Mediacy Articles - Volume 18, No. 1
Barnet, Richard And John Cavanagh. Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. Simon ∓ Schuster, 1994.
Multinational corporations are leaving their mark on every suburb, shanty, town and rural village in the world. As media teachers, we are painfully aware of the globalization of American popular culture. Global Dreams is about how this process came about, the key players from Nike, Sony to MTV and what the globalization trends mean to politics, jobs and international finance. Barnet and Cavanagh are two journalists who write readable prose and have done exhaustive research on this critically important topic. Because there is generous coverage of the entertainment industry, there is some terrific background surrounding the deals behind – to use only a few examples – MTV, the recording industry and the global reach of Coca-Cola, Benetton, Marlboro and Philip Morris cigarettes.
Buckingham, David and Julian Sefton-Green. Cultural Studies Goes to School: Reading and Teaching Popular Media. Taylor and Francis , 1994.
If you have worked your way through Buckingham’s other books, you will be familiar with his concerns about understanding what is really going on in the media classroom. Here are more explorations on the tensions between theory and practice with plenty of anecdotes based on David and Julian’s work in secondary schools. Definitely worth sticking with. I wish, however, there had been a thorough synopsis of the teaching strategies for implementing cultural studies approaches instead of the “de rigueur” concluding essay on future directions and implications.
Coleridge, Nicholas. Paper Tigers: The Latest, Greatest Newspaper Tycoons and How They Won the World. Mandarin, 1994.
This inexpensive paperback provides an authoritative study of the newspaper barons of the world from Conrad Black to Rupert Murdock. For those doing a critical study of newspapers and who want to deal with ownership and control, the Coleridge book is a fine reference.
De Kerckhove, Derrick. The Skin of Culture: Investigations of the New Electronic Reality. Somerville House Publishing, 1995.
As director of the McLuhan program, Derrick has become the heir to the McLuhan intellectual legacy and this book tells us why. The insights are generally dazzling, although some of them a trifle derivative from his rather enigmatic mentor. However, you will find enough quotes to navigate the murkier regions of cyberspace. If you have heard Derrick at our AML conferences and institutes, his prose will evoke the breathless excitement of those presentations.
Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture: Cultural studies, Identity and Politics and the Post- modern. Routledge, 1995.
Kellner uses a cultural studies approach to the study of media and addresses many of the current issues in ways that are lucid and compelling. While this may not be a book for beginners, I know of no other media analysis book that is as up-to-date, relevant, comprehensive, and balanced in the current cultural and communications debates. Kellner steers a mid course between the cultural determinists – the media dominate and oppress us – such as Noam Chomsky and those like John Fiske, at least in his work Understanding Popular Culture, who claim that audiences should celebrate or can readily give subversive, resistant readings to media texts. For seeking the middle ground, we should be grateful.
McLuhan, Eric and Frank Zingrone ed. Essential McLuhan. Anansi, 1996.
Since most of McLuhan’s books are out-of-print, this collection provides a good sampling of his work (400 pages) For those who have only read snippets of McLuhan or only know three, gnomic McLuhan statements, here is an opportunity to catch up and fill in the gaps. All McLuhanites (now being swamped with several recent books explaining the guru or reminiscing about his eccentricities) will be grateful for this marvellous sampler.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon ∓ Schuster, 1995.
Deservedly receiving excellent reviews, this is a must-buy book for anyone who realizes that identity and surfing the net are closely connected. Turkle, who teaches sociology at MIT, explores the psychological and sociological implications of computers. As media literacy expands its territory into the new and converging technologies, it is lucid and provocative studies like these which will lead the way. To have a panel of media teachers respond to her insights would be illuminating.