Research requires a perspective

• Functionalist
  • Goal: enhancing the function of the main concern — multibake -> looking at productivity and profit of the company. make adjustments after seeing what the problem is. everything else is a variable (e.g. people). goal = efficiency and productivity
• Interpretive
  • Focus is messages
  • Understanding culture
  • Outlook: academic — understanding the way organizational behaviours operate…
• Critical
  • Focus is power
  • Is that power legitimate – Hilary (Multi-Bake) imposing her power on the workers.
  • Leah (girl who resigned) is an informal source of power — she organizes shit and so on – you don’t respect the boss, people don’t work hard. if they share the same goals, the Organization will improve ( e.g. stakeholder theory).
  • Cecil has another form of power
  • Outlook: activist, moralist

• Canadians were watching American TV before Canadian TV existed
• Other American media perceived as “not as dangerous” as television
• To address concerns the government created the Massey Commission (Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences)
• Said American TV served commercial interests, not our “national needs”
• Canadian TV was to be public and a ‘valuable tool for national unity, education and entertainment’
• 1952 – 1960: Dominance of the CBC
• Canadian TV and American TV began with different backgrounds (US had money in radio and Hollywood, Canada had the CBC)
• CBC television was the first Canadian TV – focus on news, documentary, and public affairs; sports programming; children’s programming (all three are still strengths of the CBC and Canadian TV today)
• CBC originally intended to have sole TV broadcast in Canada, but cost too high
• First private TV were private rebroadcast of CBC signals
• Lack of production companies in Canada meant most of Canadian was made by CBC employees
• Because of this CBC shows all had same style: clear, deliberate, expository with an emphasis on the didactic and documentary
• John Diefenbaker took away CBC right to deny private broadcasting opportunities by creating the BBG (Board of Broadcast Generals)
• First private network was CTV – friendly with the Conservative party

1961 – 1968: From BBG to CRTC

• Canadian programs often produced at a financial loss (small ad revenue)
• Not the case for American programs because of huge advertising revenue
• Solution: Canadian networks buy US shows for fraction of production cost and have a net gain
• Traditionally that net gain is reinvested into the production of Canadian content
• Tendency to create least expensive Canadian content and to air them at least lucrative times (not during primetime)
• CTV eventually surpassed CBC
• CTV Can-con: CTV News, Canada AM, W5, Wide World of Sports, Olympics, Romper Room – same areas of expertise as the CBC
• 1968 = end of BBG and intro to CRTC
• CRTC has the ability to: license individual stations, networks, cable companies, specialty channels, and satellite operators
• Big CRTC decisions: 1.    1970 imposition of Cancon quotas –> 2.    Created framework for development of cable TV
• Canadian Content: Solution or Problem
• Canadians prefer American TV – so by restricting their access are we making it more desirable?
• Cancon usually quick and cheap
• Canada has low promo budget and no star system

1968 – 1983: Consolidation

• Consumers wanted more American TV – lead to development of Canadian specialty channels
• Very few large-scale cable operators
• CRTC introduced ‘managed choice’: services it deemed appropriate were distributed by cable operators:1) To satisfy operators want for new services; 2) In hopes of meeting consumer demands
• First Canadian specialty channels: movie channels; First Choice, Alberta Superchannel, Ontario Superchannel, Star Channel, TVEC
• 1970’s brought new private broadcaster: Canwest Global

1983 – 1993: Rise of Independent Production

• 1983 Telefilm Canada created to fund Cancon production
• New companies included: Alliance Atlantis Communications, Nelvana, Cinar and Corus Entertainment
• Canadian production companies did co-productions because of the cost
• Canada is among the worlds leading co-producers
• Production companies also recuperate costs through tax credits by adhering to MAPL
• 80s and 90s, specialty channels continued to grow
• Late 2000, CRTC licensed 200+ specialty digital channels
• Satellite TV and the internet make it easy and affordable to get hundreds of channels, leaves traditional networks and providers worried about not keeping up

1993 – 2001: The Impact of Digital Technology

• Digital technology is transmitted over air, via the Internet, via microwave, and by DBS (Direct Broadcast Signal)
• CRTC created DTH (Direct to Home) policy that would block American satellite signals
• A DBS policy by the CRTC created satellite market saturated by two companies: Bell Expressvu and Starchoice
• 1990s saw convergence and fragmentation trends
• Convergence in Canadian Television
• In all of the major mergers, those who own the means of delivery are acquiring the content and content providers
• Old media do not disappear in the wake of the new
• Convergence: Technology in the Service of Profit
• Many companies with expectation that Internet equals high quality TV soon
• Some believe that the Internet will not dominate because of new TV technology like HDTV
• Some media companies achieve many types of synergies Ex: Rogers bought the Blue jays
• Fragmentation
• Promoted as increasing the personalization of media
• Personal Video Recorders (PVR) like Tivo, Replay TV, will record everything that matches your preferences
• Canadian Content Issues
• Canadian production often note very Canadian (Nikita, Earth Final Conflict)
• Successful Canadian programs come from successful genres: Cop shows, lawyer shows, and mysteries
• Not a lot of reality TV because of legal restrictions – only one was Popstars
• What Constitutes Canadian Television
• Often it is sports; the cornerstone of the English schedule: 1) Hockey Night in Canada, 2) The Olympics, 3) TSN
• Music programming: Muchmusic – the nations music station
• Much More Music, Much Loud, Much Vibe, Much USA
• City TV: A New Cultural Sensibility?
• Predicts FashionTV and QueerTV will become specialty channels (they did)
• City TV exports to Brazil and Finland

Conclusion

• Increasingly powerful global companies does not mean the loss of ‘local’

• Mise En Scène implies how the visual materials are staged, framed, and photographed. The frame’s aspect ratio: dimension of the screen’s height and width.
• Was originally a French theatrical term, meaning “placing on stage.”
• Refers to the arrangement of all the visual elements of a theatrical production within a given playing area—stage.
• In movies, it is somewhat more complicated, a blend of the visual conventions of the live theatre with those of the plastic arts.
• In movies, Mise En Scène resembles the art of painting in that an image of formal patterns and shapes is presented on a flat surface and is enclosed within a frame. But cinematic Mise En Scène is also a fluid choreographing of visual elements that correspond to a dramatic idea or complex of ideas.

