HI307 MEDIA HISTORY: Four Modern Revolutions · McLuhan on subculture –print revolution • architect of nationalism –electronic revolution • return of tribalism – PHONOGRAPH

SILS - Spring 2020

HI307

MEDIA HISTORY:

Four Modern Revolutions Graham Law

Sound & Sight (3): US Cultural Power

Structure of today’s presentation

I Intellectual models – Some top-down models

– “Media Imperialism

– “Soft Power”

II Cultural power & audio-visual media – International intellectual property regimes

– Phonograph & cultural power

– Cinema & cultural power

I. Intellectual models

Some top-down theories of popular culture

Historical slogans – Juvenal: “panem et circenses” / Marx: “opium of the masses”

Frankfurt School and the “Culture Industry” – Institute for Social Research, U. of Frankfurt (inc. Habermas)

– Theodor Adorno (1903-69) & Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)

– their Dialectic of Englightenment (1947)

“The term culture industry was perhaps used for the first time in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, which Horkheimer and I published in Amsterdam in 1947. In our drafts we spoke of ‘mass culture’. We replaced that expression with ‘culture industry’ in order to exclude from the outset the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art. From the latter the culture industry must be distinguished in the extreme. The culture industry fuses the old and familiar into a new quality. In all its branches, products which are tailored for consumption by masses, and which to a great extent determine the nature of that consumption, are manufactured more or less according to plan.”

Adorno (1967 / trans. 1975 New German Critique #6:12-19)

• http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/Some_writings_of_Adorno.shtml

Noam Chomsky (1928-) and “Media Control” – Manufacturing Consent (1988/2002) with E.S. Herman

“Media Imperialism”

Extended senses of Empire – “Economic Imperialism”

• cf. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

– “Cultural Imperialism”

cf. H.B. Schiller, Communication & Cultural Domination (1973)

1970s UNESCO Media Commission

– MacBride chair, McLuhan ill

– Report: “Many Voices, One

World” (1980) • Subtitle: “Towards a new more just and

more efficient world information and

communication order” (NWIO)

– mid-1980s withdrawal of US/UK

from UNESCO in protest

Global Hollywood – Toby Miller (UCR), et al.

– BFI, 2001 (2nd. ed. 2005)

– critical of both “media

imperialism” & laissez -

faire models

– sections on: – subsidies & protection

– intellectual property

– marketing & distribution

– modes of exhibition

See: MacBride Report, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066eb.pdf

“Soft Power” Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power (2004) --

“The Means to Success in World Politics” – professor of government at Harvard Univ., USA

– written under the Bush administration

– Nye: “The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them ... so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks.”

– hard power = military (sticks) & economic (carrots)

– soft power includes the attractions of popular culture

• Major League baseball, Disney, McDonald’s, etc

BUT ... Don’t attractions have a stronger effect when

they are NOT created with power in mind -- that is,

without any specific intention to manipulate or influence

people elsewhere?

II. Cultural Power & Audio-Visual Media

International © regimes:

C19th & C20th

Europe – dominant culture of C19th

– bi-lateral treaties among

European powers from 1830s, despite “copyright” & “droit d’auteur” disparity

• 1st UK International © Act, 1838 • e.g. UK & Prussia, 1846 • e.g. France & Holland, 1855

– multi-lateral International Copyright Union created by Berne Convention, 1886

• initial seven European powers • limited formalities

USA – cheap books & democracy

– informal quasi-copyright • courtesy of the trade • courtesy payments • advance sheets (proofs) • breakdown of system

– Chace Act of 1891 = 1st US

International Copyright Act • reciprocity • rigid formalities • local manufacture • A-V clauses added later

– joins ICU only in 1989

– dominant culture of C20th

“The Anglo-American copyright controversy has been for the last thirty years the Schleswig-Holstein Question of literature. It has appeared equally insoluble, and has been almost as tedious.” (Times Leader, 24 May 1879)

Phonograph &

Cultural Power

Language & Recorded music

– dance & instrumental music • ragtime in 1910s

• jazz in 1930s

– protest & protest music • folk rock from 1960s

• rap from 1980s

McLuhan on subculture

– print revolution • architect of nationalism

– electronic revolution • return of tribalism

PHONOGRAPH & CINEMA

pop music genre movies, e.g. – Rock around the Clock (1956)

– Woodstock (1970)

pop music movie careers, e.g. – Elvis Presley (c. 30: 1956-69)

– Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, …

rock musicals & operas, e.g. – Hair, Grease, Rent, etc.

– Tommy (Who) & The Wall (Pink Floyd)

Cinema & Cultural Power

Language & Cinema

– ct. print culture

– silent era & title cards

– sound-track & dubbing

– sub-titling

Myth & Cinema

– “the American Dream” • “Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of

Happiness” (Decl. of Indep., )

– “Manifest Destiny” • to protect & promote democracy

• continental & global expansion

– “I have a dream” • King and Civil Rights

• US rebels

REACTIONS protectionism

– e.g., UK

– quota system from 1927

subsidy – e.g., Germany

– gov. support from 1930s (RFB)

rivalry – e.g., post-independence India

– Hindi “Bollywood” cinema

piracy – e.g., contemporary China

– analogue to digital reproduction

See: J. Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of the Idea that Shaped a Nation (2003)

Discussion Session

Over to You

Questions & Comments