tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13363219745661025542024-03-13T15:38:46.722+00:00Media ReadingsWesley Rykalski's teaching blog of readings of media texts and guidance on media theories and concepts.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-73126097551674204712016-07-03T14:58:00.001+01:002016-07-03T14:58:32.644+01:00You Live: We Do Not<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nzowlPyT4Uo/V3kaB2K3htI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/tMv5jMgbdT0/s640/blogger-image-1060631094.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nzowlPyT4Uo/V3kaB2K3htI/AAAAAAAAB3Y/tMv5jMgbdT0/s640/blogger-image-1060631094.jpg"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The suppression into non-existence of those who work so that 'you' may live. This is media as vampire. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-45976408962323969412016-05-21T11:12:00.001+01:002016-05-21T11:22:47.907+01:00Advertising - TaskRabbit - 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yJ8Dl9D6pUw/V0A27AKlU-I/AAAAAAAAB3I/-gHBOGyNQMQqUb9GXz59uR-pOZqjG4r4QCLcB/s1600/IMG_7519.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yJ8Dl9D6pUw/V0A27AKlU-I/AAAAAAAAB3I/-gHBOGyNQMQqUb9GXz59uR-pOZqjG4r4QCLcB/s320/IMG_7519.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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A <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By6IUxH2YVpGU1U1SWxsdTZVaDQ/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">note on TaskRabbit's current (May 2016) poster campaign</a> on London Underground.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-41877523702596109242016-03-29T12:09:00.001+01:002016-03-29T12:09:28.746+01:00Technocrat Themistius<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">The Twitter account @samfr is in favour of the academisation in English schools. This process, now, amounts to a privatisation of the entire English schools service and everyone knows it. </span></div><div>For samfr, however, privatisation is not a problem. The only problems are technical. Hence this tweet;</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0-lhzB_ERBY/VvpiZzdNcKI/AAAAAAAAB20/0sfP198QN1g/s640/blogger-image--1036497544.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0-lhzB_ERBY/VvpiZzdNcKI/AAAAAAAAB20/0sfP198QN1g/s640/blogger-image--1036497544.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>For samfr the objections raised by the opponents of academisation (forced or otherwise) are conspiracy theory and not to be taken seriously. </div><div>Fortunately for all of us there a small number of intellects - amongst which samfr locates itself - that are capable of being serious and recognising the true problems and grappling with them. A fact for which we must all be grateful. </div><div><br></div><div>The brilliance of samfr's tiny intervention into the social media public sphere lies in how those opposed to academisation become a dehumanised mob (<u>lot</u> is crucial here) of conspiracy theory loons whilst samfr's technoratic superiority shines through at the same time. If the politics of the samfr account did not scream out from this rhetorical structure quite so loudly it might almost work but alas this is not the case. </div><div><br></div><div>It is worth pointing out that any resemblance between the line of thought samfr is proposing and anti-democratic technocracy is , I am sure, purely coincidental & we must all be certain that whilst the entire education service in England is sold off around him and school fields and sites are transferred into private ownership for house building (or worse) that samfr will continue to recognise and comment on the serious technical difficulties confronting young people and their learning. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-14316712847077533692014-12-13T13:31:00.003+00:002014-12-13T13:31:48.489+00:00How to read Mythologies <div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>The Mythologies</u> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1">There are three concerns in the mythologies; <i>language</i>, <i>culture</i>, & <i>ideology</i>. The concern with language derives from Saussure. Culture from Levi-Strauss. Ideology from Marx. </span>Each of the mythologies takes as its focus an aspect of culture (wine, film, travel guides, etc, etc). Each considers the language of that aspect of culture (object or concept) and how it communicates with us (how it structures how we read it, how it positions us, it's rhetoric). Each shows the ideological systems at work in this specific language of culture. Each mythology expresses this triangular relation of culture-language-ideology [Levi-Strauss-Sassure-Marx]. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Typically the textual structure of each mythology follows the culture-language-ideology pattern (wine, the rhetoric of wine, the ideology of wine) which could almost be paraphrased as 'artefact <i>x</i> positions us in way <i>y</i> because ideology <i>z</i>'. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Myth Today</u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1">The concern of <i>Myth Today</i> is the lesson of all the Mythologies. It tries to answer the question 'what do all these individual mythologies add up to'. </span>Barthes' answer is rather remarkable - and it is worth reading Myth Today carefully more than once for this reason -<b> myth is the language of capital itself</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1">Each of the individual Mythologies </span>is an example of this meta-language of capital [<a href="http://www.lecerclepoints.com/livre-mythologies-roland-barthes-9782757841754.htm" target="_blank">N/B not all of the mythologies are collected in the standard UK edition and there is another set of Mythologies available in an American translation so Myth Today is based on a very wide range of examples</a>]. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Myth Today could be seen as an attempt to outline the grammar of this language of capital. The culture-language-ideology triplet could be seen as the syntax of this meta-language of myth. The mythologies themselves are so many figures of speech within it. The specific aspects of culture discussed are its nouns. The rhetorics of culture illuminated in each mythology are the verbs of this meta-language. Culture, language, ideology are its registers...