The Frame:

• The frame functions as the basis of composition in a movie image.
• The ratio of the frame’s horizontal and vertical dimensions—known as the aspect ratio—remains constant throughout the movie.
• Screens come in a variety of aspect ratios, especially since the introduction of widescreen in the early 1950s. Before this time, most movies were shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.
• Today, most movies are projected in one of two aspect ratios: the 1.85:1 (standard) and the 2.35:1 (widescreen).
• In the traditional visual arts, frame dimensions are governed by the nature of the subject matter.  The frame selects and delimits the subject, editing out all irrelevancies and presenting us with only a ‘piece’ of reality
• The materials included within a shot are unified by the frame, which in effect imposes order on them—the order that art carves out of the chaos of reality.
• The frame is thus essentially an isolating device, a technique that permits the director to confer special attention on what might be overlooked in a wider context.
• The movie frame can function as a metaphor for other types of enclosures.
• Certain areas within the frame can suggest symbolic ideas. Each of the major sections of the frame—centre, top, bottom, and edges—can be exploited for such symbolic and metaphoric purposes.
• The central portions of the screen are generally reserved for the most important visual elements. This area is instinctively regarded by most people as the intrinsic centre of interest.
• The area near the top of the frame can suggest ideas dealing with power, authority, and aspiration. A person placed here seems to control all the visual elements below, and for this reason, authority figures are often photographed in this manner.
• The areas near the bottom of the frame tend to suggest opposite meanings from the top: subservience, vulnerability, and powerlessness. Objects and figures placed in these positions seem to be in danger of slipping out of the frame entirely.
• The left and right edges of the frame tend to suggest insignificance, because these are the areas farthest removed from the center of the screen. Objects and figures placed near the edges are literally close to the darkness outside the frame.
• In some instances a director places the most important visual elements completely off frame.
• Especially when a character is associated with darkness, mystery, or death, this technique can be highly effective, for the audience is most fearful of what it cannot see.
• Two other off-frame areas can be exploited for symbolic purposes: the space behind the set and the space in front of the camera.
• The areas in front of the camera can also create unsettling effects of this sort.

Composition and Design:

• When a visual artist wants to stress a lack of equilibrium, many of the standard conventions of classical composition are deliberately violated.
• In movies, the dramatic context is usually the determining factor in composition.
• In movies a variety of techniques can be used to convey the same ideas and emotions.
  

  A Deep Focus Shot, Notice the Boy in the Window (Citizen Kane)

• The human eye automatically attempts to harmonize the formal elements of a composition into a unified whole. The eye can detect as many a seven or eight major elements of a composition simultaneously. The director accomplishes attraction through the use of a dominant contrast, also known as the dominant. The dominant is that area of an image that immediately attracts our attention because of a conspicuous and compelling contrast. It stands out in some kind of isolation from the other elements within the image.
• Movement is usually an automatic dominant contrast, if the other elements in the image are stationary. Movement tends to be less distracting in the longer shots and highly conspicuous in the closer ranges.
• The upper part of the composition is heavier than the lower.
• Isolated figures and objects tend to be heavier than those in a cluster. Sometimes one object—merely by virtue of its isolation—can balance a whole group of otherwise equal objects.
• Psychological experiments have revealed that certain lines suggest directional movements. Although vertical and horizontal lines seem to be visually at rest, if movement is perceived, horizontal lines tend to move from left to right, vertical lines from bottom to top. Diagonal oblique lines are more dynamic—that is, in transition. They sweep upward
• Throughout the ages, artists have especially favoured S and X shapes, triangular designs, and circles.
• These designs are often used simply because they are thought to be inherently beautiful.
• Design is generally fused with a thematic idea, at least in the best movies.

The main plot follows the lives of three women – lonely and repressed Constance MacKenzie, her illegitimate daughter Allison, and her employee Selena Cross, a girl from “across the tracks” or as it is called in the book “from the shacks” – and how they come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings in a small New England town. Hypocrisy, social inequities, and class privilege are recurring themes in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder

Bucket Nut (Novel)

A heroine as unlovely as she is unlikely, Eva Wylie (”Bucket Nut”) is hulking, foul-mouthed, and short- tempered, but she hides a heart of gold beneath her steely emotional armor. With Bucket Nut-inaccurately billed as a mystery-Liza Cody (Backhand) launches a promising new series in which the lovably lowbrow Eva, a professional wrestler and unwitting hit woman, hunts down her estranged sister and becomes enamored of a WASPy female junkie.

Bridget Jones Diary (Film)

Bridget Jones is frustrated; she is thirty-something, still single, and worried about her weight. She works at a book publishing company in London where her main focus is fantasizing about her boss Daniel Cleaver. On New Year’s Day, she finally decides to turn it all around and starts her own diary, which covers all her attempts to stop smoking, lose weight, and catch her Mr. Right. Lawyer Mark Darcy, Bridget’s mother’s favourite choice for a future husband, does not appeal to Bridget at all. After seeing him at a Christmas party at her parents’ house, she finds Mark to be annoying and arrogant.

