 Hi everyone, welcome to this video where we'll be discussing Marxist analysis and its role in critical media studies. So first of all, let's take a look at what we mean by Marxist analysis. What is that? Well, Marxist analysis analyzes artifacts from the perspective of class difference and the implications of the capitalist system. So that may be vaguely familiar to you if you've heard of Marxism before. It doesn't have anything to do with the communist system necessarily in terms of the political system in that regard, but that we may be familiar with from the Soviet Union, for example. But it does have to do with examining artifacts from a sense of economy and the economic systems and the class differences that that creates. So let's move ahead here and jump in and see what we're talking about. First of all, some of the major premises, the big ideas behind Marxist analysis. There are some of the major themes here that things we need to be aware of. First of all, economic realities are greater than other ideologies, according to Marxist thinking. Those economic realities are what define us. And so our materialistic items are what define us, not our ideas. In other words, that's a core of Marxist, the Marxist system and Marxist analysis that economic realities really outweigh everything else. Everything comes down to money, according to Marxist analysis, really. To sustainability and to economics. There's a constant conflict then between the classes because that's the most important thing. Marxist ideology, Marxist analysis says that there's constant conflict between the hands and the have-nots, so to speak, because of that economic difference, because of the difference in the scale of the economy that they live under. And this is reflected then in all forms of expression that the media artifacts that would result specifically in critical media analysis. That's what we'd be concerned with, using Marxist analysis that those differences in class, those differences in the economic viewpoints and the economic sustainability really are reflected in all the forms of expression of the media that would then be created. So major questions we have here, who does the benefit? Marxist analysis would say, who does this benefit? And how are the lower classes being oppressed by whatever it is, by whatever message is being sent here? So those are some of the major premises historically. And in a more contemporary sense, there are some more specific perspectives we need to consider here. First of all, the profit motive influences media creation and practices. So at the end of the day, media is about making money. I mean, it is a business, right? The media is about making money. There's some people who do it for free, I guess, or do it for whatever. But really, the profit motive for the vast, vast majority of media artifacts is to make money. And so that profit motive, the desire to make money, is what influences then media creation and practices. Why do we continue to see shows that I hate? Why were the Kardashians on TV for so many years? Because people watched them and somebody could make money from it. Despite the fact that I didn't care for it, it's not my thing. Well, enough people watched it, that it was making somebody money, and that's why it continued to go on. There's a profit motive there. That's why these things get made and that influences what gets made, how it gets made, all those kinds of things. So some current practices that influence this and in a contemporary sense and influence the world of contemporary media. Our first of all, concentration is one. So the concentration of media, meaning that really most media in the United States is owned or created by or in some way sheltered under one of these six companies, Comcast, Disney, CBS, Viacom, News Corporation and AT&T now that they've merged or bought on Time Warner and Warner Media really influence and control the vast majority of media that we see in the United States. In some way, it's either created by this company or created by a company that they own or created by a company that they're in partnership with. So that's what we mean by concentration of media, that the media is largely controlled by one of these six organizations. A lot of the media that we consume is controlled by one of these six corporations. Then we also have the idea of conglomeration, right? That these companies are connected beyond just being owned by the same company. So you have this conglomeration of AT&T owning all these different media companies, for example. Now, again, they own Time Warner, so they own a lot of different types of media. And not only that, obviously, they have a phone service. They're a mobile provider for cellular service, but they also own direct TV and all those types of things. They own a variety of different media outlets. And so they're one of the big six, but they also just own them a conglomeration of different media outlets. And so we see that as an influence in current practices as well. Integration is another one. Integration is a huge one, especially, again, we have this concentration. These conglomerations are all really kind of tied together. And in integration, we see these companies start to work their their pieces together a little bit more and start to weave things together a little bit more. So, for example, just as just week one of the NFL season, this they advertise that there are five Walt Disney company platforms to kick off the season. OK, so here you have you have they have the first game of the season on our first Monday night football game of the season that was on five different platforms all owned by Disney, ESPN, ABC, which run it together. The ESPN crew works on ABC because they're both owned by Disney, of course. So you