</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is worth remembering that this meta-language of capital has only one object, you the reader, and only one tense, the infinite present, because when it speaks it intends to weave us into a world that we are to understand we cannot change because it has always been this way and always will. </span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-85728297394599767072014-01-21T09:53:00.001+00:002014-01-21T09:53:04.572+00:00Moral Panic & Folk Devils: Labour Party & NHS<div>The Labour Party have been gifted a great weapon by the Tory privatisation of the NHS. A demonising gun to make the Tories 'The NHS profiteers'. </div><div>The Labour Party could end right here, right now, the Tory Party as a possible governing party by constructing them as a folk devil. A folk devil that could never be trusted with even a single finger of power over the fate of the NHS</div><div>A moral panic about NHS privatisation (rather than NHS institutions as is now the case) would stygmatise the Tories forever. </div><div>It would be a simple task for the Labour Party to make a stand on the NHS & to promise an end to 'marketisation'. Especially as the end of neoliberalism in 2008 makes this kind of financialisation prohibitively expensive anyway. </div><div>Such a strategy comes with a ready made thing to apologise for [which Labour often seem to believe is necessary]: i.e. continuing the 'marketisation' programme of Margret Thatcher. Which can now be presented as a terrible error that the Labour Party volubly own up to. Allowing, of course, all problems & scandals in the NHS of the period 97-2010 to be blamed on Thatcher & Blair's mistaken belief that Thatcher's 'marketisation' was both reasonable & kind [Blair just couldn't imagine that the Thatcher reforms were designed to be so harmful... is the line to take]. </div><div>The Labour Party would need to commit to undoing all the ‘marketisation' efforts since Thatcher but that would not be a hardship given how much additional cost they have placed on the NHS (& with the Cameron-Clegg privatisation this increase in total cost will only be seriously exacerbated). It would have the additional benefit of marking a very clear division between the Labour Party and the Tories (whether in Blue or Yellow ties) which would help to overcome some of the ‘they're all the same’ discourse they electorate are trapped in.</div><div>The essential point for the Labour Party to convey is that no one could believe that the Tories, especially when in a minority government, would actually be so barbaric as to privatise the NHS & set the UK on course for the brutal horrors of the USA's medical capitalism. How could a typical person in the UK even begin to imagine that? The people responsible for such a barbarity would display such a monstrous inhumanity that they could hardly be considered people at all [which of course they are not they 'are lower than vermin']. Yet no human would want to think of others in this way & in this mis-recognition of Tories as people by us lies their terrible power to do harm. </div><div>The NHS & the health of everyone in the UK, everyone, is imperilled by the anti-NHS Tories. This should be the clear & simple message of the Labour Party because not even Cameron could Flashman his way out off that.</div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-76421826035346919622013-09-19T11:23:00.001+01:002013-09-19T11:23:57.911+01:00'over-information'Virilio, Strategy of Deception, p48<div><br></div><div>The flood of information that we experience due to the <i>global multiplication</i> of media is a system of <b>disinformation</b> that means we know less the more there is. </div><div><br></div><div>This is not simply a matter of the 'flack' Herman & Chomsky once diagnosed because this system of disinformation is strategic rather than tactical (ie not applied to only one site - news media - but to the whole field of struggle). </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Poz9EtuJL9U/UjrQuszbMoI/AAAAAAAABhg/X9DvSpRPLxA/s640/blogger-image-1304088504.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Poz9EtuJL9U/UjrQuszbMoI/AAAAAAAABhg/X9DvSpRPLxA/s640/blogger-image-1304088504.jpg"></a></div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-6128694787130525402013-05-09T12:10:00.001+01:002013-05-09T12:10:17.934+01:00Gramsci on why Facebook is following MySpace into desuetude ... In his discussions of 'Americanism and Fordism' [the specific regime of factory labour that dominated the early to mid C20th in the USA and Europe] Gramsci made the following observation:<br />
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It is an obvious reflection that so-called high wages are a transitory form of remuneration. Adaptation to the new methods of production and work cannot take place simply through social compulsion. ... If the situation were "normal", the apparatus of coercion needed to obtain the desired result would involve more than just high wages. Coercion has therefore to be ingeniously combined with persuasion and consent. This effect can be achieved, in forms proper to the society in question, by higher remuneration such as to permit a particular living standard which can maintain and restore the strength that has been worn down by the new form of toil. But no sooner have the new methods of work and production been generalised and diffused, the new type of worker been created universally and the apparatus of material production further perfected, no sooner has this happened than the excessive "turnover" has automatically to be restricted by widespread unemployment, and high wages disappear.<br />
Gramsci, High-Wages, from ‘Americanism and Fordism’, in Selections From the Prison Notebooks, (p310)</blockquote>
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The point of which is to show that the 'high-wages' which were a part of this form of capitalism were a necessary part of a coercive regime required to make Fordism work. Working on the automated (moving conveyor belt type) assembly line that was central to fordist factory production was so unpleasant that no one was prepared to do it at the perviously standard wage and so 'higher wages' had to be paid to make the whole system work. Gramsci's point is that these 'high-wages' are not a good thing as they are merely one part of a system for manufacturing consent to worse (ever more dehumanising) conditions of labour. High wages are the lash that spurs the worker on ever faster.<br />