Ender’s Game (Novel)

Ender’s Game (1985) is one of the best-known novels by Orson Scott Card.[1] It is set in Earth’s future where mankind has barely survived two invasions by the “buggers”, an insectoid alien race, and the International Fleet is preparing for war. In order to find and train the eventual commander for the anticipated third invasion, the world’s most talented children, including the extraordinary Ender Wiggin, are taken into Battle School at a very young age. The book takes place around the year 2135

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Novel)

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” takes place in 1992 (in later publications, it takes place in 2021) several years after the fallout resulting from “World War Terminus” destroyed much of Earth. In the aftermath, the United Nations encourages people to emigrate to off-world colonies to preserve the human race from the effects of the radioactive dust. One incentive is that each emigrant will receive a custom-built android servant (colloquially referred to as an “andy”). The people who remain on Earth live in cluttered cities where radiation poisoning causes significant illness and gene damage. All animals are endangered. Owning and caring for an animal is considered a civic virtue and a status symbol, depending on the rarity of the species. Animals are bought and sold according to the price of the latest Sidney’s Catalog, including extinct animals (listed as ‘E’) and animals currently unavailable on the market (listed in italics at the last going price). Some people who cannot afford an animal choose to buy an artificial, robotic animal to maintain social standing. The protagonist Rick Deckard owned a sheep, which died of tetanus and was replaced by an electric replica to maintain the illusion of animal ownership.

Alien (Film)

When commercial towing vehicle Nostromo, heading back to Earth, intercepts an SoS signal from a nearby planet, the crew are under obligation to investigate. After a bad landing on the planet, some crew members leave the ship to explore the area. At the same time as they discover a hive colony of some unknown creature, the ship’s computer deciphers the message to be a warning, not a call for help. When one of the eggs is disturbed, the crew do not know the danger they are in until it is too late.

Frankenstein (Novel)

Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the British author Mary Shelley. Shelley wrote the novel when she was 18 years old. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley’s name appears on the revised third edition, published in 1831. The title of the novel refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger than average and more powerful. In modern popular culture, people have tended to refer to the Creature as “Frankenstein” (especially in films since 1931), despite this being the name of the scientist. Frankenstein is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a warning against the “over-reaching” of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. It is arguably considered the first fully realized science fiction novel.

Edward Scissorhands (Film)

The plot revolves around a man named Edward; the creation of a scientist, who is adopted into an American family in a brightly-colored suburban neighborhood. The film is a comedy-drama set in an exaggerated and highly stereotypical vision of American suburbia and the typical families that inhabit it. It intentionally combines clichés and styles from both the 1950s, early 1960s and the late 1980s. The concept, and many of the motifs of Edward Scissorhands can be compared to the Gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and the 1931 film of the same name.

The Shining (Film)

Jack Torrance is a temperamental writer who is trying to rebuild the lives of his family and himself after his alcoholism caused him to break his (then) three-year-old son Danny’s arm, and then caused him to assault a pupil at a Vermont prep school, therefore losing his job. Having given up drinking, he accepts a job as a winter caretaker at a large, isolated, Colorado resort hotel with a gory history. Hoping to prove that he has recovered from his alcoholism, and is now a responsible person, Jack moves into the Overlook Hotel with his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, who is telepathic and sensitive to supernatural forces.

Interview with a Vampire (Novel)

Published in 1976, Interview with the Vampire quickly became a cult success, and a prominent influence on present Goth culture. The novel was set apart from its predecessors of the vampire genre by its confessional tone from the vampire’s perspective, touching on existential despair and the sheer boredom of lifeless immortality.

The Hobbit (Novel)

The Hobbit is set in a time “between the dawn of Faerie and the Dominion of Men,”[4] and follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins (the titular “Hobbit”) to win his share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug. His journey takes him from light-hearted, rural surroundings and into darker, deeper territory,[5] meeting various denizens of the Wilderland along the way. By accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey and adventurous side of his nature (the “Tookish” side) and utilizing both his wits and common sense during the quest, Bilbo develops a new level of maturity, competence and wisdom.[6]

Time Bandits (Film)

A young boy’s wardrobe contains a time hole. Through this hole an assortment of short people (i.e. dwarfs) come while escaping from their master, the supreme being. They take Kevin with them on their adventures through time from Napoleonic times to the Middle Ages to the early 1900s, to the time of Legends and the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness where they confront Evil.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Novel)

The novel begins with the wizarding world’s celebration of the downfall of Lord Voldemort, an evil, powerful and cruel Dark wizard. After he killed Lily and James Potter, Voldemort attempted to murder their one-year-old son, Harry. The magical curse rebounded and destroyed Lord Voldemort’s body, leaving only a lightning-bolt scar on Harry’s forehead. Harry is placed in the care of his muggle relatives, the Dursley family.

Excalibur (Film)

As the title would suggest, it follows the travels of the legendary sword Excalibur through Arthurian myth, from the violent, powerful hands of Uther Pendragon, to a long-years’ rest in the stone to being redrawn by Uther’s son Arthur, who uses it to defeat the evil invaders and establish the great court of Camelot and the great Knights of the Round Table. It is there in Arthur’s glory years and in his decline, brought on by the love affair between his wife Guenevere and best friend and best knight Sir Lancelot, the Holy Grail Quest which produces many casualties among the knights, and the arrival of Mordred, the son Arthur had by his evil half-sister, the sorceress Morgana. Through it all, the magician Merlin watches over everything, always ready to throw in a Charm of Making when it’s called for.

Sin City (Film)

“Sin City” is four stories inter-weaved telling tales of corruption in Basin City. The first story (The Customer is always right) is short, and is based on the depression of women that they need to pay a man to feel loved when they commit suicide. The next story is Part 1 of “That Yellow Bastard” about a cop who needs to save a young girl from being raped. The third story (The Hard Goodbye) features a man taking revenge on a heartless killer who murdered his one-night stand. The fourth story (The Big, Fat Kill) stars a man who must dispatch a cop’s body, but it will be a tough ride to do it. Following that are two conclusions to Sin City, the ending of “That Yellow Bastard” which is set 8 years later, and a short story that ends Sin City.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (Novel)

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale is a memoir by Art Spiegelman, presented as a graphic novel. It recounts the struggle of Spiegelman’s father to survive the Holocaust as a Polish Jew and draws largely on his father’s recollections of his experiences. The book also follows the author’s troubled relationship with his father and the way the effects of war reverberate through generations of a family.

