9607/04 - Critical Perspective [ October/November 2022 ]

October/November 2022 

9607/04

Section A: Media Debates

Media regulation 

Evaluate some of the different ways in which the idea of freedom is used in debates about media regulation. [15] 

How media is regulated by media regulators has formed some debates. Common debate topics about media regulation include the freedom of speech in social media, creative freedom for media producers and the freedom of consumption for audiences.

Freedom of speech in social media has caused debates over the years. In 2021, the former president Trump posted several tweets on Twitter that are considered inappropriate by some users. With the help of technological convergence his tweets are able to reach millions of users across the platform in a short period of time. Many users are concerned that younger users may see Trump as a role model. According to Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratification theory, media satisfy audiences’ base need of personal identity by supplying them with role models. Due to the amount of reports submitted by users, Twitter decided to review the controversial tweets. Twitter then released a statement that they’re going to permanently suspend Trump’s twitter account due to the inclusion of glorification of violence which violates their company’s policy. However, many people expressed their concern regarding Twitter’s decision since they believe that it was Trump’s freedom of expression. According to US Law section 230, social media platforms are not responsible for what their users post. But because Twitter is starting to lose money due to advertisers pulling out their advertisements, they had to make this decision to satisfy their clients and users. 

Media regulations may limit the freedom of creativity of media producers. An example to this is, the regulation of the series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005- ). The series was brought to streaming platforms such as Disney+ in 2021. However, due to the inclusion of racist content such as blackface, 5 episodes were removed from the platform. When the show first aired, audiences were able to decode the intended meaning of the scene (preferred reading) and understand its satirical context. But as audiences’ get more media exposure to racism and their societal values change and these kinds of contents are considered inappropriate. Disney also needed to regulate the show to make it fit into their ideology and image of ‘family friendly.’ Though, the banning of these episodes have angered many fans as most of them believe that it’s fine to air satirical racist jokes as it’s a form of creativity.

The freedom for the audience to consume any kind of media has also been discussed a lot. In 2021, HBO Max hosted a Friends Reunion which sparked the interest of Chinese Friends fandom. The streaming rights of Friends (1994-2004) was purchased by the streaming service YouKu which is owned by Alibaba Group, partly owned by the Chinese government. This has influenced the censorship of some scenes in the series to follow the guidelines issued in 2015 to censor ‘vulgar, immoral and unhealthy contents’ and ban ‘abnormal sexual relationship and behaviour.’ A specific example is, in the episode "The One with the Lesbian Wedding," scenes including the mention of LGBTQ+ are cut off because according to George gerbner’s Cultivation Theory, an exposure to a certain media over time will reinforce their existing ideologies. Thanks to technological convergence and new media audience are able to express their disappointment of the regulation through the Chinese social media platform, Weibo with he hashtag #FriendsCensored. But in spite of that, the Chinese government took down all posts related to the hashtag not long after that. People consider this as a form of limiting their freedom of consumption and freedom of expression. Nevertheless, Chinese audiences are still able to gain access to the uncensored episode of Friends with the help of VPN technology and illegal streaming platforms.

Postmodern media 

‘It is difficult to fully appreciate popular culture without an understanding of postmodernism.’ How far do you agree with this statement? [15] 

In order to be able to fully appreciate a postmodern film, audiences will be required to understand some key characteristics of postmodernism such as intertextuality, self reflexivity and parody. An example of a postmodern film is She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022) distributed by Disney through Disney+. The series included numerous intertextualities. The set design of She-hulk’s room included a poster of Legally Blonde (2001) which is a movie that also featured a female lawyer as the main character. According to Roland Barthes, the poster serves as a referential/cultural code which requires the audience to have a knowledge of the reference to decode the meaning. Audiences with a previous knowledge of Legally Blonde are able to decode the message of the similarities between the two characters, including the problems they face throughout the plot such as their struggles working in a male dominated workplace and their bad luck in romance. This can enhance audiences’ appreciation as they’re able to relate the references between the 2 films as they’re watching She-Hulk. The series also included scenes of self reflexivity. She-Hulk is aware of the difference between her fictional world and the real world. She broke the 4th wall by talking to the camera and even jumping out of the story world which lets the audience connect with the character. A parody of the Incredible Hulk (1978) was also included during the start of the last episode. They copied the opening credit of the original hulk movie and changed the character into She-Hulk. A parody of Kevin Feige, the producer of Marvel was also added in the form of KEVIN the robot. These parodies serve as a fan service for Marvel’s loyal fans.

