Make Room For Discussion Questions

In our discussion about radio entering the home, we noted the convention of making the receiver into a piece of furniture and its place in the home. Spigel’s focus on television’s relationship with interior space is nothing short of extensive. Spigel notes popular discourses, significantly in “women’s magazines,” that address the issue of where to place the television and the sometimes dramatic effect that its placement had on family interaction and views on interior design.

In my experience, televisions continue to dominate the interior design of spaces that they occupy. Does any other media technology so greatly and directly affect the physical spaces in which we live? And does this effect of television rest on its tendency to bring the outside world into the private space of the home?

Spigel also makes note of producers and advertisers instructing people on how to use television and networks aggressively seeking to change morning rhythms by “making the activity of television viewing into a new daily habit” (85) This is obviously in contrast to technological determinism, as there is a social agent determining use.

However, it begs us to question the “social” half of “social shaping.” One might think this shaping would be by society as a whole, but given the information Spigel discusses it would seem that much of this shaping is done by commercial innovators of the media. Do the buying actions of consumers constitute shaping by “society,” i.e. “the market has spoken,” or is social shaping more often a process performed by certain commercial agencies? Spigel does note popular media discourses criticizing these agencies, but it seems as though this is after structures are in place.

Finally, Spigel notes Weaver’s views on television turning the world into a “small town” (112) and homogenizing the population. This is not unlike the idea of the “global village.” Though some element of this homogenizing could be seen in discussions of the spread of news anchor-like non-regional dialect, these hopes regarding new media do not come to fruition. Are we just that contradictory? that our hopes regarding new media so often do not match our actual use of those media?

Spigel discussion questions for 10/15

Throughout this book Spigel explores how television, as a cultural form, took shape – particularly building up to its diffusion, use and perception during the postwar era.  Her investigation consistently hinges on notions of domestic ideologies of familial recreation, spatial hierarchies in the home, and perceptually gendered distinctions/contradictions between work and leisure in the (often contradictory) public and private spheres. She traces these notions back to their social development during the Victorian era, and subsequently identifies postwar America as a similar age of “cultural revitalization” in the domestic space (32). She argues that these social circumstances in many ways defined the development of television as a cultural form – and subsequently facilitated its widespread production, promotion, and consumption.  In bringing her story to life – and in qualifying her assertions – Spigel exhibits numerous artifacts (namely advertisements, photos, and articles) collected from popular women’s journals of the day.

1.) Do Spigel’s artifacts from the popular media of the postwar era effectively reflect/explain/qualify the proposed domestic ideologies of the day (namely the notions of familial togetherness, social exhibition, and expectations of public vs. private space)? If so, how might we consider similar popular artifacts (see some examples below) describing media technologies/commodidities of our contemporary setting? What domestic/individualistic or gendered ideologies, values and needs do they seem to reflect? How do they align with, or conflict with, the presented ideologies of the postwar era?

2.) A common theme throughout Spigel’s book is that middle-class ideals of domesticity are “predicated upon divisions of (private) leisure time and (public) work time” (73).  While these distinctions are complicated by common gender roles during the postwar era, the general (and contemporary) assumption is that the public sphere is a space for productive work, while the domestic (private) sphere is a space for more leisurely/amusing consumption and familial togetherness.  How do these notions hold up in the age of converging media and mobile technology – where it is no longer enough to have the spectacle of the world “delivered to our doorstep” (102) but instead delivered to our fingertips and carried around in our pockets?  How might such developments complicate the lines between public and private space, and play into Spigel’s considerations of spatial confusion between electrical and real space (116-117)?  In all, how do these developments impact or reflect modern (and postwar) ideologies of domesticity?

 

Read this book with me, or else…

Roy Shukar, Understanding Popular Music, (Psychology Press, 2001).

This book covers most of what we’ve been talking about in class (check out the preview of the contents page), but it does so with regards to the music industry.  I think this would be interesting because we haven’t really talked about the music industry much so far.  Who wants to read this with me?!  -MAX

 

[Edit] There are two of us now.  We are growing in numbers.  The “or else…” is becoming more and more ominous with each breath you take. This book apparently talks about hegemony, cultural imperialism, globalization, and how new media influences and impacts the music industry.  C’mon!  Who doesn’t want to read about this?!!  Someone who has no potential of one day being the coolest cat in the whole world, that’s who.  So come, join us, and maybe you too could one day be the coolest cat on Earth!

Williams questions

I thought this book was interesting because it not only provided a historical account of television but also a cultural one that explored content and effects. We’re told how American broadcast corporations obfuscated what freedom of the airwaves really meant (32) and were able to stop TV from being nationalized (29). At the same time, Williams describes the “forms” present on television and makes some normative claims about which succeed and which are undesirable. Anyway, there were two areas in particular that I found most interesting and that necessitated questions:

1. It’s clear that Williams is not a determinist; he also devoted a section to disputing the work of McLuhan, calling some of his theories “arbitrarily assigned” (130) and “ludicrous” (131). McLuhan’s famous phrase was of course: “the medium is the message,” which suggests that people are affected by the technology irrespective of content. I felt that Williams himself testified to this very phenomenon when he was watching American TV in Miami. He claims it was a “difficult experience to interpret”… and that [he] can still not be sure of what [he] took from the whole flow (92). He was confused at the flow and pacing of films, commercials and other content blending together. He also says that a burgeoning phenomenon entails viewers stating that they’re just watching television, and not watching “‘the news, a ‘play,’ or ‘the football’” (94). He then attributes television’s power to the “primary processes of the technology itself” (76). Do you think that these and some other statements in the book suggest that maybe McLuhan was on to something, that content can indeed be superfluous?

2. Williams refers to the TV fulfilling a role as an “inferior kind of cinema” (22), due to its “immediate technical deficits” (23). People simply watch it because it is in the home, and the “social advantages” outweigh the poor quality (23). But what if the layman can’t determine the technical differences? How nuanced does the television have to be in order to reproduce films? The small screen apparently cannot do justice to battle and storm scenes (59), but what of that? Does that presuppose that what people try to get out of film is simply an exquisite look? What happened to a focus on a solid and engaging story that requires less cinematography? And finally, would Williams praise TVs in the 21st century, given their vast improvements over their 70′s ancestors?

Discussion Questions – Williams’ Television Chapter 1

Hello all,

Enclosed are my discussion prompts for tomorrow’s meeting.

1. The Preface to Williams’ Television illustrates just how much Williams rejects all forms of technological determinism (p.viii) (that they cannot emerge and have a life of their own, neither the fact that television can be reducible).  On that regard, Williams sees the rise of television as inextricably linked with social expectations, political and economical ideologies and institutions, and essentially a cultural product.  While chapter 1 discusses more of the “history” and social use of the television one way to open discussion would be to A) identify some of the unexpected/unforeseen results/consequences (p.4) that television has had in our lives – socially, financially, culturally B) whether or not these unexpected results also occurred in other mediums/technologies (radio, telegraph, telephone) and finally C) how we have been able to conceptualize the study of television as a means to understand the institutionalization of culture?  It may also be beneficial to look at Kompare’s article with regards to not only the commodification of television but also the ways in which technology has functioned as a “flow industry”.

 

1. How does Williams’ interpretation model (p.7 with emphasis on intention and as direct and central to social needs, practices and purposes) differ from the symptomatic and deterministic model?  Williams spends the better part of the chapter looking at the complex relationship between the various forms of technology to illustrate that “the invention of television was no single event or series of events” (p.7).  How was the “social” (p. 10) taken into account with the development of these technologies that necessitated a change (or remediation) of a new form of broadcast communication (starting p. 14)? 

 

1. Describe the paradoxical social relationship between broadcasting and mass communication in terms of marketing television.  How was the dichotomy of “public” and “private” (p. 17 & 19) conceptualized in terms of audience, receptiveness, and even quality (p. 22)?  Even though Williams states: “[w]hen broadcasting because visual, the option for its social advantages outweighed the immediate technical deficits” (pp. 22-23 à sound, picture, quality), what has become the major thrust of television in today’s market…sustainability, broadcasting power, high definition resolution?  Have we lost (or downgraded or replaced) the social factor of television?

See you all tomorrow,

jeremy

article I noticed that seemed relevant/interesting

It’s about how the use of printed business cards is still thriving in the digital age:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100406824.html

Caller-ID: Screening Out the Possibilities of Privacy in Communication

What’s in the Box?”

Conceptualizing new media in terms of intended versus implied use often times falls back upon a much larger question: What came before?  Caller ID (or CID) and the many variants it has spawned, including calling line identification, calling number identification, incorporates a previous feature of technology (the telephone) while wrestling with larger ethical and value implications such as privacy, rights, and equality. The rhetoric and scholarly discourse of caller-id depicts not only the cultural and social implications of intrusions but also delineates the distinction between conceptions of public and private approaches to “appropriate” communication.  This essay will not only provide a historical approach to the medium of caller-id, but will also discuss the ways in which our society has dealt with issues of privacy and the unwanted calls that are placed squarely in our domestic lives…the home.  I will also examine the ways in which the technology of caller-id was and can be used to bypass the constraints of the medium itself.  Our world is primarily a product of instant gratification when it comes to the advances of technology (i.e. the Internet is just one ‘click’ away, texting someone across the world, streaming videos in real-time on the computer).  Our levels of patience have decreased with the implementation of technologies that identify and prepare one for choosing to accept a call, conversation, argument, or whether we decide to use the technology to “screen” ourselves away from the intrusion by selectively deciding and placing values not only on whom we talk to, but the just how important we feel our time is.

Early Caller ID example from the 1970s

Caller-id has been widely used as a communication tool since 1995; however, the technology of caller-id has been around since the late 1960s.   Originating in Greece in 1968, Theodore George Paraskevakos was the person responsible for developing the method of transmitting a caller’s number to a centralized receiver’s device.  However, it was not until 1976 that Japanese inventor, Kazuo Hashimoto, was the first to develop a prototype of a caller-id device that would be responsible for recording the information on the caller (PhoneTel Patent Services). 

Theodore George Paraskevakos

 

The model that most people are familiar with developed during the mid-1990s with the use of a small box attached to the phone lines that would display one of two types of messages depending on what type of caller-id devices you owned: 1) Single Data Message Format (SDMF) – which would display only the number, date, and time that the call was placed or 2) Multiple Data Message Format (MDMF) that along with the information presented through SDMF would also provide the name of the person who was on record for paying the bill (not necessarily the person who was actually making the phone call). 

While the service provided users with the means of identifying calls, there was an inherent notion of hierarchy built into the technology.  The service initially was fee-based, whereby the user had to purchase a device (ranging from $30-60) (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1994, p.2) and then pay an additional monthly rate ($6-8) to use the service in accordance with your phone provider.  Those choosing to upgrade and use the services had to have the means to actually be able to afford it.  The price of the unit, as well as its ancillary use with regards to standard telephone use is not the main focus of my paper.  I am more concerned with the larger implications on how both social and cultural values of privacy became challenged with the use and widespread dissemination of the technology.

Privacy and Sociability in Post-CID Communication: Through the Electronic Peephole

Early accounts of the widespread use of caller-id fell into the technological deterministic category.  In a January 8, 1994 newspaper article from The Ottawa Citizen, the possibility of a device that would be able to record and transmit both the name and number of the caller was viewed as inherently dangerous.  The story’s tone focused on the concerns felt by embracing such a technology by targeting two groups of people: abusive spouses and criminals to trace their victims.  The story elicited a quasi moral panic by suggesting that by displaying the name and number of an abused person or a potential victim, the receiver-as-criminal would be able to locate that particular individual simply by matching up name and phone number in the phone book/directory to find their home address.  The undercurrent of fear and uncertainty was prevalent in many of these early articles because it was the responsibility of the caller to block their phone number and name from showing up on the receiver’s CID device.  The default settings indicate a free-flow of information, however, it is the responsibility of the individual to enter a series of numbers (i.e. *67) to block their information from coming out.  Those who are critical of embracing the widespread use of the device point to this as an invasion of their privacy.

The Philadelphia Inquirer in a January 15, 1994 article described caller-id as an electronic peephole having the responsibility to not only see who is calling before you answer, but being able to block information from the incoming calls.  State representative, David R. Wright, issued his support for this concept of caller-id by saying: “I think people ought to have a peephole on their door if they want it…and if you choose to do so, you ought to have a right to know who’s calling you before you pick up the telephone” (Philadelphia Inquirer, p.1). 

