Thanks, Jeremy, for your thoughtful response to the NAomi Klein column. It caused quite a bit of discussion on the different lists where I posted it. The Toronto Star, by the way, is one of the few Canadian papers not owned by a conglomerate. It is, however, its own huge entity, encompasing a lot of small weeklies across the country and the entire empire of Harlequin Romance books and videos. Chimo Chris >Naomi Klein writes: > >>The mergers have bred a monster race of slick and safe entertainment >>caricatures. Through carefully timed releases of movies, magazines, video >>games, CDs and CD-ROMs, they can now hijack our culture on every front and >>feed all the profits into the same pockets. >> >>In this era of so-called information choice, synergy has emerged as a means >>of controlling consumption so thoroughly that choice is practically taken >>out of the equation. > >I'm always intrigued to read criticism of one medium by another--as in news >stories *about* news coverage of sensational trials or Naomi Klein's >analysis in the TORONTO STAR of the web woven by Time Warner around its >release of SPACE JAM (thanks to Chris Worsnop for reprinting it for us). > >Klein's piece charts one example of contemporary intertextuality and media >commerce and I enjoyed reading it for that, but I also am wary of newspaper >articles that attack film and other media industries as if they [newspapers] >were somehow separate from those industries and could not be tarred by the >same brush. Is the TORONTO STAR itself not owned by a larger media concern >(this is not a wholly rhetorical question; I really don't know)? Why are >newspapers left out of her list of "carefully timed releases"? Could the >TORONTO STAR not be liable to the same sorts of criticism as Klein levels at >the "Time Warner-Turner empire"? > >In her efforts to chronicle the inner workings of this empire (a term with >interesting connotations of imperialism and colonialism), Klein overstates >her case with regard to ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY's participation in the SPACE >JAM hegemony: > >>The current issue of Entertainment Weekly - owned of course, by Time Inc. - >>plugs the Space Jam website and the Warner Music Space Jam soundtrack. An >>interview with R. Kelly, who performs on the album, asks such hard-hitting >>questions as: ``So what does R. Kelly have in common with Bugs Bunny?'' >> >>The fawning review declares that the soundtrack ``is more than just another >>all-star Jam session - it's a play-by-play of contemporary R&B.'' It's a >>bold musical claim, considering that the disc contains a song by one Bugs >>Bunny, making his debut as a gangsta rapper. > >I hesitate to defend EW (which aspires to be a media watchdog, but clearly >is not), but I do want to point out that its following issue (22 November >1996) contains a review of SPACE JAM by Lisa Schwarzbaum that excoriates the >film. She rates it a D+ and ends with the following: > >"This mediocrity disguised as entertainment, this greed promoted as >synergy--this, to paraphrase that seminal media study, BROADCAST NEWS, is >what the devil looks like. It's Tasmanian and it's coming to a multiplex >near you." > >My point is not that EW--"owned of course, by Time Inc."--is free of >corporate hegemony, of helping to "control consumption." Clearly it is not. >However, I think that a more accurate view of the mediasphere must allow >that "synergy" does not control consumption and eliminate viewer choice, as >Klein maintains. Rather, synergy fits into certain media discourses and >that those discourses frequently contain *contradictory* values. One week >EW validates SPACE JAM, the next week it attacks it. > >The viewer/reader's consumption is not fully determined or controlled by >these discourses. Instead, his/her viewing/reading is a process of bringing >his/her discourses into contact with the discourses of the text--as Stuart >Hall and other ethnographers would put it. In this manner, values are >constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. > >The mergers of media giants are dangerous things, I believe, and can have >very real effects on texts, values and discourses--as when mogul Ted Turner >steps in and stalls the release of Cronenberg's CRASH (reported, >incidentally, in EW--owned of course by Time Warner-Turner)--but it is >dangerous to presume that financial mergers necessarily lead to discursive >ones. Ideology, as Althusser maintains, has a life of its own even though >it's bullied around by economics. > >Regards, >---- >Jeremy Butler >[log in to unmask] >SCREENsite http://www.sa.ua.edu/SCREENsite >Telecommunication & Film/University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa > >---- >To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L >in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask] > > Chris M. Worsnop Consultant, speaker, workshop leader media education, assessment, writing 2400 Dundas Street West Unit 6, Suite 107 Mississauga Ontario, Canada L5K 2R8 Email: <[log in to unmask]> Phone: (905) 823-0875 "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds: and the pessimist fears this is true." James Branch Cabell ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]