The Murder of Roger Akroyd (Novel)

Is one of Christie’s best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. The book is set in the fictional village of King’s Abbott in England. It is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, who becomes Poirot’s assistant (a role filled by Captain Hastings in several other Poirot novels). The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumoured to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be suicide until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, dies. The suspects include Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger’s neurotic hypochondriac sister-in-law who has accummulated personal debts through extravagant spending; her daughter Flora; Major Blunt, a big-game hunter; Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd’s personal secretary; Ralph Paton, Ackroyd’s stepson and another person with heavy debts; Parker, a snooping butler; and Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid with an uncertain history who resigned her post the afternoon of the murder.The initial suspect is Ralph, who is engaged to Flora and stands to inherit his stepfather’s fortune. Several critical pieces of evidence seem to point to Ralph. Poirot, who has just moved to the town, begins to investigate at Flora’s behest.The book ends with a then-unprecedented plot twist: Poirot, having exonerated all of the original suspects, lays out a completely reasoned case that the murderer is in fact Dr. Sheppard, who has not only been Poirot’s assistant but the story’s narrator. The story is then shown to be an attempt by Dr. Sheppard to write about the failure to catch the criminal by Poirot, but he appends a confession and suicide note written after Poirot’s exposition.

Double Indemnity (Film)

In 1938, the experienced salesman of the Pacific All Risk Insurance Co. Walter Neff meets the seductive wife of one of his client, Phyllis Dietrichson, and they have an affair. Phyllis proposes to kill her husband Dietrichson to receive the prize of an accident insurance policy and Walter plots a scheme to receive twice the amount based on a double indemnity clause. When Mr. Dietrichson is found dead on the trails of a train, the police accepts the evidence of accidental death. However, the insurance analyst and Walter’s best friend Barton Keyes does not buy the version and suspects that Phyllis has murdered her husband with the help of another man.

Forty Words for Sorrow (Novel)

The story opens with the discovery of the body of 13-year old Katie Pine frozen in a block of ice on the desolate island of Windago outside Algonquin Bay. The disappearance of a teenage boy, the discovery of yet another dead teenager, and the disappearance of a fourth follow Pine’s death. What begins as a detailed police procedural involving forensics, footwork and follow-up slowly turns into a classic serial killer story.

The Grifters (Novel)

Roy Dillon seems too handsome and well-mannered to be a professional con man. Lilly Dillon looks too young — and loves Roy a little too intensely — to be taken for his mother. Moira Langtry is getting too old to keep on living off the kindness of male strangers. And Carol Roberg seems too innocent to be acquainted with suffering

• A series of commodities, material items, demands some kind of cash relationship (materialistic economy).
• Amounts to something more than entertainment leisure.
• Popular culture –> ideological attachment.
• Inseparable from our society, but not the culture; hence, it shapes society’s character.
• Influences the way we look at the world; hence leading to academic interest.
• 1950s, social scientists define popular culture (PCu)

Problems with  the “Folk”/ “Popular” [distinction]

• Nostalgic view of the past
• Assumes that traditional/modern are unproblematic terms
• Equates “Folk Culture” with creativity & mass culture with passivity

Problems of High and Low Culture [distinction]

• Elitist ideas made about “high” culture.
• Unclear division between ‘high” and “low/popular” culture
• Culture and ideology conceptually linked
• Culture/ideology landscape marked by relations of power and politics.

• The Walt Disney Company is, of course, a multimillion dollar empire that includes theme parks, a television network, book publishing companies, retail stores, web portals, television production companies, and motion picture companies—in addition to a corporate icon named Mickey known to children worldwide.
• Disney has consistently prided itself on being a company dedicated to children and families.
• The provocative component of Disney has also prompted greater scrutiny of Disney films by researchers, who are concerned the content geared toward children is anything but “wholesome”. Scholars criticized Disney films regarding such social issues as violence, ethnicity, gender stereotypes, and even death. A lawsuit was actually filed in Arkansas over “subliminal” sexual content in three Disney films.
• Disney films are again the focus of analysis in this study of two specific public health problems: tobacco and alcohol use.
• The gross income of a Disney movie does not include the revenue collected from video sales and video rentals, two avenues that not only add dollars to Disney’s coffers, but also extend the reach of the films into children’s lives. In fact, Giroux went so far as to exert, “these films inspire at least as much cultural authority and legitimacy for teaching specific roles, values and ideals than more traditional sites of learning such as public schools, religious institutions and the family”

Review of the Literature

• Since before the era of Prohibition, alcohol has been a mainstay in American cinema, while the pairing of actors and tobacco continues to be a staple of character development, with some contemporary Hollywood’s brightest stars lighting up the silver screen.
• Many studies concerning media effects focus on adolescent usage of media. Klein et al. (1993) reported media portrayals of risky or unhealthy behaviours may promote or reinforce the appropriateness of such behaviors through influences on individual values.

Media and Tobacco Use

• Sargent et al.’s (2001) cross-sectional study of the effect of seeing tobacco use in films on trying smoking among adolescents found a strong, direct, independent association between higher exposure to tobacco use in films and smoking in adolescents.

Media and Alcohol Use

• A study by Dale (1988) reported in films released between 1929 and 1931, 66% showed drinking, with 75% of those films treating alcohol consumption as humorous. Interestingly, more heroes than villance were shown drinking.
• The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2001) reported people who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin at age 21.
• In Kulick and Rosenberg’s (2001) study, people who vewed positive portrayals of drinking, such as laughing, singing, dancing, and companionship, were more positive about drinking alcohol.
• In Bahk’s (1997) study of the impact of presence versus absence of negative consequences in dramatic portrayals of drining, he found the absence of negative consequences in dramatic alcohol portrayals may be seen as promoting more favourable attitudes regarding consumption. His findings indicate it could make a real difference whether people will view drinking as negative if the negative consequences of alcohol drinking are presented.

