Her Hips don’t Lie, Her Tongue Doesn’t Either: Nicki Minaj, Twerking and Feminism

!! This post can contain NSFW material. View at your own discretion !!

The twerk mania has invaded music videos, clothes (even underwear) and (pop) culture in general. By doing so, the originally African American dance move has been stripped off of its original cultural significance. This blog post will look at the phenomenon of twerking and the struggles that non-white women in the music industry face. We will do so through a case study on rapper Nicki Minaj who is notorious for her uncomfortable and subtly subversive approach to feminism.

While VH1 and Fuse writers identify the origins of twerking in the New Orleans bounce scene of the early ‘90s, Christiana Mbakwe traces the roots of the dance, “all in the ass and hips [...] rhythmic and complex, the footwork’s intricate and even though the body is blending different rhythms, it all manages to flow like water” in West Africa, specifically in Côte d'Ivoire. For Mbakwe it’s natural that the dance move is known where there is a high concentration of people with African descent, as twerking “existed in black global culture for years.” In his 1992 song Baby Got Back, Sir Mix-a-Lot raps: “Take the average black man and ask him that / She gotta pack much back” while the dancers around him perform something similar to twerking.

When Nicki Minaj samples Baby Got Back and releases Anaconda in 2014, she is riding the twerk wave and makes the dance move pivotal in the music video. The Trinidad born rapper debuted with her first studio album, Pink Friday, in 2010, with Super Bass being the most successful single. Her aesthetic, that of an Harajuku Barbie, is inspired by the Japanese street fashion popular in the Harajuku district. She retains the same fun aesthetic in her second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, and especially in the single Starships: colorful wigs, adherent colorful garments, funky editing effects. Her 2014 album The Pink Print brings a change in her image and in her music style (but the pink wigs aren’t history yet, see Hey Mama). One thing has been consistent with Nicki Minaj and that’s her feminism. Among her feats, she encourages her fans to complete their education first, is pro-choice and advocates for better salaries for women and equal treatment in the bedroom (in the same interview!). But her feminism is also uncomfortable and controversial, as seen in Lookin Ass. From the promotion art for the single, a picture of Malcolm X that the artist removed and apologized for, to the lyrics, that a Jezebel editor called a “rapey waste of time” and “spectacular misuse of her talents.” But especially in the world of rap, the song and video can be seen as progressive, despite the use of the N-word and the gun imagery. Nicki Minaj owns her looks and sexuality while she invites the male gaze, she is literally seen in the eyes of a man.

At the same time, she is calling out leering men and stating she is better than them as rapper: "Look at y'all sharin' one bottle in the club / One bottle full of bub' ass [N-word]" and "No dick in the pants ass [N-word] / I be damned if I fuck a non-man ass [N-word]." The words "lookin' ass [N-word]” are often used to make one's point in an argument, and by repeating them, Nicki Minaj shows the men watching her and listening to her that she is winning the argument. The video finishes with her firing bullets off screen and thereby destroying the male gaze. With Lookin' Ass, Nicki Minaj shows that she is not only resilient and able to overcome the disadvantages of being a woman; she is also able to go on the offense (James, 2015).

The already mentioned Anaconda was at the center of a similar controversy, especially since it was released after the soulful, tame Pills N Potions; the promotion art was called almost pornographic, and the artist replied to the accusations in her own way, by posting similar pictures of white models (acceptable) and then her cover shot (unacceptable). And with the song the artist wanted to celebrate curvy women in a sexy and playful way. The video of the song mixes a lot of twerking with eating cream, spreading cream on her body, performing fellatio on a banana and then chopping it. To GQ, Nicki said that the video is one big girls slumber party, and the banana segment “was important for us to show in the kitchen scene, because it’s always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that’s fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything.”

On July 21 the nominations for the 2015 VMA came out and Anaconda was missing from the nominations for Video of The Year. In a tweet string, Nicki complained that if she was a different kind of artist and had she celebrated women with slim bodies, she would have been nominated. Remember the predominant twerking in the video? It was made viral and pop by Miley Cyrus during the 2013 VMA. The same Miley Cyrus who, asked about Nicki Minaj’s tweet reaction about the missed nomination by the New York Times, focused on the tone of the rapper and not on what she said; the interviewer hinted at Miley’s Wrecking Ball video, in which a white slim girl got naked and nominated. Miley Cyrus once again criticised the harshness of Nicki Minaj’s tone. So when Anaconda won Best Hip-Hop video, Nicki didn’t hold back.

