Queen B

iii. Global Celebrity: is celebrity a global phenomenon? Give an account of a global non-Western celebrity (that isn't Psy!), with regards to materials from the reading this week. Alternatively focus on a single celebrity from a culture or nationality other than your own (music, film, television sport, politics, etc) and provide a brief case study with regards to the concepts examined in the Specular Economy.

Beyonce, who topped the Forbes list of top earning celebrity couples last year with husband Jay-Z, projects a public and private image that is globally recognisable. I will be using Beyonce's various social media accounts to look at her complex online presentation as well as a case study with regards to David Marshall's (2010) concept of the "Specular Economy" of Beyonce's 'Beyhive Blog' which is produced apparently according by Queen Bey herself as: 

                "MY WAY OF SHOWING ALL THE INSPIRING THINGS 
                          I COME ACROSS EVERY SINGLE DAY. 
                                 THIS IS THROUGH MY EYES."

The reaction to Beyonce getting a shorter haircut earlier in the year prompted a staggering response. Shocked fans on social media expressed themselves venomously across all platforms after the innocuous Instagram snap was posted from her official account and intrigued media outlets ran the 'story' multiple times across the breadth of the expected gossip rags and fashion media all the way to mainstream news coverage.

Photo: Beyonce's Instagram

Interviews with stylists, celebrities, hairdressers, fans and her personal friends contributed to the thousands of words of opinions spread across users of social media on the new look. Close analysis of her presentation over the following days built a singer's new hairdo into a media wildfire that seemingly couldn't be sated. A 23 page analysis of every different hairstyle she had over the last 10 years and 32 of International Business Times favourite do's perhaps going the furthest to explore the follicle folly.

This democratic interactivity of new and old media scrambling to exchange opinions on the presentation of a celebrity through the seemingly personal window of the original image is a demonstration of Marshall's Specular Economy as "An entire new industry—an economy of circulating images, information, text, conversation and interpersonal exchanges—has been built to service the now more pervasive and oddly democratic construction of public identities." (2010, pg. 502) She has built up her public value and grown a "networked culture" based on her public persona through her Beyhive Blog, a more than likely closely managed front page for her Tumblr and Instagram accounts as well as various other links of her 'inspirations', trending fashions and images and videos of collective fan appreciation.

The Beyhive is buzzing with the work of her fans or 'Beys' busily "becoming part of the media ebb and flow" as Marshall describes (2010, pg. 500). Her very own realm of personal presentation produces a seemingly private and intimate discourse with all content stamped with her genuine approval. Fashion brands, restaurants, car customisation companies, upcoming tours of hers as well as other artists she chooses to promote as well as various other more subtle promotions such as maintaining the edge of her iphone 5 in focus within the above viral shot, all link the promotional with a personal touch.

Beyonce within the Beyhive has become a public personality system that is seemingly private and intimate opening the discourse for her worker Beys to consume and contribute to her success like a real queen bee in its hive cared for by it's drones and workers.

Marshal, P.D 2010, ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 498-502

Week 7 blog topic: Vidya Gaems

v.Stuart Hall (1973) wrote about the active role of the audience, distinguishing between three types of reading strategies used to interpret texts – the dominant-hegemonic reading or preferred reading, the negotiated reading and the oppositional reading. Examine the representation of gender, age, class, or race in a game you are familiar with and give a brief account of that representation in the game from all three readings.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is a hugely successful sandbox game with near limitless map size and opportunities for different forms of play such as competition, narrative, co-operation. Featuring tennis, golf, submarine exploration, shooting, racing or even going to the movies with an A.I "friend". The depth and breadth of activities available allows for multiple readings to interpret the game as a text. 

Stuart Hall (1973) discusses 3 patterns of interpretation by an audience which he suggests that  "exhibit, across individual variants, significant clusterings" (1973, pg. 58): 

- A dominant preferred reading which reflects hegemonic order of meaning reflected closely to the encoder-producers intended message. 

- A negotiated reading that, while remaining within the structure of the encoding of the producer, the decoder-audience is adaptive and oppositional to a limited degree in regards to an audience's local conditions. 

-And a third oppositional reading which is wholly contrary in decoding the hemegmonic-dominant encoding. 

Hall (1973) puts these categories together to help structure the ways a text can be interpreted and misinterpreted between encoder/producer and decoder/audience as he notes that his theory "also helps to deconstruct the commonsense meaning of 'misunderstanding' in terms of a theory of 'systematically distorted communication'" (1973, pg. 59).

