INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THEORIES AND CONCEPTS IN THE CREATIVE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRIES (CCI)
Charlene YY
Lecture_8_61074.pptxWorking in the Cultural and Creative Industries I
The Cultural Worker and Working in Television
Part I: The Cultural Worker
What is a Cultural Worker?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjqaNhL1g8Q
Part I: The Cultural Worker
‘the creative’
‘the artist’
‘the talent’
‘the author’
‘the auteur’
…..the central figure in the creative industries.
The Turn to Cultural Work?
The cultural worker was long ignored in studies of work and labour, never really considered a worker as such....
…but for a number of reasons this has changed
Reason (1)
The rise of the creative industries as an economic force….
Reason (2)
Academic enthusiasm for the new ‘creative economy’…
Not just Florida..
…but thinkers like Charles Landry and John Howkins too
Reason (3)
Critical sociological theorizing on work and culture…e.g
Ulrich Beck: ‘risk society’
Zygmunt Bauman: ‘liquid modernity’
Manuel Castells: ‘network society’
Richard Sennett: ‘cultural capitalism’
Scott Lash and John Urry: ‘economies of signs and space’
..and ‘Autonomist’ Theory
Neo-Marxist writers such as Maurizio Lazzarato, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri drew attention to ‘immaterial labour’ in a rapidly transforming ‘cognitive capitalism’ where the production of immaterial and symbolic – rather than material – goods appears to be taking precedence
(See the Gill and Pratt reading)
Reason (4)
The culturalization of everyday life in the ‘social factory’..
..are we all in some way ‘cultural workers’ simply making culture all the time?
Reason (4) …
Social media as a ‘social factory’…where we all work constantly at producing value for others?
Gill and Pratt (from the reading)
‘When read through the concerns of the recent ‘turn to labour’ in cultural studies, one of the most compelling arguments relates to the takeover of life by work. This is understood by autonomist writers and activists not through the familiar liberal notion of ‘work–life balance’ but through the radical contention that we all exist in the ‘social factory’ (…) in which the whole life experience of the worker is harnessed to capital’.
Trouble in paradise?
Cultural work is revered as special, rewarding and highly desirable….a 2015 survey identified ‘author’ as most people’s ‘dream job’
….but critics have identified some problems with cultural work
*Key Critical Texts on Cultural Workers*
Banks, M. (2007) The Politics of Cultural Work, Palgrave, Basingstoke.
Banks, M. (2017) Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality, Rowman and Littlefield, London
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2007) The Cultural Industries, Sage, London (2nd edition) (or 2012, 3rd Edition)
Hesmondhalgh, D., Oakley, K., Lee, D. & Nisbett, M. (2016) Culture, Economy, Politics: The Case of New Labour, Palgrave London.
O’Connor, J. and Oakley, K (eds.) (2015) The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries, Routledge London.
Maxwell, R. (ed.) (2015) The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media, Routledge, London and New York.
McRobbie, A. (2016) Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Cultural Industries, Polity, Cambridge.
Precarity
the precariousness of cultural work, including its temporary, unfixed and short-term nature, it’s uncertainty and uneven financial and immaterial rewards
e.g. see Gill and Pratt reading;
Banks (2017) Creative Justice, Chapter 6
Inequality
the inequalities of pay and conditions within the cultural workforce and, in the cities which are the industries’ hubs; the persistent over-representation of the already privileged; middle-class appointing in its own image
e.g. see Kate Oakley (2011) “In its own image: New Labour and the Cultural Workforce”, Cultural Trends. 20.3-4: 281-289
Informality
Informality and a ‘clubby’, often male-dominated atmosphere that celebrates playfulness and irreverence – but often leads to discrimination, injustices, abuses and lack of transparency;
e.g. see Angela McRobbie (2016) Be Creative
Banks (2017) Creative Justice
Transgression
the accelerated invasion of cultural work into the previously separate or protected territories of leisure and personal and intimate life; does ‘work as play’ actually mean the death of leisure and free-time away from work?
e.g see Melissa Gregg (2010) Work’s Intimacy
So….
We need to look at the benefits and dis-benefits of cultural work, or it’s advantages and disadvantages….
