[lbo-talk] "Cultural" Imperialism and $784 Billion Net Transferfrom the South to the North

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Sean Andrews:

sells.  And many other communication scholars (particularly in the
Uses and Gratifications area) figure that watching TV, going to movies
and listening to recorded music are all fairly predictable practices
once people become accustomed to them.  That is, there is a pretty
reliable national audience for TV.  something like 105 million
households.  These households (mine included) pretty much turn on the
TV at a certain time each day and watch for a certain amount of time.
They may flip around to find something they like or they may just have
it on in the background while they do other stuff, but the appliance
is on regardless of the content.  Therefore the real boon is being
able to control the pipes that feed into that appliance--especially in
commercial TV, where you get points for people having the TV on
regardless of if they are making sausage or babies while it flickers
behind them.  In other words, distribution is more important than
production of content because the actual production is of audiences
that are sold to advertisers.

[WS:] If memory serves, the uses and gratifications theory goes much further
than claiming that "content is irrelevant."  I think the crux of their
argument is that the contents is pretty much defined by the audience in
accordance with their idiosyncratic needs and frames of reference, rather
than pre-defined by broadcasters.  For example, a propagandistic flick
'reefers madness' intended to evoke negative stereotypes of weed smokers is
adopted by weed smoking kids as a 'cult flick' to have a really good laugh
at it.

I think that uses & gratifications approach (as I understand it, at least)
is a death blow to the cultural imperialism theory and any "hypodermic
needle" theory of the media (i.e. claimed strong pre-programmed effect of
the media contents).  It basically stipulates that the same recorded image
played in two different cultural contexts produces two different contents,
and consequently, two different works of art.  

Wojtek