no shit
23.01.2011
Livingstone, S ~ Giving People a Voice
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , ,

Livingstone, Sonia
2010
Giving People a Voice: On the Critical Role of the Interview in the History of Audience Research

Following Lazarsfeld, interviews have been conducted as “powerful interviewer and obedient interviewee” (p. 566). Then audience research moved on to try and learn from the audience. But with the emergence of New Media researchers tend to forget this. They talk of ‘now people are active and they used to be passive,’ which of course is BS. And they tend to talk about ‘the user’ and listen less.

569f
“This reminds us that at the heart of the interview is not only speech but also listening. A poorly conducted interview may be marked both by an interviewee reluctant to speak and by an interviewer who fails to listen carefully. But ask we must, and listen we must, for it is vital to go out and meet the audiences we theorize about.”

23.01.2011
Wilson, C K et al ~ Public Service Broadcasting
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , ,

Wilson, Chris K
Hutchinson, Jonathon
Shea, Pip
Public Service Broadcasting, Creative Industries and Innovation Infrastructure: The Case of ABC’s Pool

Pool man Jonathon’s article.

20.01.2011
Zillmann, D ~ Media Entertainment
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , ,

Zillmann, Dolf
Vorderer, Peter
2000
Media Entertainment: The Psychology of its Appeal

vi
“In fact, entertainment offerings obtrusively dominate media content and are bound to do so in the foreseeable future. This circumstance, together with the apparent growing public demand on entertainment provisions, lend equal justification to characterizing the present times as the ‘entertainment age.’”

vif
“More systematic inquiry is necessary to determine what it is that people deem gratifying and that brings about desired experiential states. The entertainment needs of vastly diverse audiences with vastly diverse intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional interests will have to be explored with increasing care and rigor. Most importantly, however, more attention, in terms of both theory and research, must be directed at understanding the basic mechanisms of enlightenment from, and emotional involvement with, the various forms of entertainment. As yet to be comprehended fully are, for instance, the means of making people laugh and cry, feel the sadness and happiness of others, share their terror and triumph, or simply, of generating calming or thrilling sensations and experiences of serenity or elation. It is astounding, in fact, how little genuine scholarship and basic research has addressed questions as fundamental as exactly what it is that gives comedy the power to make people laugh and tragedy the power to make them cry. It is also far from clear how it can be possible that mere spectators feel triumphant or depressed when seeing athletic competition between others go one way or the other, or, what empowers music to make listeners shudder or feel glorious.”

vii
“Fortunately, a more systematic exploration of media entertainment is beginning. Psychologists, sociologists, and communication scholars, in particular, have begun to replace speculations with meticulous assessments of the content and usage of many forms of entertainment and their effects on different types of people, ultimately, of their consequences for society. For the first time, the primary function of media entertainment – namely, attainment of gratification – takes center stage in this exploration. Specific theories have been proposed to elucidate issues of emotionality and enjoyment, and numerous research demonstrations have been published to clarify the appeal of all conceivable genres and subgenres of media offerings.”

19.01.2011
Hügel, H O ~ Ästhetische Zweideutigkeit der Unterhaltung
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Hügel, Hans Otto
1993
Ästhetische Zweideutigkeit der Unterhaltung: Eine Skizze ihrer Theorie

128
Definition-entertainment:
“Dieses Verharren der Unterhaltung in der Schwebe von Ernst und Unernst möchte ich als Zweideutigkeit fassen. Ästhetisch wird diese Zweideutigkeit genannt, weil es bei Unterhaltung nicht nur auf sinnliche Wahrnehmung ankommt, sondern weil die Wahrnehmung durch Formensprache strukturiert ist. Der Unterhaltungswert eines Fußballspiels z.B. hängt von der Qualität des Spiels ab, für die die Zuschauer Blick und Maß haben.”
-> An entertainer does not pretend it is real (it is clear that it’s all fiction), but he acts as if it were real. An audience member knows it is not real, but pretends he believes it is. Zweideutig, because entertainment at any point in time is sending out two messages: what you see is real AND what you see is not real.

138
“Solche Unterhaltung gehört nicht schon immer zur menschlichen Kultur.”

“Jedenfalls läßt sich nicht von einem allgemeinen menschlichen Zug zur Unterhaltung sprechen, aus dem historisch-spezifische Erkenntnisse abzuleiten wären.”

