The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

In advanced capitalist, free market cultural climates, the argument that there is
less real choice and therefore decreased diversity while there is steady increased
production and proliferation of products across integrated global economies, is usually
referred to as an “activist” or “anti-globalization” stance, at least in North America.
(Allison, 2006; Murray, 1999) While this is certainly my contention, the purpose of this
thesis is not to articulate and defend my own views about hegemony of mediascapes, but
to enlist the intellectual work accomplished on (cultural) hegemony, stemming from
Gramsci, “to illuminate concrete historical cases or political questions; or thinking large
concepts [through] in terms of their application to concrete and specific situations.” (Hall,
1985, p.6) Writings that complicate the relationship of domination/subordination
ultimately support the work of complicating the cultural hegemony of global media
cartels and responses to them, especially as it relates to distribution and exhibition.
Lears writes that those in power (whether it is media cartels or governments) do
not maintain domination by mere “moral authority,” but instead, “through the creation
and perpetuation of legitimating symbols; they must also seek to win the consent of
subordinate groups to the existing social order.” (1985, p.567) To this point, the historian
scholar makes clearer the questions and connections between consent and distribution:
What components of a dominant culture require the consent of
subordinates? Gramsci had in mind the values, norms, perceptions, beliefs,
sentiments, and prejudices that support and define the existing distribution
of goods, the institutions that decide how this distribution occurs, and the
permissible range of disagreement about those processes. (1985, p.569)
Lears later excavates Gramsci’s work further to reveal the multifarious tensions in the
relationship between “popular consciousness and capitalism.” (Ibid) This is significant,
because hegemony is not a single “act” exacted for instance, as one state invades another;
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