Typing in the additional numbers to ensure privacy though is met with its own share of criticism. 

James Katz’s book, Connections: Social and Cultural Studies of the Telephone in American Life (1999) focused on the disjunction between an individual’s right to privacy and the ability of technology to advance our perception of communication (we can have forethought and knowledge beforehand who’s calling…harkening back to the mystique and supernatural qualities of the telephone and telegraph over 100 years ago…see Czitrom, Boddy, & Fischer).  What we have here is the ability to predict intrusions and invasions that we would otherwise not be able to when the telephone entered into one’s domestic home.  Katz (p.150) provides four criteria surrounding privacy invasion: 1) Intruding, 2) Information gathering, 3) Interfering, and 4) Violating accepted standards.  Katz discussed that privacy interests among various parties are not equal and that even with a widespread deployment of caller-id, these decisions about privacy are not created in a vacuum since the relationship between high social goals and conflicting privacy interests, the concept of privacy rights “are relative, not absolute” (Katz, 1999, p. 152).

The history of the telephone has often been a juggling act between interaction and unwanted intrusions.  Parallels can be drawn to the issue of privacy and invasion with the caller-id.  Historically, the aspect of direct dialing had the mysterious aura of a stranger within one’s home.  Katz notes that class distinctions often added to the level of removal from actually interacting with the “caller”.  “Those with secretaries or servants did have a buffer between themselves and callers, but even with these adjuncts, people were accustomed to the fact that when the phone rang there was no way to be certain who was calling” (Katz, p. 152).  Privacy and recognition was often met with standards of etiquette.  A 1918 article in American Magazine discussed the relationship between the telephone call and a potentially unwanted intrusion: “If you went personally to see a man, or to call on a woman, you would expect to send in your name, just because you make your call over the telephone there is no reason why you should demand to be ushered into a person’s presence without that formality” (Katz, p. 153).   The caller-id however reduces the level anonymity that the caller can embody (or conceal with traditional direct dialing).

Caller-id complicates the standard level of reciprocity of sender and receiver, which is contingent upon a few conditions: 1) that the person has/has not blocked an incoming call, 2) the idea of screening an unwanted or unknown number, and 3) that the recipient of the call already has an unbalanced relationship (ala knowing the caller’s name) prior to the call actually connecting.  The imbalanced relationship between sender/receiver complicates the idea pertaining to caller entitlement to either know who’s calling at what time, or the reverse, wanting to retain some autonomy without being “read” like an open-book.  Katz’s analysis of entitlement is unfounded:  “Callers should have the same rights as everyone else, not more rights, and not special rights.  It is mystifying why a belief has developed that callers are somehow entitled to more and special privacy than others who are not, and never should have been, entitled to automatic anonymity when they impact someone else, neither in context of a telephone call nor in analogous communicative contexts” (p. 161).

Katz recommended that instead of boycotting against caller-id that humans would be able to sidestep or neutralize the function of caller-id through the following ways: using a pay phone, use of a mobile/cellular phone, calling from an unexpected location, or having two separate phone lines one used explicitly for dialing out.  Today though, these specific measures seem not only antiquated, but counter-productive considering 1) the rapid nature with which this technology has spread across cell phones, and 2) historically the telephone was not a place for privacy with party lines and people lurking.  As I will mention in my conclusion, the use and standardization of caller-id software on our modern cell phones is used more as a means of convenience than a tool used to strip away elements of privacy.

One Missed Call

Over the past fifteen years, caller-id technology has continued shaping the way we consider telephonic communication.  Caller-id units have become antiquated as more and more people have turned towards cell phones as their primary means of communication.  We take for granted the idea that we can see on the screen who is calling or who has called. The concept of time as a precious and valuable commodity is not something that has simply arisen in the wake of caller-id; it has merely been remediated into a novel, but ultimately familiar form: penetrating the private sphere at any given moment.  Historically one can see such parallels as salesmen leaving their “calling cards” while the homeowner was away, secretaries intercepting calls that the boss does not want to personally answer.  Why then should it be problematic for someone to screen a call if one does not recognize the number?  Katz optimistically asserts the appeal of caller-id: “Caller-id promises to help them receive more of the calls they want, speak to the people they want who are proposing to penetrate their privacy, avoid disruption from unwanted callers, get business done faster with organizations, and effectuate redress against abusive telephonic intruders” (p. 168).

Historical Research Project—Pirated DVDs in Mainland China—Oct. 4

History Research Project

“…… analytic attention is dominated by the media forms that generate the most money and are thus subject to the most intense accusations of piracy. Although important, this can often elide what it is that pirate infrastructures do.”

—— Brian Larkin.

Pirated DVDs Are Dead? Long Live the Piracy!

——Redefining Movie Piracy in today’s Mainland China

Recently, Chris Anderson published his hotly debated review —— “The Web is dead. Long live the Internet” on Wired[1], which is referring to one of the media currents that the Web browser is gradually losing its vitality and being supplanted by apps at an astonishing speed. Unsurprisingly, there are tons of furious netizens posting counterblows against his controversial prophecy online. This dispute reminds me of an analogous case: the unexpected decay in the popularity of pirated DVDs in China’s media market nowadays. In the following, this article would briefly examine the development of DVD piracy of foreign movies in the Mainland China’s marketplace from a historical point of view. I intend to take it as an illustrative case to scrutinize the heavy blow from the consciousness of social resistance striking at the long-established value of media copyrights in the age of media convergence.

Oh well, long story to tell……

1. The Emergence of DVD Piracy in Mainland China.

It is crucial to recall what happened right before pirated DVDs have come into being in China. Luckily, Chinese people had limited choices for foreign movie viewing: either to purchase illicit pirated VCDs/video cassettes, or just to stay uninformed. This was and remains a question of life or death for Chinese folks. The Chinese government has been harshly and consistently blamed for committing the crime of giving a blind eye to the nation-widely prevailing matter of media piracy in Mainland China for years. Like some social researchers criticize in their reports forthrightly, “… China is possibly the largest market in the world for pirated films. Organized crime in China has a long history and is frequently associated with corrupt officials in government and the military. Piracy operations in China also extend to the Chinese diaspora operating in other countries ……. High-profile cases offer evidence of Chinese gangs conducting piracy operations.”[2] Piracy, drawn into the unique context of Mainland China, is not merely a simple issue within the economic conversation; rather it comes down to a concern involved with a variety of complex matters implicating dominant ideology of the Chinese government and the Chinese spirit of revolt.

Although media piracy has always been consecrated to Chinese audiences; actually, when referring to DVD, few of Chinese people were going to associate it with piracy and copyright until the year of 1998.[3] When DVD version of pirated movies had just turned up on the black market in Mainland China, DVD-5 was the only format available at that time, which brought with a lousily indistinct image and rough sound in any movie it carried. In spite of this, its audiovisual performance was still far better than what pirated VCDs used to provide for viewers, not to mention the cheaper price for its relatively higher capacity of storage. Within expectation, after a short period of time, pirated DVDs, taking the place of other forms of media piracy, completely swept the whole country at the beginning of the new Millennium.

Undoubtedly, compared with previous devices for media storage, DVD possesses myriad advantages. I will only name a few in the following.

Firstly, the price of DVD piracy was the key to its used-to-be prevalence in China. The extraordinarily high price of movie ticket has been nagging both filmmaking corporations and moviegoers ceaselessly in Mainland China since 1985. Having nothing alike in Western countries, where people consider movie-going as a common means of mass entertainment, in most major cities of China, the majority of Chinese citizens have no financial ability to go to theatre on a regular basis. People cannot afford it. One ticket for an American blockbuster in ordinary movie theatres in Beijing, for example, will cost at least one twentieth of the per capita monthly income.[4] This awkward situation in China has changed watching movie in theatre into a particular high-brow and upscale activity. Some film distribution companies in China decided to raise ticket price as high as possibly in the mid of 1990s. They believed that anyhow there would be no more audiences going to theatre in the near future, and those, who would like to purchase a movie ticket for the moment, were all upper-class wealthy people who wouldn’t mind paying a higher price. A recent study in 2010 shows that ordinary Chinese only go to the cinema once every five years.[5] The nonstop rise in the ticket price for the last 20 years has not only kept blocking Chinese audiences out of the theatre but also become one major impetus behind the prosperity of movie piracy in China.

The price of a single-sided pirated DVD-5 carrying with one movie in Beijing was only $1 to $1.5 in 2003.[6] In 2010, people could pay less than $1 for a series of 007 or Rambo movies on a compressed DVD-9 on the sidewalks of Shanghai.[7] Back to the 1990s and the early 2000s, those pirated movies on DVDs were usually recorded by household handheld camera in the dark when they were theatrically exhibited. Usually, these movies were shaky video recordings, completing with scratchy audio and shots of the backs of viewers’ heads.[8] However, most of American movie lovers in China wouldn’t care the horrible effect presented by pirated DVDs that much, as long as they could spend much less on a movie they were dying to watch for such a long time. After its rapid spread in the last 10 years, the total sale of pirated DVDs in 2009, conservatively estimated, was more than $5.84 billion in Mainland China.[9]

A pirated DVD of The Incredibles was being sold on the street in Mainland China in 2004, right after the movie’s premiere in North America. However, the quality of this version, I assume, wouldn’t be too good, as it was highly possibly the theatrically taped one (‘Qian-Ban’ in Chinese) rather than cloned directly from the original film or its DVDs. (Photo from Baidu.com.)

Also, compared with previous forms of media for storage, such as video cassette or VCD, DVD format itself holds a variety of advanced technological improvements, including higher capacity of storing, small-sized external shape, high portability, high-resolution video, high-fidelity audio, and easy-to-use and low-cost device for burning, reading and rewriting.[10] Thanks to these unique features, a DVD could be purchased at an ultra-low price without any difficulty. Besides, when watching a movie on DVD, audiences are guaranteed a better chance to take the full control of audiovisuality in the viewing process. On the contrary, it’s hard for moviegoers in theatre to stop, to reverse, to fast forward, or to make any change to the film streaming at any time they prefer, or to watch it at any place they like. The entire process of movie viewing in theatre is lack of the sense of empowerment which audiences could easily attain during watching DVDs. Moreover, many legit DVDs prevent skipping past or fast-forwarding in order to force consumers to watch some specific parts of the content.[11] This coercive feature of legit DVDs is extremely disturbing for viewers who are inclined to have multiple viewing experiences. Like Larkin contends, “when films were shown once a week on television or periodically at the cinema, there could be a general influence but not the close textual control needed for precise copying: pausing, rewinding, examining costumes and camera techniques, and transcribing plot sequences. …Piracy allows the breaking down of a narrative into component parts and close attention to detail that constitutes this copy culture and on which the development of aesthetic forms.”[12] Especially for those viewers who have already watched the movie once, if they plan to enjoy it again, then pirated DVDs are always a better choice for them than legit DVDs or going to theatre for the second time from both economical and practical point of view.

Furthermore, when it comes to the specific cultural environment in Mainland China, pirated version of all the scarce movies is almost the only option for film buffs, movie enthusiasts, and even film experts. It was in the year of 1995 that the Chinese government started to allow foreign movies to be shown to Chinese audiences. Between 1995 to 2001, there were only 10 foreign movies per year screened in Mainland theaters. Under the political and economic pressures from WTO, the Chinese government has permitted 20 imported movies for theatrical exhibition every year in Mainland since 2002.[13] Whereas, there have already been at least 14 authorized universities having majors in filmmaking and/or film theories in Mainland China since 1990,[14] which means there were tens of thousands of film students, film professors, film makers, and film scholars existent. Lots of these film experts are specialized in foreign movies, especially in American and European cinema studies. As far as I know, only one film institution in Mainland China has its own media collection of foreign cinema in the 1990s. Before 1995, nothing concreted for them to watch or to learn if without any pirated foreign movies obtainable in China. Additionally, since there is no motion picture rating system in China,[15] every imported film has to be viewed and edited by the censor before public screening. And all the controversial parts pertaining to sensitive political, economic, and cultural topics in these movies will be removed with no negotiation. The strict censorship in China is awfully unfavorable for people who take these intact media materials as indispensable for further professional inquiry. Usually art films from European countries with any ideologically permissive content will be rejected for screening directly. Thus, people fond of French avant-garde film, for instance, have no other choice but to purchase pirated movies on the street corners. This probably could explain why the most prosperous markets for pirated media are so close to these prestigious Film Academies in Beijing.

