 If you're familiar with Karl Marx, who's pictured here, then there's a pretty good chance that you associate his name and his philosophies with those of communism. And in fact, communism is in many ways rooted in Marxism. But Marxism existed before that and really is not completely defined by communism or socialism. Marxism really, at its heart, has to do with much anything class and the economic realities that exist between those classes. The social classes and the opportunities and the perspectives that are affected by the economic realities of social class. So that's what we're really going to examine as we look into in this video, Marxist analysis of critical media studies. Remember in critical media studies, we're using these different perspectives and outlooks to examine different artifacts using that particular perspective. We're not endorsing this perspective. We're just trying to use it to understand how we could view that artifact in a different way. So with that, let's take a look at what is Marxist analysis. First of all, Marxist analysis examines artifacts from the perspective of class differences and the implications of the capitalist system. And that's all tied together in Marxism. The capitalist system and economic realities really are strongly reflected in the class differences and magnify those things and really have a deterministic effect on what happens in those classes. So we're going to examine the artifacts then from the perspective of those class differences and the implications of the capitalist system. So the major premises of Marxism begin with the fact that the economic realities in Marxism are greater than other ideologies. Economic realities, your financial situation, your economic realities and that will be reflected in your social class then obviously is going to outweigh every other consideration in your life. It's going to be greater than your religious ideologies. It's going to be greater than your political philosophies and ideologies. It's going to be greater than your moral philosophies in many ways, according to Marxism. But the economic realities, we come right back down to it to think about, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The root of these things, the root of how do we get shelter and food and water and those things? We need to survive at the base level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We get those things through economics and finances and money. So the economic realities then outweigh, according to Marxism, outweigh every other ideology. They are the most significant aspect of our lives in many ways. Because of this then, there's a constant conflict between the social classes, which are really economic classes, right? The lower, the middle, the upper class or however you want to divide it. That there are different classes of people that are the haves and the have-nots and everything in between. But because of these economic realities, it creates constant conflict between these classes. And there's going to be constant conflict there, and there's going to be friction in these instances. That this is then reflected in all forms of expression would be natural from Marxism. That if this is the guiding philosophy of life or the most important thing, the base thing in our lives, then of course it's going to be reflected in everything that we do, including the things that we create. So this is not exclusive to the artistic creation, but including everything that we do, everything we say, everything we write, everything we paint or all the music that we create, the films that we create, all of these things express in some way the economic reality of a particular class or have a message about the different classes and represent that conflict and can be viewed from that perspective. So one of the primary questions in Marxism under the major premises is, first of all, who does this benefit? Who does this artifact benefit? Not only in the economic reality of who's making money, but also in their message of that ideology, which class are they boosting up and supporting and idealizing in this work and this artifact? So who does it benefit both in a literal sense, in an economic sense, and also in a more figurative sense in the long run in terms of who does it benefit outside of even the economic sense? And then the other question that's often times asked in Marxist analysis is, how are the lower classes oppressed by this? The Marxist philosophy is that the lower classes, of course, are oppressed by the upper classes, by every class above them, wherever you're at in that range. And if you're at the lowest possible part of the lowest class, then you're going to be the most oppressed. So there's no question. The question is not, are they being oppressed? Are the lower classes being oppressed? The question is, how are they being oppressed? And how are they being affected negatively by this artifact in some way? In a contemporary perspective, there are a couple additional things that we recognize in Marxist analysis and look at in Marxist analysis. First is the profit motive influences media creation and practices. In the end, the media is a business, right? Media entities are a business. It's not a charity. It's a business. When they make a film, they're not doing it just for their own fun. They're making it to make money. There's a business there. There's a business behind TV shows and cable news and network news, any kind of news program. They're there to make money as well. They want to sell advertisements. They want to make money. That's not a criticism of the media, by the way, from me. That's just the reality of the situation. Media is a business. We