have integration of ESPN and ABC a lot of times. And not only that, you have the integration of, of course, worldwide of sports, world or wide world of sports. And Disney is, you know, an ESPN product at Disney that they're integrating there. But you have Disney working across all these platforms, ESPN, ESPN to ESPN plus their digital streaming platform, all that kind of stuff. So Walt Disney involved in that first Monday night football game on five different platforms. And that's just what they were advertising there. That does include all the other ways that they were involved as well. So so you see that integration between all those different Disney companies and Disney products working together on a single product on a single media output there. Not only that, but you have Disney who owns all these different properties now, they own the Star Wars properties, they own Pixar, they own Marvel, they own the Marvel prop movie properties. Anyway, they own all these things, right? And now it's all available on Disney Plus. So they bring it all together. Integration, they're bringing all of this together. Not only that, but now you can get the Disney Plus package, streaming package with Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu Plus because Disney owns everything, right? So they can offer them all together. You have integration there. So what impact does this have? Why does this matter? What does what does this mean for all of us? Well, we start to see things like the following. The Office is one of the most popular streaming programs that has really been viewed so many times. So I think it holds a record for the most hours viewed of streaming television in the world right now. At least the moment had that world record. It's on Netflix forever. And that's where it really gained popularity. Netflix really lucked out that when the office started to gain popularity, people really wanted to watch it. They watched it a ton on Netflix, right? And so for years, Netflix had the monopoly on the office and benefited from that greatly. Well, then NBC decided they wanted to start their own streaming platform. And NBC not only aired the office originally, but they owned the property. They created, they produced it. So you want to see integration there. NBC's television division made the office. Then they aired it on NBC. And now they decided they want it back on their station. So in January of 2021, they took it back. And it's no longer available on Netflix, right? You can't watch it on Netflix anymore. If you want to watch it now, you have to go to Peacock to watch the office, right? So they brought it all back into under the NBC umbrella, so to speak, right? None underneath them, the Comcast umbrella. So now everything because NBC is owned by Comcast. NBC Universal is owned by Comcast. So again, we come back to the big six owning all this stuff and really wanting to benefit from it themselves. So you see this integration there. They're continuing to pull things in. Everybody's got a streaming platform now. I mean, like every television station, they're all competing against one another. They're all pulling in their own properties and which is in turn forced Netflix to be much more proactive in creating their own shows and really developing new stuff. So you also see a lot of multinationalism in current and the contemporary media environment, multinationalism, which is different than globalization. Globalization has more to do with just being having a company across the world and being known across the world. Multinationalism indicates that you are preparing products and creating media specifically for that environment. So, so for example, you may be familiar with America's Got Talent. Very popular show here in the United States for America's Got Talent. And of course, we have acts from all over the world and judges from all over the world. In fact, on the most recent season before judges you see here, none of them are actually from America. Howie Mandels, Canadian, Sophia Vergaros from Colombia, Simon Cowell, of course, from the UK. And and why can I not think of her name now? From Germany. The OK, it doesn't matter. She's from Germany. Anyway, America's Got Talent is a very popular show here in the United States, right? Very popular and so popular. In fact, in fact, I don't even think it started in America, but it started in Britain. But now it's so popular that it's all over the place. You've got you. You got Myanmar, Got Talent. You've got all these different, you know, Germany's Got Talent, all these different talent shows all across. So it's been nationalized for all these different markets, right? So that each of these markets has their own kind of thing. And in fact, then it comes full circle, though, when you think about the fact that America's Got Talent now has the champions where they bring in winners from other countries or great competitors from other countries to compete on a special season or Americans Got Talent. So we have this multinationalism where the products are being created specifically for those markets and that's become a current practice, not just to ship, you know, episodes of friends over to another country, but to create your own show within the context of that country, your own show of friends and create those characters and have it in house and have it be more specific to that culture and that context. So multinationalism is a major factor in the media today. So we have these different contemporary things that are that are influencing the media in ways that impact the sense of Marxism as well. This study of Marxism. OK, a couple common questions that come up in Marxism when we're doing critical analysis of using the Marxist analysis, some common questions that you're going