At times, in some places, compliance with the law doesn’t necessarily mean the first-rate way out. Almost all the internationally released foreign films are freely available in both Chinese and English language versions through the counterfeit trade in DVDs nowadays.[16] Owing to today’s highly developed technologies which help people easily crack the regional codes on legal DVDs, most of the high-quality pirated DVDs would show up on the street in Mainland China shortly after the release of the original DVDs in North America. Chinese audiences at least don’t need to wait for years for their desired movies. They have time to kill, and they have got pirated DVDs. It should be a more harmonious society in this way. Wouldn’t it be nice?

A pirated DVD copy of the film The Matrix Reloaded that appeared just as the movie was opening in theaters in Guangzhou in the August of 2003. (From NY Times, Tuesday, Aug 19, 2003, Page 16.)

2. Turning Point.

Piracy in some countries is a radical way to acquire information. Especially when referring to some undeveloped or developing nonwestern countries, media piracy is oxygen. Larkin describes piracy in Nigeria in this way, “the array of global media is only available through the mechanism of piracy; piracy is thus the default infrastructure through which nearly all foreign media flow.”[17] In the similar manner in Mainland China, piracy, as an effective information runway, leads people to the four corners of this world. Along with the coming of new media age, the Internet brings a new wave of piracy upheaval——online file-sharing.

It was in 2005 that the peer-to-peer (P2P) systems were turning into prevalence in Mainland China. Although Napster was released in 1999, few Chinese people got a chance to have a tryout back then. After the year of 2000, with the boom of broadband Internet in China, people began to seek for more convenient channels to obtain media materials online. In only 5 years later, the amount of movies Mainland netizens downloaded over the Internet achieved 400,000-600,000 per year. According to a research report done in 2005, only one eighth of Mainland college students said they would be willing to watch a movie in theatre. Most of young people between 18 to 24 years old, who were supposed to be target audiences for movie distribution in Mainland China, chose to get access to movies online for free.[18] BTChina and VeryCD have become the most thriving online file-sharing websites in China for users of BitTorrent and eMule since 2005. Since then, P2P has begun to dominate the way DVD piracy paved.

Mainland people find themselves a new freeway to breath. By this, I mean, FREE way. More than just with regard to money, online file-sharing is not limited by any boundary of locality, time zone, language, race, nationality, and culture. It is literally free to everything. All the producing processes of online piracy in Mainland China, like recording, translating, editing, uploading, sharing, and introducing, are completely fulfilled voluntarily in a timely manner. Chinese netizens could find a variety of un-translated versions of the American movies available for downloading on P2P websites in the same month after its premiere in other regions. And then, closed-captioned scripts in English and/or Chinese will also appear online for free downloading soon after. During an interview with NY Times, one of the most well-known websites for subtitle translation of P2P media contents, YYeTs.net, maintained that their translation groups were nonprofit organization and all the members in the crew were volunteers. “What we do is a kind of bridge for two different cultures.” One of its translators told the reporter during the interview.[19]

Online file-sharing is a new definition of freedom. It offers human being a new channel to communicate, to exchange, to express, and to reproduce, without any kind of limitation. More importantly, it sets piracy free. It forms a new piracy system that “create(s) and recreate(s) conditions for everyday urban life. Like all new technologies, they organize sensory perception, provide new relationships between people and things, and give rise to different forms of affectivity, sociability, and leisure. …By expanding the range of media available and the speed with which they circulate, piracy has also expanded the possibility for cultural imagining, the modes of affect that accompany those imaginings, and new aesthetic forms that emerge out of them. In this sense, piracy is not just destructive but generative.”[20] Movie fandom, and convergent and participatory culture were emerging on the Chinese websites simultaneously. Online piracy rocks Chinese people’s world.

Mainland China already possessed an online population of 222.4 million people in 2008, 65.8% of which participated in online illegal file-sharing.[21] The most influential BitTorrent site of Mainland China, BTChina, had 80,000 daily users in 2009. Downloading has become so popular (in Mainland China), that it’s even cutting into the profits of vendors who sell pirated DVDs. People could find an entire season of ABC program Lost for less than $1 in Shanghai’s piracy market in 2008; however the business was not so good. There was no reason for audiences to pay that much.[22] With online piracy, there would be no point to pay at all.

It would be over with pirated DVDs soon. I thought.

3. Revitalization.

In 2009, the total amount of eMule users in Mainland China ranked the fourth all over the world, and the number in Taiwan also accounted for 1.42% of the total population of eMule users around the world.[23] These data indicate that at least 8% of eMule users in this world are native Chinese speakers, who have no trouble pouring and obtaining information freely online beyond regional borders. Before long, the Chinese government found itself in an embarrassing situation in this open atmosphere created by online piracy. The online filter for media content is more concerned with political taboos, rather than the infringement of intellectual copyrights. Many Chinese people seem resolved to political censorship. But, they have gotten used to the freedom to get the entertainment they want online.[24] Under a severe political clampdown from western countries, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television in Mainland China cracked down on BTChina, and shut down VeryCD temporarily for lack of legal license to distribute media files in the December of 2009.[25] The most renowned movie fan-sites, movie translation and downloading sites, and online streaming sites were all automatically suspending themselves for the following several weeks instantly after this sanction.

In a research done in one week after the crackdown on the market of pirated DVDs in Guangzhou, the price of pirated DVDs raised nearly 10% in the same week. And according to the interviews in several popular computer markets in Beijing, reports showed that the sale of DVD players had a more significant increase than before the crackdown in 2009.[26]

So, piracy will be gone forever in front of hegemonic banning? Or pirated DVDs are back now?

4. Sign of Imminent Death?

Piracies “generate social action and aesthetic forms and to examine aspects of what they do in societies rather than whether they are legal or not. In many parts of the world, media piracy is not a pathology of the circulation of media forms but, rather, its prerequisite. It is the means by which media—usually foreign—are made available and it provides the technological constraints governing how other non-pirate media are reproduced, disseminated, and consumed.”[27] Obviously, movie piracy in China didn’t and won’t disappear, provided the Chinese government is still implementing and mandating its extensive censorship on this land. The Chinese fan groups of foreign movies, making use of digital technologies and convergent media, have been bringing their intelligence into full play to break the block of culture as well as to disseminate their own knowledge and beliefs—this is a war regarding culture, knowledge, and information. Copyright in this battle becomes the biggest barrier to equality and democracy. Politics and economics matter less when it comes to the freedom of mind and heart.

On the one hand, DVD piracy doesn’t lead to a dead-end, but rather elevates itself to a higher cultural level——Cinema Collection. Although DVD itself is lack of durability, flexible accessibility, version diversity, boundless and timeless possibilities for circulation and distribution, etc., when compared with online media; high-quality pirated DVDs are increasingly dominant over the black market in Mainland China. These first-class pirated DVDs usually provide audiences with exceptional audiovisual performance for a slightly higher price. A great crowd of cinema fanatics are keen on purchase of this sort of DVD piracy for private collection. High-quality marks of DVD piracy “allow(ing) consumers to incorporate films into their home libraries, a process that provides collectors with the ability to position themselves within a wider taste culture” and guarantee “a certain type of engagement with movies, one characterized by discourses of cinematic knowledge or connoisseurship, in which the home viewer is treated as an expert—or potential expert—in films and film culture.”[28]

A screen grab from pirated DVD of Toy Story with HD studio-like visual performance.

Pictures of exquisitely made pirated DVDs of the entire series of 007 for sale on the Chinese online auction and shopping website. All the DVDs are high quality and copied from the original DVDs distributed in other regions. One set costs less than $100. (Pictures from taobao.com.)

Picture of fancy package of pirated DVDs in Mainland China. They are pirated DVDs of  Red Curtain Trilogy (By Baz Luhrmann), Schindler’s List, and the 25^th anniversary version for Alien, Mummy. (Photos from Fan Sites and taobao.com)

A screen grab from a high-quality DVD-9 version of one pirated movie winning the Best European Picture Award in 2003. This is the Chinese advert introduction content for the synopsis and the reviews from film critics of this movie. Neither the original legal DVD nor film screened in theatre is carrying with this part. The pirated DVD offers thorough background information for many infatuated movies fans to enjoy.

A picture of a pile of simple-packaged DVDs sold on the streets in Mainland China in 2007. The audiovisual quality is not necessarily low, and some among these DVDs might be on DVD-9 format. But, in virtue of the rough packing and coarse translation, they are called Jian-Zhuang in Chinese and cost much less than the deluxe ones do. (Photo from news.sohu.com)

Pirated DVDs in China are far from being done. On the other hand, there are various alternative approaches to have access to movie piracy. Three months after the crackdown, all the online streaming websites and fan forums are already back on track. Even though a large portion of movie collection has been deleted for good from some P2P sites, the function of file-sharing, after a short time of recovery, works just fine. More pirated movies will be put into the stock of these websites. Sooner or later, these cultural bridges will be restored to their former prosperity. Foreign movies, subtitles, and spoiled information are now all accessible from private online file storage providers sprouting during this period of time. This is a benefit generated from the crackdown. People will create their devious route to give a counterattack against confinement. Piracy in some people’s minds is the most efficient manner to overcome censorship and to realize cultural democracy.

What if ……?

What if living an empty life without pirated DVDs in China? Can you imagine anything worse than being caught in a self-secluded small world and living out one’s days ignorantly? Like the idealistic solution to piracy somebody was daydreaming about, “digital piracy and fake products is a problem throughout the developing world but nowhere to the scale seen in China. The problem isn’t likely to be solved through diplomacy, litigation or law enforcement – business is forced to come up with creative solutions of its own.”[29] Yeah right. But, what kind of creative solutions civilians could put up by themselves to fight for their civil rights against dictatorial politics of their government? There is a Chinese saying goes as “for every measure from the top, a countermeasure at the bottom”. Facing up to monocracy, people know how to figure out their own cunning strategy. In a sense, piracy in China is no longer what some starchy academicians thought it purported to be.

Avatar premièred in Beijing on Dec. 31, 2009. Numerous Chinese audiences went to movie theatres attempting to enjoy an intriguing visual feast. And a large amount of them ended up with vomiting and dizziness there caused by wearing a pair of 3D glasses. This is called 3D syndrome. Just like one century ago, people got scared by a train moving towards them on the silver screen and fled in all directions. People in our age are still not used to the audiovisual revolution of 3D technology. What if we could watch 3D movies at home through online file-sharing or DVDs? I bet you would rather throw up in your own bathroom than sway and fall in a faint in the theatre, right? Plus, you don’t need to pay $25 for getting nauseated in public. You could just feel nausea for free in your own place. How great it is……

Here is another benefit from piracy: on occasion, piracy is the equivalent of privacy. I have never heard of any story talking about one single public large-scaled projection of adult movies in China or in Asia. (If anyone knows something like that, I really like to hear how it was going.) However, there are abundant pirated DVDs of American porn selling on the street in Beijing. Partly, it is because Mainland China is under the embargo on any kinds of erotic media materials to be produced and circulated. But, a more reasonable and thorough explanation here I believe should be some types of film are only appropriate for private viewing. It also happens when audiences prefer to watch movies privately for some reason. Like some beefcake feels embarrassed to cry in a crowded movie theatre when watching Titanic, so he chooses to purchase a DVD or downloads it to his computer from the Internet in order to enjoy it and weep alone. Under either condition, when there are no legit DVDs for sale, piracy is the only alternative left.

My point is, technologies are constantly evolving. The quintessence of piracy remains alive yet never stops changing. Instead of raping high profits as it used to be and was supposed to be, piracy evolves to be an effectual cultural tool for people living in some part of this world to challenge the information blackout on multiple affairs.

Sometimes, I just want to utter in an earsplitting and vehement voice:

Piracy? To die for!

Endnotes:

---

[1] “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet,” last modified August 17, 2010, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1.

[2] Gregory F. Treverton et al., Film Piracy, Organized Crime,and Terrorism (RAND Corporation, 2009), 68.