Alcohol and Tobacco in Film

• Studies of the incidence of both alcohol and tobacco usage in film are relatively recent.
• In Everett, Schnuth, and Tribble’s (1998) study of tobacco and alcohol use in top-grossing American films from 1985 to 1995, they found at least one pro-tobacco event in 98% of the films studied, and 62% of the films had no antitobacco events. Similary, they found that 96% of the films contained at least one pro-alcohol event and 63% had no anti-alcohol events. Everett et al. (1998) found it disturbing that pro-tobacco and pro-alcohol events were common in PG and PG-13 rated films. They explained such frequency of substance use in film without any antiuse messages promotes the belief that the use of both tobacco and alcohol is common, acceptable, bears little risk, and is expected and embraced.

Method

• Before conducting the content analysis of Disney films targeted to children, operational definitions were composed, a coding sheet was developed, coders were trained, and intercoder reliability was tested.

Results

• There were 381 incidents of both alcohol and tobacco exposure throughout the films; 106 incidents of tobacco exposure and 275 incidents of alcohol exposure within the 24 films. These incidents ranged from a brief glimpse of a keg of beer in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Cruella De Vil chain-smoking cigarettes throughout 101 Dalmatians. Of the 24 films analyzed, only three (12.5%) contained no alcohol or tobacco: The Jungle Book (released in 1967), The Fox and the Hound (1981), and Mulan (1998). A total of 18 films (75%) contained at least one tobacco exposure and 18 (75%) contained at least one alcohol exposure.

Alcohol and Tobacco Products

• The most frequently pictured type of tobacco product was the pipe, which was shown 52 times (49%), followed by the cigar (43%), and the cigarette (8%). The most frequently pictured type of alcohol was beer (49%) followed by wine (29%), champagne (17%), and spirits (3%)
• It is interesting to note that Pinocchio showed the most cigar usage (30% of all cigar use), followed by Oliver and Company (24% of all cigar use)
• Interestingly, three products were shown fairly regularly throughout all 24 films: cigars, pipes, and wine.

Discussion

• A review of this study’s results shows the use of tobacco decreased in Disney films over time, while the use of alcohol increased. There is no way to determine the rationale for these trends, but it is interesting to note tobacco use decreased following the 1964 Surgeon General’s report showing a casual link between smoking and lung cancer, along with other detrimental health effects (Parascandola, 1997). This same decade saw those characters drinking beer and wine by the gallons.
• Today’s Disney seems to be sending a direct message to young viewers that smoking is not an action to engage in but drinking is a viable option.
• The only hopeful sign of Disney’s extensive portrayal of tobacco and alcohol use is that these substances are used overwhelmingly by supporting characters rather than the heroes and heroines the children are most likely to model.
• Given these characters are almost never rejected for using tobacco or alcohol products, children are repeatedly getting the message that use of these substances is acceptable.

People co-construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create.

• Goal: help people enhance their understanding of communication to improve quality of life.
• Their theory starts with the assertion that persons-in-conversation co-construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the worlds they create.
• When engaged in a conversation with others, these theorists find it useful to ask: What are we doing? What are we making together? How can we make better social worlds?
• CCM theorists have not discovered ironclad communication principles, but a set of concepts to help us enhance our understanding ad act more effectively in a wide range of communication situations.

CMM in Action – Stories from the Field.

• Mediation
  • CMM concepts can be used to understand disputants’ and mediators’ constructions of episodes, relationships, identities, and cultural patterns.
• Family Therapy
  • A child with a autism: What relationship do you want with your son? When is it useful to think of this behaviour as autism, and when is it now?
• Cupertino Community Project
  • An ethnically diverse community with racial tensions: dialogic communication: speaking in a way that would make the community members want to listen

CMM can be described as follows:

• The experience of persons-in-conversations is the primary social of human life.
  • Communications forms who you are and creates relationships. The Cupertino Community Project altered the community, not by changing what citizens wanted to talk about but by changing the form of their communication.
• The way people communicate is often more important than the content of what they say.
  • The mood and manner that person-in-conversations adopts plays a large role in the social construction process.
  • Consider this familiar experience: you say something, and I respond. That response makes you feel that you must instruct me about the error of my ways, but I don’t feel that I should take instruction from you. So I inform you that you are not qualified to have an opinion on this topic, and that information conflicts with your self-concept as an intelligent, knowledgeable person, so you lash out with a bitter insult. In just five turns, we’ve moved into an escalating pattern in which we are competing to see who can say the most hurtful things to each other.
• The actions of persons-in-conversations are reflexively reproduced as the interaction continues.
  • Reflexivity means that our actions have effects that bounce back and affect us.
  • “If I win this argument, what kind of person will I become?”
  • Much like environmentalists say we will live in the world we produce, Pearce and Cronen say “we are literally participating in the creation of the social universe.”
• As social constructionists, CMM researches see themselves as curios participants in a pluralistic world.
  • They are curious because one cannot profess certainty when dealing with individuals acting out their lives under ever-changing conditions.
  • They are participants rather than spectators because they seek to be actively involved in what they study.

Stories Told and Stories Lived

• Stories we tell and the stories we live are always tangled together yet forever in tension. That’s because one is the stuff of language and the other of action. In stories told, a cocky young man can envision being faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap over tall buildings. But in stories lived, inertia, gravity, and the witness of other people impose lower limits on what he can do.
  • That is why it is called management of meaning. We have to adjust our stories told to fit the realities of our stories lived—or vice versa.
  • They put coordinated in the title because we have to constantly make these adjustments when interacting with others.

