Movable Type is a Media Studies journal that displays outstanding work, researched and recorded by the undergraduate students at the University of Virginia.
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Edition 1.1 Spring 2014
table of contents
Meet the Team
Who do we think we are?
The Insider’s Local by Kate Colver
8
Understanding Globalization A look into scholarship and theory
4
14 16
Blurred Lines of Consumption by Lisa Myers
The Persuasive Power of Music by Susannah Saunders
24
29
A New Pluralistic Sphere by Niki Afsar
Credits
36
“My endeavor to compile a diverse cache of information, however trivial, has led me to the boundless realm of media. Though my time on Jeopardy may never come, I am certain that the question ‘What is Media?’ will continue to fascinate me with its innumerable answers. I still have much to learn, but some categories are becoming easier to tackle: I’ll take ‘Famous Film Detectives’ for 400, Alex.”
“I am passionate about discovering how to use the media resources that exist to highlight truth, which requires us not to run away from media, but to use it as a starting point for cultivating action. The creativity and artistry of the media is certainly worth exploring and participating in, but it must be understood for what it is - a shadow of the living.”
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Blythe Young Editor Media Studies, Religious Studies Fourth Year
Lisa Myers Vice Editor Media Studies, American Studies Third Year
meet the team “The study of media is one of the most interesting, relevant, and enjoyable academic fields offered at the University. It has allowed me to combine my outside knowledge of disciplines like psychology, English, film, gender studies, and cultural studies with the facts I learn inside the classroom.”
Mirenda Gwin Outreach Media Studies Third Year
“From understanding the role of gender in film and television, to the study of public policy, to theorizing how media texts are read around the globe, media studies opens up so many avenues of research and inquiry that everyone has an opportunity to be involved and to carve out their own space and place.”
m c Assistant Professor Christopher Ali Faculty Advisor Media Studies Department
Connectivity is at the core of our new media environment. Here we explore what this looks like on a global scale and how the progression of globalization is changing the way we look at the world from the local spaces we inhabit.
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global media
Essay by Kate Colver Second Year Arts Administration Major
The Insider’s Local:
Investigating the role of local media in shaping community identity at the Richmond Times Dispatch Introduction:
Community and Communication Information is imperative in order for individuals to act interdependently and form a community. Understanding one’s place within a public web of events and sentiments requires identity placement within the broader physical and social context of place. As authors Elizabeth and Gary Hansen note, “Community and communication are, almost by definition, intrinsically linked”1. Media makers play an influential role in the flow of events by providing an informational framework encompassing the
events within the community ecosystem. Journalists serve as the gatekeepers of information, deciding what information to present and how to present it to its captive audience. Such responsibility requires great consideration when it comes to framing information to be presented to a body of people known affectionately and colloquially as the locals. Labeling one’s audience as the locals of a geographic area denotes particular social and emotional attachment. The local as an identity or label plants its primary characteristic in the physical proximity of a community, but also draws meaning from shared
experience that creates “a concern for the common good, connection with neighbors and friends, [and] a sense of place”2. Note that this stands as the definition that I refer to when employing the term local in proceeding arguments. Journalists must execute greater sensitivity when presenting locally aimed content because readers possess a level of insider knowledge and territorial familiarity, both physically and emotionally. To feed its hunger for information and belonging, the community of Richmond, Virginia predominantly (and affectionately) turns to the longstanding local newspaper, the Richmond Times Dispatch. The following research intends to discern how staff reporters at the Times interpret their objective and subjective roles in shaping the sentiment of the Richmond community as a local entity. Understanding the perceived influence of local news writers remains an important task in discerning the giveand-take relationships that media makers have with the communities they serve. The idea of the local remains increasingly relevant as globalism melts the confines of time and place and overwhelms the possibility for knowing and social interaction. With such expansion, the local becomes more urgent yet nostalgic, a familiar raft to cling to in the sea of global technology. Globalism has brought with it a reiteration of the comfort and sense of place to be found in the local. In order to assess the intentions of local media makers as community shapers, I performed a small case study to interview multiple staff writers at the Richmond Times Dispatch. After assessing their responses, I came to the conclusion that local media makers intend to situate content within the geographically and experientially familiar context of Richmond, aiming to do so as objective facilitators rather than subjective contributors to or conductors of community conversation and identity establishment.
Literature Review and Background:
The Richmond Times Dispatch has been Central Virginia’s newspaper of record for over 150 years. Each issue rightfully boasts that the Times reaches 667,000 readers online and in print. Predominant readership is located within the Greater Richmond area (Richmond city and surrounding counties), though distribution spans across the state. The Times currently has a newsroom staff of approximately sixty-five, after having cut twenty-eight newsroom employees in April 2009 following the economic recession. The Times operates in Richmond, Virginia but is owned on a broader scale by Media General. Its mission statement reads, “We will serve our customers as the leading provider of
high quality news, commentary, information, and entertainment in Central Virginia (information obtained from reporter interviews). Research on the subject of local journalistic roles and intentions can be divided very roughly into two camps. The first constitutes a belief in soft determinism, in which the media select and frame information in the context of shared experience to engender a positive sense of community. Authors McCombs and Funk label this phenomena as the “stakeholder hypothesis,” which theorizes that, “local media coverage will positively reinforce the predominant strengths of a community” to build a community identity based on collective merits3. A second rudimentary category of discussion offers a community-driven perspective in which the power to shape local identity comes from the activity of citizens, with media appearing only as an after-thefact reflection of already established community attachment. In this sense, citizens find identity reflected in information that derives from within their community, their home, and their place rather than from within a news office. In their study on the correlation of reader satisfaction and local newspaper content, Elizabeth and Gary Hansen discovered that an increase in the overall portion of locally created and locally aimed content in community newspapers led to a 15% increase in overall reader satisfaction and a 10% increase in reader trust of newspapers4. This information indicates that readers confidently establish community identity and expect newspapers to merely reiterate that identity rather than define it. Media scholars Lindsay Hoffman and William Evelyn denote these two camps of thought in their work on assessing causality between media use and community attachment. Constituents of the former camp argue for what they title a “community integration hypothesis,” which simply states that, “local news media use can produce community integration…where community newspaper readership produces greater levels of integration by helping the individual orient to the community through the establishment and maintenance of local traditions…local news emphasize values and interest on which there is a high level of consensus”5. In this sense, the role of defining the local is awarded to the media. The contending viewpoint is one of community attachment first, media second. They present the “community to media” theory, stating, “by virtue of belonging to community volunteer organizations, members are more likely to follow local news and actions of government particularly if it affects the group… community attachment encourages local media
use”6. This notion implies that the role of defining the local belongs to the community rather than the media. These two views assess which party plays the role of shaping the local, yet neither theory is complete in its exclusivity. In the words of media scholar J. Staman, “Few truisms are as firmly established in mass communications—communities are necessary to newspapers and newspapers are necessary to communities”7. Particularly in the local news realm, the two entities of media and populace are mutually interdependent. The relationship between consumers and producers is symbiotic: citizens look for their community to be defined in the news, and the news looks to the community to provide that definition. The consumers of local media are also the persons who produce the activity on which local news reports, finding relevance in that experience. The producers or writers of local media are also, in some sense, the consumers as well, finding themselves as much at the mercy of local policy, education systems, highways, activity, and even weather in the particular area in which they report.
consumers of local media are also the “The person who produce the activity on which
local news reports, finding relevance in that experience.
”
Hansen and Hansen employ the words of Jack Knight when stating, “…newspapers need to inform the community and to ‘bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests’”8. Yet reporters are no less situated within the “condition” of a community than their readers, and in a sense are simultaneously the actors and the enactors, just as media consumers are simultaneously the users and providers of local content. John Pauly and Melissa Eckert argue that local journalism’s self-imposed task is not only to account events in a sterile sense, but also to capture this “magic” that is unique to a community9. Pauly and Eckert contend that the authentic experience of abiding within a certain “place” is necessary in order to integrate sentiment into sequence. Quoting Overholser, they write: Journalism as a shoe-leather profession…[journalists] insist that one can only know life directly, on the street… “No amount of planning, no level of market research, can make up for ten years of living in a town – not to mention growing up there, put-
ting your kids through school there, watching your folks grow old there”…Newspapers ought to be written “by people who feel the city’s pulse. Who’ve long walked its street, who love its quirks, know its history, and care deeply about its future.”10 This necessitation that reporters understand the community from an insiders perspective indicates the demand that community understanding be reflected in content. Past research in the field has attempted to discern to whom readers of local newspapers attribute the role of defining the local and creating community attachment. The purpose of my study is to help discern how the media makers interpret the role of defining local identity and creating community cohesion in this identity. In conducting my research, I predicted that local media makers, in an attempt to preserve the journalistic standard of unbiased objectivity, would take responsibility for the presentation of information but not the interpretation of information to define some sense of the local.
Research Questions:
Do newspaper reporters feel that they define “the local”? Is the local still relevant in a globalized world? Is defining the local a necessary reaction to preserving identity in a globalized world? Do local newspapers share a level of trust with the community based on familiar context that national newspapers cannot offer? How are local media providers distinguished by their participation in the community that they document?
Methods:
To address these research questions, I employed one primary tactic of investigation beyond academic literature research. In discerning how local media makers perceive their role as shapers of the community and builders of the local image, I spoke directly with news writers at the Richmond Times Dispatch in a series of interviews. Interviews were conducted with four staff writers and the managing editor in an attempt to hear directly how they
glob feel they address readers with an experiential and emotional interest vested in the Greater Richmond community. Questions addressed reporters’ content framing considerations, their impression of trust towards their news in the community, the label by which they frame their audience (as “Richmonders,” “Virginians,” “Americans,” or “global citizens”), and any impressions they have of how the Times Dispatch shapes the collective memory or the future direction of the Richmond community (for specific questions see Appendix). This method serves as the most effective insight into the perceived role of media makers in developing the local for Richmond specifically because these interviews, quite simply, manifest the thoughts of media makers directly and authentically. In directing questions towards media makers’ perceived “shaping” role, I sought to understand how reporters understand their influential capacity, given the immediate and involved nature of local news given physical proximity. It is important to note that the mean length of employment at the Times between reporters was thirty-three years. This fact arouses concern that positive personal sentiments may be a reflection of loyalty towards the Time Dispatch and the Richmond community more generally since working in Richmond for thirty-three years also denotes living and existing in Richmond for at least that many years as well. However, this fact also speaks to the community attachment developed through residence in an area that is inherently and arguably unique to local rather than national news. The information obtained reflects the work of a small and rudimentary case study of a local newspaper and cannot necessarily speak with relevance to all local newspapers. However, Richmond as a city offers an average population size and demographic distribution compared to the representation of other mid-sized cities in the nation, with the Times Dispatch experiencing similar internal constructs as is typical to the local news realm as a whole (larger ownership by a media conglomerate, affected by
recent economic downturn, etc.). As such, I believe that this research provides, if nothing more, a relevant jumping off point for further research on the placement of local media makers within their communities. The information can be circumscribed to ultimately speak to my larger argument that local media makers intend to situate content within the geographically and experientially familiar context of Richmond, aiming to do so as objective facilitators rather than subjective contributors to or conductors of community conversation and identity establishment.
