Michael Curtin

Media Capital Towards the Study of Spatial Flows

Prior studies that emphasize a one-way flow of US programming to the periphery of the world system are now being reassessed in light of the increasing volume and velocity of multi-directional media flows that emanate from particular cities, such as Bombay, Cairo, and Hong Kong. These emerging centers of transnational cultural production suggest a need to supplement the current scholarly emphasis on national media systems with a more intensive examination of media capitals. Examining the histories of Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Chicago television, this essay illustrates how scholars might use media capital as a concept that would foster empirically grounded analysis of the temporal dynamism and spatial complexity of the global media environment.

Murdoch’s dilemma, or ‘What’s the price of TV in China?’

Satellite television figures prominently in scholarly speculation about globalization, since it has the potential to cross boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity and literacy, in addition to nation. Scholars furthermore suggest that satellite TV moves audiences towards a shared repertoire of images and ideas, thereby encouraging modernization and reflexive forms of representative government. Such lofty speculation fails, however, to take into account the actual operation of media institutions, such as Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV. Closely examining the development of Star since 1993, this essay delineates the forces (infrastructural, political and textual) that transformed what aspired to be the first pan-Asian satellite platform into a niche TV service that panders to the Chinese regulators, provincial bureaucrats and subnational advertisers. The article concludes that ultimately forces on the ground are more influential than high-speed conduits in the sky. It consequently interrogates the reputed power of global media moguls and advocates further institutional research regarding globalization of media.

The anomalies of being Faye (Wong) Gender politics in Chinese popular music

• Building on previous research regarding popular music and the culture industries, this article examines the intersection between gender politics in Chinese societies and the musical success of Faye Wong, the reigning diva of the Hong Kong-based pop music industry. Influential among adolescents and young women, she has not only become a figure for textual identification but also a polysemic icon for cultural aspirations and feminist projects throughout Greater China. Unlike earlier female singing stars, Fayes music and public persona explicitly defy standard market practices and conventional representations of femininity. Yet, paradoxically, these unconventional qualities have contributed to her sustained success over the past 10 years. Thus, Fayes star persona operates both as a marketable commodity and as a site of significant cultural work in the realm of gender politics. Using Bourdieus distinction between economic and cultural capital, our analysis shows how music companies enriched Fayes cultural capital as part of their promotional efforts and how she in turn exploited that very capital in unconventional ways. •

Chinese media and globalization

For more than 30 years, scholars have explored the transnational qualities and effects of Chinese media. In one of the earliest such studies, Chin-chuan Lee (1979) used case examples of Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China to interrogate the tenets of media imperialism, which was at the time the leading model for systemic analysis of international media. Lee wondered whether conventional categories of domination and subordination could be applied to the study of these particular media cultures and asked whether the complexities he encountered in his field research called for a shift to middle-range theories and methods that might be more sensitive to the specific qualities of broadcasting and publishing in diverse societies. Lee was troubled by the ways in which media imperialism focused attention on powerful media producers and generally obscured the realities of cultural production and consumption in societies at the “periphery” of the world system. Lee’s work was part of an emerging wave of scholarship that began to investigate the particularities of Chinese media. This agenda converged with the emerging field of global studies research, which was inspired in part by developments in cultural studies and post-colonial studies. In the late 1990s, Sheldon Hsia-Peng Lu (1997) edited a landmark collection of essays that interrogated the conventional “national cinemas” approach to Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and mainland filmmaking. Instead, he and his colleagues drew intriguing aesthetic and historical connections across East and Southeast Asia. If Lee unsettled the field of media studies with his challenge to the world systems approach, Lu’s anthology questioned the fundamental presumption that Chinese cinema could be analyzed as a coherent national phenomenon. Today, Chinese film and television still pose challenges for scholars whether they hail from the media imperialism school, the global studies approach, or other traditions of research and criticism. The unruly qualities of the Internet have only compounded these complexities so that one sometimes strains to define the meaning of “Chinese media” as an analytical object. Having first emerged via transnational circuits during the early part of the twentieth century, Chinese media matured under colonial, post-colonial, and authoritarian regimes. They were shaped as well by diasporas that complicated the patterns of circulation and cultural influence. Chinese media are therefore remarkably diverse.

''Made in India'' : In Between Music Television and Patriarchy

The pressing problems and peculiar potential of transculturation in music television can be most profitably addressed by examining the struggles within being waged by local Hindi pop artists such as Alisha Chinai. Through close textual analysis, this article critically examines how and why one of Alishas most popular music videos, titled “Made in India,” has become somewhat of a cultural icon for many Indian women, ranking as the best-selling pop song of all time in the South Asian music market. The authors show how pop constructions of Indiannesson music television have been strategically appropriated by marginalized youth cultures to imagine alternatives to both national and transnational institutions of political and patriarchal power.

