00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page i Consuming Media 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page ii 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page iii Consuming Media Communication, Shopping and Everyday Life Johan Fornäs, Karin Becker, Erling Bjurström and Hillevi Ganetz Oxford • New York 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page iv English edition First published in 2007 by Berg Editorial offices: First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA © Johan Fornäs, Karin Becker, Erling Bjurström and Hillevi Ganetz 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 184520 759 5 (Cloth) 978 1 84520 760 1 (Paper) Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn. www.bergpublishers.com 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page v Published with support from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page vi 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page vii CONTENTS Acknowledgements viii The Authors ix List of Tables and Figures xi 1 Locating Media Practices 1 2 Consumption and Communication 42 3 Print Media 66 4 Media Images 82 5 Sound and Motion 96 6 Hardware Machines 108 7 Intermedial Crossings 119 8 Layers of Time 130 9 Translocal Spaces 145 10 Communicative Power 169 Notes 196 References 211 Index 225 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has been written by all four authors in a collective fashion, with Johan Fornäs bringing it all together at the end. All the other co-researchers who in various periods and functions worked with the Passages project have delivered invaluable material, ideas and other inputs: Åsa Bäckström, Göran Bolin, Leonor Camauër, Lena Gemzöe, Nanna Gillberg, Anette Göthlund, Martin Gustavsson, Hasse Huss, Lars Kaijser, Sonia Kalmering, Martina Ladendorf, Karin Lövgren and Love Nordenmark. A reference group has been in support with important feedback: Bosse Bergman, Dag Björkegren, Ulf Boëthius, Peter Dahlgren, Kirsten Drotner, Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, Orsi Husz, André Jansson, Lisbeth Larsson, Marianne Liliequist, Ulf Lindberg, Orvar Löfgren, Bo Reimer and Ove Sernhede. We are grateful to them all, as well as to the scholars and institutions who have shown an interest in our work at different universities in Sweden and internationally, including colleagues at the Department of Culture Studies, Linköping University; Orvar Löfgren, Tom O’Dell and other ethnologists at Lund University; Jonathan Schroeder at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Magnus Mörck and his crew at the Centre for Consumer Science, Göteborg University; Roger Odin et al. at Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris, France; Sonia Livingstone, Nick Couldry, Don Slater et al. at the London School of Economics, UK; Daniel Miller at University of Central London, UK; Mica Nava and colleagues at the University of East London, UK; David Morley et al. at Goldsmiths College, London University, UK; Ien Ang and her team at the University of Western Sydney, Australia; Meaghan Morris and her colleagues at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, China; Kuan-Hsing Chen and others at three universities in and near Taipeh, Taiwan. We also send warm thanks to all our helpers in the ethnographic work, including visitors, customers, salespersons, civil servants and managers at all levels. The project as well as the publication of this book were generously funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. It was hosted first by the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University, and then by the National Institute of Working Life in Norrköping, Sweden. Its first four volumes are published in Swedish by the publisher Nya Doxa, and this volume makes free use of elements from these previous ones. Finally, through their encouragement and support, Tristan Palmer and his colleagues at Berg Publishers have made this last Passages book become reality in a most wonderful way. 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page ix THE AUTHORS JOHAN FORNÄS is Professor at the Department of Culture and Society at Campus Norrköping of Linköping University, where he is also Director of the national centre for interdisciplinary cultural research called the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS). His background is in musicology, and media and communica- tion studies, and he has done extensive research on popular music, youth culture and media culture. He has also published widely in English, with articles in journals like Black Renaissance; Convergence; Cultural Studies; European Journal of Cultural Studies; New Formations; Nordicom-Review; Popular Music; Popular Music and Society; Social Science Information; Theory, Culture and Society; and Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research. His nearly thirty