Bringing Coherence to Stories Told

The hierarchy model of meaning

• Storytelling is the central act of communication, but every story is embedded with multiple contexts, or frames. The words of a story will only make sense if they are understood within the framework of a specific episode, the relationship between the parties, the self-identity of the speaker, and the culture from which he or she comes.
  • These concepts rarely have equal significance when trying to figure out what a person means, so Pearce suggests we rank order their importance for interpreting a given speech act.
• Utterance: the words spoken
• Speech act: what the words do
  • E.g. criticizing or helping?
• Episode: Communication routine with definite boundaries and rules
• Relationship: Who participants are to each other
  • Suggests how a speech act might be interpreted.
• Identity: Self-concept
• Culture: Web of meanings and values shared by a group.
  • People who come from different cultures won’t interpret messages exactly the same way.

Everything in a conversation is connected to everything else. Coherence is possible only when we perceive the flow of conversation.

Me –> Culture + Speech Act

You –> Culture + Speech Act

The coordination is the combining of two things that are similar, (above)

Using CMM

• Use to understand what persons-in-conversation do when they communicate.
• Refuse to simplify communication.
• Each person uses his/her own hierarchy of meaning. (can use whichever order)
• Cosmopolitan Communicators recognize and value such differences.
  • Cosmopolitan Communication: a citizen-of-the-word who interacts comfortably with people who come from diverse cultural backgrounds, hold different values, and express discrepant beliefs.

Critique to CMM:

• Must use all of these to understand communications
• Inconsistency in how they define their terms or in the way they state their claims. For example, they sometimes use the word coherence to label the process of people making sense of their own stories lived. Yet in other cases, the theorists use the term to refer to persons-in-conversations sharing a common interpretation of their social universe—a meeting of minds.

• Mass audiences vs. niche audiences:
  • link between these 2
  • although we speak of smaller markets, the mass audience hasn’t disappeared (e.g. superbowl)
• (fragmentation of the audience?)
  • We don’t have fragmentation that is final and absolute. There are smaller markets, but still larger markets (see above)
• Passivity vs. activity
  • Uses and gratifications discusses media audience as individualistic. We won’t be talking about that. Instead, we’ll be talking about how audiences are active.
• Messages vs meanings
  • We don’t just take in messages; we also apply meanings and make sense of them
• Today’s lecture: audience reception
  • Audiences as consumers vs audiences as citizens
  • Audiences as object vs subject
  • Mass effects vs interpretation
  • Audience reception: meaning; genre; context

Review: fragmentation

• Different logos:
  • Started with ABC World of Sports, then ABC split to ESPN, ESPN Classics, and NFL Network for different niches

Magic bullet theory

• There’s one answer for everything – we won’t follow this

Hypodermic needle

• Everyone is getting the same message and getting it directly
• Inglis calls this S–>R model, “an idiotically simple idea”
• S: Stimulus—a message that gets sent to consumers who respond
• R: Response—audiences simply receive messages the way they are sent. There is no complication. Audiences are empty vessels that are simply filled with messages
  • The problem is that this model casts society as consumers. Essentially, audiences are meant to be controlled—typically by sending messages that they like to receive.
  • You give them what they want and audiences want to be entertained. So audiences aren’t viewed as citizens who are capable of individual thinking; rather it says that mass media satisfies base desires. There HAS to be something more than this as this model is far too simplistic.
  • It thinks of audiences in terms of effects. Do audiences respond the way we expect them to? Not really. How do we determine if their responses are the appropriate response?

The quest to see how people are ‘affected’ lead to the study of how people are effected

• People are affected, but we search for media effects. Media affects is the search for something (e.g. survey results) that can quantify how people can be effected.
• It’s the difference between viewing the audience as an object vs. audience as subject.
  • An object is acted upon, and a subject acts.
  • A subject is a thinking, acting agent. Hence, we will look at audiences as subjects. How do they act, how do they do things with the media; how do they make sense of it?

For Inglis, audiences are practical subjects making active use of the cultural expressions they find. (vs. being a coach potato, a mindless consumer: i.e. audience as an object).

• Audiences are meaning making entities.
• Cultural expressions: how people connect media to real life experiences.

Audiences in real life are “messy”—not like studying people in a controlled environment

• Problems with the Hawthrone Effect: when people are paid attention to, their productivity increases.
• Audiences tend to be inattentive: people don’t pay attention to every stimulus. However, if they are told of the stimulus, it will become more apparent. That’s what happened with the Hawthrone effect. They know they were being studied so they increased their productivity because that is what they were expected to do. When audiences know they are being studied, they tend to act differently.
• This is why Inglis called the S–>R model useless because it doesn’t take into account everything else.
  • Different media have different effects on us; the same media can have different effects
  • E.g. is television making children anorexic (distorted views of women) or making them obese (watching instead of playing)?
  • People shouldn’t be treated as things. We don’t automatically respond to stimuli. The object does not think about how it is supposed to respond to the stimulus (e..g a thermometer raises with it’s how and decreases when it’s cold); by contrast, people DO think. Thus, people aren’t just objects—they have an ability to think and act and thus, should be treated as subjects.
  • The same response likely won’t be repeated again by people. Water always boils at a certain temperature; but human beings are self reflexive.
• Audiences are not something to be measured at the end of a one-way process. Water stops boiling when removed from heat, but people, after watching a show, continue to think about it. Thus, media audiences are no involved in a one-way relationship. Audiences exist in a 2-way or multi-lane highway. This is what effects tends to lose out on. To understand if TV makes you thin or obese, you have to look at the self reflexive component. Humans can think about how they want to respond to it—they can think about how good a show is compared to last weeks show; determine if they want to be a fan; etc.
• Essentially, media aren’t just used to satisfy individual needs and goals (uses and gratifications model), but rather used to connect people to their wider culture around them.
  • If we’re bored we tune into material that can excite us; if lonely, we tune into things to make us happy

We should attend to modes of interpretation (Inglis)

• Which is to say, how messages and audiences fit together (and how audiences make messages fit in with their lives and experiences
  • Effects isolate individuals from the world around them.
  • Affects looks at your situation and how you interpret it to the world around you.
    • We need to pay attention to the process: that audiences and messages fit together.
    • We should look at how it makes audiences feel, why they interpret certain things as being good and enjoyable compared to others. What is the meaning of abstract art? How do you interpret what you see? à your interpretation of an abstract art piece will likely be different than another.