As Everydayfeminism writer Maisha Johnson comments, when Nicki called out Miley Cyrus on stage, asking her “What’s good?”, she was calling out the practice of tone policing: the focus on how things are said instead of what is said. Nicki Minaj was calling out the racism in the music industry, and the struggle to be a female rapper when she was tweeting about the missed nomination.

Twerking became really mainstream after "Miley Cyrus became the conduit that brought twerking to the mainstream consciousness. This is unsurprising. The world is enamoured with black culture and corporations know this. However, they’d much prefer to sell and explore the black cultural experience using white faces,” as Mbakwe wrote. When scholar Kristen McGee talks about male creativity prioritized in Oriental studies and her focus on female dance, a parallel can be drawn with rap, the focus on male rappers and the minimization of female rappers as twerking props (McGee, 20). When McGee links belly dancing to a reputation of sex work, she implies that everything foreign to white culture can be exoticized, and twerking has followed the same fate.

Pop culture is far from simple. The multi-faceted rapper Nicki Minaj is an example of a successful black artist still struggling in the music industry: tone-policed, unrewarded, taken seriously only after a drastic change of image. But Nicki isn’t silent about it. Her hips don’t lie, her tongue doesn’t either. So, what’s good?

Thesis: Appropriating aspects of a culture, white washing them, stripping them of Otherness and tone policing the Other is something we can’t escape.

LD, NS, DL, EH, KH

Further reading:

James, Robin. “Look, I Overcame!” Resilience and Melancholy: pop music, feminism, neoliberalism. London: Zero Books, 2015. Print. 78-124.

McGee, Kristin. “Orientalism and Erotic Multiculturalism in Popular Culture: From Princess Rajah to the Pussycat Dolls.” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 6.2 (2012): 200-238. Print.

Harry Potter and the Concept of Transmedia Storytellling

Over the past two decades the domain of the music video has seen major developments in hardware and in format. The transition from television to the web has given more power in the hands of the audience, and the trend of consumption of cultural products, produced fast and processed even faster, has been a blooming field for two kinds of phenomena: convergence and transmedia narrative. Convergence is described as ‘the dissolving distinctions between media systems, media content and the resulting trade between systems’ (Cunningham and Turner). It has proven to be an extremely successful phenomenon in the consumer society, enabling creative businesses to make money and gain popularity. A great example can be found within the success of the Harry Potter series. With eight highly popular movie adaptations, countless items of merchandise, and the well-visited Harry Potter Studios and US based theme parks, Harry Potter can be seen as an extremely successful product of media convergence. Interestingly enough, the Harry Potter phenomenon uses another popular framework that came from the increased use of Internet and active audience consumption, namely transmedia storytelling. We believe, while media convergence has proven its success, transmedia storytelling provides fascinating potential and plays with active audience participation in an interesting way. This essay will therefore look at the concept of digital convergence in the music industry, and subsequently analyse transmedia storytelling. First by analyzing its potential through the framework of music and then by looking at the Harry Potter fan platform Pottermore.

The main platform for music videos changed from television to Internet, causing record companies  to review the music video as a phenomenon (Edmond, 308). Before, music videos were a fully integrated part of music production, costing record companies “tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, and eventually multimillions” (Edmond, 307). Naturally it became impossible for the independent artists who did not have a small fortune to spend to compete with the large record companies. The Internet enabled those artist to produce videos that were not extremely costly and required a very interesting new way of thinking. Maura Edmond described these changes as “major shifts in the way artists, audiences, and media industries think about how music videos are being used, how they are being made, and how money is being made from them” (Edmond, 306). The introduction of publishing music videos on the internet made a bottom-up model of distribution possible (Edmond, 311). The role of the audience became a lot more important, because they were the ones that looked up the videos on the internet and were the hereby decided what the marketing value of a song would be. This process is still managed by the record companies though with, for example, the list of suggested videos on the side of the video that is being watched at that moment. 

