell, Sarah (2009) ‘What Would Lisa Think?’ The Guardian, 24
October.
Corrigan, Timothy, and White, Patricia (2004) The Film Experience: An
Introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Derry, Charles (1988) The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred
Hitchcock, Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

64

2: NARRATIVES

References and further reading

Dovey, Jon, and Kennedy, Helen W. (2006) Game Cultures, London and
New York: Open University Press.
Durkin, Kevin (1985) Television, Sex Roles and Children, Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Field, Syd (1994) Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay,
New York: Dell.
Hyde, Marina (2009) ‘Cameron’s West Wing Plans Take us Closer to
Government by Box Set’, The Guardian, 4 July.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1972) ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, in De George,
R. and F. (eds) The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss, New York:
Doubleday Anchor.
McKee, Robert (1999) Story Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of
Screenwriting, New York: HarperCollins.
Propp, Vladimir (1975) The Morphology of the Folk Tale, Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Ravenhill, Mark (2007) ‘The Cult of Story is Destroying our Culture from
Within: It’s Time to Start Fighting Back’, The Guardian, 25 June.
Todorov, Tzvetan (1977) The Poetics of Prose, Oxford: Blackwell.
Wells, Liz (2002) The Photography Reader, London and New York:
Routledge.

65

CASE STUDY

CSI: Miami and crime fiction
•

THE CLASSIFICATION ‘CRIME FICTION’

•

APPLYING BARTHES

•

PLOT/STORY

•

APPLYING LÉVI-STRAUSS

•

APPLYING TODOROV

•

NARRATIVES, INSTITUTIONS, IDEOLOGIES

•

APPLYING PROPP

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Stories centring on crimes and how they are solved are a
good way into narrative since they have at their very

EXPLORE 2.12

centre the painstaking reconstruction of ‘another story’
– ‘what really happened’ – deducted from the evidence

•

of the plot. This reconstructing involves the same kinds
of speculation which ‘readers’ usually carry out on the
detective stories and, indeed, on many fictions: attempts
to assess character and motivation, likely actions and

•

Research how genre classifications operate in
publicity, casting and opening sequences of these
series.
List what seem to be fans’ pleasures and focus, on
the official CBS site.

unlikely ones, and ‘the evidence’ for these.
Here we will:
• apply the main theories of narrative to the very first
episode of CSI: Miami;

The group classified as ‘crime fiction’ most often deals

• update them for audio-visual forms with internet
connections;

into the ‘whodunnit’, the ‘how-dunnit’ and even the

• suggest how such crime narratives might relate to
dominant values.

TV crime series, Law and Order (US 1990–), divides

with the solving of crimes. One further division could be
‘why-dunnit’. Rather unusually, the longest-running US
episodes into the investigation of a crime, and then its
legal prosecution. But usually:

THE CLASSIFICATION ‘CRIME FICTION’

1 the focus will be on solving rather than exploring
crimes; their broader social causes, or the experience

We focus on the very first episode of the hugely

of committing them, or of being tried and punished

successful CBS series CSI: Miami, one of the CSI (Crime

for them, are examples of related areas usually

Scene Investigation) series which are separately located

broached in detail by other genres: ‘the prison film’,

in New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Though we’re

horror, the drama-documentary, the biopic, or the

focusing on narrative, genre expectations play along
with those for most audiences.

courtroom drama;
2 arguably the objects of investigation are not the
crimes of the most powerful, which often belong to
investigative journalism, and are often not defined
as crimes.

66

CASE STUDY: CSI: MIAMI AND CRIME FICTION

The classification ‘crime fiction’

Let’s consider crime narratives in more detail. Most of

often used dubious methods, and could voice telling

them deal with detection. It doesn’t take a Sherlock

criticisms of an unjust social order. The complex

Holmes to deduce that ‘detective fiction’ usually

narratives took this ‘man who is not himself mean’

involves a detective, but it also often involves a junior

down the ‘mean streets’ of corrupt US cities.

detective, and an enjoyment of the relationship
between them, often as great as the crime they have to
solve. There may also be a fascination with the place

EXPLORE 2.13

where the detectives are based, whether foggy
nineteenth-century London, Miami, or the Chicago of

•

V.I. Warshawski.
The most common narrative focuses on a single

•

detective. Though these are all ‘heroes’ in Propp’s
sense, the pleasure for many fans lies in their different

•

ways of operating in that role, in moving image fictions,
their ‘style’. There are two major roots for this genre’s
‘heroes’:
1 the first is focused on the English ‘gentleman’
detective character, from Sherlock Holmes to
Inspector Morse, or Peter Kingdom (with some
involving ‘gentlewomen’ detectives such as Miss
Marple);

•

Can you see any traces of these two traditions in
the detectives in CSI: Miami?
Since they are usually male, this can involve a
sense of masculinity, of ‘cool’ in the role.
See YouTube on the ‘greatest one-liners’ of
Horatio in CSI: Miami, including his use of his
sunglasses in their delivery, and the sense among
fans that this sometimes tips, enjoyably, into
self-parody.
Have you encountered any ‘cool’ women
detective characters? How is their style
constructed? Does it have the same authority as
that of Horatio, or Grissom in CSI: New York?

2 the other strand, from the 1920s, was centred on a
more ‘hard-boiled’ US detective, great with ‘oneliners’, not a gentleman, often an ex-police officer,

The other increasingly popular strand within ‘detective

more vulnerable than the Holmes figure, especially to

fiction’ is the ‘police procedural’, involving a team of

the sexually available women he encountered. He

police, and focused on the working processes of solving

One of the narrative pleasures of earlier forms, like the Sherlock Holmes
stories (written between 1887 and 1893) or TV’s Inspector Morse
(1987–2000), is that though we can never be as brilliant as Holmes/Morse,
we can catch up the twisting story through Dr Watson/Lewis – and also
enjoy the satisfaction of feeling that we will never be as ‘slow’ as the latter.
This narrative area involves both construction of intriguing central
characters, and also ‘delivery’ of the plot and story.
Figure 2.14 The aloof, ‘above the world’ image of Sherlock Holmes, his ‘deerstalker’ hat,
as well as his Baker Street address, suggesting an upper-class identity. Often it is the foggy
streets of other parts of Victorian London which challenge his ‘stalking’ capacities. The
resonant imagery of fog often takes his stories to the border of the horror genre. In such a
setting, Holmes worked like a ‘beacon of intelligence’ or ‘a doctor who will cure the ills of
society’ and safely take us through the maze of streets.

67

Plot/story

crimes in methodical, often weary and footslogging
ways. In the case of CSI, the frustrating work of

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
• A small entry wound is found in the upper torso of
the first body, that of the pilot. The two ‘fishermen’

investigation is replaced by a reliance on an almost

are interviewed and ask for a reward. The team

magical high-tech scientific method, often referred to in

discover substitute parts in the plane; they decide

specialised language and acronyms. The terminology

they need to find whoever shot the pilot. They find

itself has a special section in the CSI website.

an empty briefcase and, surviving, Sommer, the head

Q: How far are the relationships between the members

of the insurance firm whose managers were on the

of the team still of interest for you in this kind of
detective story?

PLOT/STORY

plane. They take Sommer to hospital.
• A woman’s body is found five miles away. It’s that
of Christina, senior accountant of the firm, and the
second passenger out of her seat (deduced from
absence of seat-belt burn on the body). Her hands

We’ll summarise the plot of ‘The Golden Parachute’, the

are hurt: first of several swift flashbacks to the

first episode of CSI: Miami, and then consider how this

possible scene of her death. Horatio visits her mother

has been arranged, so as to differ from the story, which

and discovers Christina ‘battled depression’ in high

we can reconstruct by the end.

school and was ‘so good at keeping secrets’.

Note: the word ‘synopsis’ often refers to a trailer-like
teasing summary of the beginning of the narrative.

• Horatio reveals to colleagues that the management
team were going to Washington to appear before

A true synopsis summarises all the happenings in a text,

the SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) on

and has to give away endings or use ‘spoilers’. This is

charges of fraud. Calleigh discovers that the door

the only way to understand and discuss the whole

opened in flight. Other research shows the exit door

narrative, for which the ending is crucial (see Chapter 2,

pins were tampered with.

on reviews).

Synopsis: ‘The Golden Parachute’
Pre-title sequence: two men fishing in swampland

• They find the (Hispanic) worker who filed down the
pins, but, deducing that the door was opened from
the inside, they release him.
• Sommer is interviewed in hospital. He claims not to
recall anything, then says that he was in his seat

witness a plane crash. The Miami CSI team arrive,

(though has no seat-belt burns) and that Christina

Horatio Caine in charge, with his junior, Eric. There is a

had been drinking and behaving oddly. He seems

question as to which section of the police force is in

puzzled at a mention of gunshot. They fingerprint

charge of the investigation. They find a body from the

him and make tests on Christina’s hair which reveal

crash. Eric thinks it is alive, Horatio tells him it is not.

that she used anti-depressants and tried to kill

Title sequence: spectacular shots of the Florida

herself six months ago. The aircraft’s black boxes

Everglades and stylised ‘hi-tech’ montages of images

seem to be missing. Sommer’s fingerprints are all

of the main characters at work.

over the aircraft door. Horatio and Megan decide

• Megan Donner, once boss of the team, arrives,
returning after a six-month absence following the

there was a struggle, with Christina hanging on to

death of her husband. There’s a brief argument
between her and Horatio about who has jurisdiction
in this case – the ‘Feds’ or CSI. Different approaches

68

the door. Sommer is discovered to have checked
himself out of hospital.
• Eric and Tim ask the fishermen/poachers for items
they accuse them of looting from the crash site. They

to detection arise, which resurface throughout the

retrieve the black box from a tank of baby alligators.

episode.

The box gives them the last few moments of cockpit

CASE STUDY: CSI: MIAMI AND CRIME FICTION

Applying Todorov

EXPLORE 2.14
Summaries take a long time! But hopefully it showed how the arrangement of the plot(ting) differed from the story,
which we are able to reconstruct by the end. Revise the graph in Chapter 2. See if you can replicate it here.
Q When is the earliest story event?
A Christina’s suicide attempt (revealed via analysis of a piece of her hair in the plot) six months before, as she
wrestled with her feelings around revealing the fraud.
Q What other events are deliberately ‘delayed’ or altered for the sake of narrative pleasure?
A The delay in finding the black box keeps us speculating, in the absence of ‘firm’ evidence.
• The discovered briefcase could have been full of revealing documents.
• Christina’s body could have been found first, along with trails to this full knowledge.
• The team look for a gunman for much of the episode, which turns out to be a false trail of speculation for viewers
and characters.
• So does the quarrel about who is in charge of the investigation, CSI or ‘the Feds’ (though this contributes to
‘character’, another narrative pleasure).
This plot offers pleasures which the same events in a straightforwardly told story (A–Z) could not have done. And
as a long-running TV narrative (unlike the ones Propp, Lévi-Strauss and Barthes were studying) it introduces story
strands, debates and characters which can be picked up in later episodes.

sounds. These are manipulated to discover

Her words ‘without the truth we ourselves are

seventeen seconds of struggle, but no sound of a

powerless’ act as final voice-over.

bullet fired.
• They search Christina’s apartment. Ballistics
expert Calleigh has discovered there was no bullet

APPLYING TODOROV

but that a substandard bolt killed the pilot. Horatio

Todorov’s theory can be applied here. But the ‘once

notices the fire extinguisher is missing and

upon a time’ moment, when opposing forces are ‘in

speculates that Sommer used it to force Christina

balance’, is disrupted very fast, indeed hardly lasts the

off the plane.

length of the title sequence. We’ve dealt above with the

• The team discovers that the plane’s door had
substandard parts. Copies of subpoenas reveal that

question ‘where else it could have started?’
To have Christina’s mental struggle, as she

the plane was taking insurance company executives

decides to ‘blow the whistle’, as the ‘disruption’ would

to an SEC hearing over fraud allegations. The woman

place events in a different genre or group of fictions.

whose body was found miles from the crash was a

It might signal the start of a corporate crime thriller,

whistleblower (exposing corruption in the company).

or ‘issue’ drama, or biopic, with a strong interest in

The company chief is later found hanged.

corruption.

• Horatio talks again with Christina’s mother. He reads
out the beginning of a letter she had written
exposing the fraud, over shots of the team working.

Q Are any values confirmed in the final equilibrium?
Does it ‘close’ rather than simply ‘stop’?
A Though the issue of corporate corruption is raised, it

The episode ends with Horatio thinking of the

is narrativised so as to be ‘at the side’ of the

whistleblower woman, and mentally ‘saluting’ her.

investigation. And the suicide of the ‘villain’ softens

69

Applying Propp

the verdict on those misdeeds – much more than an
arrest would have done.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
whole sequence of ‘taking into hospital’, so it is no
surprise we next see him in a bed.
Then there are codes that point outwards from a story,

APPLYING PROPP

and relate it to the rest of the culture:

Propp’s broad theory, around much earlier narratives,

• The semic code, which involves all the connotations
built up around the characters and their actions.

can still be applied. The characters here do indeed fall

These stem from culturally recognisable discourses

into certain character roles (hero, helper), though to a

and patterns of meaning, such as those around

limited extent, and there is indeed ‘solution of a task’

‘powerful professional women’ for CSI: Miami.

which, along with ‘punishment of the villain’, coincides

Barthes and other deconstructive writers were

with narrative closure. But you may argue that suicide

relatively uninterested in the questions of

as ‘punishment’ softens the character to such an extent

‘character’. But these matter for online fans of this

that we’re not really invited to think of him as a villain.

series. They conduct heated debates around Horatio.

And the ‘hero’ sometimes seems like the whole team,

Is he a ‘super-cool’ deliverer of one-liners, or is he too

even if Horatio is clearly in charge and picked out for

infallible, controlled, impassive to be satisfying as a

narrative interest.

‘character’, for whom flaws and a personal life are
required?

APPLYING BARTHES

• The symbolic code, which embodies the substitution
of a small or concrete thing for a bigger, abstract

Barthes argued (in 1970) that a narrative text (from the

one. The unrealistic darkness of the team’s labs

Latin word meaning ‘tissue’) was not one thing, but a

perhaps works in a symbolic way, as in film noir, to

weaving together of different strands and processes,

suggest the moral darkness of the world into which

some of them ‘internal’ to the story, some making

they’re throwing the light of scientific investigation –

connections to its ‘outside’ or the rest of the real.

echoes of Sherlock Holmes.

Few now would find the theory as striking as it seemed
when first published, but it is still useful in considering

• The cultural or referential code, which anchors the
text in its historical context, and points out of it

the different ways readers are given access to

towards that. In this episode there are lines like

stories.

‘Most whistleblowers are women’, signalling a

Barthes suggested that narrative works with five

contemporary fact, as well as using a contemporary

codes, which together ‘activate’ the ‘reader’. The

term for someone who exposes corruption. ‘The

two codes which are ‘internal’ to the text are:

Dolphins’ is a more ‘local’ reference to a Miami

• The ‘enigma (or hermeneutic) code’, which sets up
and usually solves major puzzles. Here the main one

football team. And there is much audio-visual
footage of the contemporary Florida setting, familiar

occurs at the start: why did this plane crash? At least

both to those who live there and to those worldwide

two kinds of pleasure are involved: it can be as

who watch US fictions. This is not available to a radio

enjoyable to come to ‘know’ the answers as it is to

or print version of the same story.

have that prediction upset by the twists and surprises
of the narrative.
• The action (or ‘proairetic’) code, which makes
complex actions ‘readable’ through small details so

70

APPLYING LÉVI-STRAUSS
Lévi-Strauss is less interested in the chronological

we don’t need to have everything spelt out. Here the

plotting of a single story (though that is how his

sight of the stretcher with Sommer on it signals a

‘syntagmatic’ group has come to be used) than in

CASE STUDY: CSI: MIAMI AND CRIME FICTION

Narratives, institutions, ideologies

repeated elements and their systematic relationship,
usually across many stories. He called these the

EXPLORE 2.16

‘paradigmatic’ aspect of myths. Nevertheless, the
‘binary oppositions’ into which they can sometimes

•

be arranged are often applied to individual stories.
A Lévi-Straussian approach to the CSI series overall
might locate it within the abiding binary ‘crime/law and
order’ and ask:
Q: How does it embody this binary – through contrasts
of characters, settings, actions?
Q: How does it fit into changing US TV and film

•

Consider The Mentalist (US 2008–), Lie to Me
(US 2009–), and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
How does the figure of the hyperintuitive or even
‘damaged genius’ male detective work in their
narratives? Are there any female equivalents?
Compare them with series such as BBC1’s Criminal
Justice (especially the 2009 series) as ways of
exploring ‘criminality’ and its detection.

treatments of that binary, which tend to blur a clear
opposition?

EXPLORE 2.15

NARRATIVES, INSTITUTIONS,
IDEOLOGIES
Branigan’s (1992: 3) formulation of narrative as ‘a way

If you’ve seen the US TV serial Dexter (2006–), also
set in Miami, make notes on how it:
a plays with the narrative positioning, casting and
characterisation of the hero as a police forensics
expert;
b plays with the villain (who here is often the same
figure as the hero: what does this do to binaries?);
c relates to the surrounding culture, including the
huge success of the CSI series and their construction
of ‘hi-tech’ science as ‘saviour’.

of organising spatial and temporal data into a causeeffect chain of events with a beginning, a middle and
end that embodies a judgement about the nature of
events’ sums up much of what we’ve explored here.
But CSI: Miami is also a specific TV series, or rather
franchise, in a hugely competitive market, not a novel
or a single film. This shapes how it tells its stories. For

It’s also worth exploring how the different detection
methods of Megan and Horatio (she insisting on staying
strictly with the evidence, he often citing a ‘gut feeling’
for an idea) are consistently opposed. This relates to a
broader gendered contrast in many crime fictions. The X

Files (US 1993–2002) played with a reversal of
gendered stereotyping (a reliance on supposedly female
‘intuition’ versus supposedly male ‘reliance on
evidence’). Medium (US 2005–) seems to take the
opposite route in its clairvoyant female investigator.

Figure 2.15 One part of ‘Miami’ is this beach, a visual pleasure as
well as segue to ‘ad break’; another is the Everglades, with more
sinister connotations. Both are rather different in their signifying
potential to the CSI settings in New York or Las Vegas, let alone
Sherlock Holmes’ foggy nineteenth-century London.

71

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Narratives, institutions, ideologies

example, it is shown mostly on advertising-funded TV

‘pleasure’, offered in especially vivid ways by film, TV

channels, so you probably noticed that parts of it

and computer games. The science-related CGI effects

suddenly include a few seconds of spectacular aerial

in many ways substitute, for the audience, for the

views, unmotivated by the story’s needs. These offer

‘Dr Watson’ function – the ‘helper’ character who

themselves to the purchasing network as pleasurable

nevertheless needs fairly simple things explained. Here,

in themselves, but also as possible ‘ad breaks’, allowing

the visuals will do that explaining. In narratives where

people a few seconds to return from the ads back to the

the emphasis of the puzzle has shifted away from

narrative. Equally the episode can be watched without

actually ‘catching the bad guy’ to ‘what happened’, the

these sections interrupting things, as in DVD boxed sets

effects seem to substitute for the excitement of the now

and also for sales to TV regulatory regimes where ads do

missing chase.

not interrupt programmes as often as on some US
networks, and with ad-skipping recorders such as TiVo.
The show deploys audio-visual narrativity: it tells

It has also been suggested that this flashy hi-tech
science is the hero or star of the show, literally the ‘light
in the darkness’ of many scenes. But it produces the

the tale differently from verbal language forms. For
example, the opening sequence is an excitingly
choreographed combination of music, cutting and the

EXPLORE 2.17

plane crash, which smoothly and shockingly culminates
in the fuselage hitting the water, almost as the
fishermen’s lines do. As well as opening the narrative, it
promises how it will be told – smartly, smoothly, slickly,
but also so as to provide thrills, an exotic locale and
clever choice of music.
Though it’s mostly the Florida Everglades setting
that is used here, in other episodes ‘Florida’ offers:
• a potentially big Hispanic audience;
• narratives centring on border-crossings, smuggling,
drugs, refugees, etc.;
• a circling round the seedy, glamorous and bizarre
aspects of its often sordid ‘entertainment industries’;
• audience genre knowledge of ‘gangsters going south
for the sun’;
• the ‘wet heat’ atmosphere of fetid swamps, with
their moral connotations (see the film Wild Things

Figure 2.16 CSI’s high-tech science, its bright lights and dark
surrounding space.

(US 1998), especially the title sequence, for similar
resonances). In fact the series was shot in LA; the

•

non-laboratory settings are often anonymous hotel
rooms (especially the now generically horror-laden
bathroom) or the sprawling housing of the Miami
suburbs.
The use of CGI (computer-generated imagery) and
ingenious ‘body’ effects for some of the laboratory
scenes likewise form a kind of spectacular visual

72

•

Might these lights signify detection as the ‘beacon
of enlightenment’?
Compare the ways in which the UK series
Crimewatch (factual) and Waking the Dead (fiction)
narrativise and light their reconstructions and
narratives. Is quite the same ‘magic’ of hi-tech being
constructed?

CASE STUDY: CSI: MIAMI AND CRIME FICTION

References and further reading

problems of impoverished characterisation, which many

comforting in a grey world’. But this means that the

fans complain of. The characters (especially Horatio) are

series lacks a whole aspect of real-life crime

said rarely to make mistakes and to show little emotion.

investigations – failure to conclude a case, or even the

The little speeches of the forensic surgeon to each

making of mistakes, with horrendous results for those

corpse, ‘Hello you . . .’, seem the licensed space where

convicted. These parts of the representation and

some emotion can be expressed.

narrativisation of science in CSI: Miami are among the

This blankness could be argued to be part of the
hard-boiled tradition, and Horatio’s manner is softened

most ideologically powerful, and limiting, parts of its
workings.

in the discussions with Christina’s mother and in his
mental ‘salute’ to the whistleblower at the end. Overall,
however, time spent on developing such interiority, or
doubts, is generally limited, partly because the team
spend so much more time ‘dishing out exposition’ to
explain the technical terms, than showing emotion or
having complex lives, or indeed, arguing about the
broader issues (here, capitalist corruption) raised by
particular crimes.
The exaltation of hi-tech science as that which will
save us, with its supposedly infallible accuracy and
enlightenment, may be one reason for CSI’s popularity.
McLean (2005) speculates that one reason was that it is
‘very black and white – the evidence never lies – it was

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Branigan, Edward (1992) Narrative Comprehension and
Film, London: Routledge.
Cooke, Les (2001) ‘The Police Series’, in Creeber,
Glen (ed.) The Television Genre Book, London: BFI,
pp. 19–23.
McLean, Gareth (2005) ‘CSI: Tarantino’, The Guardian,
11 July.
Tasker, Yvonne (2009 unpublished), ‘Smoke and
Mirrors: “Psychic” Cops, Pseudo-Science and Male
Intuition in Crime Television’, part of the Salford
University Screens and Mediations seminars.

73

3 Genres and other
classifications
•

Classifying films: Thelma and
Louise (US 1991)

•

Status and genres 2: the cultural
context

•

Repetition and difference

•

Formal classifications

•

Case study: Formats and genres

•

Conclusion

•

Repertoires of elements

•

References and further reading

•

Status and genres 1: ‘escapism’,
gender and verisimilitude

All media output is classified, in various ways, by:
• its makers
• its marketers, reviewers, and official classifiers or censors
• its ‘consumers’ or users.
These classifications (emo or grunge? horror or thriller?) have material
effects on the ways we encounter, enter into and understand media.
They shape:
• the status of works;
• their ability to get made in the first place, and then how they are
circulated;
• their ability to withstand marginalisation and even censorship;
• how their invitations are taken up, resisted or otherwise shaped by
audiences, or users.
This chapter focuses on the concept of ‘genre’ and links it to other ways
of grouping or framing texts.
‘Genre’ is simply a French word for type or kind. Some writers
emphasise its similarity to biological classifications of plants and animals
(vegetables or fruit? reptiles or mammals?). This assumes the
‘naturalness’ of genre. Such images may be useful in helping us think
about how genres change, mutate and produce hybrids or ‘in-betweens’ –
rather like species. But they are only metaphors. You can get into tricky
territory using the image to argue that particular genres (such as the
western) are ‘extinct’, only to find their major elements replayed in, say,
Brokeback Mountain, or the TV series Deadwood.

74

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Genre can usefully be understood as one of many forms of
classification, rather like maps. Different maps (road, geological,
consumer research) always have to leave out many features, and to
emphasise only some parts of an area, in order to be useful, usable.
Similarly gardeners and farmers may classify plants into ‘weeds’ and
‘proper plants’/‘crops’. Using another system of classification, asking
other questions of them, all of these are simply ‘plants’ rather than, say,
‘animals’. Classifying systems like this often use a binary ‘either/or’
division, when we might think in terms of a spectrum of varieties.
In media studies ‘genre’ is often taken to refer to cut and dried,
simple boundaries: ‘just another’ gangster film, or hip-hop track. ‘Once
you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’ But in fact there is always both
repetition and difference at play in genre products. An example: a
lightbulb joke depends on the same kinds of familiarity and therefore
expectations for its audience as any genre product. Unless you’ve never
heard one before, when you hear the question you know that a joke is
involved (a genre aiming to produce laughter) and are therefore likely to
begin thinking in certain, potentially comic directions rather than other,
more serious ones for the answer.

The anthropologist Mary
Douglas studied the ways
some substances are
classified as ‘dirt’, which she
called ‘matter out of place’.
This usefully highlights the
extent to which a notion of
‘dirt’ is partly based on taboo
or classification systems.

Or ‘repetition with
difference’ as some say, to
emphasise that the two
cannot be separated. See
Corrigan and White (2004).

See http://www.lightbulb
jokes.com for ‘generic
principles’ and many more
examples of these jokes.

Q: How many thought police does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None . . . There never ‘was’ any light bulb, don’t you remember?
Q: How many Real Men does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Real Men aren’t afraid of the dark.
And so on.

In other words you, the participant, operate a kind of classification or
framing of it – as not being a serious question, as likely to involve certain
kinds of play. If you enjoy lightbulb jokes, part of your pleasure is that
you both sort-of-know and don’t-quite-know what to expect from it. In
other words, a system of expectation is set up around it, involving both
repetition and difference, and depending on you knowing this particular
classification (‘a kind of joke’). What’s repeated is a bare framework of
elements: a lightbulb, a group of people about which certain stereotypes
exist, a number which relates the two amusingly. What’s different is how
the particular connections between those elements will be made this
time. As the genre becomes established, play can be made with its
conventions. Part of the pleasure here is often in over-the-top references
to well-known stereotypes.

‘Framing’ refers to a) the
size and position of the
subject of a photo, painting,
shot, etc.; b) the power of
media to shape and set limits
to how audiences are invited
to perceive certain groups,
issues, genres.

75

Classifying films: Thelma and Louise (US 1991)

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Classifying films: Thelma and Louise (US 1991)

Figure 3.1 Geena Davies and Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise (US 1991)

The wonderful film Visions
of Light (US 1993), about
Hollywood cinematography,
credits all the film extracts
used not by the director’s
name, but by the
cinematographer’s.

When Marge Simpson
snapped into road rage
frustration she was sent on
holiday alone. Among her
treats were hot fudge
sundaes and drinking tequila
in a bubble bath, while
watching Thelma and Louise.

76

1 Credits: in this book we have chosen to classify films by giving their
title, then the main country of production (‘US’ here), then year of
production. This is to give our examples a historical and global
location. Other writers, using perhaps an authorship approach, often
give the director’s surname (here ‘Scott’) and date, and omit country
of production. TV channels often give just film titles on screen. All are
kinds of classification, helping to shape expectations.
2 Generically this film has been argued as primarily a road movie/a
chick flick/a buddy movie/a women’s film. But there are many other
ways of classifying it, for different purposes, at different times.
• IMDb gives four main generic definitions (adventure, drama,
crime, thriller), but if you click ‘more’, up pop sixty more terms
(including ‘tragedy’, ‘hair-dryer’, ‘feminism’, ‘orgasm’ and so on).
• In terms of star classifications it would be seen by some viewers
as a Susan Sarandon, Geena Davies, Brad Pitt and/or Harvey Keitel
movie.
• Classic authorship classifications emphasise it as a Ridley Scottdirected movie. It’s less usual to identify it by the writer’s name, as
with other Scott films like Bladerunner (often identified as a ‘Philip
K Dick’ movie adaptation, after the celebrated SF writer). But there
was some discussion of the fact that this film, which won an Oscar
for Best Screenplay, had a female writer, Callie Khouri, as well as
input from the two female stars.
• Increasingly awards are important as classifiers, not only for
foreign language or low budget films, helping them to circulate in
particular networks such as ‘art cinemas’ or special multiplex
screens, but as a key part of descriptions on Amazon.

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Repetition and difference

•

Formal ratings (see imbd) ranged from France U, Netherlands 12,
to USA R and UK 18.
• The Parents’ Guide warned of the film’s ‘sex and nudity’, ‘violence
and gore’, ‘profanity’, ‘alcohol/drugs/smoking’, and warned,
under ‘Frightening/intense scenes’, that ‘The rape scene can be
considered intense’ and ‘The ending is also quite intense.’
As Altman (1999: 102) writes: ‘Who speaks each generic term? To
whom? For what purposes? . . . Why are the same films sometimes
described generically and at other times covered by an entirely
different terminology? Only by asking questions like these can we
hope to discover how (and why) genres are used.’

A related example
In 2009 Cheryl Gascoigne published her account of her twelve-year marriage
to the footballer Paul Gascoigne (Stronger: My Life Surviving Gazza), which
involved vivid accounts of his alcoholism and abuse of her. The book was
published in a completely plain wrapper. She said she did not want abused
women’s violent partners to identify what they were reading. A very striking
use (or attempted avoidance) of ‘classification’ practices.

Repetition and difference
Audiences understandably seek the pleasures of the familiar. We enjoy
the ritual and reassurance involved in knowing broadly what ‘might
happen’ in a particular media text, or even daily situation. The term
convention is usually understood in a negative way, as a set of rules which
will simply reinforce and repeat dominant (or ‘normative’) values. But
conventions, precisely in order to survive, need to be able to adapt and
shift. And if any story, or video game, or melody, were utterly different
from all others, we would have no means by which to understand it.

Even an apparently
repetitious form – the ‘cover’
version, where an artist
makes his/her ‘repeat’ of a
well-known song – sells
precisely on its blend of the
familiar and the new.

77

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Repetition and difference

EXPLORE 3.1

•

•

Think of two everyday rituals you’ve been involved in – a birthday celebration
or an introduction to someone new. What pleasures are involved in the ritual
of repetition? How was the ritual framework used for innovation or difference
– perhaps a jokiness?
A related point: the very constraint of certain conventions or limits can be a
source of pleasure for users and makers of media forms. Those who enjoy
the challenge of making a message on Twitter (a ‘tweet’) often like having to
keep within the limit of 140 ‘letters’ or strikes of the keyboard. Have you
experienced this pleasure with Twitter, or any other media form?

Yet genre products are not all the same. For one, generic media output is
not like other industrial production. You may hope that your computer
will be exactly as good as, the same as, all the others in that batch. But
you probably don’t want absolute repetition in the ‘texts’ it will deliver.
Rick Altman (1999), using film as example, broadens the links
between ‘genres’ and theories of language and communication more
generally. He argues that genres are classified by what he calls ‘semantic’
elements and ‘syntactic’ structures. Some writers identify film genres by
(semantic) elements: music, character types, familiar objects or settings
(e.g. guns, fang-like incisor teeth). Others recognise a genre because
a group of films organises these ‘building blocks’ in a particular way
(syntactic) via plot structure, character relationships and so on. Altman
suggests both approaches can be operated together, and points to the
western, the horror film and the musical as genres which maintain a high
degree of both semantic and syntactic consistency over decades (Altman
1999: 90). He later goes on to add what he calls ‘pragmatic’ elements,
or those contributed by audiences, fans, very specific situations in
production and so on. We will deal with these in the case study Horror
as Popular Art.

EXPLORE 3.2

•
•

78

Take one of the three genres Altman cites above and try to identify its
semantic and syntactic elements.
How does a favourite recent example of your own from one of the genres
(perhaps Twilight) mutate or play with these?

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Repetition and difference

EXPLORE 3.3

•
•
•

Zap through some TV or radio channels
How quickly are you able to tell what kind of programme is on offer? In
seconds?
How were you able to tell? What kinds of differences are signalled, for TV,
through music, colours, kinds of dialogue, voices, pace of editing, costume,
lighting, etc.?

EXPLORE 3.4

•
•
•

Try turning down the sound on the title sequence of a TV programme and
substituting another kind of music.
What difference does this make to its generic identity?
What connotations does the music add to, or confirm for, the genre?

Industrially, ‘genre’ describes the ways that companies producing and
trading in media ‘texts’ try to minimise risk by grouping, marketing
and distributing their products via well-established expectations.
Economically this helps to predict expenditure within costly and volatile
media businesses, which all require some standardisation of
production, in both senses of the term. Of course it requires difference
too. This was true of the ‘production line’ in the Hollywood studio
system (from around 1925 to 1950) and, in different ways, of many TV
productions now. TV companies, whether ‘independent’, state or public
service, need predictable annual income, whether from the licence fee
(BBC) or selling advertising space, or selling ad space plus charging
subscription fees (cable and satellite companies).
If output can be settled into broadly familiar groupings, then
economies of scale can operate in production but also, importantly, in
marketing and distribution. Broadly similar sets, script writers, key
actors, advertising spaces, etc. can be profitably booked or reused, rather
than made or searched for afresh each time. And advertisers can be
assured they have access to certain audiences at particular times and on
certain channels. Traditionally, British soap operas, such as EastEnders
and Coronation Street, have promised large audiences, key to building a
channel’s ‘audience share’ in the early evening.

Standardisation has a double
meaning. It can signify
‘sameness’, but also the
maintenance of standards, in
the sense of ‘quality’. Worth
bearing in mind in the
debates around ‘sameness’
and ‘difference’ in media.

Economies of scale are the
cost advantages which
expansion, or scale, brings
to a business. Average costs
per unit fall as more units
are produced. Arguably,
however, increased ‘marginal’
revenue is key in marketing
(relatively cheap) digital
media.
See MSB5 website
section on
industries.

The long-running Coronation
Street’s capacity to attract
large audiences made it
worth Granada building a
permanent set and employing
a serial historian to avoid
embarrassing mistakes in the
storyline for loyal viewers.

79

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Repetition and difference

Factual
Education (formal)
News and Weather
Current Affairs
Entertainment
Sport
Children's
Drama
Film
Music and Arts
Religion

Figure 3.2 The BBC divides up its
output into a set of broad genres.
Where are the overlaps? Why
these classifications?

‘Niche’ originally meant a
little nest or recess in a wall;
niche marketing now refers
to attempts to reach
specialised but highly
profitable groups of potential
consumers, via particular
media products or aspects of
products.

Several developments have shifted these apparent certainties, even
before the recession of 2008 onwards. In cinema, since the breakup of the
Hollywood studio system, and in UK broadcasting there have been huge
changes. The founding of Channel 4 in 1982 was followed by cable and
satellite broadcasting, and now Web 2.0 viewing, on computers and
elsewhere, at whatever times are selected by the user. The ‘audience’ has
to some extent been fragmented, which has led to attempts to target ever
more specialised, small audience segments or niches of potential audience.
The term ‘narrowcasting’ distinguishes these advertising-led developments
from an older media ecology, where fewer channels (just BBC and ITV for
UK television) had the power to ‘broadcast’ to larger audiences.

CASE STUDY: FORMATS AND GENRES
A new kind of difference/standardisation
balance can be seen to operate in
format TV productions, such as those
of Endemol, an independent company,
operating ‘multi-platform’ (i.e. mostly
on TV and Web 2.0). It deals in formats,
Figure 3.3 A now-obsolete logo for
the soon-to-be-obsolete UK Big
Brother.

80

a category which overlaps with
‘genre’.

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Repetition and difference

Formats are concepts, or set-ups, which can be sold globally and then
varied locally. A format can include everything from the presenting links, type
of set, lighting, music, even the senior producer, who may be included as part
of the contract. Simon Cowell is estimated to be worth £120 million as a
result of his work as ‘talent judge’ and consequent ownership and
management of TV formats. See Brown (2009).
Currently popular is the genre of the talent show, with
such different formats as Britain’s Got Talent, Pop Idol, American Idol, The

X Factor.
• What characterises the talent show in these formats?
• Would you argue that BBC’s The Apprentice is a version of the talent
show?
Two key genres: both The Weakest Link and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
belong to the genre ‘quiz show’ (an entertainment form centred around a
quizmaster, contestants and prizes), though their formats or set-ups differ
(the way the questions are asked, the set, prizes and penalties delivered, etc.).

Big Brother and others like it are ‘game shows’: an entertainment form
centred around teams or individuals who are usually in competition with each
other for a big prize, via ‘games’ or ‘tasks’ involving various degrees of
playfulness, embarrassment, danger, difficulty.
The formats or set-ups obviously differ in terms of the activities
demanded, the setting (desert island? jungle?), the prizes and penalties, etc.

Big Brother as a genre/format operates a loose ‘repertoire of elements’ which
can be played with both globally and over time. It combines:
1 ‘reality television’ (it is unrehearsed, unscripted, and uses surveillance
camera work, though the setting is usually highly lit ‘entertainment’);

See Chapter 13 for more on
‘reality TV’.

2 game show (innovatively, it has both teams and the individuals within
them set to compete against each other; and it uses highly selected
contestants, increasingly willing to perform and often seeing the show as
the route to a kind of celebrity, and fortune);

along with a third key element
3 audience involvement via hugely profitable interactive technology,
including blogs and phone votes on the fate of ‘characters’ and live web
broadcasts not shown on TV.

Media forms have consequently become more and more cross-generic or
hybrid or ‘mashed’, as advertisers seek to attract more and more small
segments of what used to be called ‘the audience’. Makers and audiences
draw on varied repertoires of pleasure and knowledge such that many
different media forms now routinely clash and mix: cyber-punk,

Hybridity: term originally
used with reference to the
crossbreeding of plants. Here
it signals media products
mixing different sets of
cultural values, technologies
and/or formal properties so
as to produce something
new, e.g. ‘cross-over hits’ in
pop music, comedy-drama
(Desperate Housewives).

81

Repetition and difference

Intertextuality: the variety
of ways in which media and
other texts interact with each
other, rather than being
unique or distinct. It is
broader than ‘hybrid’, and it
arguably benefits from not
being linked, as ‘hybrid’ is, to
a biological metaphor (hybrid
plant and animal breeding)
which suggests that the
elements being combined are
themselves unchanging.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

drama-documentary, the comedy and ‘reality’ documentary mix of The
Office (BBC 2002–3) and so on. This phenomenon is sometimes known by
the broader term intertextuality, or the many ways in which media and
other texts interact with each other, rather than being unique or distinct
– including quotation, adaptation, re-mediation, etc.
Though such mixings are sometimes loosely labelled ‘postmodern’,
most media forms have always involved some kind of ‘hybridity’ and
were never ‘pure’ romantic songs/novels/films or horror films/books/
comics, etc. Hollywood (and earlier nineteenth-century cultural forms)
always tried to attract as many audience segments as possible – often
by lacing a ‘male’ genre with a romance element, as in Casablanca
(US 1942).
Another useful category is the ‘sub-genre’ which defines a specific
version of a genre such as ‘spaghetti western’ or, for fans, gangster films
which fall into the ‘bank robbery’ and ‘crime syndicate’ sub-genres.
These are distinguished from hybrid genres, produced by the interaction
of different genres to produce fusions: romantic comedies, musical
horror films. Finally, to complicate matters further, the term ‘cycle’
describes brief but fairly intense periods of production within a genre,
when individual films, say, seem to share a particular approach – as in
the Dracula ‘cycles’ of the horror film. This process of mixing and

Figure 3.4 and 3.5 Vampire-horror-action-comedy-teen-school series: the
hybrids that are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the film Twilight (US 2008). See
below, and also this chapter’s case study on Horror as popular art.

82

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Repertoires of elements

‘mashing’ has accelerated and increased in recent years, especially via
the internet, and owing to advertisers’ eagerness to contact more and
more specialised groups. Try to take from all this a sense of the fluidity
of ‘genres’.

Repertoires of elements
An important development in thinking about entertainment genres has
been to put them into more pragmatic contexts, especially the varied
understandings and activities of producers and audiences or media users.
Genres are seen no longer as sets of fixed elements, constantly repeated
and occasionally innovated within, but as working with ‘repertoires of
elements’, fluid systems of learnt conventions and expectations. These
are shared by makers and audiences, who are both active on both sides
of meaning-making. The maker can rely on certain kinds of audience
familiarity to play with, and the audience looks forward to play within
these stabilities. Increasingly they communicate with the producing
institution about their preferences, enthusiasms, disappointments, rage,
etc. The conventions, and the expectations they can invoke, include, for
film, TV, games, etc., the areas of:
• narrative – how the stories in a genre usually begin and conclude;
what kinds of characters are at the centre of the fiction, etc.;
• audio-visual codes (for which the term iconography is sometimes
used), which include settings (the western’s classic landscape; the
hi-tech arena of SF), costumes, lighting and so on;
• a relationship to the rest of the real world, including perceptions of how
realistic the genre is, how it handles the ideological values of the area
it covers (e.g. war, romance, crime) and sometimes how its values
have shifted over time.
Let’s take the genre called romance, or ‘chick flick’, and the sub-genre
‘romcom’. Like many much-used commercial and theoretical terms,
these mix different elements. Romance originally referred to medieval
tales of knights, honour, battle – and the (often adulterous) love of
characters like Lancelot and Guinevere. ‘Romantic’ as we now
understand it inherits feelings (of longing, of unrequited or troubled love,
etc.) from the love strands in these earlier literary romances. A romance
narrative will often start with the arrival into the life of the female ‘hero’
or central figure of a male who interests her romantically. This sets in
play situations involving the nature of intimate or sexualised relations,
in the teen years, or as a single woman aged thirty, or one trying to
combine work and marriage, and perhaps children. The narrative will
often proceed by means of intimate conversations and encounters,

Figure 3.6 A striking shot from the
‘spaghetti western’ The Good, the
Bad, and the Ugly (Italy 1966). See
Corrigan and White (2004: 297)
for a useful discussion of
‘sub-genre’ and ‘hybrid genre’.

‘Prankster cinema – [a]
combination of documentary,
performance art, slapstick
and satire – is scarcely out of
its infancy, yet it commands
our attention right now like
no other genre.’ Ryan Gilbey
(2009) coins a new genre
title. See Chapter 13.

Iconography: a term from
art history, originally
referring to fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century guides to
artists on the ‘correct’
colours, gestures, facial
expressions, etc. with which
to image Christian doctrine.
Since media usually work
with moving, audio-visual
images, the term
‘signification’ (see Chapter 1)
is more useful.

83

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Repertoires of elements

coincidences, mistakes and so on, delaying and thus intensifying the
audience’s desire for the couple(s) to ‘get it together’ (though often desire
is prolonged by this not happening).

The character of Edward Cullen in the hugely successful Twilight franchise of
books and films (2003–) is constructed so as to take these ‘inaccessible’
longings to an extreme. The blend of vampire and romance is ingeniously
worked to deliver this masochistic pleasure.

EXPLORE 3.5
Figure 3.7 Though labelled
‘modern’ this Mills and Boon cover
centres around a dark mysterious
man (forerunner of Mr Big? but
with the mystery/threat/exoticism
of being ‘a sheik’?) taller than the
woman, who seems ‘swept away’
by his embrace. Familiar?

For the controversy as to how far these books and films seem to be strongly
shaped by Mormon religious doctrine, see http://writetools.wordpress.com
and other sites.

Ideologically it is suggested (see La Place 1987) that the particularly close
and caring attention paid to the woman by the hero provides female
readers and viewers with a fantasy escape from the often inattentive
men they are actually involved with. This figure is sometimes called
the ‘maternal male’. It may come as a surprise that if you look again at
apparently classic macho figures like Rhett Butler/Clark Gable in Gone
with the Wind (US 1939) as well as characters like Edward Cullen, they
often act out these feelings at points in the script. Such intimacy was
signalled in some of the audio-visual conventions of ‘women’s films’: less
use of fetishised shots of women’s bodies than in male-centred genres;
much use of close-ups, especially focused on the eyes, of both male and
female actors; certain styles of intimate acting, voice and dialogue; and a
particular kind of music – sweeping chords, piano and string sections of
the orchestra – amplifying the key romantic moments (though see
‘verisimilitude’ p. 86). Also often deployed were lavish or fashionable
clothes and ‘utopian’ domestic settings, often with ‘tie-ins’ to clothing and
household advertising – see the parody of such marketing in The Truman
Show (US 1998) and interesting references to it in Mad Men.

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3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Repertoires of elements

Figure 3.8 Two ‘professionals’, framed and dressed to emphasise their similarity, coolly
assess each other, within a contemporary romance setting of a luxury hotel bedroom.

A recent variant, the romantic thriller Duplicity (US 2009), is an extreme
contrast to the Twilight model, for older audiences? The director, Tony Gilroy
wrote:
‘. . . the one idea . . . was . . . How would two people who don’t trust
anything, or are completely untrustworthy, fall in love? The film is purely
about the idea of romance. Nobody’s worried about getting married,
nobody’s worried about communicating and nobody’s biological clock is
ticking. It’s elemental. Can I trust you? Can you trust me?’ (Tony Gilroy
quoted in Waters 2009).

Figure 3.9 Gone with the Wind (US 1939): one aspect of Rhett as
‘maternal male’.

Figure 3.10 Knocked Up (US 2007): a comic rendering of
contemporary problems around unexpected pregnancies and
some decidedly un-maternal males.

85

Status and genres I

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Figures 3.9 and 3.10 show two very different images of the ‘romance’ male
figure as parent. Rhett Butler/Clark Gable is here literally ‘the maternal
male’. His ‘maternal’ relating to Scarlett/Vivien Leigh involves a special
and endlessly sympathetic understanding of her (often unsympathetic)
nature – such as mothers are traditionally supposed to have for their
children. It goes along with a sexualised attraction to her. The figures
in the still from the 2007 romcom Knocked Up (Fig. 3.10) signify a very
different relationship, characteristic of a stream of recent comedies which
play with the idea of ‘taming’ the successful professional woman into a
relationship with a ‘lovable’ but inept and inarticulate male.

Status and genres 1:‘escapism’, gender and verisimilitude
When Jonathan Ross left
his BBC film reviewing
programme in 2010 it was
almost taken for granted that
a male reviewer would follow
him, despite a persuasive
campaign to have Anne
Billson fill the post (see her
film column in The Guardian).

Figure 3.11 The kitchen-savvy
monsters of Jurassic Park
(US 1993) test the limits of
verisimilitude.

86

‘Male’ genres have traditionally had higher status than romance, in terms
of budgets, marketing and critical esteem. This status often operates
through notions of ‘escapism’. Male forms have been perceived and
marketed as:
• more ‘realistic’, via references to ‘the real world’, e.g. battles,
uniforms, generals’ names, the training undertaken by actors, etc. in
combat films;
• less emotional (though in fact they deal with different kinds of
emotion);
• not ‘escapist’: it is usually more traditional ‘feminine’ genres
(romance, musical) which are classified as ‘escapist’.
Though all stories and entertainments are imaginary, are not ‘real life’ in
one sense, they are a material part of most of our real lives in several
others. We pay money to experience them, directly or indirectly; we
spend time and imaginative energy ‘playing’ and fantasising roles in their
worlds; and increasingly entertainment forms find themselves part of
news programmes.
Moreover, we are never completely ‘blissed out’ in enjoying
entertainment. Even the ‘frothiest’ or goriest kinds of ‘escape’ make
connections to real-life questions. The term verisimilitude is useful
here, with its marking of different links to the perceived ‘real’, ‘probable’,
‘likely’ in media forms. It has two main connections: cultural
verisimilitude, or the connections of genres to the social order or culture
around them, and formal verisimilitude, or the conventions audiences
have grown so used to that they seem ‘realistic’ or even invisible. An
example of formal verisimilitude is the CGI dinosaurs which seem so
visually ‘real’ in Jurassic Park (US 1993). They can eat people but also,
improbably, move neatly around a kitchen, open a door, and even tap
their claws in apparent impatience. But they do not speak English –

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

because that would be ‘unlikely’ according to the rules of ‘how creatures
behave in science fiction’.
One of the ways in which gangster or war films (like other
male-dominated genres) laid claim to higher status than, say, the
musical (assumed to be a ‘woman’s genre’) was by making a more
explicit reference to public or political events from the world outside
the film – cultural verisimilitude. So they used newspaper headlines,
named real-life politicians, generals or criminals, and even made stars
of ex-gangsters like George Raft. Until relatively recently gangster films
made little use of the flamboyant colours, camera angles and movements
enjoyed by fans of the musical (‘unrealistic’). One of the innovations of
Michael Mann’s direction of the 1980s TV series Miami Vice was the use
of flamboyant camera movements and pastel-coloured costumes for the
male leads.
War films often allow their audiences fantasy escapes from the
complication, the perceived mundaneness of the everyday, or of
depressing news stories. It’s also rarely that the emotional aspect of
combat films is discussed. This means there is little space given to some
of its central emotional pleasures: expressions of male bonding and
closeness in a ‘unit’ made up of soldiers of very mixed backgrounds, as
well as its expression of justifiable fears, around physical fragility and the
conditions of survival and trauma in war.
Often popular media forms have been seen as ‘escapist’, and therefore
inferior to ‘true art’, because they were industrially produced and aimed
at non-elite audiences. Hollywood’s early products, for example, were
aimed at entertaining working-class audiences for an evening between
one day’s work and the next, rather than to be experienced at elite
gatherings, such as opera houses. In addition, certain snobberies about
America as inferior to Europe meant that the US was assumed for years
to be incapable of producing anything worthy of serious cultural
attention. And, as with romance forms, lower status often involved
female audiences. Such positions have far less power now, though there
are still traces in some film and TV reviews.
To return to romance, William Paul has argued that recent ‘romcom’
takes account of real-world events (operates cultural verisimilitude) in
different ways. Women’s increasing participation in work and other
activities outside the home, more easily available contraception and
changes in some men’s sense of how they want to ‘be a man’ have
shifted romantic comedy. Further, in terms of formal and cultural
verisimilitude, such films now have to relate to another group of films
aiming at younger audiences: ‘gross out’ or ‘animal’ comedies, like the
American Pie series with their raunchiness and ‘bad taste’.

Status and genres I

Figure 3.12 A rare example of
a successful female Hollywood
director, Kathryn Bigelow, directing
an action adventure war film, The
Hurt Locker (US 2009) in Jordan.
Controversially the film suggests
that the central character is
addicted to the testosteronefuelled crucible of war.
Marsha Kinder argued that
the choreography of
performers like Jackie Chan,
Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li
demonstrates the ‘difference’
of the Hong Kong action
film, with the musical as a
structuring device: Jackie
Chan as a physical performer
in the mould of Gene Kelly
(Kinder 2001: 89).

In the 1920s, however,
‘Hollywood’ tried hard to
attract middle-class (white)
audiences to big city ‘picture
palaces’, the names, design
and lavishness of which,
including orchestras and
uniformed attendants, made
striking claims to cultural
prestige, rather like opera
houses. See Branston (2000).

87

Status and genres 2

Contrast the sympathetic
treatment of the theme in
Dirty Dancing (US 1987).

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Such changes have impacted on the language and extremity of the
situations in new ‘romcom’ (see There’s Something about Mary (US 1998)
and its notorious semen-hair gel scene). But other kinds of realism, or
social verisimilitude, are avoided because of their potentially polarising
effects on audiences, and therefore box office. For example, there is hardly
any reasoned discussion of the pros and cons of abortion, or of AIDS and
condom use, in Knocked Up (US 2007), or even Juno (US/Canada 2007).

Status and genres 2: the cultural context
Pierre Bourdieu
(1930–2002) began
ethnographic work after
being conscripted into the
French army during the
Algerian war of 1958.
Distinction: A Social Critique of
the Judgement of Taste (1984)
explored how the supposedly
‘natural’ ‘universal’ quality of
‘taste’ was shaped along class,
cultural and educational lines
in France in the early 1980s.

The French Marxist sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in his hugely influential
work on French taste culture patterns Distinction (1984), pioneered the
term ‘cultural capital’ (meaning a familiarity with ‘high’ cultural forms
such as opera, theatre, classical music). This was to draw attention to the
ability of privileged groups (in twentieth-century France) to define their
cultural forms and favoured genres as superior to those of the ‘lower’
classes. He argued this was itself a kind of asset or advantage.

Gender and cultural competences
This theory was later applied to TV, and to women’s soaps and magazines,
assumed to be inferior media forms, which anyone could understand but
which would only interest a rather stupid or trivial-minded audience. Feminist
work (see Brunsdon 1981) suggested that the pleasures offered to women by
the soap opera genre required particular ‘feminine’ skills and competences,
such as reading the signs of ‘emotional turmoil’ or understanding the
complexities of familiar relationships. These were learnt from outside the text
through years of informal training for presumed future roles as nurturing
mothers; or as carers in jobs like nursing or teaching; or through their
confinement to the home, except in periods of high male unemployment.
Women were more likely to realise the significance of certain kinds of looks
between characters, small-scale gestures, silences and so on. Their involvement
in the skills of domestic labour meant that they were competent to pick up on
key parts of soaps’ narratives, carried by intimate gesture and talk.
Women are argued to have access to such competences. We’re not
arguing that no male viewers ever come upon, or develop, the competences
to enjoy romances or soaps, or that no women are irritated by those forms.
But informal gender training from early on means that certain responses to
some genres (like the sad-ending romance) are made unacceptable for some
groups (‘big boys don’t cry’) and natural seeming for others. From the male

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Status and genres 2

side of gendered competences it has been argued that boys are socialised
into acting tough in the face of certain videos, computer games and horror
films, which they sometimes find hard to ‘stomach’. Our culture still expects
men, in the end, to differentiate themselves from women along the lines of
‘toughness’. Young men are encouraged not to cry, not to explore feelings
and to try to appear as decisive and hard as the heroes of action adventures.
Fortunately they do not all follow this encouragement.
Other ‘cultural competence’-related work has suggested the reasons for
young women’s reluctance to use computers. This work suggests not that
young women are incapable of using machines or technology, but that they
resist, or feel ill at ease in, the world of the ‘computer virtuosos’, the ‘geeks’
and ‘techno-heads’. These are often young men who seem to be involved in
an intimate relationship with their machines, one which is often strongly
competitive and macho – ‘mine’s bigger and faster than yours’ – centred on
very masculine games genres, such as action adventure and science fiction,
and valuing the skill of swift, automatic decisiveness. Attempts are being made
to counter such perceptions, both in media and in education more broadly.
A very real fear is that the predicted ‘information-rich’ and ‘information-poor’
distinction will work along the lines not simply of class and a north–south
divide, but also of gender.

EXPLORE 3.6

•

•

Does this outline correspond to your experience of
a genres (especially soaps and ‘tough’ genres) and their typical skilled
viewers; or
b ‘computer cultures’ and the assumed competences of male and
female users?
Do social networking websites such as Facebook seem to be free of such
divides?

Tony Bennett and others recently explored how far this class-centred and
specifically French model still applied, for Britain, in the twenty-first
century. They concluded that though cultural class distinctions still
operated, gender, ethnicity and age also need to be considered in the
ways that certain ‘tastes’ or preferences are given, or denied, status. They
also developed the idea of ‘omnivorous’ taste. This follows theorists of

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Status and genres 2

cult forms (such as ‘trash television’) who suggested that some fans have
the privilege of ‘double access’ to both ‘naive’ enjoyment of the form
‘for itself’ (a low-status competence) and a knowing humour at its
codes (higher-status). Further, they suggest that this, rather than older
familiarities with ‘high culture’ such as Shakespeare or opera, is the form
which cultural privilege or ‘capital’ now takes.

Consider this passage from Bennett et al. (2009) about their survey of recent
British taste cultures:
How fair do you consider this
estimate of the ‘country and
western’ genre?
What artists and range of
music do you take it to
include?

In 2009 some cinemas began
screening live performances
of ‘elite’ texts such as operas,
and National Theatre plays
like Phèdre. A new hybrid
form – theatre-cinema?
(Although this also happened
in the early days of broadcast
TV.)

[The] dominant expression of cultural capital in Britain [now] is perhaps
the adoption of an omnivorous orientation . . . [However] this is not
always genuinely a taste for everything, for there are limits to its range. It is
predominantly Anglophone, British and American cultural forms that are
browsed. Within cultural fields key cultural divides are rarely crossed.
For example, in the area of music, many people range across rock, heavy
metal, electronic and world music, but rarely stray into classical music
(and vice versa). There are particular stigmatised tastes (for country and
western music, for example) which are avoided by nearly all except
(working-class) enthusiasts . . .
Where are today’s cultural boundaries? Working-class men baulk at the
suggestion of going to opera or classical concerts. Professionals find it hard to
admit to reading the News of the World, watching a lot of television, liking
‘reality TV’, ‘merely’ being entertained, or enjoying country and western music.

EXPLORE 3.7
Consider the genres which make up your own ‘field’ of media use.
• Are the boundaries mentioned here ones which you recognise from
your own genre preferences and avoidance?
• Do you ever ‘confess’ to enjoying a genre which you know is low status
– e.g. The X Factor? Wife Swap? ‘Country and western’ music?
• Do you ever hesitate to say you have enjoyed some ‘higher-status’
product, such as classical music?
• Or are you ‘omnivorous’, i.e. do you think you consume ‘most things’, in
terms of media/culture/genres?
• Are terms like ‘lowbrow’, ‘highbrow’, ‘middlebrow’ used by you and your
friends to classify products? If so, how, and for which media genres?

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3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Bourdieu’s emphasis on the importance of ‘cultural capital’ may not have
the power it once did. But it still seems that to successfully to claim the
status of ‘art’ for a piece of work is often a key seal of approval, signifying
‘quality’ and ‘seriousness’ and, commercially, involving the important
power of copyright. Pragmatically, if a genre text can claim ‘artistic’ or
fully ‘authored’ status for itself, then it may well occupy special media
spaces. This is partly still true of the foreign language films (see this
chapter’s case study) though their classification as ‘arthouse’ is
complicated now by the easy availability of DVD and downloaded films.
Another example, from the level of reception. There is controversy
over whether the BBFC makes different classification decisions
(e.g. about representing sexual activity) depending on whether the
text is considered ‘art’ and is therefore assumed to circulate in ‘safer’
environments, such as arthouse cinemas, with more middle-class
audiences than in big multiplex cinema screens. A key marker of ‘art’
status is of course the presence of an ‘artist’, whether director, singer or
writer. This sometimes has to be argued, and marketed for.

Two case studies around ‘horror’
1 The status of different genres can be shown by the work put into getting
The Silence of the Lambs (US 1991) considered as a thriller rather than a
‘simple’ horror film. Textually it clearly fits into the cycle of ‘slasher’ horror
films. The figures of psychiatrist and serial killer, separated in the horror
genre from Psycho (US 1960) onwards, are fused in the ‘fascinating’ figure
of Hannibal Lecter.
Jodie Foster plays a version of what the theorist Carol Clover (1992)
called ‘the final girl’ of earlier, lower-status slasher-horror films. Clover
emphasised that the series of attacks on women in them are avenged,
not by a man, but by ‘the final girl’ to be attacked by the killer.
Institutionally, the timing of the film’s first release, Valentine’s Day 1991,
fitted the ‘watching horror together’ slot sanctioned as an excuse for
physical contact for teenage couples. As Premiere magazine put it: ‘If it is a
choice between this and chocolates for Valentine’s Day, the bon bons
might be a better choice, but then again, The Silence promises to be so
terrifying, you’re bound to end up in your sweetheart’s arms.’ Much
publicity, however, classified it as a ‘thriller’ or ‘psychological thriller’, a term
which easily invites the highly prestigious adjective ‘Hitchcock-ian’, a mix of
authorship and generic status. Though Silence could be said to fall between
the two categories, publicity for it tried to replace associations of ‘horror’

Status and genres 2

BBFC: The British Board of
Film Classification, formerly
the British Board of Film
Censors, is an independent,
non-governmental body,
which has exercised
responsibilities over cinema
since 1913, over video since
1985, and now over some
DVD products and games.
See its excellent website(s) at
http://www.bbfc.org.uk.

Interestingly the book of
Psycho was greeted with
revulsion by studio
executives (‘too repulsive for
films’, wrote a script reader)
and the film had mixed
reviews – but huge box office
returns. This prompted
positive re-reviews and
eventually two Oscar
nominations.

This use of romance-centred
marketing ploys for the
horror genre (apparently its
opposite) is a good example
of Altman’s emphasis on the
pragmatic ways that genres
are, in practice, used and
classified.

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Status and genres 2

by adjectives which produced a sense of ambivalence about the film: it is
‘terrifying’, ‘brutally real’, ‘macabre’, ‘dark’.
Casting used prestigious actors. Clarice Starling, FBI agent, may arguably
be one of the slasher-horror cycle’s ‘final girls’. But she is played by the
Oscar-winning actor, Yale graduate, feminist Jodie Foster, in a much
praised high-status ‘Method’ performance, researched via a week at
FBI HQ, cited as an effort towards ‘realism’. The film also made restrained
use of violence, and colour, and avoided voyeurism, or the goriest of
special effects (see Jancovich 2000). Judging by the latest description on
IMDb this higher status of the film has been held: it is classified there as
‘crime/thriller’.

EXPLORE 3.8
The Silence of the Lambs came out some time ago.
• Do you think that the low status of the horror genre is changing, along
with the importance of younger audiences, internet comment,
knowledge of FX and easier availability of foreign language films?
• Is the BBFC right in suggesting the genre appeals to very knowledgeable
(i.e. unshockable) fan or ‘cult’ audiences, and therefore does not deserve
so many cuts?

2 Another example of the ways that status still works in classification.
Reviews of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) mostly took it
very seriously. They classified it as a film dealing in a realistic and weighty
way with a high-status subject (the last hours of the life of Jesus Christ).
The signifiers for this were not only the subject matter, but also the use of
subtitles for the ‘authentic’ Latin and Aramaic dialogue (these usually being
associated with foreign language or ‘arthouse’ cinema), the sonorous music
and the film’s slow pace.
Only a few critics focused on its emphatic and prolonged use of hugely
gory special effects around the crucifixion (classified by some as ‘realism’),
and the ways it was discussed as a kind of test of viewing endurance or
toughness (as had parts of Gibson’s previous film Braveheart (US 1995)
and later Apocalypto (2006), also using foreign language dialogue). All this
suggested that it might be considered as a kind of horror film. But this was
a scandalous label, because of the low or even playful status of the horror

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Formal classifications

genre and its often young, fan audiences, as opposed to the high status of
the story of the last hours of Christ.
Fewer critics pointed to ways in which the film stayed within the
familiar boundaries of ‘biblical epics’. Christ (born in Palestine) and his
family are played by fair-skinned actors (years of Eurocentric tradition
here) rather than (more realistic) by darker-skinned actors. Only certain
parts of his teachings are focused on, certainly not those which would
encourage radical social change on behalf of the poor, which are
highlighted in Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St Matthew (Italy 1964)
and in the work of liberation theologians.

Formal classifications
Genre is not the only kind of classifying which positions or ‘frames’
media products for us, setting up expectations in some directions and not
others. It can shade into censorship, as part of a spectrum of activities:
• everyday: we all self-censor what we say or write before committing to
it;
• everyday: processes of news shaping by ‘official sources’, selfcensorship as a ‘good professional’, etc.;
• formal classifications: these do not ban directly, but might put
controversial programmes on at ‘post-watershed’ times, or strongly
suggest that some films or DVDs should be shown to some age groups
but not others;

Figure 3.13 Pasolini’s images of
Christ, 1964. A related quote:
‘When I give food to the poor
they call me a saint. When I ask
why the poor have no food, they
call me a communist.’ Dom Helder
Camara, Catholic liberation
theologian (1972).