Findings:
Responses regarding perceived roles can be digested into two large thematic ideas: the tasks of niche recognition and objective facilitation. A “niche” can be defined as a comfortable position within a defined community. The role of niche recognition speaks to the notion of understanding the Times Dispatch as it is situated within a physical proximity which engenders shared familiarity of experience and therefore trust of news as it translates from the writers to the readers. Interviewee responses repeatedly indicated the Times’ duty to address area-centric events that would not receive coverage in national newspapers, understanding the coverage’s relevance to the daily encounters that readers experience given their physical situation within the area in which news is happening. Features editor Cindy Creasy noted, “people who pick up a paper can get national news elsewhere, but not local news.” This regard for proximity was echoed by reporter Randy Hallman and political columnist Jeff Schaipiro who respectively stated, “Our unique product is an in-depth, well reported local scene… it’s what a newspaper of our size is all about: the community we serve;” “The interest is what is going on at the
‘local factory’ so to speak.” Since the Times serves those residing within a definite set of boundaries, readers develop the shared experience of reading the newspaper and simultaneously living amidst the presented information. Reporters noted the longevity of readership in persons living in Richmond and the sense of nostalgia associated with the paper as a staple in every household. As Hallman noted, for many generations “the newspaper set the table every day of what was important. What is placed on the front page indicates what was important, and therefore shapes understanding of Richmond life.” Reporter responses indicated that the shared experience of readership leads to recognition of the Times as a symbol of Richmond life, which ultimately leads to a sense of trust derivative from this proximity-driven familiarity. The large consensus among reporters was that readers trust the Times. Shaipiro framed reader trust metaphorically, stating, “Readers see the newspaper as a neighbor of sorts, invited into their homes everyday. If we break the china or damage the furniture [i.e. report such that readers dispute], they tend to be disappointed, but they tell us and still invite us back.” Reporters recognize this community preference for local news, translating it into the first asserted journalistic task of niche recognition and respect. Reporters understood that their audiences demand relevant content; however, they removed themselves from the task of creating one certain “Richmond” identity by taking responsibility as objective facilitators who merely fuel conversation and identity establishment with irrefutable facts. When asked whether reporters viewed themselves as the voice of Richmond, each one responded by stating that ultimate aims were to provide the information needed by the population to make its own decisions, regarding the task of objectivity as sacred. Reporter Katherine Calos noted, “what you choose to highlight ends up shaping community
the local: The local plants its primary characteristic in the physical proximity of a community, but also draws meaning from shared experience that creates “a concern for the common good, connection with neighbors and friends, [and] a sense of place.” Lindsey Hoffman and William Eveland, Assessing Cau-
sality in the Relationship Between Community Attachment and Local News Media Use (2010)
sentiment depending on where readers take the information, but we present it all: the good and the bad…Our role is not to mold something specific in the news pages, but to report on what is happening. In our reporting, the readers end up molding something perhaps, but it is not a mission of the paper.” Randy Hallman articulated that they “are not so much pushing people forward in some direction, but rather keeping their eyes open so that they aren’t walking blindly.” Interviewees were not naïve to the power which information has for guiding sentiment; however, they noted information itself to be a level playing field, leaving readers and only readers with the task of interpreting information and developing a community conscience based off of that interpretation. Each understood the newspaper’s role of providing fuel for the fire of community conversation and recognized personal vested interest in the information as community members themselves. Managing editor Paige Mudd commented, “As people who live here, do business here, and have families here, we understand the importance to readers of these experiences because they affect us [reporters] too.” While reporters noted the special needs and regards of their niche audiences, they removed themselves from any role of scripting or establishing the uniquely “Richmond” community that citizens create from the news content that they return to every day as readers.
Conclusion:
The local continues to stand within the place of global borderless expansion as a symbol of identity and belonging. Proximity and context provide a breeding ground for a familiar community sentiment that holds a power unrivaled by national or global identities because it is one in which persons ascribing to the local can take direct credit its establishment and lived practice. From the aforementioned research I can conclude that both readers and reporters value the shared experience associated with living within a shared physical space. Space remains a key determinant of the local because it inherently bonds persons as neighbors and witnesses to the same events and the same conversations that stem from these events. Reporters at the Richmond Times Dispatch indicated a strong implication that the local, whatever the community defines it to be, is still relevant in a global society because it offers a place of familiarity and trust. Findings suggest that newspaper reporters place themselves as confronters of
the community as it is a literal, physical collection of people, but not as it is more subjectively and ideologically a consensual identity or system of beliefs. In other words, findings indicate that reporters align themselves more with the community to media approach rather than the community integration hypothesis. The information collected throughout this research process has provided invaluable insight into the minds of local media makers; however, much is still left to speculation. Keeping in mind that the mean length of employment at the Times Dispatch for each reporter interviewed was thirty-three years, one must question just how removed from the Richmond local these reporters are. Lived experience is arguably the only way to fully understand the community to which one intends to feed information, yet lived experience brings with it a vested interest in the community which could bleed into reporters’ selection and presentation of content in a subjective rather than objective manner. Additionally, reporters proposed a high level of trust
among readers and a continued demand for content that feeds their readers as they exist within the specifically Richmond (rather than state or national) context of events. Some may argue that this claim of trust and demand is merely the voice of someone viewing local to global relationship through rose-colored glasses. With such loyalty to their practice, these reporters could be overly optimistic about the importance weighted towards the Richmond Times Dispatch within the Richmond community. This speculation leads logically into the hypothesis that given their utter familiarity and temporal attachment to the community on which they report, local journalists perceive their news as more necessary and influential than do their readers. Despite their being room for further speculation surrounding my research, the narratives of the interviewed reporters certainly provides insight into understanding where local media makers place themselves in the scheme of creating and executing the nostalgic, enticing, and comforting concept that is the local.
ask the experts “Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occuring many miles away and vice versa.” Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (1991)
“[Globalization is] the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole.”
Roland Robertson, Globalization: social theory and global culture (1992)
“Traces of other cultures exist in every culture, thus offering foreign media and marketers transcultural wedges for forging affective links between their commodities and local communities.” Marwan Kraidy, Hybridity: or the cultural
logic of globalization (2005)
gl l ti “Think Global, Act Local” is an international marketing principle that has penetrated the business world. The strategy encourages entrepreneurs to visit the local marketplace of their business in order to understand their specific customers while maintaining freedom to extend their business to make a global impact. Companies are learning to dream big while remaining relevant.
o ba i za io n Globalization involves more than just the spread of ideas from one place to another. The study of how these ideas are integrated or rejected impact how nationalism, identity, and origin are understood.
the world is flat mackeral, the world is becoming flat. Several “ Holy technological and political forces have converged,
and that has produced a global, web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief even language. History of the Twenty-First Century (2005)
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Blurred Lines of Consumption
Essay by Lisa Myers Third year Media Studies Major, American Studies Major
Practices and consequences of “consumption result in the diminishing of the local and the Buy spread of a single globalized this! On sale! Become a space of and for consumption better you. Hungry? Phrases prompting individuals to conwhich is then presented to the sume saturate communities through commerhomogenized consumer identity, cials, billboards, and flashy advertisements. While these platforms gain attention, there are a multitude created and reinforced in every of more subtle ploys that greatly impact the ways people recurring visit. are led to consume. My research project is developed around
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the principles of marketing that have transformed spaces where consumption occurs into spaces purposely created for consumption. This transition from spaces of consumption to spaces for consumption provokes a loss of place, and is exchanged for standardized consumer spaces. The environments themselves reflect desirable lifestyles that consumers are inclined to literally buy into in order to take part in an imagined community that exists through constructed ideologies. This demand of participation is through the form of consistent purchasing, but principles of consumption do not end there. The environments of purchase also encourage repeated visits and create new consumer identities as the products for sale act as symbols of identity, nationality, or socioeconomic status. The space and the products are temporary fulfillments of the desired lifestyles for consumers while the practice of consumption within space entrenches a consumerist mindset in individuals as well, which flows into alternative living spaces. This research is relevant because the American processes that many companies have adopted in their marketing strategies have expanded into other countries as well, creating an increased level of consumption on a global scale. This is consumption not only of resources but also and especially of false ideas of security, identity, and community. The globalization issue revolves around the methods of commercialization spreading to other nations and in additional spheres of life, whether or not those spheres are appropriate spaces for consumption. In addition, consumers are promised satisfaction of their hunger for food, community, class, and lifestyle by false promises that ultimately fail to satisfy these longings, which leads to heightened de-
sires and demands for fulfillment. What makes these spaces so successful then, is their ability to instantly gratify those needs, but fail to satisfy them long term, thus leading consumers to return and continuously purchase as loyal customers through a convoluted conception of justification. Steven Miles summarizes the issue at hand by stating “the experiential nature of consumption through shopping may be fundamentally altering our relationship with the city insomuch as the city becomes ‘framed’ by the consumer ethic”1. The local spheres of the city are altered into standardized, globalized formats that are ruled by these commercial principles. Practices of consumption are becoming more and more commonplace within every area available to individuals. This paper will evaluate marketing techniques such as structured spaces and visual productions of consumption and how they subconsciously impact individuals visiting these commercial spaces. These techniques create and enforce a new identity for the individual, known as the citizen-consumer, and create a struggle of power and freedom for the consumer, who becomes deeply engrained in a “we are what we eat” ideology. Finally, the noted consumer principles flow into additional spaces, provoking more spheres of life to construct both material and immaterial structures leading to consumption. These practices and consequences result in the diminishing of the local and the spread of a single globalized space of and for consumption which is then presented to the homogenized consumer identity, created and reinforced in every recurring visit. A number of scholars with multiple theories have debated the way that these dynamics of consumption take place. Some, such as Juliana Mansvelt in her article Geographies of Consumption, focus on the effects of the physical space in the moments of consumption, including the creation of citizenship. Mansvelt claims that factors such as exclusivity, morality, and regulation contribute to the creation of the consumer. Robert Dunn comes to similar conclusions, noting that, due to the performance demanded of individuals within spaces, people are identified as ‘consumers’ before any other characteristic because “identity is enacted through ownership and use of commodities”2. Mansvelt’s discussion is also heightened by Gillian Rose’s research of methodologies that take place in public spaces. He considers specific rules of the space: its particular layout or boundaries created by counters and signs generate a desire that causes customers to “gaze” and also desire fulfillment through those products or lifestyles resting just out of reach 3. Other
scholars, like Rakic Tijana, solidify these arguments, stating that spaces and moments of consumption have collapsed into a single experience, unable to be separated by the visitor. These scholars’ discussions go hand in hand and echo George Ritzer’s principles. In his articles Enchanting a Disenchanted World and The McDonalidization of Society, he explains space and its role as a provoker of consumption in such a way that embeds it a part of the experience. Rakic and Ritzer both capitalize on the active participation of the consumer, whose engagement within a space helps to construct that environment, leading to a deeper connection and a deeper desire to consume. This is precisely where Diane Carver Sekeres would enter the conversation in order to define Ritzer’s ideas about the “commercialization of fun” as the concept of “playspace”4 5 . In The Market Child and Branded Fiction, Sekeres highlights the concept of well-known academic, Benedict Anderson’s, “imagined communities” and the ways this (1) displays how consuming a product blurs into consuming a lifestyle in order to gain citizenship within an imagined community (be that a local, national, or global community) and (2) blurs the ideas of consuming brands with consuming literature – these two become one complex consumer approach6 . Both Ritzer and Sekeres capitalize on the importance of story and how it is used to compel individuals to consume the integrated ideas of space and the practice of consumption. Finally, Steven Miles suggests that the lifestyle individuals are attempting to engage with and embody through the performance can never actually be achieved through consumption, although the space leads consumers to believe it will and consequently motivates habitual consumption. Each of these sources led to a more profound understanding of this subject. They also inspired my research methods and persuaded me to critically analyze spaces of consumption firsthand to see the marketing processes at work. Scholars like Rose and Ritzer particularly challenged me to develop my own ideas about spaces of consumption in order to come to distinctive conclusions and put these theoretical discussions to the test. In learning what past academics have theorized about related topics, I developed a collection of my own questions. First, I wanted to understand how space – the environment and location itself – affects the products we consume. In order to better understand media’s role, I asked how advertising press frames these process of consumption. I also became intrigued with the idea of the hyperreal, defined by Umberto Eco as a constructing of the fake through desire of
