Home Entertainment and Media, Essay Example

Culture and Commerce in Home Entertainment.

Home entertainment has always been appreciated for its social, commercial, and cultural values. For this reason, TV and its content have become popular among different societies. The present essay is focused on the discussion of negotiation between culture and commerce in home entertainment content and viewing practices. The aim of this essay is to reveal the essence of home entertainment and features that make it valuable.

In 20^th century, the public discovered the advantages of home entertainment. In the middle of the 20^th century, the audience was excited by an opportunity to have “talking pictures” and “future home theatre” at people’s houses (Spigel 99). TV was treated as a window that opens “vistas of reality” and illusions produced through a combination of sound (music), color, and 3-D photography (Spigel 99). According to The Independent, the British mass periodical, TV was meant to “become cheap enough to be, like the country telephone, in every home, so that one can go to the theatre without leaving the sitting room” (Spigel 99). This way, home entertainment became available for people which valued “a 20^th century electronic monster” for giving an opportunity “to see at a distance while the event happening”, and to bring another world into the home (Spigel 99).

Since the middle of the 20^th century, such new technology as TV has become an object of commercialization. This way, home entertainment started serving as a commercial instrument for making big profits. The great popularity and profitability of television networks met the strategic and financial interests of stakeholders. It was not surprising that “the value of the networks grew rapidly as branded products companies began to realize the power of this national advertising vehicle” (Slywotzky 76). For this reason, Spigel called media content transmitted through 20^th century home entertainment as “ideological currency” (Spigel 99). This metaphor can be explained as follows: both TV and home entertainment gave an opportunity to gain huge profits through promoting, spreading, and propagating particular ideas, values, and activities. The media content provided by national governments and parties (for example, in the USA and USSR) even imposed certain thoughts that intentionally changed people’s world view. However, people face the same phenomenon even today: TV is still performing not only the entertaining, but also the advertising role.

In the 20^th  century, TV has turned people’s homes into theaters where TV had social and cultural significance because the media content transmitted through home entertainment reflected a virtual reality that was approximated to people’s real life. Available and accessible TV shows, feature films, and cultural events (music concerts, operas, plays, etc.) broadcasting on TV opened an attractive world of people’s relationships and emotions, unseen places, and interesting experiences (Hilmes 165). In addition, “Hollywood expertise in production soon began to dominate the television series market” (Hilmes 165). Watching different TV series became a widely spread family tradition that met people’s diverse interests. Overall, TV (including NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.) and film (such as Hollywood, Paramount, Warner Brothers, etc.) companies transformed home entertainment into a source for not only news and diverse experience, but also for child and adult education, their intellectual and moral development, and entertainment (Hilmes 166).

In the 20^th century, the social and cultural value of home entertainment could not be underestimated. According to Spigel, “since the 1950s, television has produced a virtual facsimile community of the air complete with neighborhoods and families that seem to share the same experienced we share, or perhaps to experience social life for us, in place of us” (100). This way, sitting in a living room, a single person or the whole family has an opportunity to share the same experiences with people on the screens. At the same time, this opportunity allows people to reflect upon cultural values.

For example, within the American society, ideology of privacy and property rights is paramount. Since the 1950s, when the suburban housing boom was followed by the migration from cities into remote farm lands, this ideology has been traced in the majority of TV shows, feature films, and other forms of home entertainment (Spigel 100). The representation of a middle class family’s or couple’s lives in a suburban area has become a kind of TV tradition even today. TV and home entertainment allow people to share domestic everyday experience and sense of isolationism produced by the clear division between private and public spheres of life. However, the ideology of privacy is “not experienced simply as a retreat from the public sphere”; it also gives “people a sense of belonging to the community” (Spigel 101). This way, purchasing a detached suburban home, a young American middle class couple or family comes to be a cultural representative of the “good life”; besides, this model of life provides an opportunity to affirm one’s social identity as a private land owner (Spigel 101). Hence, the representation of identical families and their homes provides an idea that American society members are alone and together at the same time.

A choice of particular TV programs and films is often determined by belonging to a society with its own cultural values. In addition, national advertising is focused on the representation of so-called good media content from a cultural perspective. Today, an average American prefers watching the media content related to such values of American society as a right for privacy and property, adherence to national traditions, patriotism, family unity, etc. (Anderson and Gabszewicz 569). Overall, the largest amount of media content transmitted through national home entertainment needs to respond to the social and cultural needs characteristic of a certain nation.

Hence, as the evidence suggests, home entertainment is an embodiment of a harmonious combination of culture and commerce. The essence of home entertainment lies in its ability to simultaneously perform numerous essential roles satisfying commercial, social, and cultural interests. Media content presented on TV is valued for its proximity to real life and its ideals; besides, it reflects socially and nationally appreciated values.

Manifold Uses of the Film Technology by Filmmakers and Consumers.

Manifold uses of the film technology satisfy different interest groups. Whether this technology is used by giant media communications corporations, producers or consumers, it becomes a complex synthesis of a public cultural form and domestic medium of entertainment. The essay is dedicated to the discussion of the film technology usage within two interest groups, filmmakers and consumers. The main aim of the essay is to reveal and analyze their interests, goals, and relationships.

