The Neoliberalist Blob

Or: what people really look like when looked at through the Glasses of Truth

This week’s blog post takes a somewhat Marxist look at the way cultural phenomena in this day and age, as markets, products and productivity, are best understood as lived realities, instead of abstract concepts that stand on their own.[1] Being your own island or your own product within a neoliberalist society seems an illusion, and the case study we employ to illustrate this analysis is John Carpenter’s film They Live. Released in cinemas in 1988, it couldn’t be described as recent, but its content seems more actual than ever. The movie opens with the drifter John Nada (Roddy Piper) arriving in Los Angeles (the media capital of the world?) in search for work. He finds employment at a construction site. One day, in an abandoned church opposite the construction site, he finds a pair of sunglasses in a box. When he puts on these sunglasses, his phenomenal conception of human beings and the world he lives in, shatters, and the noumenal reality becomes openly discernible: people are of a zombie like nature and the urban screens he observes, feed subliminal and hyper charged neoliberalist messages like ‘Conform’, ‘Work 8 Hours’, ‘Obey’, and ‘Consume’, into the urban landscape.

While Hesmondhalgh and Baker note that nowadays a ‘host of new entrants compete over the same territory, threatening to swallow the political economy whole’, They Live posits a regime in which the study of economy or political behavior seems to be excommunicated altogether; the regime’s only aim seems to be a subjugation of every societal element in order to feed the capitalist system.[2] Mayer states that in many societies ‘media production has been structured by a bureaucratic state that manages people and their institutions in order to accumulate capital, organize citizens and workers, and maintain a monopoly over the use of force and violence’.[3] The hyperbolic form of neoliberalism in They Live feeds into that concept and pays tribute to the notion that modern social structures for media production are immersed in histories of colonialism and imperialism by presenting the leaders of the regime as delegates of an alien race that want to usurp the Earth and use it as a colony for resources.[4] What else is the Occident nowadays, one might ask, than a colony for capitalist resources? A colony in which the bulk of creative labor (which Hesmondhalgh and Baker describe as those forms of labor with a distinct element of aesthetic, expressive and informational symbol making) has to dance to the tune of certain aesthetic conventions promulgated by the media mammoths.[5] To what degree does a person, living in such a society, has agency of its own? Culture, according to Deuze, is ‘both manufactured and managed: it is produced and experienced by people, in specific social and organizational contexts, with certain purposes’.[6] But, as we touched lightly upon at the beginning of this blog, the lines between products and lived realities have become increasingly blurred and the spatial and temporal boundaries for media production have been next to erased.[7] We don’t manufacture and then manage, we manufacture and manage and are being manufactured and managed at the same time. So we find it rather naïve when Deuze writes that lived experiences become similar to the aesthetic experiences of works of art and that people move form event to event, consuming and subsequently evaluating each and every event on the spot (but not necessarily reflecting on its impact).[8] Because clear discerning between objects, and to determine where media messages begin and artworks end, seems infeasible. As Mayer writes: ‘In the storm of media messages we encounter, we rarely consider where they came from, who made them, and how’.[9] We use and consume things and we put names on everything, but the exact way these products are made and how, the materials we put into our mouths, the way they were excavated and assembled; we don’t know the specific process of all that. The idea that, in this day and age, a neoliberalist product par excellence such as a pop-idol, brings out an album by the name Born This Way sec, without any irony, seems to be the highpoint of irony (but then again, who knows what Lady Gaga was thinking when she came up with that title?)

Let’s go back to They Live. John Nada takes up arms, together with a small underground revolutionist group, with the aim to destroy the source of the subliminal broadcasting. He is not depicted as a passive reflection of a certain societal structure (instead, most of the inhabitants of Los Angeles are) but as an ‘active autonomous subject resisting the influence of oppressive social forces’.[10] But the most interesting question is whether or not the glasses Nada looks through, really are the glasses of truth, or that they simply offer just another generic neoliberalist spectacle. On a meta level, something very paradoxical is going on here, because Carpenter wraps up his Marxist message in a capitalist vehicle: the science-fiction action movie.[11] What he employs could be considered a stunted form of ‘militainment’: winning consumers’ hearts and minds through popular culture.[12] In conclusion, we might say that in a neoliberalist society, there is no real distinction any more between lived realities, products, media, and human beings; they all blend in together to form an all-usurping blob. Criticism on that blob will be usurped by the dominant hegemony, or can only exist in a form that is condoned by the regime, thereby making it a little impotent a priori.