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What then has this got to do with the web's world of social networks?<br />
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The post-fordist 'immaterial labour' (the<i> leisure and consumption as work</i> that Adorno, Marcuse, Biffo, Marazzi and many others showed was developing in the aftermath of the second world war and especially under <i>neoliberalism</i> [1970-2008]) also operated to create a new type of worker (literally you & I) enmeshed in a new apparatus of immaterial production (this, literally this which you are looking at now) which is engaged in the same process of excessive turnover in the immaterial as Ford's original was in the material. Just as the 'high wages' disappeared when the tactical deployment of capital that required them moved on so the products of immaterial production also disappear. </div>
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MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, this, the whole of the web, all permit a new type of renumeration (often passing under the label 'free') based on the use of services (media) - mainly communicative - that are themselves essential to the new methods of production and work that these services themselves represent. We are ingeniously persuaded to consent because the whole apparatus is <i>given to us</i> for 'nothing' as part of our participation on the web. However, this (literally this that you are looking at right now) is just one more tactical deployment of capital and when the strategic needs of capital move on this tactical deployment will disappear just as ford's high wages disappeared. </div>
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It is not that 'popularity' or 'fashion' has something to do with web services rising and falling but the movements of users and of profits and of the phantasies of capital we call 'share prices' that leads to these web services thriving or disappearing. MySpace's use of music, musical preferences and phatic interaction was outmanoeuvred by Facebooks use of a wider range of raw social interaction that encompassed what MySpace could do and Facebook in turn will be outmanoeuvred (by Google, by Apple, by someone else...) and it too will suffer the problems of <i>excessive turnover</i> that MySpace faced at the moment of its outmanoeuvring. The immaterial labour that went into MySpace was wasted, the immaterial labour going into Facebook will be wasted, as this is waste, because our universal adaptation to the new mode of production results in over production. </div>
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It is a good thing that <i>email</i> is old enough and simple enough to survive the forthcoming destruction of immaterial value that will be the result of the the restriction of excessive immaterial turnover as it will be useful to still at least be able to use the net to communicate.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-54982797588583549262013-05-09T07:08:00.001+01:002013-05-09T12:10:44.916+01:00Foundations of Media Studies<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Media studies can be boiled down to four books to read. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chomsky & Herman, <i>Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barthes, <i>Mythologies</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Debord, <i>The Society of the Spectacle</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horkheimer & Adorno, <i>Dialectic of Enlightenment </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are not necessarily easy to read and they only provide the foundation of understanding in the field but that foundation is invaluable. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-83075231682002516512013-01-04T18:56:00.001+00:002013-01-04T18:56:33.383+00:00Approaches to Audience<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">Three Audience Approaches:</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1 - How does the text work on the audience (what does the text do to the audience)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">2- How does the Audience use the Text (what does the audience do with the text)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">3 - In what ways is the Audience involved in or in the production of the text (what does the audience contribute to the text)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">Some associated theories:</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1 - How does the text work on the audience (what does the text do to the audience)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1a - Mode of Address; Audience Positioning; Interpellation</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1b - [Denotation/Connotation] Mythology</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1c - Encoding [from Encoding/Decoding]</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">1d - (Hegemony)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">1e - Culture Industry</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">1f - Spectacle</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">1g - Control Society<br style="background-color: white;" /><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">2- How does the Audience use the Text (what does the audience do with the text)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">2a - Decoding [from Encoding/Decoding]</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">2b - Uses & Gratifications</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">2c - Directions for Living</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2d - Making is Connecting</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2e - Bricolage</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2f - Everyday Life - de Certeau</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2g - Everyday Life - Fiske</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2h - [S/Z]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2i - "`Distinction" etc.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">2j - Symbolic Violence</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px;"><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">3 - In what ways is the Audience involved in or in the production of the text (what does the audience contribute to the text)?</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">3a - Participation</span><br style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">3b - Co-Production</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">3c - [Culture Industry etc]</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">3d - [S/Z]</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-91719059861591484302012-12-04T15:16:00.001+00:002012-12-04T15:16:13.391+00:00ways of seeing Ways Of Seeing<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John Berger's Ways of Seeing is actually very difficult to see given it was first screened 40 years ago [but then that is exactly what capital is for]. Below are the embeds of the first episode on youtube & <a href="http://www.ubu.com/film/berger_seeing.html" target="_blank">the whole can be found (in black and white) at ubu</a>.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LnfB-pUm3eI" width="480"></iframe>
