Popular Culture Ruined Blockbuster?

From going through this week’s readings about Popular Culture I started to wonder if the focus on the future of technology would really be a good idea. In the Baran and Davis section, "Research on Popular Culture in the United States," McLuhan says, "Unlike British critical theorists, most have no links to social movements. They focus much of their attention on television and, now the internet as the premier media of the electronic era." (217)

This article looks into the purpose that Blockbuster served and now the fact that they are going out of business.
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/hollywood/blockbuster-going-out-of-business-091510

After reading about what Popular Culture has done to America it got me thinking about how when I was growing up the place that everyone wanted to go was Blockbuster to get the newest videos out. There was a time when I'm sure everyone in this class can recall going to Blockbuster with their parents and friends so they could be the first ones to get their hands on the new movies.

Basically because of the internet and new popular culture, there are so many websites like Netflix that really impacted this once profound and very useful industry. You can go on Google nowadays and type in free movies and I guarantee you that you will find sites that you can download and watch for free. Cultural imperialism as defined by Tomlinson is the practice of promoting a more powerful culture over a least known or desirable culture. It is usually the case that the former belongs to a large, economically or militarily powerful nation and the latter belongs to a smaller, less powerful one. (McQuail, 223)

The way I looked at this was the in the society that we live in today, the internet is by far the most powerful tool to accessing anything in this World at any time you want. The way I looked at cultural imperialism in this way was that Blockbuster is now a third world country and the internet and Netflix. It’s sad to think that there was once a time where Blockbuster was the place to go to get your movies. So while new popular culture seems like it would be a really good idea, there is also some flaws to the system.

Take a look at this to check out the old Blockbuster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JWP1mTItD4

My questions to you are, do you think that because of the new popular culture in terms of the internet, will this ruin older businesses like Blockbuster? Do you think because of the way our society is today (lazy, sheltered) that this is part of the reason people don’t go to these businesses anymore? If you were Blockbuster what would you have done to keep the company going?

Shopping more because of social media?

Is Twitter, Foursquare, or Facebook influencing your shopping this holiday season? The following video discusses how some retailers are using social media to get shoppers through their doors: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/business&id=7766664

Baran and Davis cite McLuhan for explaining that, “The medium is the message (and the massage). In other words, new forms of media transform (massage) our experience of ourselves and our society, and this influence is ultimately more important than the content that is transmitted in its specific messages-technology determines experience” (220). Do you agree? When we look at the problems of cyberbullying and sexting, I think this is very true. And now retailors are using social media to come into your home and entice you out of it instead of encouraging you to shop online. Has the Internet and now social media changed the way you see yourself or society? Did you ever realize that Facebook, Twitter, and other apps/sites allow you to be "social" with your favorite retailors? How has that changed your shopping experience?

Erik Qualman points out that everything is different because of social media in his Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng&feature=related

Qualman and McLuhan have a point, but is there a limit to this transformation that takes place as media shifts? I think there is and so does John Tomlinson who writes that, “Though the media may be analytically separable from other aspects of culture, it is clear that they are intimately connected with these other aspects in terms of people’s ‘lived experience’. People’s experience of television, for example, is very often within the cultural context of the family and this context has a significant mediating effect (224). As someone who grew up without cable television I can attest to this.

How have your ‘lived experiences’ mediated the ways you’ve changed with or adapted to new media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, BBM, Oovoo, and/or even HD? In what ways are these technologies affecting your or your family’s consumption?

Chilean Miner Media Coverage

While I was doing the reading for this week, about media across cultures, my mind kept going back to the media coverage surrounding the Chilean miners. Why was it that it received so much media attention? It is not as if this was the first time that miners have been trapped, and the fact that it did not even occur in the United States is even more interesting. Since Aug.5 when the miners were trapped to the rescue just a few weeks ago, the media coverage was nonstop. Why?

I found this article from The Guardian, a newspaper from the UK, about the media coverage of the entrapment and rescue

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/18/chile-miners-global-media-coverage

In the article, the writer discusses how journalists flocked to Camp Hope, the temporary camp made at the San Jose mine. Over 2,000 journalists and technicians camped out there to broadcast the event all over the world. The entire world was able to live the experience with the miners through the camera that was inside the mine. The rescue of the miners was, arguably extremely emotional as all 33 emerged alive. The article commends the Chilean government for the massive media coverage. The Chilean President, Sebastian Pinera, once owned the Chilean TV network, Chilevision. The President is a media mogul, and knows how to work the industry, "Somehow the Chile authorities understood how to make it so emotional and appealing," Rosental Alves, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, told CNN. "I think it really matters that the president is not only media literate but is a media mogul and he is surrounded by people who have that mindset."

Would other countries have even heard of the trapped miners if the Chilean government did not expose it? Do you think that it is possible that the Chilean government could have used this event to their advantage in order to gain coverage for Chile?

In the McQuail reading by Karl Erik Rosengren, he discusses how the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme spread throughout news organizations around the world, “The fact that a piece of international news can be diffused among the different populations of the globe as quickly as is sometimes the case is due, of course, to the relative efficiency of the international mass media system.” (p 232). The article goes on to say that sometimes the news travels so quickly that it can be lopsided and that “We thus get a somewhat distorted picture about what human life looks like in other parts of the world---and our own” (232). Do you think that this is true—that media coverage of events from other cultures, nations, could be lopsided and that perhaps, we are not getting the true picture of life in other parts of the world?

The Baran and Davis reading for this week discusses the commodification of culture. It lists several reasons for the repackaging and marketing of culture to peoples. One element involves dramatization of culture, which I thought was pertinent to the Chilean miner example. It says, “Such dramatization makes the final commodity attractive to as large an audience as possible” (335). Could the rescue of the miners have been over dramaticized in order to gain more media coverage?

My questions to you are do you believe that the Chilean miner incident was overexposed potentially, by the Chilean government? Do you think we received a distorted version of it? Can you think of any other examples of international events that have received intense media coverage here in the U.S.?