Proposition: In a neoliberalist society, the lines between lived realities, media, and human beings are erased.

A.vd.B., V.M., J.P.

Bibliography

Mark Deuze (2007), ‘Creative Industries, Convergence Culture and Media Work’, in: Media Work. Cambridge & Malden: polity, pp. 45-83

David Hesmondhalgh & Sarah Baker (2011), ‘Toward a Political Economy of Labor in the Media Industries’, in: Janet Wasko, Gragham Murdock & Helena Sousa (eds.), The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications. Blackwell Publishing, pp. 381-400.

Vicki Mayer (2013), ‘Making Media Production Visible’, in: Vicki Mayer (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume II: Media Production. Blackwell Publishing, 2013.

Jay Plaat (2014), ‘Digging deep with toy shovels’, as part of the course Screen Cultures. Dr. Timotheus Vermeulen & dr. Martijn Stevens, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. September-december 2014.

Filmography

They Live. John Carpenter. (1988) United States: Alive Films; Larry Franco Productions; produced by: Larry Franco; distributed by: Universal Pictures; Carolco Pictures.

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[1] Deuze 2007: 45.

[2] Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011: 381.

[3] Mayer 2013: 3.

[4] Mayer 2013: 3.

[5] Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011: 382.

[6] Deuze 2007: 45.

[7] Mayer 2013: 5.

[8] Deuze 2007: 46.

[9] Mayer 2013: 1.

[10] Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011: 386.

[11] Plaat 2014: 5.

[12] Mayer 2013: 7.

Crime-Fight Cities want Blood and Thunder

The German detective series Tatort first aired in 1970, and is the longest-running and most popular crime series in German-speaking countries. At the beginning of the Tatort broadcasts the series had more than 25 million viewers and a market share of more than 70%. Only in the 1980s, after the introduction of the dual broadcasting system, this situation changed by by virtue of the competition of the private television: the rates dropped to a significantly lower level. However, Tatort still remains one of the most popular television shows in Germany.[1]

As a consequence of the immense popularity of the series and the huge audience it has, some fans do not only want to experience the world of the detectives on TV, but in real life as well. In his article ‘Places of the imagination: an ethnography of the TV detective tour’, Reijnders introduces the concept of “lieux d’imagination”, which are physical points of reference, such as objects or places which, for specific groups in society, provide the opportunity to construct and subsequently cross the symbolic boundary between an ‘imagined’ and a ‘real’ world.[2] In this essay, we will take a closer look at these lieux d’imaginations and investigate which effect tourism has on several German cities which compete over the sceneries of the series and offer tours in order to attract the series most dedicated fans. Furthermore, we will dive a bit deeper into the article of Reijnders itself and shine a critical light on one of the statement he makes according to the wishes and needs of the audience.

In Media, Markets and the Public Sphere, Croteau and Hoynes present two approaches for researching the way in which media interacts with audiences. The first aproach, the ‘market model’, mainly promotes exchange based on supply and demand. Whereas by the ‘public sphere model’, the focus lays more on informing the society. according to this model, media also has the role of an information source and a storyteller.[3] When analyzing the interaction of Tatort with the audience, we can see that mainly the market model becomes present. Especially when we look at the way in which “Lieux d’imaginations” are created, we see that both pubs and the cities try to make profit out of the fact that they appear in the series.

In Tatort, there is a very stark emphasis on the cityscape. The “lieux d’imagination” the series employs, has made some harcore followers go out and travel to specific German cities that were featured in the series, in order to step into the footsteps of the characters. Of course, different enterprises make a profit out of this: several pubs for example advertise the fact that a dialogue scene has been shot at their bar. However, not only pubs and bars try to make profit out of the lieux d’imaginations from the series; German cities where the series is shot do so as well. Deaths in Münster, Ulm or Freiburg, brutal gang warfare between Mannheim and Heidelberg, or maybe a murder in the Black Forest, in the elegant Baden-Baden or near Karlsruhe: many municipalities in Germany want to become (fictional) crime strongholds for the series. The struggle for new scenery is always a big hype in Germany. As a location of the ARD crime series, the cities and regions expect national attention and a positive image. City Marketing and Crime series occupy an increasingly important role in the tourism industry.[4] Many cities want to be on the screen in prime time on Sunday evening with an audience of millions. TV shows make places known which seems to induce tourism, in this case television tourism, or of you will, Tatort tourism. But the place and space of a city has to be credible of course, you can’t just situate a Tatort season in any German city willy-nilly; it is important that cities offer topics, different social classes and milieus for credible crime stories.