wouldn't expect any other business to operate in the negative just to have a public benefit. I mean, there's charities to do that, write their nonprofits, but media entities are not nonprofits. These are businesses, and so their profit motive influences what they create, who they create it for, and all of their practices. And so that influences then, of course, their current practices and current things that are happening in the media landscape. Things like concentration of media. You see more and more media owned by fewer and fewer companies and fewer and fewer entities. Really, some of the big ones, and this is almost a little bit dated now, but think about Comcast. Comcast, NBCUniversal, owns tons of different media and media outlets, not only cable systems, but they own obviously the NBC network. They own MSNBC and CNBC and Peacock, the streaming network, and they at one point own a piece of Hulu, I think, and so they own all this. Viacom owns all these different entities, and CBS and Viacom own all these different entities together. And so now we see all these merging, this merging of things, right? This concentration of media under a couple of different umbrellas, organizational umbrellas. Instead of having lots of different media owned by all kinds of different people with lots of different competition, which we know is important in a pre-market system to have that competition, but there's also something to be said about the efficiency of owning lots of different things and having this concentration of media. So they're positives and negatives to all of this, but that is a reality of the current practice in media, is that there's a huge concentration of media. A few entities own like 90% of the media that you're going to watch. There's also a lot of conglomeration, like we were just talking about. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, again, working as an umbrella. So we know, and this is, again, changed a little bit, AT&T didn't own this organization anymore, but Discovery and HBO were owned by the same company, and then they own all these other, I mean, they're all connected, this conglomeration. So they're all connected. You see a lot of cross-pollination between these things. And so, you know, again, there's positives and negatives. The positives are there's, they're sharing resources so that there's more efficiency there and they can ostensibly create more and better media theoretically and do those things. But at the same time, it's very homogenous. You're not getting a lot of diversity in the ownership of media, and so you're not getting a lot of diversity in the output of that media. People are, you're going to be playing it safe. They're going to be playing to the widest possible audience, which is the widest possible audience, right? Because that's where they feel, again, coming back to the profit mode of area. That's where they feel like the money's at. They feel like, you know, people, they want to appeal to people in those upper-level income classes because that's where they're going to get more money for their advertisers, which is going to in turn produce more advertising dollars for that. So lots of things go into that. It's effective concentration and conglomeration. We also see the impact then through efforts of integration, right? All of this is as kind of leading and influencing integration. We look at, for example, Disney owns both ABC and ESPN. So we see a lot of conglomeration or a lot of integration between those things, right? Now you have ESPN crews working Monday night football and Sunday night football for ABC. And the ESPN broadcast on ABC. So they're playing on the fact that ESPN is known for sports. So their ABC is borrowing from that and integrating ESPN into their own sports entities to provide some credibility and use the personalities there to cross-pollinate those personalities. You also see ESPN broadcast a lot of specials from Disney facilities because they're owned by Disney. That's no mistake that they're doing that. And you can see right there, five Walt Disney company platforms kick off the 2021 Monday night football season in this instance, right? So you see a lot of cross-pollination there. You also see a lot of integration through things like the new streaming networks. You see Disney, Disney Plus has Pixar and Disney and Marvel and Star Wars and National Geographic and all these things now integrated into this one thing. Disney then also, of course, because they own ESPN, they have ESPN Plus and Hulu. Now you can buy that package, right? You can buy that package of things together and get a discount if you rather than buying them independently. But they integrate all of these things together and try and sell them together because, again, there's this conglomeration, there's a concentration of media that leads to this conglomeration and then this integration, right? And we see this affecting everyday media practices as well. For example, if you recall for years, the office was the biggest broadcast or biggest streaming program on Netflix for a long, long time. Netflix had the office when it was kind of not very well known and then all of a sudden it blew up and everybody was watching. It became the most streamed show in the history of the world, I think, at some point. Well then, of course, the office ran on NBC though. NBC owned the rights to the office and they had sold them to Netflix for a period of time. But when that contract was up, NBC decided to take the office back and put it on their own streaming platform. So now you can't watch the office on Netflix anymore. You have to watch it on Peacock because that's owned by NBC. We have this