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PRO285Lecture4PopularCulture.pdf

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Popular Culture

Dr Kate Fitch

School of Arts

Popular culture

• The relationship between public relations and popular culture is undertheorised.

• ‘culture making (and culture is always in process, never achieved) is a social process … culture (and its meanings and pleasures) is a constant succession of social practices; therefore, it is always political’ (Fiske, 1989)

• Rhodes and Westwood argue that popular culture representations of work are ‘inherently and explicitly critical’ and therefore enable a critical interrogation (2008, p. 2).

PR in popular culture

• Studies of representations in popular culture found that public relations practitioners tend to be male and antisocial (Lee, 2001, 2009; Miller, 1999).

• Female practitioners are underrepresented and tend to be ‘all single (or divorced), white and middle class’ (Johnston, 2010, p. 13; Saltzman,2012).

• Public relations is often ‘manipulative, scheming and unethical’ (Johnston, 2010. p. 13).

• These studies offer uncritical understandings of public relations and representation and often conclude that representations in popular culture do not reflect the reality of the industry.

Personal traits

Miller (1999) found that PR characters had the following characteristics:

• Ditzy

• Obsequious

• Cynical

• Manipulative

• Money-minded

• Isolated

• Accomplished

• Unfulfilled

The image of PR (Ames, 2010)

• Prior to 1996, practitioners were represented as ‘a parade of hacks, flacks and charlatans’ (Brody, 1992, cited Ames, 2010, p. 163)

• Practitioners in popular culture are no longer ‘bitter ex- journalists or isolated, anti-social novelists who have gone into PR for the money’ (Ames, 2010, p. 169)

• Increasingly, popular culture portrays public relations as complex, challenging work where processes include media relations and strategic planning

• ‘Diversity is not mentioned in the analysis above, because there is none. In these films, PR is done solely by Caucasians. As previously, most practitioners are men.’ (Ames. 2010, p. 169)

Representations of female PR practitioners in film and TV

• Johnston (2010) found that women in PR work tend to be depicted in film and TV in junior or technical/supporting roles; they tend to be white, single and middle class.

• Where the industry is depicted as manipulative and unethical, the men tend to be senior; women tend to perform the event management, publicity, promotional and technical tasks

• ‘a party ghetto where the velvet has simply been replaced by a pair of stilettos’ (p. 14)

Postfeminist Gothic/Vampire PR

• Through its ambivalence, contradictions, humour and irony, a postfeminist approach critiques binary and essentialist thinking and offers critical insights.

• Vampires are ‘personifications of their age’ and ‘hideous invaders of the normal’ (Auerbach, 1995, pp. 3, 6).

• Postfeminist Gothic is a site for the construction of (contentious) meaning, characterised by plurality, ambiguity and contradictions and works against any notion of stable identity or meaning (Brabon & Genz, 2007).

True Blood (HBO, 2008-2014)

• The public relations practitioner: ‘You are nothing like you are on TV.’

• The public relations campaign: ‘We’re citizens, we pay taxes, we deserve basic equal rights.’

• The audience: ‘Popcorn television for smart people.’

2008, 1.1, ‘Strange love’

True Blood (HBO, 2008- )

• The public relations practitioner: ‘You are nothing like you are on TV.’

• The public relations campaign: ‘We’re citizens, we pay taxes, we deserve basic equal rights.’

• The audience: ‘Popcorn television for smart people.’

2011, 4.1, ‘She’s not there’

True Blood (HBO, 2008- )

• The public relations practitioner: ‘You are nothing like you are on TV.’

• The public relations campaign: ‘We’re citizens, we pay taxes, we deserve basic equal rights.’

• The audience: ‘Popcorn television for smart people.’

True Blood & representation of PR

• PR is represented in complex, playful and contradictory ways, which both conform to and critique stereotypes and expectations.

• PR is revealed as a dark force used to disguise real power, where the American Vampire League is the front for a shadowy, vampire Authority.

• A postfeminist Gothic reading of True Blood offers multiple readings and discourses of PR from social justice to corporate greed.

• If every age gets the vampire it deserves (Auerbach, 1995), Nan Flanagan is the PR practitioner for a postfeminist, media-literate world.

• Popular culture offers a creative, critical and transformative space for exploring transgression and resistance and therefore an important space for exploring power and the role of public relations in contemporary culture.