Andre Castro/research/1.3/review 1

Review

Adam Curtis documentary series The Century of the Self present us with an historical and critical perspective on creation and development of marketing throughout the twenty century. Curtis associates the genesis of marketing with the figure of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew. Living in the US Bernays begins his career as public relations counselor, developing techniques for selling products to individuals, despite their lack of need for them. In oner to succeed in such a mission Bernays makes us of his uncle's theories on human unconscious desires. One revealing examples of his techniques, and one is first assignments is to change the taboo concerning women smoking in public. Bernays consulted a psychoanalyst on such task, and received the answer that cigarettes were symbol of male power, and what he need to do was to bring cigarettes with a challenge such image. With that mind Bernays hired a group of society débutantes to light up cigarettes dramatically at a given moment during a New York parade. Bernays also organized a press coverage informing it that a group of suffragettes were going to stage a protest by lighting up what they called the torches freedom. Making to the newspaper headlines, the image of cigarettes was consequently associated with women's rights, and if other women were also supporters of such cause, they must then show it also smoking in public. Inevitably the cigarettes sells shoot up. Mr. Bernays seemed to know how to apply the lessons learned from his uncle.

[OTHER EPISODES SYNOPSIS]
* Selling life stiles (episode 3)
* Electing Tony Blair (episode 4)

The role of audiences

In the documentary Curtis portraits consumers as a passive mass to who advertisers aims to seduce into buy their products. On the contrary Dallas Smythe in his essay 'On the Audience Commodity and its Work' depicts audiences as active elements in the advertisement and in the whole capitalist system. Smythe argues that audiences are put to work. Their labor consists in creating demand on advertised goods, in learning how to spend their income on them.

But how are individual transformed into audiences? In Smythe's reasoning audiences are the product of mass-media. Mass-media are responsible for producing audience with predictable demographics, specifications such as the number of individuals, the specific times where their attention is devoted, the medium who receives such attention. Mass-media commodifies audiences power, which become their main product, and is sold do advertisers. Advertisers buy the services of audiences and put these to work for them, by inducing to buy their product, as eloquently showed by Curtis. One very curious point referred by Smythe, is that we commonly assume media contents, say a song, a news article, a TV-series as being the product of media. However when viewed through Smythe's argument content shifts from being a product, to become a stimulus for keeping audiences returning, and the generator of a mood which facilitates audience's digestion of the ads displayed along-side the contents. One very interesting example of how can media excel in creating a mood for a more easy and unconscious integration of ideologies is Smyth. In it he mentions the introduction of rock music in the Soviet Union served a a effective function of creating the atmosphere for propagating the Western ideology within the Soviet Union.

Audiences' work on web2.0

Let me suggest we keep Smythe's argument in mind and jump cut to the twenty-first century. Let's move our discussion towards current highly popular and powerful mass-media - web2.0 platforms as Facebook and Youtube. As far as I can see these 21st century media still make their profit from the creation of audiences, commodified and sold to advertisers. Adverts are as present on Facebook, Google, Youtube, etc as much as in any private TV-channel or magazine, they populate the screen space and mix smoothly with the contents of these platforms. However the notions of audiences as a product, and the work of audiences, have made a quantum leap and gained a more obvious a visible character. Audiences work is no longer resumed to the purchased of advertised products. On web2.0 platforms their work expanded to include the producing of both data and contents.

Data is generated as a result of audiences' (or should I maybe 'each one of us'?) activity within these platforms. In that way individual consumer profiles can be depicted, which allows for a more effective targeting of each one of us with the aim to orient our purchasing work force.

Audience were also given the possibility to contributing by generating media contents, which they loved and fiercely engaged in. The media democracy utopias of audience participation, not only became true, but it turned into web2.0 entrepreneurs' wet-dream. In rather perverse way democratic possibility turned into an extremely profitable formula for the corporation behind such platforms. A company like Google does no longer have to worry about paying skilled directors, script-writers, photography directors, cameramen, sound engineers, set designers, electricians, makeup artists, and a whole lot more of skilled people necessary to run a television channel - Youtube. All it needs is to provide the infrastructure so that we consumers can upload our video creations. And we seem to happy to do this work and satisfied to be given the videos of our friends' cats and babies to watch.

work and leisure

On the subject of content I would to question the reason for our willingness to put up with the tasks of creating a video to upload to Youtube, while if we are assign by our client, boss or teachers to come up with a video seems like a chore. My very first reaction is that as a leisure activity, the consequent possibility of not doing it play a decisive role. The feeling of freedom and autonomy we get from leisure is crucial in establishing this difference.

As I see it audience participation or leisure work is not inherently bad or exploitative. My critic goes more towards the fact that in most web2.0 commercial mass-media audiences products are removed from the possessing of their work. (Isn't this also Marx's critic to industrial capitalist production? The products of workers' labor are taken from them, and the profit resulting from their sales goes not to them, but to the owner of the factory infrastructure). If I post video on Youtube it can disappear in 24hours, just simply because some "flagged" as not suitable, simple as that. And once again there is nothing wrong with it, I was the one choosing to host my video there, to give the product of my leisure work to this platform in exchange for it host space and transmission capability. But one must understand that these platforms are or belong to corporations and profit is their goal, and once in their territory there is not much to do, but "work" according to their rules. As I see it, it is of their interested to keep audiences unaware of the rules by which they structure their platforms. If I'd be aware of such flagging danger in Youtube I would look into finding a small online space, where I be more in control over what is store there and use it to host my video. Such knowledge would result in web2.0 corporations having slightly less power and control over users, and consequently slightly less profitable. And less profits is something I suspect not many corporation would like for themselves.

The depicted scenario might look pretty bleak, however if I make a small effort I can see something else. I can see another scenario, in which web2.0 platforms foster no only creation and communication between users - creative labor and promotional labor, one could call it -, but also cooperation, sharing of knowledge and reflection. Such processes could not only take place reference to contents, but also towards the infrastructure and processes that supports its existence. Such scenario might seem Utopian, but I will argue it is not. If we look in our current web landscape we quickly come across examples of non-profit oriented platforms where such processes are already taking place. Take the example of wikipedia, wikionary, open street map or stack-overflow. All these resources live from users' work, however they also have in place mechanisms that allow for a deeper insight into the processes in place within each the platform, collaborative production, discussion over the contents produced, and participation on structural decisions (the meta-discussion). EXAMPLE OF WIKIPEDIA IN USER CONTRIBUTING FOR THE STRUCTURE.

Taking these cases as point of departure is not difficult to imagine more interesting ways to create, communicate and reflect upon online audio-visual content than what is currently given to use by Facebook or Youtube. I think however that the responsibility is ours, to start imagining, prototyping, supporting, collaboration in projects that don't subordinate audiences' creative impulses into profit logic.