[3] “Who made the Branded DVD Piracy?” last modified January 26, 2005, http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2005-01/26/content_2509721.htm.

[4] “The Current Situation of Movie Theatre in China,” last modified August 24, 2010, http://news.163.com/10/0824/04/6EQT8QIQ00014AED.html.

[5] “The Current Situation of Movie Theatre in China.”

[6] “Very Guilty, Very Beauty?—— A Field Research on Pirated DVDs,” last modified March 12, 2004, http://www.xschina.org/show.php?id=393.

[7] “DVD Piracy in China – A Closer Look at Black Market Trade,” last modified April 24, 2008, http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/dvd-piracy-china-black-market.

[8] “DVD Piracy in China – A Closer Look at Black Market Trade.”

[9] “The Sale in the Chinese Pirated Movie Market,” retrieved September 30, 2010, http://www.mtime.com/news/2010/06/17/1434426.html.

[10] “To the Movie Fans in Lishui in the Age of Post-VCD,” last modified March 29, 2004, http://bbs.inlishui.com/dispbbs.asp?boardid=12&Id=46073.

[11] “DVD,” Wikipedia, accessed September 30, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD.

[12] Brian Larkin, “Pirate Infrastructures,” in Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, ed. Joe Karaganis. (New York: social science research council, 2007), 83.

[13] “China Sinks Dead Man’s Chest,” last modified July 10, 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/jul/10/newsl.

[14] “Information of Colleges and Majors,” accessed September 30, 2010, http://www.chinakaoyan.com/graduate/SpeForSchool/id/103.shtml.

[15] “Censorship in the People’s Republic of China,” Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Film

[16] “Regulators Now Spooked by Ghost Stories,” last modified February 14, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN1442888920080214?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews.

[17] Brian Larkin, “Pirate Infrastructures,” 78.

[18] “BT’s retirement Emule’s premiere, Angel or Demon in the Industry,” last modified June 16, 2005, http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2005-06-16/2320638317.shtml.

[19] “Chinese Fans Following American TV Online—For Free,” last modified June 24, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91799790.

[20] Brian Larkin, “Pirate Infrastructures,” 78.

[21] “China Shutters BT Sites over Porn, Copyrighted Materials,” accessed October 1, 2010, http://www.zeropaid.com/news/87345/china-shutters-bittorrent-sites-over-porn-copyrighted-material/

[22] “Chinese Fans Following American TV Online—For Free.”

[23] “The Amount of Chinese Emule Users Ranks Top 4 in the World,” last modified April 19, 2010, http://www.cnbeta.com/articles/108985.htm.

[24] “Chinese Fans Following American TV Online—For Free.”

[25] “China Shuts Down File-Sharing Site,” last modified December 9, 2009, http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/12/09/china-file-sharing-website-censorship.html.

[26] “BT’s retirement Emule’s premiere, Angel or Demon in the Industry.”

[27] Brian Larkin, “Pirate Infrastructures,” 83.

[28] Chuck Tryon, Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 20-21.

[29] “DVD Piracy in China – A Closer Look at Black Market Trade.”

References:

Karaganis, Joe. “The Ecology of Control: Filters, Digital Rights Management, and Trusted Computing.” in Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, edited by Joe Karaganis, 256-280. New York: social science research council, 2007.

Larkin, Brian. “Pirate Infrastructures.” in Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, edited by Joe Karaganis, 74-84. New York: social science research council, 2007.

Treverton, Gregory F., and Carl Matthies, Karla J. Cunningham, Jeremiah Goulka, Greg Ridgeway, Anny Wong. Film Piracy, Organized Crime,and Terrorism. RAND Corporation, 2009.

Tryon, Chuck. Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Wired. “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet.” last modified August 17, 2010. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1.

Nuances of Nintendo

Unlikely characters progress across a landscape of bright features; they slay enemies, upgrade their stats, collect treasures and heroically die for the cause. Princesses call from shuttered castles during the quest. And then in an instant, a cartridge is switched to reveal a world of 8-bit sports. Little hockey sticks or footballs appear in cartoon form as players frantically buzz about. Tinny beeps and blips align in primitive yet computerized soundtracks to serenade the action. The 8 to 15 year old demographic, mashing buttons to control all of this, seemed to be captivated no matter the content before them.

With the help of incredibly accessible games and reasonable prices, the Nintendo Company Ltd. secured a majority of the video game market during its heyday of the late 1980’s. The success did not come without its challenges, however, due to attendant legal and moral allegations as the media giant rose to prominence. Some academic literature of the era reflected discontent over the video game medium. Does it reinforce gender and class stereotypes? Does it cause aggression? Antisocial behavior? Health risks? At the same time, other voices in the news media lamented a “decline of the youth” (Pollack) as more and more hours were surrendered to the console. Interestingly, however, Nintendo was described glowingly in the same newspaper when in a retail/business context. Individual impressions, of course, varied, but each case is important to consider. What follows is an analysis of different interpretations of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), which will uncover recurring trends in media history.

HISTORY OF THE MACHINE

Nintendo was founded in Japan in 1889 and originally produced playing cards (gamespy.com 1). Under new management, the company attempted to diversify and began manufacturing toys, and, subsequently, electronic toy devices. In the midst of a sagging interest in the home video game market, the company began to design a machine that could support “interchangeable cartridges”—much like the existing Atari 2600—so that it would “remain fresh” due to a growing library of games (2). After numerous business ventures and gambles involving chips and superconductors, Nintendo ultimately released the Family Computer (or Famicom) in Japan on July 15, 1983.

Competition would ultimately be posed by the Atari 2600, but the Famicom had 16 times the RAM and simply looked fresher (2).

The success of the Famicom led to its redesign and introduction into North America. One of the key features of the newly-coined NES was allowing for the controllers to be unplugged. It also assumed a gray, utilitarian aesthetic in contrast to its initial color scheme. The most important aspect of the NES—its “improved technology”—would beat out the Atari 2600 and help revive video game sales that stagnated since 1982 (Pollack).

The NES debuted in the US over Christmas of 1986 and began test runs in major cities (gamespy.com 12). Thanks to a Herculean marketing campaign put on by Nintendo of America, 1 million consoles were sold in the first year, and an additional three million in 1987 (13). Systems ran for about 100 dollars, or 180 if one purchased the available games (Pollack). At first only 15 titles were offered, but the number expanded to 34 games in 1988 and 55 in 1989 (Rothenberg). Because of the system’s extreme popularity, it kick-started a phenomenon that would permeate many levels of popular culture in the US.

THE DEVICE ITSELF: A REMNANT FROM THE 8O’S

Some of my earliest memories of the NES involved extended family; deprived of a set at mom and dad’s house, I had to wait until Sunday nights to play video games in my grandparents’ basement. I also recall a somewhat dramatic moment in Philadelphia where, after having visited my aunt, my older cousin Andrew and his excitable friends suffered continual losses to the robot dragon in Mega Man 2. I was moved by the camaraderie and innocent solidarity around the screen. If only I could tell them now that the weapon they should have used was Quick Boomerang.

When I finally picked up an NES of my own, I was about 15 and the next generation consoles had long since debuted. It was dirt cheap and by then a novelty. I didn’t appreciate its power, however, until one night while going on a cursory run through Castlevania II. I’d gotten a random tip from my friend Charlie that I should have the character—vampire stalker Simon Belmont—crouch by a lake at some point during the quest. Doing so panned the screen down to reveal a secret and ancient world beneath the water—and thus a new area to explore. The discovery filled me with a profound awe; it was just a simple feature, sure, but clambering forward from the 1980s it spoke more volumes than any of the eye-catching cinematics of the Playstation era.

Over the years I would become acquainted with other iconic titles Nintendo fans now know and love: Double Dragon, Excitebike, Kid Icarus, Legend of Zelda, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Bubble Bobble, Ghosts n’ Goblins and more. Often times these games would become meaningful experiences for me, because they supplied a way to overcome adversity and engage in adventuring during a rather mundane existence. And they were also, well, fun. My favorite was the aforementioned Mega Man franchise, which I could only “beat” 2 through 6 of thanks to the improved motor skills of my teenage years. But my interest in Nintendo waned after sophomore year of high school.

Recently, a new guy moved in with his NES in tow. After having essentially forgot about Nintendo I experienced a fun but short-lived 8-bit renaissance in the living room. Best of all, Mega Man 3 was in his collection.

Kipp’s machine, like most of its brethren probably, has slightly yellowed over the years. It is a two-toned gray with a black stripe and red accents, with a boxy, rectangular shape. Two buttons on the left-hand side—“POWER” to turn on the console, and “RESET” to take players back to the game’s title screen. In the back corners are various jacks: audio and video as well as an RF switch, which permit you to hook the system up to your TV. The technical stats of the device are as follows: CPU: 8-bit/RAM 2KB/Colors: 52 (nesworld.com)

A door on the front opens up to accommodate game cartridges, which you can never expect to play on the first insertion.

 Legions of young players since the 1980s assumed that dust or something must have gotten onto the part of the cartridge that the NES reads. I was one of them.

This misperception led to a spate of puckering up and blowing out an invisible build-up from the bottom of the games. This long-standing myth is dispelled in one article I found: Blowing doesn’t fix anything; the real issue is with the “cartridge connector” inside the NES that gets stretched from overuse (gamespy.com 8).

 Other rituals performed to get games to work included repeatedly slapping the cartridge up and down while in the Nintendo, shifting it from side to side, and maniacally tapping the RESET button until something appeared on the screen. No matter what you did, your actions walked the line between having finesse and having dumb luck.

The controllers, as previously mentioned, could come unplugged. They matched the console in terms of color and design, and featured a cross-shaped “d-pad,” a SELECT and START button (to pause), and A and B buttons (typically to jump and shoot). Different controller shapes, including one that featured a joystick, became available later on.

With these very controllers in the hands of the nation’s youth, the NES and its content began to captivate to the chagrin of some societal guardians. What were teachers, parents, and experts saying about the phenomenon? Had Nintendo supplanted the typical activities of the American kid?

INTERPRETATIONS OF NINTENDO IN THE NEWS

The Nintendo was released in the United States during the Christmas season of 1986. It soon became wildly popular and by 1989 found its way into an estimated 20% of American homes (McGill). Support ultimately declined by 1991, however, at the onset of the Super Nintendo. Using this timeline, I searched Lexis-Nexis for New York Times articles on Nintendo from 1986 to the end of 1988.

Of the few articles devoted to the system, nearly all were written during the holiday season. There is a strong associational bond of the Nintendo to Christmas, which is probably due to the fact that it is an expensive toy and sales are “clustered” around December (Gailey 81). What’s interesting is that at the same time journalists related discontent over what the NES was doing to the youth, they also offered a celebration of retail sales and positive outlooks over the future of commerce. It was a curious wedding between two right-leaning phenomena—business and morals—that found themselves at odds with each other.

Two articles invoked the term “zap” while writing about Nintendo, and most articles described the NES stimulating a “teen-ager craze” (Malcolm), a “mania” (McGill), and a “cultural phenomenon” (McGill). One opinion piece went so far as to call it a “permanent addiction” and the “opiate of the late-80’s preadolescent” (Craig). This perturbed writer eventually suggested some upsides to the system, but only after lamenting the “hour upon hour” his son spent playing video games in the basement (Craig). The rest of the content provided on the NES posed as subtle advertising, with journalists reporting on the price of the system, its appeal, and its potential to make video games “a steady business” (Pollack). Also noted was the Nintendo’s status of the best-selling toy of Christmas 1987 (McGill). Readers also learned that the games were the top sellers at an Ames department store in Connecticut (Barmash).

But as I mentioned before, something more was going on than cheerleading conducted in the name of retail. Moralists were indeed worried about the impact of the NES on adolescents. One site stated that parents worried that video games were leading to “a nation of fat and lazy… addicts” (gamespy.com 9) By 1987, according to the same site, “‘experts’ started popping up on talk shows talking about video game addiction” and ultimately alluding to the idea that video games were the “cause of society’s ills” (14). Indeed, “new media often stir up fears of moral decline,” and the video game medium was no exception (Baym 41). With anecdotal evidence aside, parents and teachers could really only rely on research provided by said experts and academics; so what did primary resource documents say from the era?