For UK TV one key classification has been the timing of a programme
(‘before or after 9 p.m.?’), within the ‘Family Viewing Policy’. This tries to
ensure that material unsuitable for children is not transmitted at times when
large numbers of children may be expected to be watching: 9 p.m. is normally
fixed as the point up to which TV companies should see themselves as
responsible for ensuring that nothing unsuitable for children is broadcast.
After that, it is seen as the parents’ responsibility.
This is based on, and helps to reinforce, a particular conception of the
‘usual’ household and ‘usual’ viewing patterns (gathered around a TV screen),
which may now be quite outdated.

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Formal classifications

EXPLORE 3.9
Make notes on the following:
• What has been your experience of ‘family viewing’ and of this
classification policy?
• Do you have younger brothers or sisters? Do you feel it should apply to
them? If so, how? Which genres do you think are key?
• How do technological changes such as online viewing, and bedrooms
with computers in them, affect this area?

•

Old joke about classification:
‘If I like it, it’s erotic; if I don’t,
it’s porn.’ The term
‘propaganda’ can be used for
an equally deadly effect on
discussion – see Chapter 6
and case study on The Age of
Stupid.

94

censorship or decisive acts of forbidding or preventing distribution of
media products, or parts of products. This can range from cutting off
internet accesss, as has happened in China and Burma, or, much less
frequent now, forbidding circulation of certain texts.
A formal classification system is operated in the UK for film, videos
and DVDs and some other digital material (e.g. games) by the BBFC. This
Board has no regulatory powers, but it is often called ‘film censorship’,
it is although better understood as a classificatory body. It decides the
audiences for which a product is presumed to be suitable, and sometimes
suggests to the film-makers cuts or changes which will fit the presumed
nature of this audience, especially if it believes harm to children is at
stake.
The Board is responsible for checking that material is not in breach
of criminal laws (e.g. on cruelty to animals or children; on incitement
to racial hatred, blasphemy, etc.). Only very rarely will it deny a film
a rating, although that happened in 2009 with the Japanese movie
Grotesque, which the BBFC felt featured sexual sadism for its own sake
(see BBFC website). Final powers on film remain with local councils,
which can overrule any of the BBFC’s decisions, though this rarely
happens. In cinema, as well as age, the categories include ‘accompanied
by a parent’ and ‘only when over 18’. For DVDs the advice might be,
for example, ‘contains moderate sex references and one hard drug
reference’.

3: GENRES AND OTHER CLASSIFICATIONS

Conclusion

EXPLORE 3.10
Q: Sometimes ratings are said to work, not as censorship, but as advertising.
Discuss.
A: Potential audiences may be attracted, as well as put off by different
ratings labels.
Parents want to know which films might frighten their children, and broadly
whether they contain images of violence, hard drug use, or might encourage
head-butting and other easily imitatable forms of violence.
Equally, younger audiences often want to feel ‘cool’ by getting to see something
which is in the next age range up from their actual age.
Film-makers often negotiate with classification boards, such as the BBFC, to
achieve their desired classification. They will sometimes refuse to take out certain
sections in order to gain a higher rating, especially for horror. Classification is a
pragmatic, not a rigid process.
Unusually, in July 2009, Universal Pictures UK released a specially edited ‘15’
certificate version of Brüno (knowingly titled Brüno: Snipped) ‘to prevent growing
disappointment among younger fans and to maximise revenues. UK cinemas had
reported turning away large numbers of under-18s keen to see the film.’ The ‘15’
version is 1 minute and 50 seconds shorter than the original. Though this is said to
be unprecedented, a letter to Screen International (14 July) reported that in 1979
Paramount edited Saturday Night Fever (US 1977) down from an X (18) to an
A (PG) for a re-release timed to coincide with the school holidays, losing some
ten minutes of footage in the process.

Traditional methods of
censorship still operate. The
Ukrainian Ministry of Culture
banned any screenings of
Brüno (US 2009) in its
territory, arguing that it
‘contains unjustified showing
of genital organs’ and depicts
‘homosexual perversions’ in
an ‘explicitly realist manner’.

Conclusion
This chapter has tried to place genres within broader systems of
classification and framing, both formal and informal. These processes
often exist along a spectrum, whether of genre forms or of kinds of
classification, of a perceived relationship to the rest of the real, or of
cultural status.
We have argued that genres require and indeed produce a certain
amount of innovation, as well as the pleasures of repetition. Genre texts
are themselves increasingly shaped by the producers’ images of
audiences, and now, much more, by the activities of audiences and fans,
both on and off the internet. A cultural approach to genres may celebrate
some of the expansion of users’ presence, and suggest it is making
for substantial innovation. But it may ask too whether some ‘obvious’

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References and further reading

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

generic elements (the sense of what constitutes a ‘happy ending’, or of
what cannot be mentioned) may still be perpetuating some oppressive
identities or imaginings, and excluding others.
More examples are given in the following case study, which explores
films that are ‘classified’ partly by their circulation as authorship, as
‘foreign language’, as genre and sometimes as ‘arthouse’ texts.

References and further reading
Altman, Rick (1999) Film/Genre, London: BFI.
Bennett, Tony, Savage, Mike, Silva, Elizabeth Bortolaia, Warde, Alan,
Gayo-Cal, Modesto, and Wright, David (2009) Class, Culture,
Distinction, London and New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of
Taste, London: Routledge.
Branston, Gill (2000) Cinema and Cultural Modernity, London and New
York: Open University Press.
Brown, Maggie (2009) ‘Can Cowell Back a Global Winner?’ The Guardian,
29 June.
Brunsdon, Charlotte (1981) ‘Crossroads: Notes on Soap Opera’, Screen, 22,
5: 52–7.
Clover, Carol (1992) Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern
Horror Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cook, Samantha (2006) The Rough Guide to Chick Flicks, London: Rough
Guides.
Corrigan, Timothy, and White, Patricia (2004) The Film Experience: An
Introduction, Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.
Gilbey, Ryan (2009) ‘Jokers to the Left, Jokers to the Right’, The
Guardian, 17 July.
Gledhill, Christine (ed.) (1987) Home is Where the Heart is, London:
BFI.
Gomery, Douglas (1992) Shared Pleasures: History of Movie Presentation in
the United States, London: BFI.
Jancovich, Mark (2000) ‘ “A Real Shocker”: Authenticity, Genre and the
Struggle for Distinction’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural
Studies, 14, 1: 23–35.
Kinder, Marsha (2001) ‘Violence American Style: The Narrative
Orchestration of Violent Attractions’, in Slocum, David J. (ed) Violence
and American Cinema, London and New York: Routledge.
Krutnik, Frank (2002) ‘Conforming Passions?: Contemporary Romantic
Comedy’, in Neale (2002).
La Place, Maria (1987) ‘Producing and Consuming the Woman’s film’, in

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References and further reading

Gledhill, Christine (ed.) Home is Where the Heart is, London and New
York: Arnold.
Lovell, Alan, and Sergi, Gianluca (2009) Cinema Entertainment, London
and New York: Open University Press.
Neale, Steve (2000) Genre and Hollywood, London: Routledge.
Neale, Steve (ed.) (2002) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, London:
BFI.
Paul, William (2002) ‘The Impossibility of Romance: Hollywood Comedy
1978–1999’, in Neale (2002).
Waters, Florence (2009) ‘Duplicity: Tony Gilroy Interview’, Daily
Telegraph, 20 March.

97

CASE STUDY

Horror as popular art
•

THE CHILD IN THE HORROR FILM

•

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES

•

GLOBAL AND LOCAL AUDIENCES

•

CONCLUSION

•

STYLE AND THE GOTHIC: DIFFERENT REPERTOIRES

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

•

AUTHORSHIP AND PROMOTION

Here we explore two films that use horror and other

To make full use of this case study and the

repertoires in interesting ways. Both have proved

references, you should watch both films (preferably

popular with audiences and critics around the world,

more than once). The films both depend on suspense

challenging the low status sometimes ascribed to the

and narrative surprises, so if you haven’t seen the films

genre.

yet, beware that what follows contains spoilers.

Horror is one of the most endurable genres in film
history, constantly evolving, often through distinct
cycles of films. An important recent cycle was associated

THE CHILD IN THE HORROR FILM

with the impact of East Asian ghost stories in global

In The Orphanage, Laura, with her husband and

cinema. (See the J-horror case study on the MSB5

adopted son, returns to the orphanage on the coast of

website.) That cycle has now run its course,

northern Spain where she lived as a child. She intends

but in its wake have come other notable films

to reopen it as a school for children with learning

sharing elements of the same repertoires and

difficulties. Her son is around the same age (seven or

which have in some ways benefited from audience

eight) that she was when she left the orphanage and he

awareness and industrial experience of the earlier films.

soon makes contact with the ghosts of the children who

El orfanato (The Orphanage, Spain/Mexico 2007) and

died after she left. Gradually, Laura becomes aware of

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In, Sweden

her son’s behaviour and when he disappears, she begins

2008) are quite different in terms of their narratives,

to suspect that there is something or someone in the

characterisation and visual style, but they have been

house who is responsible.

seen as referring to different sub-genres of the horror

This scenario immediately calls up an earlier Spanish

film and have been distributed and received by

film, The Others (Spain/US 2001), which in turn referred

audiences in similar ways. In Rick Altman’s (1999)

to a classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw (1898)

terminology, we recognise them as horror in the

by Henry James and its adaptation as the film The

inclusive, semantic sense, but they are respectively a

Innocents (UK 1961).

ghost story and a vampire story (although we will
problematise both classifications) in the exclusive or
syntactic sense. Later we will ask some pragmatic
questions about how they were distributed.

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CASE STUDY: HORROR AS POPULAR ART

Global and local audiences
Figure 3.14 One of the original
orphans.

EXPLORE 3.10 WHY CHILDREN?
Jot down any films you know which feature children in potential horror scenarios.
• What kinds of ‘play’ do you remember around the ideas of ‘innocence’ and ‘evil’?
• Are there relationships between parents and children, especially mothers (and surrogate mothers)?
• Are there any ‘universal’ experiences of childhood that you recognise?

Let the Right One In deals with children on the cusp of

of older teenage vampires and vampire hunters in such

adolescence. A lonely 12-year-old boy, Oskar, is bullied

TV, novel and film franchises as Buffy and Twilight.

at school. He finds a new friend when a man and a girl

In this focus on the child, we can see how two films

move in next door in his apartment building in a

from different cultural backgrounds draw on the same

Stockholm suburb. The girl’s arrival coincides with a

broad repertoire and also how they are distinguished in

series of grisly murders and eventually Oskar realises

syntactical ways.

that she is a vampire – but also that he is emotionally
attached to her. The character of Eli, 12 but going on
200, is just one of the ways in which this film creates

GLOBAL AND LOCAL AUDIENCES

‘difference’ while at the same time repeating many of

The Orphanage was an international production. Mainly

the conventions of the familiar vampire movie. The

Spanish it also involved film and TV companies owned

film’s title appeals immediately to the horror fan who

by conglomerates from France (Canal+) and Hollywood

knows that a vampire must always be invited into a

(Warner Bros) and was ‘presented’ by Guillermo del

house. We’ve seen demonic children many times before,

Toro, well known for films made in Spain and the US as

but rarely as ‘humanised’ as Eli. In a way, the difference

well as Mexico. This production context helped the film’s

of Eli stands out in sharper focus because of the success

promotion in the international market.

99

Global and local audiences

Let the Right One In was produced by a group of
Swedish film and TV companies. Popular films from

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
Horror films have the potential to act as metaphors for
what is happening in the real world.

Sweden usually circulate in a limited way in Sweden,

This was important in the reception of El orfanato in

Norway, Finland and Denmark. Only occasionally do

Spain. The film’s release in autumn 2007 coincided with

they obtain exposure in the larger global market. Let the

the introduction of a ‘Law of Historical Memory’ which

Right One In is one of three recent Swedish films/TV

promised to heal the wounds of losses incurred up to

programmes to gain wider distribution. All are

seventy years earlier by families during the Spanish Civil

adaptations of popular genre novels. The massively

War and its aftermath. It allowed families to apply for

popular ‘Inspector Wallander’ crime novels (rivalling

exhumations from mass graves of thousands of civilian

Harry Potter in German sales) were first adapted for a

victims of Franco’s Nationalist forces. They can now be

Swedish TV series in 2005 and later shown in the UK in

reburied in family plots. El orfanato offers a powerful

2008 (when a British adaptation also began). The first

metaphor for this as Laura discovers the fate of her

film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s thriller novels, The Girl

childhood friends. It also offers a metaphor about

with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden/Denmark/Germany

‘believing’ in the past and coming to terms with what it

2009), swiftly became the biggest-selling ‘local film’

means, represented here by Laura’s husband who is first

and then ‘European film’ at a time when the novels

sceptical of the ‘ghost story’ but comes to accept that

were bestsellers in the UK and around the world.

his wife and son have died. (Assuming that the film is set

Both The Orphanage and Let the Right One In were

in Spain in 2005–6, the deaths of the children would

seemingly guaranteed local and perhaps regional

have taken place around thirty years earlier – soon after

success, but their wider distribution involved careful

Franco’s death in 1975.)

marketing strategies, including appearances at
various film festivals. This is explored later; here we

References to the Civil War are still common in
Spanish films, including the two Guillermo del Toro

consider what made the local impact of the films

films The Devil’s Backbone (Spain/Mexico 2001) and

distinctive.

Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain/Mexico/US 2006) and the earlier

Genre study offers a useful means of exploring other

classic films The Spirit of the Beehive (Spain 1973)

media concepts, including representation. Because of

and Raise Ravens (Spain 1976). Both these films are

repetition, audiences tend to find genre narratives are

metaphors about Spain under Franco and feature

easily accessible. The same or similar characters are

children (played by child star Ana Torrent) who have

presented in familiar stories over long periods. Because

fantasy relationships. In Raise Ravens, the child’s

of the verisimilitude of many genres, it then becomes

(ghost) mother was played by Geraldine Chaplin, who

interesting to see how these presentations change over

reappears as the medium in The Orphanage. Child stars

time. What kinds of men become gangsters; how do

and child-centred narratives were a feature of Spanish

their family backgrounds change over time? In this

cinema under Franco (see Stone 2002). The outcome of

sense, genre films are ‘porous’. They absorb aspects of

all of these ‘intertextualities’ and historical resonances

what is happening in the real world and it is not unusual

was that El orfanato was the biggest box office film in

to see claims that horror film cycles have a direct

Spain in 2007. When the film travelled abroad it was a

relationship with changes in society. The ghosts of the

success as a universally accessible horror film, but not on

East Asian cycle used ‘new technologies’ to manifest

quite the same scale.

themselves via television and video, mobile phones and

The setting of Let the Right One In is perhaps less

internet connections, and the characters themselves

significant. But it is given precisely. The source novel

often came from single-parent or dysfunctional families,

even uses the correct dates for the events of the story,

a relatively new phenomenon in East Asian cultures.

including the first sighting of a Soviet submarine in

100

CASE STUDY: HORROR AS POPULAR ART
Swedish waters on 27 October 1981. In the twentieth
century, Sweden maintained its neutrality in both world

Style and the gothic

STYLE AND THE GOTHIC: DIFFERENT
REPERTOIRES

wars and during the Cold War. A Russian submarine
(with suspected nuclear weapons) was an unusual
intruder and remained an issue in the Swedish media
over the course of the next year. In the film there is a
radio broadcast mentioning the Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev. What do we make of this realist detail? Is it
metaphorical in its introduction of a potentially

The two case study films are recognisably horror films,
both with a focus on children. They derive story ideas
from the ‘Gothic romances’ of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century literature. The term ‘Gothic’ usually
signals that a narrative will focus on what Wikipedia
usefully describes as ‘emotional extremes and dark

threatening uninvited visitor? Or does it signal a

themes’. Gothic stories are often set in inhospitable

different kind of horror film with documentary detail?

places, in dark and brooding castles and great houses,

This detail will mean more to Swedish audiences, but

with action set at night or in extreme weather. The

because of the universality of the repertoire, the global

Orphanage is a ‘dark house’ on the coast of Asturias – a

audience will easily pick up the connection between

land of rain and mists. Stockholm in winter is dark and

vampires and ‘strangers’ coming into our midst

cold. The setting is in one sense commonplace and drab,

(perhaps bringing with them diseases?). It is noticeable

but the freeze puts characters into extreme situations.

that in the crime genre novels of Henning Mankell,

Over time, the Gothic has moved location, so that

contemporary Sweden is often portrayed as a once

we now accept an ‘urban Gothic’ as well as one

‘social democratic’ country disturbed not only by the

associated with wildness and isolation. The repertoire

reaction to the arrival of refugees, but also by the

has expanded. But using Altman’s syntactic approach,

importation of forms of criminal activity with global

we can distinguish the two case study films by the

connections such as sex trafficking and the drugs trade.

way in which elements are combined in the narrative

Does it negate these ideas if we discover that

structure. In The Orphanage, the emphasis is on

the reason for setting the story in 1981 is that this

melodrama, long associated with the Gothic. The

was when the author (and adapter) was himself 12

narrative is female-centred, with concerns about the

years old?

mental and physical state of the mother – is she
responsible for the death of her son? There is also a
sense of family melodrama – how will the search for her

E X P L O R E 3 . 1 1 T H E VA M P I R E
R E P E RT O I R E

son affect Laura’s relationship with her husband? Does
she see herself as some kind of surrogate mother – first
for the children she hopes to enrol in her school and

Research the different versions of the Dracula story.
• Where has Dracula come from?
• How does he arrive in Western Europe?
• What kinds of threat does he pose to the
community?
• How are Dracula or similar vampires portrayed in
stories set in modern times?
• Refer to the ‘character-functions’ in Chapter 2 –
what happens to the character-functions in the
Dracula story in Let the Right One In?

then later for the ghosts of the children she left behind?
We can also see references to what was once known as
‘the woman’s film’ – especially in the 1940s with films
such as Gaslight (US 1944) in which Ingrid Bergman
plays a woman being driven mad in the house where her
aunt was murdered.
On the DVD the director and crew are quite clear
about the melodrama they are creating – even though
the term is not one favoured in the film industry
(perhaps it is more used in Spain than in the UK?).
In general discourse it is a pejorative term implying

101

Style and the gothic

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Figure 3.15 a, b & c Three posters for El orfanato’s release in Spain.

‘excessive’ or ‘over the top’ plotting and performance.

The other repertoires referenced in Let the Right One In

In critical terms melodrama is indeed about ‘excess’,

are the ‘coming-of-age romance’ and what could be

in music, mise en scène, performance, etc., but these

termed the ‘social problem’ film. In addition, there

should be carefully orchestrated in the service of the

is a suggestion that this is a ‘children’s film’. This

genre. Melodrama and horror share many aspects of

latter designation seems strange in a UK/US

visual and aural style, but the former may appeal more

context, yet in some European film cultures, quite

to older audiences or to audiences expecting more in

challenging narratives are considered appropriate for

terms of metaphor than the thrill of action and the

children’s films. Noting that the film comes from a

frisson of disgust/terror that some horror films promise.

‘children’s novel’, a Cineuropa website profile describes

It is worth looking carefully at some of the poster

it as ‘in essence a sweet prepubescent love story that

material for the film from Spain and the US/UK

just happens to be disguised as an anti-bullying

presented here and on the MSB5 website.

pamphlet with supernatural overtones’ (Boyd van Hoeij,
16 December 2008).
Romance is part of the Gothic inheritance, but

EXPLORE 3.12 MELODRAMA
AND HORROR

usually adult romance. The ‘social’ aspect of the film
refers to the bullying theme as well as to the overall
representation of the depressing atmosphere of the

In what ways do the posters for El orfanato suggest the
different repertoires of horror and melodrama?
• Draw on your understanding from Chapter 1 in
analysing how the posters create meaning.
• Can you distinguish references to different
repertoires and an appeal to different audiences?

suburb. The ‘victims’ include members of a drinking
group who are mainly unemployed, and the narrative
touches on the problems of dysfunctional family
relationships and Oskar’s own obsession with violent
murders as reported in the press. (The novel also
includes other teen characters into glue-sniffing, etc.)
The romance and the social detail are important for
fans of the film who compare it favourably with the

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CASE STUDY: HORROR AS POPULAR ART

Authorship and promotion
Figure 3.16 Oskar, staying in after
school to learn about Morse code.

more mainstream Twilight on the Facebook site for
the Swedish film. An interesting comment on the
combination of the real and the fantastic is contained in

EXPLORE 3.13 A REALIST
VA M P I R E S T O RY ?

this extract from an interview with the director:

•
The style of the screenplay was rather severe, there
was truly very little dialogue, and what there was was
very poetic. We were convinced that the film should

•

be told through images. The older man who takes
care of Eli was obviously a paedophile in the book.
I think that today the subject of paedophilia is too

•

How does the realist social detail of Let the Right
One In distinguish the film from Hollywood vampire
films?
What does the casting of the film contribute to the
realist effect?
How do you read the ending? What do you think
Oskar is doing now, thirty years on?

often used to give stories an emotional special
effect, without being thoroughly explored. I didn’t
want such a complex, strong and disconcerting
subject to have a disturbing effect on the love story
between the two main characters.
(Cineuropa website)

AUTHORSHIP AND PROMOTION
The Orphanage was heavily promoted in the UK as
‘presented by Guillermo del Toro’. Although del Toro
enthusiastically endorsed the film and did his bit to help

There is one tiny gesture in the film that hints at

the production and promote it, he was in no way the

the relationship between Eli and Håkan, but, as in

‘author’ of the film. The references may have set up

The Orphanage, it is the careful mixing of repertoires

false expectations about the film, which apart from

in a controlled way that makes Let the Right One

the possible Civil War allusions, shares little of the

In so effective. Some realistic detail enhances the

repertoires utilised in Pan’s Labyrinth. The UK DVD

Gothic feel – too much of the wrong kind would

announces ‘The new Pan’s Labyrinth. Excellent –

destroy it.

The Guardian’. Time Out, more helpfully and more

103

Distribution strategies

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

accurately, suggests ‘The most frightening ghost story

Asia. Awards went to the film, the director, writer,

since The Others.’ Part of the problem for the distributor

cinematographer and to the child actors. The feedback

and for the critics is that subtitled films outside the

from the festivals fed into the array of different trailers,

mainstream don’t usually have stars known to

posters and web-based material produced for different

the general audience, so an auteur name or a hit film

territories. The Swedish and British websites made

reference is essential. El orfanato had no such problem

excellent use of Flash videos to present the look and

in Spain where Belén Rueda is well known for her

tone (fade-ins and -outs with snow falling against

television and film work (which includes international

mainly static scenes), whereas the trailers emphasised

exposure). The massive Spanish success of the film

the action and shocks. The British trailer, which placed

suggests that without the language barrier (and

the ecstatic critical notices between shots, was more

with the local cultural knowledge) El orfanato is a

successful in presenting the tone than the American

mainstream genre film, not a specialised film.

trailer, which pushed all the quotes to the end (giving

Let the Right One In is slightly different. Director

the impression of a fast-paced horror film).

Tomas Alfredson has worked entirely within the Swedish
film and television industry. The film has no stars as
such and was the first feature film production of a small

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES

independent company with a background in advertising

Since the early 1990s, when the international film

and TV entertainment shows. In another interview

industry began to recover after long years of decline in

posted on Cineuropa, producer John Nordling discusses

many territories, distribution practices have become

the difficulties created by classification which means

associated with new forms of classification. Most major

that a story about a 12-year-old boy will in most

film industries have always had ‘peak periods’ for film

countries be seen only by older audiences. In Sweden

releases at specific holiday times – Chinese New Year in

the film was released ‘wide’ (and although successful,

Hong Kong, Eid and Diwali in South Asia, Thanksgiving

was affected by film piracy). Outside Sweden, sales were

in the US, etc. The threat of piracy has pushed

handled by an experienced German sales agent.

Hollywood into ‘day and date’ releases of blockbuster

In Sweden Let the Right One In sold to some extent

films which now open in many territories across the

on the profile of the original novel (first published in

world simultaneously. Some local holidays remain

2004). The English translation was not published in

important, but overall, especially since the international

paperback until January 2009. This meant that the only

market is now bigger than that in North America alone,

promotional material available to the sales agent was

film releases are being internationalised. This means

the genre identification and what could be achieved by

that certain kinds of films can be classified in terms of

talking up the film around the festival circuit. Promotion

when they are likely to be released.

purely as a horror genre offering was unlikely to appeal

Perhaps the best-known classification of this kind

to international art cinema audiences, so it was

(apart from the ‘summer blockbuster’) is the ‘awards

important that the look and the tone of the film,

film’, released in the US, often on just a few prints,

combining the cinematography of Hoyte Van Hoytema

in time to qualify for Oscar nominations at the end

and the slow pacing and use of music and sound, worked

of December and then heavily promoted during

well through the trailers and the artwork for posters.

the nomination period in January and towards the

IMDb lists more than fifty awards to Let the Right

ceremony in February. In these two months, when there

One In at festivals during 2008 and 2009. These ranged

is relatively little competition from blockbusters, which

across specialised horror/fantasy festivals and more

don’t generally appear until May, the film will also be

general festivals in Europe, North America and East

released in many overseas territories.

104

CASE STUDY: HORROR AS POPULAR ART

References and further reading

How does the horror film fit into distribution

Both films attracted larger audiences than most

planning? Hallowe’en week at the end of October is

subtitled films in the UK. Perhaps inevitably both films

important for the teen-oriented horror film. It falls

are also scheduled for American remakes. This has

between the summer and Thanksgiving peak periods,

already angered fans on the grounds that the original

and horror, because of its reliable teen audience,

version will always be the ‘authentic’ one. Both

offers the chance of making money in normally slack

proposals have in 2009 been announced with

periods. Releasing a film in October/November and

participation by the original producers. This didn’t

January–April for older audiences requires careful

prevent a fan and critical backlash for Nakata Hideo

planning. In March 2000, Universal claimed a huge box

when he remade his own Japanese Ring 2 for a

office success for Erin Brockovich, a film in which Julia

Hollywood studio. Perhaps it would be worth rereading

Roberts played outside her star image as a romantic

this case study and trying to work out what the major

comedy figure. In 2005, the same studio chose to release

issues might be in translating these two ‘properties’ into

The Interpreter (UK/US/France 2005) with Nicole

scripts for American films?

Kidman and Sean Penn a few weeks later in April, and in
2006 they repeated the trick with Inside Man starring
Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. These latter two
films didn’t match the more than $100 million take of

Erin Brockovich, but they did well and prompted industry
comment that the studio had seen them as ‘smart, adult
movies’ with a genre feel that could flourish outside the
blockbuster season (and away from the ‘awards films’).

The Orphanage and Let the Right One In are not
Hollywood films and they were both released first in
their home markets, gaining an international profile
through film festival appearances, often being in
contention for prizes. When they finally arrived in the
UK they both had reputations and in a sense a kind of

CONCLUSION
Our application of aspects of genre theory helps to
develop richer readings of these films and demonstrates
the fluidity and dynamism of the concept of genre
repertoires. Such analysis of popular films and their
circulation and reception enables us to undertake the
kind of pragmatic approach suggested by Altman which
complements our semantic/syntactic knowledge.

The Orphanage is a more conventional film than the
interesting reinvention of the vampire story offered by

Let the Right One In, but both challenge the
classification of ‘art’ and ‘popular’.

‘institutional classification’. Because they are both
subtitled, they automatically became ‘specialised films’

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

in the UK. Usually this would mean being confined to

Altman, Rick (1999) Film/Genre, London: BFI Publishing.
Cherry, Brigid (2009) Horror, London: Routledge.
Delgado, Maria (2008) ‘The Young and the Damned’,
Sight and Sound, April (also online at: http://www.
bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4275).
Stone, Rob (2002) Spanish Cinema, Harlow: Longman.
http://cineuropa.org/ffocus.aspx?lang=en&treeID=1665
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lat-den-rattekomma-in-aka-Let-the-right-one-in/27543047841?
ref=ts
The MSB5 website has supplementary
material on this case study, plus an earlier
case study on ‘J-horror and the Ring cycle’.

small independent cinemas on a limited release.
However, given the success in November/December
2006 of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, the
distributors of both films were prepared to gamble that
the films would play successfully in selected multiplexes
as well as specialised cinemas and that a wider release
was possible. Both films were trailed carefully without
subtitled dialogue (but with evidence of their festival
success). The Orphanage was released by Optimum on
seventy-four screens in late March 2008. Let the Right

One In was released by Metrodome on sixty-eight
screens in early April 2009.

105

4 Representations

•

‘Representation’ now

•

Stereotyping and ‘scripts’

•

Case study 1: US plantation
stereotyping

•

Scripts and performances

•

Case study 2: Representations
and gender

•

Stages of change, and
‘positive/negative’ debates

•

Comedy, fantasy and questions
of representation

•

Historical and institutional
processes

•

Conclusion

•

References and further reading

‘Representation’ now
One of the key terms of media studies has always been ‘representation’,
a rich concept, with several aspects to it.
1 It emphasises that, however realistic or compelling some media
images seem, they never simply present the world direct. They are
always a construction, a re-presentation, rather than a mirror, or a
clear ‘window on to the real’.
2 The term has the capacity to suggest that some media re-present, over
and over again, certain images, stories, situations. This can make
them seem ‘natural’ or familiar – and thereby marginalise or even
exclude other images, making those unfamiliar or even threatening.
The question of who has the power to make these familiarities, and
their accompanying black holes of representation, can be evoked by
this emphasis.
3 This prompts the question: if some groups, situations, etc. are
routinely represented in oppressive or limited ways, how does this
relate to public understandings, and to how some groups are treated
by others – in the street, in the interview situation? Many relate this to
the world of political representatives: people who ‘stand in’ for us, take
crucial decisions with real consequences – as union or school or
government representatives.
Two more recent connections for ‘representation’ have been:

106

4: REPRESENTATIONS

4 the increased possibilities for ‘self-representation’ in digital forms,
all the way from choice of email address, through to blogs, social
networking sites, games and simulations like Second Life; and
5 recent cynicism about ‘official’ politics and how ‘we’ are represented
in them. These have arguably weakened the political understandings
of media representations. Equally, though, new forms of politics have
made imaginative and impactful use of new media forms.

Complications of ‘representation’ now
‘Representation’ has been an important concept for ‘realistic’ media forms
such as documentary, news, etc. It works less well with fantasy or so-called
‘immersive’ forms, such as computer games. These arguably seek to involve
the user in an experience rather than to ‘present’ a view of the world.
Comedy forms also present some challenges to the theory (see Medhurst
2007).
But we’ve always argued against a simplistic application of ‘representation’,
as can occur with ‘stereotypes’, or in metaphors like ‘holding the mirror up to
reality’. We’ll come back to this, but for now let’s explore the concepts of
‘refraction’ and ‘re-mediation’.

‘Representation’ now

a

Have you ever played
with self-representation
through different email
addresses?
b For grouped
representations, see, for
example, the Cardiff
young people’s website
www.thesprout.co.uk.

See The Age of Stupid case
study in Chapter 6, involving
film, premiere ‘stunts’,
website, lively emailings and
other kinds of digital activism.
And 2009 saw some
remarkable ‘Twitter’-related
campaigns. See Introduction.

EXPLORE 4.1

•

•
•
•

Research the term ‘refraction’. It comes from the study of light waves.
When they travel from air to water, for example (such as in a sunny
swimming pool) they give misleading images of the body which is in the
water.
‘The real’, or perceptions of it, are usually part of most media forms,
even fantasy and comic ones (recall ‘verisimilitude’ and its role for
genres). But this is ‘bent’ or refracted by the conventions and demands of
those forms. Comedy needs to produce laughs, horror needs shocks and
often the shiver of an ‘Other’ as ‘villain’. Even news likes to tell a story and
construct characters, suspense, etc.
Jot down how ‘refraction’ might apply to your favourite media form or
text.
Can you say how it might develop the idea of ‘representation’?
When you’ve done this, explore how it might apply to ‘realist’ media
forms, such as news.

Figure 4.1 An example of visual
refraction. The body is visible, is
‘represented’, in the water, but not
as in a mirror. Like the media, the
water cannot be a simple ‘window’
on to the real.

107

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Stereotyping and ‘scripts’

Some writers emphasise ‘re-mediation’ as another useful concept (see Lister
et al. 2009). It suggests that all media, when they are new, adapt previously
existing media. So, cinema adapted theatre and literature, and computer
games could be said to ‘re-mediate’ forms of cinema (see Chapter 8).
These involve further kinds of refraction, rather than a simple, mirror-like
‘representation’ of the world, or simple repetition of an earlier form. Some
of these debates have been broached before, in discussions of adaptations,
though ‘re-mediation’ spreads it, as an emphasis, to include new media.

Stereotyping and ‘scripts’
Stereotype comes from
Greek stereo, meaning ‘solid’.
It is a printer’s term for solid
blocks of type used to
represent something which
would otherwise need a great
deal of work with individual
pieces of type to show fine
detail. Arguably it is now
dated. Terms like ‘scripts’ and
different ‘stories’ try for
more fluidity in the idea of
‘representation’.

108

Let’s return to mainstream debates on ‘representation’. The media give
us ways of imagining particular groups, identities and situations. When
these relate to people they are sometimes called stereotypes or types;
when they offer images of situations or processes, the term ‘script’
is sometimes used, with the implication that we grow familiar with
these and often know how to ‘perform’ them in our own lives, often
to the exclusion of other ways of being. These imaginings can have
material effects on how people expect the world to be, and then
experience it.
Stereotyping has been a key concept in media studies, and is now
often too taken for granted. Mistakes are easily made in using the term.
It does not describe actual people or characters. Brad Pitt is not a
stereotype. But the way his image is constructed does carry some, and
not other, stereotypical assumptions about ‘masculinity’, ‘toughnesswith-tenderness’, etc. Stereotypes are widely circulated ideas or
assumptions about particular groups. They are often assumed to
be ‘lies’ that need to be ‘done away with’ so we can all ‘get rid of our
prejudices’ and meet as equals. The term is more derogatory than ‘type’
or even ‘archetype’ (which mean very similar things but which have
higher status as terms).
Stereotypes have the following characteristics:
1 they involve both a categorising and an evaluation of the group being
stereotyped;
2 they usually emphasise some easily grasped or perceived feature(s) of
the group in question and then suggest that these are the cause of the
group’s position;
3 the evaluation of the group is often, though not always, a negative
one; and
4 stereotypes often try to insist on absolute differences and boundaries

4: REPRESENTATIONS

(between ‘us’ and ‘others’) whereas the idea of a spectrum of
differences, which applies to many of us, is more appropriate.
Let’s explore this in a little more detail. Stereotyping is a process of
categorisation or framing. This is necessary to make sense of the world,
and the flood of information and impressions we receive minute by
minute. We all have to be ‘prejudiced’, in its root sense of ‘pre-judging’, in
order to make our way through any situation. We make mental maps of
our worlds and the people we meet in order to navigate our way through
them. And maps only ever represent parts of the real world, at a
distance, and in particular ways.
So most of us employ stereotypes in certain situations. For example,
on first meeting someone we might apply a sense of ‘type’, often on the
basis of tiny pieces of evidence – a hairstyle, the length of a hem, an
accent. In turn, we all belong to groups that can be typified, and
stereotyped in this way – as students, lecturers, Londoners, etc. We often
make sense of the people we meet on the basis of small signifiers related
to gender, religion, sexuality, etc. and the expectations or ‘scripts’ these
may produce. This process often resembles the ways we make sense of
characters in the media.

Stereotyping and ‘scripts’

Framing refers both to a)
how an image is literally
‘framed’ to select certain
features for emphasis but also
to b) the power of media to
‘frame’ or shape and set the
limits to how audiences are
invited to perceive certain
groups, issues, stories,
especially in news forms.

EXPLORE 4.2

•
•
•
•

Consider the points above. When did you last meet a stranger and apply
‘typification’ to his/her dress, accent, etc.? What were the key signifiers for you?
Why did you interpret them as you did? Because of any media images?
Were you proved right in your estimate?
Final, tricky question: how do you know?

Moving to characteristic (2): stereotypes work by taking some easily
grasped features presumed to belong to a group. These are often
circulated by dominant discourses and relate to powerful ideological
assumptions in the culture where they move (see Chapter 6).
Stereotyping puts these at the centre of the imaginary figure (‘Arabs’,
‘teenagers’) and then imply that all members of the group always have
those features. The next step is to suggest that these characteristics
(often the result of historical processes) are themselves the cause of the
group’s position. One of the seductions of stereotypes is that they can
point to features that apparently do have ‘a grain of truth’. But they then
repeat, across a whole range of media, jokes, etc., that this characteristic

In stories there is often not
enough space or time (a kind
of ‘refraction’) to amplify, or
give a ‘back story’ to every
figure that appears – hence
the shorthand use of ‘types’
to mean background
characters. They are often
highly stereotyped, and often
understood as such.

See the late Tessa Perkins’
important pioneering work
on this concept.

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is, and has always been, the central truth about that group and the cause
of its situation.

CASE STUDY 1: US PLANTATION STEREOTYPING
Let’s take an example. For many years, in Hollywood cinema and other
discourses, black African slaves, traded as commodities, and working on
cotton plantations before the American Civil War of 1861–5, were
stereotyped through such signifiers as:
• a shuffling walk;
• musical rhythm, and a tendency to burst into song and dance readily; and
• (in characterisations of female house slaves) bodily fatness, uneducated
foolishness and childlike qualities – see ‘Mammy’ and Prissy in Gone With

the Wind (US 1939).

Figure 4.2 Hattie McDaniel as ‘Mammy’ in Gone With the Wind (US 1939), playing a
character rooted in a familiar oppressive stereotype of the older black plantation woman.
The actor was one of the very few black performers ever to win an Oscar, here for
her supporting role. See Shohat and Stam (1994) for an excellent discussion of such
performances.

To say that these demeaning stereotypes embody a grain of truth may seem
insulting. But consider the following:
• Slaves on the Southern plantations had their calf muscles cut if they tried
to run away from slavery (the ‘shuffling gait’ of the stereotype).
• Slaves were given hardly any educational opportunities. The results of this
surface in hostile stereotypes. These demean slaves’ efforts to make music

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and dance out of the very basic resources to hand. Instead they attribute
‘rhythm’ to primitive, animal qualities, thus justifying slave-owners’
prejudices – ‘slaves couldn’t benefit from education anyway’.
• The women were often treated as little more than breeding stock by the
slave-owners. Once they had given birth to numbers of new slaves, their
bodies perhaps enlarged by repeated pregnancies with little medical care,
they were often moved into the main house and used as nursemaids to
the white children. Again, hostile use of the stereotype invites us to
account for Mammy’s size in terms of her physical laziness or ignorance
rather than her exploitation at the hands of the brutal slave system.
Though historically oppressed groups have been heavily stereotyped by the
dominant order, this usually happens through more than one stereotype. As
the title of a famous book on racism and Hollywood (Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,

Mammies and Bucks (Bogle 2003)) suggests there were always several
heavily used figures of black Americans. Each stereotype itself changes over
time, and relates to broader, changing historical discourses, such as those of
colonialism or patriarchal values. As Bogle points out, some of the terms in his
title were neutral (‘coon’ referred to rural whites until around 1848) until
broader historical changes turned them into racist slurs. Some are used
sympathetically, as in black Civil Rights reformist propaganda, or the broadly
sympathetic if sentimental use of Irishness in Titanic (US 1997).

‘Race’ and ethnicity
Racism doesn’t necessarily mean a hatred of non-white groups. More
accurately it involves any account of the world which argues that:
1 People can be divided into ‘races’, usually via observable differences in
appearance. Some accounts are obsessed with ‘colour, hair and bone’
difference, which are used to argue for an absolute difference between
‘black’ and ‘white’. Some such differences do exist, but in far subtler, mixed
ways than the relatively few ‘races’ (Negro, Aryan, etc.) listed by racists.
The next steps of the racist position imply that:
2 these supposed simple groupings (by ‘blood’ or ‘race’) give fundamental
explanations for behaviour and character, indeed, that they account for
more than any other factor, such as class, upbringing (including religion and
education), gender;
3 that some ‘races’ are inferior to others, and ‘innately’ prone to certain
kinds of behaviour.

See the excellent
www.racialicious.com, a US
blog ‘about the intersection
of race and pop culture’.

See the NUJ (National Union
of Journalists) website for
guidelines on UK race
reporting.

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Racism resembles stereotyping in the way it takes broadly observable features
of a group, puts them at the centre of any account of that group, exaggerates
them and (usually) gives them a negative value. Sometimes, as with Nazi
ideology, a positive, even superior, valuation is given – to the ‘white’ or Aryan
‘race’. Racism has been well summarised as ‘the stigmatising of difference
along the lines of “racial” characteristics in order to justify advantage or abuse
of power, whether economic, political, cultural or psychological’ (Shohat and
Stam 1994).
Ethnic difference (ethnicity) usually signifies non-biological, broadly
cultural distinctiveness and identities, produced through such activities as
language and religion, as well as geographical location. As such it does not, like
race-based divisions, collapse historical human differences into supposedly
fundamental ‘racial’ divisions – white/black or Aryan, Caucasian, Semitic and
so on.

A final characteristic of stereotypes is that they often insist on absolute
boundaries, whereas in reality there exist spectrums of differences, and
some steep, less easily movable rankings of inequality. But this idea of
‘spectrums’ is not usually how stereotypes are resisted. Usually, antistereotype arguments involve one of the dominant values of Western
culture: that we are all unique individuals, not types.
In some ways this is true, though it ignores the social structuring
we’re all shaped by, differences which involve shared and changing
historical structures, within particular social orders. Many experiences
are typical, or held in common with others. And arguably our real
differences are due not to ‘unique essences’ but to the particular ways in
which very big, shared social forces (such as class, gender, ethnicity)
have intersected and mixed in your or my unique instance (along with
genetic elements and personal histories). This model, rather than the
racist one, broadens the opportunities for understanding both other
people’s uniqueness, and our capacity to act together to change unjust
social structures.

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Example
This is an extract from http://www.racialicious.com prompted by ads for a
Fisher Price toy ‘Tickle Hands’, based on Sesame Street characters, and for
a US context.

Figure 4.3 Advertisement for Elmo Tickle Hands

‘So let’s trace the evolution of the gangster meme*
1 Government policy strips urban centers of resources, jobs leave . . .
housing prices fall and the poor become concentrated . . . people turn to
“underground” economies. With only the “underclass” left, politicians . . .
continue policies that disinvest in urban communities of color. Say
“goodbye” to things like nice parks and excellent fire protection.
2 In a world where obeying the rules gets you nowhere fast, violence
flourishes.
3 The suffering and resourcefulness of young black, Latino, and Asian men in
these communities appeals to a (mostly) white “mainstream” America for
whom depictions of men of color doing violence confirms their beliefs
about white superiority and advanced “civilization.” Hip hop and rap music
becomes a huge money maker for music studios and producers (and a
handful of men of color).
4 As [these] become commodified, they are depoliticized . . .
5 Now depoliticized, being “hard” and “urban” becomes synonymous with
being “cool”. Everyone wants to be cool.
6 Being “gangster” is appropriated by white suburban youth.
7 Stripped of any meaning, it filters down to younger and younger kids.’
Discuss, from your experiences of gangster forms, including music, any uses
of the term ‘urban’ to mean black which you have came across.
* meme – see Wikipedia on this controversial term.

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EXPLORE 4.3

•

Think of the ‘cut-off points’ at which age categories or named skin colours are
classified as having shaded into their opposite (black/white;
childhood/adulthood; old/young).
• Say how you have experienced one such important boundary – child/adult
maybe?
A high-profile example: the Dutch 13-year-old Laura Dekker was temporarily
made a ward of court in 2009 when she declared her desire to become the
youngest person to sail single-handed round the globe. Her parents supported
her wish.
How were the issues at stake represented (traceable in blog trails on news
articles)?

‘Scripts’ and performances
A useful definition of scripts:
‘shared expectations about
what will happen in certain
contexts, and what is
desirable and undesirable in
terms of outcome’ (Durkin
1985: 126).

Shappi Khorsandi is a secular,
Iranian-born, British-raised
comedian.
The title of her book
A Beginner’s Guide to Acting
English uses the idea of
performing an identity which
is partly real and partly
‘performed’. See her comedy
on YouTube.

114

Another powerful way of approaching the influence of repeated
representations, this time of events and situations rather than constructed
characters, is to think of the media as circulating dominant ‘scripts’.
These shared expectations are ‘performed’ with hugely different degrees
of commitment, or subversion, by us, the ‘actors’ (see Durkin 1985;
Goffman 1959). They involve important images of how life may be lived,
how to behave with others in particular situations, and so on. The highly
conventionalised ways in which romantic encounters are often portrayed
may make you feel you will know when ‘true love’ ‘hits’ you because
you’ve seen its stages ‘scripted’ so many times. Maybe you have even
rehearsed your possible performance of it in private, fantasy moments.
Equally you may have tried to copy the ways in which ‘being a proper
man’ is framed and ‘scripted’ by repeated media imagery, often involving
notions of ‘toughness’ (see Katz 2006 on Youtube). These scripts include
a sense of when is the appropriate time to resort to violence (demarcated
in endless ‘face-offs’ in westerns, gangster films), how you do or do not
express emotion, etc. They differ depending especially on ethnicity
and class. Katz suggests the scripts for American black and Chinese
young men, never plentiful, are structured towards violent notions of
masculinity since they are refracted mostly through gangster and kung
fu genres.

4: REPRESENTATIONS

‘Scripts’ and performances

EXPLORE 4.4

•
•
•

Can you think of any other ‘scripts’ you’ve learnt from the media? In films,
songs, games, soap operas?
What sorts of situations are most often ‘scripted’ for you in computer games,
or song lyrics?
Have you ever been in a situation for which you had not previously come
across some kind of media ‘script’? What was it? How did you deal with it?

According to one researcher,
disaster movies ‘script’ most
people’s responses to
disasters wrongly: ‘9.9 times
out of 10 people don’t turn
into crazed individuals but
behave quite rationally. They
tend to help each other too’
(Ed Galea 2010, see www.
guardian.co.uk/education/
2010/mar/16/disasterplanning-research).

CASE STUDY 2: REPRESENTATIONS AND GENDER
The distinction between sex and gender is a key one, even though the two
terms may be used in different ways. Sex, in this context, is not the same
as sexuality, which refers to people’s sexual orientation, activities and
imaginings. Sex difference refers here to the classification of people into male
and female, depending on physical characteristics: sex organs, hormonal
make-up and so on.

To put it another way, sex
says ‘It’s a boy’; gender says
‘Oh, good’ and buys the blue
greetings cards, gets out the
blue baby clothes, later, the
toy guns, and a whole set of
assumptions (adapted from
Branston 1984).

EXPLORE 4.5

•

How can you tell which of these very simply drawn characters is male
and which female? Which lines on the drawing told you?

Figure 4.4 Bruna cartoon

•
•

Try to find other, similar examples in birthday cards, children’s comics
and cartoon characters. (A quick colour survey of ‘new baby’ greeting
cards can also be striking as signifying gender difference.)
What does this suggest about the sheer ease with which assumptions of
gender difference circulate in our culture?

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‘When I was 3 or 4 my
mother was already teaching
me to see dust and other
people’s feelings’ (woman
interviewed by Shere Hite
(1998)). The skills produced
by such socialisation are said
to be ‘natural’ and to ‘suit’
women to certain kinds of
employment – a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

Gender differences are culturally formed, and performed. Though they
exist on the basis of biological classification, ‘the body’, they build a huge
system of differentiation over and above it. So whereas your sex will
determine broadly whether or not you can bear a child (though even this
is not a universal truth), some gendered positions have taken a huge
second step. They insist that because women bear children, they should
be the ones to stay at home and bring them up. ‘It’s only natural,’ says
a whole social system of laws, tax and work arrangements, childcare – and
media discourses.
Feminist studies of gender roles seem to show both that there have been
huge changes in attitudes to gender difference, and that these co-exist
alongside longstanding cultural discourses and stereotypes. Media changes
might include the attitudes to sexuality, gender, ethnicity and disability
revealed, or perhaps performed, in popular programmes such as Big Brother
(Channel 4 2000–) and their accompanying blogs. The Big Brother victory, in
2004, of a transsexual called Nadia, of Portuguese origin, suggested public
attitude changes, at least in the viewers of that series. Perhaps as important,

See Jacqui Oatley’s blog for
fascinating observations on
UK football, and research her
career through online
sources.

for the first time ever a woman, Jacqui Oatley, commentated on male soccer
matches on UK TV in 2007.
But such advances co-exist with limited representation of women in the
most prestigious levels of news. For example, in election reporting (see Ross
2004), a woman has yet to run the key General Election night coverage on a
major UK channel. Employment (and redundancy) statistics within the media
remain stubbornly and unevenly gendered. ‘Hollywood’, despite its liberal

In April 2007 the Internet
Watch Foundation reported,
contrary to the usually
invoked images of
paedophilia, that 80 per cent
of the children abused on the
internet are girls.

image, and its importance as a source of gendered global imagery and media
practices, shows huge gender employment imbalance. In 2008, women
comprised 16 per cent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers,
cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing
films. This represents a decline of 3 per cent from 2001, and an increase of
just 1 per cent from 2007 (see Lauzen 2009).
One fascinating area of representation is: where and when is a category
ignored? This can be particularly revealing in the area of gender. Katz (2006)

Other categories also go
unmarked, with oppressive
consequences. While ‘black
on black’ gun crime is often
discussed, as Paul Gilroy once
commented ‘nobody said the
Camden town bin bag
murders [were] an example
of “white on white” crime’
(The Guardian, 8 January
2003).

116

points to newspaper accounts of US school massacres, or road rage incidents
– overwhelmingly committed by males, but the stories are overwhelmingly
ungendered. Often they simply speak of ‘the Columbine killers’ or ‘road rage
drivers’, thus ignoring discussion of violent masculinities, and thereby
naturalising them. Another example: in the past few years there has been
media anxiety about some boys’ exam results not matching girls’ – but
hardly any comment for all the years when the reverse was often the case.
Gender then was not seen as an issue, it went ‘unmarked’.

4: REPRESENTATIONS

‘Scripts’ and performances

Gendered representation also works with taken-for-granted textual
habits. Especially powerful within audio-visual media is ‘the look’. The
ground-breaking work of John Berger (1972), Erving Goffman (1979) and
Laura Mulvey (1975) suggested that women have learned to see themselves
as being ‘looked at’. This has accumulated through, and outside, countless
cultural forms and power structures, from classical art forms to Hollywood
cinema and beyond. Men, however, have been represented as mostly the
ones who do the active looking, along with other kinds of socially valued and
purposeful action.
Mulvey’s work explored this for certain Hollywood films of the 1950s and
1960s, mostly male-centred ones. She argued that three interlocking system
of looks in cinema can be seen as ‘male’, and as constructing women
characters as ‘to be looked at’ instead of the subject of the action. These
looks go
• from camera to characters;
• between the characters on screen;
• between viewers and screen.
Much has changed since then, including Mulvey’s own views on ‘the look’.

See Chapter 3 for an account
of Hollywood and other
‘romance’ forms, often
assuming largely female
audiences, and operating a
different set of ‘looks’ (more
focus on the face, eyes, and
less on the sexualised body)
as well as central rather than
secondary narrative roles for
women characters and stars.

She later (1981) wrote of having ignored both lesbian desire in viewers, and
also films which centred on women.
Other theorists have explored the changing relations of men to ‘the look’
(see During 2005). From the 1980s onwards, advertisers, seeking to expand
consumption, sought to make men feel they should take an interest in
appearance-related consumer goods (from stylish clothes to haircare)
previously defined as ‘feminine’. In order to do this, ads needed to display
desirable male bodies, an increased display which has arguably legitimised
not only women looking with desire, but also male-on-male looking and samesex desire.

EXPLORE 4.6
Interestingly it was reported in 2009 that the men’s magazine FHM UK sales
had been overtaken by those of Men’s Health magazine.
Men’s Fitness is a similar magazine. Analyse the latest cover, taking
Mulvey’s suggestions as guide.
• How is the look given, and received by the model?
• Is the male a ‘sex object’ in the same ways that some female pin-ups are?
• What does this involve – pose? look to camera? sexualised bodily display?
Figure 4.5 Men’s Fitness magazine

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‘The pink cotton T-shirt’s
lettering reads: “So many
boys, so little time.” . . . But
. . . this T-shirt is a “5–6
years” size . . . What about
the thong for 7 year olds . . .
or the padded bra for a 9year old?’ (Christina
Odone, ‘Sexy Kids’, New
Statesman, 15 July 2002). See
http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk.

Whatever approach we take to current gender imagery, it appears hugely
contradictory. As Ros Gill (2006) suggests:
• ‘confident’ expressions of ‘girl power’ (pole dancing?) are displayed
alongside reports of ‘epidemic’ levels of anorexia and body dysmorphia;
• graphic tabloid reports of rape are placed alongside adverts for
lap-dancing clubs and phone sex lines;
• the ages at which young girls are addressed as sexual beings, who need to
be aware of their appearance and dress, seems to get ever younger;
• the re-sexualisation of women’s bodies, often displayed in public space,
and in near-soft-porn forms, goes comparatively unremarked – except by
those from other, less ‘liberated’ cultures.
Many women feel that the balance of representation has tilted back,
towards sexist images and language, and that this is not ‘liberation’ but
‘rretro-sexism’. The ‘alibi’ use of irony (‘I was only joking. No sense of
humour?’); the ‘laddishness’ of music radio (including some female
presenters), or magazines like FHM; the use of women in traditionally ‘sex
object’ poses with ‘playful’ captions – all seem to point to this.
The term ‘post-feminism’ suggests that women are now ‘beyond’ the
need to struggle for gender equality: ‘postmodern’ playfulness or irony is
said to be the proper response to all that. Young women are said to take for
granted equal pay, contraception and the other freedoms struggled for by
earlier feminists. ‘Freedoms’ are now defined differently, in consumerist

Figure 4.6 A 2009 controversial
shot of 20-year-old model Lizzie
Miller, said to be ‘overweight’
because of the small roll of fat
round her middle. She had
hundreds of messages of support,
and of relief at seeing a ‘normal’
body in such contexts.

terms – ‘post-feminists love shopping/have plastic surgery/go binge drinking
like the men’. Meanwhile persistent inequalities of pay and job opportunities,
as well as women’s anxieties about their body shapes, are ignored.

EXPLORE 4.7
Q: Have you come across the term ‘post-feminism’? How adequate do you
find it to describe women’s experiences now? Might ‘retro-sexism’ be a
better term?
Q: How far can such images of women always be read ironically?
Q: Research and discuss the arguments around what has been called ‘the
pinkification’ of young girls’ dress, shops and culture in recent years. You
could start with www.pinkstinks.co.uk.

Figure 4.7 A relevant Leeds
postcard. Some would argue that
we are now living in
‘neopatriarchy’, in both Arab and
Western societies. Google the
term, and see if you agree.

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Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates

Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates
We’ve suggested how history shapes and changes some scripts and
stereotypes. Once an oppressed group, such as people of colour,
perceives its political and social oppression, it begins to try to change that
oppression. This occurs at the level of representation as well as at other
levels. Those seeking to change imagery have argued, first, simply for
more images of a particular group, using a simple ‘reflection’ model.
Then, in the early stage of ‘getting a voice’, they may try to achieve more
stories which centre sympathetically on their group, as opposed to ones
where they often feature as villainous or untrustworthy ‘types’. These
may be the result of violent historical processes, including wars or
colonialism, which have left a legacy of hate-filled, insulting or
trivialising images. There are long histories to this kind of stereotyping of
ethnic ‘others’ – Mexicans or Native Americans in westerns, Arabs and
Muslims in contemporary Hollywood.
Once such visibility is achieved, it is often argued that more ‘positive’
portrayals are needed. But how to replace ‘negative’ with ‘positive’
images? It sounds simple, but raises complex issues, involving:
• how to define the ‘community’ being represented – usually huge and
complex ‘communities’ such as ‘women’(?) ‘Muslims’(?);
• what are to count, for whom, as ‘positive’ representations; and
• the effect of employment practices such as discrimination.
Let’s take the last point first. Groups that are negatively stereotyped
(as ‘problems’ or even ‘potential terrorists’) are likely to have less access
to influential positions in the media or to other kinds of power. This can
set up a vicious circle of unemployment, and of lack of pressure on news
rooms, etc. from inside to represent certain issues. In the case of asylum
seekers it may even be the case that they dare not be photographed or
quoted by name, for fear of reprisals (see case study to this chapter).
When images of the group do begin to be produced, they have to bear
what has been called the burden of representation. This involves
questions such as:
• What is assumed to be the reality of the group which is demanding
adequate representation? Most groups large enough to make such
demands are not homogeneous (think of the differences clumped
together under the term ‘students’). Which group members have the
power to define what is positive and what is negative about an image?
The success of the BBC series Goodness Gracious Me (UK 1998–2001;
see the ‘Let’s go for an English’ sketch on YouTube) and its spin-offs
can be seen as part of a claim of younger British Asians to define their
own group(s), sometimes in opposition to the ‘better-behaved’ images
of an older, more threatened generation.

Such stages are not neatly
gone through, and done with.
They often co-exist with later
kinds of representation.
Lesbians have remained
relatively invisible within
popular cultural forms,
despite apparently
‘ground-breaking’ series such
as Ellen (US 1994–98) and
Xena: Warrior Princess
(US 1995–2001).

‘. . . negative behavior by any
member of the oppressed
community is instantly
generalized as typical . . .
Representations of dominant
groups [however] are seen
not as allegorical but as
“naturally” diverse . . . A
corrupt white politician is not
seen as an “embarrassment
to the race” . . .’ (Shohat and
Stam 1994: 183).

119

Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates

•

‘Pictures of perfection make
me sick and wicked’ (Jane
Austen, novelist, in a letter,
1817).

According to BARB, the UK
audience ratings body,
EastEnders is the third most
popular series among ethnic
minorities, behind The X
Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

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How to construct characters belonging to the group (particularly
visible in the case of skin colour) if they have been relatively absent
from media images previously? This can mean that when they do
appear they are read as ‘representing’ the whole community, with
the huge expectation they will help make it respectable. This is a
real burden to those trying to construct new images and stories/
scripts.
For many years there were very few images of ‘black British’
people on television, and those images which did exist were of ‘blacks’
as ‘problems’ or (more sympathetic, if patronising) as ‘victims’. When
black characters did appear, they were often felt to need to ‘stand in
for’ or represent the whole of their particular ‘community’. These
‘positive’ images often consisted of strict parents, noble teachers,
respectable corner-shop keepers and so on – clearly a narrowing of the
range of representation compared with the roles available to white
characters. As a result, some members of such groups felt that,
paradoxically, being represented in various and ordinary, even
‘negative’, ways might be a positive step.

EastEnders’ variety of non-white characters has often been controversial –
some involved in petty crime, some coping with family difficulties and so on
– and argued to be a kind of advance in representation.
The first Muslim family was introduced from 1987 to 1990, followed by
another, much criticised family, the Ferreiras (2003–5). Prior to 2007,
EastEnders had been heavily criticised by the Commission for Racial Equality
(CRE) for not representing the East End’s real ‘ethnic make-up’. It was
suggested that the average proportion of visible minority faces on EastEnders
was substantially lower than the actual ethnic minority population in East
London boroughs, reflecting the East End of the 1960s, not the East End of
the 2000s. A production team member on EastEnders writes: ‘The previous
Asian family, the Ferreiras, were criticised as boring and unrealistic – their first
names were a mixture of Muslim and Hindu, their surname was Portuguese
. . . We played safe with them and didn’t give them good storylines . . .’ (Khan
2009).
Yet there will often be a tug of war between the requirements of a
character and the ways that characters always have a ‘socially representative’
aspect. This latter aspect is keenly watched by groups (sometimes globally,
and via internet comment) who may feel they are being misrepresented. In
2008, for example, a Muslim character, Masood, was shown eating during the

4: REPRESENTATIONS

Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates

Ramadan fasting hours. Around a hundred viewers complained. The BBC
argued that ‘although Masood is a practising Muslim, he is not intended to be
representative of the British Muslim experience. He’s a fictional character
who realises he has let himself down in a moment of weakness.’ More
recently the soap has run a romantic storyline centred on a Muslim character
who has discovered his gayness, a risk for the serial, though not for its ratings:
the soap’s first gay Muslim kiss attracted 7.9 million viewers (see Holmwood
2009). In the same family a 2009 storyline featured Zainab (the Masoods’
mother and a small businesswoman). In her mid-forties, with three children,
two grown-up, she stated her wish not to continue with an unexpected
pregnancy, shocking her husband and herself, since Islam does not support
a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
To summarise: ‘negative’ images are not always best opposed by
(someone’s idea of) ‘positive’, but by the availability of a range of fuller ways
of being imagined, both by others and within the group itself.

There is another, quite different attitude towards ‘positive’ and ‘negative’.
Members of some groups may have good grounds for surliness, and for
lack of co-operation with a social system or situation, such as that of
slaves in US plantation conditions pre-1870. What if they are represented
‘positively’, as always smiling and whistling contentedly at their lot?
They may well wonder whether this image is ‘positive’ only for those
who want to be reassured that all is well with an unjust set-up.
Sometimes members of heavily stereotyped groups have responded
by taking on the denigrated identity that an abusive nickname gives
them. Examples would be black people calling themselves ‘niggers’, or
gays calling themselves ‘queens’ and ‘sissies’, ‘dykes’ and ‘fems’.

EXPLORE 4.8
There is heated debate about whether people outside such groups have the right
to apply derogatory labels.
• Explore Sacha Baron Cohen’s various impersonations of the extreme
characteristics often attributed to certain groups (and see Chapter 13).
• Do you think, as often claimed, he is ‘really’ satirising bigoted responses to these
groups? What evidence would you draw on in your debate/reply?

See the EastEnders website
which has a special section
devoted to the charities
which have been consulted
and often involved in various
storylines: one way to think
about social ‘representation’
and individualised characters.

For the importance of such
representations consider this:
‘I know of gay men who have
been murdered in “honour
killings” – in fact, the police
often contact our sexual
health organisation if there is
an unexplained death of a
young Muslim man to check
if he is on our database’
(Ibrahim, charity worker:
Holmwood 2009).

‘I like the sissy [stereotype
of gay men]. Is it used in
“negative” ways? Yeah. But
my view has always been:
visibility at any cost. Negative
is better than nothing’
(Harvey Fierstein in Russo
1981).

‘What I want is a film which is
a gay love story where the
love and not the gayness is
the point. And where one or
other person in the
relationship does not have to
die or be punished by the
narrative.’ Paul Burston, gay
editor of Time Out, at Cardiff
Iris event, 10 October 2009.
See his writings in Time Out.

121

Stages of change, and ‘positive/negative’ debates

Asylum seekers often need
to hide their identity, which
makes adequate selfrepresentation difficult.
People from outside such
groups will sometimes work
with, and on behalf of, those
denied representation, in
both politics and media. See
the 1950s and 1960s US Civil
Rights movement for earlier
examples of important calls
for realism.