Beyond the vast wasteland: The policy discourse of global television and the politics of American empire

During the early 1960s, U.S. policymakers first envisioned a global television system linked by satellite technology. Their Utopian discourse suggested that, in the face of Third World “unrest” and growing Soviet competition, television would play an important role in promoting an “imagined community” of citizens throughout the Free World. This notion of cultural and geographic integration is examined in comparison to nineteenth‐century political strategies which led to the foundation of the modern nation‐state.

Comparing media capitals: Hong Kong and Mumbai

The term ‘Chindia’ is relatively incoherent, since these two countries share few characteristics other than their sheer size and their consequent significance to the global community. They will indeed be major economic, social, and cultural forces in the 21st century, and their impact on global media is likely to be profound. Yet colliding the two names together does not make them complementary companions. It does, however, invite critical comparisons, some of which can be quite revealing. Most interesting are their diverging patterns of institutional organization and regulation. Indian film and television operates at arm’s length from the state in a relatively open market economy. Chinese media on the other hand is held close by a state apparatus that fears criticism, democracy, and populism, as well as a host of ‘cultural contaminants’ that include on-screen depictions of horror, violence, and sexuality. Equally intriguing is the fact that these structural differences have manifested themselves in the diverging fortunes of the two industries with respect to globalization. Indian screen media are successfully expanding their range throughout South Asia and increasingly in Africa, the Mideast, Europe, and North America. Chinese film and television on the other hand seems to be mired in a state of disarray. Occasional blockbusters circulate beyond East Asia, but the film industry is now renowned for a yawning gap between state-sanctioned extravaganzas and sadly undernourished midrange and independent movies. Television likewise suffers from various institutional constraints, so that mainland China, which is by far the world’s largest national television market, remains a net importer of programming. Such diverging fortunes are also manifested in the geography of these respective media industries. Fifteen years ago, Bombay – the enduring center of the Indian movie business – was rapidly becoming an important node of the India’s nascent commercial TV industry, an emerging ARTICLE

A Vanishing Piece of the Pi The Globalization of Visual Effects Labor

Digital visual effects (VFX) now comprise one-third of total production spending on major feature film releases. They also are a significant and growing component of production budgets for television programming and commercials. Yet, despite the rising status of VFX, this sector of the media business has been in turmoil for over a decade, a situation made palpable by recurring waves of bankruptcies and layoffs, most notably including Rhythm & Hues, the company that scored the 2013 Oscar for VFX in Life of Pi. This essay analyzes the increasingly globalized mode of production in the VFX industry. We critically examine the specific practices and protocols of the VFX business, demonstrating their impact on workers and labor-organizing efforts. Tying together insights from political economy, creative economy, and production studies, the essay offers a middle-range analysis that connects specific local labor conditions to broader trends in the media industries.

What makes them willing collaborators? The global context of Chinese motion picture co-productions

Market access is becoming the single most significant factor affecting collaborations between Hollywood feature film producers and their Chinese partners. The current import quota system approves only 34 films each year, which are then distributed by the state-run China Film Group, which also controls the release date for each title. The best way for a foreign filmmaker to manage these uncertainties is to fashion a co-production deal with a mainland counterpart, such as Dalian Wanda Group, which is now nearing completion of a huge studio complex in Qingdao, a project that has been greeted sceptically by industry critics. This essay assesses the ambitious logic behind this project, situating it in the broader context of the globally networked production infrastructure that has emerged over the past 20 years, one that generally favours Hollywood producers at the expense of local partners. It illustrates why the Wanda studio may in fact succeed and why foreign producers are growing ever more willing to collaborate with Chinese partners.

Regulating the global infrastructure of film labor exploitation

Confronted by media globalization, many governments have expressed concern about the productive capacity of domestic screen media institutions that are aiming to sustain the allegiances of resident populations. Policymakers are furthermore aware that creative labor is now widely perceived as a resource worth cultivating for its perceived benefits as a catalyst to economic innovation and productivity. In fear of being left behind, countries with even modest resources have fashioned a range of subsidies, tax breaks, and other enticements that have facilitated the emergence of a global production infrastructure that favors producers and media conglomerates at the expense of screen media workers. This mounting crisis of creative labor calls for a critical reassessment of the fundamental rationales behind these film policies and encourages speculation about new directions for cultural activism. Drawing inspiration from environmental studies, this essay advances the concept of stewardship as a geographically scalable approach to the challenges of media globalization.