Acland, Charles R - Canadian Communication Association (CCA)

[Updated/Revisé: 2012-05-24]
Acland, Charles R. "Taste and Technology in the Blockbuster Economy"
- Paper number/Numéro de communication : 5518
- Track/Section: Media History
- Panel: At the Intersection of Technology and Cultural History /À
l'intersection de - la technologie et de l'histoire culturelle
- Date and time/Date et heure: Mai 31, 1:15 - 2:45
- Location/Lieu: HH 1102
Blockbusters films are as connected to the summer months as school
vacations and mosquito bites. Though we hear the heavy-footed march of
their approach, expect people to recognize the titles, and may feel
compelled to see one and avoid others, blockbusters do not make up a genre,
per se. The films share characteristics and often have strong generic links
to action, science fiction, disaster, fantasy, and family animation movies.
But, it would be misleading to suggest that blockbusters are a strictly
bound set of texts.
A blockbuster is a film that "busts" conventional demographic "blocks,"
becoming a desirable entertainment for men and women, young and old, and
for ethnically and nationally diverse audiences. Blockbusters are
productions into which major studios pour the most resources, and through
which they might expect to launch or continue a film franchise. As such,
they are more than films; they embody a set of ideas about the economy of
culture, including multiple industries, multiple geographies, multiple
commodities, and multiple product life cycles.
Since the term was first applied to motion pictures post-WWII, a
"blockbuster" designated two things: a hit or an expensive production.
Given this definitional variance, one can find low-budget blockbuster hits,
and high-budget blockbusters that are box office poison. The two
definitions are linked, though; substantial financial investment in a
single film is undertaken in the expectation that it will result in box
office success. It describes a distributor's wish as much as it describes
the revenue-generating record of a specific film. Though the logic here has
time and again proven to be faulty and unreliable, we must still understand
that the blockbuster is both an industrial strategy and a way to talk about
the outcomes of industrial strategy.
This research explores the historical origins of the idea of a "blockbuster
economy" of film. Originally, blockbusters were the large bombs dropped on
enemy cities during World War II. Indiscriminate targeting, not to mention
spectacular and deadly fire power, echo in Hollywood's use of the term.
Steve Neale and Sheldon Hall (2010) pinpoint a late-1951 review of Quo
Vadis (1951) as the first use of "blockbuster" to describe a film,
signaling its simultaneous connotation of a major financial success and an
ambitiously lavish production. But even before this date, in the 1940s, we
can see that the term was used to connote both "success" and the garish.
What develops in the 1950s, as the term "blockbuster" began to appear in
movie ads, is a special relationship with new cinematic technology. This
genealogy of our now dominant Hollywood industrial model documents the
earlier traces of the logic of the blockbuster economy, challenging the
continued presumption among some historians of popular cinema that the
blockbuster era began with the success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Aguayo, Michelle Latinas and Meaning-Making: Identity, Belonging and Popular Culture - Paper number/Numéro de communication : 5562
- Track/Section: Race & Media
- Panel: "Inclusion/Exclusion of the Other:" Representations of Gender,
Race, and Religion in Popular Culture, News, and
Literature/"Inclusion/exclusion de l'Autre:" Représentations du sexe, de
l'ethnicité et de la religion dans la culture populaire, les nouvelles et
la littérature
- Date and time/Date et heure: Mai 30, 10:45-12:15
- Location/Lieu: AL 208 Latino/a Communication Studies in the U.S. have been successful in
developing a broad corpus of research given close border relations and
proximity to Central and Latin America. Scholars in the field have provided
insightful analyses on the growing visibility of Latino/s throughout
popular culture (Guzmán, 2005; Valdivia, 2007). However, while shows like
Ugly Betty and singers like Jennifer Lopez flourish in a post 9/11 context-
there is a significant immigration backlash. Increased surveillance of
Latino communities accompanied by legislation in Canada and the U.S.