122

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

There is no such thing as the ‘100 per cent right-on’ text or ‘positive
image’ which is guaranteed to challenge hostile audiences all on its own.
We have to understand images within particular histories, both of the
media and more broadly, as well as through the complicated ‘refractions’
of different media forms.
The call for ‘realism’ arises when the media are assumed to reflect
society, like a mirror, rather than re-present, let alone ‘refract’ it. Some
degree of accuracy is understandably demanded by groups which
have previously been invisible, or violently misrepresented. But how
successful the call for more realism will be depends very much on,
firstly, the power of the group seeking it, or seeking to avoid it. The case
study to this chapter deals with one of the least powerful groups in most
societies, and some ways in which they are often ‘unrepresentable’.
But for groups such as the richest in society, invisibility and privacy
is a key privilege. Paparazzi live off this set-up, and some celebrities
collaborate with it. In 2009 it was striking how elusive and relatively
invisible were, for example, the private arrangements, residences, etc.
of top bankers, whose actions were a major contributory cause of global
recession and unemployment. The story slipped off the front pages
relatively quickly, and was replaced by stories of the shocking, but much
smaller corruption of some MPs. The hounding of a so-called ‘underclass’
of ‘chavs’ and so on continued as usual, and seems now routine in some
British media (see Chapter 6).
Representations are also shaped by the kinds or genres of media in
which groups are likely to feature. This raises questions such as:
a How do different genres affect the demand for ‘realism’? What of
the needs of exaggerated character types for comedy or fantasy, for
example?
b Are stereotypes replayed and used in exaggerated ways as they
become familiar, so that they do not necessarily work to hostile ends
but ‘fly free’ of the referent for the sake of comic pleasures?
c How does this process combine with older, less humorous and
more limiting ways of imagining the group, which can suddenly
resurface?
A simple call for ‘realism’ may ignore the fact that media texts do
not have a straightforward relationship to the rest of the real. They
may belong to a form (e.g. computer games) which is not experienced
by audiences in the same way as, say, news or current affairs. Indeed
some would argue that the need for games to ‘immerse’ their players
in a world means issues such as how characters are ‘represented’ do
not arise. Users’ degrees of familiarity with a form’s conventions will
influence its ‘reality effect’ for them, and what they take for granted,

4: REPRESENTATIONS

Comedy, fantasy and questions of representation

indeed, want to play with in order to obtain its pleasures. Equally, the
skilled performance of a game itself can be part of a self-representation.
See Dovey and Kennedy (2006: 119) on the pleasure taken by female
players in mastery of some games, seen as requiring skills which are
‘masculine’.

Comedy, fantasy and questions of representation
The idea of images as reflecting reality is far too straightforward and
mirror-like, especially for comedy and fantasy forms. It suggests there
is a fairly simple thing called ‘reality’ to be ‘reflected’ in a one-to-one,
undistorted glass.
Comedy also seems to depend on the exaggerations of stereotyping,
understood playfully by audiences, and not always as a ‘reflection’ of
‘the real’ (see Medhurst 2007). Dafydd (‘I’m the only gay in the village’)
in Little Britain (BBC 2003–4), for example, is a complex combination
of ludicrous pouting presence and rubber costume, and a readiness
to take offence. The character’s ‘failure’ to realise how acceptable or
indeed common it is to be gay now is the heart of the joke. The whole
character, like many others in the series, such as the delinquent teenager
‘Vicky Pollard’ (‘No but yeah but yeah but yeah but no . . .’) seems
to assume an audience which will feel superior to supposedly ‘outmoded’
prejudice about such figures. For some this will shade into a less
attractive self-congratulation at the show’s own knowingness, or a feeling
that the sketch is premature in suggesting the death of homophobia –
‘all in Dafydd’s mind’ – or of contempt for some working-class women
(see Chapter 6).
Or take the joke form. When the late Les Dawson delivered the line:
‘I knew it was the mother-in-law ’cause when they heard her coming, the
mice started throwing themselves on the traps’ there were several
pleasures on offer:
• his delivery, gravelly northern voice and timing, especially as
contrasted with
• the verbal surprise of the exaggeration – the image of those mice!
• the verbal elegance of a concise, well-crafted joke, well delivered.
However, the joke’s elegance also works because a quickly recognisable
stereotype is in play (the ‘mother-in-law’). This offers speedy
recognition, but also involves, through this ‘community’ of shared
laughter, a feeling of ‘we’-ness and a ‘them’-ness for a moment. It’s
worth pausing to consider:
Q: From whose point of view is it being told? Whose is excluded? Who is
the ‘them’ or ‘her’ outside this cosy community?

Explore how Gavin and Stacey
(BBC 2007–10) works with
stereotypes of Welshness,
for example via the
‘refraction’ of the OTT
performance of Ruth Jones as
Nessa, and the twist that the
lustfulness, for once, belongs
to a female working-class
Welsh character.

123

Comedy, fantasy and questions of representation

An even older resonance:
Propp’s study worked with
fairy tales from hundreds of
years ago when many women
would die in childbirth, and
the role of (‘wicked’?)
stepmothers could therefore
be a shared reference point
for audiences. See Chapter 2.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Q: How is the group on the receiving end of the joke treated in the rest of
the media? Does that change the experience of the joke?
To make this last point clearer: in the case of mothers-in-law, we may
feel OK to laugh, since this is rather an outdated target. Changes in
family structures have eroded the power of mothers-in-law of many
working-class couples, who had to live in ‘her’ home for the first few
years of married life. Maybe the degree of exaggeration itself signals the
joke’s distance from reality. To put it in semiotic language: pleasure is
more from the play of the signifiers than from agreement with the way
the sign signifies or represents its referent. It’s a good example of the
refraction which occurs in such forms.
However, you might feel differently if you were an older woman, and
the object of many contemptuous jokes and comedy sketches. Or you
might not, if age were only a relatively unimportant one of your several
identities. But when jokes centre on groups who are being abused on the
street, or in the home, for whom there may be fewer alternative
‘communities of feeling’ or media images to enter into, it becomes a
much less easy thing to laugh along with them.

EXPLORE 4.9

•
•

Can you think of a recent joke to which you might apply the same analysis?
Are there any circumstances in which you would feel you should not laugh at a
joke you found ‘funny’? Can you apply to it the approach to Les Dawson used
above? How might you relate the film Brüno to this debate?

The internet has made a difference to many kinds of oppression. Paul Burston
of Time Out cited a young relative living in a fairly remote rural village where
he dare not come out as gay – and might have never done so twenty years
ago.
But now he can join groups of shared interest on Facebook and other
sites.

124

4: REPRESENTATIONS

Historical and institutional processes

Historical and institutional processes
Debates over representation cannot be restricted simply to the level
of textual analysis. They need to understand contexts such as media
institutions, and their different processes and relationships to the rest of
the real world. Historical changes widen (or narrow) imaginings, and
struggles over media images are a key part of this.
• One of the achievements of the US black Civil Rights struggles in the
1950s and 1960s, or of environmental movements now, is to have put
on the agenda different images of US ethnicity, and of ‘lifestyle scripts’
which are less consumerism-centred than dominant ones.
• The needs of capitalist entertainment industries to make profits
in ever more fragmented markets inevitably lead to constant
and unpredictable changes in the images offered to groups for
self-representation, especially in internet forms. It remains true,
though, that this is often within the limits of assumed purchasing
power. The ‘pink pound’ was a key factor in persuading advertisers
that they could target some affluent gay audiences, and thereby,
eventually, shift images of gay identities. For poorer groups (such as
long-term unemployed or asylum seekers) the prospects for changing
images have to lie elsewhere, sometimes in alliances with
sympathetic members of dominant groups.
• Changes to employment patterns in media industries, often as a
result of affirmative action or equal opportunities policies, mean that,
wherever possible, people from particular groups (defined through
ethnicity, or gender, or perhaps disability, for example) are appointed
to jobs if their suitability is more or less equivalent to that of other
candidates. These can be ‘positive’ in helping to produce expectations
and role models other than the (perhaps unspoken) conviction that
‘women or working-class northerners can’t do that work because I’ve
never seen one doing it’.
Affirmative action may also open up a newsroom or a drama unit
to workplace discussions and experiences which may be remote from
its usual experience. If people with disabilities work in a newsroom,
it makes it harder to resort to the stereotype that ‘disabled people are
always helpless victims’. Several ‘Black British’ journalists have
commented that racist headlines in ‘red-top’ papers would be harder
to justify in the newsroom if there were more non-white British
journalists employed there. The same may not be as true of internet
forms.

Imagery and employment are
interestingly linked by Ben
Stephenson, BBC Controller
of Drama Commissioning
(Khan 2009): ‘The more
on-screen we can do with
minorities, the more those
groups will feel like television
is a realistic part of their
experience and therefore
a career option for them.’

125

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Conclusion

Images of disabilities
Research from Cardiff University in 2009 found that, in a year’s worth of
programmes, an average of only 6.5 people a week with facial disfigurements
were shown on TV.
However, there have been some striking developments in other areas of
disability. The BBC’s use of Frank Gardner, badly injured in a gun attack in
Saudi Arabia in 2004, is a fine example of how to deploy such an expert
foreign correspondent. Cutaway shots to him in his wheelchair, after one of
his lucid analyses, often come as a shock to those who first see them.
Signing, on some TV programmes, already addresses deaf viewers.
CBeebies’ presenter Cerrie Burnell was born with one arm. She was
subjected to letters from a small but vocal minority of viewers objecting to
having their children ‘scared’ by her image, though one writer said how
pleased his son was to see someone resembling himself on TV.

Figure 4.8 Cerrie Burnell

•

Broadening of access to Web 2.0, and older, dissenting mechanisms
has also been important. News forms have always had power to
circulate hostile images of groups and individuals. Those targeted
have had far less power to circulate their replies, or position them
prominently. They have often been discredited by unfounded
allegations, without access to expensive lawyers.
But there were huge internet protests in 2009 against the Daily Mail
article by Jan Moir, calling the death of Stephen Gately, a singer with
Boyzone, ‘unnatural’ and linking it to his sexuality. These protests
were largely co-ordinated by Twitter messaging, and meant the Press
Complaints Commission site crashed under a record number of
complaints. See Charlie Brooker’s angry, funny and brilliant reply to
Moir at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/
stephen-gately-jan-moir.

Conclusion
Figure 4.9 Stephen Gately
(1976–2009)

126

There are many examples of the media systematically narrowing
imagery of particular groups, even of deliberately misrepresenting or
under-representing them, especially in fiction forms. The concepts of
discourse (discussed more fully in Chapters 6 and 15) and of scripts,
stories and stereotyping are useful here.
But we have argued against the suggestion that the media have huge
powers all on their own, simply at the textual level, to socialise people

4: REPRESENTATIONS

References and further reading

into beliefs, roles and behaviour. We have also questioned simple uses of
‘representation’, suggesting that ‘refraction’ and ‘re-mediation’ usefully
enrich the concept. And we suggest that rigid uses of the term
‘stereotype’ need to be avoided.
We hope you will find all these approaches more useful than ones
which tend to automatically distrust, and thus simplify, the richness as
well as the power of media representations.

References and further reading
Antler, Joyce (2007) You Never Call, You Never Write!, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Bignell, Jonathan (2004) An Introduction to Television Studies, London:
Routledge.
Bogle, Donald (2003, anniversary edition) Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American
Films, New York: Continuum.
Branston, Gill (1984) Film and Gender, London: Film Education.
Briggs, Adam, and Cobley, Paul (eds) (2002) The Media: An Introduction,
2nd edn, Harlow: Longman.
Campbell, Duncan (2001) ‘Hollywood Still Prefers Men’, The Guardian,
5 December.
Deacon, David, Pickering, Michael, Golding, Peter, and Murdock,
Graham (2007) Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Media
and Cultural Analysis, 2nd edn, London: Arnold.
Dovey, Jan, and Kennedy, Helen W. (2006) Game Cultures, London and
New York: Open University Press.
During, Simon (2005) ‘Feminism’s Aftermath: Gender Today’, in Cultural
Studies: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, Chapter 6.
Durkin, Kevin (1985) Television, Sex Roles and Children, Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Gill, Ros (2006) Gender and the Media, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden
City, NY: Doubleday.
Goffman, Erving (1979) Gender Advertising, London: Macmillan.
Hite, Shere (1998) The Hite Report on Women and Love: A Cultural
Revolution in Progress, London: Viking.
Holmwood, Leigh (2009) ‘TV Ratings: Gay Kiss Lifts EastEnders to Nearly
8m’, The Guardian, 22 June.
Katz, Jackson (2006) Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, MEF
Amherst, available through YouTube.

127

References and further reading

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Khan, Yasmeen (2009) ‘The Right Ethnic Mix’, MediaGuardian, 22 June.
Lauzen, Martha (2009) ‘The Celluloid Ceiling in 2008: Behind-the-Scenes
Employment of Women in the Top 250 Films of 2008’, http://www.
womenarts.org.
Lister, Martin, Dovey, Jon, Giddings, Seth, Grant, Iain, and Kelly, Kieran
(2009) New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn, London and New
York: Routledge.
Medhurst, Andy (2007) A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English
Cultural Identities, London and New York: Routledge.
Medhurst, Andy, and Munt, Sally R. (eds) (1997) Lesbian and Gay Studies:
A Critical Introduction, London and Hendon: Cassell.
Mulvey, Laura (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, reprinted
in Mulvey, Laura (1989) Visual and Other Pleasures, London:
Macmillan.
Mulvey, Laura (1981) ‘Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946)’, in Thornham,
Sue (1999) (ed.) Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Nunn, Heather, and Biressi, Anita (2009) ‘The Undeserving Poor’,
Soundings, 41 (spring): 107–17.
Perkins, Tessa (2000) ‘Who (and What) Is It For?’, in Gledhill, Christine,
and Williams, Linda (eds) Reinventing Film Studies, London and New
York: Arnold.
Ross, Karen (2004) Framed: Women, Politics and News Media, Coventry:
University Research Monograph.
Russo, Vito (1981) The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies, New
York: Harper; paperback reprint 1987.
Shohat, Elaine, and Stam, Robert (1994) Unthinking EuroCentrism:
Multiculturalism and the Media, London and New York: Routledge.
Wardle, Claire, and Boyce, Tammy (2009) Media Coverage and Audience
Reception of Disfigurement on TV, Cardiff: The Healing Foundation and
Cardiff University.

128

CASE STUDY

Images of migration
•

DISCOURSES AND STEREOTYPES OF ‘MIGRATION’
AND OTHER KINDS OF TRAVEL

•

NEWS MEDIA

•

THE ‘GRAIN OF TRUTH’ IN STEREOTYPES?

•

VARIETIES OF MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS

•

CONCLUSION

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

No representation can ‘contain’ more than a fraction of
its real-world subject. In the case of migration and

EXPLORE 4.10

asylum seeking that ‘referent’ is enormous, elusive and
hotly contested. Over the past five years many opinion
polls indicate that UK, and some European, public
attitudes towards asylum and immigration issues are
generally, and increasingly, negative (Crawley 2009).
These attitudes often lead to hostile behaviour and
even attacks on immigrants. They also influence

See how well you know these terms. Have you seen
them explained in news or other media forms?
• Survey a day’s news output, online or print. Do
different papers or websites seem to trade on
myths or misunderstandings of these terms?
Do some/all seek to explain them?

the content and direction of government policies and
discourses – another kind of ‘representation’.
Here we explore images of migration, asking:

Who is an asylum seeker? Anyone who has applied

• How are different migrating groups, or situations,
represented, or under-represented in the media?

for asylum against persecution under the 1951 UN

• Do some media re-present certain frames, images,
words and ‘scripts’ over and over again, making

Who is a refugee? Anyone who has been granted

Convention on Refugees, and is waiting for a decision.
asylum under the UN Convention (signed by the UK

certain discourses seem ‘natural’ and familiar?

along with 144 other countries). The legal definition of

• Does that help marginalise or even exclude other
discourses?

‘refugee’ is someone who, owing to a well-founded fear

• In what different media do such representations
occur?

nationality, membership of a particular social group or

‘Asylum seekers’ are still, largely, at the first stage of

and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to

struggles over representation, where there is a huge

obtain the protection of that country.

of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
political opinion, is outside the country of nationality,

need simply to contest very limited and negative

Who is an illegal asylum seeker? No one. It cannot be

images, misinformation and prejudice. Let’s first unpack

illegal to seek asylum: everyone has the fundamental

the term a little.

human right to request asylum under international law.
Even the term ‘bogus asylum-seeker’ is misleading. It
pre-judges the outcome of an asylum application – like

129

Discourses and stereotypes of ‘migration’

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

describing a defendant as entering a ‘bogus plea of

and often misleading angles to all kinds of stories. They

innocence’ during a trial. A more accurate term is ‘failed

also ignore the ways in which other social groups may

asylum seeker’.

also have cultural practices which offend: fox hunting,

Who are ‘illegals’? Those who work without legal

large bonus cultures and so on.

permits, for whatever reason. As a direct result they
are often paid illegally low wages, and work in illegally
poor conditions, sometimes organised by official

‘People flows’

‘gangmasters’. But such questions, also affecting other

Some journeys are represented positively, and are

workers, are not the ones conjured by this word. Instead:

media-ted as ‘natural’, or even invisible. Tourists’

• it can be used to exploit fears of semi-criminal
activities, such as prostitution and sex trafficking,

journeys and students’ ‘gap year’ travel are hardly ever
seen as part of global ‘people flows’, though they are

drug dealing, theft – which do exist but are not

a key part of many economies, and may inspire later

confined to undocumented workers;

individual migrations. A historical example: the

• the term ‘illegals’ is often used as though it were the
same as asylum seekers. In fact ‘undocumented

immigrants’ is probably a better term.
The Office of National Statistics, which records the

departure of the persecuted ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ from
Britain to North America in the seventeenth century is
rarely described as involving migrants.
Other large-scale journeys are not thus naturalised,

net annual flows in and out of the UK, uses the terms

let alone celebrated. Class is a key factor here, partly

‘in-migrants’ and ‘out-migrants’. And many prefer the

acknowledged in the use of the term ‘economic

term ‘people flows’ for migratory moves.

migrants’. Broadly it has been said that if the journeys
involve the poor they’re called ‘migration’; if they

DISCOURSES AND STEREOTYPES OF
‘MIGRATION’ AND OTHER KINDS
OF TRAVEL

involve corporate executives, ‘homes in the sun’ or
white, richer migrants, they are called ‘relocation’ and
usually welcomed. Quite different discourses apply to
high-paid executives leading semi-nomadic existences

Stereotypes, we argued, involve both a categorising and

between different airports than do to women from poor

an evaluation of the group or activity being stereotyped.

countries who often have to abandon their families

Like genres, they give the impression of absolute

to work as nannies, sex workers or cleaners for

boundaries, though the idea of a spectrum or

wealthier families in rich countries. See Hochschild and

continuum of difference is more useful. In other words,

Ehrenreich (2003: 4) for an account of this relatively

they produce a narrow label for a large and unwieldy

undocumented global flow, a trade in what they call

reality: ‘southerners’, ‘northerners’, ‘football fans’,

‘something that can look very much like love’.

‘students’, ‘immigrants’.
We’ve used the word ‘migration’ rather than
‘immigration’ to try to draw attention to different
valuations given to the widespread movements of
people to and fro, or ‘people flow’. Migrations spark
heated debates for different reasons: fears about
unemployment, about globally mobile terrorist
networks, as well as dislike of cultural practices like
‘arranged marriages’ and ‘honour killings’. As reported
in many media forms these can easily make exciting

130

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) in 2009 was involved in work with 34
million people, including some 838,000 asylum
seekers. Developing countries’ predicaments
produce most of the world’s refugees. But they also
provide asylum to most of them (see UNHCR
website http://www.unhcr.org and also
http://www.oxfamgb.org).

CASE STUDY: IMAGES OF MIGRATION

Discourses and stereotypes of ‘migration’

borders? What of the need for security against global

EXPLORE 4.11

terrorism, drug trafficking and so on?

Q: How many kinds of ‘people flow’ have you and
your family been part of?
Include holidays, or moving to go to university.
Students are a huge part of global people flows.

a The nation state of Pakistan (‘a basket case’, in the

Two more examples of absent histories:
insulting language of some journalism) is partly a
result of Britain, when it withdrew from imperial
domination, dividing India into what it perceived as
a largely Muslim state (Pakistan) and a largely Hindu
state (India). How often is this mentioned in media
treatment?
b Global ‘economic’ migration patterns for the poor.
Often these have been and are from within the same
country – for example, Scots, Irish and Welsh
migrations to wealthier England.

The Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams
used to tell of the class put-down his family used:
‘Someone says his family came over with the
Normans (i.e. are aristocratic) and we reply: “Are
you liking it here?”.’ In Politics and Letters (1979)
p. 36.
Figure 4.10 Huge promises to ‘immigrants’ made in a
nineteenth-century poster for the settlement (and sale) of parts
of California. Climate guarantees included!

c Somali ‘pirates’ make headlines, partly because of
the exciting resonance of that word. But Somali
fishermen (some of whom became ‘pirates’) had
complained to the UN for years that illegal fishing by
wealthier nations was driving them to the brink of

Histories

economic collapse. Their coast had also become a

‘We are here because you were there’ was the slogan

nuclear waste dumping ground following a contract

of anti-racist campaigns in the UK in the 1980s.

signed between local warlords and two European

The stereotypes of ‘immigrants’ resemble those of

companies. Barrels of this toxic waste cracked open

US slavery in some ways. By ‘Other-ing’ this group as

in the 2004 tsunami and waste washed ashore.

utterly different, even inhuman, it becomes harder to
ask obvious questions related to ‘why?’ People do not
usually leave their homes on such long and dangerous

EXPLORE 4.12

journeys for trivial reasons. Even if they reach their
destination, evidence suggests that many intend only a
temporary stay in another country, and hope to return
home once savings targets have been achieved.

•
•

Look at a week’s news coverage of ‘migration’ issues.
How much historical understanding is given as
context for stories? Where? Which histories?

Complex issues arise: do modern states need to have

131

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

News media

These huge ‘back stories’ are rarely adequately

‘stampeding’, ‘overrun’, ‘asylum capital of the world’,

represented. One of the appeals of stereotypes is that

‘flooding’, ‘tide’, ‘wave’, ‘sponging’ and so on. These

they offer entertaining short-cuts through huge,

both dehumanise migrants and lock into (near-racist)

complex and often painful sets of knowledge – for

rhetoric of Britain as a proud ‘island race’.

example, relations of inequality and dependency which
it is disturbing to be reminded of. It becomes difficult to
point out that migrants, working in low-paid jobs, often

EXPLORE 4.14

contribute more to hospitable countries in taxes, etc.
than they take from them.

NEWS MEDIA
News discourses and images of migration are key here,
especially the choice of terms used in news headlines.
A related part of news values (see Chapter 12) suggests
that once a ‘story’, or theme, or set of ‘scripts’, is
established as controversial or ‘newsworthy’ it tends to
achieve further headline status more easily. Headlines
often ignore the possibility that migrants might have
anything to offer to the host country. As with celebrity

•

How much do your friends think an asylum seeker
(‘sponger’) receives in state benefits? (According to
a 2000 Mori poll most people believed this to be
more than £110 per week.)
As of October 2009 the weekly rate for a single
asylum seeker, aged over twenty-five, destitute and
asking for support is £35.13 a week. It is justified
because ‘asylum seekers . . . typically live in UK Border
Agency accommodation and so have no housing cost,
or water, gas and electricity bills’ (UK Border Agency).
They are not allowed to work while waiting for
decisions on their case.

coverage, alibi phrases like ‘we hear that . . .’ or ‘there
are fears that . . .’ mean that almost anything can be
alleged. Key words are repeated – ‘swamping’,

EXPLORE 4.13
Examine the next article you come across which raises migrant fears.
• List the key terms it uses and repeats, especially in the headline. What choices have been made?
• How is asylum seeking framed? What larger contexts are given, or withheld, such as the conditions being fled
from? Which facts or statistics are used? Which organisations are quoted?
• How are photos used? Is it true that most images of asylum seekers are:
• absent, replaced by images of UK government officials?
• images of men, reinforcing the notion that the majority of asylum seekers are lone males? (UNHCR states that
49 per cent of ‘persons of concern’ to them are women, and 44 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees are
children.)
• not local to the area of Britain featured in the article?
• If the article is in a local paper, has there been any attempt to help local people imagine the plight, appearance,
abilities, families of those written about?
• Are there any photos of families, in familiar, unthreatening work or home situations?
• Is there any sign that the reporters are ‘on the spot’ if the story concerns a British town?

132

CASE STUDY: IMAGES OF MIGRATION

The ‘grain of truth’ in stereotypes?

The lure of a striking headline, and the brevity of

of industrialised countries for the number of asylum

responsible analysis in many stories, can mean that key

applications per head of population.

information is ignored and thereby goes unrepresented
– this borders on rendering a powerless group invisible.
Misleading headlines in newsagents’ shops, and online
editions, are seen by many more people than buy or

THE ‘GRAIN OF TRUTH’ IN
STEREOTYPES?

read the papers displaying them. So a retraction of

We argued that stereotypes take a recognisable feature

downright misrepresentation (much later, and much less

of a group, put it at the centre of the image, and then

prominently positioned in the newspaper or website) is a

go on to suggest it is always true of the entire group,

very poor substitute for thoughtful and accurate

and is even the cause of their situation.

journalism.
Bodies like the Refugee Council

Asylum seekers, like many powerless groups, are
often ridiculed or even physically attacked because they

(http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk, in their section

cannot afford as much, or cannot access the same

‘Basics on asylum’) attempt to correct the

resources, as most of the rest of the host population.

misrepresentations:

Negative images take the results of this deprivation,

a Applications for asylum are made in writing, so it

whether that be appearance, or difficulties with

is hard to justify the language of ‘stampedes’,

language, or desperation for money, or even a resort to

conjuring a vision of panicking animals. Many more

crime. They put these at the centre of the description, as

families than the Home Office expected await

the cause of the group’s situation. All asylum seekers

decisions for more than three years (2005) – again,

are over and over again implied by their nature to be

hardly a ‘stampede’.

always on the look-out for scams or even criminal

b In 2008, far from being the ‘asylum capital of the
world’, the UK was ranked seventeenth in the table

possibilities. This ‘inherent’ nature is then blamed for
their predicament.

EXPLORE 4.15
Imagine you are working on a popular soap such as EastEnders. You want to begin a storyline about either asylum
seeking or economic migrants.
• How would you go about it? Which existing character would be the link to the new one? What would be the
‘line’: family relationship? illness? need to hide? employment?
• What problems might arise for casting, tone, gender and age issues, and possible religious and political
controversy? How would you manage racist internet blogs? Jot down how these refractions might help account for
the relative absence of such storylines in soaps.
Example: Coronation Street (spring 2007) began a politically sensitive storyline with an illegal immigration theme
centring on Polish workers (who turned out to be ‘legal’) at the factory. It included a police raid after a disgruntled tipoff which turned out to be unreliable.

Discussion points
1 If you plan for your asylum seeker character to become an integrated and popular character in the soap
community, you might be accused of ‘being PC (‘politically correct’). However, if you plan to have them treated
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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Varieties of media representations

with suspicion, you might be accused of marginalising them. This conflict between soap opera role and the socially
representative nature of key characters (as ‘white British’, ‘female’, ‘asylum seeker’, etc.) needs much better
understanding.
2 Long-running hospital serials offer different possibilities, not least because new characters
a do not need to be introduced via an existing character.
b have an already existing degree of sympathy as patients in need of help.
Example: The BBC series Holby City in 2008 ran a long-running plot strand where a doctor became deeply involved
with the plight of a pair of Korean asylum seekers, one of whom was pregnant with conjoined twins.

EXPLORE 4.16
Repeat 4.14 above but locate your characters in a
hospital serial.

VARIETIES OF MEDIA
REPRESENTATIONS
Different groups view migration differently: some may
oppose migration for fear of worsened housing
conditions, erosion of ‘British national identity’, criminal
activity, ‘swamping’ via birth rates and so on. On the

Example: ‘The Irish’
Historically, groups who are hungry and hunted, with
different cultures and traditions, have often been negatively
imaged by the cultures they enter as (im)migrants. Terry
Eagleton’s exploration of stereotypes of nineteenth-century
Irish immigrants argued against the perception that ‘all Irish
are lazy’. He suggested instead that many Irish immigrants
fled from their small farms to the industrial cities of Victorian
Britain in the wake of the Great Famine. (This ‘famine’ itself
was partly the result of unfair trade arrangements, though
the words ‘Great Famine’ make it sound biblical and
therefore ‘sent from God’.) Since the rural Irish poor were
accustomed to a less crippling work discipline than their
British counterparts, ‘this could look like indolence, since
their lives as small tenant farmers involved sporadic bursts of
labour, but a fair bit of leisure too, with much enjoyment of
fairs and feast-days’ (Eagleton 2000).
British history later produced ‘the Paddy’ stereotype out
of the men recruited for the backbreaking work of building
nineteenth-century roads and railways, and also the abiding
sense of the love of sociability and language which could be
said to come from a largely rural society.

134

Figure 4.11 A postcard satirising the anti-Irish racism of
comedians (like Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson) by
placing one against a wall of names of famous, even
‘classic’ Irish writers.

CASE STUDY: IMAGES OF MIGRATION

Film resources and close textual analysis

other hand, many employers may favour, or turn a blind

‘Going for an English’ sketch, parodying the ways many

eye to, the recruitment of illegally low-paid migrant

British people treat Indian food when they ‘go for an

workers. These conflicting pressures on governments

Indian’). It is a very different stage of representation to

make for mixed messages in immigration policies, let

that of asylum seekers, who often dare not be filmed,

alone their refraction in media forms.

photographed or quoted by name, for fear of reprisals

Not all news forms will take a hostile line. The liberal

in their homelands, or having their applications turned

broadsheet press (The Guardian, Independent, etc.) will

down, or of causing friction in their family or

often follow up stories in sympathetic ways, as will some

community, here or in their country of origin. This

current affairs programmes on TV. Soaps like EastEnders

raises hard questions of ‘representability’ (see main

have tried to broaden representations of British ‘ethnic’

Chapter 4).

groups. And some very popular comedians have arisen
partly out of the experience of longer-established
migrants to Britain.
British comedians (Omid Djalili, Shappi Khorsandi
and Shazia Mirza) explore, in stand-up, radio, theatre
and print, their experiences of Britain (see YouTube for
sketches). In the case of British-Iranian Djalili this has
gone along with a successful career in films such as

Gladiator (US/UK 2000) and The Mummy, often, as he
indicates, playing the OTT kinds of ‘Orientalist’ figures
which his comedy undermines. As part of this selfrepresentation, here’s what Mirza, a British-Pakistani,
wrote on some of her recent experiences:
I may as well go back to where I came from. Which
I’d say is Birmingham, but the BNP says is
Rawalpindi . . . Nick Griffin was asked . . . how you
could tell if someone was British. He said: ‘You just
look and you just know.’ . . . In the past ten days I

Film resources and close textual analysis
Many images of ‘migrants’ represent them as
victims, which they often resent, especially given
their often courageous initiative in travelling across
continents from their desperate circumstances.
Novels such as The Road Home or certain films can
‘open out’ such experiences. Dirty Pretty Things (UK
2002) and Bread and Roses (UK/US/Germany 2000)
both focused on migrants employed as cleaners in
corporate offices and hotels; Maria Full of Grace
(US/Colombia 2004) centred on Colombian drug
‘mules’ and what drives people to such work. British
TV series have included Britz (Channel 4 2006 –
see website), a thriller about ‘two Muslim siblings
pulled in radically different ways’, one of whom
becomes a suicide bomber.

have been in Amsterdam, Cyprus and Paris [and]
have been mistaken for French, Italian, Spanish,
Malaysian and Egyptian. I was once even mistaken
for an Indian (that really annoyed me!) . . .
The irony is that there is no one more British than
the Pakistanis I grew up with in Birmingham. I know
women who wear Union Jack G-strings underneath
their saris, young lads who can’t eat chicken biryani
without HP Sauce, and kids who have halal turkey on
Christmas Day.
Such work resembles the confident, OTT play of comic

Figure 4.12 Persepolis (France/USA 2007), based on the
director’s graphic novel, is about a young Iranian girl growing
up in regime-change Iran and fleeing to Paris.

TV series like Goodness Gracious Me (see the famous

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Film resources and close textual analysis

Let’s explore one sympathetic film in more detail: In
This World (UK 2002), a drama-documentary following
the perilous journey to Britain, from a huge refugee
camp in Pakistan, of two Afghani asylum seekers, Jamal,
aged about fourteen, and his older cousin, Enayat. The
director, Michael Winterbottom, was partly moved to
make it by a 2001 news story of fifty-eight Chinese
immigrants found suffocated in a container at Dover.
Here is a brief account of a key scene. Try to apply this
approach to other texts if you find them striking in
their representation of ‘scripts’ or situations you have
not, and are probably not likely to, ever had to act out.
For part of their journey the two central characters,
Jamal and Enayat, need to travel to Italy in a container
lorry, illegally, having paid scarce money for transport.
The journey becomes a nightmare; shortage of air,
food and water leads to the death of Enayat and
several others. When they arrive in Trieste, Jamal
staggers out and then runs away from the container
and the dead within it. The soundtrack holds a baby’s
shrieks, as the only ‘illegal’ left alive; the Italians’ voices
as they get to the bodies; the sound of traffic; Jamal’s
feet on the road; and a mourning musical score.
Jamal runs, the camera following him, first roughly,
hand held, and then more smoothly, placed in front of
him as he blindly runs away from the ghastly scenes in
the container. This burst of energy is possibly a relief
for the audience, taken out of a terrible claustrophobia.
And Jamal changes from someone who has had to be
watchful (of potential tricksters, of people who despise

him) to someone energetically expressing his
desperation. For the first time he shows deep
emotion, in tears, which the camera skilfully catches.
The running goes on and on until we’re invited to
wonder: where is there for him to run to in this foreign
land? And what has he learnt about the harshness of
some lives?

Figure 4.13

Figure 4.16

136

Figure 4.14

Figure 4.15

CASE STUDY: IMAGES OF MIGRATION

References and further reading

But there are instances of self-representation, and of

There follows a fade to dark. Jamal appears
again, the caption telling us two weeks have passed.
He appears in the guise of a familiar figure to
tourists and city dwellers: the begging, hassling
migrant, involved in petty theft (he steals a woman’s
purse, after a waiter has offered her the luxury of
choosing a kind of water – ‘still or sparkling?’). The
film, while not approving what he is doing, has given
us a sense of how he has got there.

mainstream media making serious efforts to help ‘host’
audiences imagine migrants’ situations. There are
websites which work to welcome asylum seekers (see
http://www.swansea-arrivals.net, for example) and
among other campaigns, the ‘Show Racism the Red
Card’ campaign against racism to football players
(http://www.srtrc.org), the German site http://
www.no-racism.net and http://www.exiledjournalists.
net/page.php. We hope you will want to join the best,
informed discussions on this growing global set of
experiences.

CONCLUSION
This film, and especially these moments from it,
challenges hostile discourses and stereotypes of such
migrants. These will often blame the stereotyped
group for their position, leaving their fuller histories out
of the account. ‘Host’ media may also displace other
‘domestic’ issues on to them, blaming them for
structures which have impacted drastically on migrants,
rather than being caused by them – growing
inequalities between rich and poor, both inside and
across nations; the rise in unemployment; fears of
terrorists; and for some, relatively sudden cultural
changes in a few UK cities and towns.
The images and media representations offered of
‘migrants’ are often inadequate to their subjects. This
can make it hard to voice justifiable questions, both
inside and outside migrant groups. For example,
criticisms of the oppressive gender practices of

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Crawley, Heaven (2009) Understanding and Changing
Public Attitudes: A Review of Existing Evidence from
Public Information and Communication Campaigns,
London: The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial
fund.
Eagleton, Terry (2000) The Truth about the Irish,
London and New York: St Martin’s Press.
Hochschild, Arlie, and Ehrenreich, Barbara (eds)
(2003) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex
Workers in the New Economy, London: Granta.
Mirza, Shazia (2009) ‘Shazia’s Week’, New Statesman,
11 June.
Tremain, Rose (2008) The Road Home, London:
Vintage.
Williams, Raymond (1979) Politics and Letters, London:
New Left Review and Verso.

certain kinds of religious fundamentalism (see www.
womenagainstfundamentalism.org.uk/ ) can often be
too easily dismissed as ‘Islamaphobia’.

137

5 Globalisation

The issues here, and around
‘New Media’, run through the
book. But you should find the
case studies on migrations
and The Age of Stupid, and
Chapters 10 and 12 especially
useful.

•

Your experiences of
globalisation

•

Global histories

•

Approaches to globalised
media

•

Global–local flows

•

Global futures?

•

Conclusion

•

References and further reading

This chapter explores a complex concept: ‘globalisation’. We will
consider:
• the extent of globalised media now
• what is involved in studying this field, including histories of global
forms
• the changing and conflicting arguments which have been used to
understand this area
• how we might approach it now.

EXPLORE 5.1

•
•

Figure 5.2 A more recent image,
striking partly for its evocation of
the earlier ‘pure’ photo, to which
it disturbingly connects human
technological debris around Earth.
It perhaps makes it easier to feel
that ‘we’ are not in quite such a
cosy human ‘community’.

138

What would you call this large sphere? Earth?
The world? The globe? The planet?
What are the connotations of these different
names? And of terms like ‘international’ now, as in
‘the international community’ which is said to be
fighting in Afghanistan? ‘Community’ is another
powerful ‘hooray’ word, which always rewards
some scepticism. Within some ‘development’
Figure 5.1 A powerful image,
discourses it can be a way of representing ‘the
visible for the first time by
other’ in patronising ways: ‘they’ have community humans from space in 1966.
(in villages, etc.), ‘we’ (urban-based researchers,
etc.) do not because ‘we’ are modern (another,
different ‘hooray’ word).

5: GLOBALISATION

Global histories

Your experiences of globalisation
You almost certainly have many, daily, experiences of globalised media.
The internet alone offers resources which we all assume are global in
reach, whether Google, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, links to mobile
phone technology – and probably much else by the time this book is
printed. Your favourite brand may draw on its global advertising power
for part of its glamour. US TV series such as Heroes (2006–), Lost (2004–)
and Flashback (2009–) display multiple, globally dispersed central
characters and settings, as do many ‘blockbuster’ films with their global
themes or glamorised tourist settings. All these add to the ease of
‘transnational’ imaginings – as do texts exploring the darker side
of globalised migration, of which you or your family may have recent
or past experience.
You may be one of the hundreds of thousands involved in massively
multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) groups such as World
of Warcraft or Second Life. Or maybe you have felt involved with globally
covered news stories, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the ‘swine flu’
pandemic, the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 or the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann in 2007. Perhaps you look forward to the next global
mega-spectacle, whether a sports event, a pop concert or maybe a
demonstration. Your image may even have been flashed across the world
momentarily at such an event.
Among the pleasures of these experiences is that they are (amazingly,
when you think of it) both globally dispersed and instantaneously shared,
as a result of the scale of technological change from around 1970. One
way of putting this is to argue that media (meaning any mediated set of
meanings, beginning with written language) have gone from mostly oneto-one (print, telegraphy) to one-to-many (broadcast speeches, electronic
media such as radio, TV) to ‘many-to-many’ or social media, as in online
games and social networking sites. Another way of registering your own
involvement is to think now about when you first became dimly aware of
the ‘distant others’ who are now routinely made ‘present’ by media.
Maybe the sound of a voice on a mobile phone? Or figures on TV or
computer screens?

Research the McCanns’
website http://www.
findmadeleine.com. Note the
ways in which it operates
globally, including its
invitations to others to
spread the story/search
across the world.
Q: Why do you think this
missing child inspired
such a global campaign?

‘A typical car [of 1996 had]
more computer processing
power than the first lunar
landing craft had in 1969.’
The Economist (Balnaves et al.
2009: 5).

Global histories
Power structures and activities on a larger than national scale have
existed for many centuries, for example the Chinese, Persian, Roman
and British empires, and the Roman Catholic church across medieval and
modern Europe and beyond. All of these involved culture and ‘media’ (in

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Global histories

the sense of documents, priestly speeches from pulpits, spectacular
displays and so on) as well as displays of force.
But contemporary media globalisation is a rather different process.
It occurs when activities:
• take place in a global (not simply a national or regional) arena
• are deliberately organised on a global scale
• involve some interdependency, so that activities in different parts of
the world are shaped by each other
• often involve media and technologies which make possible
instantaneous, as opposed to simply fast, communications.
Communications technologies began with the invention of papermaking
and printing in China nearly two millennia ago. Paper use spread
globally and allowed books and pamphlets to circulate well beyond the
places where they were made – producing that sense of ‘distant others’
which is a resonant term in globalised media study.

Early media technologies
Papermaking was one of the ‘four great inventions’ of ancient Chinese
technology (the Egyptians invented papyrus, its predecessor, using fibres from
the papyrus plant). First made of silk, it spread to the Muslim world, where
the first paper mills were built. It was attacked by the official Christian world
as a manifestation of Muslim culture – a 1221 papal decree declared all official
documents written on paper to be invalid. This probably embodied the
interests of wealthy European landowners in sheep and cattle, sources of
parchment and vellum (other early kinds of paper). But the invention of the
printing press in Europe, in the mid-1400s, changed attitudes. For more on
this history see http://ipst.gatech.edu/amp/collection/museum_pm_euro.htm.

In 1924, at the British Empire
Exhibition, King George V
sent himself a telegram which
circled the globe on all British
lines in 80 seconds.

140

The expansion of trade between Europe and the rest of the world in
the sixteenth century was accompanied and followed by the speed of
Western imperialist and then post-imperialist conquest, languages and
emerging media over much of the globe by the time of the twentieth.
Crucial for later expansion was the development of underwater cable
systems by the European imperial powers and companies such as Cable
and Wireless, and the establishment of international news agencies (see
Chapman 2002).

5: GLOBALISATION

Global histories

Figure 5.3 A 1901 map of undersea telegraph cabling which reveals the beginnings of twentieth-century media globalisation, with its violent
roots in European empires. Compare this to Figure 5.10 (p. 155) showing recent global internet connections.

It may come as a surprise to learn that underwater cables were so
important, yet, until the 1850s, telegraph systems were land-based and
thus quite restricted. By the 1870s submarine cables had been laid
throughout South-East Asia and along the coast of Africa, and soon linked
Europe to China, Australia and South America.
It was the first global system of communication to separate the
sending of messages from the need to transport them physically.
News agencies likewise gathered and disseminated news over huge
areas, and eventually, in 1869, agreed to divide up the world into
mutually exclusive spheres of operation. Such drives more or less
corresponded, like the reach of the underwater cable systems, to the
imperialist spheres of influence of the major European powers.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Global histories

Figure 5.4 The cover of a 1917
British book. It seems simply to
assume ‘global’ hierarchies of ‘race’
and gender as being both part of
empire (‘like a family of children’)
and justifying it. See recent British
‘race-ist’ discourses such as those
of the British National Party.

‘Neoliberalism’ (see Glossary
definition) sounds very up to
the moment and ‘liberal’. But
it defines policies of a
globalised capitalism which
attacks free or subsidised
public provision of such social
goods as education, health,
the arts and housing. In
Europe these had been won
by social movements at the
end of the Second World
War (see Hall 2007).

Two recent watershed moments: the first, in 1973, was US President
Nixon’s cancellation of an agreement (called Bretton Woods) which had
been signed in 1944 as the Second World War raged towards its end. This
agreement had helped establish stable systems of monetary exchange
and international trade regulation. President Nixon’s cancellation of it,
along with developments in electronic communication, advertising,
attacks on trade unions, etc., opened up hugely speculative financial
markets. It also accelerated the discourses and powers of ‘free trade’,
‘deregulation’ and a corporate capitalism newly able to chase markets
and cheap labour across the world (see Grossberg in Bennett et al. 2005:
146–50). This process is also called ‘neoliberalism’, or globalisation, and,
later, Thatcherism. Some economists argue that this founding moment of
neoliberalism was one of the main roots of the 2008 – present global
financial crises and recession.
The second ‘moment’ was the attack on the twin towers of New York’s
World Trade Center in 2001, now simply called ‘9/11’. This horrible,
spectacular bombing, against, as it happened, a ‘blue sky’ background,
took place in one of the most media-ted and imagined global cities in the
world. Many saw it as like a scene from a blockbuster action-adventure
film. It was a striking moment of silence in a world noisy with messages:
the stunned silence of many of those witnessing it, on TV or in New
York; the temporary cessation of the incessant advertising on US TV; and
its anonymity, the absence of immediate claims by its perpetrators. Some
of its long-term results included a huge increase in perceived threats,
media amplification of ‘terrorism’ and actions for a ‘global war’ against it.
It has been argued, speculatively, that an overall climate of fear – of
others, and for children, especially – is partly a result of this atmosphere.
In this the media play a key part.

EXPLORE 5.2
If you can, see the film 11′09′′01–September 11 (France 2002) in which eleven
directors, from all around the world, were each asked to create an 11-minute-long
film to comment on ‘9/11’. The ones by Chahine, Makhmalbaf and Loach are
particularly striking, and the whole film a fine example of global film-making outside
blockbuster structures.
• Sketch an outline of a film you would make on this theme, given 11 minutes.
• What are the difficulties raised?
• Argue for the strengths of your favourite film from those collected in 11′09′′01.

142

5: GLOBALISATION

Global histories

Another, linked result has been a heightened sensitivity to the
experience of groups with recent or family history of migration,
especially from countries labelled as sources of terrorism (e.g. some
British Muslims, even though belonging to this religion is not itself a
badge of national origin). A liberal response to this sensitivity has been to
embrace ‘difference’ and to emphasise the ways in which differences
extend across all groups.

This approach sometimes
risks ignoring inequalities,
which are not the same as
‘differences’, though they may
produce difference (see
Therborn 2009, and Chapter
6 on Ideologies).

A small history: Wheen (2004) cites a reputable historian: ‘in the 1960s there
was not a single religious or cult-based terrorist group anywhere, and as
recently as 1980 only two of the world’s sixty four known terrorist groups
were religious’ (pp. 182–3). He links this to US sponsorship of fundamentalist
Muslim groups in the 1980s, with no care for the possible consequences.

See the thoughtful
discussions (and ‘rant box’)
on the website www.
womenagainstfundamentalism
.org.uk for one feminist
group’s response to different
kinds of religious
fundamentalisms.

EXPLORE 5.3

•

•

List the last few media texts you enjoyed which relied on, or explored notions
of, ‘difference’. They might range from kinds of music, to games, to comedy, or
TV programmes like Heroes, EastEnders or BBC2’s Who Do You Think You Are?
(emphasising how mixed, both in class and in geographical terms, are many
people’s family histories).
What did you enjoy about their exploration of ‘difference’?

Less liberal responses are exemplified by the British National Party,
which claims to represent a ‘downtrodden white majority’ in the UK.
‘British’ is linked by them to the ‘Anglo-Saxon-ness’ of the ‘folk’ of ‘this
island race’. It is asserted to be continuous with the ‘ancient world’ which
is said to have consisted of quite distinct and different races. This
separation of races is then argued to be ‘natural’: these ‘races’ should
be kept apart (as in apartheid). Hence the BNP’s hostility to
‘multiculturalism’ which emphasises the virtues of a mix of different
ethnic groups within modern globalised cultures.

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Approaches to globalised media

EXPLORE 5.4

•
•

Marshall McLuhan
(1911–80) influential
Canadian theorist of media
communications. See fuller
discussion of his work in
Chapter 8.

The difference between
‘universal’ and ‘global’ is that
‘What is universal is true
everywhere and forever
whereas what is global is
merely a feature of the
planet here and now’ (During
2005: 87).

What are the meanings of
‘cosmopolitan’ for you?
Expensive tourism,
membership of a kind of
elite global club, based on
economic privilege? Or a
kind of imagined community
where people from different
nations and cultures can meet
with mutual respect despite
different beliefs? (See Hall
2007)

‘Shut up and shop’:
slogan from the 1980s as
neoliberalism, the lure of
‘free markets’, the huge
expansion of contemporary
hyper-consumerism,
shopping malls, global
branding, etc. began to take
effect.

144

Make a diary of a week’s encounters with different media which you can relate
to a chosen definition of ‘multicultural’.
Do your notes suggest that certain kinds of multicultural effort are at work in
the media? In which media? Which programmes, blogs or internet sites? What
forms does this take?

Approaches to globalised media
Despite the huge changes sketched above, one widely used image of
our world is still as a ‘global village’. The term was coined by the media
theorist Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. He was not using the term
critically, to evoke the narrowness and boredom which some experience
as ‘village life’ and which, along with the need for employment, helps
drive many into cities in the hope of jobs and more freedom. His
emphasis can be seen as the beginning of an optimistic (and nostalgic)
theoretical take on ‘globalisation’. Like Spielberg’s talk of Hollywood’s
stories (simply resembling those ancient ones told by the fireside,
effortlessly and ‘naturally’ travelling the world) this image attractively
suggests that ‘global’ is the same as ‘universal’, that all of ‘us’ are cosily
sharing the same imagery and products, warming our hands by the
flicker of our shared screens. It goes along with recent reassessments
of US empire-building as basically benign and civilising (‘the global
policeman’) or even as happening ‘by accident’ (see Johnson 2007).
Other theorists have adapted this optimistic tradition in a less
nostalgic way. Ingrid Volkmer (2003) argues that world satellite news
channels are enabling a ‘global public sphere’ to emerge, in a phrase
which draws on the work of Jürgen Habermas (see Chapter 12). She and
other theorists deploy the terms ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘citizen’ and ‘world
citizenship’, which celebrate, or try to further, the potential of globalised
media to enlarge the capacities of nation-state media. The terms are
further used in attempts to contest the global power of consumer-hood,
or those identities as shoppers which we’re often powerfully invited to
see as our most important ones.
Less optimistic accounts are deeply sceptical about the supposed
egalitarianism of globalised media and the ‘freedoms’ of the ‘free market’.
A key theorist here was Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) and others such as
Robert McChesney, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. Schiller argued
not for global media’s free-ing capacities, but its nature as ‘cultural

5: GLOBALISATION

imperialism’, acting on behalf of US capitalist interests. As Wheen
argues: ‘the problem is not globalisation per se, but the fact that the rules
of the game have been set by the winning side – which, while enforcing
them elsewhere, feels no obligation to apply them to its own conduct’
(Wheen 2004: 245).
Schiller (1997) also suggested that traditional, local cultures are
destroyed by the external pressure of more powerful countries,
especially media and other cultural exports. Thus new forms of cultural
dependency and status are shaped, mirroring older imperialist relations
of power.
Two key points are parts of this broadly Marxist case. Firstly, the
dominance of US advertising, and especially of branding-driven
commercial media, forces a costly US model of production and trading on
the rest of the world (even where commercial dominance may lie outside
the US, as with South Korea/Samsung for electronic media). This very
specific and, crucially, ad-funded form of culture becomes normalised,
instead of other ways of organising media (such as via public service
models, or perhaps via much more localised media, as may become
necessary with global warming).
In addition, US media giants can often afford the rates charged to be
held so low, for poorer markets, that they impact on local production.
This is not lessened by the way that importers can modify the original to
fit better with the preferences of their audience. African or Caribbean
broadcasters, for example, cannot hope to produce programming of a
similar technical quality at a lower price, and their station managers
cannot afford not to buy in. Sometimes this now involves buying in to a
global format or franchise, such as Big Brother, and translating for local
tastes. Much of the time, however, a preference for local products holds
up, and tax breaks and so on are experimented with to support this.
Secondly, the wide dispersal of the advertising/branding imagery
which funds such media also, arguably, incites desires for US-style
consumerism and upgrade fashions in societies which can ill afford
them. Increasingly it is being argued that ‘less advanced’ cultures have,
in some ways, better models of how to live, especially now, with the
planet imperilled by the overconsumption in its ‘developed’ high
capitalist areas.

Approaches to globalised media

Gender and sexual
oppression within versions of
various world religions cast
a very different light on
‘globalisation’ and the
‘traditions’ it sometimes
displaces. See the film
Moolaadé (Senegal/France
2004) for a sophisticated,
angry, but visually restrained
treatment of female genital
mutilation (FGM) in parts
of Africa.

Where indigenous film
industries have succeeded
commercially they have often
been labelled, from inside
the country, by words
deriving from ‘Hollywood’.
Thus ‘Bollywood’ names part
of Indian cinema, and
‘Nollywood’ part of the
Nigerian film industry.

Less often mentioned is the
shadow of the ‘hard powers’
of the US: tough negotiations
of trade treaties; enforcing
copyright across the
world; and the reminder of
military might, embodied by
about a thousand US bases
worldwide. See Miller et al.
2007; Johnson 2007.

145

Approaches to globalised media

‘Starbucks and stadiums’ is
one way in which urban
planning experts now
summarise the driving factors
behind many would-be ‘global
cities’. Does it apply to a city
near you?

Part of this condescension:
bodily adornment and cover
are called ‘fashion’ (and linked
to modernity) in the West,
but ‘tradition’ (and linked to
the past, and to tourism) in
the ‘developing world’.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

The US Constitution cites ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as one of
the ‘rights of man’. But recent studies suggest that high-consumer capitalist
cultures are not experienced as ‘happy’ by as many people as those in
differently organised or even less ‘advanced’ ones. See http://www.
happyplanetindex.org for an annual review which tries to measure a very
different conception of ‘the good life’ than that in much global advertising and
neoliberal discourses.

Several criticisms and refinements have been made to Schiller’s position.
In the first place, the case was researched and developed in the 1950s
and 1960s when US world economic dominance seemed secure and
unchallengeable. It does not adequately describe the shifts of the
post-1945 period and it has arguably become more difficult, as Schiller
recognised, to apply the theory to the 1990s and after.
Global restructuring has now to some extent eroded the economic
pre-eminence of the US (though its military capacity to enforce trading
and other relations in its favour remains hugely intimidating). There are
debates, for example, as to who actually owns the US economy, with
China cited as owning most of it through bonds.
Media examples of how major US media have been bought by foreign
companies include:
• the Japanese company Sony bought Columbia and TriStar pictures in
1989, to add to CBS records;
• the German corporation Bertelsmann AG bought RCA and Random
House publishers;
• the then-Australian Rupert Murdoch bought 20th Century Fox in
1986;
• in 2008 the Indian media corporation Reliance BIG Pictures took a
large financial stake in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studio.
But the brands remain US based, and it is in such shareholders’ interest
that they remain profitable.
A second objection was that the cultural imperialism thesis implies, in
almost romantic fashion, that before the arrival of US and other media,
‘Third World’ countries were enjoying a cosy golden age of indigenous,
authentic traditions and cultural heritage, untainted by values imposed
from outside. Critics argue this attitude risks patronising what are seen as
weaker nations, and romanticising their pre-colonial cultures. Sometimes
cultures are called ‘indigenous’ whose sophisticated traditions and
‘ancient heritages’ have been shaped by long and brutal processes of
cultural conflict and indeed exchange. These extend from well before the

5: GLOBALISATION

Approaches to globalised media

years of US intervention, often including hundreds of years of European
(and other) colonial ‘enterprise’.

Usually this case is applied to less ‘developed’ cultures. But in popular music
huge importance attaches to specific cities, often ports, which register the
impact of various migrations – from the Caribbean to New York and London,
for example, themselves with origins in the slave trade with Africa. Think of
Detroit and ‘Motown’ (standing for ‘motor town’, when it was the centre of
US car production), or the big ports of Liverpool and Bristol, with their slaving
histories, for, respectively, the early Beatles’ music, and more recently
Portishead and Massive Attack.
The West Midlands industrial area and specifically the city of Coventry
developed ‘Two Tone’ music such as that of The Specials, The Selecter and
The Beat, a hybrid of reggae, punk and ska which spread worldwide. See
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct8O3p0pgHI for its histories. These are
examples of
a the localness of some kinds of media, especially those which depend on
networking and a degree of live performance, as much music does;
b the (often painful) global histories and migrations that give rise to these;
c the global corporations, usually US based, which can then spread this
‘local–global’ music globally.

EXPLORE 5.5

•
•

Can you trace such local–global connections for recent music?
‘Emo’ is said to have emerged from the hardcore Washington punk
movement. Do other music waves have such origins? Or are
communities of interest on the internet (Lily Allen’s ‘launch’ on
Facebook?) more important now?
For more on the global music industry see Webb (2007) and also
http://www.ifpi.org/, http://www.mi2n.com/ and http://www.musicdish.com/
and for UK debates http://www.musictank.co.uk/.

Thirdly, globalisation has never been a simple process of
homogenisation, or rendering the world all the same, though it is often
characterised as just this, leading to ‘McWorld’ (see Herman and
McChesney 1997). Rather than experiencing a ‘homogenised’ global

‘McWorld’ and ‘McJob’ (for
low-wage, non-unionised
repetitive work) are coined
from the global spread
of McDonald’s food
chain. Because of the
standardisation of a narrow
range of product in the
20,000+ McDonald’s outlets,
and its identification with US
capitalism, the term often
signifies a standardised,
Americanised world.

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Approaches to globalised media

Figure 5.5 This Imax cinema in
Hyderabad illustrates some of the
rich visual contrasts involved in
such media networks. In fact
Hyderabad is one of the major
hubs of the Indian information
technology industry, and also
home to the world’s largest film
studio.

Even the immensely powerful
Australian media tycoon
Rupert Murdoch had to take
on US citizenship in order to
acquire more US interests.

148

culture, we usually engage with hybridised texts. ‘Indigenous’ cultures
and languages are enriched and complicated, as populations and
imaginings flow this way and that across the globe. Globalisation is not
simply the West expanding uniformly, in a ‘blanket’ way, into the rest of
the world. For one thing, other countries’ media forms have exchanges
with, and even flow into and out of, ‘the West’. Words like ‘flows’,
‘networks’, ‘corridors’ and ‘transnationalisation’ have tried to signify
this more complex mapping. They try to suggest that when we talk of
media ‘covering’ territories, there are always gaps and spaces in that
only-apparent ‘blanket’ coverage. ‘Web 2.0’ and the possibility of
instantaneous, globally interactive comments, campaigns, productions,
form another complicating factor.
But we are also, always, talking about corporate capitalist strength, and
flow, often hugely influenced, if not owned by US culture, which is also
very powerful in ‘new media’ forms.

EXPLORE 5.6
Consider this quote alongside the ‘flows’ discussed above:
‘Really to work in its dominant form, capitalist globalisation must try to draw
everybody into its web . . . everyone must come to look a little bit like an
American, or to love a little bit like an American, or to walk a little bit like an
American. That’s why television and cultural industries are so critical, because you
don’t know quite how to walk and think in American until you look at enough
television.’ (Hall 2007: 150)
• Discuss the quote with friends. How far does it relate to your media
experiences and enthusiasms, including brands?
• Which of such cultural forms are mediated, or delivered, through US-inflected
routes or spellings or hybridities or accents – as, often, literally, in songs, in
‘mid-Atlantic’ DJ voices and so on?
Maybe you feel this account is inadequate, and that ‘Eastern’ cultural forms, for
example, are important for you – ‘The Dude’ and Taoism in The Big Lebowski?
Kung fu forms? Bollywood co-productions? Or perhaps ‘Web 2.0’ is your key
media resource.
• How, if at all, are these mediated by ‘American-ness’?

5: GLOBALISATION

Global-local flows

Global–local flows
Let’s look in a little more detail at the specific factors which both make
for global US cultural power, yet can also complicate our sense of it and
of the ‘local’ or ‘transnational’ reach which was always to some extent
built into ‘global’ success. One name for this now is ‘glocal’, describing
the capacity of contemporary consumer capitalism to proliferate
difference along the lines of local preferences, cultures, etc.

Example: US cinema
The US entertainment giants inherit and capitalise on huge accumulated
experience in making commercially successful products, and from the start, in
the 1890s, these had an international aspect. North America is a continent
of immigrants, with ties to other continents, along with a history of brutal
conquest of groups such as the Native Americans, and the use of slaves,
originally from Africa, for much of its history.
Hollywood cinema is an example of the hybridising as well as the
homogenising drives within the early dominance of US forms. The early
‘American’ makers and exhibitors in the 1890s were often first- or secondgeneration migrants to the US, and thus in very close contact with the
European popular taste to which they were exporting. Canny textual
strategies developed, which are still to some extent operative:
• adaptations of titles and publicity strategies for different markets;
• casting and even shaping different versions of films for global appeal to
different audiences;
• plots chosen for cultural ‘vagueness’ or openness, so as to appeal to as
broad a market as possible, avoid inflaming local cultural sensitivities and
therefore threatening profits.
In addition, English being the main language of the US meant that early US
products could ride on the back of the spread of that imperial language.
US exporters soon began to use differential pricing strategies for different
parts of the globe. This has meant until very recently that once a US television
series, for example, has been distributed in the North American market (large
enough to allow it to recoup its production costs), it can be offered to every
broadcaster in the world, but at different rates. The money made thus is often
clear profit. In the ‘developed’ countries charges are based on audience size
and disposable wealth (e.g. on the relatively affluent and concentrated
audiences who can be contacted by media in big cities). But in, say, Africa the
rates may be lowered dramatically, a process which both ensures overall

Figure 5.6 Banksy puts things into
context, 2009. The child’s T-shirt
reads ‘I hate Mondays!’. How do
you think his image ‘works’ within
this discussion?

It is worth remembering that
the continent of America
(north and south) is named
after Amerigo Vespucci
(1454–1512), a fifteenthcentury Italian merchant and
cartographer. By contrast,
‘Canada’ is said to derive
from a French interpretation
of a native word kanata, thus
embodying the idea of a
hybrid community.

Arguably for British cinema
it has been a double-edged
factor: allowing easy passage
to some English-language
films into the US, but also
meaning that they will
compete for English-language
markets with US ‘product’.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Global-local flows

profitability and also consolidates habits of enjoying US-style entertainment
forms, and then the products and ways of life often modelled on screens.
One local reaction, however, is to ignore rights and simply reuse US content
without paying. Hence the effort of US media to control ‘piracy’ and
copyright.
Co-productions are also involved, simply to afford the huge costs of media
product which will ‘travel’ globally, partly via spectacular FX which connect to
international experiences of ‘magic’ and conjurors, etc. All this means that big
media corporations need to take some account of local sensibilities – though
of course they try to shape them, or reinforce those parts of them which will
fit broadly with global capitalist drives.

EXPLORE 5.7

•
•
•

Research the production details of a few days of TV programming.
How many programmes are co-productions?
In the case of primetime products, in what ways do you think the
co-production funding may have shaped the resulting programme?
Areas to explore might include:
• Casting (even if non-fiction) – have stars been used? To what effect?
• Narrative shape and choice of characters: is there a ‘vagueness’ to the
narrative which will ‘travel well’?
• Locations and use of familiar kinds of (tourist?) spectacle.

EXPLORE 5.8

•
•
•

150

Get hold of cinema listings for your city or region, from a newspaper or
the internet.
Choose a major city with multiplexes, and, ideally, an independent
cinema.
Count the number of screens in the city which are running ‘Hollywood’
as opposed to non-US films. Calculate what proportion of the total
these make up.

5: GLOBALISATION

Global futures?

Global futures?
We began with the different resonances of the words chosen to describe
our part of the solar system. ‘Planet’ now invokes environmentalist
discourses. ‘Globalisation’ often refers to the particular stage of
‘neoliberalism’ or global consumer capitalism we are living through.
You’ll find contradictory impulses in play – always a good source for
debates – within different scenarios of what the next phase of our
world will involve. One future envisaged is of imminent Chinese
global dominance. Another involves a growing ‘global village’ of cool
consumers, in touch with each other through the internet, global brands
and networking possibilities. Another is of disastrous consumptionfuelled climate change, a consequence of the acceleration of consumer
capitalisms, including the resource-hungry internet. A less examined one
involves ‘fortresses’, whether that be ‘Fortress Europe’ barricaded against
unwanted migrants (see Chapter 4 case study), or parts of the world
barricaded against rising sea levels.

In addition to home
audiences, China (like India)
has a huge non-resident set
of audiences outside China,
estimated by some at 40
million. Another term for
such audiences is
‘deterritorialised’.

The ‘Chinese domination’ future?
In assessing media images of China’s industrial and media power the
following points are useful to bear in mind.
a China has no major global brands (compared with the US’s Coca-Cola,
Google, Microsoft) and has only limited hopes for creating any. US
companies and their hugely powerful imagery, placement and
copyright power continue to dominate the lists of top global brands.

Global media and China: Avatar
Avatar (US 2009) had the same massive commercial success in China as in most other countries, even though
China only allows twenty foreign films a year to be imported. In January 2010 there were reports that Chinese
authorities had prohibited screenings of the 2D version, perhaps because of the resonances of the film’s story of
the Na’vi’s battle to protect their land and culture from outsiders. The forced removal of old neighbourhoods
and destruction of some rural communities in China produced powerful echoes. Others have suggested that,
in the US, the resistance of Native Americans, and elsewhere some anti-corporate struggles against the looting
of the planet, are also embodied in the film.
A final twist was that tourism chiefs in central China renamed a peak ‘The Hallelujah Mountain’ – crags on
which the film modelled one of its lovely floating rocks.
Chinese domination?

