Humping The (new) Media Landscape

What he said!

Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible

 Edwin Land, inventor of instant photography

We'll Make Great Brands: Branded Identity and The Internet Public Sphere

A final paper I wrote for Media Studies: Ideas course with Peter Asaro  at The New School. It is a rambling flood of ideas but I am posting it since it touches, on just about everything I want to address in my further study in grad skool. 

“Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark.”   Tom Peters, 1997

This quote appeared in Fast Company magazine in an article by Peters entitled, The Brand Called You
The basic premise laid out by Peters is that, for individuals to be successful in the contemporary business environment, they must look to prominent billion dollar brands like Nike or Pepsi for inspiration.

“It's time for me -- and you -- to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anyone who's interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”

 Peters' message goes beyond pointing to corporate branding strategy for inspiration. It calls for individuals to actually act as corporate entities in creating an identity for themselves. In the decade since the piece was originally printed, the idea of “Personal Branding” has only become more relevant as tools for identity distribution through the internet are changing the way individuals and corporations approach mediated communication. The Internet provides a unique venue where individuals can gain agency amongst the corporate giants and this has necessitated that formerly monolithic corporate brands  borrow the identities of individuals for authenticity, one of the greatest currencies online. However, this notion that individuals can and should brand themselves in the same way that corporations are branded brings with it a very complex set of issues, that have greater implications for how we understand and develop personal identity.
    While Peters and many others like him, have been coaching individuals to brand their identities as corporations are branded, those very same corporations have been learning to behave online in a manner which mimics the way individuals use the internet for personal interactions.  This is where my personal experience comes into play: my job, for a billion dollar company, is essentially to ensure that our interactions with consumers online are authentically human. As more and more personal relationships have some element of computer mediation, the internet grows increasingly personal. For brands looking to be perceived as more human, the opportunity to communicate to potential consumers  where they engage publicly and emotionally with each other is irresistible.

What he said!

 History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

                                                            Sir Winston Churchill

Literature review for media project Sexy, Funny (working title)

Concept

This project stems from a series of interviews I have filmed with women who are burlesque dancers as well as conversations I have had with women working professionally in standup, improv, sketch comedy and comedy writing. There is something very specific to the kind of agency these women are creating for themselves through the intentional use of burlesque to lampoon established images of femininity in western popular culture. They are intentionally using their own bodies to be confrontational and at the same time charm their audiences with a coquettish sexuality.  Using the reemergence of burlesque as a spring board to look at the idea of comedy and sexuality as the emergent mode for female dominance via media.  Through interviews and textual analysis of performances, of women who write and perform their own material as investigation of the possibilities for women to assume control in the larger narratives and representation of women within popular culture. There is a wealth of writing on topics related to this idea including historical documentation of women performing comedy, theoretical texts on sexualized self representation by women and explorations of humor and feminism.  I selected a cross-section for this review as a touchstone for beginning my own research. Some very relevant books have been omitted from this review but only because I was not able to access them in the timeline for this assignment.

Feminist Theory

The subject of women and humor is clearly present but ultimately as a side note in feminist theory. However, it seems like an obvious way to engage with younger generation of women who do not feel they are part of a specifically feminist history.  I am interested in foregrounding the burlesque combination of humor and sexuality as a mode of critique for  women writer/performers working within the contemporary media environment. By using a sophisticated combination of humor and sexuality women can burlesque centuries worth of feminine representations. In this way, they craft hybrid identities for themselves within the heavily mediated contemporary cultural environment. This could be prescribed as a feminist mode of media critique, which can be highly visible and thus effective in influencing new perceptions of femininity. Much of the writing around feminist theory and humor is often about  a lack of humor in feminist theory due to feelings that the subject was too serious to make light of.  Helen Cioux's 1975, Laugh of Medussa, provides an excellent text for exploring the feminist theory aspect of this for several reasons.  It advocates that women must write and I think women today would especially appreciate that Cioux does not specify content or form – which opens a door for many types of female authority to emerge. She also writes that women must use their bodies to tell their stories since they cannot escape the meaning of its presence – so, women must write from their perspective and they must acknowledge their physicality in order for their writing to assert power in a larger cultural dialog.  The inversion of the medusa myth from screaming to laughter is the perfect parallel for looking at how women are writing/performing themselves, today.

