False.

Encoders are the message creators or the powers that be.  The decoders are the ones that use these messages, or the masses.

1. Dominant: reader shares the text's codes, "preferred reading," "natural," "transparent," local/regional readings, etc.

2. Negotiated: reader partly shares the text's codes, accepts preferred reading but sometimes resists and modifies, reflects personal interests and experiences, local/regional readings, etc.

3. Oppositional: reader understans preferred reading but doesn't share the text's codes, rejects this reading, alternative frame of reference (radical, feminist, postructuralist, Marxist, etc.)

"...the degrees of 'understanding' or 'misunderstanding' in the communicative exchange depend on the degrees of symmetry/asymmetry established between the positions of the... encoder-producer and decoder-receiver.

1. Production: The specifics of how a media object/message is created.

2. Circulation: Encoded messages in the form of meaningful discourse.  Must pass under the discursive rules of "language" for its product to be "realized."  Event circulated as a text, an encoded message.

3. Use (distribution and consumption): Before the message can have an effect, satisfy a need, or be put to use, it must first be appropriated as meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded.  Issues into the structures of social practices.

4. Reproduction (Feedback): Once the message has been decoded and used through structures of social practice, these practices, in turn, influence production... Thus beginning the cycle all over again.

• “We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society and thus it is important to learn how to understand, interpret, and criticize its meanings and messages.”

• Media are a profound...source of cultural pedagogy:

• What to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire - and what not to

• How to be men and women

• How to dress, look, and consume

• How to react to members of different social groups

• How to be popular, successful, and avoid failure

• How to conform to dominant systems of norms, values, practices, and institutions

• Gaining critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment

  • Learning how to read, criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture

  • It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment

The Birmingham School, Cenre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

1. Production and Political Economy: the industrial implications surrouding the creation of media objects/texts.  The financial dimesion.  The processes surrounding production, distribution, and exhibition.  Etc...

2. Textual Analysis: Formal and semiotic analysis.  Subjective...  Multiplicity of readings/meanings.  Etc...

3. Audience Reception and Use of Cultural Texts: Ethnographic research, multiple readings depending on perspectives and subject positions of the readers.  Audience create identities and meanings.  Appopriation.  How audiences USE texts and political ramifications of that.  Etc...

• Representation: How is the text (people, objects, etc.) represented in discourse?

• Identity: How have various groups and types of people become associated with the text?

• Production: How is the text encoded with particular cultural meanings during production? What practices of production are involved?

• Consumption: How do audiences decode the text? What kind of positions do they take relative to the text?

• Regulation: What “rules” apply to the text?  How?

Different cultures have vastly different codes and vastly ways of decoding, different life experience, different rituals, habits, ideologies, etc.

We don't NEED the media we consume to survive like we need food, water, shelter, etc.

• Appreciate how and why the texts we interact with come to be created!

• The media certainly has social and cultural consequences (as we’ve studied so far), but studying media industries also intersects with and affects such questions and concepts

• The vast majority of media creation is driven by a profit motive!  But this is only part of the story...

• “In the process of making money, the media industries also contribute to dialogues and discussions about important issues in a society and even to the enabling or disabling of democracy…”

• The media circulate ideas, attitudes, and information in society (for better or worse), unlike other industries

• Media products are important in framing civic discourse and perceptions of different cultures in ways that can affect public policy, ELECTIONS, and our everyday lives.

• Balancing the money-making motive and the cultural significance is crucial in studying media industries!

• They are increasingly important sectors of the American and world economies

• They contribute to political discussions and even, at times, set the ground rules for political debate
• They contribute to our everyday lives in ways that are sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle

Mandate: The organization's foremost goals, its reasons for operating.

Conditions: How an industry can operate.  Available technology.  Regulations/Laws.  Economics.

Practices: Professional roles, day-to-day operations, workers and activities, content they produce.  Creative practices.  Distribution and exhibition practices.  Auxiliary practices like advertising, audience measurement services, promotion and criticism of media products, etc.

• coined by Habermas, unique space for public debate that the mass media can provide in modern societies.  “Functioning democracies need to create a public space for the expression and debate of important social ideas, and that mass media provide one powerful, potential vehicle for such discussions.”

• Media industries expect a degree of “sunk costs”

• Most media industries also have high “first-copy costs” and relatively low “reproduction costs”

• “Ars longa”: long economic life of media industry products (Apple Records)

• Artificial Scarcity: For a long time, you could only see film at a theater, then in the 80s/90s, you’d have to wait a while before they came out on VHS or later DVD.  Rather than wait for the cheaper viewing experience, audiences will pay more to see the film now (price differentiation).  $10 now opposed to waiting weeks/months for a cheaper/smaller theater or to buy/rent on VHS or DVD

   

• Using known and successful textual formats - Genre, sequels, star power, famous directors, Marvel!, etc.

   

• Economies of Scale: National network television garners more ad revenue, opposed to early days of radio when it was mostly local/regional
  • 100+ student college classes opposed to 30-or-less student college classes…
• Conglomeration and consolidation of ownership: single corporate umbrella of production, distribution, and exhibition.  Vertical and Horizontal Integration.  Cross-Promoting.  Harry Potter!  Star Wars!  Etc...

• Economics - Multimedia conglomerates, globalized markets, huge budgets, multi-purpose entertainment machines (music videos, soundtrack albums, TV series, videocassettes, video games, theme parks, novelizations, comic books, etc!)

• Technology - TV!, delivery systems, VCR and home entertainment

• Regulations - No more vertical integration, ratings system

• Cultural changes in demographics (niche audiences) and suburban migrations

Schatz takes an historical/industrial approach to Hollywood, which has been written about ad nauseum!  Perren's piece incorporates more contemporary information, trade publications, box office numbers, industry discourse, etc.  Not as much out there for contemporary studies as there are for historical studies.

Let's do this!  Refer to notes if necessary...

Live TV, advertising within the program itself, 3-camera setup on I Love Lucy, studio filming, etc.

Shot/recorded on film, edited on 3 Moviolas, 3-camera setup, sound stages on the west coast (opposed to New York) with live audiences, syndication, immigrant husband, slow decline of indepenent productions, etc...

Partial accounts, inaccuracies and misperceptions, and reinforcing mythologies.

The film wasn't exactly low budget, Hollywood was all over it, wasn't exactly independent, didn't really defy the odds in the way it's presented, Nia Vardalos had done some stuff (didn't come from nowhere), etc.

The rags to riches tale, deying the odds, grassroots advertising and fundraising, etc.

• Source of financing?

• Industrial affiliations of the film’s distributor?

• Sites where the film is exhibited?

• Status of talent in relation to Hollywood?

• The “spirit” of the film?

- Production: funding provided by HBO and Gold Circle Films, brought to HBO by Playtone, Hollywood doesn't just make films for theatrical release as the discourse would have us think...

- Distribution: IFC (division of Rainbow Media Holdings - Cablevision, GE/NBC, and MGM), IFC = not so "independent"

- Exhibition: released the film as if it were a commercial film rather than an "indie," nationwide opening, theater chains over art houses, TV ads (Regis and Kelly, Oprah!), etc.