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Global futures?

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Figure 5.7 Chart of top 2009
corporations from Interbrand,
which calculates their worth
annually.

Nevertheless China is enormously important in the huge and
mineral-rich continent of Africa, in industries such as road building.
See Edward Burtynsky’s astonishing images in the documentary
Manufactured Landscapes (Canada 2006).
b China lacks what is now often called ‘soft power’, which partly
involves the spread of languages, or global cinema, sport and music
hits. Language is key to the ‘regional’ flows and media ‘footprints’ of

152

5: GLOBALISATION

broadcasters like Al Jazeera or the BBC. They often embody the global
spread of the earlier imperial languages: English, Spanish, French and
Arabic. Yet, although an estimated fifth of the world’s people now
speak Chinese, it does not have the power inherited by the imperial
‘footprints’ of English or Spanish media.
The Chinese staging of the 2008 Olympics, costing an estimated
US$ 70 billion can be seen as an attempt at ‘soft power’ or co-branding
(‘China’ along with ‘the Olympics’), trying to shift China’s image from
‘totalitarian communist’ with oppressive foreign and internal policies
into a more modern, spectacularised and broadly peaceful space
(sport). Contradictorily, part of the display was quite militaristic,
involving huge numbers of intensely drilled people (usually a part
of Olympic ceremonies now), some in military uniform.
c Chinese global power does not result from histories of vast overseas
empire. It largely lies in its capacity to manufacture cheaply, so far for
‘Western’ markets and trade, through exploitation of its labour force
and ‘economies of scale’. Its recent fortunes have been shaped by both
decline and revival in these overseas markets.
d Overexcitement at Chinese power ignores the rise of the Indian
economy and media influence, let alone the abiding power of the US,
and European media.
e As with so much, climate change may sharpen the contradictions of
China’s image. It stands to lose much if catastrophic warming takes
place. Equally, it is making huge investments in environmental
technologies (though as yet seems unable to switch from a car-centred
to a modern public transport economy). Part of its future global image
may yet include ‘saving the planet’.

EXPLORE 5.9

•
•
•
•

Jot down your impression of predictions that China will soon be the dominant
global power.
Where have you got these predictions from?
What part have media images played? Which genres or media forms are they
part of – TV? cinema? internet forms such as Google? games? comics? radio?
sports coverage?
Do you think traces of much earlier racist imagery (‘the yellow peril’, ‘Dr Fu
Manchu’, ‘the yellow hordes’) are discernible in any of your chosen texts, e.g. via
a fondness for images of masses of regimented Chinese? Or do you think there
are differentiated and individualised images in wide circulation, perhaps in
cinema and on the internet?

Global futures?

‘Soft power’ is a political
concept, developed from the
1990s. It signifies obtaining
what you want through
co-option, diplomacy,
attraction (and, perhaps,
successful ‘nation-branding’)
rather than ‘harder’ power,
such as force.

Figure 5.8 A spectacular image,
combining many of the elements
which China wanted to project
through this global event, including
its military might. Research other
Olympics ceremonies, including
the plans for the London 2012
Games.

As well as India’s home
audiences, NRIs or
non-resident Indians, both
Hindi- and Tamil-speaking,
living outside India, make up
hugely important audiences
for Indian media – not least
Bollywood, claimed as the
world’s largest film industry.

Social change in China,
especially the rise of car
ownership, has led to a
revival of radio. The
notorious traffic jams of big
Chinese cities are said to
have created what is literally
a captive audience for the
medium.

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Global futures?

The ‘global village’ future?

Figure 5.9 Some global spectacles
can help shift these inequalities.
There was much excitement when
South Africa was named as host
for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™,
though as we go to press there are
rumours of low ticket sales. If you
watched the event’s ceremonies,
what did you think were the
emphases, and omissions, in the
decisions on how to stage them?
The Lone Ranger and his
trusty sidekick, Tonto, face
an overwhelmingly large
group of hostile Apache.
‘We’re in real trouble,
Tonto,’ says the Ranger.
Asks Tonto: ‘Who’s this
“we”, Paleface?’

See Burma VJ (Denmark
2008) for a moving account
of Video Journalists’ (VJs’)
attempts to record the 2007
‘Saffron Revolution’ led by
thousands of monks against
the dictatorial power of the
military regime ruling Burma.
Part of the regime’s power is
its capacity to turn off
internet connections to the
rest of the world.

154

There are plenty of media invitations to think of the planet as an exciting
global unity, a ‘village’ if you like, though that does seem a cosily
nostalgic image of Web 2.0 and other kinds of global modernity. If it is a
village, it is a huge, broadbanding, internet village, with shared fantasies
and fandoms, conflicts and solidarities, diasporic and dispersed
‘communities of interest’.
It is often flamboyant spectacles, for sporting and other events (the
Olympics, various World Cups, exhibitions, conferences), which are cited
as evidence of ‘global unity’. Sport is particularly important. BSkyB, for
example, agreed to pay a figure believed to be in excess of £1 billion to
retain live television rights to most of the biggest UK matches, from 2010
to 2013 (Observer, 16 August 2009). Even if income from domestic live
rights decreases, it is hoped that an increase in the value of overseas
rights and new media platforms will make up the difference, plus
possible auctions for ‘near live’ packages – on-demand highlights, mobile
phone clips, overseas rights and radio rights.
Despite recession, there is still much celebration of the ‘freedoms’ of
the internet and media ‘free markets’ where all are said to be equal,
regardless of class, gender and other differences. Sadly these often work
at the expense of understanding persistent inequalities in media power
and other relations.
a First, who are the ‘we’ who have access to the literacy, electricity,
computers and broadband flows needed to ‘surf’ the global internet
(and let alone water, food and shelter in between surfings)? Though
‘broadband penetration’ is increasing, and mobile use even faster, we
cannot assume that absolutely everyone has access to these
technologies and the support systems they need.
b Second, in whose interests is Web 2.0 being shaped? It originated, like
so many modern technologies, in the Pentagon’s military research, as
well as the ‘alternative’ enthusiasms of people like Bill Gates. But who
now has overall control of which entries pop up first when you type a
category into a search engine, or of Googlemail’s capacity to retrieve
every single piece of mail you have ever sent? A different kind of
surveillance potential is that of some state regimes which occasionally
exercise the power to turn off TV screens and the internet (e.g. in
Burma, and in China during the violent conflict in Tibet in 2008).
How effective could global regulation be for the hugely damaging
circulation of pornographic imagery, which experts cite as a growing
source of HIV/AIDS deaths? See http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commentisfree/2009/aug/30/pornography-corporate-responsibilitydeveloping-world, and also Chapter 10.

5: GLOBALISATION

Global futures?

Figure 5.10 This December 2008 map shows the amount of submarine cable capacity globally available for use (referred to in specialist
terms as LIT, which distinguishes it from both maximum cable capacity, and from the bandwidth actually being used). Compare the map
with Fig. 5.3. See also www.telegeography.com for more details, and the latest maps.

c There are real pleasures in shared fandoms and other imaginings of
distant others and possible identities. But there are risks in uncritical
celebrations of active audiences, as though they were all equally
equipped to construct resistant meanings and uses for media
products, no matter what is on, or off, their screens. Many media
users can resist or interpret news images for themselves (though that
does ignore why other people choose to go along with them). But that
is not to argue that ‘the global market’ in images will do everything for
us. There is still a need for high-quality investigative journalisms or
inexpensively available, well-researched and regulated national media
which can work with the bloggers and ‘sousveillance’ images (see
Chapters 8, 12 and 13 for more discussion) which are now enabled and
circulated by global media.
Global news and information, a key part of dreams of ‘global
citizenship’, are dominantly shaped by US profitabilities. This, as so
much else in global media, is uneven and contradictory. The theory
of ‘the CNN effect’ refers to this TV channel’s pioneering of 24-hour
global news. This resulted in a huge increase in saturation news
coverage of wars, crises and disasters, and has had an impact on the

The golfer Tiger Woods
describes himself as
‘Cablinasian’ (a mix of
Caucasian, black, Indian,
Asian). This multiple ethnic
identity was a crucial part of
his global marketability for
(former) sponsor Nike.

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Global futures?

conduct of states’ foreign policy from the 1990s. Such global coverage,
funded like much else in US media by advertising, has indeed changed
the world of news, even if it often seems aimed at a small group of
predominantly male, well-educated and wealthy hotel users.

The global–local future?

Figure 5.11 A shot of the Burkina
Faso Film Festival, 2009. No need
to suggest how this differs from
the Oscars setting, or those of
other big global film festivals such
as Cannes, London or Venice.

156

Whether we imagine a global village or a US-dominated world, it is too
easy to downplay the importance of nation states and their media – and
of even more specifically ‘local’ media and communities. Nation states
are still needed, precisely to help manage global capitalism, even if
corporations often override their laws, for example, by relocating
production to lower-paid economies, or to somewhere closer to imagined
markets, or where the currency rates seem more favourable. Far from
being truly ‘free’ or ‘deregulated’, the ‘free trade’ treaties of the most
powerful depend on thousands of pages of local regulations, and the cooperation of nation states to implement them (see Miller et al. 2005: 41).
This is especially true as the US seeks to counter the threat to its huge
copyright powers posed by internet forms.
And there remains a huge appetite for ‘flows’ of local imagery of
our worlds, real and imagined, even in the most difficult conditions. In
parts of Africa, for example, films tour in tiny mobile cinemas, where
audiences often watch them several times. And the Pan African Film
Festival in Burkina Faso has been operating successfully for forty years,
though some films are cut or not shown in their home producer’s nation,
such as Morocco, and rely on success at other festivals to became known.
There are also substantial flows of ‘local’ material, such as the popular
telenovelas, a form of melodramatic serialised fiction produced and aired
in most Latin American countries and attracting a broad audience across
age and gender lines. The Latin American Telesur news channel,
attacked by the Bush administration when it began in 2005, is still
operating successfully. And it seems that some recent preferences for
‘homegrown’ films are making dents in Hollywood’s global profits. Such
local produce has long been popular in France, but now the trend ‘has
spread to places such as Greece and Japan, which a few years ago earned
just 5% of its box office from local language films but now earns 65%’
(Pilkington 2009).

5: GLOBALISATION

Global futures?

EXPLORE 5.10
List the number of ways in which your own experiences of the media over the
past week have been affected by:
• living in a global media economy
• living in a national media economy
• living with media which mix global and national characteristics
• living with media which connect you with ‘distant others’ instantaneously.
How many, and what kinds of local images of your world have you seen this
week? Where?

Fortress futures?
You may have come across the phrase ‘Fortress Europe’. It originated
in the Second World War, but is today associated with two ‘fortress’
discourses. One opposes the flows of unwanted migrants (business class
travel is not threatened) into ‘Europe’, and is called the ‘Fortress Europe’
position. The other, emerging discourse argues that there is nothing to
be done about disastrous climate change and that rich countries should,
literally and metaphorically, build their flood defences (see below and
case study for Chapter 6).

The term ‘gated
communities’ is sometimes
used to describe a similar
phenomenon. They are
residential ‘communities’ with
strictly controlled entrance
gates, and sometimes armed
guards. In poorer countries
they often provide security
for the wealthy and can
resemble fortresses.

Figure 5.12 Spanish rescue services remove a dead body from the sea during a search
operation for missing African migrants off the tourist island of Lanzarote.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Global futures?

‘Feb 16th ‘Two surfers on a Spanish beach yesterday tried to rescue drowning
illegal migrants as their boat capsized off the Canary Islands in what looks set
to be another major tragedy in the history of one of the world’s harshest
migration routes.’
A horrifying as well as a moving photo. There are several other examples
of holidaymakers trying to help migrants washed ashore in the Canaries –
a hopeful example of ‘local’ solidarities with now-not-distant others.

EXPLORE 5.11

•
•

What does ‘Europe’ mean to you? Through which media images and
discourses has this image been constructed?
Why is Israel allowed to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest? Do you
otherwise think of it as a European nation? If not, why not? Again, relate to
media images.

EXPLORE 5.12
A related area: struggles to be defined as part of the ‘modern world’?
• Explore recent media controversies over the image or brand of
particular cities, nations or areas. Examples are the alleged damage to the
national image of Khazakstan in the film Borat and to that of Austria by the
reporting of the Fritzl case, 2008. Brazil also complained at its representation
in an episode of The Simpsons in 2002.

The climate changed future?
Like the other futures this one involves contradictory hopes and fears.
The ‘globe’ in these discourses is conceived as a possibly ruined ‘planet’,
which emphasises our shared place as ‘humankind’ in a material world.
Yet the very capacity to imagine this, and to monitor minute changes to
the planet’s well-being, or to co-ordinate protests against ecologically
disastrous kinds of consumption, and then flash them round the world –
all this is partly down to globalised electronic media.

158

5: GLOBALISATION

Global futures?

EXPLORE 5.13

•
•
•

Consider the following: ‘weather forecasting is an area where global climate
change issues a) might be treated but b) tend to be avoided’.
Look at a week’s forecasts and make notes on the tone of the bulletins. Is hot
weather in usually colder countries almost always celebrated, without
comment? What are the different connotations of ‘weather’ and ‘climate’?
Try to script a different forecast, taking global issues into account, and say what
challenges that would represent for a short TV slot, within British attitudes to
‘weather’. See Miller (2007) for US comparison.

There is a massive impact on the global environment in the amounts of
waste from media industries such as film and TV, and in the lavish
spectacles, building projects, etc. on which many cities now depend for
entry to the elite club of ‘global cities’. And the gorgeously lightweight,
fashionable, shiny, super-efficient gadgets that enable swift global
communications and enjoyments – these too depend on material
resources.

EXPLORE 5.14

•

Research the substance known in Africa as ‘coltan’.
Figure 5.13 Children mining for coltan (an
abbreviated term for ‘columbite-tantalite’), a
valuable mineral for corporations involved in
electronics such as mobile phones, DVD players
and computers. Its export is said to finance
bloody conflicts in the Democratic Republic of
Congo and elsewhere in mineral-rich Africa.

•
•

Try to trace its usage by major media corporations such as Sony and Apple.
What are alleged, on the internet, to be some of the consequences of this
particular mineral hunt?
(‘Risk’ is often used in global capitalist calculations, and in the writings of Ulrich
Beck, a noted global theorist. But predictable risks, or rather known, already
existing consequences, such as these to the health of the children driven to do
such work, are rarely explored.)

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Conclusion

Conclusion

See http://www.timesonline.
co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/arti
cle3646320.ece for an
exploration of the power of
Indian money taking over
British corporations and
companies in 2008.

Figure 5.14 A globalised welcome
sign at a Cardiff school.

160

This chapter, and any writing on media globalisation, attempts to cover
an insanely huge area. Nevertheless it is possible and useful to work with
a few key approaches across a mass of theories and speculations, which
we have tried to do here.
Overall, the ways in which you understand and experience globalised
media are likely to be contradictory. They make amazing, though
uneven, transformations possible, almost instantaneously, whilst hard
and stubborn conflicts and inequalities persist – even if they are
rendered almost invisible in many media forms. It is useful to think
of ‘globalisation’ through models of regions, networks, flows, a kind of
‘liquidity’ or mesh, rather than seeing it all, rather depressingly, as block
domination by the US. But if we had to have one, most adequate
description for globalised media, it would be as corporate capitalist –
except for China, which operates as a state capitalist economy (i.e. the
state operates as though it is one capitalist in competition with the rest).
This capitalist nature of globalised media has consequences which are
usually taken for granted, or seen as unchangeable. For example:
• that the financing of most ‘Western’ media is by advertising, often
overruling principles of a public right to quality media;
• that TV viewing or web browsing is interrupted by ads;
• that internet surveillance will routinely check your consuming
preferences and many other personal details;
• that media are in competition for profits, like other capitalist firms;
• that ‘free trade’ drives apply to cultural goods, such as films and TV;
• that ‘development’ means developing towards this capitalist model,
with its attendant overconsumption, cheapest possible employment
patterns and massive rewards for those at the top (see Miller et al.
2005).
Nevertheless, capitalist ‘globalisation’ has produced, for example,
the possibility of struggling globally, and nimbly, against threats
to ‘the planet’. The US space agency NASA offers both unparalleled
opportunities for global surveillance, but also huge resources for
environmental advances. Many cultures and individuals are adapting in
intriguing ways to increased interconnections. And the possibilities for
direct global participation in more democratic forms of media, and
government, seem real, via the imaginative communities in which many
of us take more and more part.

5: GLOBALISATION

References and further reading

References and further reading
Balnaves, Mark, Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, and Shoesmith, Brian
(2009) Media Theories and Approaches: A Global Perspective, London
and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Bennett, Tony, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Morris, Meaghan (2005) New
Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Malden and
Oxford: Blackwell.
Chapman, Jane (2002) Comparative Media History: An Introduction, 1789
to the Present, Cambridge: Polity Press.
During, Simon (2005) Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction, London:
Routledge.
Hall, Stuart (2007) ‘Living with Difference’, Soundings, winter: 148–58.
Herman, Ed, and McChesney, Robert (1997) The Global Media: The New
Visionaries of Corporate Capitalism, London: Cassell.
Hochschild, Arlie, and Ehrenreich, Barbara (eds) (2003) Global
Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, London:
Granta.
Johnson, Chalmers (2007) ‘The Good Empire’, Soundings, winter: 80–91.
Johnson, Phil (1996) Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and the Roots of
Trip-Hop: Straight outa Bristol, London: Coronet Books.
Klein, Naomi (2001) No Logo, 2nd edn, London: Flamingo.
Klein Naomi (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
London and New York: Allen Lane.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Miller, Toby (2007) Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism
and Television in a NeoLiberal Age, Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Miller, Toby, Govil, Nitin, McMurria, John, and Maxwell, Richard (2005)
Global Hollywood 2, revised edn, London: British Film Institute.
Pilkington, Ed (2009) ‘Dark Future as Cash-Hit Hollywood Slashes New
Films’, The Guardian 19 October.
Schiller, Herbert I. (1997) ‘Not Yet the Post-Imperialist Era’, in
O’Sullivan, Tim, and Jewkes, Yvonne (eds) The Media Studies Reader,
London: Routledge.
Soderberg, Hans (2006) ‘Is There Blood on your Mobile Phone?’,
http://danchurchaid.org.
Therborn, Goran (2009) ‘The Killing Fields of Inequality’, Soundings, 42
(summer): 20–32.
Volkmer, Ingrid (2003) ‘The Global Network Society and the Global
Public Sphere’, Development 46, 1: 9–16.

161

References and further reading

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Webb, Peter (2007) Exploring the Networked Worlds of Popular Music:
Milieu Cultures, New York: Routledge, especially Chapters 1 and 2.
Wheen, Francis (2004) How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, London:
Fourth Estate.

162

CASE STUDY

Slumdog Millionaire: Global film?
•

THE BACKGROUND TO A GLOBAL HIT

•

CONTROVERSIES IN RECEPTION

•

THE PRODUCTION OF THE FILM

•

AFTER THE OSCAR CEREMONIES . . .

•

DISTRIBUTION

•

CONCLUSION

•

THE BOLLYWOOD CONNECTION

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Slumdog Millionaire (UK 2008) is a cultural

A scientist in Delhi experimented by putting a computer

phenomenon. Worldwide, the most successful British

only accessible to children into a poor area of the city.

film of all time (i.e. a British film made without American

The children quickly learned how to use the computer

money), it was assumed to be American in some

without any help from adults. From these two stories

markets and Indian in some others. It could reasonably

Swarup constructed the narrative of a young man

be claimed as a global text on the basis of both its

from the slums who knows the answers to the quiz

textual content and how widely it has been seen, but

questions because they each refer to something he has

also in terms of aspects of its production. But it has also

experienced in his life, rather than knowledge he gained

created controversy and challenged audiences in

through education.

different ways and in different cultural contexts.

The novel was ‘Indian’ but it was written using the
demotic language of English-speaking India. It draws

THE BACKGROUND TO A GLOBAL HIT
The story of Slumdog Millionaire’s production has been

on very traditional storytelling techniques such as that
in the Arabian Nights (The 1001 Nights) in which
Scheherazade has to tell a different story each night

more widely circulated than that of most feature films –

or the sultan will have her executed. In Q & A, the

partly because the production story itself became part

young man, Ram Thomas Mohammed, has to explain

of the ‘magic’ of the movie as its creators embarked on

how he knows the answer to each quiz question by

a long promotional tour that continued even after its

recalling specific aspects of his biography for his

Oscar success. The story begins with Vikram Swarup, an

defence lawyer.

Indian diplomat in London and author of the source
novel, Q & A. He appears to have drawn on two specific
news stories – one in the UK and one in India. A retired
army officer in the UK was convicted of fraud after
cheating on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a

Millionaire (WWTBAM). Since the show was also
massively popular in India, Swarup then thought, ‘Who
would be the least likely winner of the top prize in the
Indian version – who might be accused of cheating?’

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

The background to a global hit

knew that the storyline would have to be modified

E X P L O R E 5 . 1 5 W H O WA N T S
TO B E A M I L L I O N A I R E I N
INDIA?

considerably to sell to mainstream audiences in
the UK.
Here are some of the ways Beaufoy changed the
story:

Google the question above.
• Why was WWTBAM such a big hit in India?
• Which celebrities were associated with it?
• How do you think the programme might have been
received by middle-class Indians? Would the poorest
Indians even have seen the show?
• What themes do you think might be explored in an
Indian film based around the show?

1 The central character becomes Muslim and one of
two brothers from a Mumbai slum. His name is
changed to Jamal. In the novel, the character is an
orphan brought up in an English clergyman’s house
in Delhi and there is an explanation of why he can
speak English and why he has a name that spans
India’s three major religions.
2 Several of the sub-plots are removed to make the
storyline clearer.
3 The romance element is made more important and

Q & A was well received in the UK and serialised on

runs across the whole storyline.

BBC Radio 4. It was also read before publication

The story would be further tweaked when Danny Boyle

by Film 4 producer Tessa Ross who optioned the

came on board as director, but in the final script

film and commissioned Simon Beaufoy to adapt it.

Boyle would claim that the narrative goal – essentially

Beaufoy decided to travel to India in an attempt

to bring the childhood sweethearts together – was not

to retain the ‘Indianness’ of the novel, but as an

‘American’ since it downplayed winning the money.

experienced screenwriter with a major worldwide

Winning the girl seems to have worked with American

hit to his credit (The Full Monty, UK 1997), he

audiences though.

Figure 5.15 Jamal on the
set of Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?

164

CASE STUDY: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

The production of the film

While Beaufoy was doing this work, Ross was
securing the property in partnership with producer
Christian Colson. A well-known UK producer of smaller

EXPLORE 5.16
CAST AND CREW

films, Colson was in 2005 still associated with Celador
Films, part of the group that owned the rights to

WWTBAM. Swarup had not used the show’s title in the
novel, but Ross thought that it was essential to be able
to use it in the film. When Colson secured these rights,
he was able to fund the production of the film and then
sell the distribution rights of the finished film to Pathé in
the UK and Ireland and France, Warner Bros in North

•

What were the advantages and disadvantages of
using an Indian cast and crew?
• What difference do you think it would have made to
have more UK crew members or British Asians in
the cast?
(There are many interviews with Boyle, Beaufoy, etc. on
YouTube and other websites.)

America and other companies in territories around the
world. With the revenue from this sale, Colson could
cover the costs of production, but would retain control –
meaning that the film would remain a UK production
without interference from the Hollywood distributor.

THE PRODUCTION OF THE FILM
When Danny Boyle finally agreed to direct, he chose to
shoot the film entirely in India using an Indian crew but
with most ‘Department Heads’ from the UK. Boyle has
spoken about his Hollywood studio film shot in Thailand
(The Beach 2000) and how he didn’t want to repeat the
experience of taking a Western crew to Asia. With his
regular cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle (who
often works in Denmark), he devised a complex shooting
plan on location in Mumbai using film and digital
equipment with second unit Indian crews shooting
elsewhere in India.
One of the crucial decisions for the production team
was the casting and communication with actors. Boyle’s
ex-partner and continuing professional colleague, the
casting director Gail Stevens, worked on the film in
London but in India the team turned to Loveleen
Tandan to act first as casting director. Tandan worked
so closely with the younger actors that she was
eventually given the credit of ‘co-director’.

Indian cinema
India produces more films and has larger audiences
than any other film territory in the world. But this is
not one single industry. Film production is organised
in a range of production centres according to
language and the target audience of the films. Most
people outside of India have heard of ‘Bollywood’
but although this is arguably the richest and most
high-profile of the Indian film industries, it is not
representative of all of Indian cinema.
Bollywood is a relatively recent term (perhaps
in wide circulation only since the late 1980s). It refers
to certain forms of popular cinema made in Hindi –
the official language of India understood by about 40
per cent of the population, mainly in the north. The
capital of Bollywood is Mumbai (Bombay) where
around two hundred films with big budgets (by
Indian standards) are made each year. But more
films are actually made in the four south Indian
languages of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada
(around four hundred each year). These different
language cinemas are rather disparagingly known as
regional cinemas and this term also covers several
smaller production centres using other Indian
languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, etc.
A third type of film is sometimes referred to as
parallel cinema. There is no hard definition of a

165

Distribution

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
Mumbai. He explained that the young Bollywood actors

parallel film but generally it refers to films that are
more serious, possibly more realist and/or
art-oriented. Such films appeal more to the
middle-class audiences in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore
and other major cities. The films could be made in
any of India’s languages, but are usually in Hindi or
English in order to reach the biggest audiences.
Diaspora film-makers such as Mira Nair and
Deepa Mehta – Indian film-makers trained in
North America – could be described as parallel
film-makers when they work in India.
The large overseas population of first- and
second-generation Indian migrants (termed NRIs or
non-resident Indians) are an important market for
Bollywood films and also, in some territories, for
Tamil and Telugu-language films.

were all ‘pumped up’ and gym-toned. This was why Dev
Patel (then known mainly for appearances in the TV
series Skins) was flown out from the UK.
In Indian terms, the star of the film is Anil Kapoor
(the quizmaster), a prominent Bollywood figure,
although Irrfan Khan (the police inspector) is also a wellknown actor in both Bollywood and parallel films and is
recognisable outside India for his roles in parallel and
international films. Otherwise, Slumdog has a relatively
unknown cast.

DISTRIBUTION
The film was completed within budget (reported as
£7–8 million) but its future was suddenly thrown into
doubt when Warner Bros decided to close its ‘specialist’
film labels, one of which was handling Slumdog. There
was every chance that Slumdog would be pushed

Danny Boyle watched a group of Indian films as part

straight to DVD in North America as a result. Boyle and

of his preparation for the shoot. These included

Colson rushed to Hollywood to try to rescue the film and

mainstream Bollywood films starring Aamir Khan, the

succeeded in persuading Warner Bros to sell the rights

Bollywood star most associated with social issues, and

to another studio’s specialist division, Fox Searchlight.

all of the films made by Mira Nair in India. Nair’s 1988

Both Boyle and Beaufoy had experienced success with

film Salaam Bombay deals with many of the same

Fox Searchlight (28 Days Later and The Full Monty) and

narrative incidents as Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle also

the company has a strong track record in taking low-

studied the films of Ram Gopal Varma, known for gritty

budget ‘independent’ films into mainstream cinemas.

gangster films, and Anurag Kashyap, whose Black Friday

Even so, the fact that much of the first part of Slumdog

(India 2004), with a story about the Bombay bombings

was subtitled was an issue (especially for television in

of 1993, was quoted by Boyle as his inspiration for the

North America).

chase through the Mumbai slums early in Slumdog.
The production team made a series of crucial

Fox also agreed to release the film in India in two
versions, the ‘original’ and one dubbed into Hindi

decisions about casting which had a big impact on

throughout. The English version played in the urban

the subsequent reception of the film. The central

multiplexes where Hollywood films usually play in India

protagonists in the story had to age from nine to

and the Hindi version was released as a Bollywood film

thirteen to eighteen. Local casting sessions produced

would be released – in urban and suburban/smaller

‘real’ street children who were capable of performing

town cinemas.

for the cameras, but would struggle to do so using

The shift to Fox had no real effect in the UK

English. They therefore worked closely with Loveleen

(where Pathé released the film). But it was important

Tandan and used Hindi. The older local actors

that the American release and the swiftly growing

portraying the same characters were able to handle

profile of the film during the awards season leading up

English but Boyle could not find an adult Jamal in

to the Oscars did help to open the film in territories all

166

CASE STUDY: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Distribution

Figure 5.16 The English-language version poster in Bangalore, southern India with two security guards.

over the world, culminating in $2.9 million in China in

Hollywood films are global in the sense that they are

the first four days.

understood and enjoyed in film markets around the
world. Ironically, in India Hollywood takes only around 5
per cent of the theatrical market, although its influence

An international hit
Worldwide, the box office gross of Slumdog
Millionaire as of October 2009 was reported by
Box Office Mojo as $377 million (http://www.
boxofficemojo.com). It will probably be more than
that as in some territories reliable figures are hard
to come by. The UK figure was $52 million, US
$141 million, with healthy numbers (i.e. by local
standards) in all the major territories across Europe,
East Asia and Latin America. The Indian total
is given as $7.3 million, but it isn’t clear whether this
includes the Hindi-language total of $3.6 million
(http://www.ibosnetwork.com).

is arguably much greater since many Bollywood films
openly ‘borrow’ story ideas from successful Hollywood
films. (In 2008, one of the most successful Bollywood
films, Ghajini, was a remake of a Tamil film which itself
had copied the Hollywood thriller Memento (2000).)

Slumdog is not a Hollywood film, though it has been
taken to be one. In fact, for several reasons, Slumdog
has been caught between Hollywood and Bollywood.
Few audiences around the world think of it as a British
film. Partly this is because the film has been so
successful that it has, by accident, fulfilled the strong
desire on behalf of both Hollywood and Bollywood
producers to create a film that could succeed in both
markets and then around the world – the film that could

167

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

The Bollywood connection

replicate the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

of a score by Rahman. (Indian film soundtracks are

(China/HK/Taiwan/US) in 2000. As noted in Chapter 5,

important media products and not just elements of the

there have been several deliberate attempts to create

films.)

this hybrid, none as yet as successful across the globe as

Slumdog.

THE BOLLYWOOD CONNECTION

CONTROVERSIES IN RECEPTION
The best territory for the film (i.e. its box office take
relative to the size of the market) was the UK, where

Both the business analysis of Slumdog’s success and the

audiences were not confused by the film’s identity.

cultural analysis of what the film means for audiences

Danny Boyle is a ‘name director’ and by the time of

have struggled to deal with the film’s relationship to the

the film’s release in early January 2009, the earlier

concept of Bollywood.

success in North America (where the film had been

Slumdog benefited from the musical score composed

released on a ‘platform’ of a small number of screens in

by A.R. Rahman, the ‘Mozart of Madras’ and arguably

November) had helped to build a major promotional

the biggest name in film music worldwide. Although he

campaign. Some audiences were taken aback when

began in south Indian film-making, Rahman has had a

the promotional spin that this was a ‘feel-good film’

distinguished career in Bollywood and the UK/US as

was contradicted by some of the violent scenes.

well. His music in Slumdog is important, but only one

Nevertheless, the film was highly praised and gradually

song, ‘Jai Ho!’, involves dance choreography and this

built a large mainstream audience over several weeks

appears in the closing credit sequence. Though seen in

(it didn’t open as widely as most Hollywood films in

the West as a nod towards Bollywood, Indian audiences

the UK).

did not necessarily see the rather loose dance sequence

The controversies developed during the film’s

as authentic Bollywood. On the other hand, the film no

opening week in India, also in January 2009. The English

doubt attracted some audiences simply on the strength

version of the film appears to have outsold the Hindi

What is Bollywood?
The two hundred or so Bollywood films each year span a range of genres and different approaches to filmmaking. There are horror films and gangster films as well as ‘social’ dramas and historical dramas and films such
as those by Ram Gopal Varma and Anurag Kashyap and watched by Danny Boyle that might be described as in
some ways ‘New Wave’. Some of these films could be viewed as overlapping with parallel cinema.
Yet, despite this diversity, the biggest-selling Bollywood films still focus on comedy and romance. They tend
to be long by Hollywood standards (though the two forms are now to some extent converging on 130–140
minutes) and to feature six or seven highly choreographed and expensively mounted dance sequences featuring
big stars who must dance (and mime to playback singers). Most important, Bollywood is entertainment-led.
The films create a fantasy universe, peopled largely by the wealthy middle class and focusing on moral values
associated with the conventions of middle-class Indian family life – the realities of life for the majority of the
population in India are not a primary concern. The attempt to appeal to an NRI audience means that stories
often focus on characters who move between North America, Europe and India. Bollywood audiences expect
glamour, excitement and stars – escapist entertainment.

168

CASE STUDY: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Controversies in reception

Figure 5.17 Posters for the Hindi version in Ahmedabad, Gujerat, in western India. Some posters carried the Hindi title represented in
Roman script as ‘Crorepati Slumdog’.

version in cinemas. However, Indian box office figures

about India made by a Westerner. Here is a flavour of

are notoriously difficult to check (each language cinema

the comments:

has its own chart) and because the Hindi version may
have played in cinemas with lower ticket prices outside

. . . This isn’t the ‘real’ India. This is India as seen

the major city centres, it is possible more people saw the

through the eyes of a Westerner who’s selling desi

film in Hindi. In the Hindi chart, the film was deemed an

squalor packaged as savvy slick entertainment

‘Average Hit’. Its Hindi box office was actually above

. . . Yup, this is a film on a mission. It wants to exploit

the average (but a long way behind the ‘Super-Hit’

the Mumbai slums as a hotbed of tantalising images

Bollywood films).

conveying the splendour of squalidity.

As soon as audiences began to engage with the

(IBOS (Hindi Box Office Website) Review,

film, opinion divided. It is worth remembering that

Subhash K Jha, 23 January 2009)

the Oscar nominations (Slumdog received ten
nominations) were announced just as the film opened

. . . allegiance to the West could have made this

in India. Critics and audience members were torn

a bloodless, distanced copy of a fun book, but

between praising the film and hoping for Oscar success

one look at Slumdog Millionaire, and you know

for an ‘Indian’ film, and criticising it for being a film

that its spirit and soul is flagrantly, proudly Indian:

169

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

After the Oscar ceremonies

the Empire has been finally, overwhelmingly

Sound bites: poverty porn, slum tourism, imperialist

trounced.

guilt flick, post-colonial inequalities continued,

It’s not about poverty pornography. It’s not

Bombay’s underbelly revealed-revelled, brilliant,

about a White guy showing us touchy Brown-skins

feel good movie, accurate portrayal, gross

squatting by the rail-tracks. In the end, it’s just about

misrepresentation, a visual Lonely Planet guide to

a film, which sweeps you up and takes you for an

Mumbai, an (anti-)Indian movie, Bollywood mania.
(Atticus Narain, 9 March 2009)

exhilarating ride on the wild side. Jai Ho.
(Shubhra Gupta, Indian Express, 22 January 2009)
An interesting view of the film came from a young
Indian living in America who posted a favourable review

EXPLORE 5.17
P OV E RT Y P O R N ?

on the ‘Aint It Cool’ website:
Most Indian movies are fairy tales, and fairy tales
in popular culture are for two things: to highlight a
moral value and escape the burdens of reality. Both
of these have been the driving forces in the majority
of our Hindi movies. They tried to induce morality
but worked because of the escapism. We love our

Read over the comments above and others you can
find online.
• How did you respond to the images of poverty?
• What is at stake in using terms like ‘real’, ‘feel-good’
and ‘escapism’ in describing this film?
• What is the ‘Indian’ identity that these
commentators disagree about?

escapism. We would believe anything . . . Slumdog

Millionaire is a fairy tale as well. But it’s what a fairy
tale would be if David Simon [creator of The Wire]
wrote one.
(posted on: http://www.aintitcool.com,
26 November 2008)

AFTER THE OSCAR CEREMONIES . . .
The stir created by Slumdog persisted in the months
following the film’s Oscar success. Danny Boyle became
the focus of tabloid interest around the world when he

What is interesting about the enormous outpouring of

was accused of not rewarding the youngest stars of the

comments on the film is that many of the critics who

film sufficiently. Perhaps mindful of Angelina Jolie’s and

denounce the film are only too aware that it is very

Madonna’s adoption of poor children from Africa and

knowing about Indian cinema and Bollywood in

Asia, Boyle had put money into a trust fund for two

particular. They can’t argue that this is an ‘ignorant’

of the slum children to pay for their education and

Western view of India, since they have to acknowledge

eventually for new accommodation. This didn’t come

that it is an Indian story constructed for the screen by

quickly enough for the tabloid editors.

a Westerner who in turn openly admits his Indian

At the same time, some young Indian film-makers

influences. The argument for some critics then becomes:

have seen Boyle as a film-maker who now has a global

‘Would an Indian film-maker who had done the same

presence. Boyle has already announced that he was so

job have won as many awards?’

excited by filming in Mumbai that he intends to make

The range of questions that the film raises within

at least one more film in the city, based on a recent

globalisation discourses is neatly summarised in the

non-fiction bestseller Maximum City: Bombay Lost and

opening to a submission to the website ‘Dark Matter’:

Found by Suketu Mehta. He has also indicated that he
wants to work with Indian film-makers Shekhar Kapur
and Anurag Kashyap.

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CASE STUDY: SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Slumdog’s impact on film studies and cultural studies

References and further reading

authors – is reference to Swarup’s original ideas

has seen similar divisions between professional critics

(including a similar Taj Mahal incident) in the debates.

and scholars as between reviewers and commentators.

Whatever the commentary on the film in India and the

For instance, in the American journal Cineaste, Robert

West, it represents a new phenomenon – an essentially

Koehler lambasted the film (and Danny Boyle),

Indian story, created by an Anglo-Indian partnership of

suggesting that the success in awards ceremonies

sorts, that has been widely seen around the world and

was evidence of the middle-brow taste of American

earned thirty times its production budget at the box

audiences. In his view there is nothing original about

office. That kind of success demands to be repeated in

the film and he suggests that Boyle copied well-known

some way.

classical Hollywood directors such as Orson Welles. Boyle
and Beaufoy simply offered a Western liberal’s view of
India. Most of this was refuted by Rahul Hamid in the
next issue of the same journal. Hamid, while admitting
the film’s flaws, suggests that it is ‘a film about
globalisation’ and that it offers sets of contrasts about
rich and poor such as the scenes around the Taj Mahal
– precisely not the usual tourist views but instead
framed in terms of the boys’ desperate urge to make
money. It is not so important whether Koehler or Hamid
is ‘correct’ in his reading, but that new kinds of global
text raise new kinds of questions.

CONCLUSION
There are balancing views pointing out the Indian
sources for many of Boyle’s stylistic ideas in the
presentation of the story. Less common – and an
indictment of film culture’s general neglect of literary

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Blakely, Rhys (2009) ‘What Do Real Slumdogs Think of
Slumdog Millionaire?’ The Times, 9 February 2009.
Hamid, Rahul (2009) ‘A Hatchet Job on Slumdog
Millionaire’, Cineaste, 34, 3: 75–6.
Koehler, Robert (2009) ‘Slumdog Millionaire Review’,
Cineaste, 34, 2: 75–7.
Kumar, Amitava (2008) ‘Slumdog Millionaire’s
Bollywood Ancestors’, Vanity Fair 23 December
2008, accessed via http://www.vanityfair.com/
online/oscars/2008/12/slumdog-millionairesbollywood-ancestors.html
http://www.ibosnetwork.com/
http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/03/09/rethin
king-post-colonial-representation-after-slumdogmillionaire/
More links available on the MSB5 website.

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6 Ideologies and
discourses
•

‘Ideology’ and its histories:
Marxist approaches

•

Post-Marxism

•

Identity politics and critical
pluralism

•

Discourses

•

Lived cultures

•

Conclusion

•

References and further reading

The concepts of ideology and of discourse have been key ones for
media studies, especially in Europe. We argue that ‘ideology’ still has a
key role to play in suggesting the often taken-for-granted and unseen
connections between the media and different kinds of power, even as
Web 2.0 gives more visibility to dissenting views of all kinds. ‘Discourse’
here can help us explore the ‘in-between’ area of how overarching
and long-lasting ideologies become part of daily practices, especially
language, its assumptions, its ways of positioning the reader, and user,
on- and off-line.

‘Ideology’ and its histories: Marxist approaches
Some sets of ideas, though forming a system, even a rigid one, are not
classified as ‘ideological’. Someone may have obsessive ideas about
personal cleanliness, and relate them systematically to the phases of the
moon. But these are not called ‘ideological’ since they cannot be shown
to relate to the distribution of social power.
Ideology refers to:
• sets of ideas which give some account of the social world;
• ideas which are usually partial (in both senses) and selective (as all
positions are);
• the relationship of these ideas or values to the ways in which power is
distributed socially.
‘Ideology’ is often taken to be:
• one of the means by which dominant economic classes extend their
control over others (see Balnaves et al. 2009); and

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6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

‘Ideology’ and its histories

•

one of the ways in which dominant values and meanings come to
seem ‘natural’ and ‘obvious’ rather than socially aligned, in other
words, again, how they work with, or against, particular sets of power.
The place of religious beliefs in this spectrum is much debated.
The first time it was argued that ideas are not free-floating but instead
systematically linked to social power was in France, in the period leading
up to the 1789 Revolution, which replaced feudal relations, justified by
religious beliefs, with those of the ‘Enlightenment’ (a secular, not a
religious view of the world; anti-monarchist politics, replacing a feudal
monarchy with power centred on the newly rising bourgeoisie or middle
classes).
Discussion of ideology in Western media and cultural studies usually
comes out of the much later work of Marx (see Chapter 1). Writing in
the nineteenth century, Marx questioned the supposedly ‘natural’
but unequal order of things. He analysed the then-new profit- and
competition-dominated system – capitalism – and the power of two
classes within it: the rising industrial manufacturers (or capitalists) and
the working class (or proletariat).

Some useful terms
The term ‘capitalism’ is suddenly in use again, following the ‘financial crisis’
and then traumatic recession(s) beginning in 2008. Michael Moore’s new film
in 2009 was even titled Capitalism: A Love Story. Desperate attempts to
understand these events made visible this previously marginalised term. But
it is rarely explained, and nor are related concepts. Here are some brief
guidelines.
Mercantilism describes a class system emerging in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, led by merchants who accumulated wealth obtained
through colonial exploitation, slavery and war. It’s useful as drawing attention
to the key role of money made from slave trading and the wealth of empire
in the development of Western capitalism.
Industrial capitalism began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries when a new class of industrial entrepreneurs exploited
technological innovation (such as the steam engine) using accumulated capital
or money (from the slave trade, mercantile exploits, etc.). The factory system
of production began and political power overall was wrested from aristocratic
landowners, whose power dated from feudal times, by these ‘capitalists’.
Socialism is an ideal arising partly from the experience of workers in this
new factory system. It is broadly a belief in collective or public ownership, and

Figure 6.1 A 2009 film about
Charles Darwin and his struggle
with his religious upbringing
when working on the theory of
evolution. It received good reviews
but struggled to find a US
distributor and eventually was
picked up by an independent
company.
Feudalism: a system in
which the poor had duties
towards the landowners,
those of ‘noble birth’.
Ideologically this was justified
by a worldview in which the
Earth was made by God,
the sun revolved round it,
and everything on Earth had
a natural place in this divinely
designed order.

Capitalism: a competitive
social system, emerging in
seventeenth-century Europe,
involving private ownership
of accumulated wealth and
the exploitation of labour to
produce profit, which creates
such wealth.

173

‘Ideology’ and its histories

Figure 6.2 In 2009, the Republican
and private health firms’
opposition to President Obama’s
socialised healthcare proposals
used old-style fears of totalitarian
socialism, as here. See Chapter 1
case study, and also Michael
Moore’s Sicko (2007) for contexts.
See Lawson (2009), who
uses ‘turbo-consumption’ to
describe our times; Klein
(2007); and Wolff, offering a
Marxist analysis of the crisis
on http://video.google.com:
80/videoplay?docid=7382297
202053077236.

There’s a key difference
between European and US
uses of the terms ‘working
class’ and ‘middle class’. In
the more ‘aspirational’ US,
‘middle class’ is used to
signify a much broader group
than in European usage. It
often covers groups which
Europeans call ‘working
class’.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

the rights of all working people to full representation in political systems. It
was developed through trade union power, often supported by
‘nonconformist’ churches.
Corporate capitalism (sometimes called ‘post-industrial’) is the
contemporary form into which capitalism has developed. Large corporations
are mostly owned by ‘institutional’ shareholders (pension and insurance
funds), making links between ordinary people (stakeholders, here) and big
corporations. It is only ‘post-industrial’ in the sense that much manufacturing is
moved around the globe – often to low-wage economies.
For the past few decades it has been combined with consumer capitalism,
a term drawing attention to capitalism’s inherent capacity to overproduce,
leading to incitements to consume in every area of life, and arguably to
environmental catastrophes.

Marx (see Chapter 1) argued that class difference, or people’s
relationship to the means by which goods and wealth are made and
distributed (the ‘means of production’), was key to the kinds of values
and political ideas that they have. Do they own and profit from factories,
banks, country estates, or do they have to earn their living by working for
the owners of factories, banks and so on? The accounts of the world held
by these two groups will be very different. Marx was especially interested
in capitalists’ relationship to those they employed, the working class,
who, he argued, had the power to change history by their united action
and their practical experience of having to learn how to work together
rather than competitively. He saw class conflict, between these two
groups, as the motor of history.

Two contemporary applications
1 Though Marx was not very interested in fiction forms, and had no
experience of our media, later broadly Marxist textual accounts of
advertising, for example, can be related to his ideas. They emphasise how
ads’ focus on the product, the powers claimed for it and the joys of using it
all render the work of producing it (labour) invisible, or even ‘natural’ – a
deeply ideological move. The product can seem to appear from nowhere,
without the exploitation of either human labour or the world’s natural
resources (see Williamson 1985 and 2008).

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

Car ads additionally raise issues of the toll on natural resources
through manufacture (metals, glass, rubber, oil-based products such as
plastic, etc.), whatever their fuel efficiency. Though understandably not
treated by Marx’s nineteenth-century work, such climate change related
issues can be usefully explored in this context. (See Williamson at
http://www.frieze foundation.org/talks/detail/the_culture_of_denial,
Chapter 11 and the issues of ‘greenwashing’ it raises, and the case study
for this chapter.)

‘Ideology’ and its histories

President G. W. Bush in
2000, at a dinner for New
York’s wealthiest socialites,
remarked, ‘This is an
impressive crowd – the haves
and the have-mores. Some
people call you the elite, I call
you my base’ – an unusually
frank statement by a member
of the ruling order.

EXPLORE 6.1

•
•

Research a few car ads (TV/YouTube, and print or other online forms).
Do they seem to have the kinds of relationship to dominant values
outlined above? If not, say where and how.

2 Another interesting application of Marx’s emphasis on labour, or work,
and the ideological ways it is made invisible in capitalist cultures (except
when strikes, etc. occur) might be the physical presence and ideological
prominence of stars and celebrities. Unimaginable amounts of other
people’s labour go into not just the lifestyle of stars (nannies, chauffeurs,
servants, agents) but also their appearance, which is often presented as
‘natural’ and as something we could, and should, all aim for (via cheap
versions of their expensive clothes, beauty treatments, etc.; make-over
programmes; ‘easy’ recoveries from pregnancies, etc.). In addition their
presence in films is highly constructed (by the labour of lighting, costume,
make up, scripting, etc.) but often celebrated as though it were ‘just them’.

EXPLORE 6.2
Take your favourite star or celebrity and explore:
• their image, in relation to their idea that they are ‘naturally’ just themselves;
• any material you can find on how their physical presence has been
constructed by the labour of others.
How gendered do these kinds of appeals seem to be?

Figure 6.3 In 2009 Julia Roberts
was in India filming Eat Pray Love.
She had 350 guards, including
forty gunmen, while being driven
in bulletproof cars tailed by a
helicopter (Hyde 2009). A sacred
Hindu temple was closed for nine
days for filming to take place – also
involving labour.

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‘Ideology’ and its histories

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Marx used the concept of ideology (as well as theories of force) to help
account for how the capitalist class was able to protect and preserve
its economic interests, even during years of unrest and attempted
revolutions. Three of his emphases have been particularly important,
(though of course he was writing well before the interactive media we
now take for granted).
1 The dominant ideas, which become part of the ‘common sense’ of any
society, are those which work in the interests of the ruling class, to
secure its dominance. Marxism sees this as leading to fundamental
misrepresentations of the real conditions of life, especially paid work.
It is those who own the means of production who thereby, also,
control the means of producing and circulating the key political ideas
in any social order. This is said to be key to why the meaning-making
bodies in any society (now dominated by the media) represent
broadly political issues as they do. It implies that the working class
needs to develop its own ideas and imaginings, and struggle for the
means of circulating them, if it is successfully to oppose capitalist rule.
2 Related to this, Marx argued for a base–superstructure model of the
social role of institutions, which would now include the media. He
argued there is a clear relationship between the ways the basic needs
of a social order are met (through factory production in industrial
capitalist orders, or rural production within landlord–peasant
relations, for example) and its superstructure, i.e. its ‘secondary’, less
basic institutions, such as organised religions and cultural life. Such a
model is also often called economic determinist, since the economic
‘base’, and who owns it, is argued to determine, not just to influence,
cultural and political activities.
3 A final step is the argument that, through these sets of power
relationships, the dominant class is able to make workers believe that
existing relations of exploitation and oppression are natural, inevitable
and therefore unchangeable. This ideological power ‘mystifies’ the real
conditions of existence, and how they might be transformed. Crucially
it conceals the vested interest that dominant groups have in
preventing change, in whatever ways necessary, since they benefit
from things as they are.
Later, for media and cultural studies, the Italian Marxist Gramsci’s
term ‘hegemony’ was taken up as a key way of thinking about how
dominant value systems change. Gramsci emphasised their relationship
to everyday lived cultures and to ‘common sense’ which he saw as having
a core of ‘good sense’ which needs to be developed in trying to ‘unmask’
the reality of class-divided societies and to struggle successfully for
change.

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6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

‘Ideology’ and its histories

Gramsci, Althusser and Klein
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was a revolutionary Italian Marxist activist
and theorist who took part in political struggles in Italy, involving church and
state, north and south, peasants and modern industrial workers. As a result his
theories showed a keen awareness of the need for complex struggles and
negotiations and have been seized on and adapted by modern Marxist
writers. Instead of an emphasis on the imposed dominance of a unified ruling
class, and the determining power of the economic base, Gramsci argued that
particular social groups in modern democracies struggle for control of
consensus, or hegemony. In this they use persuasion and consent as well as
occasional brute force. He emphasised the importance of ‘everyday cultures’
and the need to connect with the hotchpotch which he argued is often
‘common sense’ so as to make of it ‘good sense’. Such ideas have been taken
up and applied to media which he could not even have imagined.
He was imprisoned by the Fascist leader Mussolini in 1927 and died in
prison, where he had written his Prison Notebooks, often using obscure
language to evade the attention of his guards and the prison censors.
Later, the French Marxist Louis Althusser (1918–1990) argued for the
concepts of ISAs (ideological state apparatuses), including the family, media,
religious organisations and education system, and RSAs (repressive state
apparatuses) resorted to at later stages by ‘the state’, such as the law, prisons,
armed forces.
Because of these struggles at different levels, power is seen as never
secured once and for all but as needing to be constantly negotiated in a to-andfro tussle. The key point from this for media studies is that people are not
forced or duped into a false consciousness of the world, but have their consent
actively fought for all the time – nowadays, crucially, through the media.
The emphasis on both force and consent in Marx, Gramsci and Althusser
is arguably developed in Naomi Klein’s theory of the ‘shock doctrine’ along
with her work on the importance of corporate branding. However, she does
not explicitly draw on classic Marxist models. See her website http://www.
naomiklein.org for the application of ‘the shock doctrine’ to disasters such as
the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The phrase ‘making a
difference’ is often used now
(where years ago the more
ambitious ‘change the world’
might have been). In some
ways it embodies a
Gramscian rather than older
Marxist view of what changes
can be achieved, though
without Gramsci’s ambitions
for revolutionary changes.

The financial crises and recession beginning in 2008 offer rich examples
of struggles for hegemony. The idea of ‘the market dictating’ recurred
over and over. Using the term ‘the market’ like this denies the extent to
which humans can shape their economic conditions, and, indeed, how a
few humans, mostly male, have made them as they are.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

‘Ideology’ and its histories

The delighted squeals of
central characters in Sex and
the City (US 1998–2004) as
they open, or are given, high
fashion accessories can be
argued as both an OTT image
of, but also as enacting
the process of, a kind of
fetishisation. Q: Do any
products have the same kind
of fascination for you? Does
Top Gear act out a masculine
equivalent for cars?

It is also part of what Marx called ‘commodity fetishism’ or
‘reification’ (from the Latin for ‘res’ meaning ‘thing’). This describes
a process whereby products and larger social processes, all made by
people, are treated as though they had an almost magical reality and
logic of their own, as though ‘the market’ was almost a real ‘thing’.
Wikipedia has a good discussion of Marx’s ironic use of the term ‘fetish’
for his highly rationalist, nineteenth-century intellectual context. It was
then normally used in study of certain ‘magical’ objects in ‘primitive’
societies. It is now useful in thinking about ideology as a ‘masking’ of
actual social relations – as well as about some of advertising’s strategies,
and results, in ‘fetishistic’ appetites for certain goods.

EXPLORE 6.3

•
•
•
•

What is your idea of ‘the free market’? Where do you come across it in media
forms?
See if you can find interviews, or news/current affairs items, where different
views of the current economic crisis, how to name it, picture it (see news
logos) and to get through it, are debated.
Do any speakers use ‘the free market’ in the ways we’ve suggested above?
What other views on ‘the market’ have you come across? Where?

Marxism’s emphasis on the determining role of ownership and economic
relations is active in political-economy writings (e.g. Graham Murdock,
Nicholas Garnham, the Glasgow University Media Group in the UK;
Robert McChesney, Ed Herman, Toby Miller and Janet Wasko in the US).
This work is a corrective to some media theory’s emphasis on textual
elements, and to over-celebration of the power of ‘active audiences’,
though at its best it tries to work alongside these approaches. As Janet
Wasko puts it, political economy is
an indispensable point of departure (for media analysis) . . . economic
factors set limitations and exert pressures on the commodities that are
produced (and influence what is not produced), as well as how, where,
and to whom those products are (or are not) distributed.
(Wasko 2001: 29; see also Wasko et al. 2006)
This develops Marxist nineteenth-century models of ownership and
production as ‘control’. It works better for the complex and now

178

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

interactive conditions of twenty-first-century global media and
ownership patterns, for which distribution is key. But it does this
without sacrificing a sense of the key pressures exerted by ownership.
Increasing concentration of power, and profits, into the hands of a very
few enormous media corporations, and of a few executives within those,
is argued to lead to:
• an overall decline in the range of material available (e.g. in satellite
and cable television programming, or cinema) as global
conglomerates exclude or swallow up all but the most commercially
successful operators, or those remaining few which are state-funded;
• the dominance of corporate advertising and marketing within culture
generally. This is especially true of ‘lightly regulated’ US television
channels, where heavy advertising sometimes seems almost to equal
programme time. It is also powerful in ‘blockbuster’ cinema, with
films, full of product placements, tie-ins, marketing deals, etc., often
seeming like adverts for the accompanying DVDs, theme park rides,
clothes, computer games, fashions, food, drink;
• the prevalence of ‘blockbuster’ material as ‘anchors’ to the
performance and branding of media corporations (whether certain
Hollywood films or ‘flagship’ TV programmes, music performers,
etc.). Some argue that blockbuster success ‘travels’ via material which
is criticised for being ‘formulaic, undisturbing, easily understood’. See
Wasko et al.’s (2006) account of Disney and debates around the global
reception of its products.

‘Ideology’ and its histories

Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 line
‘57 channels (and nothin’ on)’
puts this position concisely.

A final note on ‘the dominant ideology’ thesis
Some writers (see Abercrombie et al. 1980) agree that dominant ideologies
do exist, and struggles for hegemony around them, but argue that these are
not as important, in explaining how social orders hang together, as
• awareness of force, in the wings (huge state bodies for surveillance and
armed control; see Klein 2007), and
• the ‘dull compulsion of the economic’ or need to earn a living
– and, we could add, the time- and energy-consuming work of child-rearing
and domestic labour. All this leaves us little room, time or power to challenge
systems of values which most people either disagree with or feel to be
irrelevant.
In addition, positions drawing on psychoanalysis, such as the Frankfurt
School, would argue for the pleasures involved in the fetishism and
disavowals of many cultural forms, especially branding and celebrity, in
securing an apparent ‘consent’ to deeply unjust and unequal social orders.

Disavowal: in
psychoanalysis, the process of
refusing to recognise a
troubling or traumatic
perception. Applied by some
media theorists to account
for the apparent power of
advertising, entertainment
and fantasy forms, etc. to
‘mask’ unpleasant realities.
The term suggests some
awareness on the part of
audiences, along with their
desire to ignore that for the
sake of the pleasures of these
forms.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Post-Marxism

EXPLORE 6.4

•
•

How far do you agree with this position?
Do your friends’ attitudes, or your media experiences, seem to support
any parts of it?

Post-Marxism

See MSB5 website
for updated version
of the Pulp Fiction
case study which explores
debates on postmodern
theories.

180

Several historical changes have affected the power of ‘classic’ Marxist
theories:
• The collapse of Eastern bloc state socialism from 1989 was disturbing
for those who thought those countries had put Marxist ideas into
action.
• The renewed power of ‘free market’ or ‘neoliberal’ emphases and
policies, from the 1970s, has permeated most areas of life. These
arguably have their media theory equivalent: a tendency simply to
celebrate audiences’ powers in relation to media, as though corporate
media were not in question, and the limits they set to the variety of
media output, and to audiences’ activities, on- or offline.
• Equally influential have been some so-called postmodern positions.
Despite their emphasis on ‘deconstructing’ dominant ideologies, they
often seem to have constructed their own: an abandonment of any
political connections to help construct a better world.
• A growing scepticism about the claims of science or reason to possess
absolute truth, or to involve necessarily benign consequences for the
world. This has enriched some areas of media analysis, especially of
fictional forms. But it mattered for Marxism, which had claimed
scientific status for its theories.
Such changes resulted in key questions being asked, though arguably the
strengths as well as the weaknesses of Marxism were lost when it was
abandoned as an approach.
• To talk of just one dominant ideology, directly related to economic
power, implies an improbably argument-free ruling class, which is
able smoothly to ‘make’ the rest of us go along with its interests. We’re
talking of capitalism here, rooted in competition and certain kinds of
contradiction. Such ‘single ideology’ approaches often make very
patronising assumptions about anyone other than the person doing
the analysing. If the wheels of ideology roll so smoothly to produce

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

•

Post-Marxism

conformity, how has the person analysing their workings come to
have his or her ‘outsider’ perceptions?
The challenge of newer politics has offered ways of analysing other
kinds of oppression. These are based in the ways that gender or
ethnicity, for example, crucially affects ‘life chances’. They are not
seen as absolute determinants, as class was in the Marxist model. And
there are important debates now about the difference between
‘diversity’ and ‘inequality’ (see Orr 2009).

The persistence of class and its shifting visibility
1 It used to be easy to signify, through physical appearance, that a figure was
‘wealthy’ or ‘poor’. Nineteenth-century charity pioneers like Dr Barnardo
used images of thin and raggedly dressed ‘street urchins’ to appeal to the
conscience of the wealthier. ‘Third World’ charities often still do this,
understandably. And until relatively recently, artists and cartoonists have
used large body size, as well as clothing, top hat, accent and so on, as
indicators of wealth: the ‘fat capitalist’ or greedy lord.
2 It is now likely that a well-toned, slim or even thin body is the result not of
food shortage but of careful diet and some affluence. However, aspirations
to this appearance often produce anorexia or bulimia, which further
complicate matters – what are those slim bodies evidence of? ‘Traditional’
poverty can still, of course, produce rickets and thin bodies. It’s also
possible that expensive-looking clothes, jewellery, even cars, may conceal
huge levels of personal debt.
Such changes now make it difficult to ‘read off’ from physical
appearance alone what might be the truth of someone’s economic
position. It is one of many factors making it hard to broach questions of
social class, as compared with more visible identities, like gender, some
disabilities, or certain ethnicities and religions.
3 Obesity, which in some cultures is prized as evidence of having plenty to
eat, is, in the ‘developed world’, likely to be the result of both cultural and
material deprivation and addictions (though genetics, and even a choice
not to be a ‘slave to fashion’, may also come into play). As part of the
complicated attitudes to such bodies, ‘greed’ (rather than addiction) is
often said to be the cause of being overweight. Ideologically this view shifts
blame away from the very addictions which often result from the
marketing practices of major food brands.
4 Ideological contexts for such blamings include post-1980s celebrations of
extreme wealth (as in much celebrity coverage) and justifications of

Figure 6.4 A nineteenth-century
photo of a British street child
(c.1870–7) from the charity
Barnardo’s (www.barnardos.
org.uk).
As you’ll know, the area of
‘approved’ body shapes is
now hugely gendered, despite
general health concerns. The
term ‘body fascism’ has been
coined to draw attention to
how ideological and coercive
the images of airbrushed,
surgery-enhanced bodies
can be.

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Identity politics and critical pluralism

Conspicuous
consumption: a
term coined by the
Norwegian-American
economist and sociologist
Thorstein Veblen
(1857–1929) to describe the
consumption of goods and
commodities for the sake of
displaying social status and
wealth. (It is not used to
describe eating disorders.)

Though ‘everyone recognises’
the ‘underclass’ figure of
Vicky Pollard from BBC’s
Little Britain, it’s very rare to
hear the term ‘the
undeserving rich’.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

corporate greed – which has usually been called ‘growth’. Wealth,
whether individual or corporate, is hardly ever represented, as in Marxist
theory, as being directly related to the labour of those who produce it, ‘by
hand and by brain’.
Compare this to various make-over programmes, often dismissed as ‘trash
television’ because of the people (women usually) on whom they focus in an
effort to render them ‘acceptable’ (see Wood and Skeggs 2008). Or see the
media hounding of some of the ‘undeserving poor’ or ‘underclass’, part of
‘broken Britain’. These are often council estate dwellers, and especially
women constructed as ‘wicked mothers’, whose family trees, supermarket
bills if involving alcohol, and other intimacies may be ruthlessly paraded,
especially but not exclusively in the ‘red-tops’, if the woman seems scandalous
enough. See Nunn and Biressi (2009) for an excellent account, which they
summarise thus: ‘As the undeserving poor become ever more closely
associated with negative characteristics, the well-adjusted majority can
continue to enjoy the benefits of “meritocracy” with easy minds’ (p. 107).
‘The underclass’ is a US-originated term which partly signifies not only the
homeless, the addicted and even petty criminals, but also the most deprived
part of the unemployed working class. The term inherits some of the
derogatory values of the nineteenth-century term ‘the undeserving poor’, and
also drains poverty of its place within unequal class divisions, which Marxism
focused on.

Since the mid-1980s discussion of class, and especially working-class
experience, has dwindled. The solidarities (unions, local communities,
workplaces) which made for class identities were often destroyed, and
replaced by neoliberal ideals such as ‘social mobility’ and ‘consumer
choice’.

Identity politics and critical pluralism
As this shrivelling of an awareness of class identities happened, other,
key identities (sexuality, ethnicity, gender and so on) claimed more
expression and visibility. A good example of the difference of such
identity politics is some feminists’ argument that inequality derives
from other oppressions than unequal pay in the realm of paid work,
though that is key. Gendered inequality also stems from the realm of
reproduction, meaning both the reproduction of future generations (the
family) and the household work needed to reproduce social orders
(caring for the workforce).

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6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

Identity politics and critical pluralism

EXPLORE 6.5
Figure 6.5
Taken-for-granted
phrases and words
form a key part
of oppressive
identities around
gender. Cartoon by
Posy Simmonds,
published in the
1970s.

•

See if you can devise a similar ‘oppressive word mountain’ for any ‘identity
group’ which you are a member of – by age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, as
well as class, perhaps.