Secondly, and arguably the more interesting phenomenon, can be found in the way how the Internet and the popularity of music (videos) on the Internet enabled musicians to create new ways of narration and audience engagement. One example of trying to stimulate audience engagement is the interactive music video, such as Bob Dylan’s video for “Like a Rolling Stone” which lets the viewer decide what they will see happen in the video, and, even more importantly, music videos have started to use techniques we are used to see within the domain of movies, games, and television. There is a growing popularity of movie-like narration within music videos such as Lady Gaga’s Alejandro or Sia’s Titanium, but we also see how, next to movies, games, and television, music can now use transmedia storytelling as a marketing technique. Transmedia storytelling is the overarching term when discussing the extension of a narrative beyond the main platform of the story. (Mittel) Being able to apply a complex platform like transmedia storytelling to music shows us how the Internet enabled the music industry to reinvent itself. Although we have to understand that transmedia storytelling in music is not very common, it is interesting nevertheless to see how transmedia storytelling can cater to the audience needs and satisfy what Edmond sees as “highly idiosyncratic media interests” (Edmond, 313). By positioning the band or artists as the narrative one creates the possibility of audience engagement through transmedia storytelling. By launching the artist-as-narrative through documentaries, videogames, websites, music videos, signature dance moves and even trademark performances, music, or rather the specific artist, becomes a highly consumable product. (Dries) This allows for “liking, sharing, making, and remaking” by audiences, which is the key to a successful product in the era of Internet (Edmond, 313).

When looking at transmedia storytelling, it is audience participation that allows for a certain narrative to be successful. A great example is the Harry Potter series. The novels and the movie adaptations were incredible successes, but audiences wanted more. The need for more information on the wizarding world was satisfied with the launch of the website Pottermore. This website created digital content, was a platform for fans to interact, but most importantly it explores the the unknown of the franchise in a uniquely interactive way. Moreover it is used as a platform for J. K. Rowling to publish new relevant insights about the series.

A screenshot from the Pottermore Website: Users can register and take part in activities that allow them to experience the world of Harry Potter and to gain additional knowledge not directly expressed in the books or movies.

Jeff Gomez, Starlight Entertainment CEO said to Forbes when the portal launched, back in 2011:

If the site’s producers are clever—and I think they are—what they’ve done is created a communal storytelling engine, a battery that will continue to grow and nurture the Harry Potter brand for many years to come. They’ll be doing what most movie studios have yet failed to do, which is to officialise and galvanise a massive fan base into a single location, and then service their wildest dreams.

And they did. In fact, the author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, launched the website to extend the Harry Potter convergence by selling digital versions of the existing books, but more so to create a platform to extend the storylines. In the so called online reading experience it reveals background details on settings and characters that are not yet mentioned in the books or movies and can excellently be explained by Jason Mittels’ article To Spread or to Drill as the viewers go beyond the main narrative: “[it] encourages viewers to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling.” Pottermore is a great example of the so called ‘forensic fandom’. Rowling encourages viewers to dig deeper in the story and therefore creates engagement for the readers, who are urged to explore unknown territory within the realm of the books.  But there is also space for readers to post their own interpretations of the story, and to interact directly with the world by using the game-like features of the portal, that enable them to get sorted into houses and attend classes. Of course, this kind of content requires a certain amount of time to be developed, and new material has been added periodically. According to Charlie Redmayne, Pottermore’s CEO in 2013, already two years after the launch Pottermore was suffering from oscillating user base: every new update brought fans back, who didn’t “spend enough time coming back to the site until we have a new content release”. The portal will be revamped during Fall 2015, with a focus on new original content about the Harry Potter world and a limit on interactivity. Says Susan Jurevics, the new website CEO, that only “a small audience [was] very devoted to the gaming elements within the current site.” Concluding, the introduction of the Internet changed a lot in the media field. In this blog, we gave the examples of both convergence in the music industry and the way transmedia storytelling is used with the story of Harry Potter. Both examples show that the system became somewhat more bottom-up: the role of the audience gained more importance. In the music industry smaller record labels and independent artist gained more possibilities to reach their audience. New ways of narration and audience engagement were made possible as well, as seen with the Bob Dylan example we gave earlier. Not just the music videos themselves were thus reinvented, but the role of their audience as well. For the larger companies, it stays difficult to manage the phenomenon of the transmedia narrative, as is shown with the Pottermore example. Even though the story of the wizard scholar has a fanbase of millions, the platform Pottermore appeared to serve a niche market, and it is therefore difficult to make a profit of such a fan-dependant phenomenon. Convergence appears to be a better way to do reach as many people as possible, as is shown with the example of the Harry Potter theme park, movies etcetera. The Internet gave the cultural industries the possibility to reinvent itself, but in the future their audience will probably have a greater influence in shaping the media landscape than ever before.