To be able to fully appreciate the context of a film, audience will need to be able to differenciate between reality, heightened reality and hyper reality. According to Baudrillard’s theory of postmodernism, there are simultaneous realities and audience can find any meaning they want to fit their own narrative. The reality portrayed in media will always be different from our lived reality. An example of a heightened reality media text is The World is My Oyster (2022) released by HYBE Labels which is a documentary that documents the behind-the-scenes of LE SSERAFIM (a kpop group)’s journey of making their debut album. It is considered as heightened reality because although it's unscripted, it’s shot in different camera angles, includes non-diegetic sounds and edited in a certain way to portray a meaning. The documentary includes interview clips of the members and fly-on-the-wall styled footages. When viewing a heightened reality film, audiences are able to differenciate between what is real and what is added during the editing process. On the other hand, it’s hard for the audience to distinguish between what is real and what is not real in a hyper reality text. An example of this is the reality TV show, The Kardashians (2022) released on HULU. The show is about famous celebrity family acting like they're living their daily lives however many of the scenes are scripted and many of the events are staged so the audiences are not able to determine what is real and what is not. Baudrillard believes that audiences prefer viewing the simulation of hyper reality because it’s more enjoyable than their own lived reality. Throughout the TV show the Kardashian are always shown with makeup and a model-like fashion even when they just woke up, which is considered as a simulacra, a representation of reality are are not real because in real life people wouldn’t be wearing make up and looking camera ready 24/7. According to Richard Dyer’s Theory of Stardom, audiences are attracted to star’s reel persona more than their real persona.

Power and the media 

‘Ownership of media companies is restricted to a privileged minority, which means that the media are never fully representative.’ To what extent do you agree with this statement? [15]

Due to the ownership of media companies, media are not able to be fully representative. The representation shown in the media most of the time will be biased to a privileged minority. However, as time goes media is slowly including more variety on their representation.

Nowadays more films are including a wider variety of representations. For example the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) included positive representations. Subverting from Paul Gilroy’s Post Colonialism theory, Wakanda, which is the fictional representation of Africa, a country that was previously colonized by Europeans. Wakanda is portrayed as a strong and technologically advanced country meanwhile, Black African people or the ‘others’  are historically stereotyped as uncivilized and poor people. To be fully representative of the black community marvel reached out to Africans for references and clothes designs in order to portray a more accurate representations of Africa. However, due to the hegemonic group of white producers in the media industry, films are still mainly biased towards the white community. As an example, the movie The Woman King (2022) is a movie that focuses on the powerful, black woman warriors of the Dahomey tribe. However, throughout the movie the black characters are shown with exotic and minimal clothings while the white European colonizers are shown in fancy and high class clothing. Dahomey tribe is also shown living in a poor condition as slaves and during the fight, the colonizers are armed with guns while the tribe peoples are only equppied with traditional weapons such as knifes. The mise-en-scene are shown to show european imperialism, which implies that european culture are better than other cultures. These conflicting representations may be confusing for audiences with colonized backgrounds as they’re not sure whether to believe the media or their own lived experience. This is called double consciousness. According to Stuart Hall’s Representation theory, audience members create their own meaning and assumptions about black and white people according to the stereotypes shown on media.

It may be hard for media to be fully representative as most of the media we consume daily are created and controlled by conglomerate companies. Media companies such as Lucasfilm, National Geographic and Marvel are acquire by one of the ‘big 6’ media conglomerates, the Walt Disney Company which created media consolidation. Those subsidiary companies needed to adjust their contents according to Disney’s ideology and brand image of a ‘family friendly’ company which creates an illusion of choice for audiences. Audiences may think that they’re consuming a variety of media when in reality they’re just consuming media from one big company. Most films created by Disney features the same message, for example, most of the time in their superhero movies, the main superheroes are white, good-looking men and they follows a typical narrative of the good guys winning at the end. These type of casting and narrative can be seen in Marvel’s Avengers Endgame (2019) and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). However as media has become more globalized, Disney has been trying to become more inclusive in the past few years by including more representations of minorities. Disney+ has been providing audiences with more variety of representations such as Ms Marvel (2022) features a female Pakistani superhero main character and Turning Red (2021) shows representations of a Chinese-Canadian household.

