I cannot recommend Graeme Turner’s contribution to the convergence culture issue of Cultural Studies enough; if you have not read it yet, stop. Stop right here, go read his article, and come back when you’re done.
I. Surrendering the Space
For those who don’t have the time to read the article before Thursday’s class, the crux of Turner’s essay is, as he argues, that higher education programs centered on the study of convergence culture are frequently complicit in the erosion of both critical intellectual inquiry and the political foundations of Cultural Studies. (685) This is an irony in itself, as Turner frequently points out, considering that proponents of convergence often historicize convergence culture within Cultural Studies, supposedly being born out of it and, perhaps, also being the future of the field.
Though convergence culture programs, Turner notes, frequently represent themselves as hailing from Cultural Studies, methodologically and critically they bear very little resemblance to it. Rather, these programs typically emphasize the technical skills involved in convergence technologies while only introducing a “thin” theoretical framework with which to contextualize the creative and technical practices the programs teach (ex. the skills and methods of remix versus the larger framing theories). (689) Moreover, Turner notes that the rhetoric of these programs is vocational and trendy, focusing on “marketable” subjects and approaches that will be “cool” to students while also offering skillsets that will make participants more employable later on. (687)
Turner blames this shift, and how Cultural Studies has now been co-opted for the commercial purposes of convergence culture, on two different variables: 1) The lack of a self-reflexive and (indeed) Cultural Studies-minded critique of the media studies field in particular reference to convergence and its applications; Turner argues that, were Cultural Studies to take the same politically-oriented lens it uses on media objects and to apply it to itself and the uses of convergence within media studies, perhaps the result would be the inclusion of more theoretical and political rigor within these convergence programs. (695) 2) The economy of the University system, in which humanities and media studies programs are at the very bottom of the “funding food chain;” this structure, Turner points out, necessitates orienting programs towards “cool” and “marketable” topics in order to court undergraduate enrollment. (687, 694)
As a result, Turner concludes, not only do these convergence programs hurt Cultural Studies -- and with the apocalyptic potential to eventually replace the field altogether (690) -- but these programs also contribute to the ongoing loss of critical and analytical inquiry within higher education on the whole when faced with the more “marketable” vocational “training agendas” that are increasingly being offered. (695)
II. Not All Convergence Programs are Equal
In light of USC’s own Media Arts and Practice Division, which is often referred to as something of a sibling program to Critical Studies, Turner’s article is particularly relevant as it gives us a comparative framework with which to consider the program.
(Admittedly, all of the programs Turner bases his conclusions on are in the U.K. and Australia, which may account for some institutional and pedagogical differences between what he describes and the convergence programs we are familiar with in the States.)
Of the programs evaluated, Turner notes that their convergence-focused curricula are “technically oriented” and that “much of their content has to do with understanding the capacities of digital media and communications technologies” -- he even goes so far as to suggest that “training is explicitly their focus.” (687) This recalls Turner’s point that many of these programs are focused on providing students with “marketable”and “employable” creative skills rather than pursuing lines of critical inquiry.
On this last point Turner is particularly alarmed, as the (evidently) very optimistic precepts of convergence culture necessitate and even invite the type of critical and political analysis that Cultural Studies originated. Within the ‘domain’ of convergence, creativity is “valorized as the product of the interactive capacities released for the participatory ‘prosumer’... The new media, then, are intrinsically creative, vernacular, democratic and consumerist -- not only technically but also ideologically.” (688)
The danger in these foundational assumptions about convergence, which Turner hints at but never fully addresses, is that this Polyanna-ish perspective neglects to consider the larger economic and political workings behind digital convergence, all of which are dictated by the ruling media oligarchies. The act of ‘prosumption’ has become a commodity in and of itself as user-generated-content sites use the creative efforts of the so-called digital “democracies” to fuel their own larger machines; productive endeavors and creativity have, in effect, become commodities unto themselves which YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and other such sites urge users to consume (via their services, of course). It is this deceptive optimism that is part of the reason that Turner argues that a Cultural Studies approach to convergence is now more necessary than ever.
So the question is, how does our own sister program at MAP fare in light of Turner’s critique? Given that I only have a limited knowledge of the program through my experience with its graduate certificate courses, my observations can hardly be taken as representative. That being said, though there is certainly an emphasis on practical applications -- afterall, “practice” is part of the division’s name -- I would never consider my experiences in the program to be academically or theoretically “thin” (to borrow Graeme’s term). From Roland Barthes to bell hooks to Alexander Galloway, the courses I have taken have worked hard to bring practice into conversation with a diverse number of theoretical contexts, not simply as a loose framework for the program, but as part of an ongoing discourse about convergence.