Tweet Thesis: Is there something as too much narrative within transmedia storytelling?

DL, EH, NS, LD, KH

Bibliography

Cunningham, S. and Turner, G. (eds.) (2010). The Media and Communications in Australia, 3rd edn. Sydney: Allan & Unwin.

Edmond, M. (2014). Here We Go Again Music Videos after YouTube. Television & New Media, 15(4), pp. 305-320.

Heerkens, Dries, “Transmedia Storytelling in which Music is the Biggest Component”, https://musicfindsmedia.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/transmedia-in-which-music-is-the-biggest-component.pdf> (20 September 2015).

Mittel, Jason, “The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling”, 2011  < http://mcpress.media-commons.org/complextelevision/transmedia-storytelling/ > (20 September 2015).

Website of the Rolling Stone Magazine < http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-goes-interactive-in-like-a-rolling-stone-clip-20131119 > (20 September 2015).

Minions and Magical Wands: Convergence of Media, Expanding Franchises

The articles "Media Convergence" by Michael Latzer, "Maximizing Value: Economic and Cultural Synergies" by Nathan Vaughan, and Henry Jenkins' "Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence" all deal with convergence and synergies within the media industries. This essay will first look at what is actually meant by 'convergence' and what the different types of convergence are, then it will do the same for synergy, and the process of doing so will also discuss the effects and consequences of convergence and synergy within the media industries. Latzer first states that "'convergence' is an ambiguous term used by various disciplines to describe and analyse processes of change toward uniformity or union," (Latzer 123) and media convergence more specifically can be considered "concern[ing] the blurring of boundaries between traditional sub-sectors of communications" (Latzer 131-132). According to Latzer, this process is "central to the formation of a digital creative economy (Latzer 123-124). An example can be one provider offering a telephone, television, and internet connection as one package. Jenkins sees media convergence as "an ongoing process occurring at various intersections between media technologies, industries, content, and audiences," (Jenkins 154) and furthermore, it "enable[s] consumers to archive, annotate, transform, and recirculate media content" by introducing "new media technologies" and therefore "alters the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences (Jenkins 155).
According to Latzer, there are four categories of convergence that are instrumental to understand the digital creative economy. He first mentions technological convergence, which, simply put, makes it possible for several networks to be integrated - such as a smart phone on which one could watch TV - because technological codes and process are becoming universal and shared by different platforms. The second category as mentioned by Latzer is economic convergence. This includes media companies now being active on multiple platforms instead of focusing on only one such as television. The American Verizon is one prime example of economic convergence: the telecommunication company is active in phone, internet and cable TV, and aside from offering services, it also provides the hardware to enable the user to receive them. Traditional media companies are trying to change with the times because their old business models are no longer working, which leads to experimentation and reorganization within media companies. The third convergence category is political convergence and concerns the change in policy making now that different types of media and communication are merging together (Latzer 128-129). The final category by Latzer is socio-cultural convergence, which "is linked to the digital creative economy" and concerns "the impact of convergence on media culture" (Latzer 129). Jenkins adds corporate convergence and grassroots convergence to the several types of convergence as discussed by Latzer (Jenkins 155). Corporate convergence is linked to economic convergence as it is defined by multinational conglomerations that own different types of media companies and platforms and therefore want to be sure that their content flows across the different platforms and countries in which they are active in order to make as much profit as possible (Jenkins 155). This is where synergy as discussed by Vaughan comes into play, which will be discussed later on. Grassroots convergence is a bottom-up process as, due to the digital age, consumers are now part of "shaping the production, distribution, and reception of media content" (Jenkins 155). The two types of convergence together produce global convergence as cultural goods are now being spread all over the world in multiple directions (Jenkins 155). In short, media convergence concerns the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences in the search for the kind of entertainment experience that they want.