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/peONDtyn8bM" width="480"></iframe>
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3vHrRvsXBkM" width="480"></iframe>
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XShzabEv8bM" width="480"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-7418820686822067902012-11-30T10:55:00.000+00:002012-11-30T10:55:38.388+00:00the realistic isn't real (but the monsters are)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our sense of the realistic (cf Eastenders, Bicycle Thieves, the work of Posy Simmonds, etc) is the result of our training in the bourgeoise capitalist realism which is a part of the ideology of capitalism (whose purpose was to dismiss the monstrously - mystical - mythical - religiosity which was such a part of the ideology of agriculturalism/aristocracy: cf The Lutteral Psalter). </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The appearance of these tropes in the culture of capitalism is never a good sign as the hideous stumbling metaphor of the zombie shows us so clearly. That the modern zombie is the proletariat needs no explanation (the line from the consumers of Dawn of the Dead to the shop-workers and game show contestants of Shawn of the Dead is written in the brightest light) but what is interesting is that in a zombie horror it is the zombie that is real. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'realistic' of these texts (with its ekphrastic detail of daily life turned upside-down and the world-around-us in-ruins and the now standardised [in the sense of the culture industry] tightly woven discourse of realism) is the reality of bourgeois capitalist realism that Flaubert (et al) and later the cinema wrought upon the world. The realistic is the ideological and the monster is (on the contrary) very real indeed.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just as the morlock (which is the true original of the modern zombie not the voodoo zombie of the first wave of Hollywood zombie films) was the proletariat as warning ('exterminate all the brutes' is the cry of Wells as much as of Kurtz) so is the zombie. The zombie is the working-class, the poor, the excluded (it almost isn't a metaphor at all) and as such is the most real thing in zombie horror texts. The zombie is not how the working-class are treated in fiction rather it is an accurate depiction of how the weakest factions of the working-class live in society right now and the methods (murder mainly) that must be used to 'deal' with 'them'. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> We must recognise that the figure of the sheriff which closes the narrative of Night of The Living Dead is the same as the sheriff who opens the story of The Walking Dead: only now (neo-managerially) he no longer chews tobacco.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-29643875343646482332012-11-22T12:44:00.000+00:002012-11-22T12:44:00.436+00:00A Collection on S/Z<object width="560" height="420" id="pt-embed-4585689-651-object" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp"><param name="flashvars" value="lang=en_US&embedId=pt-embed-4585689-651&treeId=4585689&pearlId=37708694&treeTitle=S%2FZ&site=www.pearltrees.com%2F" /><param name="movie" value="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp" /><param name="wmode" value="opaque" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><a href="http://www.pearltrees.com/rykalski/s-z/id4585689" alt="S/Z" style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-size:14pt;color:black;font-weight:bold">S/Z</span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#999999;font-weight:normal"> in Media / (rykalski)</span></a></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-49710864795476509372012-11-15T11:36:00.000+00:002012-11-15T11:36:50.242+00:00Barthes S/Z LXIV. THE VOICE OF THE READER
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>As though terror-struck: </i>who is speaking here? It cannot be Sarrasine, even indirectly, since he interprets La Zambinella's fear as timidity. Above all, it cannot be the narrator, because he knows that La Zambinella really is terrified. The modalization <i>(as though) </i>expresses the interests of only one character, who is neither Sarrasine nor the narrator, but the reader: it is the reader who is concerned that the truth be simultaneously named and evaded, an ambiguity which the discourse nicely creates by <i>as though, </i>which indicates the truth and yet reduces, it declaratively to a mere appearance. What we hear, therefore, is the <i>displaced </i>voice which the reader lends, by proxy, to the discourse: the discourse is speaking according to the reader's interests. Whereby we see that writing is not the communication of a message which starts from the author and proceeds to the reader; it is specifically the voice of reading itself: in <i>the text, only the reader speaks. </i>This inversion of our prejudices (which make reading a reception or, to put matters more clearly, a simple psychological participation in the adventure being related), this inversion can be illustrated by a linguistic image: in the Indo-European verb (for example, Greek), two diatheses (specifically: two <i>voices</i>) were set in opposition: the middle voice, according to which the agent performed the action for his own sake (<i>I sacrifice for myself</i>), and the active voice, according to which he performed this same action for another's benefit (as in the case of the priest who sacrificed on his client's behalf). In this accounting, writing is active, for it acts for the reader: it proceeds not from an author but from a <i>public scribe</i>, a notary institutionally responsible not for flattering his client's tastes but rather for registering at his dictation the summary of his interests, the operations by which, within an economy of disclosure, he manages this merchandise: the narrative.</blockquote>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-53345998224865027362012-10-25T13:07:00.000+01:002012-10-30T14:26:24.426+00:00Notes on McRobbie on Neo-Liberalism and the FamilyRecently I have been trying to teach my (media & sociology) students this wonderful lecture by McRobbie on neo-liberalism and the family<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bv8a4V8CE6c" width="560"></iframe>