concerning immigration and its link to crime, act to position Latino/as as
a threat to the body politic. These issues inscribe the Latino/a body, both
symbolically and materially, as the quintessential "Other"- to be
simultaneously fetishized and disavowed and potentially expulsed. So how do
we begin to make sense of these complex issues? This presentation examines
the diaspora of Latinas in Canada. Although Latin Americans are a recent
addition to Canadian migratory history, the 2006 Census noted that they are
a fast growing visible minority. Using audience research methods this
presentation examines how Latinas in Canada interpret popular media images
and to what affect these representations have on their sense of self. It
examines if the media can encourage a sense of belonging and/or inclusion
and how does this impact individual's in a minoritized ethnic/racial
community? Overall, this research illustrates the complex discourses of how
Latinas engage with popular culture particularly through critique of media
texts. Strategies of negotiation and subversion are but two ways which
these women challenge normative media representations.
Ahluwalia-Lopez, Guppy Citizenship, Interrupted: Framing Dialogue on Cross-Country Runs Across
Canada in Daily Canadian Newspapers - Paper number/Numéro de communication :
- Track/Section: Journalism & News
- Panel: Journalism Practices/ Pratiques journalistiques
- Date and time/Date et heure: June 1, 8:30-10:00
- Location/Lieu: AL 124 Critical sociologists and journalists who are part of the public journalism
movement are actively seeking tangible ways to increase civic dialogue in
our society beyond citizen journalism (Jackson, Nielsen, Hsu, 2011).Thus
far, through framing analyses of print and television broadcast it has been
revealed that while the poor underclass (Nielsen 2008) and undocumented
immigrants (Nielsen 2009) are reported on, they are not addressed as the
implied audience or readers, enabling gaps to exist within the media system
preventing it from meeting its responsibilities as a democratically
oriented system (Jackson et al, p.71). A paradox exists when the subject of
a report is not part of the implied audience. It means that while their
stories are illustrated with personalized quotes, photographs and
representations of their points of view, the subjects themselves are not
thought of as the ideal public to direct these stories to. Furthermore, it
is clear that journalists are not "innocently" commenting on social
problems but are actively framing their stories towards an implied audience
(Jackson et al, 2011, p.252) and subsequently orienting the sense of
citizenship through the framing of the address (p.60). This paper then
poses the question: how can acts of journalism interrupt acts of
citizenship?
By engaging in a comparative study of cross-Canada runs carried out by
Terry Fox in 1980 (Marathon of Hope) and Kartar Singh Ahluwalia in 1989
(Cross Canada Run for the Children), I employ a dialogic frame analysis
where by following the framing of the news coverage, I show the moment that
an act of citizenship is interrupted. My goal is to contribute to ways to
expand communication towards more readers (Jackson p. 5) especially in
preparation for a journalism-to-come.
Theorizing the implied audience through a framing analysis requires
reference to a unique combination of theorists (Bakhtin 1993; Brown 2010;
Butler 2009) not yet combined together in studies using similar ontological
and methodological frameworks (Nielsen 2008, 2009). Following Mikhail
Bakhtin, Robert Entman and Greg Nielsen, a dialogic framing analysis
examines the moral terms or emotional tones as they arise from relations
between journalists, the implied audience and the runners who are the
subjects of these reports and what type of rejoinder is anticipated
(Nielsen, 2009). I begin with a brief discussion on the key concepts on
journalistic acts of citizenship (Isin & Nielsen, 2008) dialogic framing
and the implied audience below before explaining the context of the two
runs across Canada, press selection and presenting analysis from reports
that discuss polemics about runners. In the conclusion, I make suggestions
for strategies to evoke civic dialogue within the journalism reform
movement considering the acts of citizenship of running across Canada.
Aitken, Paul Alexander Pirates vs. The Pirate Party: Direct Action and the Politics of Online
Media Piracy - Paper number/Numéro de communication : 5496
- Track/Section: Media & Culture
- Panel: New Media: Affiliations, Action and Activism/ Nouveaux médias:
Affiliations, action et activisme
- Date and time/Date et heure: June 1, 1:15-2:45
- Location/Lieu: HH 1108
This paper presents preliminary research about the relationship between
online media piracy and the Pirate Party International (PPI) (along with
its national variants). Participation in mainstream representative politics
under the banner of 'Pirate'-complete with centralised party apparatus,
candidates, and published platforms-appears to be at odds with the anarchic
prac