to be asking a lot of times when you're doing that. Whom does this benefit? If the work is accepted, successful, believed, who does this benefit? Does this benefit somebody in lower classes that benefit somebody who's already rich, one of the big six, right? Does it benefit them? Who does this benefit? Who benefits from this particular piece and and and the acceptance and popularity of it? What's the social class of the author who created this? You know, what's what person from what perspective is this being created? Which class does the work claim to represent? And so again, not not who does it represent, but what class does it claim to represent? So we know who created it. Are they trying to represent themselves as something different, though? What values does it reinforce and or subvert either one? What values of that class does it reinforce? Or which ones does it go against? And what conflict can be seen between the values of the work between the values, the work champions and those it portrays? So what it's claiming to do and what it's actually doing to those matchup? So just give me a real quick example here. I picked it a while ago, picked it and did this analysis on us on a very popular song and just picked that number one song in the chart at the time, which is Drake's What's Next, right? And I don't know much about Drake and I know who he is, but I had to do a little research in order to do analysis on this particular song. So I watched the video, I listened to the song. I got to got to know Drake a little bit. And this is what I discovered when I asked these questions, the same questions. Who does this benefit if the work is accepted or successful? I believed, obviously, benefits Drake, of course, as the artist. That's it benefits him not only financially, but in terms of his notoriety and his popularity and his success as an artist. Also benefits his record label, of course, benefits any of his business partners, benefits all of his, you know, the people that he represents in terms of advertisements and things like that. So it really benefits a lot of those people in the same way. I guess it benefits, though, also the people who work on those projects, the people who film the videos and who record the music and the people who are the engineers behind those things, the people who, the custodians who clean those studios and things. It supports a whole kind of ecosystem of people. This work does. But so the work primarily benefits Drake, but it does benefit a lot of other people as well. What social class is the author? Now, Drake makes a big deal out of claiming his middle class roots and really kind of middle, lower middle class roots. But there's this at the moment. I mean, that may be true for his past, I'm not sure. But, you know, I'm not doubting his word on that. But but at the moment, it represents somebody who is very wealthy. I mean, the guy owns part of the Toronto Raptors, you know, NBA team. So he's not doing too bad. He's his music has been good. He's has an acting career. He's part owner of the Raptors. He's got a lot of things going on. So he is definitely in the upper social class. I mean, in terms of wealth, in terms of economics, he is in the upper social class at this time, which classes that were claimed to represent. I mean, again, he claims to be more of a middle class guy and the music kind of claims to represent that attitude and that philosophy of life of the middle class and the kind of the street level regular person, so to speak. Well, values is a reinforcer subvert, you know, reinforces kind of the notion of of of loyalty, companionship and those types of things throughout the video. That's specifically the video that I watched for the music video for the song. It does go against some of those values in terms of the clothes that he's wearing, the cars that he's driving, the things like that, go against some of his claims to be, you know, one of the people and so to speak, those types of things. So so there is some contrast there. And then what can be seen between can be seen between those values, the work champions and those portrays. Again, as I just mentioned, clearly he's an upper class guy trying to portray himself as, you know, I'm just one of you. I mean, doesn't necessarily come off that way, but it does give us something to strive for, too. You know, for people who are interested in that type of lifestyle, it gives you something to strive for to say, if you can do it, then I can do it and so forth. So so it does, you know, bring some of those values across as well. OK, so those are my thoughts on that song. And that's my effort at Marxist analysis in a nutshell. Right. So feel free to do your own, though. That's what we're doing. We want to examine things through this lens of economy and think about, you know, how does this represent the work of the different classes? How does this bring the classes together? Economic and social classes together? How does this pull us further apart? Any artifact that you look at, whether that's music or music, video or movie or piece of literature or anything at all in art installation, how does this represent different social classes? And how does this bring us together in terms of those social classes and the works of economies? So feel free to do that on your own, your own Marxist analysis. If you have any questions about this or any other type of content from media criticism standpoint or critical media studies, please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you via email and in the meantime, I hope you'll get out there and do a little work in Marxist analysis thinking about how economy and class affect the media that we see and just putting another critical lens on our view of the media that we take in.