The Wire Season 5 and the hyperreal serial killer

Scene from the wire wherein Mayor of Baltimore Thomas Carcetti is made aware of the simulated deaths of a number of homeless men. Earlier in the series Detective McNulty tampers with several crime scenes to fabricate a hyperreal narrative to the deaths, most of which are unrelated and/or natural. The use of this simulation was what Baudrillard would call 'operational negativity' (the Police departments' budget had been recently cut by the mayor), using media tactics to create a series of deaths and draw attention to the necessity of well-funded policing. In this series a journalist for the Baltimore Sun, Scott Templeton, covers the homeless murders for the paper, wherein he manufactures a great deal of hyperreal stories to benefit himself as a journalist. My favourite, and most relevant line is Norman Wilson's (Mayor Carcetti's deputy campaign manager) "They manufactured an issue to get paid, we manufactured an issue to get you elected as governer. Everybody's getting what they need behind some.. make-believe."

Portfolio Task 4 - Annotation

Charlie Brooker on Haiti

In the first part of this show, the Brooker looks at the medias' coverage of events in Haiti. What interested me the most, which is only a small segment of the report, is different governing bodies and medias use of the crisis for their benefit. Bill O'Reilly jumps at the chance to use other countries less generous economic benefits to Haiti as an opportunity to blow the American imperialist trumpet whilst Hugo Chavez is reported to have claimed the Haitian disaster was a result of an American "Earthquake inducing super-weapon".

This is incredibly relevant to the concept of hyperreal news reporting, wherein the narrative of a report is created in order to benefit a particular ideology.

Portfolio Task 3 (Essay Proposal Form)

Essay Title/Topic

• Hyperreality, News Content and the Media.

Main issues addressed by argument

• The impossibility of the apparent objectivity of news reporting
• Affects of media ideology on the 'image' created by subjective news reporting
• New media, and McLuhan's theory of the medium as the message, and how this has affected the 'image' created by news reporting
• Media utilization of the 'value' of signs in the press and reporting

Visual Material

• Season 5 of the television series 'The Wire', which follows 'media consumption' as a theme. As well as other work by the series' writer, David Simon.
• Charlie Brooker's NewsWipe
• Structure and layout of various publications, physical and online

Theoretical Approach

• Reality and Hyperreality

Specific Theorists and Writers

• Jean Baudrillard

• Roland Barthes

• Marshall McLuhan

• Ferdinand De Saussure

• David Simon

Books/Articles already located

• Baudrillard, J, (1983). Simulations. Translated From French by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beckman. USA: Semiotext(e)

• Baudrillard, J., (1991). The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Translated from French by Paul Patton. Indiana University Press.

• Barthes, R., (1977). Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press

• Eldridge, J., (1995). Glasgow Media Group Reader, Volume 1: News Content, Language and Visuals. London: Routledge

• McLuhan, M., (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

• Alia, V., 2004. Media Ethics and Social Change. Edinburgh University Press.

On Popular Music (Task 2)

Theodor W. Adorno divides music into two seperate categories or 'spheres', the two forms he claims are standardized popular music and 'serious' music. The first part of his article focuses on the process of standardization and one of the characteristics of a consumer of popular culture in all forms - pseudo-individualization.

Standardization refers to the form and production of a song, wherein a sense of familiarity is constructed through pre-conceived reactions to popular music. The listener is expected to enjoy and consume certain songs with particular structures, and as a result the song is 'pre-digested' to suit this familiarity, "The composition hears for the listener."

The concept of pseudo-individualization is a product of Adorno's 'system of response mechanisms' which he claims are in stark contrast to the "...ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society." The consumer is part of a "collective experience" more than anything.

In the second part of the articles, Presentation of the Material, Adorno focuses branding, visual stimulus and plugging. Adorno uses the term plugging more broadly, in that he refers to the repetition of similar processes in production and song structures in pop music. He talks of the paradox in his theory of plugging; "To be plugged, a song hit must have at least one feature by which it can be distinguished from any other and yet possess the complete conventionality and triviality of all others." This, Adorno writes, can only be achieved by plugging outside the boundaries of the actual music, therefore an emphasis on the presentation of the music is required. The culture is therefore recognized by the listener as well as the conventional song structure, typical of any form of branding, a "...substitute for the lack of genuine individuality in the material."