Filmmakers are one of the interest groups that transformed the film technology into a multifaceted industry. Filmmakers are usually presented by film production companies such as Hollywood, Dream Works, Universal, 20^th Century Fox, etc. Since film production has become a profitable business, the main interests of filmmakers are focused on the survival and advancement of their companies. In real life, filmmakers are interested in a successful film release and audience’s approval. Besides, investment and partnerships refer to filmmaker’ interests (Tasker 238).

Naturally, the range of interests determines filmmakers’ goals. Correspondingly, the main goal of all film production companies is to satisfy the interests and needs of particular audience groups (for example, male society members, middle-aged women, adolescents, children, etc.) providing them with a unique and high-quality product (a film). A film should present a particular view on typical human problems. In addition, filmmakers’ goals are to be in advance of their competitors (other film production companies) in certain characteristics (for example, profit, an average number of viewers, best actors involved, etc.), and to reinforce the loyalty of investors and different companies. In real life, a commonly pursued goal is to tell an interesting story attracting the audience (Garon 279). Overall, filmmakers’ goals are related to the maintenance of their production companies’ competitive advantage through the production of an object of high art and excellent performance in the film industry.

The importance of relationships for filmmakers cannot be underestimated. A brief history of the famous film production company, Hollywood Company, will prove this evidence. Since the early 20^th century, Hollywood has been considered one of the leading US filmmakers. In the late 1950s, the network-Hollywood alliance allowed the film production company to be engaged into regular telefilm production. This alliance led to the period of beneficial stabilization for the American film industry providing it with “the relatively stable set of commercial structures and prime-time program forms” (Alvey 34). Hence, it was not surprising that the 1960s were one of the most productive periods for Hollywood from industrial and creative perspectives (Alvey 34). In the 1970s, the alliance of Hollywood with the national television brought innovations and positive changes in the company’s film production. A new storytelling strategy was one of the main contributions of this productive alliance that incorporated brainstorming, imitation, reconsideration, diversification, originality, and other important filmmaking tools within Hollywood’s environment (Alvey 47).

Since the 1980s, Hollywood has been involved into another beneficial relationship. The collaboration of Hollywood with politics (during Reagan-era period) led to the synergy “which occurred between the film industry and the American political climate” (Holt 22). Since that time, the media content provided by Hollywood and other filmmaking companies partly followed political and economic imperatives. This synergy provides the company’s films with a particular content that makes a product meet currently important political and economic needs (Holt 22). Overall, the productive relationships of Hollywood with the national television and politics in which it has been involved has improved the overall quality of the company’s products

Another interest group that should be analyzed is consumers which are the target audience of all filmmaking companies. Consumers’ interests mostly refer to a desire to watch a new, high-quality, and absorbing film. An opportunity to find a solution to real-life problems and response to individual interests can also constitute consumers’ interests. Correspondingly, consumers’ goal is to be fully satisfied with a film industry product; since consumers include different groups of people, film products aimed at diverse audience are often popular. Overall, the filmmakers’ target audience is always focused on getting pleasure, entertainment, aesthetic satisfaction, and other desirable effects produced by a film (Casey 142).

In the context of this essay, the relationships of consumers with a film need to be analyzed. When a person watches a film, he or she unconsciously interacts with its plot, characters, messages, etc. This interaction is mostly presented by the feedback received from film watching. This feedback usually determines whether a viewer likes or dislikes a film; in other words, whether social and cultural values presented in a film correspond to those shared by consumers. Consumers usually like films if their contents lie within the area of their interests so that a certain parallel between a virtual and real life (or viewer’s dreams) can be drawn (Marich 37). Ideally, a film viewed by consumers should produce a positive feedback because this feedback increases demand for a film and its popularity, satisfying such interest groups as filmmakers, and consumers.

Taking into consideration the information presented in this essay, one may agree that both filmmakers and consumers make the film industry a multifaceted phenomenon. According to filmmakers, a film serves as an object of high art, a commercial instrument, a business product, and a public cultural form of entertainment. From the perspective of consumers, a film represents a domestic medium of entertainment, and a way to get satisfaction from a high art object that responds to their real-life needs and interests.

Works Cited

Alvey, Mark. “Independents:  Rethinking the Hollywood Studio System”. Television: The Critical View. Ed. Horace Newcomb. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. 34-51.

Anderson, Simon, and Jean Gabszewicz. “The Media and Advertising: a tale of Two-Sided Markets”. Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture (vol. 1). Eds. Victor A. Ginsburgh, and David Throsby. Amsterdam, Holland: Eslevier, 2006. 567-614.

Casey, Sarah. As Film Studies: The Essential Introduction. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis, 2006.

Garon, Jon. The Independent Filmmaker’s Law and Business Guide: Financing, Shooting, and Distributing Independent and Digital Films (2^nd ed). Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2009.

Hilmes, Michael. “Television: The Vault of Hollywood”. Hollywood and Broadcasting: from Radio to Cable. Ed. Michael Hilmes. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 140-170.

Holt, Jennifer. “In Deregulation We Trust. The Synergy of Politics and Industry in Reagan–Era Hollywood”. Film Quarterly 55.2 (2001):  22-29.

Marich, Robert. Marketing to Moviegoers: A Handbook of Strategies and Tactics (2^nd ed.). Carbondale, IL: SIU Press, 2009.

Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press, 1995.

Spigel, Lynn. “The Home Theater”. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Ed. Lynn Spigel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992.  99-135.

Tasker, Yvonne. Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. London, UK: Routledge, 2002.