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Media Criticism Fall2006 Session12

Another view of Ecological Genre Theory

MediumAsAnEcologyOfGenre

Production Approaches to Media Criticism

• Today will take a very summary look at several production-oriented approaches:
  1. Auteur Theory
  2. Production-Context Theory
  3. Everyone a Publisher/Producer

Auteur Criticism

• "Auteur" simply mean author (French vocabulary strikes again :-)
  • Texts on "auteur criticism" indicate that "auteur" means, in effect, "artist"
• The idea behind auteur theory is compelling, however
  • The core of an artists work is their vision and personality
  • The artist brings a distinctive point of view to every work they create
  • Elements of the artists work act as a "signature" that identifies their work as theirs
  • The artist can be regarded as a "genre"
• This last point is central to "auteur" criticism
  • The method of auteur criticism is that of Aesthetic Genre Theory
  • The primary difference is that the body of work is that of a particular artist
• Artist can be variably defined
  • Film auteur criticism usually focuses on the work of a writer or director
  • Occasionally an actor or actress is treated as an auteur (Jerry Lewis and Lucille Ball both fall in this category)
  • In television, producers (especially writer/producers), ensembles, production companies, and even programming executives are sometimes treated this way
• Auteur Criticism focuses on two things:
  1. The stylistic features common to the entire body of an auteur's work
  2. The thematic features common to the entire body of an auteur's work
• It considers genre and biography, but does not focus on them
  1. Genre, to the extent that existing generic categories apply, but with a focus on how the auteur adapts the genre to their creative vision
  2. The auteur's personal history, but not at the level of specific instances which may be reproduced on film, but on the way personal history has shaped the auteur's creative vision.
• Some gotchas
  1. Auteur theory is generally based on the "entire" body of an auteur's work (that's a lot of viewing)
  2. Auteur theory generally frowns on assertions of "intention".
     • It’s fine to identify recurring themes and stylistic conventions.
     • It’s OK to find roots for those themes and stylistics in biography
     • But try to avoid the "intentionalist fallacy" (the idea that you can know the mind of the auteur)
  3. As we've already noted, auteur's often focus their efforts within a larger genre, which returns us to genre criticism
     • Indeed, if we treat a series as a genre, there is no difference between "ensemble" (e.g. production team, cast) oriented auteur theory and genre theory
• It is possible, however, to look at the effect of the ensemble in a very different way: Production-Context Criticism

Production-Context Criticism

• All mass media content is produced by ensembles
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Records
  • Radio
  • Television
  • Commercial Web Sites
• Through the efforts of many routine participants in media (Foulger, 2002)
  1. Creators
  2. Publisher/producers
  3. Financial management
  4. Investors
  5. Content Integrators
  6. Production support
  7. Content Editing
  8. Advertisers
  9. Reproducers
  10. Directors
  11. Performers
  12. Selector/gatekeepers
  13. Critics
  14. Representatives
  15. Collectors
  16. Retailers
  17. Distributor/Carriers
  18. Transcriber/Recorders
  19. Regulators
  20. Consumers
• Most of the above can be directly associated with Turow's (1997) "power roles"
  1. Producer Power Rule, which covers Publisher/Producers and, to some extent, distributors
  2. Authority Power Role, which covers Regulators
  3. Investor Power Role
  4. Client Power Role, which covers Advertisers
  5. Creator Power Role, which also covers directors, performers, content editors, and others who can influence the final product
  6. Distributor and Exhibitor power role, which covers Retailers, Collectors, and to some extent, Distributors
  7. Auxiliary Power Role, which covers Financial Management, Reproducers and, to some extent, Production Support
  8. The Union, Linking-Pin, and Facilitator Power Roles, which cover different kinds of Representatives
  9. Public and Public Advocacy Roles, which covers Consumers, Critics, and to some extent, Regulators, Representatives, and Selector/gatekeepers
  • Note that a number of the generalized participants in media don't have power in Turow's model
    • But of course they do, within limits
    • Anyone who works as an employee is subject to allocative control
    • But anyone who touches he content has at least some level of operational control
• Production-context analysis is often concerned with the balance (or imbalance) of these forms of power and control
• how content is shaped through the varied influence of varied participants
  • This covers a lot of ground
    • Macro-level criticism looks at how media ownership, regulation, and social trends affect content
      • At this level, production-context criticism often takes becomes ideological:
        • Monopoly power and free market capitalism
        • Public Interest and Individual Rights
        • Federal Rights versus State Rights
        • Limited Government versus Regulation of Harms
        • Censorship and Gatekeeping
        • Allocative Control: the ability to set an organization's agenda, goals, and resources
    • Midrange criticism looks at how the organizational structure of the medium affects content
      • At this level, organizational communication and industrial relations perspectives are common
      • Operational Control
        • the ability of units of the organization to
          • set and implement policy
          • set and modify goals
          • allocate resources
    • Micro-level criticism looks at how the constraints associated with specific roles (time and other pressures) affects content
      • how much power does each player in the production process really have?
• Most production-context analysis doesn't fit the general paradigm of analysis (e.g. body of content) we're using in this course
  • It may be very difficult to look at a body of content and infer anything about power expressed at the macro-level, midrange, or micro-level
  • How can you tell if a 1990 California license plate on a 1960's car in New York City reflects:
    • a micro-level problem with attention to detail in a time and resource
    • a midrange organizational issue
    • a macro level regulatory issue relating to location shooting
    • an intentional choice by the director
  • You can't. We're back to the intentional fallacy
• Hence the usual methods of production-context are usually grounded in observation of production
  • Case Studies
  • Ethnographys
  • Critiques of institutions and practices
• And in any case, this is a very summary view
  • We haven't talked at all about
    • actional analysis of production-context
    • structural analysis of production-context
    • the political economy critical perspective
    • the or their intersection with each other and the industrial relations critical perspective (which we barely mentioned)
• It remains, however, that bloopers give us a window to production-context
  • It is probably reasonable to ask
  • given a set of clear errors in an episode from your body of content
  • who could have prevented those errors
  • and why didn't they
  • You could, given your production knowledge, potentially do this within this classes general paradigm of analysis

Index Card Assignment (due tomorrow)

Look through your body of content. Look for an error or blooper. What was the error/blooper? What are the possibilities for how it was produced?