and trying to use the following board notes to help explain it:
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2ZJkvC27K0/UIkq7PN1pmI/AAAAAAAAAOs/GgtvUfp7XbA/s1600/McRobbie+NL+2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2ZJkvC27K0/UIkq7PN1pmI/AAAAAAAAAOs/GgtvUfp7XbA/s1600/McRobbie+NL+2.gif" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7fQwq_-ojMw/UIkq8varRSI/AAAAAAAAAOw/FICtTRMYR1g/s1600/McRobbie+NL+Gender+Regimes+again.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7fQwq_-ojMw/UIkq8varRSI/AAAAAAAAAOw/FICtTRMYR1g/s1600/McRobbie+NL+Gender+Regimes+again.gif" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YGu0lFR21ww/UIkq9t_0jPI/AAAAAAAAAO4/uUVAm9457D0/s1600/notes+on+McRobbie+lecture+on+Neoliberalism+and+the+Family.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YGu0lFR21ww/UIkq9t_0jPI/AAAAAAAAAO4/uUVAm9457D0/s1600/notes+on+McRobbie+lecture+on+Neoliberalism+and+the+Family.gif" /></a></div>
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p.s. and this is an edited version of all three gifs.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-66498877481782436902012-10-11T09:07:00.002+01:002012-10-11T09:07:43.642+01:00Directions for Living: Self Help Books, Lifestyle Magazines & Role Models as 'technologies of the self'
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<div class="p1">
In his <i>Media Gender & Identity</i> Gauntlett outlines Foucault's idea of ‘<i>technologies of the self</i>’:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Michel Foucault became interested in 'techniques of the self' and 'the care of the self' – questions of lifestyle which today are tackled by self-help books. In the introduction to The History of Sexuality Volume Two, The Use of Pleasure, Foucault helpfully proposes a methodology for this kind of study: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“A history of the way individuals are urged to constitute themselves as subjects of moral conduct would be concerned with the models proposed for setting up and developing relationships with the self, for self-reflection, self-knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self by oneself, for the transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object. This last is what might be called a history of 'ethics' and 'ascetics,'understood as a history of the forms of moral subjectivation and of the practices of the self that are meant to ensure it.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Foucault, then, lends support to the idea that we can learn about our culture by looking at its self-help books; he was interested in the ways in which a society enabled or encouraged individuals to perceive or modify their self-identity.</blockquote>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As part of what Gauntlett describes as '<i>the knowing construction of identity</i>':</div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Not only is there more room for a greater variety of identities to emerge; it is also the case that the construction of identity has become a known requirement. Modern Western societies do not leave individuals in any doubt that they need to make choices of identity and lifestyle – even if their preferred options are rather obvious and conventional ones, or are limited due to lack of financial (or cultural) resources. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has noted, in late modern societies everyone wants to 'live their own life', but this is, at the same time, 'an experimental life' (2002:26). Since the social world is no longer confident in its traditions, every approach to life, whether seemingly radical or conventional, is somewhat risky and needs to be worked upon – nurtured, considered and maintained, or amended. Because 'inherited recipes for living and role stereotypes fail to function' (ibid.), we have to make our own new patterns of being, and – although this is not one of Beck's emphases – it seems clear that the media plays an important role here. Magazines, bought on one level for a quick fix of glossy entertainment, promote self-confidence (even if they partly undermine it, for some readers, at the same time) and provide information about sex, relationships and lifestyles which can be put to a variety of uses. Television programmes, pop songs, adverts, movies and the Internet all also provide numerous kinds of 'guidance' – not necessarily in the obvious form of advice-giving, but in the myriad suggestions of ways of living which they imply. We lap up this material because the social construction of identity today is the knowing social construction of identity. Your life is your project – there is no escape. The media provides some of the tools which can be used in this work. Like many toolkits, however, it contains some good utensils and some useless ones; some that might give beauty to the project, and some that might spoil it. (People find different uses for different materials, too, so one person's 'bad' tool might be a gift to another.).</blockquote>
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<div class="p1">