the real; because of this, I included the question of how “hyperreal” consumption has developed7. My research also answers the question of how McDonaldization and Disneyization have impacted the global consumer. George Ritzer and Alan Bryman both discuss McDonaldization and Disneyization respectively, each expressing how the principles of these corporations are actively “dominat[ing] more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world”8. My last two questions stem from ideas about the adopted identity of individuals, marked by participation of consumption: How does consumption affect identity or citizenship, and what nation are we gaining citizenship of when we consume? In order to answer these questions, I explored three distinct spaces. First, I visited Charlottesville, Virginia’s local branch of Barnes and Noble. Second, I took a trip to the Aquatics and Fitness Center, a gym on the University of Virginia grounds. The last place I visited was Scott Stadium, where Virginia’s football team hosts each game of the fall season. After visiting these places, I critically analyzed my experiences within the space, evaluating the layout of each from a consumer pointof-view, the design features presented, the details in the way workers addressed visitors, the ways in which the particular product(s) were marketed, and if the request for consumption was supplemental or essential for acquiring a desired lifestyle and/or fully experiencing the physical spaces. My second method of research was a close analysis of how the press frames the products for those lifestyles deemed achievable through purchase. To do so, I examined twelve press articles from magazines such as AdWeek and Advertising Age, each of which explored the marketing strategies of various corporations. Reading and researching the practices of places like Starbucks, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Panera Bread assisted me in understanding the strategies of these spaces as framed by the media magazine, which influences the ways in which the consumer views those branded spaces. Ultimately, I hypothesized that my experiences in the selected spaces would parallel the analyses of the press articles in terms of how consumption of and in space occurs. According to Judith Williamson, “We feel a need to belong, to have a social ‘place’; it can be hard to find. Instead we may be given an imaginary one”9. Williamson, as quoted by Gillian Rose, lays the foundation for the intent behind the architecture and visual discourse of space. The locations in which consumption occurs involve particular struc-
tures that create a temporary sense of place. Upon entering Barnes and Noble, visitors find that the store has provided furniture - comfortable couches and work tables are scattered throughout - as well as access to free wireless internet, and a safe atmosphere complete with a soothing soundtrack playing the background. By offering a multi-dimensional environment, the structure of the space speaks to guests, telling them to sit back and prop their feet up, and maybe even take off their jacket. Leading individuals to feel relaxed within the space ultimately entices them to trust in the environment and stay longer. This is key because the longer they choose to stay, the more they will consume. Even decisions to include a café and a bathroom prevent customers from exiting the store; everything they possibly need is offered to them. Secondly, the exclusivity factor of the building itself gives customers a direct vision of their placement in respect to the desired community constructed by the space: Individuals are outsiders until they enter the store, and the setting exudes a specific personality and community through its products, images, services, and architecture. To further this division, these spaces are often set up as “spectacular” because, as Bryman states, they “provide an experience that gives the impression of being different and even a sense of the dramatic while being in a location” which encourages the consumer to “engage in other types of consumption” other than the just purchasing10The question implanted in the customer’s mind, then, is how to maintain the “spectacular” outside of the building in order to legitimize themselves as an authentic member of the exclusive community residing behind the front doors. The Aquatics and Fitness Center presents this through their membership requirements, front counter, and entrance gate. Those with an identification card or monthly-fee member card are required to present it at the desk in order to enter the sacred space of the workout center. Those without granted access are left only to stare past the counter or through the glass into the gym and watch the community of this exclusive group interact and obtain an ambiguous something they themselves are lacking. Even individuals who have access into the exclusive spaces are still saturated with consumerist psychological thought processes because they only achieve satisfaction while spending time in the space. Resolving this issue takes on numerous forms, especially through routine visits and purchasing goods that exceed the boundaries of the given environment. Purchasing a pair of athletic shorts, for example, from “TJ’s Locker”, the
convenience store located inside the fitness center, allows members to wear attire that offers them a symbolic identifier as ‘gym-going individual’, ‘athlete’, or simply ‘healthy’. Additionally, spaces involve particular rules, some stated and others implicit. Rules such as requiring and expecting a particular dress code to be upheld or labeling the space as private prevents unwanted visitors out and controlled visitors within the space. Living in a culture of visual dominance, it is evident that the “market strengthens this tendency [to model ourselves after only the visual] by guaranteeing a constant stream of products and services promising to improve one’s looks”11. Visual productions appeal to individuals’ “scopophilia”, a Freudian concept that expresses human tendency to find “pleasure [in] looking”12. This is something that advertisers and spaces exploit through display cases, posters, and ad campaigns. The process of semiotics is also at play in these spaces of consumption. Starbuck’s is one company that has achieved this by collapsing their “Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte”, poured into a Christmas cup and set beside a laptop, with the idea of a professional or studious lifestyle. The code that embeds messages of a lifestyle within a single product is a visual discourse that is often subconscious when consuming lifestyles within a space, exemplifying the concept of blurred lines as consumers who are motivated by the visual symbols throughout the space, fail to differentiate a product from the lifestyle portrayed in the space. The visual productions within these spaces provide a performance aspect to the practices of the individual’s consumption. There is a distinct role that the consumer is playing while consuming – the role of performer. Because these commercialized spaces are public, there is a desire for the citizen to not only legitimize their own identities through acts of purchase, but also legitimize their identity in the presence of others. They adopt a dignity based on the element of being seen as a consumer. These constructions of identity manifest themselves through the idea of citizenship, power and freedom, and an embodied ideology founded on consumption. Individuals earn the label of “citizen” by their ability to participate, typically in politics through activities such as voting which acts to identify people as members of a national community. In the commercialized spaces presented to American citizens regularly, the primary participatory action is that of consuming, thus citizenship rests on the ability to consume, what is consumed, and how often it is consumed. Since 1998, Olive Garden has ensured its customers that “When you’re here, you’re family;”
however, the restaurant works through a process of constructed relationships that meet over a table of $15 entrees that, only after being purchased and consumed, can mark customers as part of the Italian famiglia13. In addition, identifying as members of a community involves performance. To become an active citizen in a community, whether that is a community of athletes, artists, academics, or highbrows, individuals are required to perform through ritual consumption. The identity of citizen can evidently be bought as lifestyles are purchased through “buyable experiences”14 The spaces where consumption takes place often allow visitors numerous choice, what Bryman would refer to as “hybrid consumption” 15. I will refer to this idea of combining distinct types of products into one sphere as compound consumption instead in order to highlight the multiplicity of the concept. In addition to selling books, as its identity of Booksellers would suggest, Barnes and Noble sells games, music, puzzles, calendars, sketchbooks, art supplies, and journals. Furthermore, more than half of the company’s locations also include a Starbuck’s café where tea, coffee, juice, bakery items, sandwiches, and packaged coffees and gifts are available for purchase. While individuals are given numerous options, reflecting the massive effects of convergence culture in America today, these choices are highly controlled: individuals must choose one, many, or all. The point is not which option they choose, so long as something is chosen; so consumers are presented with freedom but a restricted freedom that lacks the decision not to choose, resulting in a process of justification over purchases. This does not mean consumers are entirely passive, but they do validate their acts of consumption by framing them around the promises that consumer goods offer, as well as suspending their disbelief in the environments, causing them to “buy obsessively, believing that [they] are still playing”16. Within the space of the Barnes and Noble café, customers have the power to decide, but they also abandon their power to reject the “artificially created desires” that are instilled through the selection of items on sale17 . Feeling the need to justify a purchase also puts consumers in the position of an audience member watching the performance of the lifestyle within that public space of grocery store, fitness center, restaurant, or stadium. The only way to become the performer and join in the imagined community is by gaining the props to do so – by purchasing them. This power struggle between who is performing and who is watching is key to the publicity
of consumer spaces because there must be someone watching and someone performing at all times for the money exchange to materialize. In television commercials, viewers are automatically cast on the outside; however, the athletes in a 2013 Dick’s Sporting Goods advertisement, target the amateur athlete at home who only has to add equipment to his or her already existing “mind [and] body” in order to become “untouchable” 18. By labeling the customer as an athlete, the company enrolls themselves as a coach who will lead you, the consumer, to become a skilled performer through the equipment offered within the store. In 1825, French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin used a phrase in his book, The Psychology of Taste, which translates to “tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”19. This phrase, suggesting people become what they consume, gains a new dimension when exploring the principles of marketing and consumption of space. In this instance, what individuals eat or consume are the spaces that are codified to present particular identities, often performed, but occasionally authentic. The visual performance is particularly captivating within spaces because “appearances or persona are the true objects of consumption and therefore identification”20. As customers sit with their coffee and books in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Barnes and Noble café, they are not only performing the identity of student, academic, avid reader, or curious author for self-legitimation, but also displaying that performance to pedestrians outside the store. The consumer becomes the identity that the store is selling. Similarly, the fitness center has formatted the machines to face one another, and windows overlooking the pool lead visitors sprinting on the treadmill to gaze at the swimmers below. Windows at the Center also create a space for legitimacy, connecting the indoor track to the weight room and allowing individuals to enter a cycle of seeing and being seen as they desire credibility and then perform to legitimize their role within the space. If identity is shaped by action and action is dictated more and more by the seemingly free but actually limited selection of choices and designs presented to consumers by the commercialized spaces they regularly inhabit, then peoples’ identities are becoming meshed into a single, globalized identity, referred to as the consumer. Once individuals actively clothe themselves in this identity of consumer, spaces can target a seemingly personalized “you”, delivering a false depiction of locality while, in actuality, “you” has been standardized, each customer
categorized under one mass global identity. This is precisely what Althusser discusses in his arguments about interpellation and a citizen’s natural tendency to respond to someone shouting “hey, you there”21. In commercialized spheres, consumers subject themselves first to the role of spectator and then to the role of performer as they respond to the environment’s call through acts of consumption. Each of us, confronted with increased spheres of commercialized spaces throughout our weekly routines, has become a commodity as well. The consumption of space allows people to become what they consume; initially consuming the space around them but, through visual and structured elements, adopt an identity through the ideologies, cultures, and habits symbolically provided by food, goods, and services they consume. The commodification of the consumer points directly to the disappearance of the local, in favor of the global. Numerous efforts have gone into making the commercialized appear local. The Coach brand uses models who tell their own stories about living in New York City, Barnes and Noble offers a children’s story time to pull together children in the Charlottesville community, and Panera Bread hires real workers to appear on their television advertisements, stressing the hands-on role of producing bread each morning for their beloved customers2223. While these efforts are valiant, they fail to achieve localization because these actions are performed within an already globally standardized space. The local conception is hence constructed and sold through the spaces as well, making it a commodity just like the consumer identity. Starbuck’s ran into this issue when attempting to design a new building. Their desire to be locally relevant resulted in a LEED-certified building for drive-thru or walk-up orders only – no indoor ordering, seating, or study space exists24. This Denver chain of the globalized coffee shop epitomizes the fact that the sense of place offered by authentically local establishments is impossible to construct and “place”, in Starbuck’s case, has to be completely removed from the picture. The local is not an entity that can be genuinely created, but global companies attempt to do so through the ideas previously noted in this research. Miles evaluates the impact of this manifestation on a grander scale. The city of Shanghai is “devoid of community or place” because the “realities of commercialism have overwhelmed, even vulgarized, Shanghai” 25. Evolving from this method is “a new kind of ideology in which the propaganda tools of consumerism place a veneer over the realities,” which, for Shanghai, may be dictatorship26. While
the façade of local may be less severe than this city’s political turmoil, the disappearance of place exchanged for spaces for consumption diminishes individuals’ authentic self as well, and results in blurred lines, not only between what spaces are meant for consumption, but also of individuals’ own roles as consumers and producers. After researching the consumption of space through visitation and close analysis, it is evident that space affects us through the visual gaze and construction of the visitor through an identity as the desirous spectator. The press articles share a highly skeptical approach on many advertising campaigns, proclaiming global companies as genius yet suspiciously powerful. Hyperreal consumption occurs by drawing consumers into a space that develops a story through products tied to an act of performance, first displayed by the structured space or workers and then performed by other consumers after they have made purchases and identified themselves loyally with the brand. The combination of McDonaldization and Disneyization play a
major role in furthering the principles of business and carrying them into global spheres, which ultimately leads to global standardization. In addition, advertising and marketing create an image and the purchase of goods is the ticket into gaining that imagined lifestyle. Finally, the role one embodies as citizen-consumer means that identity and membership within a space is based upon the active consumption that occurs there: participation is equated to citizenship, therefore purchasing is equated to consumership. With McDonaldization and Disneyization spreading globally, individuals gain the consumership of the commodified world, overloaded with information and devoid of personal or genuine place. Further research would evaluate what the sense of place and space for consumption means in terms of the digital age which neglects place entirely and rebuilds a community solely online. The consequences of this movement are currently being established as the 2010-2020 generation is born into a world where the entire social and economic experience is seemingly available online.