American children, Jenkins suggests, may be more familiar with the Japanese Pokémon than with the German Grimm Brothers (157). This is the result of Asian media companies thinking globally and distributing their product in the West, and of the Western media companies’ approach “if you can’t beat them, merge with them” (Jenkins 157-8). Using Iwabuchi’s deodorization of imported goods, national producers of media according to Jenkins aim specifically at delivering the cultural “fragrance” as source, amongst other, of national pride (Jenkins 158-9); one example could be Bollywood movies, with their unique lavish settings, songs and choreographies. The big Asian conglomerates importing franchises in the West might strip their product of specific cultural references by means of dubbing or recasting (Jenkins 158-9). Their product might be censored to suit a different audience by the Western translators and distributors, like in the case of Sailor Moon: characters had their names, gender, (implied) sexuality modified; entire episodes were altered; the soundtrack and even the transformation scenes were modified, and this phenomenon varied in degree according to national differences (McNally). There seems to be a recent backlash of this practice, that can fit in with Jenkins’ speculation regarding audience: the children that were targeted by Japanese media companies at the beginning of their aggressive marketing are now adults. According to Jenkins, American teens chose to express themselves through the consumption of foreign movies and comic books because they are able to distinguish themselves from their parents this way. These teens, so called Pop-Cosmopolitans, do not have any in-depth knowledge about the culture they are consuming but encountering different cultures might, according to Jenkins, add to a greater respect for different cultural identities in today's society.
Japanese media, specifically anime and manga, are pop culture now - manga conventions are a popular phenomenon in the US and Europe alike. The increased use of the internet allows fans to look for more: unofficial translations or even raw scanlations of the original Japanese comic. Together with Crunchyroll, plenty of websites offer subtitles to new anime series, one weekly episode at the time, keeping the cultural fragrance. Maintaining the Japanese identity is one selling point today: accurate translation and notes, original names and original left-to-right reading are features of the “never before been available in the US” Codename: Sailor V (“Codename”). The same applies for (Pretty Guardian) Sailor Moon, which is “completely true to the original” (“Sailor”). Together with the manga volumes, a live action series and a brand new anime series have joined the franchise. The new anime, Sailor Moon Crystal, is legally available for streaming on Crunchyroll. The opening song is performed by Momoiro Clover Z, a girl band signed under a label that belongs to King Records, a subcompany of Kodansha. Considering the increased international collaborations of the band (with KISS and Lady GaGa, amongst others) one can thank media convergence for their popularity boost and free advertising.
In case of niche audiences, Jenkins suggests that artists might start with a very local identity, but may lose or alter it in case the company thinks the artist will have global success (Jenkins 158).
The aforementioned synergy, as discussed by Vaughan, can also be seen as a type of convergence and is both economic and cultural. It is economic in the sense that corporations are spreading out risks and chances of being profitable over multiple different types of media companies and even over multiple industries, see the above example of the Sailor Moon opening song, that can stand as Momoiro Clover Z single in case the anime is not successful (and vice versa). A strategy in trying to achieve large profits can be releasing multiple products at once that fall into different categories but promote each other in order to achieve as large an audience as possible, such as movies with accompanying merchandise. An example of this can be the Harry Potter franchise. It all started with a book series, but Warner Bros. bought the movie rights and built an entire franchise made of videogames, toys, stationery and clothing, even a theme park, and tours of filming locations by which it crosses over into the tourism industry. Synergy has not only an economic aspect but also a cultural aspect. Due to the fact that synergy causes multiple types of products to be released at once in order to promote each other, they "penetrate into all facets of daily life" and can be considered to "limit the expression of society's ideas, values, and general original creativity" (Vaughan 177). It could be said that this recently happened when the movie Minions was released and there was almost no way to escape the creatures as they were present everywhere in almost every possible shape or form of merchandise and even their own pop-up store in Amsterdam's Kalverstraat. As a result of these processes, concerns have been raised that "our culture may not actually be evolving, but merely recycling" (Wasko qtd. in Vaughan 178).