Image: www.gamerevolution.com, promotional screenshot of 3 playable characters 

GTA V can be read or decoded according to any of these three patterns as I will attempt to explain. The game follows 3 male playable characters through their careers in both legal and criminal ventures (mainly criminal) within the city of Los Santos which is based on RL L.A. It features a complete world swirling with attempts of satirical L.A. elements from billboards of fake over the top movies and products, Vinewood (Hollywood) Boulevard complete with sidewalk of the stars, satirical clubs and businesses as well as the representations of L.A. typical characters, aspiring actresses, celebrities, yoga instructors, muscle beach, surfer burnouts etc. 

First the dominant preferred reading most importantly would be to accept the satirical nature of the game decoding the intended humor as funny, the social commentary as accurate and taking on the packed messages of redemption and ideas of success and achievement. The characters would be understood as extensions of the player in that the audience would identify with at least one of the three male characters and make decisions, within what is allowed in the game, that would reflect their own ideas of their identity. The world would be seen as a clever satirical mirror of reality.

A negotiated reading would be decoding the game as fun, enjoying some satirical elements but progressing through the game frustrated by the lack of representations of women and uncomfortable with presented stereotypes. While also perhaps playing the audience might skip sections that do not find mesh with their personal conditions. Avoiding characters that offend them and making decisions within the game that would go against the presented typical intended action of the character like making the bloodthirsty lunatic character buzz around on a moped delivering pizzas or drive a taxi. Make the old man thief go mountain bike riding and basejumping avoiding the prostitutes and "rampage" killing sprees.

Image: Promotional wallpaper, sexist message much?

An oppositional reading would reject any satire at all. The patriarchal hegemonic messages of submissive, weak, women's representations or lack of any powerful women at all within the game could be read as explicitly sexist. The social commentary and  jokes would be not understood as critical or amusing but oppressive and direly offensive. The game could be played oppositionally by rejecting the narrative, skipping every cutscene and interpreting every action as strictly a sad attempt for male empowerment, constructing mayhem and adrenaline virtualisation to experience power they crave due to the pathetic powerlessness over their own lives due to class division.  

References:
Hall, S. 1973, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham [England: Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, 1973. 

Image 1:
http://media.gamerevolution.com/images/misc/grand-theft-auto-v-review-2.jpg

Image 2:
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/GTA-V-Celebrates-Fourth-of-July-with-Lamar-Tracy-and-Jimmy-Wallpapers-2.jpg?1373006759

Drone cross pollination

v. Employment and the Blogopshere

The phenomenon of work blogging or the employment related blogosphere gives employees an unofficial outlet to vent and gives control to employees to network and discuss with people and about topics that can be related to or far away from their management and corporate culture initiatives "employee cynicism can potentially offer employees a sense of control and attachment to their own occupational or professional community, while at the same time providing distance from corporate culture initiatives." (Richards & Kosmala 2013)

Source: Redpath's Beekeeping Supplies

Like bees travelling large distances and pollinating flowers by leaving the hive to collect pollen and nectar to then return to enrich the hive as a whole, the colonisation of the blogosphere by employees sharing and receiving information builds a broader culture among employees. Perhaps more beneficially than maintaining closed top down management enforced corporate culture initiatives. 

The direction of management decisions can be understood objectively with insight from outside sources and diversity of ideas on how to deal with problems as well as possible further employment opportunities. People on the outside looking into the a work blog as a record of an employees thoughts about work also makes for a better understanding out in the public of what its actually like to work in that specific industry. Again like pollination the process is beneficial both ways, the flower benefits from pollinating seeds as the bee contributes to the hive. The public gains understanding of the internal initiatives and nitty gritty day to day goings ons within a company or industry.

The example of pollination is life and death for both the plant and the bee whereas a work blog perhaps is more of a first world problem situation where whinging about work seems to be an example of a selfish desire to unload stresses and concerns. However, the dynamics of workplace blogging provides insights and understanding as a phenomena that puts control into the hands of the employees perhaps where they don't have power over anything else to do with work.

Sources:
Richards, J., and Kosmala, K., 2013 ‘In the end, you can only slag people off for so long’: employee cynicism through work blogging’, New Technology, Work and Employment, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 68 – 77.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7N50rSSZxo

Redpath's Beekeeping Supplies http://redpaths.com.au/images/top-pic1.jpg