mass-communication-theory

348 Section 4 Contemporary Mass Communication Theory
commodification of culture. How did rap evolve from its roots in urban verbal
warfare into a billion-dollar recording genre and vehicle for paid product placements
(Kaufman, 2003)?
Commodification-of-culture theorists argue that this strategy has been especially
successful in the United States, where media entrepreneurs have remained relatively
independent from political institutions. Mass culture gained steadily in
popularity, spawning huge industries that successfully competed for the attention
and interest of most Americans. As a result, compared to what occurred in Europe,
criticism of mass culture in the United States was muted. Most Americans accepted
the cultural commodities emerging from New York and Hollywood as somehow
their own. But these same commodities aroused considerable controversy when
U.S. media entrepreneurs exported them to other nations. The power of these commodities
to reshape daily life was more obvious in most Third World nations, and
even more disruptive.
In The Media Are American (1977), Jeremy Tunstall provided a cogent
description of how American media entrepreneurs developed their strategy for
creating universally attractive cultural commodities. He also traced how they succeeded
internationally against strong competition from formerly dominant world
powers France and Britain. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
American entrepreneurs had access to powerful new communications technology
but no clear notion of how it could be used to make profits. Most big industrialists
regarded media as no more than minor and highly speculative enterprises.
Few were willing to invest the money necessary to create viable industries. How
could messages broadcast through the air or crude black-and-white moving
images on a movie screen be used to earn profits? Would people really pay to
see or hear these things? How should industries be organized to manufacture
and market cultural products? Most early attempts to answer these questions
failed, but through trial and effort, wily entrepreneurs eventually developed a successful
strategy.
According to Tunstall, Tin Pan Alley in New York City provided a model later
emulated by other U.S. media industries. The authors of popular music specialized
in taking melodies from folk music and transforming them into short, attractive
songs. These were easily marketed to mass audiences who didn’t have the time or
the aesthetic training to appreciate longer, more sophisticated forms of music. In
its early days, Tin Pan Alley was a musical sweatshop in which songwriters were
poorly paid and overworked, while sheet music and recording company entrepreneurs
reaped huge profits. By keeping production and distribution costs low, rapid
expansion was possible and profits grew accordingly. Inevitably, expansion carried
the entrepreneurs beyond the United States. Because many were first-generation European
immigrants, they knew how to return to and gain a foothold in Europe.
The Second World War provided an ideal opportunity to further subvert European
culture. The American military demanded and received permission to import massive
quantities of U.S.–style popular culture into Europe, where it proved popular.
American Armed Forces Radio was especially influential in its broadcasts of popular
music and entertainment shows.
What are the consequences of lifting bits of the culture of everyday life out of
their context, repackaging them, and then marketing them back to people?
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