published books and anthologies include Moves in Modernity (A&W International, 1992), Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (Sage, 1995), Youth Culture in Late Modernity (Sage, 1995), In Garageland: Rock, Youth and Modernity (Routledge, 1995), and Digital Borderlands: Cultural Studies of Identity and Interactivity on the Internet (Peter Lang, 2002). KARIN BECKER is Professor at the Department of Culture and Society, Campus Norrköping of Linköping University, and the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, Stockholm University. She began her career in the mass communi- cation and journalism programs at Indiana University and the University of Iowa, specializing in documentary photography and photojournalism, and moved to Sweden in the mid 1980s. She has also worked as Professor at the National College of Art, Craft and Design (Konstfack) in Stockholm. Her research focuses on cultural histories and contemporary contexts of visual media practices, in the press, in museums, in private settings and in ethnographic research. Her English publications include Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 1980), The Strip: An American Place (University of Nebraska Press, 1985) and Picturing Politics. Visual and Textual Formations of Modernity in the Swedish Press (JMK/Stockholm University, 2000), as well as numerous journal articles and anthology contributions. ERLING BJURSTRÖM is Professor at the Department of Culture and Society, Campus Norrköping of Linköping University. He has a background in sociology, and 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page x x Consuming Media media and communication studies. His previous research includes studies on youth culture, media culture, advertising, popular music and ethnicity. He has published fifteen books and contributed to sixty anthologies in Swedish, and also published English articles on advertising and consumer research, cultural studies and ethnicity. His Swedish publications include the extensive volume on youth culture, Högt och lågt. Smak och stil i ungdomskulturen (High and Low: Taste and Style in Youth Culture, Boréa, 1997), and among his English publications, Children and Television Advertising: A Critical Study of International Research Concerning the Effects of TV- commercials on Children (The National Swedish Board For Consumer Policies, 1994). HILLEVI GANETZ is Associate Professor at the Centre for Gender Studies, Uppsala University. Her background is in media and communication studies and literature – fields that she combined in her dissertation on Swedish female rock lyrics. Her research interests are popular culture, consumption, young women, popular litera- ture and music, feminist theory and cultural studies. She has co-edited several books in Swedish concerning youth culture, young women, feminism and Marxism, and most recently, media and consumption. She is currently conducting research on how nature, culture, gender and sexuality are represented in wildlife films and how gender and sexuality is constructed in a TV docu-soap depicting sixteen young music artists on their way to fame. Her English publications include: ‘The female body, the soul and modernity: A dichotomy reflected in a poem and a rock text’, Young, 3/1994; ‘The shop, the home and femininity as a masquerade’, Fornäs and Bolin (eds): Youth Culture in Late Modernity (Sage 1995); ‘Her Voices: Mediated Female Texts in a Cultural Perspective’, Nordicom Review, 1/1998; ‘Diving in the river or being it: Nature, gender and rock lyrics’, Toru Mitsui (ed.): Popular Music: Intercultural Interpretations (1998); ‘The happiness of being sad, or What is melancholic rock lyrics?’, Tarja Hautamäki and Helmi Järviluoma (eds): Music on Show: Issues of Performance (1998); ‘Familiar Beasts: Nature, Culture and Gender in Wildlife Films on Television’, Nordicom Review, 25:1–2 (2004). 00Consuming Media 15/2/07 2:44 pm Page xi TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES 2.1: Phases of Consumption 47 2.2: Forms of Media Power 58 7.1: A Typology of Intermedial Relations 127 FIGURES 1.1 and 1.2. Inspired by Benjamin’s Arcades project and visits to Paris, the architect modelled this passage through Solna Centre (left) after Passage des Panoramas (right). [Amend Copy] 29 & 30 1.3. The shopping centre’s slogan invites visitors to ‘feel at home’ in this place. 31 1.4. It requires an ongoing effort to keep advertising to a minimum in front of the City Hall. The façade is considered a ‘free zone’ for the city’s public art. 32 1.5. The benches nearest the subway entrance are a common meeting point. 32 1.6. The Hollywood Stairs lead to the upper level of the mall. Their name and design refer to the ‘dream factory’ and to Solna’s history of film production. 33 1.7. Surrounded by blue clouds above the Hollywood Stairs is this nostalgic portrayal of Solna’s cultural past.