The direction we’re headed in next week (Inglis mentions Hall’s model)

• Interpretation usefully understood as decoding
• Messages are encoded for us and it’s up to us to decode them

We have to discover the balance between manipulation and expression

• Inglis talks about the idea of what we pay attention to? We have to pay attention to the balance of manipulation from one side and expression on the other.
• Manipulation: is someone controlling your every move? E.g. corporate interests, programming that wants us to act in a certain way
• Expression: people aren’t confined to act a certain way
• Audiences that are completely passive are manipulated; audiences that are complete active are expressive. Inglis says both are inaccurate. We can’t always express ourselves the way we want to.
• Example from Hockey All Star game. Vote Rory Fitzpatrick campaign: audiences voted in for essentially a ‘nobody’ rather than voting for who the NHL wanted to be at the game.

John Corner – reception & media audiences

• Reception can be broken down to examine the following questions
  • WHAT meanings audiences make of what they see, hear and read
  • WHY these meanings rather than others are produced by specific audiences from the range of interpretive possibilities
    • In a world where you can be exposed to so many things, why do you choose to be exposed to one thing and not another?
  • HOW these activities of meaning-making might relate to ideas about the power of media and their ability to shape public knowledge, sentiment and values
    • How media might shape public knowledge: John Corner distinguishes popular knowledge from popular culture. We traditionally view audiences in terms of popular culture, but why not view them in terms of public knowledge.
      • We always talk about negative effects, but what about good effects?
• Reception: three key things to pay attention to regarding audiences’ reception and interpretation of messages: 1) meaning, 2) genre, 3) context
• Meaning
  • How do we make sense of meaning?
  • Rather than looking for objective results, reception looks for subjective meanings
    • We’re not looking at objective facts like scientific studies; audience examination is a process of looking for subjective meanings—your meanings may be different than mines.
  • Audiences confront media as “texts”—not as discrete products or “works”
    • Meaning is not limited by authorial intent!
    • Think about texts vs work. Television and films are texts to be read by audiences. We read meanings into things.
    • As an author in media culture, you don’t make meanings alone. The producer cannot control the meanings. Meanings are rather created by producers of text in conjunction with their readers (e.g. the Flick Off campaign in Toronto)
    • The meaning of something is not fixed until audiences construct the meaning of texts. Authors create a message, but meanings aren’t limited to authorial intent. Audiences are involved in making meanings. Meaning is open to be received or rejected by audiences.
  • 3 different types of meaning:
    • Intra-textual (requiring analysis of textual structures): the text is not a fixed thing. There are different elements to messages. It looks at the relationship between the elements that make up the meaning of that particular text. What are the component parts of a message—how is it made?
      • Paying attention to the component parts of the text
      • What story is being told; who are the characters, what style is it.
      • Things that come out of the actual text itself.
      • Star Wars: the story of the rebels vs the empire; Luke Skywalker vs whoever. We understand the text based on what is presented to us.
    • Inter-textual (requiring analysis, among other things, of genres and relations between them): the relationship between one text to others. We’ve all been exposed to multiple messages, not because of what they say, but because of associations we have with them. Thus, sometimes we link one text with others.
      • Meaning is constructed by linking the text to others
      • Situating a “text’s meaning” in a wider field of meanings
      • Star Wars is not just the film. There are related films, books, video games, Lego and other toys, etc.
        • The intra-textual element leads us to make connections to other texts.
        • How do we make sense of Star Wars by associating it with other texts? How are meanings constructed by placing them in other texts? E.g. Family Guy episode on Star Wars
      • Inter-textual meanings don’t have to directly reference the original text. We can situate The Matrix with God, with other science fiction films, etc.
    • Interpretive (requiring research into the situation practice of ‘receptive’ understanding): how the situation in which you find yourself, the reality of where you are and what you’re thinking at that particular time
      • How do audiences situate the text into their own practices & understandings?
      • There are many ways people can interpret a text.
      • NOTE: obviously, interpretation can be inter-textual too.
  • 3 different levels of meaning:
    • Primary signification: what you recognize immediately when you experience a message; the literal meaning of the thing itself. Essentially, what you see.
    • Secondary signification: suggesting that there are secondary levels to this meaning. When you have an association with something, that’s secondary signification. When you see something and it makes you think of implications and associations of that text, it goes beyond the primary level. E.g. the White House at the primary level is that it’s a big white house; secondary is that the White House is the home of the president and if you don’t like the president, you think of something else.
    • Evaluation: after seeing it and thinking of secondary associations, you often evaluate it in terms of whether it’s good or whether it’s bad.
      • How audiences can attach a special significance to something.
  • Media is not a linear thing. We don’t go from primary to secondary to evaluation. Part of the reason for this is because media is inter-textual. We can associate something with multiple and various texts. We go through all these things all the time.
    • The reason for this is that meaning is polysemic: One word can have multiple meanings.
  • Despite a general textual ‘openness’—we cannot ignore that there is a considerable degree of DETERMINANCY possessed by texts
    • Media producers would like to determine what you think about their products.
    • We have to think of media audiences as the coming together of interpretive action and textual signification
      • Audiences act, think and interpret. Producers have, at their disposal, signification. Producers want to signify certain things. Corner talks about texts and what they want to signify. Inglis talked about manipulation/expression; Corner discusses this in interpretation/signification
      • Metaphor: we make structures/buildings and then we live in them. So our freedom is confined with what we built. We can make meanings but we can only respond to what is given to us.
• Genre: social situation—this lecture room is a genre (stadium seating, non-moving chairs)
  • Disco vs. Folk? Both are types of music. Recognizing that a song is in a certain genre leads you to expect certain things.
  • Why do you find one more meaningful than the other?
    • Answer could be pleasure: one allows you to have a certain experience.
  • Genre is one way of organizing meanings.
• Context—our experiences are never context free. We are always in a ‘con-text’.
  • For audiences to make sense of something—to make it meaningful, it has to be socially situated. It has to be placed in a particular context
  • A context is a situation that can be described by discussing other texts. It is the relationship between one text and another. We exist within a national context, in a social context. Do you drink to get drunk? Do you drink for other purposes?
  • There are 2 types of context:
    • Social relations of viewing: we pay less attention to what is viewed and more to how it’s viewed and where it’s viewed
      • Objective variables: who are you? What is the context in which you exist? Are you male/female? How old are you? What class are you in?
      • Subjective factors: your knowledge of a certain genre can change; some audiences are experts, others are neophytes;
    • Space time settings: what we traditionally associate with context. We are in the lecture hall at the moment—our physical context.
      • Where are you at a particular time, at a particular place? Basically, it is the location. You may watch a TV show at home, at a friend’s house; you may watch a hockey game on TV at home, in a bar, or at the actual stadium. The location will change the nature of the experience.