MORAL PANIC AND RESEARCH ON NINTENDO

While concern over the “decline in youth” appeared in the newspaper and on TV, some academic research of the time reported potential, albeit rare, health effects of video games. One journal article from 1990 averred that the “high-tech, fast-paced culture” Nintendo was endemic of could cause such effects (Crigger). As evidence, it stated that a Boston physician treated a thirteen-year-old girl who suffered an epileptic seizure after playing Super Mario Bros. for three hours. In more specific terms, it went on to say that the “shifting pattern of the video-game image [was] more likely to have triggered the photoconvulsive response” (Crigger). Though it did admit that seizures were uncommon, the author warned players of an additional peril not found on the screen  during gameplay. Severe pain of the “extensor tendon of the right thumb”–dubbed “Nintendinitis”–is another malady to watch for. One woman in the article was unfortunate enough to fall victim to it after 5 hours of repeated button pushing. Synonyms from other sources include “Space Invader’s wrist” (Schroeder) and “Nintendo thumb” (gamespy.com 14).

Another health-related article was featured in a 1993 issue of Youth Studies Australia. Although next generation consoles had torpedoed the original Nintendo’s standing by that year, it still fits in with the ongoing tradition of fearing new media forms. The author reported cases of “photosensitive epilepsy” in England and Australia, where kids were taken to hospitals due to “epileptic fits brought on by playing video games” (Health). However, it provides the caveat that only those prone to epilepsy are really at risk.

But with physical health risks aside, what else about Nintendo negatively influences impressionable kids? What sorts of lessons about the world are they adopting through gameplay?

 Research in this area is inconclusive at best. One 1996 article from the Journal of Popular Culture says as much, though admits some other troubling factors. The author spoke disparagingly of the violence exhibited in video games, although this appeared to be less of an issue with Nintendo as it was with the burgeoning Sega systems that featured the controversial Mortal Kombat and Night Trap games. The author also admits that “violence [is] the primary problem-solving option [and] the only way to get points” in a typical game (Schroeder). This rings true for many NES games, though they are certainly not as graphic or visceral as the jarring recreations of gore on Sega’s fighting games. One site even claimed that NES games just weren’t “realistic” enough to offend (gamespy.com 14). In any event, any research hoping to discover links to video games and aggressive behavior was “contradictory” (Schroeder).

 A 1993 article from the same journal concluded with somewhat similar results. The recurring theme seems to be that while video games operate with some questionable content, “children are not empty receptacles” (Gailey 93). Avid players can think for themselves, and, in many cases, “children did not seem to play the games to the exclusion of other activities.” But this is not to dismiss the notion that problematic values and messages are nonetheless expressed through the video game medium. Gailey noted that players experience a “worldview presented by a sector of the corporate structure” that is both “paranoid” and “fraught with danger” (89). She goes on to say that “anything new is potentially dangerous… [and that] the new must be avoided or killed” (91). But the worry over whether children are inculcated with these unfavorable values is misplaced; Gailey says that there is little or no evidence for video games causing aggressive behavior. However, one fascinating yet depressing study done on video game behavior produced a significant result. Kids who played more aggressive games “tended to give less to a schoolroom canister labeled ‘For Poor Children’ than those who did not, perhaps indicating a lower level of compassion” (91).

I can only give an anecdotal response and say that though my brother and I played an onslaught of aggressive games as kids, we’ve grown into compassionate pacifists in our adult lives. So perhaps all or most of the allegations brought on by the Nintendo moral panic were ill-founded.

CONCLUSION: A LASTING NOSTALGIA

My roommate Kipp and I have both expressed our disinterest in the vast, encompassing, story-laden and graphics-heavy offerings of contemporary video games. The odysseys unfolding on Xbox 360s and Playstation 3s simply take to much time, and we don’t feel the need to be so engrossed. At the same time, he and I feel nostalgic for the wholesomeness of the original Nintendo. At least for me, playing NES games now is mostly enjoyable due to the memory of the Philadelphia dragon—five kids just trying to overcome the beast, switching the controller around in the silver glow.

And there is some evidence for this nostalgic emotion. It’s not just us. Michael Newman wrote in a recent blog that part of the appeal of the Nintendo Wii is that it “exploits” this very feeling. “Nostalgia,” he continues, “is potent because it promises to return to us the lost time we yearn to recapture.” Comments posted below the youtube.com offerings of old NES game play also suggest as much. There is something to the original Nintendo, something powerful, but whether the medium conditioned us to feel or think a certain problematic (and aggressive) way is unlikely.

Works Cited:

 -Barmash, Isadore. “Retailers Optimistic at Season’s Start,” New York Times 4 Dec. 1988:

1.

-Baym, Nancy K. Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Malden, MA: Polity, 2010, 22-49.

 -Crigger, Bette-Jane. “Hazardous to Your Health,” Hastings Center Report, Sept/Oct. 1990, Vol. 20, 5, 3.

 -Gailey, Christine Ward. “Mediated Messages: Gender, Class, and Cosmos in Home

Video Games,” Journal of Popular Culture, 27.1 (1993): 81-97.

 -Health,” Youth Studies Australia, Autumn 1993, Vol. 12, issue 1, 11.

 -Malcolm, Andrew H. “Zap the Chestnuts; Tune in a Yule Log,” New York Times 21 Dec.

1988: 1.

 -McGill, Douglas C. “Nintendo Scores Big,” New York Times 4 Dec. 1988: 1.

 -Pollack, Andrew. “Video Games, Once Zapped, In Comeback,” New York Times 27 Sept.

1986: 1.

 -Purcell, A. Craig. “LONG ISLAND OPINION; Video Game Mania: Passing Phase or

Permanent Addiction?” New York Times 11 Dec. 1988: 38.

 -NES World, “The Nintendo Entertainment System,” nesworld.com, 19 Aug. 2005. Web,

30 Sept. 2010,

http://www.nesworld.com/nes.php

 -Newman, Michael Z. “New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Video Game Nostalgia,”

Antenna, 20 Feb. 2010. Web, 1 Oct. 2010,

http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/02/20/new-super-mario-bros-wii-and-video-game-nostalgia/

 -Schroeder, Randy, “Playspace Invaders: Huizinga, Baudrillard and Video Game

Violence,” Journal of Popular Culture 30.3 (1996): 143-153.

 -Turner, Benjamin and Christian Nutt, “Nintendo Famicom: 20 Years of Fun!”

Gamespy.com, Web, 30 Sept. 2010

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/famicom/index.shtml

Photos:

Famicom: Gamespy.com,  http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july03/famicom/index.shtml

All others taken by Dane Haman

Exploding Films and Burning Reels: How a Tragedy Influenced the Cinema Industry

My historical project is attached as a PDF file. The project is created to look like an article in a small-format magazine or a booklet (each of the pages is representing a spread of the magazine). I also recommend to zoom out the PDF a bit for the best viewing experience.

The project investigates the history of the nitrate film and how the fires it was responsible for (one in particular) transformed the technology of cinema and impacted society. The project explains the history of the technology through its interaction with society rather than through a chronological step-by-step description so the project is a bit unusual.

Click here to download the project. I hope you enjoy it.

Machinimatograph: Making the Machine Cinema

Amateur filmmaking is a popular form of expression. However, it naturally has its limitations. Though great for many genres, amateur filmmaking often is lacking in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, and action. Amateur filmmakers are faced with a problem. Polished approaches to these genres are prohibitively expensive for the amateur, but producing them at an affordable cost sacrifices quality. Animation can alleviate the issue of quality as it provides a stylistically consistent, if not realistic, image. However, animation, if quality is the aim, is labor intensive and requires a fairly large set of additional skills. This no doubt encouraged creative solutions to limitations, but in 1996 a movement began that allowed amateur filmmakers an alternate option that avoided some of these limitations.

Machinima, a combination of the words “machine” and “cinema,” is a form of film made “in real time with the software that is used to develop and play computer games.”[i] The final product resembles an animated film, but the process is far more akin to shooting live actors.[ii] Furthermore, like animation, the final product is stylistically consistent, which allows for more fantastical subject matter than a live action amateur film can attain both easily and cheaply. Because the rendering software used in videogames operates in real time, the machinima creator can set up a scene and then capture it as it is acted out. In fact, especially in the early days of machinima, the actions of the video game characters often were performed by other players. The connection between these players and actors is not difficult to see. However, this is getting ahead of the issue. To understand how machinima came about, we must look back to 1996 and a game called Quake.

As a first person shooter, Quake, released in 1996 by id Software, “must render the virtual environment as a three-dimensional space seen from the player’s point of view, constantly re-rendering at high frame rates as the player ‘moves’ through that space.”[iii] Not only did Quake have this capability, but it also included an in-game recording option, allowing players to capture their game play for later viewing. They could then share these recordings with one another over the web “either in the original game replay files or in an encoded movie format.”[iv] This was likely a key element in the development of machinima.

Initially, Quake movies were focused primarily on actual game play, displaying particularly skillful play, impressive feats, or completions of levels in record time.[v] An example can be seen below with music and visual transitions added at a later date:

This video, as it is primarily a recording of game play, really only appeals to Quake players and is more about spectacle than storytelling. However, in the same year Quake was released, a group of gamers/programmers known as The Rangers made a film that incorporated narrative and began the machinima movement.[vi]

“Diary of A Camper.” The Rangers’ influential video:

There are several key aspects of “Diary of A Camper” that aid in transforming the real time rendering engine from game platform to filmmaking technique. The first is the inclusion of the narrative. Though the film’s narrative is very simple, it demonstrates the possibility of the game engine being used as a storytelling platform. It is worth noting the similarity to the early days of film as a medium. Just as the Lumiere brothers captured events solely for the purpose of watching them and focused on spectacle with films like “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,”[vii] early Quake recordings were purely demonstrations and were in fact called “demos” as a result of the in-game recording function being called “demo function.”[viii] George Melies’ early films then, like “A Voyage to the Moon,”[ix] can be thought of as analogous to The Rangers’ early work in that they injected narrative into the use of the technology.

The ranger’s early work also mimics the early days of film in that it uses subtitles, analogous to early silent film intertitles. Later machinima makes use of voice dubbing much in the way sound eventually became a key element of filmmaking.

Another important element that can be seen in “Diary of A Camper” is the use of a distinct “camera.” While earlier Quake gameplay movies were viewed from the expert player’s point of view, often with user interface information displayed, “Diary of a Camper” does not treat the “camera” as a character. Although the limitations of the game engine necessitate a character acting as the camera, by not treating this character as a character in the narrative machinima is able to avoid shooting solely in first person perspective.

Though “Diary of A Camper” contains many important steps in appropriating the game engine for a new use, it was only an elementary push into the world of narrative expression. While it does use narrative, that narrative is very closely tied to the game and the community of gamers surrounding it. “Camper” is a term that refers to a person performing a specific, and negative, behavior in the game. Furthermore, the narrative is largely an in-joke as the camper’s identity is revealed at the end to be John Romero, the lead developer for Quake.

Even as machinima matured as a form, many projects remained connected, as one might expect, to the games whose engines they appropriated. Even Red vs Blue, a popular series regarded as “expanding audiences’ awareness of machinima” and appealing even to “those who had never played ‘Halo,’” makes subtle references to game conventions in its first episode:[x]

The first half of this episode refers to the oversimplifying nature of many multiplayer modes in games, and specifically in Halo. This is a reference that non-gamers may not get. However, though the episode does contain this element it is employed subtly and is only one layer of the humor presented. That is, though gamers may get the extra reference, the humor of the scene does not come entirely from the reference and, more importantly, the narrative of the episode and the series does not depend on viewer knowledge of the game. Essentially, this machinima series, hailed as expanding awareness of the form, pushes its connections to the game it uses as a platform to the background and focuses on the narrative. This fact, combined with its popularity, marks Red vs Blue as an important step toward solidifying machinima as a narrative form first and a part of the video game community second, if at all.

That said, machinima was, is, and likely will continue to be, intrinsically linked to video games. It is not hard to understand why, given the source imagery. Even the most mainstream and professional use of machinima, the “Make Love, Not Warcraft” episode of South Park, solely uses the technique and technology to refer to the video game it is lampooning. It tells a story, and its use in the episode doesn’t necessarily require knowledge of the game, but the story revolves around the South Park characters playing World of Warcraft:

This continued linking to the video games they are spawned from serves several purposes for machinima. In the case of South Park’s use of machinima, employing the framing device of having the characters play the game was necessary to avoid alienating the audience and for cohesion of the series, given that the machinima style would be such a stark departure from South Park’s usual aesthetic. Beyond the need to ease audiences into the form, the connection of machinima to its source games also serves a categorical purpose.

