An Autoethnographic Examination of the Media Industry
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UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 12-2010 The Write moves: An autoethnographic examination of the media industry Danielle Gomes University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Mass Communication Commons, and the Political Economy Commons Repository Citation Gomes, Danielle, "The Write moves: An autoethnographic examination of the media industry" (2010). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 763. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/2042538 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE WRITE MOVES: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC EXAMINATION OF THE MEDIA INDUSTRY by Danielle Gomes Bachelor of Arts Villanova University 2002 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Master of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies Greenspun College of Urban Affairs Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas December 2010 Copyright by Danielle Gomes 2011 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The Write Moves: An Autoethnographic Examination of the Media Industry by Danielle Gomes Dr. Lawrence J. Mullen, Thesis Committee Chair Professor of Journalism and Media Studies University of Nevada, Las Vegas This thesis examines the current media environment through the use of adaptation theory, political economy theory, and media ecology theory. More specifically, this thesis is an autoethnography of this author‟s attempts to release content into the mass-media. This thesis expects to find that in the current conglomerate controlled media environment content that has multi-media potential is preferred. Vertical integration is the standard in these massive media corporations. Consequently, the adaptation of content into multiple media is no longer an afterthought to creation, it is forethought. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................ iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.................................... 1 Hit Me: Background on the Book ......................... 11 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW.............................. 17 Media Ecology .......................................... 22 Adaptation ............................................. 30 Critical Cultural Theory/ Political Economy of Media ............................. 41 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY.................................... 46 Adaptation Theory ...................................... 47 Hit Me – An Autoethnographic Case Study ............................................. 49 Critical/Cultural Political Economy of Media Methodology ................. 57 Media Ecology Methodology .............................. 58 “My Story” ............................................. 60 Chapter Conclusion ..................................... 72 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS....................................... 75 Autoethnography ........................................ 76 Political Economy of Media Analysis .................... 81 Media Ecology Analysis ................................ 107 Adaptation Analysis ................................... 117 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION.................................... 122 APPENDIX A – Hit Me Proposal............................ 136 APPENDIX B – News Articles.............................. 208 APPENDIX C – Agent Contract............................. 218 APPENDIX D – Hit Me Short Preview....................... 222 REFRENCES............................................... 225 VITA.................................................... 236 iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “It wasn‟t like that in the book” (Geraghty, 2008, p1) Adaptation studies once revolved around a comparison of the source text, or novel, to the film that was created from it. “More specifically, studies of adaptation tend[ed] to privilege literature over film in two ways. By organizing themselves around canonical authors, they establish a presumptive criterion for each adaptation. And by arranging adaptations as spokes around a hub of such a strong authorial figure, they establish literature as proximate cause of adaptation that makes fidelity to the source text central to the field” (Leitch, 2007,p.3). Consequently, these studies would place the novel/source text on a pedestal and then base their comparison of the film around how accurately it portrayed the book. This form of analysis is known as “fidelity-based criticism” (McFarlane, 1991, p.222). However, in recent years, adaptation studies have taken a new turn and are moving 1 away from studies that focus on “fidelity” (Cutchins, Raw, Welch, 2010). Adaptation is now being seen as both a “creative and critical act” (Cutchins, Raw, Welch 2010, p.1). These newer adaptation principals hold that there is no need for an adaptation to remain true to the source text and as such there is no need for a study to judge the adaptation in accordance with this criterion. Adaptation has thus become a creative process of its own and can be viewed with no boundaries and judgments, based on fidelity to a source text, which can‟t account for creative adaptations. Prior to this creative orientation to adaptation, one of the practices that compounded the problem of the earlier very narrow focus on fidelity was the popular practice of applying adaptation theory on a case by case basis. The only way that this kind of study could be accomplished, was to have fidelity as its focus and it had its consequences. According to Thomas Leitch(2003), the author of Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory, “the fact that studies of particular literary texts and their cinematic adaptations greatly outnumber more general considerations 2 of what is at stake in adapting a text from one medium”, has led to the “operation of adaptation studies on a severe economy of theoretical principals which have ossified into a series of fallacious bromides”. Or as adaptation theorist, James Naremore (1973) puts it, adaptation studies have descended into studies which focus on a deconstruction of “literature versus cinema, high culture versus mass culture, original versus copy”. There is a consequence to this approach; it tends to create a cultural hierarchy between the different media, which has added to the stagnation of the adaptation field (Murray, 2008). This overall approach has failed to propel this field forward because, according to the adaptation scholar Simone Murray, fidelity based adaptation studies neglect how content is produced (Murray, 2008, p.9). To be more specific, there are many factors, such as; literary agents, publishers, producers, and film studios, to name a few, that effect how content is produced and delivered to an audience (Murray, 2008). Shifting the focus of adaptation studies to incorporate these factors will, according to Murray, “take account of adaptation‟s role as the driving 3 force in contemporary multiplatform media” (Murray, 2008, p.14). Adaptation studies have always sat on the edge of literature studies or film studies, but really “…traces its decent more directly from literary studies” (Leitch, 2007, p.3). It is now moving into the broader field of mass media thanks to such scholars as Simone Murray. Murray has advocated a new approach that “would seek to replicate this commercial centrality by according adaptation an equivalently central role in theorizations of twenty-first- century culture” (Murray, 2008, p.14). The twenty-first- century media environment is now owned by big media conglomerates which means that one company, for example Time Warner, owns publishing houses, television stations, film studios, Internet sites, video games, and various periodicals. Consequently, it is likely that these large companies will seek to traffic the content that they own through multiple media. Thus, the adaptation field provides the perfect window in which to examine the flow of content through the different channels of the media 4 environment; and as such makes a study of adaptation a compelling approach to communication studies. The following paper will use adaptation as a window through which to view the current media environment. It will further this study through an examination of this author‟s own work, a book proposal titled, Hit Me. Consequently, it will amount to an autoethnographic case study of sorts. This adaptation study will differ from all others in the sense that the full „adaptation‟ has not taken place yet. However, the content that is Hit Me has been written and re-written multiple times and as such has taken many forms. And, it is this nature of the birthing process of Hit Me that has brought me to the study of adaptation. As stated earlier, Hit Me is not yet a book and thus has not yet been adapted to a movie. So, how will a study of adaptation apply to Hit Me? Well, as previously indicated, adaptation