Corner says you need to pay attention to Meaning, Genre, and Context in order to make sense of someone’s experience

Review:

• The audience can certainly interpret media content
• But the audience’s power is not so large and wide-ranging that it trumps the power of the media: you have the power to interpret but the media has the power to package certain things for delivery—you can accept/reject, but you do so as a receiver
• Similarly, audiences don’t have any instinctive ability to resist most of what they see or hear in the media
• There are questions of communicative form; and then there are questions of interpretive activity
  • To fully understand audiences, we should look at both. We can’t just look at the context, we need to look at the dynamic relationship between the 2.

• Origins
  • Stems from neoclassical economics, which focuses on maximizing satisfaction
  • Mainstream cultural economics fails to address several issues of power
    • It is completely uninterested in the relationships between economic organizations and issues of textual meaning.

• An important tradition looks at the way that the impact of media has transformed political communication. This puts strong emphasis on the dangers for a society of the way that democratic processes are increasingly run via the broadcast and press media. Most people in society get their political knowledge from the mass media (usually television)
  • My personal note: audiences are passive! The media can generate political issues if needed by emphasizing certain news. E.g. the issue of hijabs while voting—it’s not really an issue.
• There is evident concern with how the cultural industries affect democratic processes and public life.
  • Structured forms of inequality and power are downplayed; different interest groups fight for their interests (e.g. the Israeli lobby)

Political economy approaches have a great deal more to offer than cultural economies in terms of analysing power in relation to cultural production.

• Political economy places emphasis on ethical and normative questions

• Some writers use the term critical political economy –> the concern of the increasing role of private businesses in cultural production. Such approaches are heavily critical of media and cultural corporations
  • These approaches are holistic, and see the economy as interrelated with political, social and cultural life
  • They’re historical, and pay close attention to long-term changes in the role of state, corporations and media in the culture
  • They’re concerned with the balance between private enterprise and public intervention
  • They engage with basic moral questions of justice, equity and the public good

Critical political economy approaches see the fact that culture is produced and consumed under capitalism as a fundamental issue in explaining inequalities of power, prestige and profit. It Examines the extent to which the cultural industries serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

What is political economy?

• Two particular strands of North American and European political economy approaches
• Schiller-McChesney tradition
  • Emphasizes strategic uses of power.
  • Liberal-pluralist communication studies—primary concern is with information media
• Cultural industries approach
  • Emphasis on problems and contradictions, on the partial and incomplete process of commodifying culture, provides a more accurate picture of cultural production
  • Combines interest in the macro level of relations between general economy and cultural industries (which is an important concern for the other tradition) with an analysis of what distinguishes industrial cultural production from other forms of industrial production (which is not an important concern for the other tradition).
  • Focuses on the supply side (on cultural production and circulation and their social and political contexts), but does not ignore the activity of audiences.
    • Production and consumption are not seen as separate entities, but as different moments in a single process.
    • The connections and tensions between production and consumption are more or less ignored in the other tradition.
  • Puts symbol creators (those responsible for creative input in texts, such as writers, directors, producers, performers…) in issues of market structure and how it affects the organization of cultural production (whereas the other tradition does not)
  • A more successful approach in the difficult task of addressing both information and entertainment
  • There is a lack of attention to textual analysis and meaning amongst writers drawn to political economy approaches to culture.

Cultural studies is a diverse field. It attempts to examine and rethink culture by considering its relationship to social power.

• Cultural studies argue that ordinary, everyday culture needs to be taken seriously.
• Cultural studies has provided considerable refinement of what we might mean by that difficult term culture.
• Cultural studies has raised vital political questions about ‘who speaks?’, about who has the authority to make pronouncements on culture.
• Cultural studies has fore fronted issues of textuality, subjectivity, identity, discourse and pleasure in relation to culture.
  • Subjectivity and identity, and the often irrational and unconscious processes by which we become who we are.

Political economy versus cultural studies is neither an accurate nor useful way to characterize approaches to the media and popular culture

Production versus consumption

• Political economy is often used as a shorthand term for ‘studies of production’
• Both these approaches treat entertainment as a mere distraction/diversion from creating a rational, participatory citizen.

Questions of epistemology

• Political economy writers tend towards realism; cultural studies writers towards constructivist and subjectivist epistemological paths.