The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

commercial exhibition sites, and further, there remains an exclusionary quality to
commercial zones – where possession of currency (cash or card), normative
(heteronormative, conservative, “acceptable”) dress, and normative (shopping) behaviour
are all unspoken requirements for entry. (Davis, 1999, p.453) This is not to say that
commercial exhibition sites – although part of the dominant media sphere(s) – are not
also sites of political and socio-economic tension and struggle, where conflicts are often
between local groups and management or regional governments negotiating the
intricacies of international trade agreements. Charles Acland writes:
Significantly, commercial cinema venues, those specially constructed
spaces intended to appeal to wide audiences, are one site at which the
various struggles over globalization are being played out, sometimes
concerning economics, but also concerning national legal structures, the
future role of various levels of government, the selective mobilization of
people, the uncertain continued existence of older cultural forms and
practices, and so on. (2003, p.32)
Still, commercial cinema sites offer a window into the historical bloc that is currently
forming an imbricate matrix of media spheres around the world that consolidate power
into the hands of owners and management elites, while significant challenges to media
hegemony appear at the margins, perched away from commercial sites. Megaplexes and
other commercial cinema venues are – other than the film texts themselves – the most
reified example of cinema culture as articulated by a global media cartel like Viacom, for
example, who owns Paramount Pictures (one of the “big seven” Hollywood studios) and
Dreamworks SKG, as well as CBS Television and Radio and distribution arms.
A healthy democracy that is predicated on diversity and plurality is perhaps the
central thread to Chantal Mouffe’s radical democratic project, and is indeed at the heart
of her concept of a renovated democracy that she has named “agonistic pluralism.”
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