We must realise that this <i>knowing</i> is yet another technology-of-the-self. We have arrived at a point in which society requires us to ironically and archly construct an understood presentation of ourselves in everyday life and our use of this ‘knowing’ is not free flowing. It is rather a matter of <i>power</i> and our relations-of-power to the different technologies of the self available to us in the society we inhabit.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-86200735540221945562012-10-07T09:56:00.000+01:002012-10-07T09:56:09.204+01:00Social Status and Symbolic Violence<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/embed?id=1Vfa500Wzh7DtPXs8zXF6zkU7LXw0L_koStIGkkmdAmo&start=false&loop=true&delayms=5000" frameborder="0" width="575" height="550" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-69054392139879794352012-09-11T15:29:00.000+01:002012-09-11T15:29:33.265+01:00Do-it-yourself?<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>Bricolage:</i></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This is a french word that means 'do-it-yourself' or making things from what you have and what ever skills and tools you posses rather than with the correct and best skills and tools.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As an analytical concept it was developed by Levi-Strauss and taken up by Derrida & Hebdidge (in different directions).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For Levi-Strauss the idea was a sign of a certain approach to understanding the world around one in an ad-hoc fashion, which he contrasted to the planned approach to understanding the world of the engineer.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For Derrida it was the only way in which we could read a text. There can be no planned rational reading of a text because of, one, the semiotic blizzard of possible connotations available to us in that reading, and, two, the social construction of both text & reader (a point to look at in re Barthes S/Z & 'narrative codes').</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For Hebdidge Bricolage was a stylistic mechanism which allowed people to mark their sub-cultural position. So that a particular musical or social scene would be associated with a particular set of fashion codes, stylistic choices, and presentations. Hebdidge is looking at the ways in which we display our place in society through our choices of styles and fashions and our appropriations of others styles and fashions.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-85184886675061926072012-09-05T10:51:00.000+01:002012-09-05T10:51:13.262+01:00Media Diversity as the Screen of Capital Uniformity (Barthes Soap-Powders & Detergents).In 'Soap-Powders and Detergents' (from <i>Mythologies</i>) Barthes works through the, very different, semiotic mechanisms used in the advertising of three washing powders injected into French society in the 1950s (Lux, Persil, and Omo) and the fundamental unity of the three on "the plane of the Anglo-Dutch trust Unilever." We tend to forget that Barthes was a marxist and was deeply concerned with the ways in which capital found its expression in, and organised its control over, semiotic systems. This forgetful reception of Barthes is remarkably similar to the ways in which Benjamin's works are drawn on for over optimistic and non-ethical readings of 'popular-culture' (especially '<a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm" target="_blank">The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction</a>') when even the briefest perusal of '<a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/postgraduate/maipr/teaching_1112/warwick/st2/kobialka_reading_-_benjamin_w_-_the_author_as_producer.pdf" target="_blank">The Author as Producer</a>' or '<a href="http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html" target="_blank">Theses on the Philosophy of History</a>' would show this to be an error.<br />
<br />
This forgetfulness of marxism is especially problematic for the study of current media forms because there is so much unity on the plane of capital behind the seeming diversity of our media. It is of course obvious on the level of the mega institutions such as News Corporation but Barthes can help us think through this quality of being unified by the flows of capital 'behind' the media and its texts on a personal and/or individualised basis. For instance Andy Murray, Lewis Hamilton, and Cathy Dennis are all unified with Pop Idol (in its many versions) by the capital flows personified in Simon Fuller (who, of course, also unifies the Spice Girls and S Club 7 and <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/simon-cowell-breaks-silence-x-226664" target="_blank">The X Factor and to some extent Simon Cowell</a> on that same plane of capital).<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most useful working through of this 'unified by the flows of capital' approach concerns Endemol because of the great diversity of semiotic mechanisms it utilises and the plane of capital that it's diverse products are finally unified on. <a href="http://www.endemol.com/" target="_blank">Endemol </a>(originally a Dutch based TV production company) is probably most famous for Big Brother and its off-shoots but in the UK is also behind <a href="http://www.zeppotron.com/faq.html" target="_blank">Charlie Brooker and his Zeppotron Agent/Production Company</a>. The radical distinction between the semiotic mechanisms utilised by these two parts of the same capital flows cover the essential unity involved. The semiotic contrast between Zeppotron's <i>Dead Set</i>, <i>Screen Wipe</i>, or <i>A Touch of Cloth</i> and Endemol's <i>Deal or no Deal</i>, <i>Million Pound Drop</i>, or <i>Big Brother</i> could not be more different but they are all the same on the plane of capital.<br />
<br />
The nature of the plane of capital on which these media products are unified is most interesting. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/03/mediaset-sells-final-holdings-endemol" target="_blank">Endemol was partially purchased by one of Silvio Berlusconi's media corporations in 2007</a> (along with one of its original founders &, seemingly, Goldman Sachs) before a 'debt restructuring deal' in 2012 saw ownership of Endemol dissipate into the ether of financial-capital (<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95a72aac-e88e-11e1-8397-00144feab49a.html#axzz25aOz1uEE" target="_blank">RBS seemingly taking a stake).</a> So for five years Charlie Brooker was unified with <a href="http://newleftreview.org/II/68/paolo-flores-d-arcais-anatomy-of-berlusconismo" target="_blank">Silvio Berlusconi </a>on the same plane of capital but now is merely adrift on the<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12084" target="_blank"> miasmic plane of global financial capital</a>.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-23325528212891674182012-07-27T16:29:00.000+01:002012-07-27T16:29:50.069+01:00The Zap Gun of the Culture-IndustryPhilip K Dick imagined many worlds in his bewildering and brilliant fiction and in his scathing satire of The Cold War <a href="http://www.philipkdick.com/works_novels_zapgun.html" target="_blank"><i>The Zap Gun</i></a> (which set out exactly the same argument on the confrontation as Chomsky in <i>Deterring Democracy</i> i.e. that it was a joint system of government and not a war) PKD presented something particularly pertinent to his own posthumous role in the culture-industry. <i> </i><br />