“Ideology is the meaning made necessary by the conditions of society while helping to perpetuate those conditions. We feel a need to belong, to have a social ‘place’; it can be hard to find. Instead we may be given an imaginary one.” Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (1978)
“People consume not simply to satisfy their biological and other modest needs but in response to artificially created desires in order to perpetuate the accumulation of capital for private profit, in other words, to ensure that the capitalist global system goes on forever.” Leslie Sklair, Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives (2002)
The world of new media offers students the ability to reflect and analyze our cultural environment in an interdisciplinary manner. These pieces display the breadth of study that media formats like film and television offer.
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television and film studies
The Persuasive Power of Music
In thinking about the production of documentary films, the aspects that often come to mind are camera angle, voice, and the general visual aesthetics used to make a point. However, a subtler, yet no less important, element exists in the world of documentaries, but it is often placed in the margins. This element is music, and its selection in the production of documentaries is arguably just as important as the more regularly discussed aspects of documentary production. In fact, documentary scholar John Corner claims, “Perhaps the richest and most intriguing aural
Essay by Susannah Saunders Fourth year Music Major, Media Studies Minor
aesthetic in many documentaries…is that provided by music”1. Certainly people recognize that music plays a crucial role in fiction films. Most people could easily hum the theme of the Harry Potter or Indiana Jones movies, for example. Music defines fiction film in assisting the narrative by connecting the scenes and tapping into our emotions by the way it is paired with the images. In many ways, its use in documentary film is not so different. Similar to its role in fiction, music can set a mood and invoke emotion in documentary film. The difference, however, lies in the viewers’ relationship to a documentary film as opposed to theirs with a fiction film. The viewers’ involvement with a documentary is different than the involvement with fiction because we are “witnesses to the implicit revelation of more general truths”2. In viewing a documentary, the viewers are not meant to transcend into a fictional world. Instead, the viewers are supposed to receive some sort of message or argument. While, like its role in fiction film, music can set a mood and invoke emotion, it also has the ability to assist in asserting the perspective of the documentary. Because of this, music should be carefully chosen and placed in documentary films so that it aligns with the argument, purpose and mode of the film. Research in psychology has offered results offering psychophysiological evidence that music in films actually produces physical responses3. In a study conducted by Julian Thayer of New York University and Robert Levenson of Indiana University, sixty male college students were split into three different conditions. All three groups viewed a short informational film about industrial safety, explaining the proper measures to take around dangerous equipment. The film also showed some of the consequences of carelessness around such equipment by incorporating some graphic examples, such as one where a man severs his finger using one of the machines. The first group was in the control condition. They viewed the film with no accompanying music. The second group was in what the experimenters labeled the “decrease condition,” because they hypothesized that stress levels in participants would be lower in this situation. This group viewed the film backed with what they called “documentary music.” This music was meant to be neutral and it featured major seventh chords, structures generally associated with pleasant feelings. The third group was place in what they labeled the “increase condition,” because their hypothesis was that the stress levels of these participants would be increase in this situation. They viewed the film accompanied by what was called “horror music.” This
soundtrack featured diminished seventh chords and “harsh timbres,” musical structures that tend to invoke stress or negative feelings because they lack the clarity and resolution of major seventh chords. The experimenters measured the participants’ psychophysiological responses while watching the film using electromagnetic equipment that recorded responses including heart rate and pulse through electrodes attached to the subjects. As the psychologists hypothesized, the results indicated that the soundtracks accompanying the films both increased and decreased the electrodermal responses in their respective film conditions. These results provide support for the idea that musical scores can add a sense of stressfulness in film4. How do these results relate to documentaries? Since documentarians are trying to influence viewers and make arguments, it seems that the knowledge that music physically affects us would cause them to place high importance on the selection of a musical track for their images. Why then, do so many documentaries place music in the margins? Can any documentary benefit from an appropriate soundtrack? In his work, Directing the Documentary, Michael Rabiger suggests that music can enhance any kind of documentary film because it can “highlight an emotional change when, for instance, an aspiring football player learns he can join the team, or when somebody newly homeless lies down for the first night in a doorway”5. Certainly any documentarian would want to pull on our emotions to make their points, right? I would argue that the answer to this question is not always ‘yes.’ The answer depends on the mode of the documentary and the nature of how the filmmaker constructs his or her argument. Music must be used in alignment with the argument, purpose, and mode of the film. If music is not carefully chosen, it can actually detract from the film’s argument. Corner points out that music has been placed in the margins in the documentary world because of the prominence of journalistic and observational formats6. He argues that filmmakers should not feel so inhibited in using music in these modes and that the use of music in different ways could actually assist in conveying an argument7. While this is possible, I think it is important to be cautious here. Experimenting with a fiction-like soundtrack, for example, in a journalistic, expository documentary could detract from the believability of the film. Documentary scholar Bill Nichols defines an expository documentary as one that “assembles fragments of the historical world into a more rhetorical frame than an aesthetic or a poetic one”8. This type of
film features voice-of-God narration and relies heavily on the legitimacy of ideas presented by authority figures to convey an argument. The 1960 documentary film Harvest of Shame serves as an example of an expository documentary with highly journalistic conventions. It offers the argument that the government should take action to improve the conditions which migrant workers in America face. The film makes this argument through strong reliance on the authority of its narrator, renowned broadcaster Edward Murrow, and on the assumed legitimacy of live interviews and the newscast form. Music could affect this documentary, but does not. Many of the scenes feature highly emotional images and dialogue. Take one of the interview scenes for example: The producer and interviewer David Lowe approaches a mother sitting on a porch surrounded by nine children of all ages. Through the interviewer’s questions, we learn that every single one of these children has to work in the fields with their parents every day. We also learn the unfortunate truth that this family can only afford to have milk once a week, a cue that all of their labor does not lead to an income that supports them well. The scene is informative but also emotional as it shows us the actual people who are affected by the conditions. An evocative musical soundtrack could be seen as helping the filmmaker create an even stronger argument. However, the mode of the film and the ways in which it presents its argument must be considered. Corner might suggest that a soundtrack could add something to the scene. Furthermore, the psychology research could lead to the conclusion that added music might heighten our reaction to the film, suggesting that the film could benefit from music. I propose that adding music would actually do the opposite. Though it might add emotion to the interview scenes, it would ultimately detract from the film’s argument. Harvest of Shame is effective in conveying its argument because of its use of journalistic conventions. A soundtrack could add a certain artificiality to the film by making it seem as though the scenes were constructed to look and seem a certain way. Music would add a voice that does not necessarily belong in the picture here. The lack of music works because it makes the scenes of the workers appear more realistic. These are their real lives into which the journalists are entering. It seems as though the viewers are being presented with unbiased informative accounts out of which they can form an opinion. Music might make the point seem more forced, or could even add a sappy feel to an already emotional image
of the workers. In conclusion, the choice to leave music conveys a certain mood and point. Its absence matches with the tone and argument of the film. In a roundabout way, this shows just how influential music can be in film because the choice to add it can change the tone of a film completely and can delegitimize a journalistic film. Similarly, music is also on the margins in observational films in the sense that films in this mode do not feature non-diegetic soundtracks like those in fiction films9. Observational cinema rests on the belief that showing the audience events just as they happen before the camera is more revealing and true to life than the use of narration or invention to convey a stance. Because of this, the mode relies on ‘fly-on-the-wall’ camera techniques where the filmmaker seems to be nonexistent, acting as a sort of camera-stand that captures action as it unfolds in real time. The observational mode was made possible as portable cameras were developed and synchronous sound was made possible by new technology10. Synchronous sound is key here when it comes to the use of music in observational films. Music is only helpful in assisting the nature of this mode’s argument if it is synchronous and part of the film’s world. Corner notes that any extra-diegetic sound can “risk the power of the immediacy effect” in these films Frederick Wiseman’s film, High School, is an example of a documentary with typical observational techniques11. A supposedly non-intruding camera watches different daily scenes in a high school and presents them to the audience for viewers to determine their viewpoint. A key point in an observational film like this is that it remains supposedly unbiased. Its goal is to show us what actually happened that day- no staging or narration. Of course, many arguments can be made that High School and films like it are indeed biased. Regardless, the point of filming in the observational mode is to make scenes, such as those featured in High School, appear completely unmediated in order to legitimize an argument or viewpoint. If this is the case, an added soundtrack would automatically place the voice of the filmmaker into the film. There is music in High School, however, but it is a very particular type. It is music in which the source can be identified in the film’s world- diegetic music. Knowing that music can affect us emotionally and physically, what does this type of music mean for observational films such as High School? Does it assist the argument or is it just there in a neutral sense? Take, for example, one of the classroom scenes where a teacher plays Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Borders of Our Lives” for her students
through a tape recorder as part of a poetry exercise. The camera zooms in on the tape player, clearly revealing the source of the music to the viewers. I would argue that the music, while it is diegetic, does assist the argument and create a mood for the film that wasn’t necessarily just there to be observed. Wiseman chose to include this scene and to allow the entire song to play even as the camera moved out of the classroom and into the hallway. The lyrics include such words as “We speak of things that matter with words that must be said,” and “Can analysis be worthwhile? Is the theater really dead?” Though it may not have been Wiseman’s purpose, I believe that the inclusion of a song with such lyrics adds to the message that Wiseman wanted to convey- he was showing us something that he thought mattered and suggesting that analysis through observation is indeed “worthwhile.” In this case, the addition of music not only fits the mode because it seems to come from within the film, but it also connects with the argument and makes the scene memorable. While music remains marginalized in both observational and journalistic documentaries, it is in the forefront of many other modes. In Errol Morris’s 1988 film, The Thin Blue Line, a prominent musical soundtrack contributes to the film’s reflexive purpose and heightens the mood. Corner points out that “Dramatizations of all kinds…have often been keen to use [musical scores] in order to support their attempt at offering some of the narrative development and emotional intensities associated with fiction”12. This is the case with the score in The Thin Blue Line. The film is successful in quickly drawing the audience in with its highly stylized and dramatic conventions, which make it seem similar to a fiction film. In this case, the most obvious convention of fiction is the soundtrack, an engaging and emotion-provoking piece composed by Philip Glass. The music ebbs and flows with the narrative, building up at suspenseful scenes and using minor tones to set a dark mood for the film. This is very similar to the use of music in a fiction film, so when the audience experiences it here, they are likely to relate the film to a fictional murder mystery of sorts. The scene of the murder in question, where a police officer pulls up behind the suspects’ car, approaches the vehicle and is then shot to death is shown multiple times in different versions. Each version represents the puzzling together of fragments of the event as told by witnesses. The music the key to creating these foggy visions. A musical analysis of the harmonic structures in the Glass’s score determines that many of them are
dissonant and harsh, similar to what the “horror music” would have sounded like in the “increase condition” of the Thayer and Levenson Study. This means that the music is not only causing an emotional reaction in the viewers, but it is also inducing a subtler physical one that makes viewers feel on edge. In this way, the music assists in bringing the audience into a fictional world. That sense of fiction helps to helps convey the idea that memories of witnesses, just like fictional reenactments are constructions and are therefore not always the whole truth. As a viewer, the feeling that you are viewing something fictional most likely makes you question the reality of what you see and hear. In this case, the musical soundtrack crucially lends to the mood, emotion, and reflexive perspective of the film. As we have seen, music is a scarcely discussed element, critical in documentary films. Even in
