Sports Media and the Culture Industry

Cultural studies is concerned with the pivotal question of “so what?”

“Popular culture is one of the sites where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the stake to be won or lost in that struggle. Is is the arena of consent and resistance…that is why “popular culture” matters. Otherwise, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn about it”

Sport matters as a cultural site of struggle:

• Powerful ——— Less Powerful

• Dominant ——— Opposition

• Consent ——- Resistance

• Hegemonic ——- Counter-hegemonic

Theory: The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School was a group of theorists beginning in the 1930s

They were interested in studying the realm of popular culture and its relationship to power relations

Specifically, they focused on the emerging “mass production” of culture, later termed the culture industry

The Frankfurt Pessimists…

• Escaped from persecution in Nazi Germany and relocated to the U.S. to study capitalism in its most advanced form

• Concerned with issues of conformity, alienation, and exploitation

• Also developed a reputation being critical, pessimistic, and dystopian

Frankfurt School was interested in the social effects of when “culture” becomes an “industry”

• They argued: the once-special realm of popular culture was now fully integrated into the capitalist economy, and operated with the profit-driven structures and logics of other domains (such as factory work)

The Frankfurt School provokes some interesting questions about mass media and popular culture, that we can apply to sport

• Is sport enlightening us or dumbing us down?

• Is sport enhancing our lives or turning us into cultural dupes?

Rationalization of Sports and Media

Adorno (Frankfurt School Theorist) pointed out that the culture industries homogenize popular culture (such as sport):

• “Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous with itself and all are unanimous together” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1946, p. 94)

Frankfurt School Critique #1:

Commodification of culture is leading to rationalized/standardized/generic cultural products that are devoid of any creativity or humanity

In other words, turning sport into a money making machine may be removing everything that we love from it

Sport’s “Enchantments” and “Disenchantments”

In sociologist Max Weber’s terms, sport is a rare cultural phenomenon that possesses “magical” qualities which can enchant mundane modern existence:

• Sport potentially brings meaning, substance, and pleasure to our rationalized lives

Sport energizes individuals and collective identities and experiences like few other cultural forms (if any):

• Religion

• Food

• Music

• Museums

Sports Enchanting Qualities?

1. Visceral Physicality

2. Identification

3. Competitive Structure

4. Unpredictability

5. Community

Jouissance → emotive (non-verbal) communication and resonance

• Sporting jouissance: the transcendent sense of ecstasy or bliss:

  • taking the self beyond its normative being

Plaisir → conscious and cognizant identification

• Sporting Plaisir: The pleasure derived from sporting participation or spectating:

  • A pleasing affirmation of self

Weber’s “Iron Cage” of Capitalism

Weber argued that the widespread influence of bureaucracy and economic efficiency (profit) based rationalization in modern society led to an “iron cage”, in which people became trapped by predictability, monotony. and control

Mediasports Primary Tension

“The pervasive commodification in contemporary society is increasingly turning sport and leisure activities into commercial pursuits and away from their basic internal logic as sporting practices”

• Economic Maximization (Profit) vs Sporting Maximization (Winning)

Material and Economic Ownership: Sport as manufactured commercial product/vehicle

Emotional and Symbolic Ownership: Sport as Perceived and Prized Public Property

• Are their “commercial” profit interests aligned with our “magical” sporting interests?

MediaSport rationalization may potentially negate that magical/enchanting qualities that initially made sport popular

• “Rationalization brings with it disenchantment; that is…sites of consumption can lose the magical qualities that attract consumers”

Analytics as rationalizing basketball?

• Analytics and the demise of the mid-range shot

Sport science as rationalising performance?

• Sport science is motivated by the desire to create ever more efficient/successful, thereby and economically productive, athletes (scientific management of sport performance)

Youth Sport Specialization as rationalizing sports careers?

• Burn out

• Restriction of Developmental Experiences

• Mental health issues

• Overuse Injuries

  • 70% of children leave organized youth sport by the age of 13 (National Alliance for Sports)

Fantasy sports as rationalizing sports consumption?

MediaSport (as a rationally organized and efficient machine) can negatively affect the feelings of

• Pleasure

• Freedom

• Creativity

• Independence

• Community

• Enchantment

Which first attracted many people… in other words, sport can disenchant as much as enchant

The Irrationality of sport rationality

“the variety of negative effects that rational systems have on the individuals who live, work, and are served by them.”

Signs of disenchantment with sport?

Increases:

• Franchise Valuation

• NFL Game attendance

• Advertising Rates

• Broadcast Rights Fees

• Social Media Views and Engagement

Decreases:

• MLB, NBA, NHL Game Attendance

• MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL Television Ratings

• Super Bowl Viewership

• Core Demographic (male 18 to 49) Decline

More Optimistic Counterpoints

• Maybe there is no and never was a “pure” motive for sport consumption

• Commodification may be changing the meanings and uses of sports… but maybe not for the worse

The Sporting Opium of the Masses

Frankfurt School Critique #2

Modern popular culture is making us all dumb, passive, and distracted

Argument:

• Culture industry is a pity term that refers to when culture is “produced” rather than formed organically

• Commodified popular culture is “hypnotizing” us into buying, consuming, and more generally dumbing us down

• Easy pleasures of modern popular culture are rendering people to be docile and content, thus steering them away from critical thinking and reflection

• The culture industry does so by creating needs that can only be satisfied by further consumption

  • Is sport the contemporary “opium of the masses?”