On the primary site of the machinima community, Machinima.com, there are different “channels” that categorize different machinima projects by which game engine they use. Though this seems like it is stressing the connection between the films and their source game, it ends up acting more the way genre divisions do in the film world. Collecting all the machinima that use Grand Theft Auto as an animation platform does not mean all the projects will be about Grand Theft Auto, but will be quite likely to focus on the crime film or parodies thereof. Similarly, a viewer can expect that many machinima made with the Left 4 Dead engine will have horror elements. Beyond these genre divisions, separating the machinima by game engine also separates them by visual style. Halo and The Sims look very different, and the visual style may be a deciding factor for some viewers.

As machinima took its first small steps into the mainstream with its incorporation into a South Park episode, it also encountered its counterpart, mainstream animation. Although J.J. Franzen, a South Park producer, extolled the flexibility of machinima, he admitted that their use of the technology also required use of their own, more labor intensive, animation techniques to get to a professional finished product.[xi] Where as machinima allows the game engine to do all the work of rendering the characters, South Park’s use of it is more akin to digital animation techniques like those used by Pixar, wherein a digital model is sculpted and placed in key positions before a computer fills in the movement of the model in a three-dimensional environment.[xii]

Pixar’s animation process for Monsters, Inc.

The South Park team made use of some “true” machinima, but also incorporated their own animations and rendering they performed themselves as animators.[xiii] They did this because of limitations on the amount of animations available from the game itself. Franzen even mentions that Trey Parker, one of the creators of South Park, claimed, in reference to machinima techniques, that “this is where animation is headed.”[xiv] Surely, video game rendering engines and digital animation rendering are intertwined. However, the appropriation of video game engines to create narrative will likely primarily remain in the realm of the amateur, as established animators would more likely develop their own engines, or at the least their own models, to suit their specific needs. They would also likely run into copyright issues unless working with the video game company as South Park did, a problem not faced by amateurs as the companies generally see their projects as opportunities for exposure.

Though unable to truly become a mainstream technique, machinima allowed and continues to allow amateur filmmakers to produce films with relative ease and for fractions of the cost of other amateur filmmaking options. Early Quake movies may have cost as little as the price of the game.[xv] Even including the cost of a computer, the machinima film comes in at costs more likely in the hundreds than the thousands common among other avenues of amateur filmmaking, requires little if any special equipment, and is easily accessible by anyone driven to attempt it. Machinima thus made a powerful form of expression more available than it ever had been before, and at a level of quality previously unknown to beginning filmmakers.

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[i] Lowood, Henry. “High Performance Play: The Making of Machinima,” in Videogames and Art, ed. by Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2007, 59-79.

[ii] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

[iii] Lowood, High Performance Play, 59-79.

[iv] Lowood, High Performance Play, 59-79.

[v] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

[vi] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

[vii] Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: an Introduction. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

[viii] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

[ix] Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History: an Introduction. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

[x] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

[xi] “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” interview with Frank Agnone, J.J. Franzen, and Eric Stough, accessed Oct 3, 2010. http://www.machinima.com/article/view&id=459

[xii] “How We Make a Movie: Pixar’s Animation Process,” accessed Oct 3, 2010. http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html

[xiii] “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” interview with Frank Agnone, J.J. Franzen, and Eric Stough, accessed Oct 3, 2010. http://www.machinima.com/article/view&id=459

[xiv] “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” interview with Frank Agnone, J.J. Franzen, and Eric Stough, accessed Oct 3, 2010. http://www.machinima.com/article/view&id=459

[xv] Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works,” accessed Oct. 3, 2010. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima.htm

Video Games’ Physical Designs and the Technological Based Marketing Strategy

I’ve included a link to my project. I would suggest zooming out a bit. Easier to read, and it looks better. I didn’t intend for the viewer to be looking at it in a zoomed in format. Thanks.

Click here for a PDF of the project.

The biggest problem I faced with this project was dealing with so many ideas at once. It was hard envisioning a project from a photography, design, layout and editorial perspective at the same time. At the same time, I realize it’s a great learning experience.

Masala Bollywood movies – “All-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” into the 21st century

“A common term used by the film industry, the Indian media, and audiences to describe popular Hindi films is “masala”. A Hindi word meaning a blend of spices, masala, when applied to films, refers to those that contain a potpourri of elements – music, romance, action, comedy and drama designed to appeal to the broadest range of audiences” – Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. ^[1]

The terms “masala”, “dinchik” (referring to the more glamorous), or “dhishum-dhishum” (action movies) are terms that heard everywhere in Delhi, the capital of India. These terms do not really have a derivative meaning from Sanskrit (i.e. the root language of Hindi) but have rather evolved from Bollywood- the Hindi movie industry. The term Bollywood is in itself a combination of the word Bombay and Hollywood. Bombay being the epicenter of the Indian film industry.

Films came into India soon after the Lumiere brothers invented cinema and the first screening of motion pictures in India was at the Watsons hotel in Bombay on 7 July 1896.^[2] Soon after Dada Saheb Phalke was inspired to create the first Indian feature-length movie “Raja Harishchandra” in 1913. Raja Harishchandra is based on a story from the “Mahabharata” (Mahabharata is one of the Hindu epics akin to the Greek epics). “Raja Harishchandra” tells the tale of a truthful king, Harishchandra, who suffers trials and tribulations to honor his promise to the sage Vishwamitra. He sacrifices his kingdom, wife and eventually his children. Convinced of his ideals, the Gods declare him to be the living embodiment of Truth and restore him to his former regal glory.

http://drishyamtelevision.com/india-movies/first-indian-silent-movie-2.php

“Raja Harishchandra” set the stage for the development of Hindi movies. The movie was silent but the overt emotions and melodrama are apparent and this is what later movie tellers would adapt into their own story lines.

Music and sound entered Bollywood simultaneously with the release of “Alam Ara” (Beauty of the World) on 14 March 1931.

“Alam Ara” was promoted as an “All-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” movie and was an instant hit. The film was based on a successful play of the same name, written by Joseph David for the Parsi Theatre.^[3] A period fantasy, in Hindi-Urdu, the film tells the story of a king of an imaginary kingdom. Of his two wives, Dilbahar and Naubahar, the former harbors an illicit relationship with Adil, the army chief of the land. When Adil spurns the queen, she plots to have him imprisoned and his daughter, Alam-Ara is exiled. The girl is brought up among nomads and happens to visit the palace. She is spotted by the young prince who falls in love with her. Eventually everything is resolved peacefully. “Alam-Ara” begins the history of Indian film music. “Alam-Ara” had seven songs but not one of them is in circulation today. Unfortunately the last existing prints were destroyed in a fire at Pune’s National Film Archives seven years ago.^[4]

Today, films are sold on the basis of the director, stars, and music director; the story and screenplay are secondary. ‘Item numbers’— songs and dances with no connection to the story—are crammed in so that films themselves are perfunctory. The idea is that music videos are used as promos and music sales recover some money, even if the film flops. Moreover, music companies funding films have insisted on up to twelve songs in a single film. This is hardly new: pre-Independence films such as Shirin Farhad had forty-two songs and Indrasabha boasted fifty-nine songs! Since song and dance is considered sacred in Indian cinema, some directors put in horrendously crude sex and vulgarity into song picturization, which the shortsighted censor board would cut if it was merely filmed as part of the spoken narrative.^[5]

“Alam Ara” set the norm for movies to encompass singing and dancing in their production. The advent of sound created another complication in film making – that of language. In a country with over a thousand languages, this could have been a problem. Though there are other language film industries such as Tamil, Bengali etc. Bombay was the heart of the film industry. But there was a resolution. Hindi was the most widely spoken language in India and had been recognized as the official language and filmmakers decided to go with Hindustani– a mixture of Hindi and Urdu. This created an interesting environment as Bombay was primarily a Gujrati and Marathi speaking region. As Ganti says, “The fact that cinema in the Hindi language developed in multi-lingual Bombay, rather than in the Hindi-speaking north, disassociated Hindi films from any regional identification, imbuing them with a more “national” character.” This also credited filmmakers with the spreading of Hindi as the national language and also making their movies more accessible to the masses.^[7]

With “Alam Ara”, the staple for the Bollywood musicals were set and has prevailed for the past 79 years. As Shedde says, “Though cinema technology came from the West, the aesthetic principles of Indian cinema derive from its own theater. These were based on Bharata’s classic treatise on theater, the Natyashastra (second century B.C.), which called for dramatic action, song, dance, conflict, and a happy ending—all based on the rasa (essence/emotion) theory, aiming at “the joyful consciousness that the spectator feels when his conflicts are resolved and he feels in harmony with himself and nature.”^[8]This trend of using song and dance to promote emotions of love and sex is still prevalent in Hindi movies today. Initially, this was done through the use of metaphors such as when the hero leaned into the kiss… there would be a cut to show two flowers touching or bees pollinating.

In the above movie, the flower is the topic of the song itself where as the lovers are far apart they express their feelings through the flower. The heroines in the movies were also supposed to be shy and embarrassed at the concept of falling in love. Most of the earlier movies also show the heroine showing outrage and anger at the boldness of the man proclaiming his love, to display her modesty while being silently pleased at the attention. But with time hugging was common but again mostly in very public places and nature was always the metaphor for love and sex. As seen in this song from “Silsila”.

The next controversial topic in Hindi cinema was the wet sari metaphor. This became a blatant display of sexuality and for a long time was frowned upon.

This song from “Ram Teri Ganga Maili” being considered the most scandalous song in Bollywood history with the transparent white sari under the waterfall. As Ganti says, “Utilized in many films over the years, these often highly erotic sequences – with wet clothes clinging to bodies – are part of an elaborate system of allusions to, rather than explicit portrayals of, sexuality and physical intimacy as filmmakers navigate the perceived moral conservatism of their audiences, as well as the representational boundaries set by the Indian state through its censorship codes.”^[6] Though in movies today with the change in time and morals, kissing is allowed and in recent history movies have even been promoted on the number of kisses that are in it. One of the firsts was “Khwaish” with a scandalous 17 kisses in it. Kisses even made it to taglines with another movie called “Ugly aur Pagli” whose tagline read “ 99 Kisses and 1 slap.”

Czitrom traced the history of movies not only to its technological roots but also explored its role in the shift from “high” culture to “pop” culture and its influence on the middle classes. ^[9]This was the impact of the films in India. Initial films such as “Raja Harishchandra” traced the lives of royalty but later films followed the lives of everyday people and their problems. It relied on story-telling that focussed on the trials of the everyday man who triumphed in the end and drew in crowds who not only identified with the heroes on-screen but also sang and danced in the theatres alongside them. Movies such as “Mother India” (that tells the hardships of a single farmer woman raising two sons), “Kismet” (Fate, about a pickpocket), “Pyaasa” (Thirsty, the plight of a struggling artist) brought the story from the courts of kings into the lives of the newly independent India. And as always it was the stories with the happy endings that did better with audiences.

Later Bollywood movies also stuck to this formula but family values became the staple diet with films today focussing not only on the Indian family within India but Non-residential Indians grappling with keeping their traditions alive amidst western traditions. The second longest running movie “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (it has run for at least 10 years) is about a young woman (Simran) who falls in love with a young man (Raj) during her trip to Europe but is brought home by her traditional father to wed a man of his choosing. Raj follows Simran to India but is only willing to marry her with her father’s permission, in a traditional style. Thus propagating traditional Indian values.

Throughout the song and dance sequences in Hindi movies, these are not comparable to Hollywood musicals. Song and dance sequences in Bollywood are random and does not necessarily have to follow the plot. They can be used to enhance emotions, cover time lapses or even just to add value to the movie. These sequences are so important that sometimes a movie maybe a hit just because of a single good song. “Every time you come to a point of intense feelings, you see if a song will convey it better. If you don’t have enough situations for songs, then you have to create them” says Anjum Rajabali, a Bollywood screenwriter since the early 1990s.^[10]
To demonstrate how effective the song and dance sequence in Hindi movies can be, we can look at the examples of “Umrao Jaan”, that has been remade twice first in 1981 and then 2006. “Umrao Jaan” is the story of a famous courtesan of the same name and the difficulties she faces in being accepted in society. Looking at the two clips from a decade apart it is apparent that the movies treat and use the same styles for the dance of the courtesans.

