Cultural Industries: Blog Tasks
Cultural Industries: Blog Tasks
1) What does the term 'Cultural Industries' actually refer to?
Cultural industry refers to the creation, production and distribution of products of a cultural or artistic nature.
2) What does Hesmondhalgh identify regarding the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable?
Cultural Industries are seen as adding value to society and individuals, as they focuses on intellectual property and are knowledge-based and require a large number of people in their production which will therefore create employment and wealth. They are also highly profitable as they tend to be societies that support the conditions where large companies, and their political allies make money.
3) Why do some media products offer ideologies that challenge capitalism or inequalities in society?
This happens because the cultural industries often produce texts that do not support these conditions instead text tend to offer ideologies which challenge capitalism or the inequalities of gender and racism in society.
4) Look at page 2 of the factsheet. What are the problems that Hesmondhalgh identifies with regards to the cultural industries?
5) Why are so many cultural industries a 'risky business' for the companies involved?
They are often risky as the fact that audiences use cultural commodities in highly volatile and unpredictable ways. Companies cannot control the publicity a product will receive, as judgement and reactions of audiences, critics and journalists cannot accurately be predicted.
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?
I think that media products should be a form of artistic expression as if a product is good in artisitic value and expresses a positive message or expresses a important message then it is likely to create profit anyway. A good artistic product will automatically create profits and therefore media products should be more focused on creating a good artistic product instead of milking out a product for 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)
A company can do multiple things to maximise profits and minimse risks such as having vertical and horizontal integration. Owning other businesses in their line of work such as distributors will help a business maximise profits as they won't need to pay other companies to distribute their product and instead can do it themselves. Companies can also minimise their risks by buying and owning other companies similar to their line of work e.g. owning a radio station if you are Disney. This will insure that the company still receives money from other lines of work if their main source crashes.
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?
Yes i agree to an extent that cultural industries do highlight the inequalities and injustices in society however their are also companies which take advantage of this and use it to create profit instead of sending a message. Producers and script writers for these media works are normally ignored and the praise normally is given to the actors or the company themselves.
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? because they are not being appreciated or getting recognition for what they're doing and instead they're being challenged and pushed against in aims to stop the production of the filming in some locations.
Cultural industry refers to the creation, production and distribution of products of a cultural or artistic nature.
2) What does Hesmondhalgh identify regarding the societies in which the cultural industries are highly profitable?
Cultural Industries are seen as adding value to society and individuals, as they focuses on intellectual property and are knowledge-based and require a large number of people in their production which will therefore create employment and wealth. They are also highly profitable as they tend to be societies that support the conditions where large companies, and their political allies make money.
3) Why do some media products offer ideologies that challenge capitalism or inequalities in society?
This happens because the cultural industries often produce texts that do not support these conditions instead text tend to offer ideologies which challenge capitalism or the inequalities of gender and racism in society.
4) Look at page 2 of the factsheet. What are the problems that Hesmondhalgh identifies with regards to the cultural industries?
- 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?
They are often risky as the fact that audiences use cultural commodities in highly volatile and unpredictable ways. Companies cannot control the publicity a product will receive, as judgement and reactions of audiences, critics and journalists cannot accurately be predicted.
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?
I think that media products should be a form of artistic expression as if a product is good in artisitic value and expresses a positive message or expresses a important message then it is likely to create profit anyway. A good artistic product will automatically create profits and therefore media products should be more focused on creating a good artistic product instead of milking out a product for 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)
A company can do multiple things to maximise profits and minimse risks such as having vertical and horizontal integration. Owning other businesses in their line of work such as distributors will help a business maximise profits as they won't need to pay other companies to distribute their product and instead can do it themselves. Companies can also minimise their risks by buying and owning other companies similar to their line of work e.g. owning a radio station if you are Disney. This will insure that the company still receives money from other lines of work if their main source crashes.
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?
Yes i agree to an extent that cultural industries do highlight the inequalities and injustices in society however their are also companies which take advantage of this and use it to create profit instead of sending a message. Producers and script writers for these media works are normally ignored and the praise normally is given to the actors or the company themselves.
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? because they are not being appreciated or getting recognition for what they're doing and instead they're being challenged and pushed against in aims to stop the production of the filming in some locations.
here was a scene near the end when the tiger and Pi have been at sea for a long time and they’re both starving and near death.
That’s Bill Westenhofer. He was the visual-effects supervisor on Life of Pi.
WESTENHOFER: And we show the tiger in a very emaciated form. And I think it was India that said they wouldn’t allow the filming of the movie because they thought we had starved the tiger. And we had to show them that all that Suraj Sharma, the actor playing Pi, was doing was holding a blue sock, and that it was a complete digital creation on top.
10) What is commodification? Commodification is turning something e.g. turning a media product into something that can be bought (a film).
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?
I agree and disagree with this argument as there have been examples to express both sides of this argument. For example newspapers have been known in the past to target the Muslim community and label them as 'terrorists' and a 'threat to society' whereas other media texts don't label all of them as terrorists instead highlight the point and threat of terrorists in general and how they are not all Muslims. Another example when media texts highlight the diversity of people is in film such as Moonlight which highlights the struggles of someone who is gay and that grew up in a black community.
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