Discussion Idea:

Media convergence and synergy can cause sameness, but pop-cosmopolitanism charts audience liking, and it’s a global map still to discover. Authors: DL, EH, LD, KH, NS

Works Cited

• “Codename: Sailor V.” Kodansha Comics. Kodansha Advanced Media, n.d. Web. 13 Sept.2015.
• Jenkins, Henry. "Pop Cosmopolitanism : Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age of Media Convergence." Fans Bloggers and Gamers : Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York UP, 2006. 152-72. Print.
• Latzer, Michael. "Media Convergence." Handbook on the Digital Creative Economy. Ed. Ruth Towse and Christian Handle. N.p.: Edward Elgar Pub, 2014. 123-33. Print.
• McNally, Victoria. “A Ridiculously Comprehensive History of Sailor Moon, Part 2: Coming to America.” The Mary Sue. The Mary Sue, 25 Jun. 2014. Web. 14 Sept. 2015.
• “Sailor Moon.” Kodansha Comics. Kodansha Advanced Media, n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.
• Vaughan, Nathan. "Maximizing Value Economic and Cultural Synergies." The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications. Ed. Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock, and Helen Sousa. N.p.: Blackwell, 2011. 169-86. Print.

The Importance of the Dialectic

Culture is said to be one of the two or three most complex words in the English language.

Literary theorist Terry Eagleton starts his book The Idea of Culture with the loaded premise of the difficulty to define the concept of culture. In the etymological sense, as mentioned in by Kramer and Bredekamp in Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques – Moving Beyond Text, culture derives from nature, meaning that it centers around the idea of cultivation. However, culture can no longer be seen as just a form of cultivation. Developments in technology and with it the conception of new art forms has led culture to move beyond the etymological meaning.  But the defining of culture beyond the literal meaning has proven to be challenging. Where theorists such as Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton tried to define different structures within the realm of culture, Kramer and Bredekamp are more interested in defining culture in a textual context, not necessarily taking in account the different structures of culture. Kramer and Bredekamp outline the movement of culture beyond the textual boundaries, creating a fluid mobility that moves “into our everyday practices with objects, symbols, instruments and machines.” A dialectic approach towards culture is important to understand the complexity. Moreover, a dialectic approach can be applied to the creative industries and its theorization to form a complete framework that includes all stakeholders. This essay will briefly look at different theoretical frameworks concerning culture and the creative industries and will try to demonstrate that a dialectic approach towards these theories offers the most complete framework.

Traditionally academics have tried to define the media industry through either a political-economical approach or a cultural approach. In the article Critical Media Industry Studies the writers outline the political-economical approach, which, according to them, fails to provide complete “explanations of the role human agents in interpreting, focusing, and redirecting economic forces that provide for complexity and contradiction within media industries.” Moreover this approach looks at the Frankfurt School notion that the media industry is “yet another form of commodified culture operating only according to the interests of capital,” which suggests culture is only produced for commercial gain. Natalie Fenton, in Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media, discusses both the political-economical approach on media studies as well as those theories situated within the realm of cultural studies. Similarly to the writers of the critical media theory, Fenton describes the political-economical as concerned with the influence of cultural production and financing on the discourse and representations related to consumption. Fenton critiques the political-economical approach upon the fact that this approach “[…] paints a picture of a culture industry which monolithic corporations rule supreme, manipulating consumers and infiltrating our consciousness to the extent that they could almost be considered totalitarian in their aims reach and impact” (Fenton 15).

