Cultural Industries: blog task
Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:
1) What does the term 'Cultural Industries' actually refer to?
The term ‘cultural industry’ refers to the creation, production, and distribution of products of a cultural or artistic nature. Cultural industries include television and film production, publishing, music, as well as crafts and design. You might also consider architecture, performance and visual arts, and advertising as part of a cultural industry. Cultural industries are seen as adding value to society and individuals. As they are often focused on intellectual property, the cultural industries are knowledge-based and require a large number of people in their production, therefore as an industry it will create employment and wealth. They are also a source of cultural diversity, innovation and creativity, thus will enhance economic performance.
2) What does Hesmondhalgh identify regarding the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable?
Hesmondhalgh identifies that the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable tend to be societies that support the conditions where large companies, and their political allies, make money. These conditions being: constant demand for new products; minimal regulation outside of general competition law; relative political and economic stability; work forces that are willing to work hard.
3) Why do some media products offer ideologies that challenge capitalism or inequalities in society?
This happens because the cultural industry companies need to continuously compete with each other to secure audience members. As such, companies outdo each other to try and satisfy audience desires for the shocking, profane or rebellious. There are also longstanding social expectations about what art and entertainment should do, and challenging the various institutions of society is one of those expectations.
4) Look at page 2 of the factsheet. What are the problems that Hesmondhalgh identifies with regards to the cultural industries?
Problems:
• Risky business
• Creativity versus commerce
• High production costs and low reproduction costs
• Semi-public goods; the need to create scarcity
5) Why are so many cultural industries a 'risky business' for the companies involved?
Risky business:
• Risk derives from the fact that audiences use cultural commodities in highly volatile and unpredictable ways – often in order to express the view that they are different from other people.
• Risk stems from consumption and is made worse by 2 factors: firstly, limited autonomy granted to symbol creators in the hope that they will create something original and distinctive; secondly, the cultural industry company is reliant on other cultural industry companies to make audiences aware of the existence of a new product or of the uses and pleasure that they might get from experiencing the product. Companies cannot completely control the publicity a product will receive, as judgements and reactions of audiences, critics and journalists etc. cannot accurately be predicted.
• Cultural industries can be highly profitable in spite of high levels of risk, but it may be difficult to achieve high levels of profit for independent or individual companies.
6) What is your opinion on the creativity v commerce debate? Should the media be all about profit or are media products a form of artistic expression that play an important role in society?
In my opinion, media products should be expressed as a form of artistic expression that play an important role in society however they are twisted with lies and lack opportunities into making credible profit.
7) How do cultural industry companies minimise their risks and maximise their profits? (Clue: your work on Industries - Ownership and control will help here)
By owning other small companies that help their profit when they are themselves unable to provide the audience with content.
8) Do you agree that the way the cultural industries operate reflects the inequalities and injustices of wider society? Should the content creators, the creative minds behind media products, be better rewarded for their work?
I do agree with the question since many opportunists have very less regard i terms of what their production of work therefore they often quit and form their own brand which happens to succeed more drastically than their previous company.
9) Listen and read the transcript to the opening 9 minutes of the Freakonomics podcast - No Hollywood Ending for the Visual-Effects Industry. Why has the visual effects industry suffered despite the huge budgets for most Hollywood movies?
Several hundred visual effects artists had protested outside the Oscars, claiming their industry was being crushed by outside economic and political forces.
10) What is commodification?
11) Do you agree with the argument that while there are a huge number of media texts created, they fail to reflect the diversity of people or opinion in wider society?
In some case. I do agree since not much credibility is shown towards the workers that are indeed behind media texts that are created.
12) How does Hesmondhalgh suggest the cultural industries have changed? Identify the three most significant developments and explain why you think they are the most important.
Artificial scarcity:
Cultural industry companies will limit or control release of texts and ensure the adequate availability of goods. Vertical integration is the primary method of creating artificial scarcity, however the following are also important:
• Advertising which controls or limits the relative importance of a product – how exclusive it is deemed to be.
• Copyright, which aims to limit or prevent people freely copying texts.
• Limiting access to the means of reproduction so that copying is not easy.
Formatting: stars, genre, serials:
Another way for the cultural industries to cope with high levels of risk in their sector is to minimise the chance of a miss by formatting their cultural products.
• Star system: associating the names of star writer, performers with a text. This involves considerable marketing efforts to break a new star or writer, or to continue to maintain the star’s aura. As this is costly, it is reserved for those cultural texts that are hoped to be big hits
• Genre: genre terms operate as labels that indicate to the audience what to expect from the text. Many cultural productions are promoted through the use of genre, as audiences will be familiar with the pleasures they can expect.
• Serial: the reliance on sequels and prequels – Hollywood is highly reliant on serials, the creation of a world or universe that can be revisited repeatedly, in the hope for continued hits.
Loose control of symbol creators; tight control of distribution and marketing:
Symbol creators are granted creative autonomy within the production process. Managers assume that big hits and creation of new stars are as a result of originality. But this carries high levels of risk. To control these risks, there is tight control over the reproduction, distribution and marketing – what Hesmondhalgh calls circulation. This is often achieved through vertical integration.
These are the most important since they are primarily what bring the whole concept of the film/media industry.
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