Fame, infamy and the girl next door

How media conglomerates in the 1990's influenced the increasing interconnections between people and places around the world.

Emma Balfour in 'Emma'
Vogue Paris June July 2001

Fashion model, Emma Balfour, grew up in Adelaide, lives in Sydney and gets her family's travel expenses paid when she works overseas. When Emma worked full-time she lived in London for convenient access to her employers on the Trans-Atlantic and European fashion circuit (Inchly 2001, p. 76). In Australia we see her work in Vogue. Images from photo sessions could be printed in any of Vogue's eight different editions worldwide (Zanetti 1995, P. 14). Balfour's international and intercontinental connections, and those of Vogue's publishers, Conde Nast, typify the trend towards 'global' or 'transnational' business and media connections (Thompson 2000, p. 202).

I will explain 'globalisation' and the way it is influenced by and the influence it has upon, the business of technologically mediated communication, and the trend towards conglomeration. Data suggests increasing interconnections between people and places, facilitated by mediated communications systems (from here on 'the media'), can produce a dependency upon that type of connection. A corresponding reduced vitality of relationships within neighbourhoods can result. I will attempt to explain how global media monopolies require dependency among readers and viewers (from here on 'consumers'), but although they can manipulate this dependency, they cannot control it. 

John B. Thompson states:

One can speak of globalization... when the growing interconnectedness of different regions and locales becomes systematic and reciprocal to some degree (2000 p. 202)

Conde Nast is part of a global media conglomerate. Conde Nast publishes editions of Vogue in Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, United States and Australia (Zanetti 1995, p. 14). Conde Nast also produces twenty other magazines (CJR p.2). Conde Nast, however, is just one 'unit' belonging to a parent company, Advance Publications. Advance own twenty-six newspapers, and publish over 40 weekly business journals (Standard 2001, p. 1), their trade and consumer magazine unit, Fairchild, publish another thirteen magazines (CJR p. 2) The Industry Standard lists Advance Publications as the 'number two US magazine publisher (behind Time, Inc.)'. At this point it can become difficult to discern between a connection and a division. The Industry Standard lists Time, Inc. amongst Advance's competition, which sounds contradictory, because Advance have a 'partner', called AOL Time Warner (Standard 2001, p. 1).

AOL Time Warner is one of the world's largest media conglomerates (Herman & McChesney 2000, p. 218). They do in fact own the magazine publisher, Time, Inc., listed amongst Advance Publication's competitors. This situation highlights a divergence from anticipated notions of competition, once we enter the oligopolistic top end of the media market (pp.223,224). In their book Global Media, Edward Herman and Robert McChesney list some of the companies owned by Time Warner in 1997 and give us preliminary insight into the scope of interconnections within global media conglomerates.

Time Warner 1997... owns Time, Inc., which publishes 24 magazines, including Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune, and Life; Warner Music Group, including Warner Bros., Atlantic, Interscope and Elektra Records; Warner Brothers studios; owns part of the WB Television network. Time Warner is the largest owner of cable systems in the U.S., as well as owning such cable channels and CNN,HBO and Cinemax (1997, p. 1)

Herman and McChesney call this the 'tiered global media market' (2000, p. 220) or 'vertical integration' (p. 221). Conglomeration of companies has many benefits. Profit margins are increased through 'cross-selling and cross promotion' (p. 221). They say AOL Time Warner is but one of six huge vertically integrated media conglomerates that control the majority of media activity in the global marketplace, but this is only a recent trend. The market activities that birthed these giants have only happened since the 1990's, when 'an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions among global media giants' was seen (2000, p. 220). Katherine Ainger says, the problem with this development is: 

We are creating a world in which a small & shrinking commercial monopoly gets to tell all the stories while the rest of us get to watch and listen (2001, p. 11).

Media networks are not the only businesses to move towards global distribution. Neither are they the biggest players in the trend towards conglomeration. (Herman & McChesney 2000, p. 220) (Klein 2000, p. 421). Deregulation, downsizing and cost-cutting have contributed to the shaping of a 'global economy' where 'multinationals' dominate trade throughout industry (p. 421) (Thompson 2000, p. 202. What makes media networks so important in global marketing is the role they play in connecting vendors to consumers when the two are separated geographically. John B. Thompson states:

Distance has been eclipsed by proliferating networks of electronic communication. Individuals can interact with one another or can act within frameworks of mediated quasi-interaction, even though they are situated, in terms of the practical contexts of their day-to-day lives, in different parts of the world (2000, P. 10).

This is particularly noticeable in advertising. Again, promotional trends within the media reflect trends in promotion generally. It is a realm in which 'networking' directs players towards services they can use (Castells 2000, p. 10).  

Exemplifying cross promotion, Vogue can promote a film while promoting clothes while making it look like they are profiling an actor. One such profile in 1998 has images of Australian actor, Toni Collette, modelling Akira Isogawa's clothes alongside text about her career. The article mentions her latest film, Velvet Goldmine, nine times and gave its release date in Australia at the end (McGregor 1998, pp. 124, 128). Isogawa gets a model for his clothes, Miramax get haute couture for their star, Vogue get a 'feature', Collette gets exposure as an actor. And all this available to 8 different editors spread across the globe.  The unique 'Synergy' combines interest and appeal (Herman and McChesney 2000, p. 221). 