….cultural work as existing and future utopia or the state of (bad) things to come?
Part II Working in Television
Working in Television
What is it like to work in television?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeAcrAA6PkQ
Four themes in cultural work..
Subjectivity
Affect
Temporality
Solidarity
Structure of UK Television
Major Broadcasters (e.g. BBC, ITV, Sky)
‘Independents’ – TV production companies who make content for broadcasters
‘Freelancers’ – most actors, camera operators, producers, writers, lighting engineers, employed on project, informal or temporary contract basis with broadcasters and/or independents
250,000 workers in TV, film and radio combined (DCMS, 2015)
Structure of Chinese Television
Major Broadcasters (e.g. Hunan Television, Dragon Television, Zhejiang Television, Jiangsu Television etc.)
More than three thousand TV channels exist in China today
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television of People's Republic of China (PRC) and targets the overseas programs, gives out licenses to overseas channels.
Employees Radio & Television in China 2008-2018 (in thousands)
Structure of South African Television
Major Broadcasters (e.g. South African Broadcasting Corporation: SABC channel 1, 2, 3 and e.tv)
Under the Apartheid, television was divided into television services in English and Afrikaans, aimed at white audiences, and another, known as TV Bantu, aimed at black viewers.
Most television in South Africa is satellite or community television. There is no cable TV.
About 100,000 works in radio and TV (75 percent of all households have a TV and imported TV).
Pleasure of TV Work
‘I don’t do this for money. If I wanted money I’d work in a bank’
(see Ursell, p819)
The best thing in the world is to hear people chatting about the programme you’ve made..’
‘It’s quite nice when you think to yourself 4.5 million people watched something you did. That’s buzzing. That’s a really nice feeling’ (Hesmondhalgh and Baker pp.216-218)
Governed Subjects
Ursell (2000), drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘governmentality’ argues that…. TV workers might not be forced to occupy particular roles, but that they themselves were actively implicated in choosing or creating their own precarious conditions of labour.
Internalised Models of Subjectivity?
People are continually presented with models of ‘good work’ that emphasises the benefits of flexibility, freelance and portfolio work, zero-hours working and the like, and so come to value these arrangements and see them as beneficial to their own ‘flexible and ‘free-chosen’ lives..
Self Exploitation?
self-exploitation; this arises when people are not being driven directly by bosses or by powerful organisations per se, but mainly by their own anxieties, affects and desires – it is their own willingness to be a successful cultural worker that drives people to overwork, stress, and go the extra mile, regardless of the consequences
Excessive Temporality?
Currently valued are those ‘flexible’, ‘creative’ workers with the ability to ‘go the extra mile’, ‘think outside the box’, ‘live for the project’, and show dedication by working long hours or under oppressive circumstances. In cultural industry work, to be described as a regular ‘9-5’ worker is no longer a commendation of your diligence, but a kind of insult.
Affective anxiety
You get to this stage at the end of every job where you’re facing unemployment again. So you bang out emails to people you know, fix up interviews for jobs. This inevitably happens at the end of a job, when you’re flat out in the edit, working all hours. It’s a nightmare.
I really struggle to be a director and a mother. We have child-care, and luckily my husband’s hours are less crazy than mine. But it gets me down, I feel I’m missing a lot. Then I’m supposed to be out there schmoozing at parties on top of all of that? (see Ursell)
The Costs of Commitment?
(see Ursell, Hesmondhalgh and Baker)
‘Seduction of Autonomy’
The seductive prize is the freedom to work more flexibly, informally and in accordance with ones’ own preferences and ambitions
(see Knights and Willmott (1989), Power and Subjectivity at Work, Sociology, 23, 4, pp.535-558)
Solidarity
BECTU: Say No to TV Exploitation
Equity: Low Pay/No Pay
Trade unions continue to campaign avidly for fair and non-exploitative work in TV.
Reasons to be Cheerful!
What we shouldn’t lose sight of is the many positive aspects of working in television as a creative industry; the opportunity to make art or entertainment that touches people, or that extends our democracy and public sphere – that enables people to be self-fulfilled and autonomous in their expression and creative subjectivities. This happens!