integration bringing it back home into the NBC world so that NBC can benefit more from it. However, there are probably fewer people watching Peacock, although maybe some of them jumped over there to Peacock because they wanted to access the office. That's kind of the idea. They're trying to pull people into their own things here. So we see that integration along with the concentration and the conglomeration of sources there. We have that integration of media. We also see a lot more multinationalism happening within the media. One example of this is America's Got Talent. A huge program here in the United States. America's Got Talent brings in people from all over the world, judges from all over the world. But it was such a big hit here. They decided, wow, if we can do this here, there are a lot more countries in the world than America. So they decided, well, we can just do this anywhere. We can do this in Slovakia. We can do it in Germany. We can do it in Myanmar. We can do it in everywhere, right? So almost every country has their own fill-in-the-blank Got Talent show, right? Whatever your country is, Got Talent. And we see them coming back together for, of course, the champions or AGT All Stars. They bring in and promote the fact that they have all these shows all over the world. So now we're exporting media to different parts of the world as well. That's a contemporary media practice that has significant impact on the economics and how it's represented. How these things are represented, how classes are represented, and the appeal of those different classes. The desire to get to a different class is represented, which is, again, important in our discussion here in terms of Marxism. So there are a few common questions I want to look at. Just general questions I want to look at before we apply this to a specific artifact and try and see what this looks like. So some of the common questions that we ask in Marxist analysis include things like, whom does this benefit? If the work or effort is accepted or successful or believed in whatever, who does this benefit? Whom does this benefit? Individually or whom as an organization and what class and things? Of what social class is the author? Where is this author from? And that's going to affect their perspective on how it's put together, how it's written, how it's packaged, and what it hopes to accomplish. What class does the work claim to represent? So you could have the author from one social class but claiming to represent a different social class and how does that impact things and what perspective does that bring? What values does this work reinforce or subvert? So what values of that particular class, whatever class it claims to represent, what values does it reinforce about that? And what does it try and contradict about that class or what common conceptions we might have about that class? And what conflict can be seen between the values of the work champions and those it portrays? So where's the dichotomy there? Is what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you're experiencing, is that representative of that class? Or is it different? So what's the difference between the values of the work that it claims to be, the claims to the champion, and the work that it actually shows? So I want to try and apply this information to a specific artifact now. Look at these general criteria, look at these same questions and apply it to something specific. And to be honest, I just went to the Billboard Hot 100 and found the number one song right now. So it's dating this video a little bit right now. But the number one song at the moment, unfortunately for me because I'm not really a fan, is Flowers by Miley Cyrus. So this is a big hit song. A lot of people know it and I've watched it a few times and tried to dig into it a little bit. Now this is going to be a fairly superficial analysis. If you were doing a real analysis of this artifact, you would go much, much deeper than I am. But I did watch the video a few times and I've tried to answer some of these questions. So let's take a look at these questions as they relate to flowers and apply the framework of these questions to flowers by Miley Cyrus. So again, those common questions, just go through them one by one as we look at this with Miley Cyrus here. Whom does it benefit if the work is accepted, successful, believed, et cetera? First and foremost, I mean, this is a song and it's a production. It's a song, it's a video, it's on an album. It's all kinds of things like this. So it benefits Miley Cyrus. She's the artist. That's fair, right? She created it. She performs it. She put it out. It benefits her. Benefits her record company and those who work with her, not just her record company, but those who work with her in terms of, you know, her stylist, her assistant, whoever directed the video and whoever was a part of putting this product together. It benefits them. Theoretically, they were paid for their work and so if it's successful, it benefits them as well and enhances their work. You know, conceptually, because of what the song is about, theoretically, it could benefit, I guess, women in a sense. It's sort of about female self-empowerment, right? The fact that she can do this one or she doesn't need somebody else for all these things. She can buy herself flowers. She can do all these other things. So could theoretically benefit the effort of empowerment of women and independence of women in society. So there's that too. It could benefit, you know, not just in a financial sense, but it could benefit others in that way. So, I mean, there are lots of different people that it could benefit if it's accepted. But, you