“Folgt man dem hier vorgeschlagenen Begriff von Unterhaltung, fallen alle Genres des Unterhaltsamen, die dominant zur Vergewisserung sozialer Identität genutzt werden oder deren Produzenten, wie die ‘fahrenden Leute’ im Mittelalter, sozial diskriminiert waren, aus der Geschichte der Unterhaltung heraus. Denn das Verständnis von Unterhaltung als ästhetisch zweideutigem Vorgang setzt ihre Emanzipation voraus. Zu den Voraussetzungen von Unterhaltung zählen daher neben der sozialen Gleichberechtigung der Unterhaltungskünstler vor allem noch die Entstehung einer populären Kultur – deren Teilnahme nicht mehr auf die Herstellung sozialer Identität ausgerichtet ist – und die Entwicklung von Medien, die Unterhaltung im Sinne von Günter Anders Welt als Phantom zur Erfahrung bringen. Daß die historische Epoche der Unterhaltung mit dem Aufkommen der Familienzeitschriften 1850 beginnt, dafür spricht, wie ich an anderer Stelle dargelegt habe (Hügel 1992), einiges. Wann die Epoche der Unterhaltung endet? – Wir werden es noch erleben.“

17.01.2011
Bosshart, L et al ~ Introduction
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Bosshart, Louis
Macconi, Ilaria
1998
Introduction in Bosshart, L et al ~ Media Entertainment

3
“The reason lies, instead, in the scant attention paid by serious researchers to theories of entertainment. There is simply no positive correlation between the amount of entertainment that is consumed and the amount of scholarly research in the field of entertainment. More ‘noble’ topics, such as the interactions of media and democracy, attract much mainstream research. but “mere entertainment” seems too humdrum for serious attention.”

17.01.2011
Bryant, J ~ Foreword
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Bryant, Jennings
2010
Foreword in Sayre, S et al. ~ Entertainment and Society: Influences, Impacts, and Innovations

XXI
“The resulting phenomenon has numerous dimensions, the sum total of which has led some scholars to suggest that we’re living in the entertainment age (Zillmann and Vorderer, 2000). Others have emphasized the dysfunctional aspects of the entertainment explosion and have lamented that we are Amusing ourselves to death (Postman, 1985).”

“The concomitant proliferation in entertainment scholarship has evoked abundant changes in the academy.”

XXII
“Such developments indubitably have laid waste to Fischer and Melnik’s (1979) claim that “theories of entertainment per se are practically nonexistent” (p. xi). Moreover, the widespread acceptance of the myriad theories of entertainment presented and refined in these volumes casts considerable doubt on Freud’s century-old dictum that “we do not know what it is that gives us pleasure and what we laugh about” (p. 107).”

16.01.2011
Campbell, J ~ The Hero With a Thousand Faces
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , ,

Campbell, Joseph
1968
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Very wise: he doesn’t even get into a religious discussion. He says straight away, that what he writes about is true for all religions and myths at the same time.

Numbers in brackets: pages in pdf.

xxi
“It is the purpose of the present book to uncover some of the truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythol­ogy by bringing together a multitude of not-too-difficult exam­ples and letting the ancient meaning become apparent of itself. The old teachers knew what they were saying. Once we have learned to read again their symbolic language, it requires no more than the talent of an anthologist to let their teaching be heard. But first we must learn the grammar of the symbols, and as a key to this mystery I know of no better modern tool than psychoanalysis.”

3
“It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.”

13f
“He had converted a public event to personal gain, whereas the whole sense of his investi­ture as king had been that he was no longer a mere private person.”

14
“By the sacri­lege of the refusal of the rite, however, the individual [e.g. King Minos] cut himself as a unit off from the larger unit of the whole community: and so the One was broken into the many, and these then battled each other—each out for himself—and could be governed only by force.”

15
“The hero is the man of self-achieved submission.” -> See On The Waterfront, maybe it wasn’t religious after all?

“As Professor Arnold J. Toynbee indicates in his six-volume study of the laws of the rise and disintegration of civilizations, schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorat­ing elements. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.”
-> He talks about Nietzsche’s and Schumpeter’s creative destruction!

16
“In a word: the first work of the hero is to retreat from the world scene of secondary effects to those causal zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside”

18
“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.”

“The [Australian Aranda] word altjira means: (a) a dream, (b) ancestor, beings who appear in the dream, (c) a story (Rôheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 210-211).”

30 (28)
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

35 (33)
“As we soon shall see, whether presented in the vast, almost oceanic images of the Orient, in the vigorous narratives of the Greeks, or in the majestic legends of the Bible, the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above de­ scribed: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return.”

37f (35)
“The composite hero of the monomyth is a personage of exceptional gifts. Frequently he is honored by his society, frequently unrecognized or disdained. He and/or the world in which he finds himself suffers from a symbolical deficiency. In fairy tales this may be as slight as the lack of a certain golden ring, whereas in apocalyptic vision the physical and spiritual life of the whole earth can be represented as fallen, or on the point of falling, into ruin.
Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former—the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers—prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his ad­ venture the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.”
-> He distinguished two essential stories: fairytale and myth.

39
“The cosmogonic cycle is presented with astonishing consistency in the sacred writings of all the continents, and it gives to the adventure of the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time. He is “the king’s son” who has come to know who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power – “God’s son,” who has learned to know how much that title means. From this point of view the hero is symbolical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life.”