Figure 6.6 A postcard which
highlights the different demands of
different kinds of labour, domestic
and industrial.

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Identity politics and critical pluralism

Figure 6.7 Banksy’s image suggests
not only global inequalities but the
narrowed life it represents for
both human sides of the rickshaw
– even though they are so unequal
in terms of monetary wealth.

See Wilkinson and Pickett
(2009) for a massively
researched study of the
effects of inequality, and why
remedying this needs to be
prioritised above what is
called ‘growth’. It is estimated
that 1 per cent of the world’s
population now own 40 per
cent of its wealth, for
example. Also research
http://www.happyplanet
index.org/.

Recall Spielberg’s quote from
Chapter 2: ‘Once upon a
time it was a small gathering
of people around a fire
listening to the storyteller
with his tales of magic and
fantasy. And now it’s the
whole world . . . It’s not
“domination” by American
cinema. It’s just the magic of
storytelling, and it unites the
world.’

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Men’s social position and power can often be shown to exploit
women’s domestic and even emotional work for them and their children.
And because of the assumed ‘naturalness’ of women’s caring role in the
home, they tend to be overwhelmingly employed in ‘the four Cs’: caring,
cleaning, catering and cash registers (see http://www.fawcett.org.uk and
Hochschild 2003). We might add call centres, though there are increasing
numbers of men employed in those, as often happens in recessions with
occupations previously gendered as ‘feminine’. Call centres involve the
kinds of ‘emotional labour’ skills which many women learn, both in
caring for their families, and in growing up with the expectation they will
have families, and will have ‘natural’ abilities to work/care in this way.
‘Black’ theorists have likewise explored not only the foundations of
modern industrial development in the wealth accumulated through the
slave trade, but also the ways in which inequalities between ethnic
groups have been constructed and maintained, and how they have often
cut across class and gender difference. Similar arguments have been
made for different sexualities, for age groups (for both children and old
people), disability and other key structuring experiences and struggles.
All of these have become more visible, partly thanks to Web 2.0
communications in recent years, and there have been absolutely key
changes to most people’s experiences as a result.
Some would argue that too much of Marxism’s key interest in class
differences has been lost in ‘identity’ emphases. We still live in deeply
unequal capitalist societies, driven by profit, high consumption and gross
inequalities. But these now operate on a global scale, with relations of
exploitation spread across and between continents, and with other kinds
of oppression also producing deprivations.
Some would argue that neoliberal capitalist orders are quite happy
with identity politics. Such politics are admirable and necessary,
and related to class differences. But they are argued to emphasise
diversity and not inequality, which is steeply rising and finding
disturbing forms of expression, such as fascist movements focused
on ‘race’ (see Orr 2009).
Pluralist models of media ownership have developed, seeing the
media as floating free of power, and emphasising the apparent diversity
and choice of media forms and products. They argue that, if certain
values, or forms, are dominant, it is because they are ‘genuinely popular’
and have won out in this ‘free market of ideas’. Time and again, for
example, the ‘popularity’ of US cultural forms is attributed to ‘universal’
appeal rather than globally orchestrated power.
Of course there is diversity in media, especially in an internet/
interactive age. Both website owners and big corporations are driven to

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

circulate many different ideas and identities to remain profitable. But
we still need an account of power to understand how some ideas and
imaginings came to circulate more freely than others. Thus, developing
the original Marxist and Gramscian emphases, others (e.g. Thompson
1997) suggest we now live in times of a complex play between several
kinds of power:
• economic power
• political power
• coercive, especially military, power (see Klein 2007 on the ‘shock
doctrine’)
• ‘symbolic power’, i.e. the means of information and communication,
including religions, schools, universities and, crucially, the media.
Such approaches are sometimes called critical pluralism. They
acknowledge that there may be a struggle between competing
discourses or accounts of the world, but insist that this is not an
amicable ‘level playing field’ free-for-all. Some discourses are parts of
powerful institutions and have easy access to credibility, material
resources, legal power, publicity: access which will be fought for if
necessary. Others are routinely marginalised.

Discourses

There is an increasing
tendency to talk of the
‘narratives’ instead of the
positions or arguments of
political players – for
example, ‘the Palestinians
have their narrative, the
Israelis have theirs’. This
seems to replace ‘ideologies’
or ‘values’. Q: What
difference do you think the
word makes in these
contexts?

EXPLORE 6.6

•
•

How far do you think the internet has changed these sets of relations?
Are there any ways in which you have experience of it:
a circulating marginalised discourses, or
b preventing such circulation?

Discourses
We suddenly used the word ‘discourses’ rather than ideologies just now.
It’s useful to apply this complex concept to the multiple ideas and values
running within bodies of power. Media studies tends now not to use the
model of a single dominant versus a single oppositional set of ideas, both
rooted in class struggle (the Marxist model). Indeed the Frankfurt School,
a group of influential Marxist theorists who fled Nazi Germany for the US
in the 1930s (see Chapter 14) began to choose to call itself ‘critical’ rather
than Marxist, and abandoned the idea that class conflict was the driver
of history.
Later theorists, responding to the struggles around identity, which
focused partly on media representations of oppressed groups, have

185

Discourses

Michel Foucault (1926–84)
post-structuralist
philosopher, sociologist and
historian of knowledge. Best
known for his work on the
relationship of the practices
of power and knowledge,
especially in the areas of
madness and sexuality.

Often the choice of a single
word – ‘evil’ – to describe an
act or a person will serve as
remnant of a fundamentally
religious view of people,
where acts are not to be
understood or discussed as
socially shaped but are seen
as ‘God-given’ – and
therefore unalterable.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

turned to a model of powerful and subordinated ideologies and identities,
said to operate through lived cultures and powerful or marginalised
discourses. These offer a more dispersed sense of how power structures
maintain themselves, and they locate struggles for change at different
levels of the social order – a more optimistic politics than that of
overarching class struggle.
Let’s look at the components of this approach.
‘Discourse’ has a long and complex history (see Bennett et al. 2005)
and is often confusingly used in media studies, so we will spend a little
time on it here. It firstly involves regulated systems of statements or
language use. ‘Regulated’ here means that the ‘appropriate’ language
for a given area operates, with rules, conventions – and therefore
assumptions and exclusions. And ‘language’ can be expanded to include
visual languages (as in semiotics). To put it another way, discourses are
systems of language use (arguments, descriptions, theories, etc.) built up
as part of particular areas of practice (e.g. the law, fashion, politics,
medicine).
‘Discourse’ can also be traced partly to the work of the French
theorist Foucault. He was interested in the organisation of knowledge
in institutions, which partly involved language, but also the layout
of buildings, the routine practices (accreditation, exclusion, ‘the rules of
the game’) of the law, medicine, prisons, etc. They are an integral part
of the power of some practices.
Foucault argues that discourses actually create ‘regimes of truth’ and
therefore our perceptions. The term ‘child’, for example, has not always
been used of ‘young adults’ and is notoriously hard to define, both in
years and as between different cultures. But the power to define
someone as a ‘child’ usually has enormous legal, financial and other
implications.
Discourses have also, since, been argued to operate for oppositional
and specialised practices and sub-cultures, such as punk fandom or the
specialised language of some sport.
‘Discourse’, as a concept in media studies, now often explores the
‘struggle for meaning’ at the level of words chosen for news reports,
the phrasings of interview questions, the ‘rules of the game’ such
as the ‘language-etiquette, speech-tact and other forms of associating an
utterance to the hierarchical organisation of society’ (Frow in Bennett
et al. 2005: 92). Fairclough is an important writer for this linguistic aspect
of ‘discourse’ study and its method ‘critical discourse analysis’, often
abbreviated to CDA – see Chapter 15.

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

EXPLORE 6.7
This may sound obscure, but make notes on the next controversial interview
involving a very powerful person that you see on TV, or read an accurate account
of. Can you see the unspoken ‘rules of the game’, the signs of ‘language-etiquette’
or ‘speech-tact’ in the interview? Does an atmosphere of ‘some things are best not
said’ prevail: certain questions clearly cannot be put; some challenging areas are
avoided or not pursued – for example, around large bonuses, or a politician’s
possible prosecution at an International Criminal Court for war crimes?
If the interview or discussion involves a studio audience, how are their
questions, comments, shouts or even movements ‘managed’, by the interviewer or
chair, by systems of microphones, etc.? (Of course, some of the very powerful are
not even going to be available for interview. Or it may have to be on their terms,
having cleared certain issues beforehand. Equally important is the use of prerecording.)

Discourses

The set-up of a studio, of a
lecture theatre, or of
buildings such as courts,
embassies, hospitals, big
stores – these usually
‘address’ and place their
users in different ways, which
some would relate to
dominant discourses and
power relations. Take notes
on any public (or virtual)
room or building you know
from this perspective.

Discourse analysis explores what values and identities are contained,
prevented or encouraged by the day-in, day-out practices and (often
unspoken) rules of a particular discursive formation, in Foucault’s term.

We explore how you might use linguistic critical discursive approaches in
Chapter 15. Deacon et al. (2007) outline their value:
Discourse analysis can . . . point to attempts to close meaning down, to fix
it in relation to a given position, to make certain conventions self-evidently
correct, to do creative repair work when something becomes
problematic, and to make the subject positions of discourse transparently
obvious without any viable alternatives. (158)
‘Subject positions’ here refers to how we can be ‘positioned’ by the ways
certain discourses address us, in words gestures, etc. A related term is mode
of address. Coming out of critical linguistics, it refers to the ways a text
seems to ‘speak to’ its audience, or ‘who it thinks we are’. In everyday
encounters, whether on- or offline, our way of addressing a teacher, a friend,
a bank manager usually incorporates a (different) ‘position’ for each of those
people in what we are saying: as someone being treated respectfully, with
intimacy or with caution. The further implication is that when we are

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Discourses

For a very funny dissection of
many practices of UK news
forms see Charlie Brooker’s
Newswipe (BBC4 2009–,
extracts available on
YouTube and a very popular
one via the link http://www.
broadcastnow.co.uk/news/
multi-platform/charliebrooker-scores-globalyoutube-hit/5010263.article).

The model Lily Cole recently,
interviewed about her
academic studies, spoke of
‘banking’ the experience and
then seeing what she wanted
to do. We routinely talk of
‘investing’ in decision,
students are often called
‘customers’, we ‘own’ rather
than are involved with
projects and so on.

addressed in certain ways (as ‘naughty children’, as newly ‘grown-up’, etc.) we
‘play along’ and may even assume or perform the identity thus constructed
for us, at least temporarily.
Or take ‘professional’ reporting of financial news. It often uses obscuring
metaphors, such as ‘the pound/stock exchange had a bad day/bounced
back/took a hammering’, or ‘the NASDAQ dived’ or ‘getting the economy
back on the rails’, which later became ‘the banks need to clean up their
balance sheets; the government is cleaning-up the financial sector’, etc. These
both re-mystify the already mysterious workings of stock exchanges, and also
‘naturalise’ them, in the ways we outlined above via the Marxist idea of
‘fetishism’ or ‘reification’.
Arguably related to this is the suggestion that everyday personal life, and
not just ‘business’, is increasingly framed as a space of economic action
and ‘investment’. Payments of student loans, mortgages, credit cards,
pensions and so on are obviously part of global financial networks. But we are
also addressed by a range of ‘private’ cultural forms, like ‘lifestyle’ television
and magazine features about home renovations, and many kinds of personal
make-overs. These invite us to think of the future returns they may yield. We
are thus repeatedly positioned in ‘aspirational’ ways, a classic ideological part
of consumer capitalist discourses.

EXPLORE 6.8
Consider this position for any recent ‘lifestyle’ programme or magazine
feature you’ve recently enjoyed. Do you agree with the suggestion above? If
not, why not?

Examples
1 T-shirt for G8 protests in 2005. It reworks familiar discourses of African
dependency by
a the words ‘History Makes Poverty’ (a variant on ‘Make Poverty History’
which was the slogan of many demonstrators, and already a striking
phrase).
b the substitution of ‘Greedy 8’ for ‘G8’;
Figure 6.8 ‘Make poverty history’
T-shirt

188

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

Lived cultures

c (less visible) a map showing ‘the history of this division of another
continent’s human and natural resources’.
2 Another example of turning a discourse around, drawing attention to the
ways language and kinds of logic are used: ‘When I give food to the poor
they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a
communist’: Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil (1909–99),
a pioneer of Latin America’s liberation theology movement, which argued
the Gospels justified social change, not social acquiescence.

EXPLORE 6.9
Look through your usual news sources, print, TV or online. Can you find any
metaphors which seem to be doing the kinds of ideological work suggested so far?
Existing examples would include:
• the use of the metaphor of ‘cancer’ in political discourse, which is argued to
encourage fatalism about a situation, and often to justify ‘severe measures’;
it also suggests that cancer is always fatal, which is no longer true;
• ‘downsizing’ as a (pre-recession?) signifier for cutting down workforces. Other
euphemisms include ‘modernising’, ‘streamlining’, ‘restructuring’, ‘rationalising’,
‘making leaner, fitter’ and so on.

Figure 6.9 ‘Cool’ is a powerfully
fashionable attitude, one which
does not easily combine with
political activism, debate, etc. Kate
Moss is considered by many to
embody this, often performing a
‘look’ to camera which is haughty,
unconcerned, remote, not ‘needy’,
She is also renowned for hardly
ever speaking in public, staying
remote.

Lived cultures
An interest in ‘lived cultures’ (loosely part of discourse approaches)
takes us back to some of the ideas of Gramsci, as well as out towards
the concerns of cultural studies. Gramsci argued that ‘common sense’,
an ‘obvious’ guide for many people, can be explored as a complex set
of traces, rather than simple ‘wisdom’. These traces may come from
hundreds of years ago and may be contradictory (‘God helps those who
help themselves’). But they are also constantly changing, and jostle with
much more recent beliefs and much ‘good sense’. He emphasised that
hegemony is a lived process, never simply imposed, or existing in ideas
alone. The power of ‘common sense’ (rather than what he called ‘good
sense’) comes from its relationship to day-to-day material practices,
rituals and activities, as well as dominant ideas.

Figure 6.10 A slogan in the form
of a British Second World War
propaganda poster which has
had a huge revival recently, in mug,
T-shirt and postcard forms – as
well as being parodied (‘NOW
PANIC AND FREAK OUT’).
See this chapter’s case study for a
companion image, and for
discussion of ‘propaganda’.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Lived cultures

Examples

Figure 6.11 Two girls in the ruins
of Battersea, London, VE Day,
8 May 1945. Arguably their
‘unknowing’ use of the two flags
makes the photo all the more
resonant, or ‘cute’. Anonymous
US photographer, Imperial War
Museum.

1 Billig explores the construction of national identity, arguably so useful
to those who wield political power and stirring rhetoric to persuade
young men and women to fight and even die in wars of economic
interest. (Of course economic necessity may also drive them: they are
not simply ‘dupes’.)
He suggests that such a ‘strong’ version of national identity is not
something that is constantly ‘there’. Instead ‘one needs to look for the
reasons why people in the contemporary world do not forget their
nationality’ (1995: 7; emphasis added), which is always ‘there, and
can then be called upon in moments of struggle’. He suggests this is
achieved, in established nations, by ‘banal nationalism’, a set of banal,
or everyday, lived practices. These form a continuous ‘flagging’ via
everyday tiny reminders of nationhood: not a flag waved with fervent
passion in the sports parade or war, but the ‘flag hanging unnoticed on
the public building’, the daily salute to the Stars and Stripes in US
schools, national symbols on coins and stamps, national history
memorialised in street names, or the use of words such as ‘we’, ‘us’,
‘them’, ‘home’, ‘foreign’ in news reporting. Billig (2005) and Andy
Medhurst (2007) have also explored the role of humour and its
pleasures in sustaining dominant identities, as well as in subverting
some of them.

EXPLORE 6.10

•

•

See Grindstaff and West
(2006) for an interesting
piece on cheerleading and the
gendered politics of sport.

190

Research for a range of examples of signifiers of both ‘banal’ nationalist
discourses and of more self-important kinds, such as commemorative or sports
ceremonials, nationalist websites, etc. (The racist British National Party (BNP)
was recently criticised for trying to adopt Second World War imagery as part
of its image.)
You might also watch for people who are declared ‘national treasures’ from
time to time. What is the tone and role of this particular part of the nationalist
discourse?

2 The lived cultures of sport, especially as constructed by corporate
media, could also be examined for the ways they reproduce and
‘refresh’ our sense of categories such as gender and nationality. They
also display/construct the desirability of physical and financial power
(the ‘big hitters’, ‘size matters’), part of the discourse of many big
corporations.

6: IDEOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES

Economic determinants clearly shape some of our sense of the
relative importance of men’s and women’s sports. Overall media
coverage of men’s sports massively exceeds that of women’s, which
also usually has smaller prize money, except when the Olympics take
place. But linguistic ‘marking’ and other ‘natural-seeming’ practices of
the media reinforce the gender differences in sports.
• Women’s sports are still likely to be subject to verbal and visual
‘gender-marking’, especially in internet imagery. Sportswomen are
sometimes still infantilised in television commentary, as ‘girls’
(it’s rare to hear male sports people called ‘boys’); by the use of the
first name; by repeated reference to their marital or family status
(e.g. the tennis achievements of the Williams sisters were often
related to their father’s coaching in a way not seen with male sports
stars). In women’s basketball the images of the players are typically
subject to sexualisation, and tennis players such as Maria Sharapova
arguably attain celebrity status partly because of appearance.
• Women’s achievements are less often held up as representative of
‘the nation’ (as happens for rugby teams, etc.). It is more usually
seen as a personal affair, partly perhaps because they are less
likely to be competing in the big team sports which depend on
institutional funding and networking all the way from early
schooling.

Conclusion

‘The sports pages in
newspapers are not optional
extras . . . There are always
sports pages, and these are
never left empty. Every day,
the world over, millions upon
millions of men scan these
pages, sharing in defeats and
victories, feeling at home in
this world of waved flags’
(Billig 1995: 122).

Conclusion
In summary, the Marxist emphasis on economics and class struggle as
the basis of ideology has been replaced by an interest in other kinds of
• oppression
• power formations
• ways of circulating and challenging dominant assumptions.
For this there has been a shift from an emphasis on ‘ideology’ to one on
‘discourses’. The media are no longer seen as ‘concealing’ or ‘masking’
the ‘true’ processes of a class struggle which exist in binary forms –
capitalist/worker.
This approach has been replaced, in media studies, by
• a sense that, while concentrated levels of economic power do
operate, they are complicated by other, often equally key sets of
oppression;
• a sense that these are further complicated by the circulation of many
confident new identities and related new ideas;
• an exploration of fiction, entertainment and fantasy forms, as well as
‘factual’ ones, as a way of exploring these identities;

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References and further reading

•

an interest in how audiences using many new media forms can be an
active part of media processes and struggles.
Many would argue that much has been lost as well as gained in the
move away from Marxism’s emphasis on economic inequality, especially
in present times of economic trauma and deeply unequal capitalist
societies, linked globally. There seem now to be moves to re-explore
some of that emphasis, for the very different times we are in – which this
chapter tries to be part of.
Our case study focuses on one of the trickiest contemporary struggles,
around climate change, which raises new issues for ideological analysis.

References and further reading
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Hill, Stephen, and Turner, Bryan S. (1980) The
Dominant Ideology Thesis, London: Allen & Unwin.
Balnaves, Mark, Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, and Shoesmith, Brian
(2009) Media Theories and Approaches: A Global Perspective, London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Bennett, Tony, Grossberg, Lawrence, and Morris, Meaghan (eds) (2005)
New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London
and New York: Blackwell.
Billig, Michael (1995) Banal Nationalism, London: Sage.
Billig, Michael (2005). Laughter and Ridicule: Toward a Social Critique of
Humour, London: Sage.
Connell, Robert (2000) The Men and the Boys, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Deacon, David, Pickering, Michael and Murdock, Graham (2007)
Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and
Cultural Analysis, London and New York: Hodder.
Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse, London: Arnold.
Foucault, Michel (1988) Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other
Writings, 1977–1984, London: Routledge.
Golding, Peter, and Murdock, Graham (1991) ‘Culture, Communications
and Political Economy’, in Curran, James, and Gurevitch, Michael
(eds) Mass Media and Society, London: Edward Arnold.
Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
Grindstaff, Laura, and West, Emily (2006) ‘Cheerleading and the
Gendered Politics of Sport’, Social Problems, 53, 1.
Hochschild, Arlie (2003) The Commercial Spirit of Intimate Life and Other
Essays, San Francisco and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Holland, Patricia (2003) Picturing Childhood: The Myth of the Child in
Popular Imagery, London: I. B. Tauris.
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References and further reading

Hyde, Marina (2009) ‘Julia Roberts Turns a Temple in India into a Closed
Set’, The Guardian, 25 September.
Klein, Naomi (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
London and New York: Allen Lane.
Klein, Naomi (2009) No Logo, revised anniversary edition, London and
New York: Picador.
Lawson, Neal (2009) All Consuming: How Shopping Get Us Into This Mess
and How We Can Find Our Way Out, London and New York: Penguin.
Lewis, Justin, Inthorn, Sanna, and Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin (2005) Citizens
or Consumers? What the Media Tell us about Political Participation,
London and New York: Open University Press.
Marmot, Michael (2005) Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing
Directly Affects Your Health and Life Expectancy, London: Bloomsbury.
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick (1965; first published 1888) The
German Ideology, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Medhurst, Andy (2007) A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English
Cultural Identities, London and New York: Routledge.
Munt, Sally (ed.) (2000) Cultural Studies and the Working Class, London
and New York: Cassell.
Nunn, Heather, and Biressi, Anita (2009) ‘The Undeserving Poor’,
Soundings, 41 (spring): 107–17.
Orr, Deborah (2009) ‘Diversity and Equality Are Not the Same Thing’,
The Guardian, G2, 22 October, 10–11.
Therborn, Goran (2009) ‘The Killing Fields of Inequality’, Soundings, 42
(summer): 20–32.
Thompson, John B. (1997) The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of
the Media, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wasko, Janet (2001) Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wasko, Janet, Phillips, Mark R., and Meehan, Eileen R. (2006) Dazzled by
Disney?: The Global Audiences Disney Project (Continuum Collection),
Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Wilkinson, Richard, and Pickett, Kate (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More
Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, London and New York: Allen
Lane.
Williamson, Judith (1985) Consuming Passions, London: Marion Boyars.
Williamson, Judith (2008) ‘The Culture of Denial’, a talk on http://www.
friezefoundation.org.
Wood, Helen, and Skeggs, Bev (2008) ‘Spectacular Morality’, in
Hesmondhalgh, David, and Toynbee, Jason (eds) The Media and Social
Theory, London and New York: Routledge.

193

CASE STUDY

The Age of Stupid and climate
change politics
•

CONTEXT: IMAGES AND DISCOURSES

•

‘CINEMA’ AND ITS ‘EVERYDAY PRACTICES’

•

THE TERM ‘PROPAGANDA’

•

CONCLUSION

•

TEXTUAL APPROACHES TO THE FILM

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

‘Climate change politics’ is a complex, global and
vigorously contested area. So it is no surprise that
discussion of media imagery of this field can also be
fierce and complicated. But at least, at last, it is now
globally ‘high profile’. The very idea that certain kinds of
human activity were prime causes of disastrous climate
change was denied for many years, often by polemicists
funded by Big Oil (see www.exxonsecrets.org), who
continue to be active in this area.
We are using a 2008 British film The Age of Stupid,

1 The revolutionary theorist Gramsci wrote: ‘The
old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this
interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms
appear’ (1930; translated and published 1971).
2 ‘Other generations managed to abolish slavery,
overturn apartheid or even land on the moon.
We know what we have to do’ (Director Franny
Armstrong’s email to supporters before the UK
premiere, 2009).

funded, made, released and publicised globally in 2009,
in highly unconventional ways. It forms a good case
study for the ideological questions around media,
including ‘new media’ or Web 2.0, raised by attempts to

CONTEXT: IMAGES AND DISCOURSES

activate protest and change:

Advertising in general has claims to be the biggest

• how to ‘represent’ the issues at play in climate
change debates;

propaganda system ever invented (see below). For

• how to work these into a film designed for wide
release, which has to make accessible and

obsolesence’, as well as the fetishised glamour of the

‘entertaining’ cinema;
• how such re-mediation (from documentaries,
political speeches, research, etc. to a hopefully
engaging film) can relate to discourses and practices
involved in making and distributing a ‘global’ film.

cars in particular the ads often trade on ‘planned
role of cars in films, games and Top Gear (BBC relaunch
2002–present). It’s difficult to promote even the best
public transport systems with quite the same sense of
dangerous glamour, even though most people’s actual
experience of driving involves traffic jams.
Responding to evidence of accelerating climate

It was made for global release at a key ‘moment’:

change has for some time been hugely contradictory for

months before the Copenhagen summit of world

car advertisers. Here a relatively ‘eco-friendly’ but

leaders in December 2009. By then there was abundant

nevertheless metals-and-minerals-hungry Prius car

evidence of the impact of warming.

advertises itself. The eco-discourse is a familiar blend of

194

CASE STUDY: THE AGE OF STUPID

Context: images and discourses

Figure 6.13 Polar bear
Figure 6.12 An ad for a relatively eco-conscious car, with ‘good’
mileage, use of recyclables, etc. By contrast you can easily find
examples of car ads which flaunt their carelessness for the
resources they use. See also the Prius 2010 ad on YouTube.

Even the BBC’s global blockbusters Planet Earth (2006,
first series) and Life (2009), wonderful in many ways, are
mostly devoid of tourists, or other mention of human
shaping, since that might impact on the purity of the

white colours, in car and backgrounds, a context devoid

spectacle.

of other traffic, and signifiers of the prettier parts of

The phrase, secondly, ignores the fact that ‘the

‘nature’. Often car ads will ‘offer to take you to places

planet’ arguably will survive any disaster affecting

which are not likely to exist in the future, precisely

people. It has long mutated, and survived past huge

because of the use of products like cars’ (Williamson

changes. Perhaps insects, or other tenacious species, will

2008).

be newly dominant?

Greenpeace has successfully drawn attention to the
evidence of melting glaciers over the past decades.
Antarctic polar bears have become figurehead images,

EXPLORE 6.11

looking forlorn but ‘cute’ on tiny ice floes, each seeming
to be the last glacier. The slogan ‘save the planet’ tends

•

to focus on such empty, spectacular landscapes. As a
(dominant?) visual discourse it may carry a sense that

•

something separate out there – ‘the natural world’ –
can be studied, imaged and indeed ‘helped’. This,
though, ignores how it has long been shaped by human

•

Are there equivalent images to this kind of warning,
involving human beings?
Would they need to come from ‘hot spots’, in both
senses of the word?
Then, how could such images be different from
other, familiar, ‘disaster’ images?

cultures, and especially high-consumer capitalist ones.

195

Context: images and discourses

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
Figure 6.15 A poster for
The Day After Tomorrow
(US 2004), Hollywood’s first
eco-blockbuster film, with
all the contradictions that
involves.

Figure 6.14 The ‘dry’ apocalypse of award-winning computer game
Fallout 3.

In a wide range of images like those in figures
6.14–6.16, compelling visual discourses (especially in
the US, with its long-established frontier myths) from

Figure 6.16 Wall-E, big-budget
animation with dystopic views
of the future, but a fragile
hope in its narrative.

survivalist narratives are often at play: how might you
survive in a world without modern resources? These
merge (certainly in parts of the US) into religious
discourses of ‘rapture’ at what is seen as the coming,
and oddly welcome, End of the World (see
http://www.raptureready.com). ‘The worst’, here, is
partly framed as yet another challenge to militaristic
skills.

EXPLORE 6.12

•

•
•
•

196

What are the limits and strengths to the ways that different media and media forms (fact/fiction, children’s/adult
forms, etc) are able to represent climate change politics? This is a challenging question for entertainment fiction
forms, like cinema and some games. News, documentary, social networking sites can keep us up to date, minute
by minute, with scientific debates, the latest floods and so on. Fictions perform other kinds of representational
‘work’, and take much longer to produce.
Do film and TV representations have to be environmentally destructive, e.g. by showcasing expensive special FX,
stars, stunts, etc. for the games and other spin-offs which are partly needed to fund the films?
How do these relate to long-established post-apocalyptic discourses? Might they make ‘the end of things’ feel
glamorous?
Most important, might the repetition of such scenarios, without any sense of an alternative politics and different
futures, deepen people’s sense that there is nothing to be done – at least in non-’action adventure’ politics and
practices? (see Branston 2007).

CASE STUDY: THE AGE OF STUPID

The term ‘propaganda’

As a film trying to shift dominant discourses and

The important British cultural theorist Stuart Hall
used to refer to ‘Thatcher’s friend TINA’ in trying to
account for part of the ideological appeal of her
neoliberal politics. ‘TINA’ stands for ‘There Is No
Alternative’. There are parallels with climate change
politics.

political action on climate change, The Age of Stupid
has to work firstly in a particular discursive context: key,
familiar terms such as ‘progress’, ‘development’ and
‘sustainability’ need to be queried. Sustaining what
social order exactly? Developing further what kinds of
inequalities and unequal levels of consumption? Which
impulses and sets of knowledge are effectively being

under-developed and un-sustained?

EXPLORE 6.13
List any such fictions you, or your friends, have seen, or
played.
• Do you think they have they helped shape your
sense of possible futures?
• How do they relate to the more practical, optimistic
discourses in many children’s books and news
programmes, and some climate change protest
movements? These offer immediate possibilities for
small, everyday practices as challenges to ‘inevitable’
disaster. They can also build the political will for
larger change, as in these solar power ‘farms’.

Secondly, it inhabits several formal or refracting
contexts.
• How well can films like this, needing wide circulation
and to offer pleasures to big global audiences,
represent complex arguments?
• How well can DVD extras, as here, usefully extend
the main film?
• Key components of cinema are sensuous,
audio-visual, entertaining. How to combine these
with the message of the film? What genres seem to
produce them?

EXPLORE 6.14

•

Figure 6.17 Possible images of the future could include safe energy
sources like these solar power generators in southern Spain, 2009.

•

How differently did the film Wall-E construct these
scenarios? Explore its vision of future human
existence in the Buy’n’Large spaceship sequences.
And at the X-Box game version, and the film’s other
tie-ins. Do these contradict parts of the main film’s
‘message’?

If you have not seen the film, jot down what you
expect of it. This is often a powerful way of seeing
how expectations have been shaped and circulated,
even for non-blockbuster films, and also how
precisely the film works.
Areas to include:
• how might it open?
• what might the first scene consist of?
• what exactly do you expect from Peter
Postlethwaite’s role?
• is it to be ‘propaganda’?
• how will it end?

THE TERM ‘PROPAGANDA’
Some words can bring thoughtful conversations to a
juddering halt. ‘Propaganda’ is one of these. To dismiss

197

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Textual approaches to the film

a film as ‘just propaganda’ (a contemporary word

culture in the US, where they fled to in the 1930s, in

seems to be ‘preachy’) is to locate or frame it as beyond

similar terms, provocatively likening it to ‘propaganda’.

the limits of acceptable discourse, as hopelessly biased

Herman and Chomsky did likewise, later.

and untrustworthy. On the other hand, The Fast and the

Yet if you accept our definition, it is not the form

Furious or Top Gear, which openly fetishise excessive

‘propaganda’ which is to blame for its bad reputation,

carbon use, will not be seen as propaganda. They are

but some of the uses to which it is put. This means that

classically ‘naturalised’ within consumer capitalist

if you disagree with a propagandising text (like this film)

cultures.

you need to argue why, in terms of the film’s case, and

The Age of Stupid, while loosely an SF film, is a
documentary, making propaganda for action on climate

not simply label it ‘propaganda’, and thereby stop
discussion.

change. Propaganda is a form of discourse which openly
presents itself as wanting to persuade its audiences,
often, but not always, by its argument and textual

EXPLORE 6.15

strategies. Advertising, public health and safety
messages, as well as political ones, could all be classified
as ‘propaganda’. This film’s title and the end credits
involve the words ‘AND YOU’ – a very open mode of
address, a way of positioning the audience which
mainstream cinema usually avoids.
But ‘propaganda’ is commonly misunderstood
as signifying only the manipulations of brutal

•

Gather a few recent uses of the word propaganda,
in print or in conversations. See if they correspond
to the suggestions here.
‘Ideology’ is sometimes used in similar ways. Such
marginalising usage can make it seem that it is always
the other side – never one’s own – that has an
ideology, or is trying to propagandise for its position.

governments, or lying political parties. The Frankfurt
School theorists made use of these connotations. They
had seen the unprecedented power of propaganda in
the early years of German Nazism. Understandably they
framed their critical approaches to early consumer

TEXTUAL APPROACHES TO THE FILM
First, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
video/2009/mar/02/age-of-stupid-making-of, a
50-minute documentary on the six years spent making
the film. Make notes on the makers’ approach to the
‘representability’ of eco-politics.
Here’s our discussion.
• As a documentary it is enjoyably performative. The
two film-makers expose some of their weaknesses
(e.g. Lizzie does not at first know about climate
change politics and starts by booking a flight) and
their anxieties during production (they wonder if

Figure 6.18 The British ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign during the Second World War (1939–45)
encouraged people to dig up gardens, flowerbeds and parklands to convert them to allotments
for vegetable production (see Chapter 1). There has been a recent revival of interest it. This
poster is ‘propaganda’, as is ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ in other parts of this book.

198

CASE STUDY: THE AGE OF STUPID

Textual approaches to the film

Figure 6.19 Though not aiming for the expensive hi-FX work of The Day After Tomorrow (US 2004), the film has some short but impressive
graphics sequences. They locate the beginning of the film in the ‘disaster/post-apocalypse’ field, and are also, shrewdly, part of the trailer.
The music too is a key pleasure. How would you describe its tone and function?

they ‘can sell the Alps footage’ if it all fails, and
so on).

How is it structured? How are the linked stories or
characters woven into an argument?

• It also offers ‘knowledge-related’ or cognitive
pleasures – about the stages of making such an
innovative documentary. It could be called
‘performative’ in that sense too. It acknowledges
glitches in production, the hard crafting of the Alpine
shots to show the passing of time, the ethical
questions of Alvin’s involvement after the grief of
Hurricane Katrina; the development of the computer
graphics, and the music, as well as the networks of
talent linked to Armstrong by this stage in her career.
Now, watch the film itself.

Director Franny Armstrong says she took the idea
of multiple heroes spread across continents from
Stephen Soderbergh’s big-budget Hollywood film
Traffic (US 2000). This was itself based on UK
Channel 4’s Sex Traffic (2005) about sex trafficking:
an example of the interconnections between
media forms across continents now. See also the
multiple hero/global narratives in ‘blockbuster’ TV
entertainment series Lost, Heroes and Flashforward.

There is no space to explore its complexity and ‘craftedness’ in detail. But it might be useful to organise your
responses through the following questions.

199

Textual approaches to the film

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Figure 6.20 Pete Postlethwaite as the archivist in this film.

1 Discuss the role of The Archivist/Peter Postlethwaite
character. You might think about
a his location in a kind of SF narrative, set in 2055,

what you would expect of a simple piece of
propaganda or ‘ideology’.
Q: Did you notice any examples of this? It seems to be

and including one very melancholy speculation

an important part of ideological work like this to

about the human race. What does this future

acknowledge the attractiveness or power of other

setting and melancholy tone allow that a more

positions and discourses (Alvin’s pride in his work as

conventional documentary form might inhibit?

an oil scientist; the seductiveness of images of US

b the small but important special effect of the
‘screen’ over which he pulls video clips. What does
this enable and add to the film? How would these
scenes be without it?

consumerism for Layefa in Nigeria).
‘Fundamentalist’ it is not.
3 As well as traditional documentary ‘evidence’, the
film uses ‘montage’, where short sequences of film
are juxtaposed so as to make a point via their

Compare the usage here to that of a similar screen
in Minority Report (US 2002).

combination. Again, these are not hammered home,
but viewers, by implication, are credited with the
intelligence. One example: the editing of the wind
farm protesters’ claims with filmed evidence of

c his voice: how does this signify? Tone, accent, age,
pace, etc.?
2 The film has been praised for including
contradictions and conflicts, for retaining footage
where characters express opinions which are not

200

high winds which contradicts them. Can you think
of others?

CASE STUDY: THE AGE OF STUPID

Textual approaches to the film

‘Politics’ is often seen as ‘uncool’. This is for a whole raft of reasons, some to do with the place of irony and
awareness of other discourses in interactive consumer capitalist cultures – often, for example, advertising
acknowledges, with a ‘wink’, the absurdity of some products.
‘Cool’ is used of figures looking unconcerned, remote, not needy (see discussion by ‘Lisa’ in the blog
http://sociologicalimages.blogspot.com and Chapter 6 on Moss). This is the very opposite of the feelings which
political movements need to build and connect with. Some activists in recent campaigns, like ‘Stupid’ and 10:10,
have adopted a very different style to that of older forms of protest, more humorous and inventive around
stunts, for example.

EXPLORE 6.16

•
•
•
•

Do you agree with our suggestions on ‘cool’?
Look at the film’s website, and at the documentary about its making. Is there a different kind of ‘cool’ at
work here?
What are the markers of this funny, smart discourse? In what ways does it seem to assume, or ‘position’, an
intelligent ‘media-savvy’ audience?
What are the pleasures of the film for you? Are there ‘un-pleasures’? Did you enjoy the short ‘films’ (often
animation) embedded in it which give entertaining potted histories of imperialism, advertising, ‘Crap is Us’
connected to China’s growth, and so on?

We’d argue that the film does a fine job of intervening

We could argue that, as well as the ideological work

in climate change debates by seeking to engage with

of making a coherent, smart and moving argument, the

popular audiences (see responses on the website http://

film has another achievement: it can produce hope, and

www.ageofstupid.net).

a desire to join in change.

‘To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing,’ Raymond Williams, often quoted
(but uncredited) in these contexts.
‘Climate change deniers’ often cite ‘an apathetic public’ as part of the problem. In an age of massively present
interactive media, mostly funded by advertising, this is a very powerful ‘denial’ ideological position all on its own.
Some theorists, using psychoanalytic perspectives, argue that, as with personal traumas, it’s often not apathy
but caring too much that may be the problem. The threat of unchecked climate change may be too painful to
engage with, especially if governments do not support or encourage actions that will make a difference (see
Lertzmann 2009).
Hence our argument that part of the effort of the film is to produce hope on the part of ordinary people and
everyday practices.

201

‘Cinema’ and its ‘everyday practices’

‘CINEMA’ AND ITS ‘EVERYDAY
PRACTICES’
The film also engages with the practices of cinema –
taken for granted and therefore, arguably, deeply
ideological. As we’ve said elsewhere, the media do not
merely represent the environment; they help to make it
the way it is. Part of this involves distribution and
exhibition discourses – the power of big broadcast and
cinema corporations simply to define/review/classify
an oppositional text as ‘uncommercial’. This helps
guarantee it will become ‘uncommercial’ and be seen
by only a few. ‘Big Hollywood’ is a key source of phrases
like ‘Size Matters’, and the publicising of films and
celebrity programmes in terms of how good it is to
flaunt wealth and consume, consume, consume.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
Stupid’, T shirts, DVDs, a compost bin and so on. Its
credits acknowledge help from funding bodies such
as the UK Film Council and the National Lottery –
important public sources. A version of ‘authorship’
will work for some in the audience. Franny Armstrong
was known as the director of McLibel: Two People

Who Wouldn’t Say Sorry (UK 2005; available on
video.google.com; see also trailer on YouTube). She is
also a funny, skilled and engaging speaker, organiser
and emailer – all important for the ‘around’ of such
cinema. See this from a 2009 email about the US-based
global premiere:
Glenn Beck [notorious Fox News anchor] is being very
rude about our film, but we don’t believe he even
watched it as surely he would have noted that he is in
it. (Funny Facebook response: Beck didn’t like this

An interesting connection was made in 2008–9
between the L’Oreal cosmetics company’s slogan
‘Because you’re worth it’ and the hyper-consuming
drives at the heart of the banks’ crash.
How does this slogan compare with ‘Because
you deserve it’? Through a shift in the sense of how
worth is measured? Might such tiny shifts, over time,
help construct, or relate to, new dominant
discourses?

new film, therefore, it must be GREAT. I’m going.)
Its production, distribution and exhibition practices, and
its use of the internet, are innovative and ‘sustainable’.
‘Crowd funding’ was used to raise the capital required.
Large numbers of ordinary people were asked, often
via the internet, for small donations. You can find on the
website more about the global premiere (http://vimeo.
com/6675157) as well as the pioneering ‘Indie
Screenings’ model. This is a new form of film distribution
allowing anyone, anywhere to buy a licence to hold a

In addition, at the level of funding and pre-production,

DVD screening of the film – with the price set according

blockbusters are massive marketing anchors for the

to the screener’s means – and then to charge for tickets

corporations which own them. At pre-planning and then

and keep any profits for themselves. There are no

‘tie-in’, ‘product place’ and franchise stages, other,

‘middlemen’.

often unnecessary, goods are sold on the back of them.

And at the end of the film there is an account of

Indeed for many big films these are a main source of

how much carbon was emitted during its making.

income. All this just when the entire world needs new

The ‘Stupid’ team also tried for the ‘world’s greenest

ways of living and sharing resources to be experienced

premiere’ with a projector powered by solar energy, a

as ‘cool’, and taken for granted.

tent lit with gas from London landfill sites, celebrities

This film makes what use it can of ‘mainstream’
strategies. Armstrong acknowledges developing

arriving in electric vehicles, low CO2 cars or bikes, to
walk on a green carpet, of course, and so on. Altogether

Soderbergh’s (Traffic) multiple internationally linked

a premiere which produced 1 per cent of the CO2

‘heroes’. It offers (modest) tie-in products: stickers, both

emissions of the typical blockbuster premiere: five

‘Stupid’ (found on some gas-guzzling cars) and ‘Not

tonnes compared with the usual five hundred.

202

CASE STUDY: THE AGE OF STUPID

CONCLUSION
A Marxist analysis would emphasise the extent to
which overconsumption is an inevitable outcome
of capitalism, especially in its contemporary highconsumer form. As a system based on competition and
profit, rather than co-operation and social sharing, it
systematically leads to overproduction, ‘planned
obsolescence’ (see Chapter 11) and an inevitable
ravaging of ‘natural resources’. The impact of the
disposal of these products on the environment is now
visible as a further problem.
Some big oil companies, despite their ‘greenwashed’
public image, are still busy funding the resistance to
environmentally responsible politics. We, and the film,
argue for understanding this economic and ideological
‘driver’ to the debate. But post-Marxist media and

References and further reading

old mountaineer talking eloquently of the changes he
has seen in the European Alps, and joining a bicycle

protest; Arab children as important ‘characters’, and
so on.
It has been argued that ‘green’ politics does not
have quite the same sense of an ‘enemy’ or ‘Other’
which often drove earlier ideologies (the clearer
‘capitalist versus workers’ model of Marxism, the
binaries which often drive fundamentalist religious
ideologies and so on). To some extent, however small
our power compared with that of the chairman of
Goldman Sachs, or Shell, for example, it is also up to ‘us’
to make changes in everyday ways, especially to how
we consume and conserve – as well as pressuring power
to make big changes. This film valuably strengthens
attempts to do just these things.

politics allow more than the prediction that this will be
‘the end of the planet’. Climate change is produced
unequally and will impact unequally – in fact is already
doing so. Some parts of the world, and of specific cities,
like New Orleans, are more impacted than others, for
reasons of pre-existing inequalities – of race, class,
gender, age and cultural capital. Some green activists
have objected to the fact that the work of recycling,
conserving, mending and so on will fall unequally on
women and men.
The film’s politics are ‘red-green’ in this sense, aware
of the politics of identity as well as of political economy.
Almost incidentally, it offers images, stories and
histories which include some (but not all) the major key
identities. It has women in significant positions, across
the world, both in front of and behind the camera; an

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Boyce, Tammy and Lewis, Justin (2009) Climate Change
and the Media, Oxford and New York: Peter Lang.
Branston, Gill (2007) ‘The Planet at the End of the
World’, New Review of Film and Television Studies,
5, 2.
Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison
Notebooks, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hansen, Anders (2010) Environment, Media and
Communication, London and New York: Routledge.
Lertzmann, Renee (2009) ‘The Myth of Apathy’, The
Ecologist, 38, 5 (June).
Williamson, Judith (2008) lecture, accessed via
www.friezefoundation.org, October.

203

7 Media as business

Creative rights are usually
invested in a ‘property’ and
referred to in legal terms as
‘intellectual property’.

•

Studying business organisations

•

Ownership and control

•

The experience of
conglomerates

•

Public and private in filmed
entertainment

•

The new digital environment

•

Business models

•

New players in India and China

•

Conclusion

•

Public or private funding?

•

References and further reading

Media production is invariably an industrial process. It usually involves
a creative producer and ‘rights’ to exploit creative labour, some form
of technology and a system of distribution and then ‘exchange’ (the
interaction with a user). Even if a producer is the legendary ‘musician in
a bedroom’, each of the above applies. They have all been subjected to
major changes over the past twenty years and media businesses
themselves are in turmoil, some having found new ways to monetise
their rights holdings – to make sure users pay something for their
products – while others face the prospect of declining sales.

EXPLORE 7.1 MEDIA BUYING HABITS
Reflect on your own media buying habits and compare them with what your
family might have been prepared to pay for five years ago. Do you:
• buy a newspaper of any sort on a regular basis?
• ever buy CDs?
• go to the cinema at least once a month?
• buy or rent DVDs?
• play games online?
• have a television set?
• think about how much you spend on online services and phone contracts?
What conclusions do you draw from your comparison?

204

7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

Studying business organisations

Studying business organisations
Over the relatively short history of media studies, some scholars have
argued that too much emphasis has been put on the media texts
themselves and that more attention should be directed towards media
use and media users. This is indeed what is happening to a certain
extent, possibly as media studies cohabits more productively with
cultural studies. Yet left out in this argument and seemingly always in
the background is a focus on media producers – how they are organised
and what kinds of practices they adopt and why. Our focus in this
chapter is on the media industries. We’ve chosen to refer to this work
in terms of media as a business activity. This signifies two things:
• we are mostly interested in organisations (public or private sector)
rather than individual producers, although what ‘bedroom producers’
of music, or even individual bloggers and software developers do, can
have an effect on media business as a whole;
• ‘business’ can act as a term to cover both industrial and institutional
issues which in previous editions of the book we have kept separate;
now we think that they might be better understood together.
The media industries are groupings of organisations producing both
physical goods (such as magazines, DVDs and videogames) and ‘live’
experiences (a night’s radio broadcasting, a screening of a 3D film in a
cinema) as well as a range of services and facilities supporting media
production and distribution. The totality of such media activity could
be considered to be an ecosystem – a system which is sustainable over
time with the different organisations interacting with each other in a
productive way. They also interact with media users, with critics and
commentators, and with regulators and governments.
The metaphorical use of ecology as part of media studies dates back
to the work of Marshall McLuhan and others in the 1970s. McLuhan was
discussing the interdependence of media forms at a time when the
different media industries were clearly distinct, using different
technologies and different forms of media language. Now we face a
media environment in which convergence of technologies and
applications means that we can access virtually all traditional media
forms on a single hand-held device. By the time you read this, we’ll know
whether consumers will accept a touchscreen ‘tablet’ like the iPad as an
attractive (and affordable) device that will allow users to play games,
screen movies, TV programmes, newspapers and ebooks, play music
and radio broadcasts, and provide full internet access.
But although all these media activities are likely to be available via a
single device, does it mean that we will have a single media industry? It

See Chapter 5 for Marshall
McLuhan

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Ownership and control
Figure 7.1 The iPad – on the way
to becoming the all-in-one
portable media player?

seems unlikely, but the ecological questions about which industries
will survive, which will mutate and how the dynamics of the media
environment can be managed, require us to consider a whole range of
concepts taken from economics and business studies, sociology and
politics, management studies and psychology.

The MSB5 website
provides up-to-date
information on
current media organisations
and some historical material
to provide context.

The ecology metaphor approach also has its critics who argue that a more
adequate image would be one of capitalist markets. Words like ‘landscape’
and ‘ecology’ are argued to perform a ‘softening’ function compared with
more commercially based ones.

Ownership and control
Political economy was the
original term from the early
nineteenth century for what
we now think of as
‘economics’. Political
economists were interested
in who owned land, labour
and capital and what the
political consequences of
their actions in using these
resources might be.

206

Questions about public/private ownership and control have always been
paramount for media theorists from a political economy background.
They have been concerned about the possibility that concentrated
ownership of media companies by small groups of ‘major players’ or
control by government agencies could have a detrimental effect on the
range of goods and services available to users.
This fear stems from the economics of monopoly supply (or more
correctly, oligopoly supply – the control of a market by a few large
organisations). By the early 2000s it seemed that the free-market
capitalists who successfully lobbied to loosen regulatory controls and

7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

privatise some public sector organisations during the 1970s and 1980s
were leading us inevitably towards a media landscape dominated by a
relatively small number of ‘media majors’. At the centre of this scenario
was the contradictory notion of a ‘free market’. The term suggested
media users would be able to choose whatever goods and services they
wanted. Yet deregulation actually fostered the growth of conglomerates
that consolidated production resources into a few hands and potentially
denied real choice to users.

Media conglomerates
Conglomerates are companies made up of separate divisions, each with
distinct identities operating in different sectors of the market – and possibly
different industries altogether. They are most often formed through a process
of ‘mergers and acquisitions’. Where this happens in a specific market or
sector it is termed consolidation.

Discussion of free markets is included in Chapter 10. Let’s look more
closely at media conglomerates.
Such companies mostly:
• operate across national boundaries;
• operate across media sectors and also, perhaps, in associated
industrial sectors such as telecommunications;
• are owned by shareholders (often institutional shareholders such as
pension funds) and managed by a managerial business class who may
have little direct experience of creative media;
• have headquarters in the US, Europe or Japan;
• are big enough, especially when working collectively through business
or trade associations, to lobby effectively against restrictions on their
activities proposed by national and international regulators.
There are still some individuals whose actions can be influential, but
they have to work within a framework of corporate management systems
and the ultimate power of shareholders. The corporate nature of modern
media activity means that business decisions will be based on both
short-term and long-term economic analyses – there is relatively little
space for creative decisions aimed at purely artistic innovation (although
good design will be an essential element in all media activities and
product innovation will require research and development).

Ownership and control

See references to the work
of theorists such as Janet
Wasko in Chapter 6.

Neoliberalism is the term
to describe a co-ordination
of privatisation and
deregulation. See Chapter 5.

In the ‘narrative of
free-market capitalism’,
consolidation is seen as
inevitable in mature markets.

The most powerful trade
association has been the
MPAA – the Motion Picture
Association of America, aka
the six major studios – see
http://www.mpaa.org/.

Figure 7.2 Hokllywood has often
turned to ‘buying in’ creativity by
attracting film-makers from
overseas or from other creative
industries into film production.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind (US 2004) was directed by
the French director Michel
Gondry.

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The experience of conglomerates

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E X P L O R E 7 . 2 D O M E D I A M O G U L S M AT T E R ?
Here are three influential individuals in the media industries. Use a search engine
to find out which corporations they have been involved in and why shareholders
are often interested in what they are up to:
• Sumner Redstone
• Steve Jobs
• Jeffrey Katzenberg.

However, there are several other factors that suggest that the steady
march of the media conglomerates towards complete domination of
global markets might not be inevitable. They include:
• the failure to make large corporations work effectively for the benefit
of shareholders and the decision to ‘de-merge’ in recent years (e.g.
Viacom and AOL-Time Warner);
• the impact of the recession of 2008–9 and the sudden recognition that
private industry sometimes needs public sector support;
• the development of new competitors in the growing markets of India
and China;
• the emergence of new business models which threaten to undermine
traditional ways of working.

The experience of conglomerates
The idea of a ‘media conglomerate’ has its roots in the 1970s when the
most famous media ‘brands’, the Hollywood studios, found themselves
bought by larger corporations (e.g. Paramount by Gulf & Western) with
no direct interest in media production as such. At this time, though,
there was little interaction between the different companies within the
same group.

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7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

E X P L O R E 7 . 3 H O L LY WO O D S T U D I O B R A N D S

•
•

How many of these are familiar? Do you know which studios use: a shield,
a mountain, a searchlight, a magic castle, a globe and a classical figure with a
torch?
These logos, most recognised all over the world for seventy years or more,
are valuable marketing and sales assets – even if the studios themselves don’t
actually make many of the films branded in this way;
http://www.neatorama.com/2008/12/03/the-story-behind-hollywood-studiologos/ has stories about some of the logos.

The experience of conglomerates

In 1969 Warner Bros was
bought by a company
operating a funeral business,
a parking lot operation, a car
rental agency and a building
maintenance company.

EXPLORE 7.4

•

•

Go to IMDb (imdb.com) and look up a few of your favourite films. Use the
‘combined details’ presentation and check each film’s distributor. The chances
are that most of your film choices will be distributed by one of the Hollywood
majors.
Now take the first two Hollywood majors you come across and do an internet
search to find out which other companies are part of the same conglomerate,
noting which media sectors they are in. It’s easiest to look for the ‘investors’
site for each conglomerate rather than the consumer site. It’s more fun to do
this yourself, but afterwards you can check out the ‘Media Majors’ page on the
MSB5 website.

In the mid-1970s Hollywood cinema was in the doldrums and seemingly
on the way out (even if some argue that the films were actually better).
When it revived commercially in the 1980s, particularly with the rental
and retail sales of films on VHS, and with various technological
innovations such as cable television, videogames and music video, the
possibilities of synergies between different divisions of a conglomerate
became apparent. Gradually, each of the famous studio brands was
bought by new owners who put together conglomerates solely concerned
with media activities (see the ‘The Media Majors’ on the MSB5 website).
By 2000, the media environment was dominated by a handful of major
corporations, all with global interests and all bar one using a famous
Hollywood studio as a significant brand.

Synergy – the concept that
extra value could emerge
from using the effort put
into one product in the
production and promotion
of another. For example, a
media conglomerate working
with an author in a publishing
division might also consider
film, television and game
adaptations in other divisions
of the same company
(or commercial partner
company).

209

The experience of conglomerates

The dot.com revolution – the
short period in which new
online companies, sometimes
little more than a website
with a clever marketing idea,
were founded and saw their
share prices rise dramatically
as they attracted new
investors. But since these
companies had no tangible
assets as such, there was
always the possibility that the
new investment ‘bubble’
would burst, as it did during
2000 (soon after the AOLTime Warner merger).

See the case study to
Chapter 5 on Slumdog
Millionaire and its ‘escape’
from Warner Independent to
Fox Searchlight which made
its US release possible.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

The merger between the internet service provider AOL and the
leading media major Time Warner early in 2000 was the biggest ever
media merger and seemed to signal both the convergence of online and
traditional media activities and further proof that the media ecosystem
was experiencing a consolidation of interests which had only one logical
outcome. But the merger never really worked and AOL was soon
revealed to be far less valuable than had appeared the case when the
so-called ‘dot.com revolution’ was being talked up.
In 2008 AOL was ‘de-merged’ from Time Warner. Earlier, in 2004,
Warner Music had separated from Time Warner in a management
buyout and in the same year, Universal Music was separated from
Universal Studios after the breakup of the failed Vivendi Universal
conglomerate. (The music business was the first of the core media
industries to be threatened by online activity and piracy, and perhaps it
is not surprising that it experienced the most turmoil at this time.)
One of the concepts that the move towards conglomerates involved
was the process of integration, the term used to describe the purchase of
other companies (or the founding of new subsidiaries) in order to extend
control over a media market in one of two ways. Vertical integration
has a long history in the film business. It refers to control over the whole
process of making, distributing and exhibiting a film so that during the
1930s the major studios like Warner Bros or Paramount would produce
their own films and distribute them ‘domestically’ and internationally –
often to their own cinemas. The studios had their cinema chains in the
US taken away in the late 1940s as part of ‘anti-trust’ laws designed to
increase competition, but in the 1980s they were able to develop their
own video labels and later to show their films on their own TV channels
in many cases.
Horizontal integration refers to control over companies working
across the same market sector. For instance, in the UK since 2000, the film
exhibition sector has seen consolidation, with three large cinema chains
(Odeon, Cineworld and Vue) taking over other exhibition companies so
that now they each control significant shares of the overall market.
Another good example of horizontal integration saw all the major
Hollywood studios in the 1990s taking over existing independent
specialised cinema distributors, so that each studio acquired its own
‘independent brand’. The whole idea of a different, independent
approach to making and distributing films in the US (and elsewhere) was
severely compromised. Recently these same studio brands have become
vulnerable to further changes in the economic climate and in 2008,
Warner Bros moved to close its three independent brands (New Line,
Warner Independent and Picturehouse).

7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

The experience of conglomerates
Figure 7.3 The London flagship of
the Vue cinema chain (once the
Warner West End) showing
promotional material from 20th
Century Fox and Paramount. Vue
is one of three chains, all owned
by investment groups, that
dominate the UK market.

What is the motive for creating a conglomerate? Growth is only
worthwhile if it secures and/or increases profits. But, often, there is no
agreement on which strategy might be sustainable in the long term.
Some managements look for diversification – operating in as many
different media industries as possible. Others, driven by a belief in
synergy, attempt to work in different media that share the same content.
For instance, in the relatively short-lived Viacom conglomerate, all the
divisions, including television brands MTV and Nickelodeon, were
encouraged to initiate film productions for Paramount.
The identification of shared content also raised the question of
whether it is more profitable in the long run to be a content provider
or a content carrier – e.g. to own the rights to films or to own a TV
channel. Some conglomerates have attempted to do both, but others
argue that they are very different kinds of activities and that companies
can be more successful (in producing profits for shareholders) by
focusing on one.
Media content became more valuable as outlets/carriers began to
multiply, since back catalogues could command a higher price as new

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New players in India and China

Film libraries do have a fixed
cost of simply storing physical
copies and maintaining them,
but their value as assets is
shown by the number of
times whole libraries have
been bought and sold – most
British films are no longer
held by their original owners
and many are held by the
French company Studio
Canal.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

carriers competed for material to fill their airtime. Content also has the
advantage that during an economic recession a film library doesn’t lose
money, whereas advertising-funded television channels probably will.
This also leads us towards another issue that we will meet later – the
distinction between carriers that are subscription-based and those that
are advertising-based.
What is heralded as a world-beating merger one day can be dismissed
as folly only a few years later. Recognition of the importance of brands
and the value of back catalogues is evidence that the ‘old’ media
industries still have confidence in their ability to withstand the pace
of change. However, as we see in Chapter 8, the concept of ‘owning
content’ is beginning to look like a precarious investment if copying is
inevitable in the world of Web 2.0. Kevin Kelly suggests that future
income will come from the ‘extras’ that can be offered with the copy that
will be effectively ‘free’ (see http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/
2008/01/better_than_fre.php). We aren’t there yet, but it must be
a frightening prospect for those whose income relies on royalties derived
from repeat sales of their content. As well as these warnings, the
‘traditional’ media majors also face other new challenges.

New players in India and China
The major media corporations emerged during specific periods of
industrial development. For instance, the leading European media
corporation (and the only major without a Hollywood brand),
Bertelsmann of Germany, began as a printing company in the nineteenth
century and as this statement on its website suggests, it is still aware of
what this means for its corporate culture:

Bertelsmann is a rare
conglomerate that is still
mainly under the control of
the Mohn family, descendants
of Bertelsmann, who
refounded the company in
1947. Reinhard Mohn, a
hands-on figure known to his
workforce in the company’s
base in Gütersloh, died in
October 2009. Will his heirs
manage to keep the company
as a family business?

212

Tradition-consciousness is a fixture in our corporate culture, which
strives to integrate historically developed values with modern
corporate policy.
(www.bertelsmann.com)
Other major European media companies such as Reed-Elsevier
(Anglo-Dutch) and Pearson (UK) are also rooted in print publishing,
but the famous names associated with cinema, the next media form to
emerge in the late nineteenth century, are mostly American (even if
many were built up by migrants from Europe). Since the 1980s new
American ‘players’ in the global media business have emerged in the
form of ‘start-up’ companies engaged in computing and online activity.
Microsoft, Apple and Google have developed within a completely

7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

New players in India and China

different business environment. Statements like this from Tim Cook at
Apple are indicative of a different kind of approach to business:
We’re constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple,
not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the
primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate
only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
(Tim Cook, 21 January 2009, Apple Earnings Conference)
We can see in this statement that Apple has a distinctive corporate
culture, which includes the ‘ownership and control’ of both the hardware
and software associated with its computers. Although Apple and
Microsoft have different strategies (Microsoft focusing on its software
for generic PCs), they share with Google a start-up company ethos (a
‘West Coast’ feel), driven primarily by ideas. But as they have become
embroiled in both the consumer gadget and the media carrier markets
(i.e. MP3 players and music and TV downloads) will they begin to behave
more like the traditional media companies?
In Japan, publishing and motion picture companies emerged in much
the same way as in Europe and Hollywood, although against a different
cultural background and interrupted by the militarism of the 1930s and
the subsequent defeat and occupation of Japan in 1945 – which in turn
led to the post-war environment in which Sony developed. The Japanese
experience suggests that hardware is easier to sell across cultural
barriers, so that it is Sony, Panasonic (Matsushita) and the other
hardware manufacturers that have a global presence rather than film and
television studio majors such as Toho or Shochiku, which attempt to sell
Japanese cultural content (and foreign content) to Japanese users.
India and China had sophisticated entertainment forms well before
Europe and North America (and Japan), but European colonialism and
imperialism stifled the development of local media organisations in Asia
up to the Second World War. In the decades following the war, China
(apart from Hong Kong) was to a large extent cut off from the global
business environment because of the trade policies of the Chinese
Communist Party. In India government economic policy was also
not encouraging for media corporations with global ambitions until
the ‘liberalisation’ of economic activities introduced in 1991. Now, the
two most populous countries in the world each have a rapidly growing
middle class, providing a home market large enough to sustain
large-scale media companies (always the advantage held by the
US media companies over their European rivals with smaller
single-language markets).

Computer start-up
companies appeared in the
1980s and featured new kinds
of entrepreneurs, in one
sense ‘driven’ by ambition,
but in another, informal and
opposed to hierarchical
business traditions.

Sony’s ownership of the
Hollywood studio brand
Columbia is a legacy of the
period when Japanese
electronics manufacturers
decided that owning a studio
would help them sell
videocassettes – a form of
vertical integration.
Matsushita were briefly
owners of MCA/Universal
Studios from 1990 to 1995.

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New players in India and China

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

In the media ecosystem of 2010 and beyond there will be a range of
global media corporations. It remains to be seen whether the emergent
media corporations in India simply follow Hollywood models and whether
Chinese corporations will be allowed by their government to develop
further and to build a global identity (i.e. outside traditional Chinese
markets in South-East Asia and the Chinese diaspora communities).

Shekhar Kapur, Indian
director of Elizabeth: The
Golden Age (2007), predicts
that: ‘In future sequels, when
Spider-Man takes off his mask
in Asia, he will probably be
either Chinese or Indian. And
he will no longer swing from
the high-rise buildings of New
York, but from Shanghai or
Mumbai.’ (Ramachandran
2008)

EXPLORE 7.5 THE RISING INDIAN MEDIA
C O R P O R AT I O N S
Each of these corporations has a Hollywood connection:
• UMP (UTV Motion Pictures)
• Reliance Big Entertainment (Adlabs).
Search to find out what the connections are. Are these corporations similar to US
conglomerates?

The UK Film Council defines ‘filmed entertainment’ as including:
• theatrical (i.e. cinema)
• terrestrial TV
• DVD/video rental
• free multichannel
DVD/retail
•
• nVOD (near Video on Demand) and
VOD – includes TV and online.
• pay TV

Figure 7.4 Filmed entertainment
figures for 2008, and 2013
projection.
Source: UK Film Council Statistical
Yearbook 2009.

What these figures show is the current underdeveloped state of the Indian
and Chinese industries and their predicted substantial growth up to 2013.