Women's Humor

There have been many attempts to identify a sense of humor specific to the female experience. In the book, They Used to Call me Snow White, Regina Berreca points to the fact that women have used double entendre to provide coded messages in comedy (performed on a stage or personal life) out of necessity because showing outright wit was not socially acceptable. Berreca looks at female characters in classic and contemporary texts and even the actors who portrayed them on screen. She mentions the formidable Lorelie of Anita Loo's Gentlemen Prefer Blonds a story itself that burlesques a type of woman which Loo's felt was the type men  desire. A coded message that would " have no trouble getting by the censors despite the fact that the hidden message could easily be understood by the audience." (p17) A woman who purrs to men cloyingly with a wink to women watching that this man is clearly a fool. She describes a 'double-voiced dialog' in which women, aware of the humor in a situation are trained by societal conditioning not to confront it directly.

The many ways that humor is used to gain power in social situations is a predominant theme of writing about women and comedy. Women of a certain generation have been made to feel uncomfortable women using humor as a tool because it implies sexual experience, as is asserted by many examples from film, television and social conventions which  align use of humor with 'bad girls'. The message from such portrayals is that we are to look negatively upon those women who do use humor.  It could be useful to bring  contemporary insight to this area, by observing and interviewing women of the next generation, those who grew up with a different set of images of femininity. Is there Such a Thing As Women's Humor by Sevda Caliskan addresses directly the idea of a specifically female sense of humor. The  combination of the perspective of women in general from a position of  “other “ and that humor has publicly belonged to men, creates a situation where women in comedy is inherently subversive because it is seen as an exception to the rule rather than for its own independent relevance. Out of necessity, women writers/performers have learned to rely on subtext and double entendre in order to make a place for themselves, without uprooting the existing hierarchy of male dominance in comedy.  Many examples of women as in performance or social context, using a strategy of subversive humor to  satirize and call out double standards, are provided in existing writing on women and humor.

A Popular Discussion

The subject of funny, sexy women was brought into the public sphere recently when Vanity Fair published an essay from Cristopher Hitchens entitled “Why Women Aren't Funny.” The essay is essentially an anthology of  all the historical mythology around women and humor, subtract a few contemporary references and it could easily be mistaken for something written in the 1950's.  The article generated a good deal of discussion online between women writers and comedians and  served as a build up to a cover story in the magazine about a recent trend of funny and (not so coincidentally, beautiful) women making names for themselves in mainstream comedy television and film today, including Tina Fey former head writer and cast members from Saturday Night Live. Vanity Fair continued the dialog with a rebuttal from Hitchens in a video interview online where he reiterates his real provocation which is that women don't need to be funny evolutionarily.

History and Revival of Burlesque Performance

One of the few pieces I found investigating use by women of a specific distribution mechanism for creation of this type of self image, in this case the photo promotional cards, carte visite etc.e, . The early self representation by women actors and proto-burlesque performers, in the mid 1800s on and how they used photography to create and mass disseminate a simultaneously sexy and comedic image of themselves. This was the beginning of the modern the pin-up, a sexually self aware yet charmingly coy, promotional image meant for mass distribution. Even in the earliest form these images played with feminine stereotypes and shamelessly blurred the boundaries of a character and the performer.  This sets up a historic president for women to use combination of sexuality and comedic parody of sexuality to create a powerful hybrid identity for themselves.  The feminist theory approach these images of women has been addressed in her book The Happy Stripper.  It profiles several eras of burlesque through the work of performers and looks at what modern burlesque reveals about the contemporary condition of post-feminism. There is something empowering to the women performing and observing this burlesque with its bold, smart, tounge-in-cheek humor. "The burlesque performer looks back, smiles and questions her audience, as well as her performance, a performance that is comic outlandish and saucy, a highly camp mostly vintage spectacle. Burlesque is the low invading the high it cheekishly and brashly moved into the mainstream, adopting its forms, performance art, comedy, circus, modern dance, but without taking any one too seriously." The burlesque body is a place where all kinds of issues are called into light, class, agency, economics, gender etc. all the while, it a light entertainment that can appeal to a cross section of male and female audiences. It can be used to address a public indifference which she sees in many young women  have to calling themselves feminists. Walker is a bit uncomfortable with too quickly aligning this new-burlesque with female empowerment but, in my own research interviewing performers and women who are active as producers and educators, it is clear to that their work is on the whole, very intentional and intellectually inspired.

