UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Derivative Media: The
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Derivative Media: The Financialization of Film, Television, and Popular Music, 2004-2016 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Andrew Michael deWaard 2017 © Copyright by Andrew Michael deWaard 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Derivative Media: The Financialization of Film, Television, and Popular Music, 2004-2016 by Andrew Michael deWaard Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor John T. Caldwell, Chair This dissertation traces the entrance of the financial industries – particularly private equity firms, corporate venture capital, and institutional investors – along with their corresponding financial logic and labor, into the film, television, and music industries from 2004-2016. Financialization – the growing influence of financial markets and instruments – is premised on highly-leveraged debt, labor efficiencies, and short-term profits; this project argues that it is transforming cultural production into a highly consolidated industry with rising inequality, further decreasing the diversity and heterogeneity it could provide the public sphere. In addition to charting this historical and industrial shift, this project analyzes the corresponding textual transformation, in which cultural products behave according to financial logic, becoming sites of capital formation where references, homages, and product placements form internal economies. The concept of ‘derivative media’ I employ to capture this phenomenon contains a double meaning: ii increasingly, the production process of popular culture ‘derives’ new content from old (sequels, adaptations, franchises, remakes, references, homages, sampling, etc.), just as the economic logic behind contemporary textuality behaves like a ‘derivative,’ a financial instrument to hedge risk. As we witnessed during the financial crash in 2007-2008, the derivative dismantles or unbundles any asset into individual attributes and trades them without trading the asset itself, in contracts such as futures, forwards, options, and swaps. This project demonstrates how cultural texts employ a similar ‘derivative’ logic, using intertextuality as a financial strategy, not just to sell products through brand integrations, but to maintain domination over the cultural sector through an interconnected referential economy. Through textual analysis and case studies, I explore the formal and interpretative implications that this financial shift has on cultural texts, arguing that popular digital media texts function as unbundled, risk-hedging derivatives through which capital accumulates in diversified cultural hedge funds operated by a handful of transnational media corporations. Utilizing a methodology combining political economy, data mining and visualization, ethnographic fieldwork, and textual analysis, this dissertation argues that financialization is a little-understood, yet profoundly transformative – and often destructive – force within the cultural industries. iii The dissertation of Andrew Michael deWaard is approved. Stephen Mamber Denise R. Mann Johanna Drucker John T. Caldwell, Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv Table of Contents List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ xi Vita ............................................................................................................................................... xiv Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 1. Literature Review .................................................................................................... 15 Critical Political Economy of Media and Media Industries Studies ......................................... 15 From Text to Work to Textwork: Intertextuality ...................................................................... 30 From Intertext to Hypertext: Digital Media and the Digital Humanities .................................. 51 Chapter 2. Derivative Media: Finance, Private Equity, and Corporate Venture Capital in the Cultural Industries ......... 63 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 63 Financial Capital ....................................................................................................................... 66 Financialization and Institutional Investors .............................................................................. 71 Private Equity ............................................................................................................................ 73 Corporate Venture Capital ........................................................................................................ 78 Derivative Media ....................................................................................................................... 80 The Trading Floor of Cultural Production ................................................................................ 88 Chapter 3. The Financialization of Music ................................................................................ 90 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 90 Music Industry/ies ..................................................................................................................... 92 Private Equity in the Music Industry......................................................................................... 95 Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: The Piracy Panic in Retrospect ................................. 100 Streaming, the Black Box, and Royalty Rates ........................................................................ 104 v Equity Stakes, Venture Capital, and Big Data ........................................................................ 108 Destruction through Disruption ............................................................................................... 116 Chapter 4. Derivative Music: The Wu-Tang Clan, Jay Z, and Hip Hop’s Speculative Form ............................................. 120 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 120 The Political Economy of Hip Hop ......................................................................................... 121 The Collective and the Kingpin: The Wu-Tang Clan and Jay Z ............................................. 124 Authenticity with a Splash of Speculation: Visualizing Alcohol Branding ............................ 129 Promotional Vehicles: Lyrical Speculation & Automotive Branding .................................... 133 Hip Hop’s Intermediality ........................................................................................................ 137 Tidal Wave .............................................................................................................................. 144 Chapter 5. The Financialization of Film & Television .......................................................... 147 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 147 Private Equity’s Blockbuster Buyouts in Hollywood ............................................................. 148 Silver Lake & TPG: Hollywood’s Private Equity Studios ...................................................... 152 Private Equity’s Investments on Hollywood’s Margins ......................................................... 158 Hollywood Libraries as Private Equity Investment Portfolio ................................................. 161 The Hollywood Bubble ........................................................................................................... 165 Chapter 6. Derivative Television: Reflexive Comedy, 30 Rock, and Mise-en-synergy ................................................................ 172 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 172 The Space of Synergy at 30 Rockefeller Plaza ....................................................................... 175 Digital Humanities, Data Visualization, and 30 Rock ............................................................. 180 Mise-en-synergy ...................................................................................................................... 187 30 Rock as Paratext and Transmedia ...................................................................................... 195 Marketing a Satire of Marketing ............................................................................................