<i>The Zap Gun</i> presents a world were the super-power confrontation is displayed to the people of the world as deadly serious and focused on an astounding arms race in which, in reality, all of the weapons dreamt up by the specialists in the field are never made (at least not so that they function). This subterfuge is a key mechanism in the joint system of control that the two super-powers use on their own people. The spectacle of the unimaginable arm-race is used to ensure that flows of capital and governmental measures are directed as the governing elites wish without bringing these weapons of annihilation actually into existence and thus threatening the continued existence of the system of control. Eventually there is a crisis (a devastating alien invasion of course) in which it is discovered that the source of all of the unbelievable weapons of total devastation that the psuedo-arm-race had spectacularly projected into the political discourses of the world system came from the imagination of one man; Oral Giacomini who is an insane Italian artist who writes and draws a '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_comic" target="_blank">motion comic</a>' titled The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. <br />
It is this role of the insane artist as source of imagination for an industrial system the PKD now holds. His character unwittingly, because his mind was plundered by telepaths without his knowledge, provided a pseudo-military-industrial-complex with ideas, images, and projections of terror to be used in a non-existent but ideologically crucial arms-race. PKD unwittingly, because dead, provides a culture-industry with ideas, images, narrative forms, projections of terror and so forth to be used in <a href="http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/" target="_blank">the spectacle</a>. The non-existent super-weapon arms-race of <i>The Zap Gun</i> lives on in the spectacle.<br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.166666030883789px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 17.5px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-54589896012274094672012-06-16T08:57:00.003+01:002012-06-16T09:06:52.601+01:00The Tory Discourse of 'grand conspiracy theory': a straw man of transnational capitalThe Tory Party hates the BBC. They have as yet not found a way of disciplining it (the injection of Carlton into the ITV network as punishment for Thames Television's <i>Death on the Rock</i> had worked perfectly to discipline ITV) and continue to seek out ways of dismembering it and handing over the richest meat to its friends among the transnational corporations. This is not a polemical point just the bare facts.<br />
<br />
The Murdoch Organisation (News Corporation and its many aspects - in the UK most especially BSkyB) hates the BBC. They have found no mechanism for drawing away from the BBC the substantial audiences it generates for its programmes and channels and continue to seek out ways of dismembering that audience and handing it over to its advertisers. This is not a polemical point just the bare facts.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/aug/29/james-murdoch-edinburgh-festival-mactaggart">James Murdoch's MacTaggart Lecture to the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2009</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/24/leveson-inquiry-murdoch-david-cameron">Jeremy Hunt's response to that lecture and David Cameron's foreshadowing of some of its demands</a> show the combination of this hatred.<br />
<br />
Around the current Leveson Inquiry the myrmidons of this hatred have been building a discourse about the 'grand conspiracy' between the Tory Party and News Corporation to allow by any means the full takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation <i>and how this has not been shown by any of the evidence as yet presented to the Inquiry</i>. The main thrust of David Cameron's evidence was structured along these lines.<br />
<br />
However, this is of course not the point. <i>The point is that the restructuring of the capital flows in and around BSkyB is of very limited importance</i>. This is an institution and set of audiences that are already fully integrated into transnational capital and the profits (<a href="http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=391&Itemid=56">or perhaps rather rents</a>) from this nexus of consumption are already fully financialised.<br />
<br />
No the point of this is that the BBC and the set of audiences around it are not fully integrated into transnational capital. The BBC's peculiar relationship with the people - paid for through taxation - means that the flows of capital in and around it are not perfectly available to transnational capital (they are by no means sealed off from transnational capital they are just more difficult - and thus expensive - to derive a profit/rent from). Annihilating the BBC in its present form would open those flows of profit/rent to transnational capital and allow a full financialization of those audiences and the rents they offer. There would in effect be a massive virgin territory for transnational capital to exploit. News Corporation, through its most significant UK aspect - BSkyB - intended to be the only institution leading the charge to open this territory and thus the only beneficiary from this opening of the new territory. This is the 'grand conspiracy' not the BSkyB takeover side show.<br />
<br />