Thus, a least from my own experience, I would say that our MAP program stands in contradiction to Turner’s assertions about convergence programs; that being said, perhaps MAP is also the exception that proves the rule.
III. Whence Theory, Politics and Rigor?
Quite honestly, Turner’s suggestion that convergence programs will soon replace Cultural Studies seems nigh apocalyptic. Though almost all modes of critical inquiry in higher education are currently under attack -- thank you for that, global economy -- it seems far-fetched to ever believe that Cultural Studies, an intellectual feat, could become extinct because of the rise of vocational training in digital media. At their core, these two things fulfill very different needs; acquiring employable skills is not mutually exclusive to critically- and political-minded thinking, as much as Turner might make it seem that way.
There is, however, I think a very tangible threat within critically-oriented convergence programs (such as, although not specifically, USC’s MAP) as curricula begin to highlight “cooler,” more “marketable” and definitely “tech-oriented” critical practices that are drastically less political than any Cultural Studies’ approach. Perfect examples of this are Lev Manovich’s two recent digital/convergence media projects Visualizing Vertov and Selfiecity.
Visualization from Visualizing Vertov. To read the article on the project, click here.
Visualizing Vertov does a number of technically amazing things with The Eleventh Year (1928) and Man With A Movie Camera (1929) by measuring and visualizing the films’ frames with methodologies we typically think of as being applied to data; all of this falls under the ambiguous umbrella of “software studies,” and supposedly represents an intervention into the field of media studies by shifting the way we think about cinema towards the way we think about data. Selfiecity does much the same thing, utilizing the same software in both projects (called Cinemetrics), but pulls ‘selfie’ photos from Instagram for its raw data rather than frames from films.
Example of visualization and metrics used in Selfcity. To visit the site, click here.
Of course, this is an incredibly over-simplified (and probably reductive) explanation of Manovich’s projects, but there is something both intriguing and dangerous about treating media objects as raw data. Denuded of contexts and treated as visual data points, then mechanically ground through algorithms and metrics, they lose much of their potential as nodes of access into cultural and political inquiries. Where is the place for Cultural Studies in Visualizing Vertov?
In this light, perhaps the real threat to Cultural Studies is not from vocational or instructional training in convergence media, but rather from emerging critical methods that operate without political aspirations or underpinnings.
IV. Unmarketable Doesn’t Mean Obsolete
Throughout his essay, Turner constantly emphasizes the “marketability” of these vocationally-aimed programs, particularly because it is exactly this, their monetary appeal to departments and universities, that is so threatening. Following this logic, the implicit suggestion in Turner’s observations is that Cultural Studies and all of its political and critical underpinnings are now outmoded and unmarketable to undergraduate students, otherwise more institutions would be selling “seats” and enrollment numbers for Cultural Studies programs rather than convergence programs.
This is something very important that I think we all should take note of, in part because it echoes similar themes and questions that have been showing up throughout our work and readings this semester: this is not the first time we’ve seen accusations of “unappealing” and “obsolete” lobbed at Cultural Studies.
My mother, the therapist, is often fond of saying that if a person has a history of failed relationships, the only common denominator is that person; it’s a way of saying that perhaps the problem isn’t other people, but rather something a bit closer to home. I would say the same thing of Cultural Studies right now. Rather than debating and analyzing what is wrong with institutions and fields that aren’t embracing Cultural Studies into their methodologies (and making excuses like “students only want skill-based programs” or “they’re trying to be more like hard sciences and STEM fields”), perhaps we should be thinking about what it is about this field that is making it unmarketable?
Afterall, Cultural Studies' lack of appeal to undergraduate students (or, perhaps in more economic terms, lack of potential monetization) has nothing to do with its sometimes purported obsolescence. As Turner pointed out, never before has it been more important that we embrace Cultural Studies’ methodologies and goals given the current economy, the institutional business practices of university, and the fraught media landscape. How could it possibly be irrelevant or obsolete in the face of so many power structures that are in need of tackling?
Yet, based on Turner’s accounting, Cultural Studies is failing when it comes to marketability. For myself, I refuse to believe that it is the critical and political acts of inquiry in themselves that are unfashionable (and therefore unprofitable), although Turner seems to suggest this -- What college student doesn’t enjoying breaking down and taking down the Man? There is an inherently rebellious appeal to the political underpinnings of Cultural Studies that seems as though it would be very marketable, and in fact was exactly so in previous decades. As such, it is this question that I close with -- one that I am still mulling over myself as I consider its applications to my final project for this course -- If Cultural Studies isn’t obsolete, then why is it unmarketable?
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