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7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

China and India are important in other ways as well. Newspaper sales
are going down in Europe and North America, but they are rising in India
and China – and some Western publishers have taken the opportunity to
buy into the newspaper business in India. The UK-based Daily Mail and
General Trust (DMGT) took the maximum permitted 26 per cent stake
in Mail Today, a joint venture with the India Today Group which also
publishes Indian editions of many well-known American magazines (see
http://www.indiatodaygroup.com/). India has been a major location for
computer software companies for some time – it seems likely that some
future web developments will be led by Indian companies.

Public or private funding

Figure 7.5 A Mexican multiplex
built by Cinépolis, a major Latin
American chain which in 2009
announced a major building
programme in India – banking on
growing Indian demand for new
cinemas in different markets and
drawing on its experience of
similar conditions in Mexico
(soon to become the third largest
territory in the world in
admissions).

Figure 7.6
The e-paper edition of Mail Today

Public or private funding
The most startling news stories of 2008 concerned the intervention of
governments, via the use of taxpayers’ money, in the major financial
markets to bail out failed banks and mortgage lenders in Europe and
the US. Not so much of a surprise perhaps in Europe, but in the US
government intervention has become much more controversial. We are
conscious, in writing for students in a potentially global media studies
community, that terms used to describe policies in the US may seem
strange to readers in Europe and vice versa. The salvaging of
international banking through intervention exposed attitudes to the
public/private debate and points us towards thinking through what it
means for media businesses.
In August 2009, two stories appeared in the UK media. In one, it was
reported by the Daily Mail that the UK government had agreed to take
‘tough action’ against illegal downloaders of music and video files on the
internet by requiring ISPs to cut off subscriber connections. This was
much stronger action than recommended in the UK government’s Digital

The hostile use of terms like
‘socialised medicine’ in the
campaign against Barack
Obama’s health plans is one
example of this confusion.
Most people outside the US
who have access to good
levels of healthcare use some
form of publicly funded
service.

215

Public or private funding

The ‘silly season’ refers to
the holiday period in many
countries, when there is little
hard business or political
news and the press and
broadcast media tend to fill
their space with frivolous or
sensationalist news stories.

Public service broadcasting is
discussed in Chapter 9 along
with arguments about public
funding via the licence fee.

Much of the credit for the
BBC’s successful venture into
online media services is now
being given to John Birt, the
former director-general
(1992–2000). Birt has been
heavily criticised for his
‘modernisation’ and
‘centralisation’ policies, but in
the case of digital media they
seem to have paid off.

Cross-media ownership is
a feature of many national
regulation strategies designed
to prevent strong market
positions in different media
sectors held by the same
owner adding up to an overall
monopoly position in the
national media market.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Britain report. The action was prompted, the Mail suggested, by a visit to
the UK by David Geffen, the wealthy ‘media mogul’ and founder of both
Geffen Records and (with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg)
Dream Works Studio. Geffen is supposed to have had dinner with UK
Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson. Perhaps this was just a ‘silly season’
story tied to celebrity gossip, but it is suggestive of the way in which
media industries lobby for government ‘protection’ of their private
interests at the same time as attacking public sector media and other
forms of government intervention. The story did indeed later prove to
have some substance in that Mandelson announced a policy along these
lines in October 2009.
Barely a week after the initial story, Rupert Murdoch’s son James
launched an attack on the BBC investment of taxpayers’ money in its
extremely successful online news operation. James Murdoch was
speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival as the chair and CEO of
News Corporation (Europe and Asia), the biggest shareholder in BSkyB,
one of the main competitors for the BBC. The Murdoch family has a
long track record of attacks upon the BBC and the whole concept of public
service broadcasting (PSB), but this outburst was particularly well-timed
(see below for Rupert Murdoch’s comments on charging for online news).
With the advertising downturn and the gradual collapse of the
newspaper market, the BBC’s astute move into comprehensive online
coverage – which provides video, audio and text services created by or
for the corporation’s radio and television channels – is a direct threat to
the viability of the private sector media companies’ attempts to exploit
their own media output online. The BBC is able to use income from the
licence fee to underpin its output, but the problem for the private sector
companies is how to generate some income from their own online
activities (to ‘monetise’ them in the current jargon).
Murdoch would like to cast the debate in terms of enterprising free
market entrepreneurs such as BSkyB being constrained by a regulatory
regime that supports public service broadcasting and views competition
from the private sector with suspicion. This has been an ongoing debate
since Rupert Murdoch’s successful swoop into UK print media through
the purchase and subsequent transformation of titles such as The Times,
Sun and News of the World. It could be argued that the regulations
governing cross-media ownership of terrestrial television carriers have
been the major barrier to Murdoch’s expansion in the UK. But as the
television environment changes (to a completely digital system in
the UK by 2012), BSkyB is emerging as a major player with only the BBC
as a significant rival. The BBC has always been most vulnerable in its
privileged position of receiving income from a compulsory licence fee.

7: MEDIA AS BUSINESS

Public or private funding

News Corporation in the UK
The global media conglomerate News Corporation is owner of News
International, the company which publishes the Sun, News of the World and
The Times. Another division is HarperCollins, a major book publisher in the
UK. News Corporation describes BSkyB as its ‘equity affiliate’ (controlling 39
per cent of the company), Fox TV is available via BSkyB and 20th Century
Fox has a UK distribution operation. See http://www.newscorp.com/.

The BBC responded vigorously to the Murdoch attack – as it needed
to do. It was unusual to see Murdoch supported by several competitors
who would usually side with the BBC. For instance, The Guardian, a
centre-left newspaper with readers in many cases deeply opposed to
Murdoch, actually faces the same problems as News Corporation. It has
produced one of the most popular and well-used online newspaper
services – all funded from within its own resources. But how can it
compete with a BBC service backed by the licence fee (which represents
‘protected’ income at a time of economic recession)?
Some commentators have seen this and similar incidents as part of
‘softening up’ the BBC and paving the way for top-slicing of the licence
fee – taking a share of the TV licence fee income and offering it to other
media producers so that they can fulfil the public service remit currently
covered by the commercial channels. ITV, Channel 4 and Five will
lose significantly after the digital switchover as the subsidy implied
through free access to the broadcasting spectrum is withdrawn. The
subsidy currently supports the PSB remit for commercial channels.
(See Chapter 9 for more on PSB.)
A joint campaign from the media unions, the NUJ (National Union of
Journalists) and BECTU (‘The Media and Entertainment Union’) began
in October 2009 to stop top-slicing on the grounds that the BBC needs the
full income (and they need to protect their members’ interests). The
unions suggested that the ‘funding gap’ that would become apparent
after switchover could be bridged by levies on BSkyB and Virgin Cable
operations or ISPs and mobile phone companies. A report, Mind the
Funding Gap, commissioned by NUJ and BECTU from IPPR, was
published in March 2009. The report argues for the ‘mixed ecology’
of public and private and the plurality of different PSB providers.

Mind the Funding Gap is
downloadable from the
Institute for Public Policy
Research at: http://www.ippr.
org.uk/publicationsandreport
s/publication.asp?id=661

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E X P L O R E 7 . 6 A TO P - S L I C E D L I C E N C E ?

•
•
•

Some BBC material is not
available online – rights issues
for certain sports coverage,
etc. prevent wider
circulation.

Working on ‘bids’ and
accountable budgets, filling in
evaluations and compliance
statements is an important
element of work in the
publicly funded sector. How
much is this also part of
private sector work?

What do you think are the benefits of having more than one PSB provider?
Is it better to have one TV licence fee with the income divided up between
different providers?
Or should there be a commitment to PSB from ‘new’ players like the ISPs or
BSkyB?

The Guardian website example also refers to a second issue about the
BBC spend on its online services. Both The Guardian and the BBC are
now read/viewed widely outside the UK via an online presence. These
overseas readers don’t pay for access and are effectively subsidised by
UK Guardian purchasers of the print edition and UK licence payers in
relation to the BBC. The Guardian can decide its own policy, but all
licence payers are entitled to ask about how the BBC spends its money.
The BBC remains in a difficult situation. Its high-profile TV
programmes remain popular and BBC1 remains the most popular
channel (21 per cent audience share). Its radio stations dominate the
commercial opposition and its website is the most used media site in the
UK. But maintaining this position involves contradiction. In the licence
fee debate, making programmes that attract large audiences is essential
to justify asking everyone to pay. But this commitment takes resources
away from other kinds of programming that also need to be high quality
to fulfil the range and diversity remits of public service broadcasting. The
licence fee is set by Parliament and is due for renegotiation by early
2013. BBC Charter renewal will be necessary by 2016. Although it should
be possible to plan expenditure with licence fee income guaranteed in
the short term, the prospect of a change in government and the constant
need to defend the licence fee in the face of concerted campaigns against
it from other media producers can make BBC governance and production
planning decisions time-consuming and problematic. (See further
coverage of the BBC in Chapter 9.)

Public and private in filmed entertainment
The public/private split runs through most forms of media activity. Film
is perhaps the medium that seems most rooted in the free market world
of ‘global entertainment’, especially in Hollywood and Bollywood. The
international film industry refers to sources of investment funding as
hard or soft money. Playing up the image of the movie mogul as a

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producer living by their wits in a dog-eats-dog world, Hollywood disdains
‘soft money’ – funding support available via public sector schemes.
Film industries without the large market that offers the possibility of
financially viable releases, on the other hand, recognise that some form
of public support is necessary to sustain a diverse range of film
production over time. Soft money schemes include:
• tax breaks – allowances and concessions made available to companies
producing in specific nations and regions;
• development funding – support for scriptwriters to work on ideas
before production funds become available;
• direct investment from public funds in films made in specific nations
and regions;
• distribution funds to enable more copies of films to be printed and
exhibited and for associated promotion and advertising;
• venue and festival funding;
• training schemes and competitions for young film-makers, etc.
All countries offer something from this list. Even in North America there
are various financial inducements to make films in different states in the
US. Much of Hollywood’s output (in film and television) is actually made
in Canada (Vancouver and Toronto), partly because of indirect support
available through Telefilm Canada.
The best source for researching what the various schemes offer is via
the UK Film Council (http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/funding), or
Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC)
(http://www.cnc.fr – English version available). Underpinning such
schemes is recognition by governments that the ‘creative industries’
employ many people and create wealth on a large scale. See the
‘Economic Impact Report’ on the MPAA website (http://www.mpaa.org)
for evidence of how Hollywood reminds the US government of its
economic importance.

The new digital environment

‘Under French law, a film is
not a product, but an artistic
work. And the French movie
industry enjoys the strong
support of the State because
of the cultural interest for the
country of having a dynamic
film industry.’ From the
Introduction to a guide to
co-production for overseas
film-makers in France – a
rather different attitude to
that found in Hollywood
(http://www.filmfrance.net/
telechargement/France
CoprodGuide09.pdf).

The new digital environment
All the media industries have faced the same challenge in responding to
new forms of competition from online services. Their responses have
been variable. The music industry was one of the first to be hit and it was
hit hard. After a period of dithering and believing that it could defeat both
the pirates and the ‘home copiers’, it has now woken up to the possibilities
of the new digital environment. We explore some of what happened in
the music business in the case study that follows this chapter, but here is
the bullish statement that opens the 2009 Digital Music Report of the IFPI
(International Federation of Phonographic Industries):

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The new digital environment

The recorded music industry is reinventing itself and its business
models. Our world in 2009 looks fundamentally different from how it
looked five years ago. Record companies have changed their whole
approach to doing business, reshaped their operations and responded
to the dramatic transformation in the way music is distributed and
consumed.
The music business, like others, goes into 2009 under the uncertain
cloud of the global economic downturn. However, we are no stranger
to the need to reform, restructure and reinvent. Record companies
began this process many years ago. They are, I believe, as a result,
better placed than many other sectors to manage through more
difficult times.
(John Kennedy, chair and CEO, IFPI)
This report has a sub-heading: ‘New Business Models for a Changing
Environment’. One of the proud boasts is that the music industry now
generates 20 per cent of its income from online digital sales – whereas
film and newspapers both languish with only 4 per cent of their turnover
from digital platforms. We consider newspapers later in this chapter and
film in the case study alongside music. Television also faces problems
with new business models and these are covered in Chapter 9. But the
most important media industry trading online is the games industry.

The games industry
The games industry (aka the ‘interactive entertainment software industry’)
is often now quoted as having overtaken the film industry as the biggest
international consumer media industry. However, comparisons are difficult
to make and far less has been written about the games industry in terms of
media business. Here’s an outline of the current industry.
The industry’s roots are in the amusement arcade business of mechanical
games in the 1930s with electronic arcade games appearing by the 1970s.
It has developed in three major markets – Japan, Europe and the US. In the
1970s and 1980s the first home computers offered a new platform for games
and by the late 1990s the dedicated games console (desktop and mobile) had
become established. Online gaming also has a long history, developing to take
advantage of new communications technologies since the 1980s.
One of the differences for the games industry is that several of the major
players have at various times produced both dedicated hardware and
software. A second associated point is that the software is much more

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The new digital environment

expensive than films or music on discs and a thriving second-hand market for
games might disguise an even bigger turnover.
One definition of the market from consultants Price Waterhouse Cooper
tries to define the industry more tightly:
The video game market consists of consumer spending on console games
(including hand-held games), personal computer games, online games, and
wireless games as well as video game advertising. The category excludes
spending on the hardware and accessories used for playing the games.
Retail purchases of a game are included in either the PC or console game
categories. If those games are then played online for a subscription fee, the
subscription fee is counted in the online game category.
(http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/globalentertainment-media-outlook/index.jhtml)

The players
The majors include Sony, one of the studio conglomerates, via its Playstation,
and Activision Blizzard, the company formed from the games division of the
French media conglomerate Vivendi and the software company Activision.
Vivendi was briefly part of the studio major Vivendi-Universal. Harmonix,
creater of the Rock Band series (see this chapter’s case study Music and
Movies), is part of Viacom, so some games companies are linked to the media
conglomerates. Microsoft with the X-Box is also familiar as a computer
company with media aspirations.

Figure 7.7 Playing a console game

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Sega and Nintendo are rather different as Japanese companies which
started in pachinko (a traditional arcade game still popular in Japan) and
playing cards respectively. Konami and Capcom come from the same
background.
Finally, the independent games designers and publishers, many of them
from the UK, have been gradually consolidated to produce major publishers
like Square Enix (Japan), Ubisoft (France) and Electronic Arts and Take
Two (US).
To make a comparison in which the hardware factor is stripped out, most
of these publishers have a turnover from games roughly equivalent to a major
Hollywood studio take from cinema box office (i.e. around $1.5 billion).
According to Activision Blizzard, which has major strengths in online
franchises, the combined European and North American market for gaming
software in 2008 was $24 billion. There are undoubted parallels between
films and games in terms of how the Japanese and American companies
publish games that are then possibly distributed in certain territories by their
rivals.
This business report gives an indication of the games industry thinking
which embraces new distribution models (and takes up the ecology
metaphor):
Renowned industry analyst Nick Parker claims that, according to his
research, the tipping point (‘the iTunes moment’) will occur in 2014, when
the games industry ‘might have some parity between digital distribution
and retail.’
. . . he was keen to speculate that it would not be too surprising to see
Apple launch a dedicated gaming console based around Intel’s Larabee
chip.
The suggestion was that a company such as Apple could well take the
gaming industry by storm, with Parker expecting ‘one big new entrant to
shake up the eco-system’.
(http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/microsoft-dismissescloud-gaming-analyst-predicts-apple-console-645066)

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Business models

Business models
Wikipedia suggests that a business model might refer to:
core aspects of a business, including purpose, offerings, strategies,
infrastructure, organisational structures, trading practices, and
operational processes and policies.
The problem for many media industries is that they face a situation in
which what had once been a successful model is now no longer viable.
Is there a new model that they can adopt – or, to pursue the ecological
metaphor, is the organisation likely to adapt and evolve or become
extinct like the dinosaur?
In 2009, Rupert Murdoch, a media entrepreneur widely acknowledged
as a major figure in reworking the business model of the international
newspaper industry in the 1980s, announced that his newspaper empire
would begin to charge a fee for access to its previously free online content.
Immediately a debate began about whether Murdoch had made the right
decision in a competitive marketplace. If he charged for access, wouldn’t
internet users turn away to other free sites? Murdoch knows that it is very
difficult to sustain an income stream from web operations – whether it is
through selling online advertising space or charging a fee for access.
But he also knows that when newspaper content is free to access online,
it generally leads to a drop in sales of ‘hard copy’ newspapers. When
circulation drops, so do advertising rates. How low must they fall before
the paper has to close? Here is a good example of a ‘failing’ business model
for newspapers. Will a web-charging model be more successful?

EXPLORE 7.7
Do you ever buy a newspaper?
Read a free one?
Or do you expect to find all the news and features you want online?
Spend a short time at a newsstand checking out the newspapers and magazines
on display.
• What strategies are they using to sell copies?
• How else could you gain access to a newspaper without paying the full cover
price?
• Would you pay for newspaper content available online?
• What do you think of Murdoch’s decision and its implications for the
newspaper business model?

See Chapter 12.

The Y-pay? generation: ‘74%
of 16-to-34-year-olds agree
that paying to rent or see
films in daily life is right and
proper, just 39% think they
should pay for the same
content when they are
viewing the content on the
internet’ (The Guardian, 7
September 2009).

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Murdoch’s change of stance over news made available online for free
comes after what might be considered to be the relatively short life of the
‘freesheet’ model of newspaper publishing as a ‘new model’. In MSB4 we
discussed what in 2005 seemed like the quickly growing sector of free
newspapers – especially for commuters in urban areas. But in 2009, the
future for these media products began to look much less secure.

The economics of newspaper operation
Like most businesses, newspapers have to consider fixed and variable costs.
Fixed costs refer to costs that can’t be easily changed as circulation goes up or
down. To guarantee production of a paper every day, or even once a week,
the publisher must have a printing plant which they own or have use of on a
long lease. They must have orders for large shipments of paper and they must
have at least some staff on long-term permanent contracts. These costs are
there even if they decide to produce no newspapers for a short period.
Other costs can be varied, so staff on short-term contracts might not be
needed in a slack period.
Income (revenue) comes from the cover price of the paper and from
the sale of advertising space. Revenue from the cover price will be reduced
by distribution costs (payments to distribution companies, discounts to
newsagents, transport costs, etc.) and the two forms of revenue are linked, so
that as circulation goes down, advertising space will have to be priced at a
lower rate to attract advertisers.
A free newspaper is attractive if the publisher has excess capacity – in
other words they could print more newspapers on the same presses without
incurring much extra cost (the plant is already there). At the same time, they
may be able to use much more ‘bought in’ agency material and not use
expensive reporters to create material. The marginal cost (the extra cost) of
the free paper should be low and if advertisers can be attracted at reasonable
rates, the proposition is viable. The big question is: how to distribute? When
people want to buy a paper, they seek out a newsagent. Would you go out
to a shop to pick up a free paper? Most of us wouldn’t (probably because we
don’t expect something that is free to have much ‘value’). The local free
newspaper is usually distributed by a company that specialises in door-todoor delivery of ‘direct mail advertising’. At railway stations and bus stations,
newspapers will be given out or made available in special bins for easy access.

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In London, for a brief period from 2006 there was a freesheet war every
day, with Murdoch’s the londonpaper competing with Associated News’
paid-for Evening Standard and the same company’s ‘spoiler’ freesheet,
London Lite. The battle changed slightly when Associated News sold a
majority stake in the Standard to Alexander Lebedev in January 2009.
But in August 2009, after his father’s announcement about charging
for news online, James Murdoch announced the closure of the
londonpaper. News International lost £12.9 million on the paper in the
previous year, so perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised. Newspaper
wars have often been bloody, with the last man standing ‘winning’
but frequently paying dearly. But if London Lite expected to benefit it
clearly hadn’t foreseen Lebedev’s next move – to make the Standard
a free paper.
The Standard has a history of more than 180 years of publishing and
it’s the only survivor of three London-wide evening papers in the 1960s
and several other competitors since. The BBC News website was suitably
taken aback and its report said:

Business models

Figure 7.8 Free newspapers

Alexander Lebedev is an
intriguing figure and
represents a very specific
example of a new kind of
global competitor for News
Corporation. One of
Lebedev’s other interests is
a ‘liberal/oppositional’
newspaper in Russia,
Novaya Gazeta, with an
English-language presence on
http://en.novayagazeta.ru/.

Many are reluctant to hand over the 50p cover charge when they
have plenty of other things to entertain and inform – not least mobile
phones and the huge range of news websites.

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Conclusion

That includes this one, where, within two hours of the story
breaking, more people had read the news about the Standard going
free than read the Standard itself.
But while the BBC is in a privileged position, with guaranteed
income from the UK licence-fee payer, the Standard has to chase
advertising income – despite being 75% owned by a Russian
billionaire. And it is this potential revenue which lies at the heart of
its plan.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8287715.stm, 2 October 2009)
By the time you read this, the battle will have moved on. We can’t predict
the outcome. Will Murdoch be proved right and begin to make money
from online news to compensate for falling sales of paid-for titles? Will
Lebedev’s gamble signal a way out for the traditional print newspaper?
Gambling like this during an advertising slump looks foolhardy, but who
knows? Perhaps the BBC News website will lose its licence fee backing –
or perhaps some other form of PSB production outlet will replace it?

Conclusion
We are suggesting that new business models and new players may be
changing the way in which the media business environment evolves. To
some extent, the traditional media conglomerates with their very rooted
sense of how ‘old’ industries like newspapers, music and film work have
yet to catch up fully. Web 2.0 and Media 2.0 (see Chapter 8) have
attracted some optimistic supporters who argue that the traditional
concerns of the political economy theorists over ownership and control
have been side-stepped by the emergence of new models and new
players. The focus has shifted to concepts like user-generated content
(UGC) and more importance is being attached to how users actually
engage with media products and services.
On the other hand, when we look at the new players in the media
markets, whose entry has largely been via digital media and Web 2.0
applications, we note that fairly quickly they also work towards the
consolidation of the new markets they have helped to open up.
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Apple are still young corporations, but
they dominate computer- and internet-based media activities just as
much as the older media conglomerates have done in the traditional
media industries.
It’s also worth remembering that at the same time as consumer
innovations such as the Kindle and Sony e-Reader started to challenge
the book publishing industry in 2009, Hollywood was being forced to

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References and further reading

recognise the recession and its impact on what investment banks were
prepared to put up for annual film production slates. The Guardian
reported that a Hollywood financial consultant was predicting a 66 per
cent cut in the investment funds available to the studios. In a triple
whammy, Mark Gill from the Film Department pointed to a 25 per cent
decline in DVD sales (and a rise in competition from video on demand
(VOD)) and an increasingly competitive international film market with
competition for Hollywood’s English-language films from ‘domestic’
product in local languages in many countries.
The games industry is vying with filmed entertainment for leadership
of entertainment media. Games companies have a strong base in Japan
and in France and the UK as well as the US. So with Hollywood eyeing
up the film-based competition from India and China, the US hegemony
of entertainment is not perhaps as secure as it has been up to now. In
Chapters 9 and 10, we consider broadcasting and regulation. The issue
here is whether public service broadcasting in both traditional and Web
2.0 modes can maintain its presence, especially in Europe.

References and further reading
Curran, James, and Seaton, Marie (2009) Power and Responsibility: The
Press and Broadcasting in the UK, London: Routledge.
Hesmondhalgh, David (2007) The Cultural Industries, 2nd edn, London:
Sage.
Institute for Public Policy Research (2009) Mind the Funding Gap,
available via
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=661.
Miller, Toby, Govil, Nitin, McMurria, John, Maxwell, Richard, and Wang,
Ting (2004) Global Hollywood: No. 2, London: BFI.
Ramachandran, Naman (2008) ‘Bollywood v. Hollywood’, film & festivals,
summer.
http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2009.pdf
http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/230

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CASE STUDY

Music and movies –
digital and available
•

THE CHALLENGE OF COPYING

•

PIRACY

•

CHANGING BUSINESS MODELS IN THE
FILM INDUSTRY

•

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

As the recorded music model becomes a less and less

critic calling for a change in attitudes and a music

compelling one and the cost of bringing a new artist

industry executive recognising the value of ‘catalogue’

to market is so high, it becomes an easy fall-back for

– ‘old music’ distributed in new ways. The Observer

a music company which owns lots of old rights to

article dealt with the worldwide release of remastered

exploit them. They are dealing with the tried and

Beatles material. This included both ‘retro’

tested as opposed to the brand new and speculative.

presentations of Beatles CD singles in ‘hand-assembled’

(Jeremy Lascelles, chief executive of
independent music company Chrysalis, quoted
in the Observer, 20 September 2009)

cardboard sleeves (in Japan) and a Beatles version of
the popular Rock Band game for wii, Playstation and XBox. Here, seemingly, is an industry which has found a
way of exploiting rights in conjunction with new media

For a generation used to viewing images on an
almost continuous basis using a variety of screens

business models.
The music industries and the film industry have a

that have just one thing in common – instant

long history of almost symbiotic relationships, even

accessibility – the idea that there is an image-based

though they have operated in different ways at

narrative form that needs to be viewed in a special

different times. Recorded music has been an integral

and not very attractive place must be beginning to

part of film’s appeal since the 1920s and at various

appear almost quaint.

times the same companies have owned both film

(Nick Roddick, Sight and Sound, March 2009, p. 14)

studios and record labels. (See the Classic Case Study on
the MSB5 website – Music Industry, Technology and

These quotes reflect the confusion over changing
markets and changing business models in the media

Synergy.)
They became more like each other in the 1980s

business environment. The music industries were the

with the increased reliance of the film business on

first to be fundamentally damaged by piracy and the

ancillary rights, especially those associated with selling

relative collapse of traditional business models. The film

videotapes and later DVDs. Both industries were also

industry has in some ways been the most reluctant to

influenced by the rise of a quite specific new media

change to business models associated with digital

form, the music video. In the 1990s both could see that

media (and certainly to decide on how to pay for digital

the new environment of the digital online world was

cinema projection). Yet in these two quotes, it is a film

going to challenge them. The main difference between

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The challenge of copying

them has been the means by which their products have

of contemporary digital copying, a laborious process

traditionally been presented to audiences.

carried out in ‘real time’. Most people still bought

The music industries are really two separate
industries dealing with live performance and recorded
music. What we now call filmed entertainment is

records but then made ‘Mixtapes’ to share with friends
or to play in the car or on their Walkman.
Copying CDs produced better quality and also

essentially the same or similar products, all prerecorded

opened the way for piracy with mass copying. However,

but available in different modes of distribution (e.g. in

until the development of music compression and

cinemas, on TV, on DVD, etc.)

‘ripping’ software, digital copying was not something
that was easy to do at home. The changes that occurred

THE CHALLENGE OF COPYING

from the late 1990s, as distribution – legal and illegal in
terms of copyright infringements – of MP3 files

The music industry faced the challenge of copying first.

increased, had various consequences:

From the 1960s onwards, anyone with an analogue

• they changed the way people listened to music and
the structure of the ‘music industry’ by promoting

tape-recorder could copy music from discs and radio
broadcasts. Cassette recorders made this easier in the

individual ‘tracks’ over the ‘album’ or ‘single’ in

1970s and the first official campaigns against copying

recorded music;

began in the 1980s. In the UK this meant a logo on
records proclaiming ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’. This
industry campaign (by the BPI – British Phonographic
Industry) received some support from the Musicians’

• they offered the potential for wider distribution of
music by independent labels and performers; and
• the relationship between recording and live
performance changed.

Union (who also ran their own campaign, arguing that

Services like iTunes operate on the long tail principle,

taping was ‘killing live music’). However, its main aim

stocking every kind of music. They also enable preview

was to protect the income stream of the record labels

samples and along with other services enable access

(see McLeod 2005; Laing 1985). In reality, the

to podcasts, internet radio and playback of MP3s

home taping of the 1980s didn’t damage the music

from artist and record label websites. Here is the

industries significantly. Taping was, by the standards

democratising impetus of Web 2.0 making
recommendations and a wide variety of user-endorsed
music, rather than that simply promoted by the music
majors. Alongside the ‘internet jukebox’ Spotify,
YouTube and the My Space pages of musicians and
fans, the recorded music environment explored by music
lovers now is very different.

Figure 7.9 An early industry campaign against copying.

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The challenge of copying

the American band Wilco were dropped in 2001 by the

E X P L O R E 7 . 8 H OW D O YO U
L I S T E N TO M U S I C ?

major label Reprise because the album they had just
recorded was ‘not commercial’. Wilco managed to
acquire the rights to their own material and streamed it

Do you use an MP3 player or play music on your
computer?
• If so, how do you organise the music you put on the
player?
• How much do you recognise as user-generated
content in how you classify your own music and
how you use other people’s advice?

over the internet to fans. In 2002 they released it on the
independent label Nonesuch and sold half a million
copies for their biggest success. The band discovered
that, sometimes at least, the Web 2.0 gurus are right.
In Chapter 8 we quote Kevin Kelly as regards
accepting that what you produce will be copied, but that
people will still pay for the extras that can’t be copied.
These might include the chance to support the band
knowing that the profits will go direct to them or that

Music industry practice used to be about exploitation

they will receive a bigger share when they are not with

of the rights gained in ‘signing’ artists to long-term

a major. Fans might appreciate getting the music first

contracts. Watch any of the biopics of 1950s and 1960s

via the internet, but then also having the chance

music stars (e.g. Ray (US 2004)) and note the trajectory

to own the physical copy. Wilco certainly didn’t ‘lose

from aspiring musician to a first signing for a small label,

out’ by embracing the possibility that fans would

then a big label and then the development of a career.

copy music.
The music majors (Sony, EMI, Warner Music and

The label would hope to mould the career of the artist,
persuading them to make music that could be easily

Universal) are corporate producers with large overheads.

marketed. Live performances were often designed to

The arrangements they make to share profits with

exploit different stages of the artist’s career – initially

contracted artists are highly complex. Back to the

gaining them exposure and then capitalising on chart

biopics, and one of the most familiar narratives is that

success and consolidating sales through large arena

of the new pop sensation who sells tons of records and

shows. The label also exploited rights by selling them for

somehow receives very little income. With good

ancillary uses (cinema, advertising, etc.) and later as

management, he or she will eventually do well perhaps,

catalogue (as in the Beatles example above).

but the business model is designed to generate profit

Kembrew McLeod (2005) quotes an early instance of
the cracks appearing in the music majors’ model when

first, and support for the artist is something that they
have to fight for.

Figure 7.10 Album and single sales in the UK in selected years, 1999–2008.

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PIRACY
The illegal copying and distribution of music and films
and TV programmes is now generally referred to as
‘piracy’. It’s interesting that both the industry and some
of the illegal copiers and distributors have adopted this
reference.

Piracy

and, as the name suggests, projecting the image of a
community sharing material across national boundaries
and challenging traditional forms of copyright law and
regulation.
Alongside ‘piracy’, a second term, also with a
romantic/heroic connotation, is ‘bootleg’ (derived from
alcohol smuggling when bottles were perhaps hidden
in boots?). The first widely circulated bootleg music

The term originated more than two thousand years
ago to describe attacks at sea when ships were
attacked by robbers seeking plunder. In the
eighteenth century some pirates became
celebrities. Wikipedia’s description seems apt:
‘pirates of the classical period were rebellious,
clever teams who operated outside the restricting
bureaucracy of modern life’ (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Pirates).

recordings started to appear when portable recorders
were smuggled into rock concerts in the 1960s or
material was smuggled out of recording studios. Again,
the popularity of such material eventually persuaded
artists themselves and the record labels to issue legal
versions of bootleg recordings, some of which, like The

Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and the Band, became
classic albums (see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Wonder).
Much less romantic was the growth of counterfeiters
– copiers of legal recordings creating facsimile tapes,

In more recent times, pirate radio stations have

CDs and DVDs. This practice is simply for monetary

always had a certain amount of public support when

gain; there is no defence that the illegal copy is in some

they have attempted to play different kinds of music

way aiding the artist or distributing material that

than that being offered by licensed radio broadcasters.

wouldn’t otherwise be heard. In the early days copies

In the UK in the 1960s pirate radio stations did indeed

were poor and packaging unconvincing. Now it’s better

broadcast from ships offshore. They were eventually

(apart from films recorded from cinema screens). There

closed down by legislation but their popularity led to a

is little doubt that the practice has damaged the artists

major change in UK broadcasting. Radio pirates in inner

and the media industries as well as often delivering poor

cities still carry a romantic appeal of sorts, but they
haven’t had the same dramatic impact on broadcasting
policy.
Internet radio knows no boundaries and neither do
the various websites that have been set up to enable
peer-to-peer copying and downloading. Using the
BitTorrent protocol these sites allow anyone with a
single computer and limited bandwidth to become part
of a ‘community’ sharing large files. BitTorrent links
computers together so that each computer ‘feeds’
others with a small part of a large file. The protocol is
used by legitimate distributors to offer quicker and more
reliable downloads, but large numbers of files are also
shared without rights payments. One of the best known
‘torrent tracker’ sites is Pirate Bay, based in Sweden

Figure 7.11 A ‘demo’ page on the Pirate Bay website. Sweden has
three organisations using the Pirate name (‘Pirat’). Go to Wikipedia
to find out what they each do.

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quality goods. As a criminal enterprise on an industrial
scale it has many social disbenefits and in some
countries it has virtually destroyed the local cinema

E X P L O R E 7 . 9 T H E VA L U E
OF MUSIC

industry (see Chapter 10).
It is difficult to avoid a moral judgement of some
kind. Most of us would probably condone some forms
of copying and distributing that avoids questions of
copyright at the same time as condemning other forms
simply designed to make a quick killing at a car boot
sale. We are probably all fed up with the anti-piracy
messages pumped out by the music and film industries,
yet we don’t want to be tricked into buying a poor copy.
The single important issue for the digital media
industries is that it isn’t possible to stop the copiers
(see the Kevin Kelly quote in Chapter 8) and therefore

How do you value music?
• Do you make music yourself, use music in your
media productions, collect recordings or just enjoy
it for recreation?
• How do you think a price should be put on:
• a new composition
• a recording
• a live performance?
• How do you find out about new music?
• How has digital distribution affected the value you
place on music?

new business models are needed.

For an entertaining and thought-provoking
perspective on copyright issues see the Larry Lessig
video lecture on TED at http://www.ted.com/talks/
larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.
html.

The title of Lessig’s lecture (see box) takes us back to
the question of artists and creativity. As he points out,
copyright laws (which differ from country to country)
were instituted in a specific set of circumstances as
popular music performance and then recording became
institutionalised. But since then (early in the twentieth
century) technology and media ‘use’ has changed.
Perhaps we now need different interpretations of
copyright law that recognise the globalised media
environment within which media is produced? See
Chapter 7 and the section on creative commons.

232

Making music and making movies
What do you need to create a piece of music
that people want to hear? Talent and imagination
are essential, but not necessarily sophisticated
equipment. High quality recording equipment
costs only a few hundred pounds for basic ‘live’
recording. Local recording studios are available in
many cities on an hourly basis. Recorded material
costs nothing to distribute as MP3s with a laptop
and broadband. Small runs of CDs are not
expensive. If performers are willing to limit their
ambitions to making the music that they enjoy
performing for a fan audience that really appreciates
it, they can make a comfortable living. Selling
millions of ‘units’ and having a Christmas No. 1 is
another story, but overall, recording artists and
small record labels have proliferated as the majors
have struggled to make the transition to a
download world.
Making movies is rather different. The need for
talent and imagination is the same, but the variety
of skills required, the logistics of production and the

CASE STUDY: MUSIC AND MOVIES

Changing business models in the film industry

device as well. But still the service provider faces the

higher costs of equipment mean that consistent
production of movies people want to watch will
cost more than the equivalent music production.
Yes, you can make a movie for £5,000 (Zombie
Diaries 2008) or even £45 as claimed for Colin
(UK 2009), another zombie flick, but these are rare
exceptions: £50,000 is now the bottom-end for
a cinema production in the UK, e.g. Le Donk and
Scor-Zay-Zee (UK 2009) from Shane Meadows and
Paddy Considine, who have discussed setting up a
scheme to help young film-makers make £50k films.
Low-budget movies can survive with digital
distribution only, but it is more difficult than posting
a few MP3s on a website.

problem of deciding how much to charge for each
download. This is made more difficult by the threat of
piracy. If the charge is too low, the business may lose
money; if it is too high, potential customers may turn
to free but illegal downloads or less expensive pirate
copies.
The service provider may also offer other filmed
entertainment services. How will the new service impact
on the others? After several years of spectacular growth,
the DVD sale and rental business began to stutter
around 2007–8. Hollywood saw a big fall in DVD
revenue during 2009 and attention began to focus even
more on release windows and in turn on questions about
vertical integration, consolidation and diversification.
The feature film has often been regarded as one
of the highest profile and most desirable of media

CHANGING BUSINESS MODELS IN
THE FILM INDUSTRY

products to access. Its value is to a large extent
determined by an audience desire to see a film as
soon as it becomes publicly available and to see it

The concept of feature films being instantly available

under the best conditions (best projection, sound, most

whenever the viewer wants is not new. VOD or nVOD

comfortable seats; etc.). The distributor stimulates this

(‘near’ video on demand) has been around since the

desire through promotions and advertising, aiming to

1980s as an idea and since the 1990s as a feasible

attract as many people as possible to the opening

option on cable or satellite television. Now films are

weekend (when cinemas will be prepared to pay

available for download on a home computer or a mobile

distributors more to screen the film to an eager public).

DVDs available via self-service kiosks have
launched in France and the US. But some
Hollywood studios refused to distribute their
films through the $1 per overnight rental service
from Redbox as it ‘undervalues our product’. Will
the same scheme work in the UK where online
rental has been a big success led by LOVEFiLM?

Figure 7.12 ‘pop’ DVD kiosks at Piccadilly Station,
Manchester, UK. ‘pop’ is a service from Universal and Sony.
Most kiosks are in multiplex cinemas where they sell games
and downloads as well as DVDs. The kiosks here target
commuters who may not go to cinemas.

233

Changing business models in the film industry

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK
The problem with a rigid system of windows is that
it is established by the major studios who enforce it for
the most popular films. But it isn’t appropriate for more
specialised films and it can’t be policed in a global
market with online alternatives.
. . . theatrical grosses are an increasingly inadequate
indicator of how well a film is recouping – and
yet they continue to be the sole measure of
performance, considered a reliable barometer of
a film’s success when its revenue numbers on
secondary windows are rarely if ever disclosed.
It’s no secret that distributors big and small are
churlish about releasing DVD sales figures and even
less for TV sales or per-picture pay-TV financials.
So what happens to those theatrical grosses we
all consume avidly every Sunday and Monday when
theatrical distribution starts to share its first-window
status with other platforms such as VOD, DVD or
download-to-own?
(Mike Goodridge, Screen International,
22 October 2009)

Figure 7.13 Loveleen Tandan arriving at the premiere of Slumdog
Millionaire in Mumbai in January 2009 (see the case study to
Chapter 5). The film opened in India the next day.

Goodridge in this quote accurately pins down the
concerns of the studio majors when he points out that
the current model is unsustainable. In the same paper
(9 October 2009) he reported on two ideas being touted

Inevitably, over the ensuing weeks of the ‘rental’ of

in Hollywood – a new blockbuster delivered to your

the film by the exhibitor, the ‘newness’ of the film in

living room on the day of its release for $250 or the

cinemas wears off and audience numbers fall to the

same film on VOD for $30–50 only four weeks after

point where there is no longer a commercial reason to

release. This might be in the context of major studios

screen the film. The business model suggests that the

closing or being consolidated.

cinema window should now close so that a new window
(DVD) can open. The DVD experience is different.
Although the film is no longer ‘new’, the DVD may cost
more to purchase than a cinema ticket, suggesting that
the purchaser values the chance to view the film more
than once – or more likely, to view it with others, making
it cheaper on a per head basis. Rental is cheaper, but
may involve waiting and then returning the disc soon
after viewing. Each succeeding window (pay-per-view
(PPV), subscription, free to air broadcast) will charge less
for the viewing experience.

234

The cost of digital distribution
A ‘home music producer’ may be able to distribute
music online for negligible cost, but it’s not quite the
same for professional producers. As well as paying
staff, media businesses require professional websites
and paid-for web services, including design, hosting
charges and maintenance. This is where the hidden
costs come in – not least the power consumption
needed to operate fully professional systems
delivering online films and music.

CASE STUDY: MUSIC AND MOVIES

Changing business models in the film industry

So far, most of the experiments in simultaneous

Video on demand

£259,000 (46%)

theatrical, DVD and online releases have come from

Other ancillary

£33,000 (6%)

small distributors offering specialist titles. There have

DVD rental

£273,000 (158%)

been interesting examples of using Web 2.0 services to

DVD sell through

£3,459,000 (14%)

promote and distribute specific independent films (see

Total

£4,545,000 (30%)

the Chapter 6 case study on The Age of Stupid). It is
now almost the norm for art films to be released in

(From the Interim Report for January–June 2009,

the UK on only one or two prints just to gain a profile

downloaded from http://www.metrodomegroup.com)

through reviews and commentaries, before all the effort

The figures refer to only a limited number of around six

goes into the DVD release a couple of weeks later (or,

theatrical films and six leading DVD/Blu-ray titles (out of

in the case of Fatih Akin’s 2007 Cannes prizewinner,

thirty). The figure in brackets is the increase on the

The Edge of Heaven (Germany/Turkey/Italy), a

previous six months. This highlights a major issue – the

simultaneous PPV release on Sky Box Office). These

huge impact of one successful title out of the six, and

figures from the UK independent distributor Metrodome

how it can mean financial security for a relatively small

illustrate the current financial performance of different

company. Overall, in this market DVD is currently the

distribution modes:

only game – but that could change. The majors are
protected from the risk of the failure of a few titles in

Cinema sales

£293,000 (296%)

any year – the nightmare for a small distributor – but

Television sales

£228,000 (274%)

not if the whole business model collapses.

E X P L O R E 7 . 1 0 M A K I N G M O N E Y F R O M F E AT U R E F I L M S
What can you find out about the costs and revenue associated with a feature film?
Try to find out financial information on a major studio picture and an independent film (American or foreign)
distributed in the US. You should be able to find a production budget, possibly a marketing budget (50 per cent on
top of production budget on many Hollywood films), box office grosses and possibly DVD sales, at least in North
America. Remember, only about 50 per cent of ‘gross’ box office goes back to the distributor as net rentals.
Try:
• imdb.com
• UK Film Council Statistical Year Book (free download from http://www.ukfilmcouncil.com/research)
• http://lumiere.obs.coe.int/web/search/ (admissions on films released in Europe – a rough calculation of ticket
prices gives box office estimates)
• http://www.boxofficeguru.com/
• http://boxofficemojo.com/
• http://www.the-numbers.com/
In your university library, you should find Screen International or an equivalent industry trade paper with weekly charts
and occasional market reports. If your library has a Screendaily subscription, the archives on http://www.screendaily
are useful.
• How difficult is it to find useful information?
• What conclusions do you draw about how the current business models work?

235

References and further reading

The future is uncertain for everyone, especially
during a prolonged recession. In 2009 it appeared that
the market might still support big-budget blockbusters
(but fewer of them) and low-budget independent films
‘picked up’ cheaply for distribution. The mid-range films
from both Hollywood and other film industries might
find life difficult with current distribution models if the
distributors cannot see ways of making a profit given
the cost of acquiring rights. The likelihood is that we will
see more diversity in distribution models and less rigidity
in the practice of the majors. But, of course, nobody
knows for sure.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Allen, Katie (2009) ‘Back Catalogues Spin a New
Generation of Profits for Record Labels’, Observer,
20 September.

236

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Laing, Dave (1985) ‘Music Video: Industrial Product,
Cultural Form’, Screen, 26, 2: 78–83.
McLeod, Kembrew (2005) ‘MP3s are Killing Home
Taping: The Rise of Internet Distribution and its
Challenge to the Major Label Music Monopoly’, in
Popular Music and Society, 28, 4 (October): 521–31.
http://www.kembrew.com/documents/Publicationspdfs/McLeod-MP3sAreKilling.pdf
Mitchell, Wendy (2008) ‘Sky, Curzon, Artificial Eye
Work Together on The Edge Of Heaven’, 3 January,
http://www.screendaily.com.
http://www.musictank.co.uk/
http://www.musiciansunion.org.uk
http://www.theauteurs.com
http://microwave.filmlondon.org.uk/get_the_resources/
http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/ondemand.html

Part II

Debates
8 ‘New media’ in a ‘new world’? 239

12 News and its futures 334

9 The future of television? 261

13 Documentary and ‘reality’
debates 358

10 Regulation now 285
11 Debating advertising, branding and
celebrity 309

14 From ‘audience’ to ‘users’ 379

An internet application (Wordle) stylises our use of some key terms in these chapters.
Q: Which key term(s) do you think are missing, or wrongly sized here?
Q: How big would you make them?

8 ‘New media’ in
a ‘new world’?
•

‘Newness’ and histories

•

New media, old metaphors

•

Academic approaches

•

•

Openness, collaboration and
‘users’

‘New media’, vanishing
resources

•

Conclusion

•

‘The long tail’

•

References and further reading

•

Digital copies and the
‘enclosure’ of information

Most of you, reading this, will have grown up in a digital and online
world – or at least, experienced the world that way since the time you
began to access media products and services for yourself. You are called
‘the internet generation’ or ‘digital natives’ because you are presumed to
be unprecedentedly familiar with such forms, and to expect an ‘anytime
anywhere’ media, always ‘on’ (however far that may be from your
experience). Some recent theories have suggested that Web 2.0, as this
degree of interactivity is called, requires completely new theories of
media. We’re not exactly arguing for this, but equally we refuse some
easy media panics suggesting that ‘new media’ are the end of civilisation
as we know it.
We want to explore what is exciting and truly new about interactivity,
as well as what existing theories can best be adapted to understand it,
and to celebrate its enjoyments and potential, as well as its ‘darker side’.
This has to include questions about the many different ways in which
gadgets ‘work’ for us – as enablers of sociability; as training media (some
games); as fashion accessories; as parts of domestic arrangements. The
many uses of such media involve fears and hopes for broadly cultural
developments, as ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘new media’ shape the relations of
public/private, work/non-work, home/outside-home spaces and
activities.
The term ‘postmodernism’, emerging in the 1980s, can in retrospect
be seen as an attempt to get to grips with changes we can now begin to
grasp as materially rooted technological change within capitalist systems.

On ‘digital natives’ myths and
issues, see the link to Moby
What?! on PBS’s Digital
Nation section:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
pages/frontline/digitalnation/
learning/literacy/moby-what1.html?play.

Figure 8.1 Arguably mobile
phones are often put to ancient
purposes – weaving social
connections, arrangements, gossip.
But social networking sites can
shape a quite new sense of privacy,
as they report rows and intimacies.
Q: What do you tell your mother
(or son) if s/he wants to be your
‘friend’ on Facebook?

239

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

‘Newness’ and histories

Postmodernism is
a hugely confusing
and often
confusingly used term. It
refers to several different
approaches to contemporary
media-tised experience,
especially in ‘developed’ parts
of the world. See MSB5
website for the updated
case study Pulp Fiction which
outlines and discusses its
main features.

Figure 8.2 The internet arguably
began with the ARPANET a US
military-related communications
system, in 1969; in 1975 email was
introduced, and in the 1990s the
World Wide Web was publicised
by Al Gore as the ‘information
superhighway’. During that decade
it became an everyday technology
– in parts of the developed world.
See Chapter 1 for a reminder
of debates in this area,
involving ideas of ‘indexical’
media. These are linked
directly, if in fragile ways,
with what they record –
e.g. celluloid film stock and
its ‘trace’ off the real, as
opposed to digital forms.

240

Why the quotation marks around ‘new media’? While celebrating the
capacities of interactive media, we need to remember that study of
media has always explored the ‘new’, and that some of the key theories
for existing media are still relevant, alongside newly necessary concepts.
Finally, nowhere is the interdisciplinary nature of media studies clearer
than here, so you will find more than pure ‘media’ approaches in this
chapter.

‘Newness’ and histories
When we wrote the first edition of this book, in the mid-1990s, users
were still experiencing the arrival of what was then often named ‘new
media’. This referred to the move to digital and away from analogue
media processes and products (see below). The internet was then still
something that was the preserve of a few rather than a medium for
everyone.
Analogue is the term for most media’s pre-1980s reliance on recording
sounds and images as physical forms – images captured in a chemical
emulsion on celluloid film, sounds literally cut as grooves into a disc or
as magnetic impulses on a tape. This physical transformation required
skill and precision, and was prone to damage through repeated use.
Digital data is easier, cheaper and less bulky to store. It’s less likely to
deteriorate and can be easily and accurately duplicated. It has also aided
convergence because the same device (i.e. a computer) can be used to
present all kinds of digital media.
But still some users prefer the old analogue forms – are they just old
romantics or has the change in form created new problems? Is the sound
or image still superior?

Digital data has several drawbacks:
• It can be easily ‘corrupted’ or accidentally wiped. Sometimes a small fault
can render a whole file useless.
• Some digital files are not compatible with all kinds of equipment.
• Digital data is easily compressed – tempting commercial producers to
release lower standard copies.
As a result, whole new industries have evolved to protect files from viruses,
back-up data, convert between formats, etc. A reel of 35mm film is ancient
technology, but it can still be projected after fifty years or more on equipment
that hasn’t changed over the same period. Other analogue media texts, such

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

as vinyl records, have also returned to usage. And many would argue that
Kindle technology is not a substitute for a printed book.

EXPLORE 8.1

•
•
•

Find someone who buys or sells vinyl records. Ask why there is still
interest in this ‘obsolete’ technology. Do you have any favourite ‘old’
forms, such as print, radio, books?
How do these combine with newer media forms, such as games, in
your daily activities?
Look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek for a short
satire involving the usefulness of books.

‘Newness’ and histories

Convergence: the
combination of multiple
services through lines of
telecommunication from a
single provider. See Henry
Jenkins’ blog at http://www.
henryjenkins.org.

As one reviewer wrote of
Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe
(BBC4 2009): it’s an
indication of how ghettoised
gaming is on television that it
was a shock to see talented,
popular contributors
discussing the subject at
length and in knowledgeable
detail.

EXPLORE 8.2
Consider this quote on the practice of watching films on mobile phone and
computer screens: ‘few film- and TV-makers have yet thought much about
how their films or programmes look on the tiny screens of hand-held
devices . . . this situation begs for a “third aesthetic” after film and television’
(James 2009).
• Explore these points with friends and fellow students. How true are they
of your experiences?
• What might be valued in a ‘new aesthetic’ of smaller screens?
• If you use Kindle technology for reading books (on trains, perhaps?) does
that seem to raise similar questions? Does the iPad?

Since the move from analogue to digital there have been two further
stages in the development of online activity. The dot.com boom or
‘bubble’ (c.1998–2001) was a huge rise in the number of internet-based
companies, with some of them subsequently ‘crashing’. There then
emerged what is called Web 2.0. This refers to several changes. Most
important is the (often rather vague) idea of interactivity and usergenerated content (UGC). The UK government’s 2009 Digital Britain
report rather optimistically calls this ‘digital participation’. Web 1.0 had
email, but in the early days this felt a bit like putting a message in a

See Chapter 14
and also MSB5
website for the
case study on the BBC’s uses
of UGC.

241

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Academic approaches

Telex or teletype was a form
of message sent by wire
between two typewriters
and was a common form of
business, military and news
communication in the
twentieth century. Enjoy
the comedy sketch on:
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7pouCAOPfYg.

bottle and hoping it might arrive. Even electronic bulletin boards were a
bit like corresponding by telex machine.
Web 2.0 makes direct communication easy and attractive, especially
since wireless technologies and mobile (hand-held) devices mean that
being online all day is now the norm for some. Ease of access also means
that more of us are willing to ‘post’ material and help create ‘content’
online. Web 2.0 means that users expect to be able to do this and often
expect any service to offer us this opportunity.

EXPLORE 8.3
Your experiences? When you began your course, did you assume that you would
be able to find everything you needed online, that your lectures would be
recorded and podcast or slides or pdfs made available, and that you would be able
to interact via them with your lecturers and fellow students? Printing or emailing
your essays is probably now taken for granted.
Q: How else have interactive media shaped your learning?
Q: What is the place of ‘face to face’ learning (e.g. seminars) in your college?
Q: Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY for a video which
Sony played at their executive conference in 2010.
• How would you be able to check and further research the statistics used?
• How does this affect the usefulness or strikingness of this collection of
statistics?

Academic approaches

Henry Jenkins’ blog (see
p. 241), especially the Archive
section, is a rich and welltheorised resource for this
kind of exploration. See also
Chapter 14.

242

Web 2.0 has led to utopian claims for Media 2.0 – as both a new form
of media business and a new form of media studies. Critics have argued
that the changes are so profound that the previous theoretical ideas
developed in media studies have been rendered obsolete. What we need,
they argue, is ‘Media 2.0’ a completely revised and updated version of the
‘first form’ of media studies, putting much more emphasis on ‘prosumers’
(consumers as ‘producers’ of content) and interactivity in general as
challenging ‘old’ notions of ‘representation’, textual analysis, audiences
and so on.
We agree that media studies needs to take on board the huge changes
to media and the ways they connect users. It is no longer ‘business as
usual’ for most media activity. But neither is it a complete break from
the past.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

‘Newness’ in media has been hailed before, and we can develop
existing academic debates in engaging effectively with what is happening
now. Two of these, from the 1960s, are sharply and interestingly at odds
– the theories of Marshall McLuhan and those of Raymond Williams.

Two different early approaches
Marshall McLuhan (1911–80), a Canadian literary academic and 1960s
theorist and writer, was the most celebrated pre-internet theorist of media.
His provocative phrasing and early TV-friendly presence helped make him
one of the first academic ‘celebrities’ in the field (scan YouTube for clips of
his many TV appearances). He argued that, irrespective of the content or
audience use of particular media products, the technologies which ‘carry’
them change human perception of the world and practices within it. For him,
media determine consciousness.
His most famous phrases are ‘the medium is the message’ and, differently,
‘the medium is the massage’, and ‘the global village’, evoking an optimistic,
even redemptive view of electronic media, one which sees primitive
‘community’ virtues in the new world of broadband access. Wikipedia has a
helpful account of his most famous book Understanding Media: The Extensions
of Man (sic) (1964).
He also defined all media as extensions of the human body, forming
new ‘environments’ for it in subtle ways and even making bodily changes,
as media change from being ‘ear centred’ (acoustic) to being eye centred
(visual). A famous statement of his: ‘Media effects are new environments as
imperceptible as water to a fish, subliminal for the most part’ (McLuhan 1969:
22). His use of ‘environment’ does not directly relate to climate change
politics, but refers to the balance between different media, such as TV and
radio, as well as the ‘sensorium’ or combination of human senses.
Finally, in this very brief summary, he argued for re-mediation, that ‘the
content of any medium is always another medium’. By definition this is an
older medium, and thus a reason to feel sceptical about completely ‘new
media’. (See Lister et al. 2009 for excellent fuller discussion of McLuhan.)
Raymond Williams (1921–88), a very different founding figure of cultural
and media theory, agreed that media re-mediate. Examples would include
early cinema basing itself on existing theatrical conventions and only gradually
making its own forms, in the ways it mediated speed, spectacle and visceral
potential. Later, some computer games could be said to re-mediate cinema,
but with even more ‘immersivity’ or capacity to immerse players in certain

Academic approaches

Arguably the term ‘digital
natives’ for people who have
grown up with interactive
media (like you?) partly harks
back to McLuhan’s idea of a
‘global village’. Both ignore
issues such as class, gender
and ethnicity in making
internet access unequal.

Contrast McLuhan’s ‘sexy’
pronouncements with
Livingstone’s point regarding
media interviews: ‘In terms of
policy effectiveness the
scholar’s careful conclusions –
“it depends on the context”,
“different children react in
different ways”, “the findings
are indicative but not
conclusive” – play out poorly
in a fast paced and hotly
contested policy process’
(2009: 230).

Figure 8.3 ‘The Matrix is
everywhere, all around us.’ ‘Follow
the white rabbit,’ says Morpheus in
The Matrix (US 1999), a film which
some see as a McLuhan-influenced
view of all-pervasive media
technology. Videodrome (US 1983),
Robocop (US 1987) and Strange
Days (US 1995) also speculated on
futures where TV and electronic
media are linked directly to bodily,
perceptual changes.
243

Academic approaches

You can probably see a
reworking of older forms on
your computer screen, e.g.
‘cut’ signified by scissors, or
an egg timer signifying a task
in progress, and so on.

92% use email to communicate
with friends and family
Half of adults use webcams and
social networking

7 in 10 access photos online
24% use a Twitter-like service

Figure 8.4 For a well-resourced
global snapshot of global digital
usage take a look at the Norton
Online Living Report 2009.
Q: What do you find is the most
surprising statistic there?

244

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

kinds of game. In a recent turn around, the phenomenally successful film
Avatar (US 2009) could be said to re-mediate the immersivity of computer
games for cinema, especially in its 3D and IMAX versions. Livingstone (2009)
develops this point: ‘The contemporary conceptual toolkit centres on the
prefix “re-”.’ She lists ‘remixing, reconfiguring, remediating, reappropriating,
recombining’ as terms which ‘recognise the activities by which innovations are
rendered both continuous with and distinct from that which has gone before
. . . adopting a frame of enabling and constraining rather than of determining
or causing’ (p. 25).
So Williams and others rejected McLuhan’s view of technology as in itself
determining human perception and social change – called technological
determinism. Williams argued this was unhistorical and asocial, that it is
impossible to study technology as though it were a sphere separate from
social life. It is part of broader social processes, all the way from first ideas
– that is, whatever seems, in different social contexts, to be feasible
(i.e. fundable) projects – through to design, production, marketing, uses
and consequences.
Williams wrote extensively on drama, literature, culture, Marxism and
media. His book Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) is a milestone
in thinking about TV as a specific medium, through emphasising the
importance of the ‘flow’ of programmes rather than their existence as a set of
discrete ‘texts’, like books or songs or plays. John Ellis (2000) took this further,
suggesting TV can be understood through three periods and their specific
cultural shapes:
• Scarcity, with mostly one or two national channels (BBC and ITV for the
UK) where TV performed a socially integrating role, since most people
could be assumed to be watching certain programmes. It was not,
however, as easy to discover what they felt about these.
• Availability, with multiple channels, where he argues TV ‘works through’
traumatic happenings which viewers are made to witness but feel
powerless to affect. Scheduling becomes key in ratings-driven systems.
• Plenty, which promises more of everything, and is the beginning of the
‘being-together-while-apart’ cultures which interactive media promise.

Later writers, working often with TV, have opened out the ways in which
a ‘technology’ is more than just wires, plastic and circuits. New media
are usually made commercially viable through also being design items,
fashion items, something that fits into existing room layouts and usage,
train journeys, etc. ways of keeping safely in touch with others
(especially for parents and children) and so on (see Livingstone 2009).

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

Once we locate technology as socially shaped, and specific, in the
ways Williams, Ellis, Livingstone and others have done, we have to allow
that it can also be, to some extent, socially shaping. We can’t simply
generalise, in the way that often pressurised journalism likes to do,
about new media, whether games or Facebook, as the latest threat to
‘civilisation as we know it’ (just like ‘video nasties’ or certain horror films
did in the 1980s, and other media at other times).
Debates on social media can be shaped around two main attitudes,
one pessimistic and the other optimistic or even utopian.
1 Pessimistic positions around the dominant technology of our time,
the internet, include the following claims:
• ‘Social networking’ via social media substitutes for actual physical
relationships. It encourages banal and trivial communication,
and leads to unhappiness because of lack of ‘real’ human contact
– touch, ability to understand the range of face-to-face
communication and so on.
• It is shaping people in narcissistic, inarticulate and often autistic
ways as a result of this lack of social contact with others. This
accompanies internet addiction which is growing around the world,
especially in China, where it is constructed as a threat to the
nation’s youth. Read and evaluate http://www.onasia.com/
content/story.aspx?storyID= 669&page=1.
• A sense of public and private is being eroded, with Facebook and
other sites allowing violent verbal abuse, bullying and ignorant
comment in ways that would not be allowed in a properly ‘public’
space. There are also concerns about the global spread of
pornographic discourses (see Chapter 5, p. 154) and of the global
surveillance possibilities of interactive media.
• Computer games are to blame for much violence and cruelty in
their users.
2 Optimistic, even utopian positions are exemplified in this statement
of ‘where we are now’ from the UK website of Stuff, the ‘world’s
best-selling gadget magazine’, September 2009:

•

Academic approaches

‘Social media’ are
usefully defined by
Brian Solis as ‘Any
tool or service that uses the
internet to facilitate
conversations.’ See MSB5
website for a link to further
discussion on his website.

We are living in a golden age. A time when the iPhone serves as a
multimedia do-it-all app-fest, when all music is available DRM-free,
when ebooks are on the verge of replacing paper books. You can
wander down the streets of the world in Google Street View, get
hi-def movies on Blu-ray for less than a tenner and buy a super-low
emission hybrid car for Ford Focus money. This is it, people, we’re
living the dream.
A related utopian view is McLuhan’s assertion that we are now

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Academic approaches

Figure 8.5 Judging from some of its
covers, Stuff constructs traditional
gender roles as part of a kind
of ‘utopia’. 1) Analyse this
magazine cover as a gendered
representation of technology use.
Contrast with Figure 8.4. 2) Make a
survey: how gendered are your
friends’ uses of and confidence in
internet forms? Is it true, as often
implied, that the internet is free of
gendered inequalities and
preferences?

living in an electronic ‘global village’ which can heal the sensory
alienation of an era dominated by print forms and national
boundaries.
• Many kinds of global and local protest, politics, arts, and charitable
forms of action now use interactive media to shape a new world
order. Obama’s presidential campaign is a celebrated example, but
see also indymedia resources for your country (e.g. uk.indymedia.
org) and also www.zmag.org/znet the use of ‘flashmobs’, and
Chapter 12.
Some developments produce explicitly split structures of feeling.
a Twitter social networking, for example, is often valued for its
immediacy and for its short messages which can be followed up on
elsewhere. It already has two amazing campaigns to its name.

EXPLORE 8.4
Research the 2009 Twitter campaigns around Trafigura, and Jan Moir’s Daily Mail
article on Stephen Gately’s death (see Chapter 12).

Even its name sounds modestly self-parodying. But opponents
point to the banality of some of the messages, and ask: how much
can be communicated in 140 keystrokes?
b Here’s John Lanchester (2009) on Google’s power, a major cause of
concern (as resembling Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ in the novel 1984) for
many:

Figure 8.6 This striking design
publicised a New Statesman
magazine piece on the internet’s
greatest success story, Google, and
growing concerns about how it
may be using the data it is
amassing on its users.

246

about a month ago my hard drive . . . crashed, and my backup
. . . failed to restore my work archive. I was facing a gigantic bill
for a by-no-means guaranteed hard drive recovery, when it
occurred to me that every piece I’d ever sent by email might,
just might . . . and sure enough there it was on Gmail. A copy of
everything I’d ever written for publication, and everything else
I’d ever emailed too. It’s the kind of thing a big brother might do,
help you in ways which make you feel simultaneously relieved
and resentful.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

Openness, collaboration and ‘users’

EXPLORE 8.5
Consider the assumptions of these three contrasting positions.
• Can you bring evidence from your experience of ‘new media’ to bear on them?
• How would you describe your position? On the basis of which media forms:
games, texting, Gmail, internet-enabled political movements?
• Can you think of ways in which your position is shaped by your gender,
ethnicity, social class?

Openness, collaboration and ‘users’
Web 2.0 has impacted on theories affecting both the study and the
business of media, as you would expect for such a deeply embedded and
socially ‘shaping’ technology.
As context, let’s first reconsider the ‘newness’ of interactivity. The
development of the internet and the opportunity to ‘go online’ to find
something or simply to send email changed many aspects of
communication and research. However, it was the possibility of staying
online that really changed things. Pre-broadband working with computers
used to involve a quick dash online, using a telephone ‘dial-up’ account to
retrieve something, when connection time was expensive and often slow,
and then working on it ‘offline’. We can now use ‘always-on’ broadband
connections – if they are available, and affordable.