“Devdas” is another popular tale of love gone awry. It is based on the 1917 Bengali novel by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and follows the story of Devdas, a young man in love with his childhood sweetheart, Paro. Unable to marry her due to their vast class and caste differences, he turns to alcohol and a dancing girl/prostitute Chandramukhi who falls in love with him. Unable to contain his sorrows, Devdas eventually succumbs to alcohol and dies on Paro’s doorstep. The movie was first made as a silent film in 1928, then remade in 1935, 1955 and 2002 and then 2009. Though the 2009 version differed with a happier ending and also showcases a more modern dilemma, though the 2009 “Devd” is a grittier look at this old story it became a commercial success due to its catchy tunes and lyrics. The posters of these movies are remarkably similar.

Bollywood has also seen many “art” movies i.e. movies that do not use any song/dance numbers or are shot in a more “indie” style but these are mostly never commercial successes though they maybe critically acclaimed. Bollywood may be becoming modern and changing with the times but the music and dance sequences are timeless and will always be an essential part of these “Masalaedar” movies.

1. Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood a Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.
2.Ibid.
3.The Hindu : Friday Review Thiruvananthapuram / Cinema : When the Stars Talked.” The Hindu : Front Page News : Sunday, October 03, 2010. Web. 03 Oct. 2010.
4.”India’s First Talkie Film Alam Ara Lost Forever – Movies News News – IBNLive.” CNN-IBN, Live India News,Top Breaking News,World,India,Business,Sports, Entertainment & Health News. Web. 03 Oct. 2010. .
5. Shedde, Meenakshi. “Bollywood Cinema: Making Elephants Fly.” Cineaste 2006. Print.
6. Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood a Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.
7. Ibid.
8. Shedde, Meenakshi. “Bollywood Cinema: Making Elephants Fly.” Cineaste 2006. Print.
9. Czitrom, Daniel J. Media: from Morse to McLuhan and the American Mind. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1982. Print.
10. Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood a Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Challenges of doing this assignment:

The biggest challenge I faced in doing this assignment came at the very end. It was while trying to find an appropriate method to cite my sources. I had not realized that it is a different process to use footnotes in a blog. This took me almost four hours to figure out and finally I realized that it had to be done manually using html codes, which I am not familiar with. Besides that there was also a lot of challenge trying to understand how to insert youtube videos/pictures into the post but these issues were easier to solve and had comprehensive tools that could be used. Due to the problems faced with the citing of sources I feel like it does not work as cleanly as an academic paper would have. Also, visiting a friend with really slow Internet brought home the fact how dependent we have got on a fast Internet connection. But overall, it was fun and interesting to do a project where I used multimedia to try and put across my point. It also made me think more visually and plan in advance the clips or possible media I would want to use for this post and what resources were available to me.

Baseball Journalists Composed Vibrant Prose, Then TV Came Along And Ruined It

Baseball writers created legends.  They composed narratives with colorful language that readers never see in the post-television era of sports journalism.  Before television became common in homes in the early 1950s, most people did not see games with their eyes.  Baseball writers painted pictures in the heads of readers.  The Associated Press sent vibrant baseball articles all over the country in the days before TV.  The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants did not move to California until 1958.  The west coast had a baseball league of its own (the Pacific Coast League), but the newspaper was the only way they could learn about the Major Leagues.  Radio did not air baseball until 1921, and it was very limited.  The New York Yankees did not air games over the radio until 1938, three years after Babe Ruth retired.  Even after radio came along, Americans mostly got their baseball fix through newspapers.  Television changed all that.  Television changed the way baseball writers composed articles.

“From the outset, sportswriters in the U.S. were differentiated from mere sports reporters or journalists by their ability, and licence, to place themselves at the centre of the story, rather than merely report the facts and figures associated with a sporting contest.  The reader was under no illusion that what you were reading was an interpretation of an event through the eyes of the sportswriter.”[1] Before television, baseball writers created an event for fans who eagerly picked up newspapers wondering if their favorite team walloped the opponent.  Davis J. Walsh painted the scene in Chicago during the 1932 World Series against New York for Miami readers: “One by one, the lengthening shadows cast themselves across Wrigley field late Saturday like so many of the ghosts of the hope that once abided here.”[2] Walsh’s description elicits a much more vivid and titillating image than what a fan would see on television. Before TV, baseball transcended reality.  Baseball was one part sport, one part novel.

Crowd outside of the Polo Grounds before the 1905 World Series

The second World Series took place in 1905 and pitted the American League’s Philadelphia Athletics against the National League’s New York Giants.  The New York Times covered this event.  The typical lead of a news article gives readers the most important information and answers the questions “Who?” “What?” “Where?” and “When?”  This lead appeared in The New York Times the day after the hometown Giants won the 1905 World Series: “Two neatly dressed, ruddy faced, athletic looking young men, grinning broadly; one a giant in contrast to the squattiness of the other, walked along the veranda of the clubhouse at the Polo Grounds about 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon.”[3] The opening sentence of the piece sounds more like the first line of a story than the lead of an article.

The descriptive language and metaphors in the 1905 baseball article greatly differ from contemporary sports journalism as well: “He [Christy Mathewson] bestrode the field like a mighty Colossus, and the Atheltics peeped about the diamond like pigmies who struggled gallantly for their lives, but in vain.”[4] Post-television sportswriters would get fired if they turned in an article with language like “peeped about the diamond like pigmies who struggled gallantly for their lives, but in vain.”  Broadcast sports journalists use vibrant language more than print journalists now.  Radio and TV announcers have unique ways of calling homeruns during games.  Highlight shows such as ESPN’s Sportscenter also enliven the telecasts with colorful language.  Catch phrases are the difference between the fun language exemplified in the 1905 New York Times article and the anchors on Sportscenter.  Newspaper writers before television would compose entire sports articles with metaphors and creative diction.  Sports anchors on ESPN make names for themselves by coming up with individual sayings that get repeated over and over if they catch on with the public.

Another example from the 1905 New York Times article shows how sports journalists had to provide in precise detail what happened during a game because television and radio did not exist to broadcast games: “In the second inning, Seybold sent the first ball pitched to left field for a base.  Murphy put an easy grounder into Dahlen’s hands close to second, and by a quick toss to Gilbert, and he to McGann, a sharp double play was the result.”[5] The New York Times article accounted for the entire game like this, and it was not the only newspaper that transcribed game results in detail.  Here is an example from Pittsburgh in 1924: “In the eighth, with one out, Young doubled past third, and advanced to third on Kelly’s out at first.  Terry was passed intentionally to bring up Wilson, and on the next pitch Ruel nipped Young off third.”[6]

Sportswriters could not write the same narrative prose and detailed game accounts for baseball games after television became a common household item.  Michael Oriard states, “Sportswriting has become an adjunct to television, its primary role now to find the story behind the story, not to recreate sporting events for fans who could not attend them.[7] By the 1960s, with television firmly established in homes, baseball journalism stopped telling the story of a game.  Sports journalists knew the public saw the games on TV, so they had to give the public something they could not get from television.  Baseball reporters began using many more quotes than they had in the past.  Fans could see the games, but they did not have access to the players like the media.  Inside access to players became one of the new selling points of sports journalism.

Babe Ruth

Along with beautiful and fun prose and a detailed account of the game, sportswriters had another goal in pre-television sports journalism: creating legends.  No better example of idol-making exists than that of Babe Ruth.  An article on the University of Virginia’s website explains, “Babe Ruth’s rise to legendary status coincided with a boom in the sportswriting industry. From 1915 to 1925, the average metropolitan newspaper doubled the amount of pages it devoted to sports coverage.”[8] The New York Times colorfully describes a Babe Ruth home run in 1921:

With Peckinpaugh on first base, the stage was properly set for one of Ruth’s four-ply slams, and the Babe obliged by hitting one so fast that many found it impossible to follow the course of the ball.  Those blessed with glimmers of the 20-20 grade bore testimony later that the sphere had burned a path between the upper and lower decks of the right-field stand, carrying over the westerly corner of the bleachers, and then over the runway into the vacant lot south of the Polo Grounds.[9]

The New York Times author makes Ruth sound superhuman.  And language such as “four-ply slams” instead of “homerun,” “glimmers” instead of “eyes” and “sphere” instead of “ball” is not commonly used in baseball print journalism today.  The people calling the games on TV and radio are much more likely the ones using colorful language to create mood and character.  Surprisingly, The New York Times would not even knock Ruth during his pre-Yankees days.  They even branded Ruth as a hero back when he still played for the archrival Boston Redsox: “…that he [Babe Ruth] finished second best is not at all discrediting.  The young Boston pitcher gave an efficient all-around display of baseball at its best, and even in defeat was undoubtedly the hero of the game.”[10]

Even before radio and television existed and instantaneously spread words and images all over the country, everyone still knew the Babe.  Former Yankee great Tommy Henrich explained, “When I was, let me see, eight years old, Babe Ruth went to the Yankees, 1920.  And now no radio, no nothing, you still heard of Babe Ruth.  This is a phenomenon coming on the scene in New York.  And I said, ‘Boy oh boy that’s for me.”[11] And, Ruth knew how to use the media as well as the media knew how to use him.  Myth has it Babe Ruth pointed towards center field and called his shot during the 1932 World Series.  Only one verifiable source reported on this called shot, but all the other newspapers picked up on it the day after it was reported.  Many eye-witnesses said Ruth merely pointed to the Cubs dugout and told them he had one more strike left in his at-bat.  After the press went wild with the called shot story, Ruth played along.  Former Cleveland Indian standout Bob Feller said, “We all know he was pointing in the dugout and not in center field, which doesn’t mean anything.  It was a good story and Babe realized it was a good story.  And right away when they said, ‘You called the shot,’ he said, ‘Yes.  I did.”[12] Baseball writers made Ruth a legend, and he played along because he loved the attention.

Barry Bonds, the media and steroids

In the post-television era of baseball print journalism, writers rarely promote players as role models and depict them as living legends.  The press rarely wrote a good word about former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds during his playing days.  Most of the public thought, and still thinks, of Bonds as a cheater (steroids) and a jerk.  People now know that Ruth was a womanizer and a drunk, but print journalists mostly protected Ruth’s image during his playing days.  Bonds has one of the most reputable charities among athletes, and he never goes out moonlighting or shows up in a bunch of commercials like some other sports celebrities.  So why does the media lambast Bonds?  Why do they not hide his ties to steroid scandals? Why are things so different now?

Along with television came more money.  Most baseball players’ received modest salaries in the pre-television days.  Fans related to the players.  Most athletes made the same amount of money as the fans and lived in the same neighborhoods as the fans.  After television created more revenue, baseball players became millionaires.  Fans no longer related to them as much.  Post-television, fans often profile athletes as greedy and elitist.  Fans do not mind seeing baseball stars such as Bonds get taken down by the press in scandal.  In fact, fans seem to desire it based on the concentration it receives from a contemporary media that is fixed on “selling” news for consumption.

Television might have destroyed the beautiful and fun prose sportswriters used, and television might have turned the media from legend makers into scandal makers, and television might have turned baseball players from relatable folks into rich celebrities; but, those are the sacrifices for making the game more accessible to people all over the country and the world.

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[1] Raymond Boyle, Sports Journalism: Context and Issues (London: SAGE, 2006), 32-33.

[2] Walsh, Davis J. “Ruth and Gehrig Homers Shatter Cubs’ Hope,” Miami Daily News 2 Oct. 1932, accessed September 30, 2010, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=AVgtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mNgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4057,3213007&dq=miami+daily+news&hl=en

[3] “Giants Champions, The Score 2-0,” The New York Times, October 15, 1905, accessed September 30, 2010, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F00F11FE3F5C1A728DDDAC0994D8415B858CF1D3

[4] “Giants Champions, The Score 2-0.”

[5] “Giants Champions, The Score 2-0.”

[6] Ralph S. Davis, “Giants Take First Game,” The Pittsburgh Press, October 5, 1924, accessed September 30, 2010, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ohcbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BkoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6885,5362291&dq=giants&hl=en

[7] Boyle, Sports Journalism: Context and Issues, 39-40.