Section B: Media Ecology

Analyse the significance of the convergence of the smartphone with mass communication technology. [30]

The convergence between smartphone and mass communication technology has affected the way we consume media. With the help of technological convergence, audiences are able to access movies, tv shows and prints from anywhere and anytime with the internet.

As technology advances, the media industry is moving from traditional media towards new media that we can access through our smartphone. Nowadays it’s common for media companies to distribute their films through online streaming platforms. Due to the decrease of viewership ratings, in 2021, The Walt Disney Company decided to shut down Disney Channel in Southeast Asia to focus on their online streaming service, Disney+. Disney+ allows their subscribers to watch any shows through their smartphones anytime without limitations. Disney+ has allowed Disney to provide a wider variety of content as it includes shows from their subsidiary companies, National Geographic and Marvel which was acquired in 2009. It also allowed Marvel Studios to produce niche films such as She-Hulk (2022) and Moon Knight (2022) for the Marvel Comics fandom that are exclusively only available on Disney+. Contents on Disney+ are easily accessible by audiences as it can be accessed through smartphones and it’s also relatively cheap when compared to movie tickets or blu ray discs. The use of smartphones can help us satisfy one of the base needs from Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory, social relationship. We are able to build social relationships by discussing the media with other people through social media discussions or online communities.

With the help of smartphones, TV shows are able to reach a wider audience and allow prosumerism. Boys Planet is a South Korean survival TV show aired in 2023, produced by Mnet, a subsidiary of a major entertainment company, CJ ENM. Mnet utilizes technological convergence to promote the series to a global audience. Aside from airing it through the local Mnet channel, CJ ENM worked together with streaming platforms such as VIKI and VIU to broadcast the show internationally which lets fans to watch the show through their smartphones. The mobile app of the streaming platforms also provides international viewers with subtitles or dubbing in various languages. Boys Planet created prosumers by involving their audience in the process of choosing the winners. They opened weekly online votings that can be accessed through mobile phones to let viewers choose their favorite contestants. According to Henry Jenkins’s Fandom Theory, fans enjoy media texts so much that they create contents based upon the text and form communities around it, which has been made even more possible with the help of smartphones. The Boys Planet fandom actively participates in the promotion of the show by posting screenshots or clips from the show on social media to attract other fans. Their fans act as textual poachers that can offer new interpretations of the show by creating their own media such as fanfictions of the contestants and fanmade music videos. Smart phones also contain cameras and editing software, so the prosumers can upload using their phones only. 

In this digital age less people are willing to buy physical prints of magazines since it’s more practical for them to search for information through smartphones. Magazines which are considered traditional media have evolved into new media. In 2017, Teen Vogue announced that they’re stopping the printing of their physical magazine due to the decline of consumers, However, they’re still making magazines and publishing them through their website. Online magazines are preferred by many audiences, especially the younger ones like Teen Vogue’s target market, because they’re accessible through their smartphones. The style and form of online magazines have been made to suit smartphones. The layout has been altered to fit the smartphone aspect ratio. The magazine also includes shorter articles, more pictures. Smartphones also allowed online zines to be more interactive by adding videos or clickable texts and links.

Thanks to the advancement of smartphones we are able to digitalized events that are usually conducted offline. In early 2020, when the pandemic started people were unable to watch their favourite artists in concerts or festivals. This led to the invention of online concerts. Beyond Live is one of the first online live concert streaming services established in early 2020 by SM Entertainment in partnership with Naver. The platform allows artists to hold a live performance virtually that can be watched through smartphones. Other than that, chosen fans are given a chance to interact real time with the performer via video calls. Not long after its establishment, a Kpop group formed by SM Entertainment, SuperM, held their first online concert. They garnered hundreds of thousand ticket buyers, proving their massive success. Unlike offline concerts, Beyond Live provides their customers with VOD, allowing them to rewatch the show anytime they want. Although traditional concerts are allowed these days, many Korean artists chose to do concerts through Beyond Live because of its practicality and the amount of profit it gave them because according to Hesmondhalgh’s cultural industries theory, media companies need to minimize risk and maximize profit to be successful.