Figure 8.7 Workers haul part of a
fibre optic cable on to the shore
at the Kenyan port town of
Mombasa, 2009.

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1 The accessibility of broadband is not universal, nor easily come by. Figure
8.7, showing the arrival, in Mombasa, of the cable bringing access to those
East Africans who can afford it, was taken in the summer of 2009. It’s a
reminder of the labour and materials involved in ‘magic’-seeming goods,
like computers and mobile phones.
2 A letter in The Guardian made this point about the unevenness of the pace
of change in media usage:
Alan Rusbridger asks when we last played a CD, owned a basic phone,
went to a library for information or bought a map. The answer is that
most ordinary people still do all these things. I can well believe media
people live in the world he describes, but perhaps he needs to get out
more?
(24 October 2009)

TED (http://www.ted.com)
is ‘a small nonprofit
organisation devoted to Ideas
Worth Spreading. It started
out (in 1984) as a conference
bringing together people
from three worlds:
Technology, Entertainment,
Design.’ In September 2009
there were more than 450
free TED Talks (i.e. video
lectures) available to view.

248

These connections have changed the media environment profoundly.
They explain why we might consider the 1990s as a first internet age
(the ‘dot.com revolution’), and why we need to think of 2005–6 as the
beginning of a revised version of the experience. This is a shift not from
‘Web 1.0’ to ‘Web 1.1’, but to a completely revised ‘Web 2.0’.
One of the striking aspects of the new media landscape, or ecology,
is the creation of a kind of web-based ‘academy’, almost an alternative
advanced education system, a new kind of ‘media study’. This is
primarily a North American phenomenon (though many of its members
may have originated outside North America). It comprises a range
of writers and lecturers who may be academics, media consultants,
journalists, lawyers or other practitioners. But instead of publishing
only for their main institutions, they write in journals such as Wired
or write their own blogs or give video lectures sponsored by Google or
less commercial organisations such as TED. Much of what they say is
consequently free to access and a boon for impoverished students. We’ve
used the writings of several of these Web 2.0 thinkers in different parts of
this book. This doesn’t mean we accept all of the claims for the extent
of the changes that Web 2.0/Media 2.0 has brought. But they do allow
new debates to open up.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

Openness, collaboration and ‘users’

Some useful new terms, used in accounts of media businesses, spreading into
theories of audiences and interactivity are: networking; user-generated content
(UGC); ‘the wisdom of crowds’; ‘crowd funding’; ‘the long tail’; ‘prosumers’; ‘tags’;
and ‘clouds’.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cluetrain_Manifesto for a
statement of belief in the new business model which is possibly offered by
Web 2.0.

Let’s begin with the concept of networking and user-generated
content (UGC). In June 2009 Clay Shirky gave a TED Talk observing
that Web 2.0 was the fourth great advance in communication (following
the printing press, telegraph and radio/TV broadcasting). This is not just
because it introduced new possibilities of its own, but also because it
includes easy access to all other media technologies. Whereas previous
technologies enabled one-to-one instant communication (e.g. telephone)
or one-to-many (e.g. broadcasting), Web 2.0 allows ‘many-to-many’
(sometimes called ‘social media’).
He outlined a recent example, from politics, of Web 2.0 possibilities.
In 2008 individual US citizens, concerned at the potential for vote rigging
in the presidential election, after serious allegations in the previous two,
took video images and footage of voting activity at their local polling
stations and posted it to a central website. They hoped this would deter
possible illegal activity. It wasn’t a new idea (Nigerians had done
something similar in 2007, but used simple text messages rather than
camera phones). Shirky commented that this was an example of ‘global
tech transfer’ from Nigeria to the US – an unusual transfer in that the
important resource that was utilised was ‘social capital’ rather than
‘technical capital’. Nigerians had the pressing need to do this and so
social usage developed because the technology was there to be adapted
creatively.
This is an important observation about the introduction of new
technologies – they don’t usually spread until significant numbers of
‘social users’ (i.e. not technology experts) see a use for them. This can
be hard to predict. Manufacturers of mobile phones did not expect the
enormous take-up of SMS messages by teenage users. Shirky concludes
that media have become ‘social’ because the technology has become
almost boring rather than shiny and new. We can all access it, so it’s
argued that what then becomes important is what we can do with it.

Trivia: Clay Shirky teaches
at New York University
on a course entitled ‘Social
Weather’. See http://www.
shirky.com/bio.html.

Interestingly Shirky is using an
approach from the French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
(1930–2002) who pioneered
the idea that inequalities
persist through different
kinds of ‘capital’ and their
distribution. It is not simply
a matter of ‘money capital’,
though often closely
related to it. See Chapter 3.

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EXPLORE 8.6

Figure 8.8 Samsung’s pebble
design netbook, 2009. It seems
designed as a ‘cool’ fashion
accessory, like much computer
advertising (see Apple) which also
markets machines as ‘pure’, and
certainly not as related to
disastrous climate changes.

Figure 8.9 Why do you think
the founders chose the Hawaian
word ‘wiki’ for their online
encyclopaedia? (See Chapter 15.)

Firefox is a product from the
Mozilla Foundation which
used the coding released by
Netscape, producer of the
first widely used browser,
Netscape Navigator, to
develop a new internet suite.
Mozilla also produces the
Thunderbird email client.

250

Evaluate your own use of Web 2.0 services.
• Have you started blogging or participating in online groups because your peers
and family seem to be doing it?
• Does your use mostly involve immediate friends and family? Or have you also
joined a global ‘community of users’?
• Have you identified activities that enable you to live your life differently or to
work in different ways? How important are these ‘new’ uses of media
technologies?
• How do you think the saleability of gadgets as fashion accessories, for male and
female users, fits with Shirky’s suggestions – or with your own usage?

Shirky’s example (developed later for Twitter’s role in the 2009 Iranian
elections) evokes the wider phenomenon of collaborative media (such
as Wikipedia, and also the ‘crowd funding’ of films like The Age
of Stupid). Surowiecki (2004) argues that a large group of individuals,
making independent decisions on the same issue, which can then be
aggregated and averaged, are more likely to produce a ‘correct’ decision
than a small group of experts. These are ‘crowds’ of individuals who
voluntarily contribute to something – like Wikipedia – rather than simply
respond to a sampling questionnaire. It is crucial for this argument that
the ‘crowd’ is made up of diverse and self-selecting individuals, without
attempts to ‘second guess’ what others are thinking. It is not the same as
‘crowd psychology’ (which suggests that individuals within a crowd are
aware of, and react to, other crowd members), but it does mirror aspects
of statistical sampling.
Tapscott and Williams (2006) argued for business activities undertaken
by groups of individuals with no formal organisation. Wikipedia itself is
developed through ‘mass collaboration’ (see http://en.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia#Editing_model for a statement of Wikipedia’s aims and
strategies). The basic idea goes back much further, to activities like
software development, where free, open source software projects, like the
Firefox browser, were produced by ‘communities’ of developers. Other
software projects invite users to test products, file reports, help other
users in support groups and then create extra applications or ‘plug-ins’.
The product of this labour may be distributed freely or as shareware.
Those who contribute in this way might be described as prosumers, or a
mix of consumers (they might still pay for the product) and producers.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

A different possibility for collaboration comes via the use of tags,
user-devised or user-selected terms for classifying media content. For
instance, if you have a Flickr or Picasa account, you can post your digital
photos to your website and tag each image to help you classify your
collection. Similarly, if you blog about something you may wish to add
several tags to link it to other similar posts you have made. But the tags
don’t just help you. They could allow others searching for something to
find relevant images or posts on your sites. ‘Categories’ are also available
on some Web 2.0 services as an alternative to tags. Both categories and
tags can be related to clouds – a visual representation of word tags or
categories such that the most used words are shown in a larger type
size. You can see the effects of this by producing your own clouds using
free Wordle software (http://www.wordle.net/). See the Part II title page
image (p. 237).

‘The long tail’

‘Prosumer’ has several
meanings, all related to
collapsing the distinction
between ‘professional/
producer’ and ‘consumer’.
Businesses might use it
instead of ‘customers’, rather
like ‘semi-pro’. In some
‘Media Studies 2.0’, it might
refer to users who are
actually contributing to
producing ‘published’ media
texts – though nothing on the
internet is fully private.

As an application, we might rethink informal classification of films (and other
media texts, such as popular music) if we look at how ‘users’ describe specific
films. Which tags and categories do they use? See the blog from the
University of Amsterdam (http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/) on such uses
of Web 2.0. In a section entitled Video Vortex (2008), visual artist Dan Oki
suggests new ways of constructing cinema history by making use of databases
of film ‘meta-data’ – full cast, crew, locations, etc. – on a large scale. This could
map developments and innovation in cinema and overcome the elitist
‘default’ option of attributing change to the singular ‘visions’ of directors, or
‘auteurs’.

‘The long tail’
Combining the traditional attractions of economies of scale and the new
possibilities offered by online databases, various retailers have prospered
with Web 2.0. The most obvious example is Amazon, the online retailer
that took over the Internet Movie Database and which also developed an
online rental business (subsequently operated by Lovefilm in Europe).
Amazon’s simple business model is based on the idea of making any
media text (books, DVDs, music, etc. – as well as non-media products)
available, not only by storing the most complete range possible in a
warehouse, but also by organising a host of other smaller retailers in
a ‘virtual marketplace’ so that even second-hand and remaindered stock
is included – and stock held overseas. In this way, Amazon has the

The IMDb began as a project
by a group of usenet film fans
in 1989 and was based at the
University of Cardiff when it
was launched on the web in
1993. In 1998 it became an
Amazon subsidiary.

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Figure 8.10 One of the warehouses storing the ‘niche’ goods of Amazon’s ‘long tail’ ready for distribution.

The long tail, although
known to statisticians for
many years, was the focus of
a 2006 book, The Long Tail:
Why the Future of Business Is
Selling Less of More by Chris
Anderson. It is often used
in debates on businesses
more generally and is
another example of the
interdisciplinary interests of
this stage of media study.

252

potential to ‘prove’ what has been termed the long tail effect. What’s
called the frequency distribution curve for popular media products
would normally show that the most popular (i.e. the ‘Top 20’ or so) would
at any time constitute around 80 per cent of the market, with sales of
all other media products ‘tailing off’ to single figure or even zero sales.
Thus the ‘long tail’ of DVDs/CDs, etc. traditionally destined for a ‘niche’
market. A traditional high street store would be unable to justify holding
all the low-selling titles, but the marginal cost (the extra cost for a single
item) of storage in a large warehouse is not significant.
The database that underpins Amazon’s operation offers two benefits:
1 it helps to physically locate one item in the warehouse out of
thousands (millions?); and
2 it helps the customer to be aware of alternatives. Instead of a single
sales agent in a high street store, who may know relatively little about
books, films or music, Amazon’s database can immediately suggest
that ‘if you like this, you might also like this . . .’ or that ‘people who
bought this, also bought this . . .’ Because Amazon is a Web 2.0 retailer,
it also invites users to provide ‘wish lists’ or suggestions. With links
to IMDb and customer reviews available, the retailer prompts you to
consider the ‘wisdom of crowds’ (of which your choice is presented as
a part) in selecting your purchase.
The suggestion is that online retailing exploits the long tail, enabling
consumers to have a much wider choice, and that creative artists outside
the mainstream should, in theory, receive more royalties. Does this
actually happen? How could we tell that the long tail is really there and

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

that choice is really being extended? Many of such claims for Web 2.0
are very optimistic, even part of ‘free market’ emphases. They ignore
possible disadvantages, let alone the impact of deep recession.
The long tail promise certainly helps a few larger Web 2.0 operators
to drive out smaller ‘niche’ competitors, who face higher set-up costs in
relation to their turnover. Consumers may be in danger of abandoning
the services of ‘experts’ in favour of Amazon or Google (or all those
‘compare prices’ websites). We will pay less for advice, but we will need
to be very sure about the ‘wisdom of crowds’: who is summarising it, and
who has the power to act on it.
There are also social costs associated with the success of online
retailing:
• not everyone has access to a broadband connection – or a credit card
account, to pay online;
• it is difficult to work out the environmental costs and benefits
associated with door-to-door deliveries of packaged goods
(i.e. compared with buying them direct from a store); and
• the failure of high street businesses may trigger a collapse of high
streets, with their associated public spaces in traditional trading areas
in towns and cities.

EXPLORE 8.7
What for you are the advantages and disadvantages of ‘real’ as opposed to ‘virtual’
or online shopping?

The growing success of online retailers suggests that the economics of
the long tail makes sense – they can make profits by selling just one or
two ‘units’ of a very wide range of products. But who are they selling to?
Certainly a very well-informed consumer can now find more or less
anything they want, be it rare music or obscure films. But what of the
average consumer without the time or inclination to look far and wide?
Amazon still pushes its ‘bestsellers’ or ‘blockbusters’ first, just as there
is controversy over the order in which entries pop up on Google’s search
engine. It continues to make good business sense to maximise sales of
a few titles, and there is little real evidence of a change in consumer
choices. Perhaps we need to remain sceptical?

‘The long tail’

Some small internet sites
have shown similar
commercial potential. See
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=sxy-TxCXH6Y on
Lauren Luke, a South Shields
single parent who was bullied
at school, started recording
make-up tips on YouTube
and is now manufacturing her
own make-up range.

Watkins (2010) has argued
that the ‘community’ of
‘digital natives’ is rather
like those wealthy ‘gated
communities’ only available
to certain income groups,
and often segregated by
neighbourhood. See also
Chapter 5 on ‘fortress
futures’ and Watkins’
interview on Henry Jenkins’
blog archive.

The failure in the UK of
the ‘downmarket’ F. W.
Woolworth chain in 2008
saw empty shop spaces and
deserted public space all over
the UK. It also triggered the
collapse of music and films
retailer Zavvi, which relied
on Woolworth’s distribution
service.

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Digital copies and the ‘enclosure’ of information

Figure 8.11 A visualisation of part
of Kelly’s argument.

One of the most important advantages of the ‘switch to digital’ is the
facility for making perfect ‘copies’ of media products, or rather ‘duplicate
originals’. The concept of a copy originally implied something that was
‘fashioned to be like’ the original, but was nevertheless inferior in some
way – it was a ‘reproduction’. Digital files can be duplicated so that they
are identical (although often the copier chooses to make them lower
quality if that is cheaper). Kevin Kelly, one-time founder and editor of
Wired magazine, suggested (2008) that digital copies are usually ‘free’ to
produce:
Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied
somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies.
Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these
copies are not just cheap, they are free.
(See http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/
archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php)
Kelly’s argument raises fundamental problems for media producers. It is
pointless to think that you can prevent anyone making digital copies –
‘piracy’ of different kinds is inevitable and media producers should think
about other ways to make profits from their ownership of ‘original’
material. As Kelly succinctly puts it:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes
scarce and valuable.
When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.
Well, what can’t be copied?
(Ibid.)
Kelly answers his own question with a discussion of eight possibilities or
‘generatives’:
Immediacy
Accessibility

254

Personalisation
Embodiment

Interpretation
Patronage

Authenticity
Findability

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

EXPLORE 8.8
Read his article to find out about each of these in detail.
• Jot down summaries, and try to apply them to the media you use most.
• Do you agree that most of us who can will pay, either to make our life easier
(immediacy, accessibility, findability) or to improve the quality of what we have
and our experience of using it (all his other ‘generatives’)? ‘Patronage’ may also
cover wanting to give those who work on these media products some kind of
income.

New media, old metaphors

One of online media’s results
has been a greater willingness
for experts and academics to
go to the blogs and websites
of those who, like Kelly,
might have been dismissed as
‘geeks’ or ‘nerds’ previously.
Within a year of being
published these ideas were
picked up by industry film
commentators as a possible
solution to problems of
piracy and falling revenues.

New media, old metaphors
Information is often argued as something that is not ‘used up’ or
‘consumed’ when it is passed from one person to another – unless of
course when you acquire information you refuse to divulge it to anyone
else, a case where information becomes like any other commodity that is
traded for monetary gain (see Balnaves et al. 2009).
The whole process of ‘commoditising’ information has been compared
to the eighteenth-century British ‘enclosure movement’ and its global
equivalents. The large landowners of the Middle Ages had allowed the
peasantry – the ‘common people’ – to use what was seen as common or
shared land as a basic resource on which they could graze some animals
and grow a few subsistence crops. The developing capitalist system,
however, offered the landowner the chance to make money through
investing in new technologies, and in farming more scientifically and
intensively. Landowners used their political power (at a time when they
were amongst the few who could vote or sit in Parliament) to ‘enclose’
common land by law, forcing the peasantry to leave the countryside and
find new work in the towns, where industry was developing – the
‘progress’ of the Industrial Revolution.
The commodification of information in the digital age has been
called a second enclosure movement in which a number of large
corporations such as Google, Corbis and Getty Images are exerting rights
over the massive collection of digital files that they have acquired
through commercial operations. One response to this has been the
Creative Commons movement, offered as a solution to the problem of
‘common knowledge’ and authorial rights in the new media landscape.
It proposes that authors should be able to decide what interest they
want to retain in what they produce, and what they are willing to
distribute freely.

You can explore exactly
how this is designed to work
on the website at http://
creativecommons.org/, and
see also Wikimedia commons
websites.

255

‘New media’, vanishing resources

‘Public domain’ refers to
the concept that a text is
open for adaptation or
republication without
payment to a rights-holder.

Figure 8.12 A screengrab ‘fragging’
moment from the computer game
Fallout3, which reuses, but expands
on momentary violent images of
fragmenting bodies in cinema.

See Chapter 11 on the
concept of ‘built-in
obsolescence’, highly relevant
here.

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

There are some contradictions in all this. Kelly seems to argue both
that:
a digital copies are essentially free – and therefore it is pointless to
expect a return simply because you own the original rights, and that
b it is a problem knowing how to support creative work in this new
world of collaboration.
Some confusion comes from the concept of information itself. Balnaves
et al. 2009 argue that traditional forms of copyright are granted to authors
for their ‘tangible expression’ of ideas for a limited period. After that, the
ideas pass into the public domain and are again free for anyone to use.
There are two problems with this.
1 Copyright laws are not universally applicable, so that they differ, for
instance, between the US and Europe.
2 Most media texts are not ‘information’ as such (think of fictions, and
the huge area known as ‘entertainment’). These have always been
seen as ‘exploitable’ in terms of payments for often costly processes of
creation and/or ‘performance’.

‘New media’, vanishing resources
One rarely discussed part of media study involves the materials needed
for, and the later disposal of, fast-changing ‘anytime anywhere’ media,
gadgets and equipment sold and enjoyed across the world. This evokes
a different sense of ‘environment’ to McLuhan’s.
Consider these points:
• Media corporations’ global hunt for both minerals and water with
which to make the complex equipment involved in global media, and
for low-cost skilled labour, often female, needed to assemble it,
and later to dispose of it. This is fuelled by changing fashions in
status-driven media use, including international upgrades such as the
analogue–digital switchover, or the ‘race to HD’, Blu-ray, etc.
• The amounts of electricity needed to power the internet, especially
with Web 2.0’s ‘always on’ norm, and power-hungry forms such as
games and YouTube, as well as flat-screen TVs.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

1 ‘We cannot continue to grow the internet in an energy constrained world’
(Subodh Bapat, vice-president, Sun Microsystems (Johnson 2009)).
Explore Johnson’s other writings for The Guardian.
2 ‘. . . for every unit of energy a server uses to actually do some computing, it
takes an equivalent amount of energy to cool it down again. US
government statistics show that data centres now use as much energy as
the whole of the car manufacturing industry’ (Susan Watts, ‘Two Go Mad
in Silicon Valley’).
See Watts’ other reports for BBC2’s Newsnight, especially on Google’s
secretiveness about its appetite for electricity, and the problems of cooling its
servers.
Then switch off the link?

•

‘New media’, vanishing resources

‘Connectivity’ usually refers
to the internet bandwidth
coming into and going out of
a country, and the quality
of the infrastructure linking
computers to the internet
(see Figure 8.14’s caption
about Samsung and South
Korea, p. 258). This, of
course, has implications for
environmental politics.

The tsunami of toxic waste resulting from analogue disposal alone
will probably not feature much in the images on new 3D-HD large
flatscreens or Blu-ray players. This disposal of hi-tech equipment has
serious environmental consequences, especially for those children
who will have to put their lives at risk in remote, poor areas of the
world, dismantling sets for the tiny amounts of minerals, often toxic,
which they can sell and live off. Sometimes, ironically, this happens in
those very areas which are mined for the minerals in the first place.

Figure 8.13 Children are among those picking a (toxic) living in the huge Steung Meanchy waste tip,
Cambodia, 2009.

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Conclusion

Research ‘nanotechnology’
here. See http://www.care2.
com/causes/environment/
blog/will-nanotechnologyhelp-or-hurt-ourenvironment/.

EXPLORE 8.9

•
•

•

Research this area, firstly through the sources given above.
Script and storyboard a 30-minute film which would trace the routes and
energy uses between switching on your computer, your fingers typing a link
to, say, YouTube, and receiving video images on your screen seconds later.
Perhaps use Susan Watts’ reports.
How would you script the film’s comments on connections between
a the enjoyment of such internet resources, and
b their possible climate-change consequences?

Conclusion

Figure 8.14 Research Samsung,
the world’s biggest conglomerate
by revenue. Note the range of
commercial activities (military,
shipbuilding, etc.) which help
fund, feed into and out of their
cutting-edge technologies. A high
degree of connectivity (South
Korea’s is the highest in the world)
also fuels this.

258

We’ve only been able to sketch the debates and contradictory impact
of ‘new media’ technologies here, though they are part of most other
chapters. Earlier approaches and concepts are still valuable in
understanding and locating these changes. McLuhan’s speculative
generalisations, in the 1950s and 1960s, drew attention to the need to
rethink media technologies. But Williams’ insistence that we need to see
them as always fully enmeshed in other social drives and power contexts
remains key. It has been thoughtfully developed in recent work (Dovey
and Kennedy 2006; Livingstone 2009; Lister et al. 2009). Re-mediation is a
key term here, for understanding not only how ‘content’ is shaped anew
by each set of media forms (parts of theatre flow into some cinema, then
parts of cinema into some games), but also how ‘new media’ have older
shapings within their radically new forms.
‘Media Studies 2.0’ is right to point out the need to learn and teach
through and with the huge changes of the past few years, and to
celebrate their potential. But:
• it is sometimes too cynical about ‘theory’, though itself draws on
theorists such as Bourdieu and McLuhan;
• it celebrates the ‘power of active users’ in ways which sometimes
ignore the commercial structures which still try to shape those
powers, primarily for profit, rather than for more shared, public
interests;
• it tends to ignore real material and cultural constraints, including
unequal gender power relations, on truly open use of the amazing
potential for ‘digital citizenhood’ and the real possibilities it offers for
unprecedented collaborations.

8: ‘NEW MEDIA’ IN A ‘NEW WORLD’?

References and further reading

EXPLORE 8.10

•
•

•
•
•

On the basis of your own experience of and research into ‘new media’ (such
as social networking sites, various games and so on) outline an educated guess
at what three developments you expect in the next three years.
Remember that part of the current attraction of ‘new media’ is the commercial
effort put into designing and marketing gadgets and equipment as fashion
accessories, their promotion as ‘cool’, their place in the layout of home spaces,
etc. Try to include these.
Try to factor in the increasing effects of climate change. How might these
interact with marketing ever-more-upgraded media forms and the masts and
cables and electricity supplies needed to sustain them?
On the other hand, how might the possibilities for global environmental politics
expand, using digital interactivity?
Justify and debate your ideas in class if possible.

References and further reading
Balnaves, Mark, Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, and Shoesmith, Brian
(2009) Media Theories and Approaches: A Global Perspective, London
and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Dalby, Andrew (2009) The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing
Reality, Draycott: Siduri Books.
Dovey, Jon, and Kennedy, Helen W. (2006) Game Cultures, London and
New York: Open University Press.
Ellis, John (2000) Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty,
London: I. B. Tauris.
James, Nick (2009) ‘Editorial’, Sight and Sound, May: 5.
Johnson, Bobbie (2009) ‘Power Failure: How Huge Appetite for
Electricity Threatens Internet’s Giants’, The Guardian, 4 May.
Lanchester, John (2009) ‘Short Cuts’, London Review of Books, 9 April.
Lister, Martin, Dovey, Jon, Giddings, Seth, Grant, Iain, and Kelly, Kieran
(2009) New Media: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn, London and New
York: Routledge.
Livingstone, Sonia (2009) Children and the Internet, Cambridge and New
York: Polity Press.
Livingstone, Sonia, and Haddon, Leslie (eds) (2009) Kids Online:
Opportunities and Risks for Children, Bristol: Policy Press.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,
London and New York, Sphere.

259

References and further reading

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

McLuhan, Marshall (1969) ‘Playboy interview: Marshall McLuhan’, Play
boy, March.
Orwell, George (1949) 1984, London: Penguin; new edn 1998.
Roddick, Nick (2009) Sight and Sound, March: 14.
Surowiecki, James (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are
Smarter than the Few, New York: Doubleday.
Tapscott, Don, and Williams, Tony (2006) Wikinomics: How Mass
Collaboration Changes Everything, New York: Penguin.
Watkins, Craig S. (2010) The Young and the Digital, Boston: Beacon Press
(and see his website http://www.theyoungandthedigital.com).

260

9 The future of
television?
•

Ownership and control in the
television industry

•

Paying for television

•

Business models for television
broadcasting

•

Case study: HBO

•

Case study: Channel 4

•

Conclusion

•

References and further reading

Addressing the Library of Congress in 2008, Michael Wesch described
how television networks have failed to ‘get’ the internet. He calculated
that over sixty years, the three main US TV channels produced 1.5
million hours of television. YouTube produced the same amount in six
months and 88 per cent of it was original material (how does he know?) –
a higher proportion than the networks manage today.

Michael Wesch of Kansas
State University is one of the
most engaging evangelists
for Web 2.0. See his
work on YouTube or
http://mediatedcultures.net/
mediatedculture.htm.

EXPLORE 9.1

•
•
•
•

When did you last watch television?
Was it live?
Where were you and who with?
What kind of material were you watching?

In most of the developed world television had become integral to
daily life by the late 1970s, at the beginning of what John Ellis (2000)
termed the television era of ‘availability’ (see Chapter 14). Television
became the most important source of news and of entertainment,
and the TV set became the focal point of most homes in the developed
world.
Is broadband internet access now more important than owning a TV
set? In the UK in 2009, 65 per cent of homes had a fixed broadband
connection and 3 per cent used mobile access (Ofcom 2009). But many of

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Figure 9.1 Anna Paquin and Rutina Wesley in True Blood, one of the ‘high quality dramas’ from HBO, available internationally on many
different platforms. A ‘water cooler moment’ for some?

In 2009 BARB gave
twenty-five hours viewing per
person per week as the
average in the UK
(www.barb.co.uk).

To make the best use of the
material here, you’ll need to
work through it alongside
Chapters 7, 8 and 10.

262

us still watch television broadcasts for several hours a day and the social
impact of popular television programmes remains in the ‘water cooler’
moments when we discuss with friends or work colleagues what we have
been watching and why.
Internet access and other changes in media activity have not so much
reduced the importance of television, but changed how we watch it,
where we watch it and what kinds of material we watch. The biggest
single use of broadband capacity is for video material, either streamed
live or collected via digital downloads. If we’ve reduced the amount of
broadcast programmes we watch, we haven’t stopped using the TV set to
view boxed sets of TV series. Television is changing even as it remains at
the centre of a range of media debates. Does it have a future as a discrete
medium and a discrete culture, or will it just become another online
‘application’?
We can’t really understand where television is going without a sense
of how it developed and why it is the way it is now. This chapter has
three main sections:

9: THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION?

•
•
•

Ownership and control in the television industry

an exploration of the economic basis of television broadcasting
systems,
three examples of television business models, and
a brief consideration of television and public culture.

Ownership and control in the television industry
Radio services began as private enterprises in most countries, led by the
US and UK in the 1920s, but in the UK and Germany the established
model became one of public ownership by the 1930s. In the US, ‘public
broadcasting’ has always been seen as an ‘add-on’ to a commercial
system. One of the reasons for state involvement in broadcasting was
the question of ‘spectrum scarcity’, with analogue broadcasting signals
competing for space in a finite bandwith. This was far more important
in more densely populated areas with more demand for services. It is
noticeable that the effective ending of scarcity (i.e. when all broadcasting
has switched to digital multiplex signals) has been much more complex
in Europe, because of concerns about public sector broadcasting issues,
than in the US where the whole country ‘switched over’ in June 2009. In
the UK the digital switchover was scheduled to take three to four years.
A rather different concern about radio broadcasting focused on the
capacity to develop propaganda. The Nazis demonstrated how effective
this could be in the 1930s and all the main combatants used radio,
cinema and posters extensively during the war that followed. After
the Second World War in Europe, the Allied authorities made sure that
complex regulatory controls were in place when new broadcasting
licences were granted in Germany to regional public sector broadcasters
within a federal structure. ARD, the broadcasting service based on this
model, was formed in 1950. In Italy a monopoly state broadcaster (RAI)
was established in 1954 and in France in 1945. TVE in Spain was
established in 1956.

Television services began in the UK in 1936, but were shut down during
the war. In Germany TV broadcasts began in 1935 and lasted until 1944.
See http://smashingtelly.com/2008/07/14/television-under-the-swastika/
for a documentary based on material from East German archives. These
broadcasts privileged Nazi members and the armed forces, as well as offering
‘viewing parlours’ in Berlin.

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Ownership and control in the television industry

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

In most continental European countries, ‘commercial’ (i.e. profitmaking) broadcasting by private sector companies had been introduced
by the 1980s, but usually within a regulatory framework that sought to
protect the ‘public service’ ideals vested in the state broadcasters. The
balance between private and public sector broadcasting in television
began to shift in the 1980s for two reasons:
• The new technologies of cable and satellite broadcasting offered
opportunities to introduce new channels and new services.
• The general shift towards ‘free market’ economics and ‘deregulation’
of public services and utilities resulted in various forms of
‘privatisation’ and ‘contracting out’ to the private sector. In France,
the privatisation of the main public broadcasting channel, France 1,
in 1987 created the current French market leader, TF1 (with 26 per
cent of audience share in 2009).
The new opportunities attracted media entrepreneurs from other sectors
into the previously stable European television market, including News
Corporation (US), Bertelsmann/RTL (Germany), Mediaset (Italy),
Vivendi/Canal+ (France), etc., as well as the telecommunications
companies Liberty Media (US) (a product of the US telecommunications
anti-trust actions) and Telefónica (the privatised Spanish telephone
company). These companies moved into terrestrial and satellite/cable
television (including pay-TV) and they began to operate across national
boundaries. They often have ‘cross-holdings’ of shares within each
other’s companies.
The impact of the privately owned broadcasters has put pressure on
public broadcasters and the concept of public service broadcasting. It has
also meant that many European terrestrial networks have succumbed to
further penetration by US imports as their own budgets are not strong
enough to make competitive programmes. Some broadcasters have failed
in the marketplace. The UK’s once powerful ITV companies failed in a
bid to launch a digital operation led by live football and the German
Kirch Group collapsed also as a result of its sports broadcasting policies.
These two failures, both in 2002, signalled that competing with the likes
of News Corporation, Bertelsmann, etc. as major media corporations is
difficult for smaller European companies.
These changes were real and they were noticeable, but sometimes
they can be given too much emphasis. Figure 9.2 shows that in the
world’s biggest TV markets, apart from the US, the public sector remains
significant. The table also points to the decline in advertising and the rise
of subscription as revenue sources, discussed later in the chapter.

264

9: THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION?

Paying for television
Figure 9.2 TV revenue expressed
as per capita funding in four major
TV markets (in pounds sterling).
Source: Ofcom 2008.

An associated development that involves some European producers
has been the success of independent production companies operating
internationally, mainly in gameshows and reality formats and serial
dramas. Two of the most successful have been Endemol and Fremantle.
Endemol began as a Dutch company, set up international operations in
the US and UK, and in 2000 was bought by Telefónica. In 2007 it began a
process which took it back into ‘private’ ownership by a consortium
including the Dutch founder and the Italian Mediaset group. Its most
famous programmes are probably Big Brother and Deal or No Deal
(see http://www.endemol.com). Fremantle is 90 per cent owned by
Bertelsmann through RTL, but it now includes companies like Grundy
from Australia and Thames from the UK and creates programmes such
as X Factor and The Apprentice (see www.fremantlemedia.com).
The future of television in all markets is going to be determined by
a number of factors:
• the relationship with Web 2.0 and new media technologies (mobile
devices, digital cinema projection, etc.);
• the development of new business models;
• the regulatory framework (including PSB and competition policies).
We’ll focus mainly on the UK, but in the context of European media
generally. Europe represents both a concentrated group of territories
with the possibilities of cross-boundary flows and a ‘single region’ in
which European-wide policies (sometimes covering not only the EU of
twenty-seven nations, but the ‘wider Europe’ of thirty-six) attempt to
sustain the audio-visual industries and a diverse media culture.

Paying for television
In most European countries, there are at least six possible ways in which
viewers pay for television:
• via some form of taxation (e.g. a licence fee or subsidy)
• higher prices for goods in order to support advertising

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THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

Paying for television

The television industry is
awash with abbreviations:
DTH is ‘direct to home’;
usually this is now digital.
DTT is ‘digital terrestrial
television’.

•
•
•
•

subscription to receive a cable, satellite or encrypted DTH broadcast
system
pay-per-view per programme (PPV)
direct payment for ‘interactive services’
direct payment for merchandising and ‘tie-in’ products or TV
programmes in other formats such as DVD.

EXPLORE 9.2

•
•

The BBC licence fee pays for
a total of eight TV channels,
thirteen national radio
networks (including the
home nations), local radio
and online services.

The Dutch PSB system allows
‘membership associations’ of
people with similar cultural
background to access specific
programming designed for
them and broadcast on
publicly owned channels.

266

How many of these payment options do you use?
Why would you choose one over another?

The UK licence fee has several advantages:
• everyone pays but some groups have concessions (visually impaired,
over-75s, etc.);
• efficient to collect so revenue is not wasted;
• in 2009 all BBC programmes were available for a charge of £142.50
annually or less than 40p per day (less than the cost of most daily
newspapers).
But the main advantage is that universal payment means the possibility
of broadcasting remaining as a public good – a service to provide
something we could not buy ourselves (or perhaps would not consider
buying, but may discover that we still need). Or perhaps something that
is not completely ‘consumed’ by an individual, but remains available for
everyone?
The weakness of the licence fee is that under ‘deregulation’ and
‘liberalisation’ it is increasingly open to attack by the free market lobby
because it is compulsory (see Chapters 7 and 10). The main defence
against this charge is the popularity of BBC programmes. As long as
the BBC makes its fair share of the most popular types of programme
it remains ‘a channel for everyone’. If the BBC’s share of the broadcast
market were to fall below a certain figure, the licence fee could become
difficult to defend on this basis. The actions of Ofcom as a regulator are
crucial here. A policy that encouraged the BBC to concentrate on news,
current affairs and arts programming at the expense of EastEnders,
Strictly Come Dancing and Match of the Day could be very damaging.
In other European countries, public service broadcasting (PSB)
is funded in a variety of ways, by licence fee in Scandinavia, by
government grant or subsidy (i.e. from general taxation) in national or

9: THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION?

federal structures, or by combinations of government funding and
advertising.
Advertising is losing ground as a source of television funding. In 2007 it
fell to less than 50 per cent worldwide (Ofcom 2008):
• it is increasingly difficult for even well-established networks such as
ITV to deliver large audiences because of fragmentation;
• technology now offers simple ways of avoiding advertisements on
broadcast television (e.g. watching VOD or replay versions of
programmes which strip out broadcast ads);
• at times of recession, advertising almost always produces less
revenue;
• internet advertising is increasing its share of the overall advertising
market and putting pressure on television advertising to reduce rates.
Programmes broadcast by commercial TV channels have never been
‘free’, even if they have been ‘free to air’. Advertisers have in effect paid
for the programmes (i.e. provided the revenue for broadcasters) and
these costs have to be covered by profits from increased sales from the
goods advertised. Most of us have accepted or not really thought about
this system, not making direct connections between the programmes
we watch and the goods we buy. Note that the regulation of advertising
on ITV (a limit on minutes per hour, a clear distinction between ads
and programming, etc.) has arguably helped to maintain ITV as a
watchable service.

Paying for television

See Chapter 11.

EXPLORE 9.3

•
•
•

What is your experience of advertising on TV?
Are you irritated by it or can you ignore it?
How does it compare with advertising on the internet as an interruption to
viewing?

A looser regulatory structure risks an advertising environment in
which the narrative flow of a programme is constantly interrupted by
commercial breaks, some of which may be difficult to distinguish from
the programme itself. Rick Instrell (2005) examined a US broadcast of
an episode of Friends and counted three advertising breaks, lasting over
eight minutes in total, in a programme of less than twenty-two minutes.
Regulation has helped to restrain the excesses of advertising-funded
television and certainly up until the 1990s, the lack of any direct

267

Paying for television

PVRs or ‘personal video
recorders’ are growing in
popularity and allow viewers
to record and create their
own viewing schedules and to
attempt to avoid advertising.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

connection between advertisers and programmes allowed ITV, as well
as the BBC, to be ‘producer-led’ – i.e. to make a range of interesting
programmes that would attract significant audiences, large enough to
satisfy advertisers – rather than make programmes designed to attract
specific audiences for advertisers. This situation ended with the new
offers from satellite and cable.
One of the ways in which ITV has tried to counteract the ‘avoidance’
of ads has been through programme sponsorship, which allows a closer
connection between the programme and the ad, so that the brand
appears as part of the programme title card.
Subscription television implies a willingness to pay for extra television
services. In one sense this is similar to the purchase of consumer goods
such as a DVD player, etc. It is a willingness to pay not for a specific
programme, but for a new technology in the home – indeed, the
purchase of cable or satellite services in many countries may have been
accompanied by the purchase of a new TV set for digital reception.
Perhaps a majority of satellite and cable subscribers will purchase
‘premium channel’ subscriptions on top of a basic package. This has been
the basis for the growth of BSkyB’s business in the UK with the following
outcomes:
• families with children were the first to create ‘multi-channel TV
homes’;
• sport and movies have been the ‘drivers’ behind sales of premium
services.

Families with young children are more focused on ‘home entertainment’ with
a preference for a wider selection of entertainment channels – both for
children and for adults who may be less able to leave the home for
entertainment.
Older men or younger single men are arguably the ‘early adopters’ of
other aspects of home entertainment such as ‘home cinema systems’ with
Blu-ray and full sound systems.

Children (several different age-range segments) are important to
advertisers and to the new television service providers. Advertisers want
to reach parents as consumers (possibly via the ‘pester power’ of children
wanting specific products seen on television) (see Livingstone 2009).
They also want to engage older children – the future consumers.
BBC children’s programming has not capitulated completely in the
new environment and when new BBC digital channels became available,

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9: THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION?

children’s programming on CBBC and CBeebies was the most successful
element of the new offer. In October 2009, CBeebies, the channel for
younger children, was one of the most watched channels on multichannel television with a 1.4 share and a reach of nearly 2 million daily,
beaten only by the ITV entertainment channels (Source: Broadcasters’
Audience Research Board – BARB). On the other hand, the availability
of so many channels to young viewers introduces the idea of choice
as ‘natural’ and as they grow up they will likely not think about the
subscription payment. Will they resent the licence fee?
In 2009, BSkyB earned an average of £469 from each ‘user’ or
‘subscriber’. With the licence fee, the average Sky subscriber is paying
out around £600 per year on television services or around £12 per
week. This isn’t a particularly large sum compared with the average
cost of a cinema ticket, a DVD purchase or a premiership football ticket
– especially since the television set can be watched by anyone in the
family. With 9.5 million customers for its various TV, telephony and
broadband services and revenue running at £5.3 billion for 2008–9,
BSkyB is now the biggest UK-based media player (figures from
http://corporate.sky.com). The BBC had income of £4.6 billion for
the same period (http://www.bbc.co.uk/annualreport/exec/financial/
highlights/highlights.shtml).
Pay-per-view television (PPV) hasn’t yet taken off in the UK or the
rest of Europe to the same extent as in North America. Once again,
it is primarily concerned with entertainment (movies or music events)
or sport, with a focus on unusual high-profile events such as boxing
matches (for which US viewers are willing to pay upwards of $40 dollars
per event). The important point to note in the context of this chapter is
that PPV offers the clearest sense of ‘paying for television’ just like any
other product. Assuming you have already bought/rented the necessary
equipment, a decision to ‘pay to view’ is no different from purchasing a
ticket to go to the live event. This should give the clearest indication of
what a ‘free market’ in television might look like – at least in terms
of sports or music events.
A different form of PPV is offered via digital downloads such as the
iTunes service from Apple. Here is an example of ‘paid for’ television
competing with ‘free’ internet-available programmes on BBC iPlayer and
similar services from broadcasters worldwide – as well as pirated shows
via filesharing services (see discussion of piracy in the Chapter 7 case
study Music and movies).
PPV also prompts consideration of one of the longstanding differences
between cinema and television. When television first threatened the
mass cinema audience in the early 1950s, some cinemas looked at the

Paying for television

Digital downloads or
streaming video are usually
grouped under the heading
‘video on demand’ (VOD) –
see the Chapter 7 case study.

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Paying for television

possibilities of showing television broadcasts in theatres. This didn’t take
off, partly because the technology wasn’t yet suitable. With high-quality
digital projectors in cinemas and satellite/broadband feeds, some of the
1950s ideas have now returned and UK cinemas have seen ‘big screen’
broadcasts of major football championships as well as arts events such
as live theatre, opera and ballet performances. Here is an interesting
example of technological convergence which raises questions about how
different, but associated, media industries will develop.
In October 2009, England’s World Cup game against Ukraine provided
an experiment in PPV live streaming with the match only viewable
online (or in cinemas) because of the collapse of the sports channel
Setanta. Most commentators were not impressed with the quality of the
computer coverage, which was hastily organised – but its time will come.

3D football? By the time you read this, you may have the choice between live
football at home with a few mates, a larger crowd at the pub and the
prospect of the ball (or a player) landing virtually at your feet in the cinema.

Paying for interactivity involves viewers choosing to spend money on
extra services such as voting for gameshow contestants or entering

Figure 9.3 Watching live football online.

270

9: THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION?

Business models for television broadcasting

competitions (gambling really, since many competitions require little
skill) or telephone shopping. It could be argued that this moves television
more towards the casino or general leisure activity.
Payment via voting on BBC channels is a move towards another US
model which sees ‘public broadcasting channels’ supported by donations
from audiences who want to see the channels continue to broadcast.
We might call this a ‘charity model’ of funding – going back to the world
before the welfare state and public services funded via taxation. Voting
also raises a series of ethical questions which surfaced in 2007 when a
whole range of television channels in the UK, commercial and BBC,
became enmeshed in scandals about on-screen competitions with
entries received by phone or text. What is at stake here (alongside the
professional standards of broadcasters who have ‘fixed’ competitions, or
perhaps allowed unfair decisions under pressure during live broadcasts)
is the status of a publicly owned media organisation in an increasingly
commercial environment. (See PSB in this chapter and in Chapter 10.)
Direct purchase mainly involves the sale of DVD series in box sets. It
seems odd that these sales seem to be increasing just as DVD begins to
falter as a format for cinema films. Perhaps the explanation is that the
big sellers are long-running series (usually, but not always, American)
that although available on different channels are difficult to find in the
schedules and the times of broadcasting may not suit specific audiences.
Being able to ‘gorge’ on several episodes consecutively could be an
attraction.

Business models for television broadcasting

The relationship between
broadcast serial drama
(e.g. The Sopranos or The
Wire) and its boxed set
equivalent is not dissimilar
to that between the stories
written in serial format for
magazines in the nineteenth
century and their subsequent
publication as novels or book
collections (e.g. much of
Dickens or the Sherlock
Holmes stories).

In Chapter 7 we emphasise that the major issue in all media businesses
has become the search for suitable business models – ways in which to
monetise the value inherent in the media properties for which rights are
held. In that chapter and its case study, we consider the crisis in music,
cinema and newspaper publishing. Television is in a slightly different
position, if only because it acts as a media carrier for music and filmed
entertainment as well as creating its own unique media formats. But at
the same time it is more vulnerable than any other form to the onward
march of Web 2.0. Television’s business models are in some cases very
traditional and some broadcasters may find it difficult to survive. In this
section we consider three models:
• public service broadcasting
• commercial network television
• subscription television
and we make reference to four specific broadcasters:

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Business models for television broadcasting

•
•
•
•

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

BBC
ITV
Channel 4
HBO.

Public service broadcasting (PSB)
According to UK regulator Ofcom, PSB continues to be valued highly by
UK viewers and has retained its importance despite the availability of
many more television channels and viewing opportunities. Defining PSB
is not straightforward and over the course of five editions of this book,
we’ve seen definitions in the UK change. One issue is that since Ofcom
became responsible for ensuring PSB remained at the heart of UK
broadcasting policy, it has defined and redefined what we might
understand by the term.

BBC

Public Broadcasting System
(http://www.pbs.org/) and
National Public Radio
(http://www.npr.org/) are
two of the many public
broadcasting organisations
in the US. See ‘Public
broadcasting in the United
States’ on Wikipedia for
further links.

As well as providing a model
for PSB, BBC training and
work practices have also
influenced service providers
elsewhere, e.g. in setting up
Al Jazeera, which recruited
several ex-BBC personnel.

272

Outside the UK, similar ideas about PSB can be found across Europe and
in most other parts of the world. Wikipedia provides a useful thumbnail
description of PSB in many countries (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Public_broadcasting). The BBC model has been influential not just in
those countries linked to the UK by language and a colonial past, but also
in Japan, Scandinavia and parts of Latin America. In the US, something
similar is evident in the form of the Public Broadcasting System or
PBS, but this is far less significant in terms of the general television
offer in the US and it tends to be limited to educational or cultural
programming. The US also has local television services which receive
public funds. In many countries, public funding is also available for
services in regional/national languages or in autonomous regions
(e.g. Spain).
The BBC remains unique in the breadth of its offer, not only within a
UK context, but also internationally via BBC World, programming sold to
other networks via BBC Worldwide and also through its major online
presence. For this reason, we will consider PSB issues in relation to the
BBC as a central focus, while also considering other examples.
PSB does not necessarily require a publicly owned broadcaster, but it
does require regulation that can bind private sector broadcasters to
certain PSB objectives. In the UK, the BBC, Channel 4 and S4C (Welshlanguage channel) are public sector organisations (although each funded
in a different way) and the commercial terrestrial broadcasters ITV,

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GMTV and Five have been charged with an increasingly lighter PSB
commitment since the 1990s.
Before Ofcom, PSB was not defined separately in the UK but was
embodied in aspects of the BBC charter, broadcasting legislation and
franchising/licensing arrangements for private sector operators. In
Media Student’s Book 2nd and 3rd editions we referred to a checklist of
features based on work by an independent agency, the Broadcasting
Research Unit, during the 1980s (see O’Malley and Treharne 1993).
Although the overall media environment had changed dramatically since
the 1980s, we felt that the list remained useful as a guide. It suggested
that PSB should:
• provide a full range of programming to meet audience needs for
education, entertainment and information;
• be universally available (i.e. throughout the UK);
• cater for all interests and tastes;
• cater for minorities;
• have a concern for ‘national identity’ and community;
• be detached from vested interests and government;
• be one broadcasting body financed directly by the body of users;
• promote competition in good programming rather than in numbers of
viewers;
• be run on guidelines which liberate and do not restrict programmemakers.
It’s interesting to compare this list with Ofcom’s presentation of PSB in
its 2009 Annual PSB Report. The report begins with the ‘public service
purposes’ outlined in the Communications Act 2003:
• to deal with a wide range of subjects;
• to cater for the widest possible range of audiences – across different
times of day and through different types of programme; and
• to maintain high standards of programme-making.
It goes on to recast these as ‘purposes and characteristics’ of PSB.
PSB purposes:
• Informing our understanding of the world
• Stimulating knowledge and learning
• Reflecting UK cultural identity
• Representing diversity and alternative viewpoints.
PSB characteristics:
• High quality – well-funded and well-produced
• Original – new UK content rather than repeats or acquisitions
• Innovative – breaking new ideas or reinventing exciting approaches,
rather than copying old ones
• Challenging – making viewers think

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•
•

Engaging – remaining accessible and attractive to viewers
Widely available – if content is publicly funded, a large majority of
citizens need to be given the chance to watch it.
To these, the report also adds:
• Trust – deemed necessary to monitor following concerns about
the handling of phone-in voting and competitions on PSB channels
(see above).

Changes in PSB policies

In 2009 the highly respected
independent producer Tony
Garnett wrote a passionate
essay on the problems of
BBC commissioning policy
which he posted on The
Guardian’s media blog. See
www.guardian.co.uk/media/2
009/jul/15/tony-garnettemail-bbc-drama.

Ofcom’s remit is tied directly
to the development of UK
government policy in relation
to the UK’s ‘digital future’
expressed in the Digital Britain
report, June 2009. By the
time you read this there may
be a new UK government
with different plans.

274

If we compare the Ofcom presentation with the 1980s list, it’s clear that
there is little change in the perception of what constitutes worthwhile
PSB programmes in terms of ‘quality’ criteria, range, diversity,
accessibility, cultural identity, etc. – although ‘widely available’ is not
the same as ‘universally available’.
What has changed is the prescription about the nature of the
organisation that is needed to provide PSB and questions about how
programming should be produced. Ofcom makes no such stipulations
and this reflects the political changes that accompanied the privatisation
of many publicly owned utilities. This led to the subsequent application
of ‘internal markets’ in the remaining public concerns as well as the
ideological attachment to more open markets in production requiring,
for instance, that UK broadcasters commission independents to make
programmes and also use outside facilities rather than maintain
servicing departments in-house.
Ofcom has responded to both current political and economic changes
in its definition of PSB. In some ways its actions as a regulator for
‘communications’ mirror those of the UK Film Council. The latter is
not a regulator, but is charged with ensuring the future of the UK film
industry as an important revenue earner and employer in the UK
as well as promoting a vibrant and diverse film culture. Ofcom has
a similar ‘cultural remit’ in its regulatory role. It must also consider
how regulation will affect the stability of UK television production
(a consistent contributor to a balance of trade surplus in television
programming and services). In this latter context it is likely to run up
against those 1980s concerns about preserving the integrity of unique
PSB providers. For example, any proposal to use part of the BBC licence
fee to fund other organisations in order that they can fulfil PSB objectives
is likely to be criticised.
The PSB remit undertaken by ITV and Five and the Teletext service
offered by the Daily Mail and General Trust has been slowly diminishing
since the 1990 Broadcasting Act. Once a major part of ITV’s operation,

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the PSB function was built into the franchise agreements made by the
independent companies that comprised the ITV network. The remit
still covers news, regional production and the quality and diversity
of programming as well as the requirement to carry party political
broadcasts and listed national events. Subsequent amendments to the
franchise licence have reduced the remit in a long process of ‘lightening
regulation’. However, all the UK’s broadcasters are clearly still within a
PSB system and there is still a distinction between UK commercial
television and channels in some other countries.

The PSB remit for ITV companies before the 1990s resulted in current affairs
programmes such as World in Action (Granada) and This Week (Thames),
which often surpassed BBC programming in both journalistic endeavour and
popular appeal.

Before we leave Ofcom, it is important to note that its remit goes beyond
broadcasting as such and applies to online media and telephony. In this
sense it has extended the UK television role, just as the main UK television
providers such as the BBC, BSkyb, Channel 4 and, perhaps to a lesser
extent, ITV and Five have moved into different media. Ofcom is quite
prepared to look for other ways in which the PSB remit can be fulfilled.
PSB in the UK also comes under scrutiny from the European
Commission which has the authority to rule on PSB provision under EU
regulations governing competition. In 2001:
a Communication from the Commission on the application of State aid
rules to public service broadcasting . . . first set out the framework
governing State funding of public service broadcasting . . . Since 2001,
more than twenty decisions were adopted concerning the financing of
public service broadcasters.
(see ec.europa.eu/competition/consultations/2009_
broadcasting_review/broadcasting_review_en.pdf)
In 2009 the EC set out to review its policy on state funding, mindful
of all the changes in broadcasting practices over the previous eight years.
In the main, the EC is likely to concur with Ofcom, but sometimes its
decisions can prove difficult for individual member states. On the other
hand, the strength of EC rulings is their supra-national application which
gives national PSB broadcasters some comfort in the face of actions by
multinational media conglomerates.

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Network television
The oldest business model in television is the network concept. It’s
worth reflecting on the term ‘network’ which immediately prompts the
connection to a computer network and suggests that it is a concept easily
absorbed within a Web 2.0 world. But television networks go back to the
beginnings of the television service in the US and in Europe and they
are closely associated with spectrum scarcity. TV networks work
by branding a television channel that could be broadcast locally by
subsidiaries or affiliates/network members. The main programmes are
made/acquired either by the single brand owner (in the US) or by the
larger network members (e.g. the regional ITV companies in the UK
before consolidation). Network programmes fill the peak-time hours with
popular entertainment, drama, sports and national news/current affairs,
and the affiliates produce their own local news programmes and other
programmes in the off-peak. Commercial networks are funded via
advertising which could mean airtime sold across the whole network or
locally/regionally.
Networks in the current television environment have the odds stacked
against them. With advertising revenue flat or falling they have little
chance of fighting against the competition of multi-channel television,
and once the digital switchover is completed, the advantage of being the
‘known’ button on a TV channel selector will start to fade. But this does
raise the question of ‘local television’.
In the UK two opposite scenarios developed as the digital switchover
gathered pace in 2009. In England, ITV appeared prepared to give up its
loss-making ‘regional programming’ with the prospect that this PSB

Figure 9.4 Granada Reports
is one of ITV’s regional news
programmes.

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commitment will be transferred to another service of some kind.
However, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the two ITV
companies, STV and UTV, have remained independent and are not
owned by ITV plc, they have begun to opt out of network programming
on a more regular basis, including during peak-time. This is an
expression of ‘national identity’ which also carries through to ITV Wales,
but though some viewers are happy with this, others regret that they
cannot receive their favourite network programmes. Once digital
switchover is complete, the missing programmes may well be available
via other channels or replay software – although they may be more
difficult to find than simply pressing the ITV button on the remote.

UTV Media owns UTV and
several local radio stations in
the UK and Ireland. UTV
in ‘Ulster’ is not related to
the Indian media company
with the same initials.

STV (Scottish Television) is owned by the Scottish Media Group which
includes Ginger Productions and the cinema advertising company Pearl and
Dean. STV doesn’t broadcast to southern Scotland which is covered by ITV
in the region once covered by Border TV. This was the first UK region to
make the digital switch.

Different concepts of ‘local’ and ‘regional’ television have operated at
different times and in different places. At one time the concept of very
local television, a reality in a North American context, looked like
appearing in the UK with ‘community channels’ via cable and in the
original discussions about a fifth national channel that might include
‘city-based’ television. Neither of these was realised. City-based channels
have appeared at different times in London and Manchester, but the
overall concept has never taken hold in the UK. Channels associated
with major Premier League football clubs are possibly more popular.
It could be argued that when ITV lost its regional distinctiveness, it
also lost some of its appeal for audiences. That regional identity was part
of the PSB remit of the ITV companies – an element that could be
transferred to local/regional newspapers and delivered as an online
service.
The major networks such as ITV and its European equivalents have
tried various other ways of exploiting their brands. After the failure of
ITV Digital, the network has recovered to some extent by setting up
three digital channels via Freeview, the DTT platform, which offer
mainly repeats and acquisitions but also some original programming.
Although the terrestrial channel ITV1 has fallen behind BBC1, the
addition of audience shares from ITV 2, 3 and 4 boosts the total ITV share
in the UK to 24 per cent (including the breakfast service from GMTV).

Ofcom refers to the BBC
and ITV digital channels on
Freeview as ‘portfolio
channels’.

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Business models for television broadcasting

ITV plc holds only eleven of
the fifteen regional licences
(the other four are those
for the Channel Islands,
Northern Ireland, and two in
Scotland).

ABC belongs to Disney, NBC
to General Electric, CBS to
National Amusements and
Fox to News Corporation.
National Amusements is
the private company that
controls ownership of both
CBS and Paramount.

UK cable was launched
through local franchises
during the privatisation boom
of the 1980s, but by 2005 95
per cent of the operation was
controlled by Virgin Media.

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Note here that BSkyB only attracts a 6.5 per cent share, yet its revenue
massively outstrips that of ITV plc (2008: £2 billion). The once cash-rich
commercial network that could lure talent away from the BBC now
struggles with less than half the revenue of BSkyB or the BBC.
The four North American networks all face the same problems of
declining advertising income, but their position is less precarious
because of their ownership by large media conglomerates and the
possibility of taking content from other divisions. They have the
resources to put together high-quality programming, but even so, the
network model looks out of date.

Subscription
As a business model, subscription television could be argued to have the
advantage of the security of funding of a PSB broadcaster without the
requirement to fulfil a PSB remit. In practice, it doesn’t work out quite so
straightforwardly.
Subscription income does certainly offer some security, especially if
packages are sold to viewers for set periods (e.g. a minimum one-year
contract). Even so, a percentage of old subscribers will leave each year
and there is a constant battle to keep existing subscribers happy and
attract new ones. The indicator of success here is a low churn rate
(i.e. holding on to subscribers).
Secondly, the launch period for subscription may need to be lengthy
and the channel’s owners will need deep pockets. In order to attract
subscribers, the channel needs attractive programmes, preferably
unavailable anywhere else. Producing or acquiring such programming
is expensive, but until the subscriber base is established the channel is
not generating revenue. This means that the owners must be prepared
to invest heavily in programming and to sustain losses.
BSkyB saw off an initial competitor, BSB (which merged with Sky to
form BSkyB in 1990). Its eventual success in the UK was based on sport
– Premier League football and rugby league – and movies (sourced from
major stakeholder News Corporation’s 20th Century Fox and other
Hollywood studios). BSkyB sustained losses for many years until it
eventually forged ahead of the UK cable industry in signing up
subscribers. Then it saw off ITV Digital and Setanta, both of which tried
to compete, but with insufficient investment funds: the live football
rights they acquired were not attractive enough to attract large
subscriber numbers quickly.
As a satellite broadcaster, BSkyB has avoided the PSB remit in the UK.
Its range of programming has been more entertainment-oriented and it

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Business models for television broadcasting

has been severely criticised for the relatively low levels of UK-originated
programming and poor support for British cinema. However, in a couple
of respects it has taken on the mantle of a UK PSB provider with a strong
news presence and recently with the development of the Sky Arts
channels (acquired through a gradual takeover from 2002 onwards of
Artsworld, the independent channel set up by Jeremy Isaacs, former
head of Channel 4). In an environment where arts programming is being
cut back as other channels’ budgets fall, Sky Arts is a useful PR tool for
James Murdoch as well as a means of attracting more AB (professional/
managerial class) subscribers.
Although some of its channels carry advertising, BSkyB earns its
revenue primarily via individual subscriptions either directly or via
Virgin and other carriers. It also receives a ‘wholesale service’ income
from these carriers when they take channels which are offered on a basic
cable package (i.e. no premium subscription). Sky News is one such
channel.

CASE STUDY: HBO
It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.
Time Warner slogan
HBO (Home Box Office) and its corporate sister Cinemax are subscriptionbased television channels that operate in North America and, in different
ways, globally in Asia, Latin America and central Europe. The company first
launched a cable operation in 1972 but soon became a subsidiary of what is
now Time Warner. Its programming is available in both HD (high definition)
and standard formats and is carried by cable, satellite and broadband
services.

Figure 9.5 A plug for next
month’s highlights from the
October 2009 schedule of
HBO.

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Because it is a subscription-only programmer, HBO is not dependent on
advertising revenue. It is available in around one-third of American homes
(approximately 40 million subscribers as of September 2008) and a further
20 million plus homes internationally. Those viewers who do not subscribe
will be able to access HBO ‘original’ material on DVD and in some countries
these shows will be available on free-to-air networks (e.g. in the UK).
Many of the most highly acclaimed shows will not be networked in the
US, however, because they are made without the self-censorship deemed
necessary for general viewing by the Federal Communications Commission,
the US regulator. In American terms, this refers to sex, violence and
profanity.

Financial viability
As a content provider with a guaranteed income, HBO can afford to make
expensive programming for a limited (i.e. not broadcast to all) television
audience and still make large profits. Time Warner does not issue separate
financial statements for all its companies and HBO is included in the
‘Networks’ division with Turner Networks. The 2008 figures show a total
annual income of more than $11 billion for this division, with $6.8 billion from
subscription and $3.3 billion from advertising.

True Blood
A contemporary vampire series based on the novels of Charlaine Harris
and mostly co-written by Harris and Alan Ball, a well-known Hollywood
screenwriter and creator of Six Feet Under, True Blood was first broadcast in
2008 in the US and quickly became a cult success. The website for the series
carried this ironic statement: ‘This website is intended for viewing solely in
the United States. This website may contain adult content.’
As we note in Chapter 10, it is difficult to control access to internet
material, so this is really an invitation to access ‘adult content’ for anyone,
anywhere in the world. The sex scenes in the series are certainly ‘stronger’
than those in network series and the combination of action, sex and comedy
draws in audiences. Although legal broadcasts/downloads of the series
may be restricted in different parts of the world, illegal downloads over
Masterpiece Theatre airs on
the Public Broadcasting
System in the US (http://
www.pbs.org/wgbh/
masterpiece/).

280

peer-to-peer sharing sites are almost guaranteed. It may well be that it is the
intelligence on display in the writing that gains the channel so many awards
and the attention of upscale audiences, but it would be wrong to place HBO
alongside more ‘worthy’ offerings such as Masterpiece Theatre with its

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Business models for television broadcasting

screenings of BBC and ITV drama serials and mini-seasons – some with
education support.

Quality drama
The most common reference to HBO and its high-quality drama series found
in television industry discourses in many countries is an envious observation
about how difficult it is to emulate such production quality. In the UK system
before the arrival of multi-channel television, such production was possible by
all three broadcasters, BBC, ITV Network and Channel 4. This was because
expenditure on drama could be justified in the context of large audiences for
artistically challenging material. The fragmentation and segmentation of
audiences has reduced the overall audience size for each channel and now
only mainstream drama (often referred to as ‘cops and docs’) is able to
attract funding. ITV will now spend £2 million or more on a two-hour crime
mystery for Sunday evening, but not £15 million over several episodes of a
literary adaptation such as Brideshead Revisited (UK 1981) or The Jewel in

the Crown (UK 1984), highly praised serial drama series of the 1980s. Much
the same is true for the BBC and Channel 4. ‘Quality drama’ is now often
assumed to be bought in direct from HBO or to be the result of co-productions
with HBO or public broadcasters in the US, Canada, Australia, etc.
At various times, the UK regulator Ofcom has suggested that public
funding of television (i.e. via the licence fee) might be used to create an
HBO-style production house in the UK.