40 (37)
“The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical terms as a circulation of food substance, dynamically as a streaming of energy, or spiritually as a manifestation of grace.”

44 (41)
“The World Navel, then, is ubiquitous. And since it is the source of all existence, it yields the world’s plenitude of both good and evil.”
-> God is in everything, in every blade of grass.

14.01.2011
Gabler, N ~ The movie magic is gone
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Gabler, Neal
25.02.2007
The movie magic is gone (14.01.2011)

“Hollywood, which once captured the nerve center of American life, doesn’t matter much anymore.”

“More than any other form, they [movies] defined us, and to this day, the rest of the world knows us as much for our films as for any other export.”

“Before demographics became the marketing mantra, the movies were the art of the middle. They provided a common experience and language — a sense of unity. In the dark we were one.”

“Now, however, when people prefer to identify themselves as members of ever-smaller cohorts — ethnic, political, demographic, regional, religious — the movies can no longer be the art of the middle. The industry itself has been contributing to this process for years by targeting its films more narrowly, especially to younger viewers. In effect, the conservative impulse of our politics that has promoted the individual rather than the community has helped undermine movies’ communitarian appeal.”

“But it is much more difficult to survive a change in consciousness than a change in taste or technology, and that is what the movies face now — a challenge to the basic psychological satisfactions that the movies have traditionally provided.”

12.01.2011
Müller, E ~ Not Only Entertainment
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Müller, Eggo
2009?
Not Only Entertainment: Studien zur Pragmatik und Ästhetik der Fernsehunterhaltung

There’s litle doubt about it that entertainment is changing in its nature. A framework like EA can only be of help then!
See also Müller, E ~ Unterhaltung im Zeitalter der Konvergenz.

5f
Wolf, M J ~ The Entertainment Economy (check out) argues that economy and culture are being ‘entertainmentized.’ Müller is sceptical, but gives lots of examples of people who agree and give examples about various areas where this seems to be true (p. 7).

8
“So gehen Diskussionen, wie sie unter anderen über die “Erlebnisgesellschaft” (Schulze 1992) oder über die so ge­ nannte “Erlebnisökonomie” (Pine/Gilmore 1999) geführt worden sind, im Kern um einen kulturellen Wandel, den ich mit Bezug auf Fern­sehen und Medien als die Aufwertung von Unterhaltung gegenüber anderen kulturellen Praktiken beschreibe.”

12
“der Wandel der Bewertung von Unterhaltungskommunikation, wie er sich in den vergangenen Jahren im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs vollzogen hat, [kann] wohl als das deutlichste Indiz einer Aufwertung der Unterhaltung gelten.”

14
“Diese Traditionen der Beschäftigung mit Medienunterhaltung hat Richard Dyer in seiner richtungsweisenden Essaysammlung Only Entertainment (1992) dahingehend kritisiert, dass sie, statt die spezifi­sche Qualität von Unterhaltung zu benennen und zu erforschen, Un­terhaltung als minderwertige Formen der Kunst oder der Information mit Blick auf ihre unterstelltermaßen ideologische oder manipulative Wirkung kritisieren. Selbst wenn Unterhaltung, wie auch Dyer (1992, 2) realistischer Weise unterstellt, ideologische Implikationen hat, so darf sie begrifflich doch nicht auf “Ideologie” reduziert werden. Zudem kann ihre spezifische Qualität nicht begriffen werden, wenn sie – wie Hügel (1993a, 125) dies in seiner Charakterisierung des Problems der Dichotomisierung von U- und E-Kultur formuliert­ – bloß als “‘missratene Ausgabe’ von Kunst” beschrieben wird.”

“Dyers Versuch, die Qualität von Unterhaltung als solcher zu be­ stimmen, ist Teil eines Umbruchs in der wissenschaftlichen Ausein­ andersetzung mit Unterhaltung, der sich seit Anfang der neunziger Jahre im Windschatten der internationalen Rezeption der British Cultural Studies und ihrer Theorien zur populären Kultur vollzogen hat. Dieser Umbruch lässt sich als “Umwertung der Unterhaltung” be­schreiben, nicht nur, weil nun die eigenständige Qualität von Unter­haltung zum Gegenstand der wissenschaftlichen Forschung wurde, sondern vor allem, weil die Bewertung von Phänomenen und Wirkun­gen der Unterhaltung vom Negativen ins Positive gewendet wurde.”

14-16
The academic understanding of ‘entertainment’ has changed in the wake of “British Cultural Studies.” He illustrates that by comparing the different editions of JH’s Key Concepts in Communication.