Toni Collette, Australian actress 2001

Toni Collette, Australian actress 2001

According to Dorothy Smith, appeal is necessary to 'create the "motivational" structure which returns the purchaser again and again to... the fashion boutiques [and] to the magazine racks displaying fashion magazines' (Smith 1988, p. 41). Designers at the Balenciaga fashion house must have thought Emma Balfour offered a characteristic appeal that no European model could. Along with that, props, lighting, camera techniques, accessories, and the work of stylists, makeup artists and hairdressers further refine the mood (Sauve 2001, p. 124). The enhancement, however, moves the images into the realm of fiction. Turner, Bonner and Marshall spoke to publicists during their study, 'The Production of Celebrity in Australia'. They confirmed that appeal in the media is not only constructed but also carefully targeted (2000, p. 81).

Further insights from Turner et al, give us grounds to speculate that publicists from Miramax (producers of Velvet Goldmine), controlled the construction of appeal in the Toni Collette feature specifically with their film in mind (p. 1). Furthermore they reveal that Toni (at the time) had her own publicist who only directed her towards media exposure that furthered her career (p. 43). As a result, if readers feel a connection with Collette, it is one that is limited and controlled. Readers can't ask their own questions of her and are unlikely to ever meet Collette to verify her testimony of the human experience (Roman et al 1998, p. 42).

 We start to see a pattern described by Katherine Ainger (2001, p. 10). Stories, images, 'repackaged' to suit the interests of a third party. Purchasing never seems far away. Manuel Castells says the media network is integral to capitalism and capitalism is integral to the media market.

 It is indeed capitalism in its pure expression of the endless search for money by money through the production of commodities by commodities (2000, p. 79).

Media technologies have become the bona fide infrastructure of global capitalism. Although their merging, collaboration and downsizing are typical of corporate business practices more broadly during the last decade, consumers have grounds to be suspicious according to Katherine Ainger:

In a recent CNN discussion, Gerry Levin, Chief Executive of AOL Time Warner, announced that global media would become the dominant industry of this century, more powerful than governments (Ainger 2001, p. 10).

Katherine Ainger and Langdon Winner have mentioned two areas, however, where media conglomerates depend, to maintain their power, on ingredients outside of their otherwise comprehensive control. The first is 'cultural resources' the second is a yielding consuming public. Ainger says the media is 'extractive'. In order to get 'cultural resources' it draws on people's lives.    

Wealth is being made from words, ideas, knowledge, songs, stories, data, culture... they are mining cultural resources in every part of the world and repackaging them as cultural commodities and entertainment... (Rifkind in Ainger 2001, p. 10)

Every edition of Vogue is packed from cover to cover with images of people like Emma Balfour. Is Emma a cultural resource? Using Ainger's definition, Emma becomes a cultural resource because her story is in Vogue.  Vogue Australia subordinated the Balenciaga images to text about Emma's life. They called the feature "Second Coming" (Inchley 2001, p. 76). Vogue Paris told her story on the contributor's page (Complices 2001, p. 16). They also called the Balenciaga fashion feature 'Emma' though its focus was Balenciaga (Sauve 2001, p. 124). Manuel Castells states that in the expensive world of the media: 'the simplest message is an image. The simplest individualized image is a person' (2002, p. 13).

The attraction for consumers is the offering of a connection with a glamourous person they are unlikely to meet (Turner, Bonner & Marshall 2000, p. 8). Consumers who pursue connections through texts, however, will always be subordinating face-to-face family and neighbourhood relationships during reading time. In the absence of strong family and neighbourhood relationships consumers may become more and more dependent upon the mediated connections. 

In Langdon winner's discussion of technologies possessing power, he, like Ainger, speaks of 'requirements'. I see dependency in consumers as a requirement of the media conglomerate. Winner States:

In this conception, some kinds of technology require their social environments to be structured in a particular way in much the same sense that an automobile requires wheels in order to run (Winner 1999, p. 33).

Winner takes his definition of 'required as being a 'practical necessity' and uses an analogy that I think is useful in depicting the relationship between media conglomerates and consumers.

thus, Plato thought it a practical necessity that a ship at sea have one captain and an unquestioningly obedient crew (p. 33).

In using the metaphor of consumers as an unquestioningly obedient crew, I do not mean that they consume media products without questioning what they receive, but that they unquestioningly continue to purchase and use media technologies.

Gumpert and Drucker (1998 pp. 6,7), Herman and McChesney (2000, p. 216), and Katherine Ainger (2001, p. 10), all report that consumption rates of media technologies, media products and mediated entertainment are increasing in the industrialised world. Gumpert and Drucker's figures indicate that when families in western countries buy a new media technology they seldom rid the home of the pre-existing piece. The new piece gets added in. 