musical soundtrack crucially lends to the “The mood, emotion, and reflexive perspective of the film. ” the earliest forms of documentary, music or the lack thereof could make a remarkable difference in the interpretation of a film’s perspective. In fact, the addition of music can change the mood of a scene and offer extra, and possibly different, meaning than exists without it. Robert Flaherty’s 1922 silent film Nanook of the North, considered one of the first documentary films, is an example of this13. The only means of conveying a story or mood was through title slides and images. The informational title slides give the viewer context around which to base the images. Watching silently, the viewer can create his or her own mood for the film. A silent story of Eskimo life unfolds, with title slides suggesting their friendliness and their nature as “kind, brave, and simple”14. Of course the viewer comprehends the title slides as a romantic portrayal of Eskimo life and then most likely associates the images with this view. However, the addition of music makes the romantic vision clear and even suggests an air of silliness associated with the Eskimos in some scenes, an effect that Flaherty might not have intended to offer. In watching a silent version of this film, the viewer sees all of the same things that they would see without an added soundtrack; however, the way they experience it and the conclusions they draw might be entirely different. A study of the film reveals that many of Flaherty’s scenes were indeed staged in a way that romanticizes the life of
the Eskimos15. These families did not actually live so simply at this time, relying on primitive tools and means of acquiring food and lacking all forms of modern life as is suggested in the film. In the original version without the music, this portrayal is fairly clear; however, the addition of the music makes the film even more story-like and romanticized. Nanook of the North’s soundtrack features orchestral music with prominent strings and harp. Chromatic sequences at the introduction of the first characters suggest an exoticism or otherness of the subjects. Generally, however, the soundtrack is fairly Western sounding and maybe even reminiscent of something that would accompany a fairy tale or a cartoon. It helps to push the idea suggested by the title slides that the Eskimos live in simple happiness. The scene where the Eskimo is introduced to the gramophone embodies the idea that the music imposes meaning, whether intended or not, on the images. It is unclear whether or not Flaherty meant for this to be humorous, but the music certainly suggests a degree of silliness, even clumsiness or stupidity, associated with the Eskimo’s reaction to the gramophone. A slide tells the viewer that a white trader is attempting to show the Eskimo how the white man “cans his voice,” or records it using a gramophone. Being removed from the complicated and technological Western society (as Flaherty’s film suggests that Nanook and his family are), the Eskimo is puzzled by the invention and even tries to bite the record like an animal might do when inspecting something unfamiliar. A staccato string section plays out a cheerful, bouncy tune that sounds like something that could be the soundtrack to a cartoon program. Surely, without music the scene might come across as humorous, but it is really up to the viewer to determine that. With the added cartoon-like music, it becomes obvious that the viewer is meant to find this scene funny and maybe even to laugh at the Eskimo’s supposed lack of knowledge as though he is some sort of character meant to entertain the audience. Finally, the addition of music serves an even more basic function than imposing meaning: it keeps viewers’ attention
and interest. Corner mentions that the use of music in documentaries helps to “reduce the risk of the attention frame slipping towards too much self-consciousness and a loss of focus”. With Nanook of the North, and any film, music helps to keep attention on the film. With complete silence, it is easier as a viewer to slip back into your own thoughts and lose track of what is happening onscreen. Music helps indicate suspense, change in scenes, and change in mood, helping to bring back viewers who may have zoned into their own thoughts while watching a film. Since documentaries have points to make and information to convey, it is vital that they keep viewers’ attention. Music has the ability to do this. Documentary producer W. Hugh Baddeley explains the impact that musical selection can have on documentary film in his book detailing documentary production techniques: Music must ‘do something’ for a picture…Music in the right mood introduced at a scene change, or at a moment of climax, will point the visuals most tellingly…Even in the most undramatic and unemotional documentary, music carefully chosen and used selectively can point the film and add greatly to the impact. As the examples discussed suggest, there is certainly truth to this statement. The use of music in documentary films greatly impacts the messages that they convey. While scholars such as John Corner suggest a more imaginative approach to the use of music in films, it is important to very carefully imagine music selection17). While musical creativity can certainly aid and enhance our understanding of documentary films, if used poorly, it can do the opposite. Critics and psychologists alike have noted the impact that music has on human reactions to film. Seeing the role of musical soundtracks in the films discussed also points to its impact. While musical themes from fictional films stick with us forever and transport us to their fictional worlds, music in documentaries can be just as powerful, transporting ideas and arguments into our world. Music’s alignment with the argument, purpose and mode of the documentary film is a crucial element in understanding.
A New Pluralistic Sphere: Essay by Niki Afsar Third year Media Studies Major, Comparative Literature Major
Television today has drastically changed how America’s citizenship defines and participates in the public sphere. Despite Jürgen Habermas’ dismissal of mass media as acting contrary to the ideals of a public sphere based on rational-critical debate and prioritizing conversation and consensus, the medium of television has become so ubiquitous in our society that a presence in today’s public sphere requires a presence in what Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples dub “the public screen.”1 The conversation of transforming stories on television to improve representation and diversity on the screen then becomes interconnected with the conversation of redefining the public sphere as one based on the representation and inclusion of difference. A vast and expansive subject unto itself, the scope here in this paper is limited to a single fictional television series and how its attention to diversity and inclusion, and the discussions inspired by that attention, connect to the television medium’s contribution to the evolution of the public sphere. Upon its debut in the summer of 2013, the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black was received with high praise from viewers and critics alike. While credit is due to the high quality of storytelling on the part of the writers, actors, and directors, the show also gained a lot of positive attention for its focus on diversity in a female-centric cast. The show’s approach to representation of diversity and storytelling reflects calls for changing how the public sphere is understood today. Exciting but imperfect, even the show’s limitations provide a conscious meta-commentary on the limitations of public representations of diversity. Ultimately, the plural-
Television, the Public Screen, and Orange is the New Black istic and consciously flawed Orange is the New Black contributes to the conversation of diversity on the public screen, while also contributing strongly to the conversation of pluralistic, expanded, inclusive evolutions of the public sphere. In order to understand Orange is the New Black in terms of a conversation on redefining and reevaluating the notion of the public sphere, it is necessary to evaluate aspects of this conversation in contrast to the Habermasian ideal of the “liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere.”2 In her response to this model, Nancy Fraser summarizes Habermas’ sense of the public sphere that “designates a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk. It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, and hence an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction,”3 pointing out Habermas’ focus and appraisal of “rational-critical public debate,”4 his emphasis on conversation and deliberation in order to reach consensus. With the rise of contemporary media in the form of mass communication, and thus a collapse of public and private as television allows the public to invade the private home, Habermas sees a refeudalization of the public sphere: “Radio, film, and television by degrees reduce to a minimum the distance that a reader is forced to maintain toward the printed letter—a distance that required the privacy of the appropriation as much as it made possible the publicity of a rational-critical exchange about what had been read”5 Rather than the public sphere debating with and “about itself,”6 “The discussion seems to have been carefully cultivated and there seems to be no barrier to its proliferation…Today the conversation itself is administered.”7 The focus on rationality and critical thinking is lost and instead becomes a focus on “consumption” and “critical debate disappears behind the veil of internal decisions concerning the selection and presentation of the material.”8
Furthermore, such a collapse and refeudalization, Habermas claims, is a result of “the occupation of the political public sphere by the unpropertied masses”9 leading to “an interlocking of state and society which removed from the public sphere its former basis without supplying a new one.”10 Thus Habermas seems to mourn the integration that founds contemporary mass media, the integration of the masses as well as the integration of different modes of thinking besides the conversation-based rational-critical debate of the bourgeois pubic sphere. In response to the idealized definition of a general public sphere, critiques of Habermas’ work propose redefining the public sphere in contemporary society in order to include difference and pluralism, as opposed to a generalized, united idea of the public sphere based in exclusion. Nancy Fraser, in calling for the development of “a new, post-bourgeois model of the public sphere”11 contends that “although in stratified societies,” like our current American society in which hierarchies exist in the realms of sex, gender, race, socioeconomic status, etc., “the ideal of participatory parity is not fully realizable, it is more closely approximated by arrangements that permit contestation among a plurality of competing publics than by a single comprehensive public sphere.”12 Fraser reimagines the public sphere as more inclusive with the establishment of contesting “subaltern counterpublics”13 which would allow for minoritized groups excluded from Habermas’ original model to organize as well as “offset, although not wholly eradicate, the unjust participatory privileges enjoyed by members of the dominant social groups in stratified societies.”14 This call plurality is also seen from Iris Marion Young and Seyla Benhabib, who assert that the modes of rationality and reason prioritized in the public sphere rely on a sense of unity and consensus that overlooks how difference and individuality contribute to a larger dialogue. Such responses rethink Habermas’ communicative ethics and emphasis on “the experience of discussion that aims to reach an understanding.”15 Fraser, Young, and Benhabib prioritize conversation but in terms of inclusion, deliberation, and even contestation. Fraser “emphasiz[es] the contestary function of subaltern counterpublics in stratified societies in part to complicate the issue of separatism.”16 Young reimagines a public sphere modeled after the “Rainbow coalition,” a “heterogeneous public” that will “ensure that public life will not exclude persons and groups which it has excluded in the past” by “giv[ing] specific recog-
nition to the disadvantage of those groups and bring[ing] their specific histories to the public.”17 Benhabib reimagines “a model of communicative need interpretations”18 “within which moral and political agents can define their own concrete identities on the basis of recognizing each other’s dignity as generalized others.”19 Defining the “generalized other” in terms of commonality versus the “concrete other” in terms of individuality and specificity, Benhabib thus argues that the public sphere can allow for the acknowledgement of universal dignity and respect between individual persons through the pluralistic communication of specific, different identities.20 Thus, while Habermas seems to bemoan the effects of an integration of the masses, revisitings of his own communicative ethics imagine plurality and inclusion as a means of achieving a more equalized and successful public sphere. Habermas’ denouncement of a public sphere dominated and refeudalized by mass media is also revisited and revised. Conversations concerning the television medium and its contribution to changing understandings of the public sphere reflect calls for inclusion and plurality, valorizing different modes of discussion and thinking besides Habermas’ idealized rational-critical discourse. DeLuca and Peeples introduce the notion of “the public screen”21 in addition to the general public sphere. The public screen as, A concept [that?] takes technology seriously. It recognizes that most, and the most important, public discussions take place via ‘screens’—television, computer, and the front page of newspapers. Further, its [sic.] suggest that we cannot simply adopt the term ‘public sphere’ and all it entails, a term indebted to orality and print, for the current screen age. A new term takes seriously the work of media theorists suggesting that new technologies introduce new forms of social organization and new modes of perception.22 Such “new modes of perception” proposed by DeLuca and Peeples reflect the emphasis on plurality expressed by Fraser, Young, and Benhabib. DeLuca and Peeples focus on how television and screens offer communication in the form of “dissemination.”23 “The public screen is an accounting that starts from the premise of dissemination, of broadcasting. Communication as characterized by dissemination is the endless proliferation and scattering of emissions without the guarantee of productive exchanges,”24 a consequence also warned by Fraser, Young, and Benhabib in the attempt to understand the specified and differentiated other. DeLuca and Peeples suggest that the dissemination
of the public screen “offers a model of communication that is more democratic, open, public, equitable, receiver-oriented, and in tune with humanity’s multiple communication practices”25 thus imagining the public screen as an important and necessary counterpart to the conversation of the public sphere in contemporary society. Rather than preventing deliberation and conversation, the television medium and public screen thus seem to provide the possibility for cultural understanding and discussion. DeLuca and Peeples include in the television medium “sitcoms and other entertainment TV, where national ‘discussion’ on race, class, feminism, and sexual identity take place on Cosby, Roseanne, Ally McBeal, and Ellen,”26 thus accrediting entertainment and fictional TV’s ability to contribute to public debate and discussion. Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch reimagine “Television as a Cultural Forum,” reflecting on how television acts as a space for cultural debate and “contemporary cultures examine themselves through their arts, much as traditional societies do via the experience of ritual. Ritual and the arts offer a meta-language, a way of understanding who we are and what we are, how values and attitudes are adjusted, how meaning shifts”27 The vast plurality offered by television, the multiplicity of genres and stories and choices, again poses the consequence of what Young calls “the irreducible multiplicity and ambiguity of meaning;”28 for Newcomb and Hirsch, in television “The emphasis is on process rather than product, on discussion rather than indoctrination, on contradiction and confusion rather than coherence,” contradiction and confusion not unlike DeLuca and Peeples’ dissemination. The forum provided by television “offers a perspective that is as complex, as contradictory and confused, as much in process as American culture is in experience,”again demonstrating television’s potential for projecting the plurality and inclusion of difference called upon by Fraser, Young, and Benhabib 29. Such discussion about the potential for the television medium to alter understandings of the public sphere and how citizens participate within it have strong implications in discussion about the importance of representing diversity on the screen. Critiques of the lack of minorities in major roles on television hold important clues as to how television as a cultural forum and space for public discussion can have a direct affect on societies’ self-perception. While Newcomb and Hirsch remark that “submerged in any episode are assumptions about who and what we are,”30 Sherryl Browne Graves goes further in analyzing how