Summary

Since my own area of expertise is neither women's literature or feminist theory,  comedy or sociology  but rather the study of digital media and the new modes distribution and social interactions that it allows for, I propose to study how the  burlesquing female fits in this context. Women have used burlesque as a way to reassert control over the eroticism of female body and to create a complex self-image not available in the traditional female archetypes offered by the mainstream media.  A study of the self-made funny, sexy female as an alternative archetype throughout history could construct a feminist theory of interest to young women, today which encourages them to own burlesquing of culture as a right and responsibility.

References

Barreca, Regina. They Used to Call Me Snow White. New York: Viking, 1991

Buszek, Maria-Elena, “Representing "Awarishness":Burlesque, Feminist Transgression, and the 19th-    Century” The Drama Review 43.4 (1999) 141-162

Caliskan, Sevda. “Is There Such a Thing as Women's Humor?”, American Studies International v33     (1994) p49-59 O

Cioux, Helene. “The Laugh of The Medusa.” SIGNS 1:4 1976: 875-881. University of Chicago Press. Rpt. In The Essential Feminist Reader. Ed. Estelle Freedman. New York: Random House, 2007. 318-324.

Dresner, Zita and Walker, Nancy, eds.  Redressing the Balance: American Women's Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s.  Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 1988

Fraiberg, Alison. “Between the Laughter: Bridging Feminist Studies through Women's Stand-Up Comedy.” Look Who's Laughing: Gender And Comedy. Ed. Gail Finney. Amsterdam: Gordon And Breach, 1994. 315-333

Gray, Frances. Women And Laughter. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1994

Hitchens, Cristopher. “Why Women Aren't Funny.”  Vanity Fair January. 2007

Hitchens, Cristopher. “Why Women Still Aren't Funny.” Vanity Fair Magazine  YouTube Channel April. 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7izJggqCoA

Stanley, Alessandra. “Who Says Women Aren't Funny.” Vanity Fair April. 2008

Wilson, Jackie. The Happy Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque.

What he said!

I don't care if its a lie, as long as its entertaining

-Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon

FOE3 notes: Henry Jenkins opening

I have so many notes from the Futures of Entertainment Conference that I figured I should just start throwing some of them up here in posts for archival purposes. They are fairly raw because, at this point, I am more interested in crafting interesting questions for further exploration than coming up with any definitive answers.

Opening comments from Henry Jenkins:

Viral Media model traps us and doesn't allow for important questions of Consumer Agency to be asked.
The term meme has really fallen into this unfortunate usage as well, and it puts an excessive importance on preservation of original and less on changes tha occur as something gets passed around. These changes, mutations are how content is now developed and given meaning.

Hybrid Spaces where new alliances and collaborations arise between unlikely partners   - Great term, it describes very well the kinds of media I am interested in.

New active children - while much of media wants to focus on male fanboys, social media is clearly showing us that women are just as relevant as an audience, Twilight as example.

Also mentioned was the obsession in the industry with problem of loyalty in a dispersed media landscape. This is something I am confronted with working for a television network. When the entire business model is built around driving to one place to access the content, it is hard to understand the notion that content, to be succesfully distributed in this new media landscape, it needs to be fireworks exploding outward rather than a black hole pulling inward.

Lewis Hyde:  Gift Economy v. Commodity Culture
The difference between these types of exchange, is in the motivation.
Emotional, social, economic properties
Gift Economy = esteem takes place of cash, social transaction - worth more as it circulates?
Commodity Culture =monitary value - worth less as it circulates?
Antiques Road show served as a great example this back and forth between worth and value, money and sentiment and our obsession with it.