23 (he explains the concepts until p. 26)
“So richtet sich medienpsychologische und kommunikationswissenschaftliche Forschung vor allem auf das empirisch mess- oder er­ fragbare Unterhaltungserleben von Rezipienten, ohne dass die Qualität des ‘Stimulusmaterials’ näher in den Blick käme.”
He disagrees.
-> rezeptionsorientierte Perspektive

24
“Vielmehr lasse sich Unterhaltung, so wendet Vorderer gegen produktzentrierte Ansätze ein, allein aus Zuschauersicht fassen, als ein “Rezeptionsphänomen” (ebd., 548).” (Vorderer, 2004)

26
“Im Gegensatz zu den rezeptionsorientierten Ansätzen ist für kul­turwissenschaftliche Studien kennzeichnend, dass sie den Kern des Begriffs der Unterhaltung im historischen Charakter ihrer gesell­schaftlichen Institutionalisierung sehen.”
-> gegenstandsorientierte Perspektive

27
Definition-entertainment:
“entertainment is a type of performance pro­duced for profit , performed before a generalized audience (the public), by a trained, paid group who do nothing else but produce performances which have the sole (conscious) aim of providing pleasure. (1992, 17)” (Dyer, 1992)

“Diese historische Institutionalisierung der Unterhaltung hat Hans­ Otto Hügel (1987; 1993a; 2003b) in seinen Schriften als ihre “Eman­zipation” beschrieben und damit untermauert, dass Unterhaltung im modernen Sinne nicht nur eine unterhaltsame kulturelle Praktik ist, sondern dass diese sich im Laufe des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts als eigenständige Institution und kulturelle Praktik etabliert hat. Sie zeich­net sich deshalb durch spezifische soziale und mediale Kontexte, Pro­duktionsweisen, Gattungen und Genres aus ebenso wie durch spezif­ische Rezeptionserwartungen und -gewohnheiten.”
=> Entertainment is not JUST entertaining. It means something that we understand because we grew up using the word to describe something specific.
=> This understanding is changing. See Müller, E ~ Unterhaltung im Zeitalter der Konvergenz.

28
“Dieses Forschungsprogramm, das sich durch seine Akzentuierung der ästhetischen Qualität von Unterhaltung auch von Cultural Studies und ihrer Theorien der populären Kultur unterscheidet, stellt gleich­ sam den Gegenpol zu medienpsychologischen und kommunikations­wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen in der Unterhaltungsforschung dar.”
-> He argues that the historico-cultural approach cannot be unified with the medienpsychologisch and kommunikationswissenschaftlich approaches: “Unterhalt­samkeit hier, Unterhaltung da.”

29
Pragmatisch-ästhetischer Unterhaltungsbegriff: “Dabei rücke ich im Sinne der kultur­wissenschaftlichen Tradition Dyers und Hügels, jedoch im Gegensatz zu Früh und anderen kommunikationswissenschaftlichen oder medien­psychologischen Begriffen der Unterhaltung, die gesellschaftliche Institutionalisierung von Unterhaltung ins Zentrum. Nur so lässt sich vermeiden, dass alle mehr oder weniger als angenehm erfahrenen For­men des Zeitvertreibs mit Unterhaltung verwechselt werden, und nur so kann die historische Spezifik von Unterhaltung im Unterschied zu anderen kulturellen Praktiken gefasst werden.”
-> Entertainment is something specific and we know what it is. Not everything entertaining is entertainment, i.e. sex. And entertainment is entertainment, whether somebody is entertained by it or not. Even if somebody is not entertained by stand up comedy shows, the shows are still considered entertainment.

32f
Definition-entertainment:
“Unterhaltung wird in den hier versammelten Texten als kulturelle Praktik gefasst, die institutionell produziert und reproduziert wird und sich im Zusammenspiel von institutioneller Produktion, textueller Qualität und rezeptiver Situation aktualisiert. Für das konkrete Unterhaltungserleben ist kennzeichnend [,...] dass es von ästhetischer Art ist.”

37
Entertainment is “Not Only Entertainment,” because it is much more than that: it is cultural practice anchored in history. Did I get that right?

10.01.2011
Rushton, Richard ~ Deleuzian spectatorship
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Rushton, Richard
2009
Deleuzian spectatorship

Explores Deleuze’s views on spectators. Read properly if to be cited.

45
“At one level, Deleuze was felt to have introduced a perspective on film studies that was at odds with Screen Theory’s insistence on the passivity of the cinema spectator, the latter being a notion indebted to theories of psychoanalysis [...]. Rather than spectators passively deprived of their bodies and held in thrall to an ideological apparatus, Deleuze’s writings gave rise to the possibility of spectators who engaged their bodies and senses in ways that made Screen Theory seem incorrigibly shortsighted.”

53
“Deleuze throws down a quite extraordinary and risky challenge: that we lose control of ourselves, undo ourselves, forget ourselves while in front of the cinema screen. Only then will we be able to loosen the shackles of our existing subjectivities and open ourselves up to other ways of experiencing and knowing.”