Whereas political-economical theorists concern themselves with the influence of economical factors upon the cultural industries, especially access to cultural products, the representation and meaning making, cultural theorists are more interested in analyzing popular cultural practices – and the human agency related to these cultural practices. Fenton argues that the cultural approach suggests that mass media produces “citizens of the media”. Media enables individuals to “manipulate imagery and information for their own ends, to build their own identities and local politics from the vast array of mediated bits and pieces they have at their disposal” (Fenton 8). Cultural studies also heavily draws on the role of societal influences on (the production of) culture. Moreover, cultural studies views audiences as active consumers of culture. Individuals are able to interpret culture and find the hidden meaning.

        Both Fenton and the writers of the critical media approach end up suggesting a dialectic approach towards the creative industries. Fenton stresses the importance of attending “to the dialectical relationship between agency and structure, cultural production and consumption,” (Fenton 21) suggesting that cultural theories cannot paint a black-and-white picture of what is right and what is wrong when approaching culture. Fenton discusses recent studies that look at both of the abovementioned approaches and “attempt [both] to account for the social totality of production, content and reception of the media” (Fenton 18).  These studies acknowledge that ideological forces play a part in individual interpretation of culture but also uses the political-economical notion that authors of cultural texts can frame audience reception. Culture is thus highly denotative in nature. Fenton refers to the holistic approach towards culture, which establishes “that interrogating the role of the media in society does not start or stop with the interpretation of it by audiences or the analysis of it as a text” (Fenton 21).

The critical media theory dismisses the Marxist notion that power is situated with those that control the means of production. Rather, it examines “the micropolitics of institutional operation and production practices” (Havens 238). The writers of the critical media theory coined the dialectic within the theory as a ‘helicopter’ view to review all interconnected operations within the cultural industries. It uses Gramsci’s idea of “ideological struggle for cultural hegemony” and Foucault’s theory of “fluidity of determination” to suggest a dialectic (helicopter view) within audience reception and cultural production. It moreover stresses the importance of a “reconsideration of the relationships between cultural production and industrial practices in an increasingly interconnected world proved integral to contemporary media studies” (Havens 240). It reviews culture as both cultural and economical and critically assesses all forms of culture and all stakeholders involved.

        When looking within the practical sphere of cultural production, distribution, and consumption one can also find the importance of using a dialectic approach. In the article There is No Music Industry, Jonathan Sterne remarks that the definition of the music industry creates a tremendous limitation. Generally one thinks of those matters that concern themselves directly with and artist or an album. One can find similar definitions when looking at other fields within the media industry; these industries are centered around a core product, e.g. film, music, or theater, but often do not look beyond those stakeholders directly involved. Sterne remarks that “we miss a lot by focusing everything around the musicians-audiences-recordings nexus and we miss even more when we limit our understanding of music as a social practice to the objects sold as “music” in its wake” (Sterne 52). Sterne, drawing upon Christopher Small, argues that one should consider multiple industries as being involved in the field of music, rather than pinpointing everything on direct involvement in the musicians-audiences-recordings realm. As with the academic research within creative industries one should acknowledge the dialectic relationship between the core-products and the industries involved.

       Research and theories concerning the creative industries have been subjected to variables from the start. It has proven to be difficult to define an industry that is so unpredictable due to constant change in material matters, such as technology, but also due to the fact that media, with its pivotal role as meaning maker, is highly individual. Society generally engages in the consumption of media on a mass scale, but meaning is partially created on an individual level and is therefore hard to define. It is crucial to step away from an absolutist theory and consider a dialectic approach to deal with the research on cultural practices.

Discussion Idea: "By changing the way we study media, we might be able to grasp the way it affects our society as a whole."

Works Cited

Fenton, Natalie. "Bridging the Mythical Divide: Political Economy and Cultural Studies Approaches to the Analysis of the Media." Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. Ed. Eoin Devereux. London: SAGE, 2007. 7-31. Print.

Havens, Timothy, Amanda D. Lotz, and Serra Tinic. "Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach." Communication, Culture & Critique 2.2 (2009): 234-53. Web. 6 Sept. 2015.

Kramer, S., and H. Bredekamp. "Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text." Theory, Culture & Society 30.6 (2013): 20-29. Web. 6 Sept. 2015.

Sterne, Jonathan. "There Is No Music Industry." Media Industries Journal 1.1 (2014): 50-55. Web.

6 Sept. 2015.

Authors: DL, EH, NS, LD, KH