[8] “Babe Ruth: Constructing a Legend,” September 30, 2010, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/yeung/Baberuth/writers.html

[9] “Trinity of Homers Helps Yanks Win,” The New York Times, September 3, 1921, accessed September 30, 2010, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10C17F63F5A1B7A93C1A91782D85F458285F9

[10] “Babe Ruth Is Hero, Though Yanks Win,” The New York Times, May 5, 1918, accessed September 30, 2010, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50E1FFC3B5F1B7A93C7A9178ED85F4C8185F9

[11] Fay Vincent, The Only Game In Town (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 59.

[12] Vincent, The Only Game In Town, 55.

The Turntables Might Wobble but They Don’t Fall Down: The Amazing Renewable Phonograph

It is rare that a technology be considered new only once; rather, history shows that technology often goes through a process of renewal.  As media scholar Benjamin Peters paradoxically suggested, “…new media history is older than old media history.”[1]  What Peters means is that all technologies were once new and most, if not all, go through a process of negotiation and experimentation that often leads to new uses and cultural understandings.  While a once new and exciting technology may become domesticated, future generations or other cultures may interrupt the accepted normalcy of any given technology by appropriating it for different uses.  The history of the record player clearly illustrates how cultural innovation shapes technical inventions to alter their initial purpose(s).  Through tracing the history of the record player from Thomas Edison’s phonograph to the Hip Hop DJ’s turntables I intend to illustrate the process of technological renewal that changed the phonograph from a technology of both production and consumption to purely a medium of consumption and back again.   

Edison’s phonograph was invented in 1877 and was the first invention capable of recording and playing sound.  As you can see from the picture above, it was quite different from the record player of today.  First it used a rotating tin cylinder in which indentations were played by a stylus and amplified by a large horn.  Secondly, the phonograph was not electric; rather it was powered by a hand crank on the side of the box.  Finally, the early phonograph was capable of recording sound and was not merely a device for listening.  This final technological difference led Edison to view his new invention primarily as a device for letter writing and dictation.  In an article from 1878 entitled “The Phonograph and its Future”, Edison writes that “The main utility of the phonograph, however, being for the purpose of letter-writing and other forms of dictation, the design is made with a view to its utility for that purpose.”[2]  Correspondence rather than entertainment was the primary function of this new technology. However, Edison clearly had an understanding of the social shaping nature of technology as he wrote, “In the case of an invention of the nature and scope of the phonograph, it is practically impossible to indicate it to-day, for tomorrow a trifle may extend it almost indefinitely.”[3]  How correct that Edison fellow was.    

Perhaps the earliest example of cultural influence on the phonograph is that music soon became the primary function.  This change was largely created by the Victor Talking Machine Company who abandoned Edison’s tin cylinder and became the largest producers of the forerunner to modern-day records[4].  The Victor Talking Machine Company focused on the production of these musical recordings in order to push its victrola (a phonograph with its mechanical parts concealed within a cabinet) into homes across the country. 

As the picture above shows, the Victor victrola was made to be an elegant piece of furniture that would not only be pleasing to the ear, but to the eye as well.  The early records produced by Victor were to match the elegance of the player and featured trained singers, operas, brass bands and other elite forms of entertainment that could bring the art of the stage or auditorium into the home.[5]  As the following victrola ad from 1921 states, “It isn’t possible for everyone to go out to the parks and auditoriums where the famous bands play to vast audiences, so the victrola brings the bands to you.” 

Even Edison adapted the use of his invention to favor entertainment.  As a recorded advertisement created in the early 20^th century states, “I am the Edison phonograph.  Created by the great wizard of the new world to delight those who would have melody or be amused.”  The previous ad would have been present at most early Edison phonograph dealers and clearly focuses on entertainment; recording for the purpose of dictation and letter writing were no longer the main functions of the phonograph.   Because of popularity of the Victor Talking Machine company’s music records and the economic incentives for other companies in the market to produce similar entertainment the phonograph changed from a technology of both creation and consumption to one that favored the later.  This functional change became apparent later in history as the titles phonograph and victrola were replaced simply by record player.

While the phonograph’s main purpose in the new decade became providing a means to consume entertainment, there were some innovative uses in 1930’s Germany.  Instead of consuming music, German composers Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch were using the gramophone to create music; turning the gramophone into a musical instrument of sorts and creating what they called “Grammophonmusik.”[6]  According to author Mark Katz, Hindemith and Toch created numerous pieces for the tenth annual Neue Musik Berlin, which was a festival that specialized in forward thinking, at times odd, music.  The festival’s final selections entitled Originalwerke fur Schallplatten (original works for disc), manipulated prerecorded music to “…explore the technical abilities not of the performer but of the instrument.”[7]  Here is a segment of Hindemith’s Trickaufnahemen (trick recording).

In the above recording the strings were recorded on one record and the xylophone on another while a third record was used to capture the simultaneous playing of both, essentially creating the first overdub.  While cello and viola can be heard, Katz believes that Hindemith only used a viola and simply slowed down the record to produce the lower pitch of a cello.   Katz also believed that during the performance of this piece Hindemith played two phonographs, started at different times, to create a round.  Grammophonmusik, while never popular, laid the groundwork for re-conceptualizing the phonograph as a source of new musical creation.  As Katz wrote, “…the story of Grammophonmusik makes clear, the ambitions a technology inspires in its users can far surpass the capabilities of the technology itself, ambitions that may only be fulfilled long after the originators are gone.”[8]  The social shaping of the phonograph into a type of musical instrument wouldn’t be fully realized until decades later.    

While DJ’s (disc jockeys) gave concerts of sorts by playing records in public areas such as clubs and discos as early as the 40s[9], it wasn’t until the 70s when technology finally caught up with the aspirations of Hindemith and Toch.  Early DJ’s would use what ever equipment was available but eventually  “The industry responded by designing turtables for DJ use.”[10]  A Japanese company called Technics began producing the SL1200 and SL1210.  These “decks” were designed with a new patented “magnetic drive device” which allowed DJs to control the speed of the record as well as stop and move the record back and forth by hand without damaging the mechanics of the deck.[11]  It was this ability to spin back a record by hand that proved to be essential to the beginnings of Hip Hop.   Technics made Hip Hop possible; DJ Kool Herc made it a reality. 

In the mid 70s, a Jamaican immigrant by the name of Clive Campbell (DJ Kool Herc) started to throw parties in the Bronx projects.  While playing old soul and funk records, Kool Herc noticed that his partiers would grow with excitement during the instrumental drum break of a song.  He wanted to keep the crowd hype, so he came up with a way to extend these short sections by using two decks and a mixer.[12]   Herc invented what he called the “Merry-go-round.” As Herc shows in the above link, two records that contain the same break are fused together using the cross fader on the mixer.  As soon as the short instrumental break has finished playing on the first record, another record begins playing the exact same break on the other turntable.  That first record is then spun back to the start of the break and allowed to play as soon as the second record’s break comes to an end.  This process alows the short segment of music to play indefinitely. 

Herc’s partys and his new use of the turntable was the beginning of Hip Hop culture.  As White and Crisell explain, “…the young partygoers were transfixed by the skill, which not only revolutionized DJing but also led to a new style of dancing—break dancing, which soon became known as ‘b-boying.’”[13]  But DJing and break dancing are just two of the four elements of Hip Hop culture.  The MC, or master of ceremonies, also was a direct result of Herc’s new use of the turntable.  According to Watkins, MCing “…was essentially a live performance-art form that complemented hip hop’s main attraction, the DJ.”  Watkins goes on to say that “…some DJs began…to add MCs as a way to keep rivals from stealing their two most prized possessions: their records and their technique.”[14]  While the fourth element, graffiti art, isn’t as closely linked to the DJ, many early “taggers” produced the flyers promoting the parties held by Herc and his contemporaries.  Below are some examples. 

While these flyers aren’t the best example of accomplished graffiti artists, it is important to note who is being promoted.  It’s not the MC, as is common today.  It is the man behind “the wheels of steel” who is the focus.   And when an MC is noted he is secondary to the DJ.  The second flyer reads “DJ Kool Herc and Coke La Rock,” not the other way around.    

Herc may have built Hip Hop on his “Merry-go-round” and been the father of modern day sampling, but other DJs soon begun manipulating the turntables in equally creative ways.  DJs such as Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa developed their own sounds and trademark skills.  Perhaps the second most important innovator of the turntable though is Grand Master Theodore who is credited with inventing the scratch.[15]  This staple of Hip Hop music was created by rubbing the record back and forth with the fader open creating a percussive scratching sound.  This example from DJ DeezNotes should prove helpful. 

Not only does Deez do a good job of scratching, he also demonstrates how a DJ can “beat juggle” and create new rhythms and sounds from one existing song.  Notice that he has his turntables turned so that the arms come down from the top.  This is so his hands do not bump the needle in the process of scratching and “backspinning” the record to the desired location.  Also notice the stickers at the top of his records.  These act as markers so he knows where the start of the track is and can then quickly and accurately pick different parts of the song to sample as he moves the crossfader frantically from right to left; controlling which turntable can be heard through the speakers.

I’ve included another example of beat juggling, this time from DJ Babu of the world famous Beat Junkies.  Pay special attention to minute 1:37 as the syncopated rhythm he produces is mighty impressive.  Babu is also credited with coining the term “turntablist” in 1995.[16] Rather than using DJ, the term is meant to convey a sense of seriousness and a desire to be viewed as a legitimate musician. 

While technologies, such as Stanton’s “Final Scratch” pictured above, have been developed to allow looping and scratching of digital audio files, records and actual turntables still remain vital to the DJ.  For some Hip Hop DJs there is a certain quality and skill in manipulating vinyl that is lost through the digital medium.  DJ A-Trak articulates the tension that exists between the use of vinyl and new technologies well,

“…vinyl is fundamental to turntablism, but these new technologies can be good tools.  For a while I wasn’t even paying attention to any of them, but now… you can’t help but want to try it out and see how you can integrate it into what you do.  But what you do as a turntablist stays essentially rooted in vinyl.” 

This quote is interesting as it illustrates an initial reluctance to try new technologies, even if they have the potential of improving one’s craft.  And even though A-Trak admits new technologies prove to be “good tools” he ultimately hails vinyl as king.  A-Trak’s quote and the resistance to new technologies in the Hip Hop community might also speak to the core Hip Hop values of “keeping it real” and remaining authentic.   

Whether the DJ stays true to the current incarnation of the turntable or adopts a new technology, it seems that the turntable will continue to live on in some form or another.  From Edison’s dictation machine, to Victor’s victrola, to Hindemith’s Grammophonmusik, to Herc’s break beats, to the modern turntablist, the history of the phonograph has shown its resilience and ability to adapt with current cultural trends.  Run D.M.C.’s “Peter Piper” was pretty prophetic: “The turntables might wobble but they don’t fall down.”

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[1] Benjamin Peters, “And lead us not into thinking the new is new: a bibliographic case for new media history, New Media Society 11 (2009), 25. 

[2] Edison, Thomas. “The Phonograph and Its Future.” The North American Review, 126.262 (1878): 531.

[3] Ibid. 527

[4] Schaefer, Peter. “The Sound of Safety: Design, Disguise, and Disclosure in Early Phonography.” Conference Papers — International Communication Association, (2007): 8.

[5] Ibid. 8.

[6] Katz, Mark. “The Rise and Fall of Grammophonmusik” in Capturing Sound. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, (2004): 99. 

 [7] Ibid. 100. 

[8] Ibid. 113. 

[9] Rietveld, Hillegonda. “From Recording to Remix: The Technologies of Electronic Music” in DJ, Dance, and Rave Culture. Edited by Jared Green. Greenhaven Press, Farmington Hills, MI, (2005): 47.

[10] Katz, Mark. “The Turntable as Weapon” in Capturing Sound. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, (2004): 118. 

[11]Ibid. 48.

[12] White, Phil and Crisell, Luke. The Scratch DJ Academy Guide. St. Martin’s Press, NY, (2009): 28.

[13] Ibid. 28. 

[14] Watkins, Craig, Hip Hop Matters. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, (2005): 13. 

[15] Katz, Mark. “The Turntable as Weapon” in Capturing Sound. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, (2004): 116. 

[16] Ibid. 116.