This is part of overall consumption of popular culture, not just music. The theory of effortless entertainment inducing the consumer in a state of relaxation through reproduction of popular taste and opinion. Finally, Adorno claims that the forms in which popular culture could mainly be consumed at the time, movies and music, allure the consumer into a state of fantasy wherein they are made aware of the perfection of depicted individuals - forcing them to admit that they can never be what they consume; they "...have no part in happiness."

Skepta's 'Sunglasses at Night' is typical of the now heavily standardized song structure in which former grime artists have become accustomed to. The foundation of this trend was the level of popularity and consumption of Wiley's 'Wearing My Rolex', creating the formula for artists' to follow. Artists like the two mentioned, Lethal Bizzle, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk - when considered part of the sub-genre of grime - all typically worked with half-time 140bpm instrumentals of varying song structures. It's now an obvious convention to write songs that have a 4x4 kick drum, are around 130bpm and carry the structure of standardized pop music, pre-digested for the listeners consumption. This track, and in a wider sense the association of grime MC's with heavily standardized pop music, can also be attributed to pseudo-individualism - the consumer may buy into the association with grime as much as his/her response to the compositions.

Globalisation, Sustainability and The Media

- Hegemony of Western ideas
- Globalisation homogenous, unified culture.

- Capitalist definition of Globalisation: Free Market Economy

- Sovereignty of the nation-state, Accountability/control of forces and organizations, national Identity... suffer negative effects of globalisation

- Oligopolies dominate world media, ie. TimeWarner

- Cultural imperialism "if the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilate one".

- Media power of the US - Americanized consumerism in societies that can ill afford it, drives consumer desires ie. 'Fair and Handsome' skin lightening cream

- Propaganda- Basic Filters; Ownership (ie. Rupert Murdoch owns much of Britains press and several broadcasting companies). Sourcing (ie. where news stories are chosen to be reported from). Funding (ie. advertising in press). Flak (ie. counter-campaigns, negative responses to news stories)

- Anti Ideologies domination of western ideas, demonising of non-western cultures. Mechanism- ideological overlay

- An Inconvenient Truth: Pseudo Science, manages to promote consumerism to help save the planet (ie. 'buy hybrid cars' and 'encourage everyone to watch this film')

- Competitive Enterprise Institute 'Flat earthers' claim global warming is a hoax

- Sustainability sustainable development; improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems.

- Greenwashing media ideology, to portray eco-friendly image / image of being sympathetic to environment. Ideology spinning.

- Victor Papanek 'Design for the Real World', Adbusters, OBEY.

Reality, Virtuality & Hyperreality

-Theory of 'Value'

-Saussure's Theory of The Sign ie. The signifier and the signified, the concept and the image/sound.

- Key theorists/precursors Guy Debord the 'society of the spectacle' Marshall McCluhan media and communication theory, 'the medium is the message', Georges Bataille symbolic aspects of ritual in diverse cultures, Marcel Mauss the 'gift' as an economic principle

- 'The world is an image of something' Plato, the Timeaeus

- Simulacra and Simulation

- The precession of Simulacra - 1. the reflection of a profound reality 2. masks and denatures a profound reality 3. masks the absence of a profound reality 4. has no relation whatsoever: Pure Simulacrum.

Disneyfication

Synopticon - ie. Big Brother, The Loud Family, Forget Foucault?

'Welcome to the desert of the real'

- The end of history? 'If there are no more dustbins of history...(history) has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.'

'America got what it fantasized about'

Although Zižek was referring to the unimaginable catastrophes of Hollywood disaster movies, this quote reminded me of a couple of 'predictions' by rap artists. Boots Riley, the male half of The Coup, is an activist as well as an emcee, and holds strong far left political views. The release date of The Coup's fourth album was put back as a result of it's untimely closeness to September 11th. The album cover - referring to money-obsessed Southern hip-hop in style - depicts Riley pressing a button whilst the World Trade is destroyed in the background.

Another example was Biggie's line on the James Mtume sampling single 'Juicy' ; "Time to get paid/ Blow up like the World Trade" Of course this was again a simple metaphor - in this case for making money rather than in The Coup's case, the destruction of Capitalist ideologies.

What struck me about this was the level of sensitivity, 'A Dream' a Jay-Z track released after the September 11th bombings included an acapella of the aforementioned Biggie verse over a newly produced instrumental, with the words "World Trade" censored.

The relevance in all of this is the different levels of signification, without the 9/11 disaster, the 'Juicy' lyrics would have little cultural meaning. Because the signified in both cases was involved in a very real historical event, this in turn changes the meaning of the signifier, in a way it intensifies its significance.