Once a location is chosen, location marketing, understood as the orientation of a city or region as a location provider at regional, national and international site markets, can come into fruition, both before the actual episodes are being shot, and of course, after they have aired. The aim is to influence the location decisions of companies. In this case, the marketing is focused on the safeguarding of existing premises and the acquisition of new-interested companies. In addition, the operator of the location marketing wants to achieve more visibility and a better image in the primary target group companies as well as advertise with tourists, investors, skilled workers and families to bring additional purchasing power to the location.

The television critic Hendrik Efert reported that some cities have had additional revenue, because Tatort tourists were targeted, and with succes. However, the effect could still be much bigger. The hit series Breaking Bad for instance, instigated a whole new level of attention for the once fairly anonymous Albuquerque, New Mexico. To give one more example: tourism in the small Swedish town of Ystad, home of the mysteries inspector Kurt Wallander detects, has shown what since has been dubbed as the "Wallander - effect”, which is another word for a major rise in tourist numbers.[5] So, economically-wise, it is fair to judge that it is not disadvantageous for a city if a popular film or series takes place there, even when it is mostly grim and revolves around murders, drugs and other unpleasant topics. But it is important to raise the question whether this place promotion in the long term doesn’t devaluate or obscure the original sense of place or identity of that particular place, in the sense that the tourist image, instigated by popular televsion or film, doesn’t usurp the place’s truer and more classic identity, something that doens’t have that strong of a relation to fiction.

So far, we have explained the concept of ‘lieux d’imagination’ in relation to Tatort and analyzed how this can be an important concept for German cities in their own city branding. In the conclusion of this essay, we want to take a closer look at one of the statements Reijnders makes in his article: the notion that ‘tourists clearly enjoy the disctintion which is made between the TV detective programs and the ‘real world’.[6] This is an interesting assumption, because it raises the question whether or not tourists travel to places to get their fantasies about certain places confirmed, or to get them, in a sense, deconstructed, because they will be confronted with reality sec, which, of course, hardly ever is true to fiction. There might be tourists who, in a Freudian sense, and perhaps unconcsiously, will travel to these lieux d’imaginations to get their fantasies destroyed, for mental cleansing maybe, but we can also, just as easily, imagine tourists who go and travel to enjoy the unclear, symbolic boundaries between the real and the imagined. So, if cities get a clearer understanding of the emotional and deeper motivations on televison and film tourism, the branding and marketing of these phenomena could turn into something even more adequate. More research on this topic, could provide interesting answers.

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[1] Richter, 2009: x.

[2] Reijnders, 2010: 40.

[3] Crocteau & Hoynes, 2006: 17, 22-23.

[4] Balderjahn, 2014: 21.

[5] Deutschlandradio Kultur: x.

[6] Reijnders, 2010: 45.

References

Balderjahn, I. (2014) Location Marketing. UVK/Lucius: München.

Croteau, D. & Hoynes, W. (2006) ‘Media, markets and the public sphere’, in: The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press: 15-40.

Deutschlandradio Kultur [article] ‘Sie profitieren von den Krimi-Touristen’, retrieved 06-10-2015, from: http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/reisen-in-tatort-staedte-sie-profitieren-von-den-krimi.2156.de.html?dram:article_id=313712

Gerhards, M. & Klingler, W. (2011) ‘Branches- and Format trends in German television’, in: Media Perspectives, 1.

Reijnders, S. (2010) ‘Cultural Geographies, Places of the imagination: an ethnography of the TV detective tour’, in: Cultural Geographies, 17, nr. 1: 37 - 52.

Richter, C. (2009) 'Die Experten: 14. September 2009', in: Quoten Meter. Retrieved at 06-10-2015, from: http://www.quotenmeter.de/cms/?p1=n&p2=37241&p3

Proposition: do we as an audience really want the fictional world of the series to be ‘explained’ or do we, to a certain extend, enjoy to be fooled by the fantasy?

A. vd B., V.M., J.P.