CASE STUDY: CHANNEL 4
Channel 4 (http://www.channel4.com) in the UK is an unusual broadcaster.
It was founded by the Broadcasting Act of 1980 and launched in 1982 as a
publicly owned PSB provider. It was charged with commissioning (rather than
making) programmes that were in some way ‘alternative’ either in their
formal structure or in their appeal to audiences who were not being properly
served by BBC and ITV. (This new concept – as a ‘publisher-broadcaster’ –
was considered as innovative and continued to be discussed as appropriate
for various initiatives until fairly recently.)
Channel 4 was founded as a subsidiary of the then regulator, the
Independent Broadcasting Authority, and its budgets were determined
by the sale of advertising (initially by ITV with minimum guarantees). This

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initial approach did indeed produce a different programming schedule,
with notable successes in developing African-Caribbean and South Asian
programme content and other innovations in meeting its PSB remit.
However, from the early 1990s onwards the channel gradually lost much
of its radical edge and began to look more like a conventional UK PSB
provider. In 1993, following the 1990 Broadcasting Act, it became a public
corporation (though the board was still appointed by the new regulator, the
ITC), and it started to control its income through selling its own advertising
space. In this period it gained its highest audience share (11 per cent) but
also began the move towards more popular programming. Over the next
fifteen years, while maintaining its PSB remit and commissioning a range
of innovative and ‘quality’ programming (including drama series such as

Queer as Folk (1999)), the channel also started to target specific audiences,
Channel 4 Films arguably
‘saved’ the British film
industry in the 1980s, and
in 2009 its production of
Slumdog Millionaire won eight
Oscars, but in 2002 an
attempt to become a
distributor and international
sales company was
abandoned as funding
problems mounted.

primarily younger and more middle class. Young women in particular were
targeted through imported series such as Friends and Sex and the City plus
the format import Big Brother.
In some ways, Channel 4 has been a kind of experiment watched from
within the UK industry. Its successes have included its film industry ventures,
initially in the early 1980s into ‘television films’ but then into theatrical
releases, and its prizewinning news programming. With the arrival of multichannel television, the corporation started new channels, FilmFour, More4 and
E4, initially as premium channels and then moving to the Freeview service.

Red Riding
This trilogy of television films based on a quartet of novels by David Peace
was broadcast on Channel 4 in 2009 and then sold for cinema screenings

Figure 9.6 A scene from Red Riding 1980, the second film in the trilogy, showing the stylised
presentation of the story.

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Conclusion

internationally. Many commentators saw the production as an attempt to
create ‘event television’ around a serious drama offer and consciously to seek
to compete with the impact of HBO series in the UK (Channel 4 also began to
broadcast True Blood later in 2009).
In some ways, the attempt worked: the films (shown in consecutive weeks)
were eagerly discussed and the promotions worked well. However, the viewing
figures were mixed, dropping considerably for the second film and only
picking up slightly for the third. This may be a result of the subject matter and
the cinematic style of the films. The story, about police corruption and brutal
murders, is set in the period of the Yorkshire Ripper killings in the late 1970s/
early 1980s and was filmed on location in West Yorkshire. The films were
made by the well-known British independent film company Revolution
Films (Andrew Eaton and Michael Winterbottom) and directed by three
experienced British film-makers (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand
Tucker). The budgets for the three feature-length films were less than for
comparable HBO productions, but two of them were shot in CinemaScope
ratios (i.e. wider than widescreen televisions). The overall look of the films
was often dark – the image on poorly adjusted TV screens may have been
off-putting and overall they would work better in cinemas. However, in a UK
context the average 2 million viewers for each film is certainly more than the
cinema admissions achieved by most British films.
The stark truth is that, being advertising-funded, Channel 4 faces a difficult
future. But its PSB status and history of innovation do offer possibilities:
receiving part of the licence fee income, joining other organisations in
extended PSB (and publicly funded) services, and merger/tie-up with a larger
private sector organisation (e.g. Five owned by RTL/Bertelsmann).

Conclusion
We’ve queried the future of television as access to video online increases.
Whereas certain aspects of broadband usage seem inevitable, e.g. the
migration of advertising from network television to the internet, others
are contingent – will statutory regulators outside the US seek to protect
forms of PSB by helping them to establish online? Equally contentious
is the future of supra-national attempts to protect intellectual property
rights. If media-user attitudes towards copying follow the Kevin Kelly
hypothesis (see Chapter 8), even the currently successful subscription
television channels are at risk. In Chapter 10 we explore the issue of
regulation in more detail, but here we should emphasise that the future

UK politicians have taken
several mistimed steps
towards Web 2.0 (see
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=3ziDciRjxUo and
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=yELHemcQn10).

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References and further reading

Figures quoted in The Power
of Print (2009) showed that
readers’ faith in the credibility
of Google News was not
significantly different to that
in US newspapers. It would
be interesting to poll on the
credibility of Fox News and
CNN.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

of television is very much about what is now being termed ‘public
culture’. If politicians of all kinds, business leaders and trade unions,
religious and cultural agencies, etc. decide to operate primarily in a Web
2.0 world, how will the society at large follow the debate across different
outlets? Perhaps Google News will be our first port of call?

References and further reading
Crisell, Andrew (2006) A Study of Modern Television: Thinking Inside the
Box, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Ellis, John (2000) Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty,
London: I. B. Taurus.
Instrell, Rick (2005) ‘The Economic Shaping of American Television
Drama’, Media Education Journal, 37 (spring).
Livingstone, Sonia (2009) Children and the Internet, Cambridge and New
York: Polity Press.
Ofcom (2008) The International Communications Market 2008, 4:
Television, http://www.ofcom.org.uk.
Ofcom (2009) Public Service Broadcasting: Annual Report 2009,
http://www.ofcom.org.uk.
O’Malley, Tom, and Treharne, J. (1993) Selling the Beeb, London:
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.
Digital Britain (2009) Department for Culture, Media and Sport,
http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/digitalbritainfinalreport-jun09.pdf.
The Power of Print (2009) WAN-IFRA Strategy Report, Vol. 8 No. 5,
www.futureofthenewspaper.com.

284

10 Regulation now

•

Politics and media economics

•

Regulation and ‘freedom’

•

Historical background

•

Changes in the ‘orthodoxy’ of
economic policy and new
models

•

Deregulation, liberalisation
and media institutions

•

The contemporary regulatory
environment

•

A ‘free market’ for
classification, censorship and
sex and violence?

•

The public gets the media it
deserves?

•

‘Free choices’ and ‘free
speech’?

•

Conclusion

•

References and further
reading

Whenever ‘the media’ are discussed as an important feature of
contemporary society, a whole range of assumptions come into play.
As we might expect from Chapter 6, different ideologies suggest different
ways in which media organisations might function socially/politically
and how we might understand their activities and the ways in which we
interact with them. In this chapter we want to investigate questions such
as:
• Should society expect media organisations to perform certain actions
and desist from others?
• Are there some forms of media use which are more desirable than
others?
• Who should decide this and the kinds of controls there might be over
media activity?
Before we begin, we perhaps need to consider the concept of the media
institution which draws on ideas from sociology, psychology and politics
as well as economics and business studies. Institutions have been
described as:
enduring regulatory and organising structures of any society, which
constrain and control individuals and individuality – the underlying
principles and values according to which many social and cultural

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practices are organised and co-ordinated – the major social sources of
codes, rules and relations.
(O’Sullivan et al. 1994: 152–4)

Let the Right One In (see
Chapter 3 case study) is
rated ‘12’ in France, ‘13’ in
Spain, ‘15’ in the UK and
‘M/18’ in Portugal.

Deterritorialisation refers to
the move away from media
production and consumption
being governed by national
boundaries – and ‘official’
designations of limits to the
rights held over a media text.
‘Region 3 DVDs’ may be
intended to be watched in
East Asia, but they can
be purchased over the
internet and watched via
a multi-region player by
anyone, anywhere in the
world.

A number of key words such as ‘control’, ‘values’, ‘organised’, ‘codes’,
etc. are important in any discussion of media institutions. Overall, the
definition points towards an ordered and ‘known’ world. As new media
technologies and then goods and services were developed from the
middle of the nineteenth century onwards, what were at first the
inventions of a few pioneering entrepreneurs or public servants were
eventually both industrialised and institutionalised. On the one hand,
media production was organised on an industrial scale, and on the
other, the actions of media producers and users were gradually
‘regulated’. How precisely this happened depended on the social,
economic and political contexts in which specific media activities were
introduced. Institutionalisation, although it usually followed a similar
trajectory, tended to be specific to national contexts – so how films are
classified for different audiences varies across the world.
But this seemingly ‘ordered’ institutionalisation has been disrupted by
the same two factors which are discussed in many other sections of this
book – globalisation (in the form of deterritorialisation) and the
development of new media associated with internet use.
As Jonathan Bignell points out, television need not necessarily have
developed as it did in the twentieth century:
television could have been a popular medium, in the sense that it
could have been made as well as received by the viewers themselves,
and the making of television could have been embedded in their
own lives. Instead, television became big business, where national
governments co-operated to set up technical standards to control the
mass production of television equipment. A professional community
of highly trained technicians and production staff undertook the
making of programmes.
(Bignell 2008: 45)
With inexpensive digital video equipment and any of the various Web
2.0 services (see Chapter 8) now available, it is possible to return to
that vision of a ‘personal’ use of ‘television’ (i.e sound and image
communicated across long distances). Digital technologies offer at least
the possibility of unregulated media production by individuals and the
internet has proved very difficult to institutionalise. But this doesn’t
mean that institutional questions have disappeared or that regulation has

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been abandoned. Consider some of these questions about media activity
in recent years:
• Should a newspaper be allowed to print photographs or cartoons that
it knows will be offensive to certain religious groups?
• Major retail chains (e.g. WalMart in the US) have sometimes refused
to stock magazines or CDs/DVDs containing what they deem to be
‘offensive material’ – if they have a monopoly of supply in a specific
area is this too much ‘control’?
• In a democracy, should everyone, irrespective of where they live
or their ability to pay, be able to receive certain media services
(e.g. television or broadband) by right?
• Should advertising be withdrawn even if only a few people are
offended by it?
Each of these examples refers to the power of media producers or
distributors to do things that others would like to prevent or not do things

Figure 10.1 Advertising in France
is regulated by the ARPP (Autorité
de régulation professionelle de la
publicité, http://www.arpp-pub.
org/1-ARPP.html), a self-regulating
body for the advertising industry.

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Politics and economies

others want them to do. The examples also refer to our activities as
users. Do we want to live in a society where anything and everything is
available if we have the money to buy it – or do we prefer a society in
which goods and services are provided for all, but not necessarily in the
way we would choose for ourselves?

EXPLORE 10.1

•
•

If you were in a position to regulate forms of media activity, what would you try
to constrain and what would you like to promote?
Or perhaps you don’t think the media should be subject to constraint or
encouragement?

‘Constraining’ the power of organisations and how media users
engage with them is one of the main functions of the process of
institutionalising them. At the same time the ideologies of contemporary
capitalism emphasise ‘economic growth’ and ‘more choice for users’.
Can we, or should we, attempt both to constrain or direct media
institutions in certain ways and to encourage them to produce
more, advertise vigorously and constantly strain to become more
powerful? As we will see, this basic contradiction underpins many
media debates.

Politics and economics
Some media debates are concerned with political issues – the
relationship between media institutions and government – or with public
debates more generally. Others are primarily questions of economics –
how to make the most efficient use of ‘scarce’ resources (i.e. labour and
capital) to produce goods and services. For example:
• A government directive to internet service providers requiring
them to disconnect broadband users or to report on their behaviour
(i.e. which sites they visit) is a political issue involving debates about
personal freedoms.
• Whether a film animation studio should carry out its time-intensive
post-production work in the US or contract it out to a company in
Europe or Asia is a business economics issue.
But the separation of what is ‘politics’ and what is ‘economics’ is not
clear-cut – in fact it is a function of ideology. If we believe an action is

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‘purely a question of economics’, we are less likely to think of its political
consequences. So, in the example above, the animation studio’s decision
might mean less work in its own studio and more work elsewhere – with
social costs and benefits to different groups of people.
After the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe began in the
eighteenth century, the scholars who studied these momentous changes
(Adam Smith, Karl Marx, etc.) were described as political economists.
They made direct links between the growth in production and the
development of new nation states in a capitalist system. It wasn’t until
the late nineteenth century that ‘economics’ emerged as a separate
discipline, concentrating in a more ‘scientific’, ‘mathematical’ way
on changes in prices for inputs and outputs without the impediment
of political questions. This form of economics (usually termed
‘neoclassical’) has remained dominant, but some media studies theorists
have returned to the original formulation and adopted a political
economy approach to their work.
This isn’t an economics textbook, but we do need to note how, in the
twentieth century, economic theory developed and changed over time.
Despite the supposed separation of politics and economics, governments
changed their policies and worked with economic models created
according to the prevailing ideologies within the economics communities
of academics and advisers.
A model in social sciences is a theoretical construction which enables
policy-makers to predict what might happen in the future – e.g. how the
population might grow, whether the price of oil will go up, or, in media
industries terms, what will happen to television in any country when the
analogue service is ‘switched off’ or when broadband access is sufficient
for everyone to watch high-quality streaming video. We will concentrate
on two such models and the arguments that surround them. But first we
need a clearer idea of what is at stake in terms of controlling or ‘freeing’
media activities. The arguments focus on ideas of regulation and
personal freedom.

Regulation and ‘freedom’?

Adam Smith (1723–90) is
associated with ideas about
‘free trade’. Like Marx, he has
often been misrepresented
by various political groups.

‘. . . the difference between
political economy and
economics is that, in
economics, war is a
temporary alteration in price
variation, the old joke being
that “World War III, should it
come, will be noted in two
sentences in the Wall Street
Journal, with an article inside
on its effect on soybean
futures” ’ (from the ‘political
economy’ entry on
Wikipedia).

Regulation and ‘freedom’?
Media activity has an impact on society in three ways.
1 As a social activity, it can bring benefits associated with better
information, insights, understanding and, of course, pleasure in our
enjoyment of interaction with media products and other media users.
At the same time, media activity could be harmful if it led to increased
ignorance, encouraged violent and anti-social behaviour, or interfered
in some way with other forms of social activity.

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Regulation and ‘freedom’?

Disbenefits refer to the social
costs of economic actions.
These may not be easily
measured in monetary terms
but can be damaging to the
social fabric. They form part
of a cost-benefit analysis and
are not always recognised in
free market calculations.

In October 2009, UK
Industry Minister Peter
Mandelson referred to the
£16 billion earned by the
UK’s ‘creative industries’.

Attacks on media studies
in the UK media rarely
mention the economic
contribution of the media
industries – and the need
to produce graduates
with media skills and
understanding.

One of the first modern
thinkers to address the idea
of personal freedom was
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–68) in The Social
Contract (1762). He argued
that individuals could only
gain freedom by submitting
to the ‘General Will’ of the
society embodied in the
democratic state – but the
state must also act in a moral
fashion and preserve the
freedom of its citizens.

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2 As a cultural activity, it can be considered as art practice. It can
contribute to the cultural heritage of communities and enable us to
explore ideas in new ways and to enrich our experience. Viewing
media texts as art objects gives them a different status compared with
texts which have a more instrumental social use or for which
entertainment is a primary function.
3 As an economic activity, it can provide employment and a return
on capital, creating wealth for individuals, companies and
regions/nations. In a capitalist system based on the concept of risk, it
can also be associated with business failure and the social disbenefits
that can bring. The so-called ‘cultural’ or ‘creative’ industries are of
great importance in post-industrial societies that have managed to
shift most forms of heavy industry and manufacturing to economies
with lower labour costs. Governments are beginning to appreciate
the contribution of the media industries to this sector – but perhaps
it hasn’t yet been appreciated by society at large?
One aspect of regulation that is clearly related to the ‘economic’
is the aim of maintaining competition in the media marketplace. This
could mean competition between PSB providers as well as between
different commercial media producers and between public and
private producers. Certain monopolies may be allowable in a PSB
context, but pluralism is frequently the byword.
Competition is essential to the free market approach, but since
this only occurs ‘naturally’ in a perfect market, it is often necessary to
distort market conditions to produce competitiveness. (See comments
on the free market model below.) Regulators in some countries are
keen to restrict cross-media ownership. The European Commission
also hopes to limit too much competitive advantage across the
European Union as a whole (e.g. the long-running action against
Microsoft over its Media Player).
How do we as a society maximise the benefits – social and material –
and minimise the disbenefits of media activity? The solution is going to
depend on our approach to issues of regulation and institutionalisation.
What is problematic is that there are also broad issues about how far we
as individuals are prepared to allow other people to have a say in how we
conduct our media activities as ‘producers’ or ‘users’. How do we resolve
the conflict between the public and private aspects of our media use? Is
the best form of regulation organised by:
• governments
• media institutions themselves
• the operations of the market
• some other way?

10: REGULATION NOW

Historical background

Before we try to explore these questions, we need to sketch in the
historical background to the regulation of media industries and how it is
aligned to economic models, since without it you will find it difficult to
understand contemporary debates fully.

Historical background
Knowledge is power and has been recognised as such throughout history.
Rulers and powerful classes have always tried to keep the mass of the
population away from ‘dangerous knowledge’. In Europe in the Middle
Ages this meant a Christian church which attempted to maintain a
‘priestly language’, Latin, as the basis for theological and academic texts.
The church had control over education, which was restricted to those
who could learn Latin. The invention of the printing press promised to
introduce the first ‘mass medium’, circulating ideas to everyone who
could learn to read in their own local or ‘vernacular’ language. It is
no surprise that governments of every kind immediately saw the
importance of exerting some form of control over what was printed.
Sometimes they banned titles, sometimes they altered them and
sometimes they taxed them – raising revenue as well as limiting their
availability by artificially raising prices.
The ‘mass media’ developed as industrial activities from the end of the
nineteenth century onwards. Until 1945, political events and associated
economic policies produced a turbulent social and business world with
revolutions, world war, economic prosperity (particularly in the US in
the early 1920s) and then worldwide economic depression. In this
context, a difference between US and European ideas about media
institutions began to emerge. In Europe there was a tendency towards
forms of government intervention in the new industry of radio and
television broadcasting, largely for political reasons. Public service
broadcasting (PSB) is also evident in other developed countries such
as Canada, Australia and Japan, and is generally regulated by a set
of requirements laid down in a founding charter or licence and then
monitored for performance. But this was also linked to other forms
of publicly funded activity in countries with ideologies developed to
support collective, or co-operative, ‘social’ ownership. By contrast, US
ideas about the new industries stressed ‘unfettered’ capitalist enterprise
and only a very limited role for state intervention.
In the US, political events did give rise to some public sector media
activities, such as the theatre programme devised as a means of
employing writers, artists and performers to entertain and educate
communities with limited arts access as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal

Perhaps the first important
‘media product’ was the Bible
printed in 1455 by Johann
Gutenberg and celebrated
by Marshall McLuhan in the
title of his 1962 book The
Gutenberg Galaxy. That Bible
was in Latin, but the new
printing technology was used
for William Tyndale’s
‘Common English’ translation
in 1525 – he was burned at
the stake in 1536 for heresy.

Stamp duty is still levied
on certain legal documents
in the UK, but in the early
nineteenth century it was
used as a means of
suppressing radical
newspapers. The Newspaper
Stamp Duties Act of 1819
was an effective means of
‘regulating’ newspapers by
making them too expensive
for working people to
purchase. After newspaper
and advertising duties were
removed in 1855, the popular
press began to grow.

See the full discussion of PSB
in Chapter 9.

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Historical background

Cradle Will Rock (US 1999),
directed by Tim Robbins,
depicts the true story of
a leftist musical drama
production in New York in
the 1930s and the attempts
to prevent its staging.

The House Committee on
Un-American Activities
(HUAC) began investigating
Hollywood in 1947 and nine
screenwriters and a director
were eventually sent to
prison for ‘contempt’ –
refusing to ‘name names’
and to say whether they
were members of the
Communist Party. YouTube
features footage on ‘The
Hollywood 10’.

‘In US movies before the
1960s, [the] Production
Code dictated that
characters got shot without
bleeding, argued without
swearing, and had babies
without copulating’ (Linda
Williams in Nowell-Smith
1996: 490).

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

during the 1930s Depression. This movement promoted the careers of
many writers and directors, including Orson Welles, but was viciously
attacked by some Hollywood executives. Many of those who took part
in the programme were later attacked as dangerous radicals during the
anti-communist ‘witch hunts’ of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In the US, publicly funded media activities have remained marginal:
media activity is essentially a business enterprise or the product of
an endowment by philanthropists (who have often made large profits
from business enterprise). From the development of radio stations in
the 1920s onwards, US broadcasting has been dominated by networks
selling advertising. Public service broadcasting on European lines has
been limited. This means that regulation of broadcasting in the US
has been conducted by a federal agency more concerned with
maintaining competition than with laying down requirements about
programming.
The non-broadcast media such as cinema, press and advertising
developed systems of self-regulation as part of their institutionalisation
in the twentieth century. Self-regulation means that institutions appoint
committees or panels of individuals drawn from within the industry (and
sometimes ‘independents’ from outside) who are charged with enforcing
a code of behaviour.
The tradition of certificating films for cinema release dates back to
1912 in the UK. Hollywood introduced a restrictive Production Code in
1930, designed to head off criticism and potential boycotts from religious
groups. The press and advertising industries have also developed ‘codes’
of behaviour as a defence against critics, and like cinema they have been
subject to forms of censorship. However, they have not been subjected to
the same regulatory environment that has faced broadcasters. (See the
list of self-regulating institutions and their codes below.)

The centrality of broadcasting
Statutory regulation means
that the powers of the
regulator are provided by
Act of Parliament and are
therefore enforceable by law.
In the case of the BBC, it has
traditionally been allowed to
self-regulate, with that status
being conferred by Royal
Charter.

292

Broadcasting has usually required some form of statutory regulation. Jostein
Gripsrud (2002: 260) suggests several reasons why broadcasting is often seen
to be the most important medium and therefore as giving the most concern
to governments (this would have applied to radio in the 1930s–1950s, but is
now more a feature of television):
• enormous ‘reach’ – accessible to almost everybody;
• people spend more time with radio and television than with any other
medium (but the internet may be replacing broadcasting now);

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Changes in the ‘orthodoxy’ of economic policy and new models

•

television is located centrally in every country (despite local services, it is
the medium which represents a national focus on events);
• television dominates the agenda of the public sphere;
• television is the most important medium for culture, both in the sense of a
‘way of life’ and in the sense of art – we gain our sense of who we are and
how we live primarily from television.
For all these reasons, television (and, to a lesser extent, radio) is considered
too important to ‘leave to the market’, and governments have decided it
should be regulated. We should also note the public safety issue of the
control over radio frequencies (i.e. interference with vital services).
However, in Chapters 7, 8 and 9 we explore how the traditional model of
television is being challenged by online video services.

Public sphere – a concept
associated with the work of
Jürgen Habermas, who used
the term to refer to a social
space in which everyone
should be able to
communicate their ideas
about the state and the
economy. In practice, the
opportunities to do so are
limited. In Chapter 12, we
outline the concept of the
public sphere and criticisms
of it.

Changes in the ‘orthodoxy’ of economic policy and
new models
From the end of the Second World War (1945) until the early 1980s, the
prevailing economic ideology in the developed world was ‘Keynesianism’
(named after the British economist John Maynard Keynes). This set
of ideas saw government intervention in the economy as an essential
tool for controlling inflation and unemployment across all the major
capitalist economies. Keynesian policies saw governments ‘regulating’
their own spending so that, if a depression in the economy threatened,
spending on public sector goods and services would be increased. The
aim of government policy was to maintain economic prosperity and the
general economic welfare of all aspects of society (i.e. ‘full employment’
and low inflation).
These policies provided relative economic stability and were accepted
by all political parties in the UK and elsewhere. In Europe this allowed
governments to fund public service broadcasters adequately so that
programming could be ‘producer-led’. Producers had budgets that
allowed them to make a full range of programmes. The UK stood out
in Europe as having a ‘mixed economy’ in television with a strong
commercial sector in ITV, but one which was regulated alongside the
BBC and had certain public service broadcasting obligations.
In the US, television broadcasting was a relatively stable market up to
the 1970s, with two, and later three, big commercial networks competing
with each other across the country and an array of local channels in each
major city. The different approach to regulation in the US did not directly

John Maynard Keynes
(1883–1946) was a very
influential figure, often
credited with founding
the discipline of
macroeconomics, the study
of the workings of the
whole economy, rather
than those of individual
producers, consumers, etc.
(microeconomics). The 2008
banking crisis prompted calls
for a reconsideration of
Keynes.

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Changes in the ‘orthodoxy’ of economic policy and new models

Naomi Klein’s book and the
documentary film based on it,
The Shock Doctrine (UK 2009),
features Milton Friedman’s
ideas, in combination with
unchecked political violence,
let loose in Chile and other
countries since the early
1970s.

THE MEDIA STUDENT’S BOOK

affect Europe at this time. In the era before full globalisation of media
activity, the main issue for Europeans was the import of Hollywood films
and filmed TV series (westerns, police series, etc.). At various times
imports were restricted in an attempt to protect local markets.
In the late 1970s, the economic orthodoxy began to shift for a number
of reasons:
• the 1973–4 oil crisis raised the price of oil dramatically and caused
energy shortages in the West;
• social unrest at home and military disaster in Vietnam hit US
confidence;
• worn-out industries in some countries were suffering from chronic
under-investment and lower production costs by competitors in
‘emerging economies’;
• the whole post-war system of international trade and monetary
exchange was collapsing.
Governments began to abandon Keynesianism, partly because what had
previously seemed ‘impossible’ – unemployment and inflation rising
together – was now happening. They began to turn towards ‘monetarism’
and later the promotion of so-called ‘free market capitalism’. In its
extreme form, as formulated by the US economist Milton Friedman,
monetarism meant that governments intervened only in the flow of
money in the economy: money was all that mattered, and investment
decisions were made only by referring to the prevailing money market
conditions (the ‘interest rate’) and the potential profit from investment
(i.e. rather than by whether investment would produce a social benefit).
It is important to note here that governments didn’t all embrace the new
orthodoxy with the same fervour and their actions generally followed the
previous distinctions between Europe and the US. Generally, France and
Germany were most reluctant to change, the US was most eager, and the
UK was somewhere in the middle.

‘Free market’ economics
Before we go much further, it is important to think through how an economic
model works. In simple terms, economists study the actions of buyers and
sellers in markets and the cost of factors of production such as labour, capital,
raw materials, etc. in order to try to predict what will happen. To do this, they
use hypothetical constructs. One of these is the ‘perfect market’ in which
everyone has ‘perfect knowledge’ and buyers and sellers make rational
decisions. These decisions act on the levers of the price mechanism and the

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market controls itself with an ‘invisible hand’. When the supply of something
goes down, the price goes up and more suppliers join the market until the
price falls again, and so on.
But this is a theoretical market. In the ‘real world’, markets are ‘imperfect’
as knowledge is not equally accessible to all buyers and sellers. Because of
social and political considerations, governments, businesses and other
organisations and groups of individuals deliberately ‘distort’ markets, usually,
but not always, for good reasons. In our discussion about regulation, we are
concerned with different emphases on the importance of ‘markets’ and
‘competition’ on the one hand, and ‘intervention’ and price control on the
other. At one end of the spectrum there are free marketeers who perhaps
believe that a free market is possible and that it equates to personal liberty.
At the other are societies that accept markets only within a general
framework governed by other social priorities (universal access, ‘quality’ of
products, etc.). If we accept that globalisation (see Chapter 5) has created a
global market, we might expect a whole series of disputes between
governments whose ‘take’ on markets is different. We’ll look next at what
happened in the 1980s and how it has affected the media environment
(in particular the broadcasting environment) we now live in.

E X P L O R E 1 0 . 2 S T U DY A M A R K E T
The street market is the closest we come in the real world to the idealised
‘perfect market’. Think about online shopping (including digital downloads) as an
extension of the street market.
• Check the prices of a film/DVD and a
music album across several internet
retailers and local high street/
supermarket suppliers – are they all
the same?
• Are they actually the same goods – or
different versions from different
suppliers?
• If you can find the same titles on sale
in the US or in Europe, are the prices
similar? Is it helpful to use the street
Figure 10.2 A typical street market in Italy
market as a model for the market in
– is this a good ‘model’ for the media
industries?
films and music?

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Deregulation, liberalisation and media institutions

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Deregulation, liberalisation and media institutions

New technologies were also
important in other media
industries such as
newspapers and magazines.
Newspaper owners, led by
Rupert Murdoch, took
advantage of new labour laws
to break trade union power
in order to exploit these new
technologies. They were not
constrained by public service
requirements.

Utilities included gas,
electricity, water and
telecommunications – the last
including some major media
players such as Vivendi and
Telefónica.

In 1984 in the new ‘free
market’, the UK government
decided that so-called ‘video
nasties’ should be censored
by law – some markets are
obviously more ‘free’ than
others. In 2009, the British
Board of Film Classification
reported that the 1984 Act
did not comply with EC
directives and any rulings
were temporarily invalid
(http://www.spiked-online.
com/index.php/site/article/
7320/).

296

Starting in the 1980s:
• the new economic orthodoxy saw a move away from government
funding of public sector organisations towards support for more
‘open’, ‘competitive’ markets; this meant outlawing what were called
‘restrictive practices’, selling state-controlled enterprises to new
shareholders (‘privatisation’), contracting out public services to
private companies and encouraging the formation of new markets;
• new technologies – cable, satellite and cheaper broadcasting
technologies – offered a sudden increase in the possibilities for new
broadcast channels, more choice, but fragmentation of the market;
• new global media players emerged, some the result of privatisation
of publicly owned utilities, capable of moving across national
boundaries; in some cases they were welcomed by national
governments and in some accepted reluctantly.
These changes destabilised the existing broadcasting environment,
with public service broadcasters having to react to the presence of US
companies or new European private sector companies working to the
US model.
In economic terms the introduction of new channels and new services
meant that television was no longer something that governments saw as
a public good, to be treated as a special form of media activity in which
everyone shares. Instead, it became a ‘private good’ just like any other
media product such as a newspaper or magazine (see Küng-Shankleman
2000: 29). The media market across the world moved into a phase of
what some commentators called ‘deregulation and liberalisation’.
Linked government policies in many countries saw:
• the privatisation of what had been public sector monopolies in
broadcasting and telecommunications – what had been publicly
owned utilities were now privatised; these new private sector
companies were free to attract investment into new media products
and services;
• the ‘loosening’ of regulatory controls, especially in broadcasting,
which allowed previously tightly regulated broadcasters to lose some
of their public service obligations;
• the ‘opening up’ of media markets with new licences for broadcasting
services, particularly in radio, satellite and cable. Restrictions on
‘cross-media ownership’ were also gradually lifted. This was the
liberalisation of the market.

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Deregulation, liberalisation and media institutions

E X P L O R E 1 0 . 3 T H E L A N G UAG E O F T H E
MARKET
Have you noticed how the language used to describe the market is always
‘positive’? Markets are ‘free’, they have been ‘liberalised’. Regulation is usually
described in negative terms, such as ‘restrictions’. Even a potentially positive term
can be presented negatively, e.g. the ‘nanny state’ in the UK. Presumably the
people who use nannies for their children think that they are helpful, but the term
has become one of criticism.
• If you were asked to write promotional copy for a new form of regulation,
what positive terms would you use?

What does regulation really mean?
For most of us regulation is not something we think about unless it suddenly
has an impact. If at the start of the banking crisis in 2008 you were lucky
enough to have some money stashed in a bank or a building society, you
were probably very glad that governments decided to step in and save the
banking industry from collapse by guaranteeing your savings. But you might
also have wondered why the regulatory system was so feeble in the first
place as to allow the crisis to develop.
Nothing quite so dramatic has happened in media regulation, but we
shouldn’t be complacent. What follows is an example of a media world
without regulation.
Guyana, situated on the Caribbean coast of South America, didn’t develop
a national TV service until 1988 – unlike the other main ex-British colonies
in the Caribbean, most of which developed TV services soon after
independence in the 1960s. In Guyana, a repressive regime in the 1960s
decided that the simplest form of censorship of television was just to ‘delay’
its development – no TV, no problems with dissenting voices. Guyana’s
colonial history means that the country has two distinct ethnic groups:
descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured labour shipped in to
work in the sugar industry. The 1960s regime attempted to exclude the Asian
community. When a new government lifted the ban on television in the late
1980s, Asian TV stations sprang up very quickly. With no regulatory controls
in place, an ‘anything goes’ policy in some new television stations saw
broadcasts of feature films and other programming for which no rights had
been purchased.

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In other countries these would be ‘pirate stations’ but in Guyana they
flourished openly. Any criticism of this practice could be countered by a claim
that at least some audiences were receiving services and ‘cultural content’
that they had been denied before. But there were consequences. Here is a
2001 report in one of Guyana’s leading newspapers:
Piracy on TV, through video clubs and via recorded cassettes in this
country has assumed a certain legitimacy and is institutionalised, thus
making it more difficult to oversee the interests of the cinema. There used
to be a functioning Cinematographic Authority in Guyana, set up by the
Ministry of Information, and it used to police the cinema industry. It seems
as if it is now needed to protect it. This authority might well be
resurrected since it can now assist in saving the cinema.
(http://www.landofsixpeoples.com/gynewsjs.htm)
In 2009 only one cinema was still open on a part-time basis. There were fiftytwo cinemas in Guyana in the 1960s.
See Halstead (1999) and Narain (2005) for more background.

The contemporary regulatory environment
Since the 1990s many countries have seen changes in government and
therefore some changes in the approach to the surviving public sector
media activities. At the same time, media producers have found
themselves faced with three other factors:
• the structure of the global economy has shifted with the emergence
of China and India and significant other ‘players’ such as the wealthy
Arab states funding Al Jazeera or the Iranian English language
television service;
• national governments find themselves constrained in media policy
by trade agreements – especially in the enlarged European Union but
also in the wider context of GATT; regulatory regimes have also begun
to meet and organise on a European-wide basis (see below);
• the growth of internet services, especially peer-to-peer sharing, makes
it very difficult to monitor what is being distributed within national
boundaries.
We can identify six different types of regulation that might be applied to
contemporary media, distinguished by where the power to regulate is
located.

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The contemporary regulatory environment

1 Direct control by government
Some countries are controlled by authoritarian regimes which intervene
directly in the activities of the media industries (Burma, North Korea, etc.).
But such intervention isn’t unknown in democracies. The UK has a long
history of attempts by government to prevent certain news stories being
reported. The appeal here is to the ‘national interest’ and includes the DA
Notice system and the restraints placed on certain individuals by the
Official Secrets Act. In this respect the UK has a relatively ‘closed’ form of
government, which is often revealed as such in comparison with the ‘open’
US system. Aspects of telecommunications activity were regulated by a UK
government department until the creation of Ofcom in 2003.

‘The DA Notice system is a
voluntary code that provides
guidance to the British media
on the publication or
broadcasting of national
security information’ (from
http://www.dnotice.org.uk).
In April 2009 a DA notice
was issued to prevent the
publication of press photos
taken with telephoto
lenses that revealed secret
counter-intelligence material
carried by a senior police
officer entering 10 Downing
Street.

2 Delegation by government to an independent statutory regulator
Most European countries have some form of independent regulation of
broadcasting/telecommunications with powers delegated by government
to an appointed body. Such regulators are commonly charged with
issuing licences, collecting data, monitoring output and conducting
research leading towards policy proposals.

European audio-visual regulators
The EPRA (European Platform of Regulatory Authorities) operates a website
profiling all the European regulators (http://www.epra.org/content/english/
index2.html). The site also lists selected regulators worldwide plus other
networks of regulators, broadcasting legislation by country and links to
associated websites.

Figure 10.3 The websites of the broadcasting regulatory authorities in Nigeria (http://www.nbc.gov.ng/) and Jamaica (http://www.
broadcastingcommission.org). Both sites signal the digital switchover.

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The US regulator is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
an independent agency funded by the US government ‘working to make
sure the nation’s communications systems are working seamlessly and
competitively in your best interest’ (http://www.fcc.gov). Although by
European standards the FCC appears a ‘light touch regulator’, there have
been several cases of problems when FCC rulings have been contested in
terms of the ‘First Amendment’ to the US constitution which upholds the
right to ‘free speech’. See http://blog.cdt.org/2008/07/25/another-freespeech-victory-against-the-fcc/. Attempts to regulate internet operations
also face similar opposition.

3 Self-regulation by media producers
This has two meanings. In a formal sense the media institution itself
appoints a panel to oversee regulation. But it also works ‘informally’
through individual producers constraining themselves to avoid any
chance of later demands for changes or cuts. The older media industries
such as newspapers and cinema tended to create their own regulation
bodies. More recent industries are more likely to be regulated by
statutory bodies.

EXPLORE 10.4 PRESS COUNCILS

•
•

Visit the website of the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe
(AIPCE) at http://www.aipce.net/.
Check the ‘About the AIPCE’ page and the aims of the organisation. In what
ways do the aims reflect/refract the discussions about regulation in this
chapter?

4 The general legal framework as a restraint
Obscenity and blasphemy provide legal frameworks for actions against
media producers in many countries. If legal charges are made against
media producers, the results are often not satisfactory for either side.
Laws on blasphemy are problematic in secular societies – as atheists ask
‘Who protects us from offensive remarks?’ Legal action based on laws of
privacy may also provoke a defence of human rights argument and the
intervention of supra-national legal bodies such as the European Court of

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Human Rights (e.g. a case like Max Mosley v. News Group Newspapers
Limited, 2008).

5 ‘Market forces’ regulate
Audiences using their own judgement over purchases affect future
industry activities through the price mechanism. This is the view of the
free market model which assumes that it is possible and desirable to
allow the market to ‘look after itself’. In Chapter 9 we discuss what the
price mechanism means in relation to television services. Two recent
developments cast some doubt on the power of the market. First is the
suggestion that internet retail via the long tail means that even an
obscure product with very limited appeal may be able to find sufficient
buyers over a long period to justify its production. Secondly, if media
products are effectively free for many consumers, there is no price
mechanism as such. This is relevant to the easy access to pornography
at no cost – something which brings pressure on ‘protection policies’,
especially for children.

If you want to gain a sense
of how the most vocal
‘free marketeers’ argue their
case, go to the website of
Tech Central Station (TCS)
at http://www.techcentral
station.com, ‘Where free
markets meet technology’.

6 Audience pressure regulates
There is a long history of action by groups of all kinds campaigning for
changes in media activity. Sometimes this has been against the output of
material thought to be offensive or ‘morally dangerous’ – cinema, rock
music, television, videogames have all been attacked in this way. Other
campaigns focus on the overall quality and diversity of output and
lobbying has also come from specific groups concerned either about
representation issues in media products or about participation by their
members in media production. Such groups may be most effective by
putting pressure on either producers to self-censor (or to be more
inclusive) or governments to require statutory regulators to investigate
grievances.
Protest groups are often not themselves consumers of the products
that they attack and in this sense such protests are not part of ‘market
pressure’. However, media producers may respond as if to market
pressure if they fear that being associated with controversial media
products may damage their sales. But then, as the saying goes, there
is no such thing as ‘bad publicity’ and notoriety may also lead to an
increase in sales.

In a celebrity-driven culture,
charismatic campaigners
sometimes have a significant
impact. In 1985 four
‘Washington wives’, with
partners involved in politics
and business, created the
PMRC (Parents Music
Resource Center) which
eventually persuaded the
RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) to
put stickers on CDs warning
of ‘offensive lyrics’. The
practice continues today, but
its effectiveness is contested.

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A ‘free market’ for classification, censorship and sex and
violence?
As we’ve argued, the price mechanism and the free market are
associated with ‘value-free’ economics – in other words, an economics
which deals only with the effects of a change in prices on supply and
demand and not with questions about what economic policy should be
or what would be a price that was ‘good for society’. The importance of
this distinction is clear when we consider issues of classification and
censorship.
In a ‘free market’ we might expect to see a thriving trade in
pornographic material, as in many European countries and in the US,
if that is what people wish to buy. Indeed, developments in media
technologies (video, DVD, the internet, etc.) have nearly always been
adopted first within the porn industry – since it is the least regulated and
most market-driven media industry. However, the very advocates of the
free market are often among those who wish to control access to the
marketplace for certain kinds of products. The result is that in terms
of ‘sex and violence’ we expect to see the development of some form of
self-censorship in all media, whereby the distribution companies in
that medium agree to set standards for acceptable products. This has
happened with film, magazines and, more recently, videogames.
The oddity of the debate about sex and violence in broadcasting
(or in print or on film) is that the issue is rarely put to the market
test. We don’t know what would happen if ‘hard’ material were freely
available – if it is unacceptable to a large number of media consumers,
perhaps ‘the market’ would drop it from general release when it didn’t
sell? There are many pressure groups arguing for censorship but few
actively campaigning against. One argument might be that the current
attitude to self-censorship is patronising towards the audience. If
someone is capable of making a decision about whether a media product
represents ‘value for money’, why can’t they also decide whether or
not it is offensive and ‘liable to corrupt’? And if they can’t decide,
what makes a programme-maker better qualified to decide? This is
the argument as presented by the libertarian right and is a complete
refutation of public service broadcasting, without the qualifications of
the social market position.
In some respects this libertarian position looks acceptable (assuming
that children are protected from ‘offensive’ material, though this raises
more questions). However, ‘freedom to choose’ is also the freedom to be
assailed by fierce marketing. With that comes the possible acceptability
of more explicit sex or violence, leading to more of such programming
and less overall variety of material.

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The public gets the media it deserves?

The public gets the media it deserves?
Much of the UK debate about television (and radio and, possibly,
newspapers) is about the ‘level’ or ‘seriousness’ of programming and
scheduling. Public service broadcasting in the period up to the 1980s
was heavily geared to ensuring that certain kinds of programme were
scheduled on all channels in peak time. Current affairs and news and
arts programming were all prescribed, as well as education during the
day and at other times. The loosening of such requirements allowed ITV
and then Channel Five and the satellite and cable companies to target
BBC programmes in the schedule with more ‘ratings-friendly’ shows.
The BBC struggled within its remit to compete, and towards the end of
the 1990s various ‘test cases’ were widely discussed in the press and by
regulators:
• the disappearance of current affairs and arts programmes from peak
time;
• reduction of news programmes on ITV and the move to 10 p.m. by the
BBC for its main evening news.
In the ‘free market’, are these kinds of change inevitable? The market
is reflected in ratings and these in turn are used in negotiations with
advertisers. Scheduling is a strategy game in which the scheduler makes
an ‘educated guess’ about how well a programme will fare in a particular
time-slot. Because an instant response is important in ratings terms, the
scheduler is likely to:
• risk only those programmes which are formulaic (have worked
before);
• take off very quickly any programmes which don’t achieve the target
rating.
In the regulated market with strong support for the public broadcaster,
the scheduler would often allow a programme to ‘build’ an audience –
especially if it was a new kind of programme. This was ‘production-led’
rather than ‘ratings-led’ scheduling. In Chapter 9, we discuss the future of
television in terms of the switch to television online or time-shifted via
PVRs and VOD. Does this mean the end of scheduling arguments and the
triumph of the free market? The proponents of the free market in
broadcasting are likely to offer these observations:
• People want popular programmes: why shouldn’t they have what they
want? (This argument is often couched in class terms, with the public
service supporters represented as being a middle-class elite, out of
touch with the tastes of the majority.)
• The market is very conscious of ‘niche audiences’ who want very
different kinds of programmes. These audiences are often ABC1 and

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‘Free choices’ and ‘free speech’?

•
•

attractive to advertisers. As such they are targeted by schedulers
(and online retailers).
The market makes producers more focused and more efficient
(an argument often made to explain the success of imported US
programming).
Were the majority of programmes any better under the old system?
Yes, there were some great television plays and some classic sit-coms,
but what about the rest?

‘Free choices’ and ‘free speech’?
‘Freedom of choice’ is seen by the free marketeers as a winning slogan.
But what does it mean? As a traveller walking down an alley in Baghdad
a thousand years ago, you might well have been able to buy a carpet or a
sack of dates from one of many sellers, making your choice based on
knowledge of all the prices and a chance to see all the goods. Your
purchase decision may even have led to another buyer lowering prices.
Go to the ‘media bazaar’ anywhere in today’s global media marketplace
and your choice isn’t quite so simple. The chances are that you will know
most about the products with the biggest marketing budgets. Products
from smaller independent products may not even be ‘on sale’ at all if the
producers can’t afford to hire a stall. What kind of choice is being offered?
Modern distribution methods have increased access to books, DVDs,
CDs, etc. Although your chance of seeing a wide range of films at your
local multiplex is not very good (i.e. the same nine or ten films play at
most multiplexes), you have the opportunity via internet shopping (as
long as you have a home connection and a credit card) to buy any one of
thousands of DVDs to be delivered to your door or downloaded as digital
files. That is the power of ‘the market’. Of course, you may help to put
your local video shop, bookshop and record shop out of business. That is
the power of ‘the market’ as well. Are there any social benefits in having
a record shop manager to talk to or to sell tickets for concerts or copies of
your band’s CD? If you think there are, keeping them might require
some ‘intervention’ in ‘the market’.

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‘Free choices’ and ‘free speech’?

Regulation in Europe
As we’ve indicated several times in this chapter, regulation of a directive
and interventionist kind (i.e. as distinct from the US model) is strong in
Europe and it has become one of the main policy areas for the European
Commission. The latest EC directive came into force in 2010. Here is an
extract from the EC promotion of its policies online:
Audiovisual and Media Policies of the European Commission
(http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/index_en.htm)
The audiovisual sector directly employs over one million people in the EU.
It also plays a key social and cultural role – TV remains the foremost
source of information and entertainment in Europe, with most homes
having a television and the average European watching up to 4 hours a
day. Audiovisual content is also increasingly accessed through on demand
services.
EU audiovisual and media policy is implemented in 4 ways:
• Regulatory framework – mainly the 2007 Audiovisual Media Services
Directive, which aims to create an effective single European market for
audiovisual media and amends the Television without Frontiers
Directive, but also EU recommendations on protecting children/minors
online and European film heritage.
• Funding programmes – e.g. MEDIA, to complement national systems.
• Other measures – e.g. to promote online distribution of content
(content online and media literacy) and media pluralism.
• Action outside the EU – especially defending European cultural
interests in the World Trade Organization.
The Commission also participates in the European Audiovisual
Observatory.
And from the Press Release for the Directive ‘Audiovisual without Frontiers’:
The new Directive reaffirms the pillars of Europe’s audiovisual model, which
are cultural diversity, protection of minors, consumer protection, media
pluralism, and the fight against racial and religious hatred. The Commission
also proposes to ensure the independence of national media regulators.

This overall approach is well thought out, but regulatory decisions and
the institutional frameworks that they help to create can lead to difficult
situations.

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Dealing with race hatred and extremist politics
In the UK in 2009, the British National Party, a party espousing racial exclusion
and therefore potentially open to prosecution, won two seats in the
European Parliament. The BBC, a self-regulating PSB operating in a broadly
regulated (i.e. by Ofcom) PSB environment, decided to invite the BNP leader
Nick Griffin on to a Question Time panel. Question Time is a popular discussion
programme on BBC1 with a studio audience pitching questions to a panel of
politicians and others from different backgrounds. Questions were raised as
to whether the BBC was obliged to invite Griffin as part of the ‘impartiality’
clause in the BBC Charter. Certainly the BNP would have to be given a ‘party
political broadcast’ slot as this is an agreement amongst UK broadcasters. The
justification that appeared on the BBC website suggested that:
The BBC could not apply different standards to different parties because
of their particular policies. That would be a breach of our charter,
challengeable in the courts.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/09/
question_time_and_the_bnp.html)

Figure 10.4 BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time.

Stuart Hall (described on The Guardian’s website as a ‘cultural theorist’) was
quoted thus:
He should be interviewed when he’s specifically involved in a news event
– for example if someone throws a brick at a BNP meeting. He shouldn’t

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be banned from the media. But Question Time is something different – him
being invited on suggests we’re interested in his views on a whole range of
issues, which we’re not. His appearances should be related to news rather
than general commentary.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/
oct/16/does-question-time-accept-racists)

Conclusion

Question Time is made for the
BBC by an independent
company, Mentorn.

During the programme, which usually covers a range of topical issues, most
questions were directed at Griffin and his policies. Although many in the
wider BBC audience thought that Griffin’s poor performance in answering
questions had damaged his position, many others suggested that by allowing it
to become effectively a ‘bash Griffin’ programme, the BBC itself had been
damaged as a credible PSB provider.

EXPLORE 10.5

•
•

Do you think the BBC was right to invite Nick Griffin on to the show and then
allow the format to be modified?
What does this example tell us about the impact of regulation?

Conclusion
We’ve suggested that regulation is a function of all media markets.
Even deregulated ones have some new form of regulation, rather than an
abandoning of it. But different ideological positions favour both different
levels of regulation and different forms of regulatory controls. In the
US the tradition has been for limited intervention in media markets and
certainly relatively low levels of publicly funded and regulated output.
At the same time, certain aspects of easily accessible media are subject to
elements of social control. By contrast, in largely social democratic or at
least ‘mixed economy’ Europe, publicly funded output is still extensive
in an environment that experiences much more intervention by national
and Europe-wide regulatory bodies and conventions. Both these positions
are challenged by aspects of Web 2.0 and difficulties in regulating online
media. Finally, in all these different modes of regulation, we recognise
that regulatory codes always need adjusting as the media environment
itself changes – and the ways in which users wish to engage with it.

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References and further reading

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References and further reading
Bignell, Jonathan (2008) An Introduction to Television Studies, 2nd edn,
London: Routledge.
Gripsrud, Jostein (2002) Understanding Media Culture, London: Arnold.
Halstead, Narmala (1999) ‘Television in Guyana: A Regulatory
Nightmare’, in (eds), Lees, Tim, Ralph, Sue, and Brown, Jo Langham,
Is Regulation Still an Option in a Digital Universe?, Luton: Luton
University Press.
Küng-Shankleman, Lucy (2000) Inside the BBC and CNN, London:
Routledge.
Narain, Atticus (2005) ‘Remote Control Nationalism: Media Politics in
Guyana’, Journal of the Moving Image, 4 (November),
http://www.jmionline.org/jmi4.htm.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (ed.) (1996) The Oxford History of World Cinema,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Sullivan, Tim, Hartley, John, Saunders, Danny, Montgomery, Martin,
and Fisk, John (1994) Key Concepts in Cultural and Communications
Studies, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.

308

11 Debating
advertising,
branding and
celebrity
•

Advertising, marketing and
branding

•

Debates

•

Histories

•

Hollywood and branding

•

Hollywood: the brand(s)

•

Case study: ‘Brangelina’

•

Citizenship and consumption

•

A note on ‘spin’

•

Conclusion

•

References and further reading

‘To advertise’ originally meant ‘to draw attention to something’, often
by word of mouth. It is now the media form we most often encounter,
usually as part of branding. It funds most media, directly or indirectly.
Product press releases are often used by news sources, since they are
usually legally safe and ready written. And such contemporary activities
now involve much more than ‘drawing attention’ to products. They
extend into PR (public relations) and activities known as ‘spin’. And,
finally, they sometimes seek to take products out of the public eye, or to
‘spin’ their meanings in processes such as ‘greenwashing’.
Ads now have usually been carefully researched via focus groups
(see Chapter 15). More recently ‘viral’ or ‘peer-to-peer’ advertising is
attempted. This is said to work like a virus (in the community or in a
computer) – ‘infecting’ one consumer who spreads it to others. This uses
the idea of a cumulative ‘tipping point’, here in the spread of good ‘word
of mouth’ for a product. You probably notice the resemblance to ideas of
‘the wisdom of crowds’ (also explored in Chapter 8). It’s all a long way
from simple 1950s psychological or ‘effects’ models applied to single ads,
or to myths of the power of subliminal advertising.

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The ‘tipping point’ explores the ways that momentum for social change
gradually builds up, until a ‘tipping’ point is reached, where the momentum is
suddenly unstoppable. The term comes from Michael Gladwell’s book The
Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2001). Other key
terms there include ‘connectors’ (people with extensive social networks),
‘mavens’ (specialists who can connect ‘us’ to new information), and ‘the
stickiness factor’, which you will hear in some discussions of how often visitors
come back to a website, or a blog.

Lawson (2009: 243) quotes
the famous saying of the
architect Mies van der Rohe
‘less is more’, and the reply of
Frank Lloyd Wright: ‘Less is
only more where more is no
good.’

Most chapters in this book have had to deal with one or other of
advertising’s social roles (see Chapters 7–10 for its involvement with
media economics). Some would argue its costs are now not only
monetary, but involve mental and physical health, and the future
of much human life on this planet. The term turbo-consumerism has
been coined (see Lawson 2009) to describe the pace of demand which
advertising, especially branding, has stimulated in recent decades. It
is arguably the most powerful and pervasive form of propaganda in
world history. Try to avoid all advertising for a single day. You will find
it very difficult.

EXPLORE 11.1
Figure 11.1 Advertising has for
some time featured in dystopic
source fiction narratives. The mall
in Minority Report (US 2002) is a
striking visualisation of novelist
Philip K. Dick’s idea of brands
which scan the consumer’s
eyes – an extension of the use of
barcode information by some
supermarkets?

•
•
•

How many forms of advertising have you encountered so far this week (include
branding – the visible sign of a brand on your trainers, jeans, shopping bag)?
Where did you encounter them?
Have you ever advertised? Where?
In a ‘free’ student or other local paper? On e-Bay? As internet ‘spam’?
On a dating site, advertising yourself, or an image of yourself? (See Chapter 15)

Advertising has drawn the attention of generations of analysts and is an
attractive way to begin study of media imagery. Often though, the
implication can be that ads alone produce direct ‘effects’ on viewers –
as claimed in the past by advertisers. There’s often a fascination with
‘subliminal ads’ as apparent evidence of the sheer power of this media
form alone. Yet this is arguably another example of the strange attraction
of a ‘dupes’ model of audience.

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Advertising, marketing

Subliminal means ‘imperceptible but powerful’ (from Latin for ‘below the
threshold’). It is used of secret messages said to be inserted into advertising
and other media forms, and to have measurable effects on behaviour,
‘bypassing’ the ‘conscious’ brain.
The theory is now discredited, though still circulates. Stories of ‘backward
messages’ in rock and roll songs, or frames included in ads and political
broadcasts, have also persisted. See Wikipedia’s useful account.

Advertising, marketing and branding
Advertising works in the larger context of marketing, public relations
(PR) and now branding, all of which try to identify, connect with or
create the ‘market’ for a product. This involves not only the design of
individual ads but also the sum of the ways (such as pricing, placing in
distribution outlets, association with celebrities) in which a product is
positioned in its particular market.
Advertising or marketing agencies co-ordinate different kinds of
activities, sometimes in competition with each other. PR is one set
of activities, involving publicising persons or companies. It uses
some of the same techniques as advertising – competitions, free
offers – but may also arrange incidents, ‘spontaneous’ happenings, the
setting up of internet fan clubs, micro-blogging (crafting identities on
Twitter, etc.), even staged relationships, reported by the media as news
(see the career of publicist Max Clifford). All of these activities can
overlap with those of the advertising agencies which make ads and
manage campaigns, ‘placing’ or buying space for ads in particular
media.

The South African company
De Beers sought in 1947 to
redefine diamonds, saying
they would ‘make diamonds
a cultural imperative in a
woman’s life’. How does
their advertising now try
to redefine these small,
polished, sparkling rocks?

A market is the total of all
the potential sellers and
buyers for a particular
product (and the number
of products likely to be at
stake). The word has
attractive connotations –
local, bustling, sociable – for
operations which are now
often very different. See
Chapter 10.

Nielsen Media Research, the leading provider of US TV ratings and
‘competitive advertising intelligence’, tracks product placement on the top
US networks, including whether the ad is placed in the foreground or
background, its time on screen, integration into the storyline, etc. This is in
a context where products such as TiVo DVR allow some viewers to skip
commercials altogether. Go to http://www.nielsenmedia.com for details of
this (very expensive to access) research.

Branding aims to give products and services resonant cultural meanings
through various imaginative/imaginary connections (often to

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celebrities or powerful cultural myths). However, these meanings are
grounded in
• distribution: commercial placings and pricings;
• often intense legal protection (ever tried to use a pair of Mickey
Mouse™ ears in a commercial poster?);
• the ability to pressurise suppliers of raw materials and products as a
result of the sheer size of the regular contacts the branding company
promises (you could explore almost any major brand for evidence of
these practices);
• the processes of globalisation (see Chapter 5).
Branding is said to be driven by the need for ‘competitive distinction’
within a crowded ‘marketplace’. The physical form of the brand (shape
of bottle, colour of packet, logo, etc.) can come to stand as the face of
the parent corporation. It is a key means of shaping ‘markets’ and
competitive relations between companies, as well as many consumers’
sense of themselves.

EXPLORE 11.2
Explore http://www.interbrand.com, the major ‘brand consultancy’, which publishes
annual rankings of global brands’ values based on the percentage of their revenues
that can be credited to their brand. Only brands worth more than £1 billion and
deriving a third of earnings outside their home countries are included.
Striking about their report cover, opposite, is the ease with which you can
probably recognise the visible brands by mere slivers of the logos.

Figure 11.2 Interbrand report
cover 2009

USP: unique selling
proposition: the supposedly
unique quality of a product
which advertisers seek to
communicate to potential
buyers. These attempts occur
in a world with many possible
substitute products for big
brands (e.g. the huge
numbers of more or less
equally efficient detergents,
toilet rolls, trainers).

312

Branding often seeks to establish a USP or unique selling proposition.
At the simplest level it involves trying to persuade customers, through
this USP, of a product’s quality prior to purchase or experience, by
means of the reputation or image of the producing company. It is often
argued that the versatility of modern capitalism means that individual
products (e.g. a bar of chocolate) are not unique for very long: product
specifications can easily be copied by rivals in a few days, and the
difference between products anyway is often minimal. How many
truly different kinds of shampoo can there be? Brands, however (e.g.
Cadbury’s, McDonald’s), making a range of products, can be made to
seem, and indeed often are, stable guarantees of ‘quality’. Their legal
teams will strongly defend the recipe or design of the brand, and if a
problem arises with quality, there will be intense PR and other efforts
to repair the damage to the brand – see the Cadbury’s example below.

11: DEBATING ADVERTISING, BRANDING AND CELEBRITY

Debates

EXPLORE 11.3
Take five shampoos or other everyday product. Act as a ‘rational consumer’ and
assess the claims of their advertising (including labels).
• How long did that take?
• How many shampoo brands are there in your local supermarket?
• Estimate how long a full survey, as ‘rational consumer’, would take.

Monarchs, cities and nations, as well as products, are branded, and
rebranded. Such ‘image campaigns’ arguably stretch to the work of the
British Council or the German Goethe Institute. The British royal family
has hired branding experts to work on their images, following fears that
their unpopularity, surfacing after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales,
would lead to republican changes.
Conversely, one of the results of ‘9/11’ or, rather, of the massive
military responses which the US Bush administration chose to make
to it, was to provoke what is called COE or country of origin effect. This
denotes consumers’ awareness of the place of manufacture or ownership
of some branded products, with purchases – or boycotts – becoming
related to those. Slave-like conditions in the factories of suppliers in
some countries, for example, have sparked huge protest campaigns, like
the one against Nike.
Branding is now more than a key commercial activity, it is also a
metaphor, within most cultures. Articles will ask ‘Is it time to rebrand
feminism/Glasgow/the games industry?’ and so on. Individuals
sometimes come to see themselves as like brands, advised to operate
‘reputation management’ or ‘impression management’, looking for their
‘USP’ for CVs, for dating agencies and so on.

Debates
The major debates around advertising/branding have included the
following points, each working with different assumptions.
• It brainwashes consumers with deceptive promises and appeals,
designed to promote consumerist materialism, waste, hedonism
(pleasure seeking) and envy.
• If we did rationally ‘assess’ all the claims of all the kinds of any
one product, as defenders suggest in the ‘ads help the rational
consumer decide’ case, it would take more time than most people
ever have.

See Balnaves et al. 2009,
Chapters 7 and 9 for a good
account of these, and recent
Chinese and Indian strategies
for rebranding their nation
states.

See http://www.royal.gov.uk
for one face of a vast
multimedia PR operation that
projects the Queen ‘as a surly
but steady presence at the
helm of the nation . . .’ New
Statesman editorial, 13 July
2009, p. 4.

See http://urbanlegends.
about.com/library/weekly/aa0
22101a.htm for a famous
email exchange on Nike
trainers. It’s an example of
‘culture jamming’ which
Jordan (2002: 102) defines as
‘an attempt to reverse and
transgress the meaning of
cultural codes whose primary
aim is to persuade us to buy
something or be someone’.
See also http://www.
adbusters.org.

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Debates

Planned or ‘built in’
obsolescence: the process of
making a product obsolete
after a certain period, or
amount of use. This is
planned by the manufacturer
rather than being the result
of ‘wearing out’. See Packard
1960.

•
•

•

Advertising is part of the built-in drive to ‘planned or built-in
obsolescence’ and high consumption on which modern capitalism,
with its capacity for overproduction, partly depends.
It acts as an unnecessary business expense, adding significantly to the
costs of goods for customers. Large monopolies such as Procter &
Gamble spend millions advertising products (e.g. soap powders) that
compete with those of their own subsidiaries.
For all its ‘free market’ claims, branding produces barriers to
competition. Young companies cannot afford the expenditure needed
to break into markets via the costly work of creating ‘brands’. Big
corporations can ‘shout louder’ and ensure their goods are favourably
distributed in crowded markets.

EXPLORE 11.4
Re. ‘built-in obsolescence’: ask friends and family if they have ever NOT been
advised, when mobile phones, DVD players, etc. break down: ‘why don’t you buy
a new one? It will cost nearly as much to have it mended.’

‘Why do beer ads never
show guys with beer bellies?’
Anon, Radio 1, an example of
widespread scepticism about
advertising’s images, which
partly leads to self-aware ads,
apparently with no designs
on our disposable income.

314

Let’s look at one recent example as a way of exploring some changes.
Advertisers often, now, happily go along with claims that readers of ads
are free to interpret them as they choose, to ignore them, or to spot
product placements in a spirit of sarcastic superiority. They are now
well aware of some audiences’ knowledge of their earlier strategies.
Pricing, control of resource supply lines, their powers to ‘place’ or
distribute both ads and products are less often discussed. Ads often now
make self-reflexive play with their own discourses, with enjoyable and
often stunning-looking results, which also flatter their viewers.

11: DEBATING ADVERTISING, BRANDING AND CELEBRITY

Histories

In 2010, the ‘gorilla drummer’
was part of the Cadbury
workers’ campaign to try
to ensure that the US
corporation Kraft Foods kept
its pledges to safeguard jobs
when it bought Cadbury’s.

Figure 11.3 A prizewinning 2007 cinema and TV ad for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Featuring a gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight, the
Cadbury’s ad pictured (Figure 11.3) tried to work as an ‘entertainment piece’
and provoke ‘viral’ marketing by word of mouth rather than, for example, by
connection with Coronation Street, which the company stopped sponsoring in
2006.
The ad is severed from any direct claims for the product except for the
colour purple, the final slogan (‘A pint and a half of joy’) which ‘anchors’ the
short film, and perhaps the song’s lyrics. Viewers seem to have been
fascinated by the ambiguity of the images – was this a real gorilla? Why this
choice of film? Of soundtrack? Many enjoyed adding their own music.
See Wikipedia for more on the production of, and reasons for, this
campaign, including a previous salmonella scandal (2006) around Cadbury’s
products and other problems involving PR and the company brand at the
time. And watch for work on the brand image now that Kraft Foods has taken
over Cadbury’s (2010).

See John Lanchester’s
fascinating piece on the art of
chocolate manufacture and
the questions raised by
Kraft’s bid for Cadbury’s:
http://www.Lrb.co.uk/v32/
n01/john-lanchester/shortcuts.

Enjoyable though it is, looking at individual ads will not account for the
power of ads in an age of branding. Let’s explore some histories.

Histories
Advertising can arguably be found as far back as Greek and Roman
public criers, shouting the wares of local traders. But its recognisable
modern form begins to appear with the nineteenth-century Industrial
Revolution, the overproduction of goods for existing Western markets
through new manufacturing techniques, and then the drive to expand

315

Histories

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markets as part of global imperialist conquest. In the 1850s in Britain,
the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, removed
regulations and taxes on advertising. Manufacturers were soon able to
appeal to consumers over the heads of retailers, through the young
media industries. And, beginning in the US, potential customers began
to be educated (informally, by advertising) into the possibilities and
attractions of consumption.
For many years (as now) ads were described as though they operated
in purely irrational ways, and as though that was why they had a
‘brainwashing’ effect – on women. ‘Femininity’ is still often constructed
as irrational and bound up with consumption (shopping, fashion and the
domestic sphere) rather than with production or ‘serious’, i.e. paid, work
outside the home. But the apparent power of advertising for women in
these years ca