One motive for high rates of television viewing in the western wold is a perception that vicarious participation in life, from the safety of the lounge chair, will protect consumers from 'dangers' within their community (Gumpert & Drucker 1998, p. 4). The consequences can be a weakening of relationships. the perception of danger, however, can be constructed or even implicit in media reports. Tanja Dreher has studied responses to the high media profile of Western Sydney suburb, Cabramatta.

Categories which recur in media representation of Cabramatta are youth, gangs, refugees... corruption, murder, immigration, heroin and crime. In much of the extensive literature discussing these categories, there is broad agreement that all are routinely reported in narrow and negative terms, as outside and threatening to 'mainstream' society (Dreher 2000, p. 131).

Responses from locals indicate 'people who live and work in Cabramatta feel passionately about news reporting of the area' and that 'most feel frustrated' and misjudged. 

You have to meet people and talk to people and not believe what they say on television. Never judge a person by what they say in the papers, because they always say the bad things (Resident in Dreher 2000, p. 132).

Well, we never get to hear about good stuff (Resident p. 131). 

Further, Dreher unearths the same ingredient we discovered in the fashion magazines... the agenda of a third party. 

Criminals, youth, refugees, 'westies' [residents of the western suburbs of Sydney] generally appear in news reporting only in response to issues or agendas determined by others (p. 133).

Dreher found neighbours whose relationships had broken down because of misleading portrayals of cultural differences in movies (p. 140). This may have simply been a result of the creation of drama in the film or the maintenance of the level of entertainment (Postman 1986 p. 89) (Turner et al 2000, p. 9). Other residents claimed being disadvantaged in job placement when employers found they lived in (or even near) Cabramatta. Residents of  Northern and Eastern suburbs of Sydney consistently expressed bewilderment at how anyone could live 'out there' [in the western suburbs] (p. 133). Sadly, the perceptions may have arisen because of some political agenda (Castells 2000, p. 80). In conclusion Dreher states:

I do want to suggest that media representations may contribute to perceptions of  people and places of which we have little other experience (Dreher 2000, p. 141).

In an unexpected convergence of the data at hand, Vogue makes reference to Toni Collette's childhood in Western Sydney. They make no attempt to dress it up. 

I grew up in Sydney's Western Suburbs. I was well aware of the shit that goes down. I didn't have to research this side of things (Collette in McGregor 1998, p. 128). 

We quickly notice, however, the connection between her history and a second film, David Wenham's controversial film The Boys. Collette's childhood no doubt sounded like credibility for her role in the fictionalisation of events surrounding the Anita Cobby murder, which happened in the western suburbs (p. 128) (Hogan 1998, p. 86). Moreover, her streetwise suitability for that role could have translated into further credibility for her role as the 'wife of a 70's glam-rock star' in Velvet Goldmine. The problem with Collette's comments is that they tie the events in the film to a location, and build expectations of the area as a place where 'shit goes down', whereas bad things can happen anywhere.  The controversy surrounding the release of the film, however, 14 years after the murder took place indicated that the event was something from which the community had barely begun to recover (fisher 1997-2002, p. 1). In fairness to Collette, several publicists, a writer and magazine editors could have stopped her comments getting into print (Turner et al 2000, p. 43). An infamous image can be useful in some circumstances. With Collette's interview taking place in Los Angeles (McGregor 1998, p. 124), I suspect any concern held by Producers' in Australia probably carried little weight.

Katherine Ainger directs a challenge at both producers and consumers about the divisive capability of this type of globalised, mediated connectedness.  

In every country media corporations help to break our relationships to our communities, educators, collective cultures, experiences. They turn us into isolated consumers - and then tell our stories back to us (2001, p. 11).

I do not think this could happen without widespread acceptance of the separation between producers and consumers that typify globalisation. Tanja Dreher found the same residents who had complained about Cabramatta's media profile, sought to find out 'all about the government' through news and current affairs television (Dreher 2000, p. 134). Non profit, open publishing projects like 'Indymedia' on the world wide web offer some relief from the tangled interests of politics and profiteering (Roman 2002, p 2), but the problem of verification persists with reporters and readers separated. Consumers can hardly blame a scheming controlling media for narrowing their field of information, if the media has become their primary source of discovery. Particularly when the reduction in access and reporting is caused by the same merging and downsizing being implemented in other industries. 

I think suspicious, disgruntled consumers of media products still have power. Langdon Winner has paved the way for some innovative power-play in his musings about Plato's crew of a ship at sea. Like Katherine Ainger, I assert that consumers who allow themselves to be come dependent upon mediated technologies for their news, entertainment and relationships become that yielding consuming public or  unquestioningly obedient crew 'required' for global media to maintain power. In conclusion I ask: If consumers cancelled their newspapers and magazine subscriptions, melted down their radios and put their televisions out for hard-rubbish collection and didn't replace them, then started mining their own neighbourhoods and communities for live, unmediated, unconstructed, non-sponsored cultural resources, would that constitute a mutiny on Plato's ship?

Submitted 08/11/2002, Major Assignment: Cultural Change & Communication Technologies, Bachelor of Arts, University of South Australia 

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