Wires are getting crossed because individuals want to participate in CC and corporations using GE to gain esteem of individuals. This is pretty much exactly what I have proposed as a topic for a paper. I think about it a lot in light of the time I spend examining marketing in this space for my job. And as well, it ties into the issues around authenticity which fascinated me in my early online video experiences. 

What happens when worth becomes value and value becomes worth?
Is it possible to create value and generate worth at the same time, how? 

Personal Branding in The Internet Public Sphere

Some general notes for Media Studies: Ideas Final

I would like to address the recent trend, calling for individuals to craft their identities online as if they were a brand. On the one hand, learning to use the internet as a tool can be very effective for individuals with a specific goal. On the other, creating a brand of oneself denigrates identities into shallow demographics. This may be great for marketers eager to figure out how to funnel the communications of individuals online into ad placements but is it good for the internet as a public sphere and the individuals that make it up? This trend works against diversity which, in theory, would be what is important for growth and survival of any living organism.

Individuals identities online are also useful to brands right now, because they offer authenticity. When individuals online have effectively branded themselves are their identities less authentic=less valuable. In effect this makes the individual a competitive brand or a potential business partner with corporate identities online. With individuals are seeking to function like brands online and brands looking to be perceived more like individuals, what are the implications of this mediated relationship between corporations and individuals online? What are the ramifications for personal identity and what an identity is vs. a public profile?

Does defining oneself as a brand and acting as such in online interactions, disempower or empower individuals? What is the opposite of this? Online, what really separates individual identities from corporate brands, anyway?

I welcome any suggestions for reading along these lines. I will post whatever I end up using in my research here, as well.

What she said!

Technology is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections - and it matters which ones get made and unmade.

-Donna Haraway

The Myth of Viral Media

I just returned from a weekend of convergence culture convening at MIT's Future's of Entertainment Conference. I am still reeling from all the amazing people and potent conversations. Although a relatively small group attends this event, the variety and level of engagement is remarkable. Just sifting through the pile of business cards I collected over the weekend, from experienced thinkers and do-ers, producers and PHDs alike, I am reminded the importance of this very rare, much needed, opportunity for exchange.

The conference started on a pitch perfect note when Henry Jenkins called out the Myth of Viral media, which got a hearty Amen! from those gathered before him. The point is, we know that the injection theory, is just not true. Consumers are not simply impregnated with ideas, people have agency and contexts as well, are dynamic, and especially so in todays media environment. 'Viral' is clearly the wrong metaphor to rely on, if we really want to understand the complicated things that the internet is teaching us about media and how people (have always) connected to each other through it. Avoiding use of the word became an excellent test for all the panelists, keeping everyone on their feet and avoiding falling back on BS industry terminology.

This conscientiousness with language is one of the important aspects of this conference. Having a dialog about the industry that takes place in an academic context forces more specific articulation, guiding the discussion to the real issue by not overly simplifying with some non-dairy whipped topping buzzwords.

Last year, the overall sentiment that moved me the most was a sincere desire we all shared to make (promote, distribute etc.) meaningful experiences for people through entertainment.  The this year I would say, the word empathy struck me as a defining theme. In the closing panel Maurício Mota of New Content (Brazil), created a nice bookend when he so passionately advocated for empathizing with audiences - seems so obvious but is the first the to get lost in the frenzy over new technologies and money making schemes around media.

Entertainment which is attempting to broadcast with generic broad stroke demographic information is no longer working (and I think many would agree, has always sucked.) The key is to remember that an audience is still made up of individuals with varying interests and changing needs from moment to moment.

I'll be posting more specific thoughts from various panels in the next few days. I noticed Mike Arauz is also thinking about audiences and fans in particular and I am sure he'll be posting more from FOE3 as are many others. The official Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of conference notes posted, as well.

(image credit - Factoryjoe )

What he said!

Please don't look to me for information because sometimes, I lie!

-Stephen Colbert