Television programming provides information about social groups in two ways: by inclusion and by exclusion. When diverse groups are included, television content offers specific examples of the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and economic characteristics of each group. However, when groups are absent form the television curriculum, there is the implication that the missing groups are unimportant, inconsequential, and powerless.31 Graves thus asserts the need for visibility, echoed in Anne Phillip’s argument that it is with “public manifestations in which differences can be confronted and (hopefully) resolved…presence becomes crucial, for any public domain marked by the systematic absence of significant groups cannot even approach this resolution.”32 Thus understanding difference requires presence and visibility. As the television medium has become ubiquitous, we see how participation in a larger public sphere today requires having a visual presence via the public screen, including the television as well as the computer screen largely dominated by the Internet. In order to “act on the stage of participatory democracy,” citizens must “appear on the public screen.”33 Dahlgren also acknowledges the necessity of visibility today, and his discussion of television’s ability to produce “civic cultures”34 is not unlike Fraser’s discussion of counterpublics. For such minoritized groups, “many of the issues raised and positions taken by various groups find their way into television and can achieve visibility and enhanced legitimacy, not least via entertainment programs.”35 Dahlgren proposes that television has the ability to establish trust between civic cultures; empathy and sympathy created through television programs can allow for “the generalized expectations of honesty and reciprocity that we accord people we don’t know personally, but with whom we feel we can have satisfactory exchanges…Such trust may often be group-specific rather than universal, but at least such cohesion can be seen as a starting point for civic engagement”36 Again, we see the potential for television to provide spaces of exchange, inclusion,
public screen: “...provokes a consideration of new forms of participatory democracy. [It] highlights dissemination images, hypermediacy, publicity, distraction, and Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples, dissent.” FromKevin Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the “Violence” in Seattle (2002)
and plurality, contributing to a more equitable and expanded public sphere. Thus, the inclusion of certain voices into the television medium, including from fictional entertainment television, involves the inclusion of significant voices from a public discussion and understanding of American culture. Having looked at how the television medium acts as a major player in the evolution of an understanding of public sphere as potentially more inclusive and based on difference, I will now shift the focus to hone in on how Orange is the New Black has contributed to such discussions of plurality or participation and representation. While the show certainly makes strong political statements about diversity and the U.S.’s current prison system, this paper will not focus on the exact statements being made, but rather on how the general approach to presenting diversity in the show contributes calls for plurality and inclusion seen with Fraser, Young, and Benhabib. Orange is the New Black presents an adaptation of Piper Kerman’s memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.37 The story follows a Piper Chapman, a well-off white New Yorker, soon to be married to her equally well-off writer fiancée, and about to launch an artisanal hand-made soap business with her best friend, whose past as her girlfriend’s assistant in trafficking drug money comes back to haunt her with a 15-month stint in the fictional federal prison, Litchfield. The pilot suggests that the show will tell Piper’s story as a “fish-out-of-water;”38 she stands out in this setting because of her race, her class, her education, her sexual ambiguity, her attractiveness. A graduate of Smith college from a WASP-ish background, she is the kind of privileged yuppie with enough comfort and time on her hands to have her own website and embark on a juice cleanse. The show makes a point to highlight Piper’s difference and exceptionalism in prison life, and the environment of the prison provides a host of colorful characters, with a wide range of diversity in terms of race, sexuality, religion, class, and gender. Reactions to the show have highly positive, and reviews from reviewers and critics almost particularly praised and expressed appreciation simply for the diversity of the show’s characters. Besides the dominant female presence, there is a large presence of women of color, immigrant women, women from lower socio-economic backgrounds, various presentations of sexuality, as well as a transgender character, played by transgender actress Laverne Cox. There is a general appreciation, from the viewers and actresses alike, for roles for women that, because of their depth, read as more authentic.
Cox has also commented on her appreciation for such a role, particularly since transgender actresses are often relegated to typical roles as sex workers.39 Selenis Leyva, who plays Gloria, a “Nuyorican” inmate, has said that, “I don’t think we’ve [in the Latino community] ever had five, six Latinas in a show this huge worldwide. We haven’t.”40 Yet, while receiving widespread praise for its attention to diversity, Orange is the New Black has also received some criticism for its limitations in attempting to break down stereotypes. A main critique has been the fact that apparently a television show needs to take place in a prison in order to feature intricate characters for women of color. Orange is the New Black is still subversive for the fact that, while most television shows about prison usually take place in male prisons and focus on violence, the reality remains that such a setting continues to present women of color in positions of lower class and associated with criminality.41 Other critiques have been that the show fails to fully break stereotypes, saying the show “is diverse in the shallowest, most tokenist ways.”42 In attempting to branch out and learn about a variety of characters, the show is forced to overlook some, for example a single Asian inmate who briefly appears, relegated such characters to types. While these are valid concerns and limitations to the presentation of diversity seen in Orange in the New Black, the manner in which the show uses difference to create conflict and further the plot demonstrates validity in its contribution to a “cultural forum” and larger public discussions on race, class, gender, sexuality, and the prison system in the U.S. The pilot episode observes a self-imposed racial segregation in the prison, which Piper initially reacts to in shock, supposedly coming from a world that ignores racial controversy. Such a stark presentation not only presents a very real depiction of race in female prisons,43 but also embraces and confronts very real questions of how racism insidiously persists in today’s supposedly post-racial America. The show’s willing admission and openness to such controversy differs strongly from the expectation that “When intergroup interactions are presented on television, they are generally portrayed as neutral or positive, especially on children’s programs.”44 Because of this avoidance of depicting “negative reactions or overt acts of prejudice or racism…As a result there are few opportunities to model how to handle this type of interaction.”45 Such calls for the necessity of confrontation reflect Fraser’s assertion in “the contestary function of subaltern counterpublics”46 and their “agitational
activities directed toward wider publics.”47 The prison setting particularly emphasizes the contestation of difference, as the show’s creator Jenji Kohan has stated that such a setting acts as a space, “where you can slam really disparate people up against one another, and they have to deal with each other… We talk about this country as a big melting pot, but it’s a mosaic. There’s all these pieces, they’re next to each other, they’re not necessarily mixing. And I’m looking for those spaces where people actually do mix…”48.
[is] a cultural forum in which “Television assumptions are raised and then complicated, and conflicting, contesting stories from specified characters or groups provoke discussion and deliberation even at the risk of confusion.
”
Here we see Kohan’s consciousness of the problems of race relations in American society, and a desire to create a story based on interaction and contention. The idea that a prison setting is needed in order to see a diverse cast interacting on a television show makes strong assertions about existing racism and segregation in American society. Such interactions, the “spaces where people actually do mix,” then have the potential to at least raise questions about how people in society either confront or ignore difference. Her description of America as “a mosaic” with potential “spaces where people actually do mix” is not entirely unlike proposals for a revisal of the public sphere seen from Fraser and Young, a heterogeneous, pluralistic coalition of groups combating separatism. In addition, what some refer to as stereotypes may also be perceived as identifiers, aspects that accredit and pay tribute to a particular cultural, racial, sexual identity. In acknowledging the realities of racism, there is the consequence of acknowledging the half-truths of stereotypes. Responding to such criticisms, Levya states, “I don’t think there is a stereotype, stereotypes also come from real truths of reality…we [Latinas] can be passionate and crazy and loud but we’re also kind and smart and there’s a little bit of everything.”49 Her comment acknowledges Fraser’s description of counterpublics as “arenas for the formation and enactment of social identities,”50 “where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses.”51 It also reflects the contradiction and paradox proposed by Benhabib of “recognizing each other’s dignity as generalized others” through the definition of “their
own concrete identities.”52 Orange is the New Black does not shy away from such contradictions, but accomplishes what Newcomb and Hirsch’s deem an “emphasis…on contradiction and confusion rather than coherence,”53 by acknowledging that, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stated in a popular TED Talk, “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”54 The manner in which Orange is the New Black structures its story demonstrates important connections with post-Habermasian critics’ appraisal of plurality, discussion, inclusion, and contestation. The show’s manner of tackling diversity presents certain stereotypes, expectations, to later be complicated. Initially, we see characters, including Piper, as caricatures, the typical stereotypes that audiences have become used to seeing on television: loud black women singing gospel in the prison shower, angry and violent Latinas, a transgender inmate who also serves as the prison’s hairdresser, butch lesbians who come on a bit strong, an intimidating Russian cook with a thick accent and a clear handle of control among the prison politics. These presentations of stereotypes, however, quickly gets complicated and even shattered as the story, initially centered on Piper, begins to branch out and expand: eccentric and individualizing details emerge about characters; a series of flashbacks are used to depict the “specific histories”55 of certain characters; dissonant interactions between unlikely characters show glimpses of humanity. The title of Adichie’s TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,”56 is extremely similar to the show’s tagline, “Every sentence has a story;”57 the show resists presenting Piper’s single story and expands to include various voices and perspectives that could not have been known to or seen by Piper. In tying in the “specific histories” and backgrounds of certain characters, the show also “push[es] its own protagonist to be left feeling the powerlessness of being made a character in someone else’s story.”58 Thus the show exemplifies Newcomb and Hirsch’s assertion that, “in popular culture generally, in television specifically, the raising of questions is as important as the answering them”59 and that “Conflicting social viewpoints of social issues are, in fact, the elements that structure most television programs”60 Orange is the New Black’s structure thus purports the notion of television as a cultural forum in which assumptions are raised and then complicated, and conflicting, contesting stories from specified characters or groups provoke discussion and deliberation even at the risk of confusion. It is interesting to note the kind of universality
being portrayed on the show. The idea of universal seems to coincide with Benhabib’s revising of an understanding of universality as acknowledging both the generalized and concrete other, acknowledging a general human dignity and respect by acknowledging characters’ specificity and individuality, particularly through cultural expression. Leyva comments on questions of realness and universality in the show’s depictions of diversity: “…I think the writers aren’t focusing on telling stereotypes, they’re telling stories, real stories that can happen to anyone regardless of race.”61 Leyva’s comments demonstrate the show’s power in telling ‘universal,’ human stories using characters that aren’t usually seen as universal. Returning to Graves assertion of the importance of including diversity in order to teach empathy, the show’s inclusion of “diverse groups”62 and its concern with ensuring that each character has a specific history tied to their identity, creates a space for “vicarious experience”63 for sympathy and identification, that humanizes and provides deeper understanding of race relations. Such a viewing of the show’s presentation of diversity ties in strongly with Benhabib’s assertion that the definition of “concrete identities” can result in the recognition of “each other’s dignity as generalized others.”64 As Young calls for, the show “give[s] specific recognition to the disadvantage of those groups and bring[s] specific histories”65 of certain character into “the public” of the narrative, the forefront of the story, in order to humanize and acknowledge a general human dignity, creating space for understanding and learning. In using Piper’s story as an entrance-point into the prison, the show gives a self-conscious, critical view of storytelling and the “privileges of storytelling.”66 There is a valid criticism of the show’s reliance on a white perspective in order to present the “other.” Creator Jenji Kohan openly acknowledges the use of Piper as a “Trojan Horse”67 in order to delve into stories that might otherwise not get attention. You’re not going to go into a network and sell a show on really fascinating tales of black women, and Latina women, and old women and criminals. But if you take this white girl, this sort of fish out of water, and you follow her in, you can expand your world and tell all of those other stories. But it’s a hard sell to just go in and try to sell those stories initially. The girl next door, the cool blonde, is a very easy access point, and it’s relatable for a lot of audiences and a lot of networks looking for a certain demographic. It’s useful.68 Newcomb and Hirsch comment on how even past