Opium → A sedative drug that temporarily relieves pain by creating an artificial sensation of pleasure

• Karl Marx described religion as the opium of the masses ; makes people docile and go along with things

Media technologies and Culture:

• The reach and speed of cultural communication (the circulation of meaning) has changed over time with the advent of new: MEDIA COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

One Dimensional Society

The Frankfurt School argued that there is a link between rampant consumerism and social control/domination

• While we are led to believe that we find freedom and happiness through consumption, it is an illusion. We are instead learning how to conform

• Any potentially disruptive mass mobilizations against economic, political, and/or social injustice are effectively defused by the consumer freedoms (and the needs and desires created by consumerism)

Therefore, to the Frankfurt School, the culture industries act as normalizing and stabilizing institutions that discourage social criticism

“athletic events were the models for totalitarian mass rallies. As tolerated excesses, they combine cruelty and aggression with an authoritarian moment, the disciplined observance of the rules”

In Adorno’s terms, contemporary sport is a “pseudo activity” involving the: “channeling of energies which could otherwise become dangerous” through the “endowing of meaningless activity with a specious seriousness and significance”

• “mass sporting culture is not interesting in turning its consumers into sportsmen as such but only into howling devotees of the stadium” and, by inference, passive advocates of the capitalist order as a whole

The Frankfurt School Boston Celtic? → “sports is a mechanism of control. If people didn’t have sports they would be a lot more disappointed with their role in society. There would be a lot more anger or stress about the injustice of poverty and hunger” -Jaylen Brown

Applying Marcuse…

• Does sport really provide an “escape” from more ‘serious’ issues, or does it only provide the illusion of comfort/

• Does sport turn us into “cultural dupes” who just go along with whatever?

Theories of Sport

Early Cultural Theories of Sport

Critical scholars and activists in the early 1900s thought sport was so obviously corrupted by capitalism that it was pointless to seriously study

• Mostly includes the Frankfurt School

This view has since been critiqued

• Too deterministic

• Too marco

• Too “Magic Bullet” -y

• Too dramatic

Later Cultural Theories of Sport

Hegemony theorists took sport more seriously, arguing that sport can be oppressive, but it can also be used by less-powerful groups of their own purposes

People are capable of granting their own meanings to their sporting experiences and practices

Sport and Cultural Struggle

The Frankfurt School sometimes forgot that people have agency

• “Sport is a site in which power is negotiated and contested… sport is a “site of everyday domination and resistance; a space of joy/creativity and routing mechanized existence”

Sport matters as a cultural site of struggle:

Powerful —— less powerful

Dominant —— opposition

Consent —— Resistance

Hegemonic ——- Counter-Hegemonic

Sport and the Attention Economy

New Media Environment →

Linear TV:

• Traditional television medium, with content delivered according to a predetermined (and often anticipated) schedule…Real-time individual and collective engagement, but more passive experience

VOD (Video on Demand):

• Content engaged via digital platforms on devices whenever viewer wants…More fragmented media engagement, but more active experience

Contemporary Media Technologies/Culture:

• Digital

• Global

• Instantaneous

• Viral

• Decentralized

• Often user-generated

The Attention Economy:

“the environment in which digital products and services relentlessly compete to capture and exploit our attention”

“There’s a deep misalignment between the goals we have for ourselves and the goals our technologies have for us…

Instead of your goals, success from their perspective is usually defined in the form of low-level “engagement” goals

But these “engagement” goals are petty, subhuman goals. No person has these goals for themselves. No one wakes up in the morning and asks, “How much time can I possibly spend using social media today?”

Consider how contemporary sports media has adapted to the Attention Economy…

However… “As Jeff Hammerbacher, Facebook’s first research scientist, remarked: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads…and it sucks”

“What do you pay when you pay attention? You pay with all the things you could have attended to, but didn’t: all the goals you didn’t pursue, all the actions you didn’t take, and all the possible yous you could have been, had you attended to those other things.

The Optimistic Perspective:

These practices likely result in:

• More people engaging in sports

• More ways to engage in sports

• More pathways to revenue for sports companies

• More jobs in sports and sports media

Echoing the critiques of the Frankfurt School…

What benefits, “engagement-hunters” financially does not benefit US (the public) psychologically, or socially, or spiritually…

The Attention Economy Rewards:

• Extremism

• Moral outrage

• Shock Value

• Combativeness

• Rumors/misinformation

• Tribalism (us vs. them, in-group vs. out-group)

Which then shapes how we see the world