That the Tory Party and News Corporation have been able to construct <i>a discourse about another 'grand conspiracy' theory, their preferred as a straw-man to be swatted away with such ease</i> is down to the ideological apparatus at work inside the media institutions in this country, which have always operated on the basis of the <a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html">'propaganda model' described by Herman and Chomsky</a>. An analysis along the lines set out above is unthinkable within the 'media' as typically understood. Not least because, of course, of <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/postgraduate/maipr/teaching_1112/warwick/st2/kobialka_reading_-_benjamin_w_-_the_author_as_producer.pdf">the position in the relations of productions</a> of media workers. Observing this 'takeover grand conspiracy' straw man being projected into the media is to see all of the ideological systems of capital in the UK at work.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-44942508538130503462012-06-01T14:23:00.000+01:002012-06-01T14:26:03.834+01:00Prezi on Encoding/Decoding & its relationship with other theories.<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><object id="prezi_jk6hf_pdn63g" name="prezi_jk6hf_pdn63g" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="550" height="500"><param name="movie" value="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf"/><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/><param name="flashvars" value="prezi_id=jk6hf_pdn63g&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0"/><embed id="preziEmbed_jk6hf_pdn63g" name="preziEmbed_jk6hf_pdn63g" src="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="550" height="500" bgcolor="#ffffff" flashvars="prezi_id=jk6hf_pdn63g&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0"></embed></object><div class="prezi-player-links"><p><a title="encoding/decoding & the inter-relation with other theories" href="http://prezi.com/jk6hf_pdn63g/encodingdecoding-the-inter-relation-with-other-theories/">encoding/decoding & the inter-relation with other theories</a> on <a href="http://prezi.com">Prezi</a></p></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-43024082061902075422012-05-11T08:14:00.000+01:002012-05-11T08:14:52.661+01:00MEST1: Institutions<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the problems with the <i>institutions</i> question on the MEST1 paper is that often it is not about media institutions per se. Rather it is about what the institutions involved in the production and distribution of media texts are saying about themselves in or with the very texts you are being asked to comment on.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One way to think about this is to ask 'what is it that the institutions involved in the production and distribution of this text in this media (on this platform) saying about themselves with this very text'?
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another way would be to think about this in terms how the text works as an advert for the media institutions that produced and distributed it? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What claims does the text make in terms of the brand of the institutions involved, what claims does it make about the values the institution purports to have as part of its marketing strategy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In terms of media theory consider the ways in which: </span><br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the Institution encodes a message about itself in the text, </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the extent to which the message of the medium (McLuhan - The Medium is the Message) is about the institution,</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what is the text's discourse of representation about the institutions that produced and distributed it?</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">It might be worth considering the Institutional issues question as trying to uncover what <i>rhetorics</i> the Institution is mobilising within, through and by the text. If a product in an advert lays claim to green, ecological, credentials then so to does the institution that produced &/or distributed they text. Read <a href="http://rykalskireadsthemedia.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/fallon-flogging-fun.html">this</a> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">and think about the use of 'fun' that Cadburys & Fallon were engaged in and what they were saying about themselves with & in these texts.</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-65927009066631718462012-05-08T14:28:00.002+01:002012-05-08T14:48:50.642+01:00Baudrillard: Hyperreality, Simulacra & Simulation<object width="560" height="520" id="pt-embed-5042019-293-object" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp"><param name="flashvars" value="lang=en_US&embedId=pt-embed-5042019-293&treeId=5042019&pearlId=43352905&treeTitle=Baudrillard&site=www.pearltrees.com%2F" /><param name="movie" value="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp" /><param name="wmode" value="opaque" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><a href="http://www.pearltrees.com/rykalski/baudrillard/id5042019" alt="Baudrillard" style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-size:14pt;color:black;font-weight:bold">Baudrillard</span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#999999;font-weight:normal"> and SIMULACRA AND SIMULATION in Post-Modern Media Theory / Media / (rykalski)</span></a></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-37470469160179705442012-05-01T10:36:00.000+01:002012-05-01T10:36:43.038+01:00Student Made AS Media Revision PearlTree<object width="560" height="520" id="pt-embed-4982192-92-object" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp"><param name="flashvars" value="lang=en_US&embedId=pt-embed-4982192-92&treeId=4982192&pearlId=42545744&treeTitle=Concepts&site=www.pearltrees.com%2F" /><param name="movie" value="http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/embed/getApp" /><param name="wmode" value="opaque" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><a href="http://www.pearltrees.com/rykalski/concepts/id4982192" alt="Concepts" style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-size:14pt;color:black;font-weight:bold">Concepts</span><span style="font-size:10pt;color:#999999;font-weight:normal"> and Audience / Genre / Institutions / Representation / Narrative in AS Revision / Media / (rykalski)</span></a></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1336321974566102554.post-26483799781237445712012-03-07T13:28:00.002+00:002012-03-07T13:28:55.437+00:00Post-Modern Media Theory<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/embed?id=1J0eg8vR2LhJItBR8ScIqD_caMQ9jqTQB04V5FAg3gF0&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" width="570" height="449" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03324621993803915244noreply@blogger.com0