American shows like M.A.S.H. that raised controversial points reached a limit, forced to retain some conventionality in order to introduce the important questions to the forum. “A truly radical alternative”69 in Orange is the New Black, as Kohan says, would not have sold with producers. Without Piper, we would lose exposure of actresses’ of various backgrounds and identities: “We remain trapped like American culture in its historical reality, with a dream and the rhetoric of peace and with a bitter experience that denies them.”70 Yet Kohan’s consciousness of television media’s limits in terms of representations and whose stories get told by whom do not simply demonstrate a writer operating within the limits of the system, but rather of a media producer using the medium to expose the medium’s own limits: “…there’s admirable gutsiness to the show’s willingness to acknowledge that builtin imbalance that’s also part of its own makeup.”71 The show’s own entrapment within Piper’s central storyline relates to Newcomb and Hirsch’s observation on how “one of the primary functions of the popular culture forum, the television forum, is to monitor the limits and the effectiveness of this [American] pluralism,”72 so that even as the show achieves a pseudo-pluralistic form of storytelling it acknowledges the limits of such an attempt, and thus of American pluralism on the whole. This self-consciousness commentary on the limits of the entertainment industry, and potentially on American pluralism itself, connects with Benhabib’s assertion that a combined, pluralistic understanding of the generalized and concrete other “can also change levels of reflexivity, that is, they can introduce metaconsiderations about the very conditions and constraints under which such dialogue takes place and evaluate their fairness.”73 By acknowledging and acting upon its own storytelling limitations, it seems that Orange is the New Black is doing just that. Beyond the storytelling aspects of the show, Orange is the New Black’s commercial success also raises questions about the industry’s motives for depicting diversity on the public screen. The company’s youth and desire to make an impact in the television industry has allowed for a certain amount of freedom. Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, has been vocal about “his disinterest in playing by the industry’s rules.”74 Jenji Kohan has stated her appreciation for the company’s willingness and trust in the project: “That is every showrunner’s dream, to just ‘go to series’ and have that faith put in your work. They paid full freight. They were new, they were streamlined, they were lovely, they were enthusiastic about it.”75 She also
has expressed her excitement at being “new frontier” of Internet based television. Such language is backed by statements from Netflix’s officials. Cindy Holland from Netflix has stated that “We’re buying their vision, not ours” and that the very format on online streaming allows more freedom for writers: “You can write differently knowing that in all likelihood the next episode is going to be viewed right away.”76 Such openness and apparent risk-taking poses Netflix as “the first deep-pocked platform for original content to emerge since the cable TV renaissance of the late 1990s;”77 it also potentially poses Netflix as an example of how Internet based television may be a new forefront in providing more diverse content contributing to understandings and appreciation of difference on the public screen. On the one hand, Netflix’s success with Orange is the New Black may demonstrate an example of the company’s success in responding “to real events, changes in social structure and organization, and to shifts in attitude and value.”78 (And significantly, “to technological shifts;”79) meeting a public demand for increased diversity and quality of content reflecting more diverse backgrounds to better reflect society. Laverne Cox comments on the reaction to the show’s cast: “…I think that the wonderful lessons that Orange is the New Black is teaching us is that it shows our industry—the entertainment industry— that you can cast women of different races, you can cast different ages and body types, and folks will tune in and be interested. And the public is craving that.”80 Cox believes diversity should be represented not only to reflect society’s numbers, but also because there is a desire in the general public, the television cultural forum, to view difference in order to learn, understand, or relate. The flipside of the show’s emphasis on diversity are the consumerist motives behind it. While Sarandos and Holland express the company’s approach as, “there’s a bigger business in customer satisfaction than managing business satisfaction,”81 there can be no denying that the use of diversity, while perhaps a risk, has dealt beneficial results to the company. Netflix has seen recent growth that executives contribute largely to the success of its original series.82 Diversity and difference in Orange is the New Black then becomes a mode of advertising, of drawing viewers willing and able to pay for a subscription. There is some evidence in the show itself that supports this idea of using diversity to draw viewership. The show’s title sequence does not focus on Piper, but presents a montage of various faces interspersed with images of the prison itself.
We see close ups of mouths and eyes, the parts of the faces that demonstrate the most emotion, that quickly flip like a color wheel, emphasizing the variety of color, make up, and identity. We see smiles, tears, looks of concern.83 The title sequence from the outset presents the show as one based on diversity, prioritizing difference and emotions. Certainly such a portrayal relates to Young and Benhabib’s insistence on the validity of affectivity and feeling; yet presenting these values in such a way has potentially exclusionary affects. In discussing the show Ugly Betty’s commercial success, Hector Amaya observes that “diversity itself became the corporate tactic to tackle ratings, signaling a moment in our political culture where the social space often referred to as the public sphere becomes, under this definition of diversity and these conditions of citizenship, neatly occupied by the values and ethical concerns of corporations.”84 While Orange is the New Black at times seems to resist a universality that ignores specificity, Amaya argues that “the re-casting of diversity as a self-serving economic tactic”85 threatens to allow “a mostly white structure to embrace mainstream racial protocols without giving up its structural privileges,”86 and to “sidelin[e] the argument that to have a just society, the majority must substantially learn about the other.”87 Based on Orange is the New Black’s limited scope in centralizing on Piper’s story, the perspective of a white woman, and on Netflix’s tactics of using the show’s diversity as a selling point, Amaya’s observations may serve as warnings to overly optimistic appreciation for Orange is the New Black’s portrayal of universality and diversity. While the presentation of diversity on Orange is the New Black has its limitations and deserves scrutiny, its approach to storytelling can also be said to significantly reflect and contribute to the conversation around inclusiveness and plurality in the public sphere via the evolving public screen. Such criticism in themselves contribute to the larger cultural forum, for the public screen does not just include the browser open on Netflix’s website, but the multiple blogs, social media, and journalism available via the Internet. The conversations generated around Orange is the New Black in itself demonstrates various levels of plurality and discussion, and contests Habermas’ disapproval of mass media and demonstrating change and lively debate in a changing public sphere.
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The Insider’s Local
(Endnotes) 1 Hansen, Elizabeth K., and Gary L. Hansen. “Newspaper Improves Reader Satisfaction By Refocusing On Local Issues.” Newspaper Research Journal 32.1 (2011) (90) 2 Hoffman, Lindsay, and William Eveland. “Assessing Causality in the Relationship Between Community Attachment and Local News Media Use (176) 3 McCombs, Maxwell, and Marcus Funk. “Shaping The Agenda Of Local Daily Newspapers: A Methodology Merging The Agenda Setting And Community Structure Perspectives.” (909) 4 Hansen 102 5 Hoffman 178 6 Hoffman 179 7 Hansen 99 8 Hansen 105 9 Pauly, John J., and Melissa Eckert. “The Myth Of ‘The Local’ In American Journalism.” (314) 10 Pauly 316 (Bibliography) Curley, Rob. “Childhood Memories Kindle Hyperlocal Strategies.” Nieman Reports 61.4 (2007): 53-56. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Gant, Camilla, and John Dimmick. “Making Local News: A Holistic Analysis Of Sources, Selection Criteria, And Topics.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77.3 (2000): 628-638. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Hansen, Elizabeth K., and Gary L. Hansen. “Newspaper Improves Reader Satisfaction By Refocusing On Local Issues.” Newspaper Research Journal 32.1 (2011): 98-106. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Heider, Don, Maxwell McCombs, and Paula M. Poindexter. “What The Public Expects Of Local News: Views On Public And Traditional Journalism.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82.4 (2005): 952-967. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Hoffman, Lindsay, and William Eveland. “Assessing Causality in the Relationship Between Community Attachment and Local News Media Use.” Mass Communication and Society. 13. (2010): n. page. Print. McCombs, Maxwell, and Marcus Funk. “Shaping The Agenda Of Local Daily Newspapers: A Methodology Merging The Agenda Setting And Community Structure Perspectives.” Mass Communication & Society 14.6 (2011): 905-919.Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Pauly, John J., and Melissa Eckert. “The Myth Of ‘The Local’ In American Journalism.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79.2 (2002): 310-326. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. Sanchez, Rene. “Changing Reporters’ Beats--With A Focus On Local.” Nieman Reports 61.4 (2007): 52-53. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013. Yamamoto, Masahiro. “Community Newspaper Use Promotes Social Cohesion.” Newspaper Research Journal 32.1 (2011): 19-33. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Blurred Lines of Consumption (Endnotes) 1 Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. (London: Sage, 2010) , 98. 2Dunn, Robert G.. Identifying consumption subjects and objects in consumer society. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 163. 3 Rose, Gillian. Visual methodologies an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. (London: Sage, 2001), 120. 4 Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of society. Rev. new century ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2004), 3. 5 Sekeres, Diane Carver. The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 406. Education Research Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. 6 Sekeres, Diane Carver. The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 400. Education Research Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. 7 Eco, Umberto. Travels in hyperreality: essays. (London: Pan Books in association with Secker & Warburg, 19871986), 1. 8 Bryman, Alan. The Disneyization of society. (London: SAGE, 2004), 1. 9 Rose, Gillian. Visual methodologies an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. (London: Sage, 2001), 120. 10 Bryman, Alan. The Disneyization of society. (London: SAGE, 2004), 5. 11 Dunn, Robert G.. Identifying consumption subjects and objects in consumer society. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 181. 12 Rose, Gillian. Visual methodologies an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. (London: Sage, 2001), 100. 13 Bostic, Tracy Mcreynolds . “Familia Comes First at Olive Garden | Adweek.”AdWeek. N.p., 1 July 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising/familia-comes-first-olive-garden-73507>. 14 Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. (London: Sage, 2010) , 155. 15 Bryman, Alan. The Disneyization of society. (London: SAGE, 2004), 57. 16 Eco, Umberto. Travels in hyperreality: essays. (London: Pan Books in association with Secker & Warburg, 19871986), 7. 17 Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. (London: Sage, 2010) , 3. 18 Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Untouchable.” Commercial. 28 February 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKkcoL2kjG0> 19 Robinson, Fayette. The physiology of taste, or, Transcendental gastronomy. Waiheke Island: Floating Press, 2008. 20 Dunn, Robert G.. Identifying consumption subjects and objects in consumer society. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 180. 21 Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press 1971. Translation by Ben Brewster from La Pensee, 1970. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm#n18> 22Coach. “Coach New York Stories: The Coach Fall 2013 Campaign.” Commercial. 18 September 2013. <http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=V18s4HEWcKw> 23 Nudd, Tim. “Ad of the Day: Panera Builds a Rube Goldberg Machine | Adweek.”AdWeek. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-
panera-147674>. 24 Kiefaber, David. “New Starbucks in Denver Looks Nothing Like a Starbucks | Adweek.” AdWeek. N.p., 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/new-starbucksdenver-looks-nothing-starbucks-144125>. 25 Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. (London: Sage, 2010) , 79. 26 Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. (London: Sage, 2010) , (Bibliography) Althusser, Louis. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press 1971. Translation by Ben Brewster from La Pensee, 1970. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ ideology.htm#n18> Bryman, Alan. The Disneyization of society. London: SAGE, 2004. Print. Bostic, Tracy Mcreynolds . “Familia Comes First at Olive Garden | Adweek.”AdWeek. N.p., 1 July 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising/familia-comes-first-olive-garden-73507>. Coach. “Coach New York Stories: The Coach Fall 2013 Campaign.” Commercial. 18 September 2013. <http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=V18s4HEWcKw> Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Untouchable.” Commercial. 28 February 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKkcoL2kjG0> Dunn, Robert G.. Identifying consumption subjects and objects in consumer society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008. Print. Eco, Umberto. Travels in hyperreality: essays. London: Pan Books in association with Secker & Warburg, 19871986. Print. Goodman, Michael K.. Consuming space placing consumption in perspective. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2010. Print. Kiefaber, David. “New Starbucks in Denver Looks Nothing Like a Starbucks | Adweek.” AdWeek. N.p., 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/new-starbucksdenver-looks-nothing-starbucks-144125>. Mansvelt, Juliana. Geographies of consumption. London: SAGE, 2005. Miles, Steven. Spaces for consumption. London: Sage, 2010. Nudd, Tim. “Ad of the Day: Panera Builds a Rube Goldberg Machine | Adweek.”AdWeek. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. <http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/adday-panera-147674>. Ritzer, George. Enchanting a Disenchanted World : Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1999. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of society. Rev. new century ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2004. Print. Robinson, Fayette. The physiology of taste, or, Transcendental gastronomy. Waiheke Island: Floating Press, 2008. Print. Rose, Gillian. Visual methodologies an introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. London: Sage, 2001. Print. Sekeres, Diane Carver. The Market Child and Branded Fiction: A Synergism of Children’s Literature, Consumer Culture, and New Literacies.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 399-414. Education Research Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. Tijana Rakić, Donna Chambers. Rethinking the consumption of places. Annals of Tourism Research, Volume 39, Issue 3, July 2012, Pages 1612–1633 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. annals.2011.12.003> Urry, John. The tourist gaze leisure and travel in contemporary societies. London: Sage Publications, 1990. Print. “An Experimental New Starbucks Store: Tiny, Portable, And Hyper Local | Co.Design | business + design.”Co.Design. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. <http://www.fastcodesign.
com/1670889/an-experimental-new-starbucks-store-tiny-portable-and-hyper-local#5>.
The Persuasive Power of Music (Endnotes) 1 Corner, John. “Sounds Real: Music and Documentary.” Popular Music. Vol. 21. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2002. 357-66. Journals. cambridge.org. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. 2 Ibid. 3 Levenson, Robert W. “Effects of Music on Psychophysiological Responses to a Stressful Film.” Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition. By Julian F. Thayer. 1st ed. Vol. 3. N.p.: Stephen F. Austin State University, 1983. 44-51. PsycNET. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. 4 Levenson, “Effects of Music” 44-51. 5 Rabiger, Michael. Directing the Documentary. Boston: Focal, 1998. 286. Print. 6 Corner, John. “Sounds Real” 357. 7 Corner 366 8 Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print 9Ruoff, Jeffrey. “Conventions of Sound in Documentary.” Cinema Journal. 3rd ed. Vol. 32. N.p.: University of Texas, 1993. 32. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. 10 Nichols. Introduction to Documentary. 172. 11Corner, John. “Television, Documentary, and the Category of the Aesthetic.” New Challenges for Documentary. 2nd ed. N.p.: Manchester UP, 2005. 54-55. New Challenges for Documentary. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. 12 Corner. “Sounds Real”. 363. 13 Grimshaw, Anna. “The Innocent Eye: Flaherty, Malinowski and the Romantic Quest.” The Ethnographer’s Eye. N.p.: n.p., 2001. 46-47. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. 14 Flaherty 1922 15 Grimshaw”The Innocent Eye”. 46. 16 Corner. “Sounds Real”. 360. 17 Corner. “Sounds Real” 366. (Bibliography) Corner, John. “Sounds Real: Music and Documentary.” Popular Music. Vol. 21. N.p.: Cambridge UP, 2002. 357-66. Journals. cambridge.org. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Corner, John. “Television, Documentary, and the Category of the Aesthetic.” New Challenges for Documentary. 2nd ed. N.p.: Manchester UP, 2005. 54-55. New Challenges for Documentary. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. Grimshaw, Anna. “The Innocent Eye: Flaherty, Malinowski and the Romantic Quest.” The Ethnographer’s Eye. N.p.: n.p., 2001. 46-47. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Harvest of Shame. Dir. Edward Murrow, John Lowe, and Fred Friendly. CBS, 1960. YouTube. High School. Dir. Frederick Wiseman. 1969. Videocassette. Levenson, Robert W. “Effects of Music on Psychophysiological Responses to a Stressful Film.” Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition. By Julian F. Thayer. 1st ed. Vol. 3. N.p.: Stephen F. Austin State University, 1983. 44-51. PsycNET. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Nanook of the North. Dir. Robert Flaherty. 1922. Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010. Print. Rabiger, Michael. Directing the Documentary. Boston: Focal, 1998. 286. Print. Ruoff, Jeffrey. “Conventions of Sound in Documentary.” Cinema Journal. 3rd ed. Vol. 32. N.p.: University of Texas, 1993. 32.
JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. The Thin Blue Line. Dir. Errol Morris. MGM, 1988. YouTube.
A New Pluralistic Sphere (Endnotes) 1DeLuca, Kevin Michaels and Jennifer Peeples. “From
Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19.2 (June 2002): 125-151. 2 Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 110. 3 Ibid. 4 Habermas, Jürgen. “Social Structures of the Public Sphere.” The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. 43. 5 Habermas, Jürgen. “The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.” The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. 170. 6 Habermas, Jürgen. “Social Structures of the Public Sphere.” The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. 43. 7 Habermas, Jürgen. “The Social-Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.” The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. 164. 8 Allen, 169. 9 Allen, 177. 10 Ibid. 11 Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 111. 12 Allen, 124. 13 Allen, 123. 14 Allen, 124. 15 Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critique of Moral and Political Theory.” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 434. 16 Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 124. 17Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critique of Moral and Political Theory.” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 443. 18 Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1987. 92. 19 Allen, 93. 20 Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987. 77-95. 21 DeLuca, Kevin Michaels and Jennifer Peeples. “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19.2 (June 2002): 131. 22Ibid. 23 Allen, 130. 24 Allen, 131. 25 Allen, 130. 26 Allen, 146. 27 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 506. 28 Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critique of Moral and Political Theory.” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 440. 29Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 506. 30 Allen, 508. 31 Graves, Sherryl Browne. “Television and Prejudice Reduction: When Does Television As A Vicarious Experience Make A Difference.” Journal of Social Issues 55.4 (1999): 708. 32Phillips, Anne. “Dealing with Difference: A Politics of Ideas or a Politics of Presence?” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 481. 33 DeLuca, Kevin Michaels and Jennifer Peeples. “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19.2 (June 2002): 136. 34 Dahlgren, Peter. “Television, Public Spheres, and Civic Cultures.” A Companion to Television (2005) 35 Dahlgren, Peter. “Television, Public Spheres, and Civic Cultures.” A Companion to Television (2005): 420. 36 Allen, 427. 37 Orange is the New Black. Netflix. Netflix. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. 38 Willmore, Alison. “How ‘Orange is the New Black’ Became One of the Year’s Best Shows By Turning a Fish-Out-Of-Water Tale On Its Head.” Indiewire. The Network, 20 Aug. 2013. 39 Cox, Laverne. Interview by Michel Martin. “Laverne Cox: Transgender Actress On The Challenges Of Her ‘New Black’ Role.” Tell Me More. NPR, 7 Aug. 2013. 40 Leyva, Selenis. Interview with Carolina Moreno. “Selenis Leyva Explains Why ‘Orange is the New Black’ Is A Huge Step for Latinas.” Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 18 Nov. 2013.
41 Samuels, Allison. “I Don’t Watch ‘Orange Is the New Black.’” The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast, 19 Aug. 2013. 42 Gay, Roxane. “The bar for TV diversity is way too low.” Salon. Salon Mag., 22 Aug. 2013. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. 43 Matthews, Dylan. “‘Orange is the New Black’ is the best TV show about prison ever made.” Wonkblog. Washington Post, 17 Jul. 2013. 44 Graves, Sherryl Browne. “Television and Prejudice Reduction: When Does Television As A Vicarious Experience Make A Difference.” Journal of Social Issues 55.4 (1999): 711. 45 Ibid. 46 Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 124. 47 Ibid. 48 Kohan, Jenji. Interview by Terry Gross. “‘Orange Creator Jenji Kohan: ‘Piper Was My Trojan Horse.’” Fresh Air. NPR, 13 Aug. 2013. 49 Leyva, Selenis. Interview with Carolina Moreno. “Selenis Leyva Explains Why ‘Orange is the New Black’ Is A Huge Step for Latinas.” Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 18 Nov. 2013. 50 Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. 125. 51 Allen, 130 52 Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987. 93. 53 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 506. 54 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TEDGlobal. TED, Oct 2009. 55 Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critique of Moral and Political Theory.” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 421-443. 56 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TEDGlobal. TED, Oct 2009. 57 Orange is the New Black. Netflix. Netflix. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. 58 Willmore, Alison. “How ‘Orange is the New Black’ Became One of the Year’s Best Shows By Turning a Fish-Out-Of-Water Tale On Its Head.” Indiewire. The Network, 20 Aug. 2013. 59 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 507. 60 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace
Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 507. 61 Leyva, Selenis. Interview with Carolina Moreno. “Selenis Leyva Explains Why ‘Orange is the New Black’ Is A Huge Step for Latinas.” Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 18 Nov. 2013. 62 Graves, Sherryl Browne. “Television and Prejudice Reduction: When Does Television As A Vicarious Experience Make A Difference.” Journal of Social Issues 55.4 (1999): 708. 63 Ibid. 64 Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987. 77-93. 65 Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critique of Moral and Political Theory.” Feminism, the Public and the Private. Ed. Joan B. Landes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 421-443. 66 Willmore, Alison. “How ‘Orange is the New Black’ Became One of the Year’s Best Shows By Turning a Fish-Out-Of-Water Tale On Its Head.” Indiewire. The Network, 20 Aug. 2013. 67 Kohan, Jenji. Interview by Terry Gross. “‘Orange Creator Jenji Kohan: ‘Piper Was My Trojan Horse.’” Fresh Air. NPR, 13 Aug. 2013. 68Ibid. 69 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 509. 70 Ibid. 71 Willmore, Alison. “How ‘Orange is the New Black’ Became One of the Year’s Best Shows By Turning a Fish-Out-Of-Water Tale On Its Head.” Indiewire. The Network, 20 Aug. 2013. 72 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 509. 73 Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory.” Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987. 94. 74 Rose, Lacey. “Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Reveals his ‘Phase 2’ for Hollywood.” Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 22 May 2013. 75 Kohan, Jenji. Interview by Terry Gross. “‘Orange Creator Jenji Kohan: ‘Piper Was My Trojan Horse.’” Fresh Air. NPR, 13 Aug. 2013. 76 Rose, Lacey. “Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Reveals his ‘Phase 2’ for Hollywood.” Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 22 May 2013. 77 Ibid. 78 Newcomb, Horace and Paul M. Hirsch. “Television as Cultural Forum.” Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press,
1994. 505. 79 Ibid. 80 Cox, Laverne. Interview by Michel Martin. “Laverne Cox: Transgender Actress On The Challenges Of Her ‘New Black’ Role.” Tell Me More. NPR, 7 Aug. 2013. 81 Rose, Lacey. “Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Reveals his ‘Phase 2’ for Hollywood.” Hollywood Reporter. Hollywood Reporter, 22 May 2013. 82 Ibid. 83 Orange is the New Black. Netflix. Netflix. Web. 13 Dec. 2013. 84 Amaya, Hector. “Citizenship, Diversity, Law and Ugly Betty.” Media, Culture & Society 32.5 (2010): 810. 85 Allen, 813. 86 Allen, 814. 87 Allen, 815. (Bibliography) Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TEDGlobal. TED, Oct 2009. Web.<http://www.ted.com/
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