know, the primary beneficiary would be Miley Cyrus because it's going to promote her career and her artistry and things. But secondarily then would be her, anybody who benefits financially, record company and those people who work for her and then, you know, extends out from there. What's the social class of the author? I would say Miley Cyrus is a fairly, you know, toward the top of the social class in terms of economics. You know, not only she is successful artist at this point and has been an actress and performer for many, many years now, but she comes from her dad, Billy Ray, had this one hit wonder. Anky breaky heart, if you remember that back from my day. So, I mean, they were presumably fairly well off, you know, not destitute. And then she's made a lot of money over time. So her social class, I would say, is of the upper class. She's an upper class person and that of privileged society. I don't think that's much of a leap there. What class does the work claim to represent? You know, I would say it claims to represent, I guess just from the visuals in the video, it claims to represent the upper class because, you know, most of the things she's doing and wearing are fairly high class. So economically, I would say it represents the upper class, but really it's not class oriented in that sense. It's intended, I think, again, as an anthem of women's empowerment. And so not an economic situation like that. So, but certainly everything that's in the thing tends to look. So what class does this work claim to represent? If we examine that question, you know, I think it's fair to say this class, she's not claiming to represent a lower class. She's upper class herself and she tends to represent that in this video, I think, in terms of what she's wearing, her style, the locations that they use are fairly upper class. They're pretty fancy. You know, she's not claiming to represent the lower class. I would say more broadly she's claiming to represent a class of women and the independence and empowerment of women in general. So if we're looking at class in that respect, then she certainly represents, is claiming to represent women who are independent and can value that independence. But I don't think, you know, she's claiming to represent a lower economic class. It's pretty fairly evident that she's part of the claim is that she can do it on her. She doesn't need anybody else. She's got all this stuff. She can and she did that on her own and she doesn't need anybody else for any of that. So what values does this reinforce and or subvert? I think it reinforces the values of I can women's empowerment that women can do things on their own that they don't need a partner. I mean, specifically, we're a partner in general to accomplish these things. They can they can do that. They can get rich. They can they can make their own money. They can, you know, have all these nice things through their own efforts and their own power. Right. What lies is it subvert? And does it does it contradict? I guess I don't know the idea that that if you don't have these things, then that you're not. Doing what you should be doing, I guess, or not not empowering yourself and that you're failing in some way in that regard. So it kind of contra, you know, undermines those types of things that that says that if you don't have these things, maybe you're not doing something right. I guess, you know, that is my own perception, my own perspective of this. And that's, you know, that's what I'm bringing, I guess, to this analysis. Then what conflict can be seen between the values of the work champions and those it portrays. Again, the idea that you can, yes, you can buy yourself flowers. You can do all these things on your own. You also have a little bit of a head start, Miley. So it's not like you were destitute before all of this, right? You had a little bit of advantage, a little bit of privilege in that regard. So there's a little bit of conflict there, I think, in terms of, yes, women can do all these things. But certainly some women have, you know, just in all forms of life. Some people have privilege over others. That's something we've been recognizing now in our societies that some people come with that privilege and have that privilege, have that stronger foundation to begin with. And I think that's true here that, yes, you can do all these things and women absolutely can do all these things and should be encouraged to be individually independent and empowered. But at the same time, it's a little easier when you start with the wealth that you had. Not that she hasn't worked hard, but when you start with the, from an upper class perspective, that does provide some advantages to doing these types of things. So that's my analysis of, you know, armchair analysis of Miley Cyrus's flowers using the Marxist analysis and looking at it from an economic sense and those types of things. So almost crossing over, see a little bit into feminist criticism and things, but there's always a lot of crossover in these things. Hopefully this gives you an idea of what Marxist analysis is about and how it can be applied. I hope this is helpful to you in understanding it even just a little bit more. Certainly we're only scratching the surface here, but just trying to provide some perspective on what we're looking at in terms of Marxist analysis. If you have questions about this analysis or any other kind of analysis, please feel free to contact me. I'd love to hear from you via email and we can chat about it there. In the meantime, I hope that you will continue to examine things critically through Marxist analysis and all the other different types of analysis that we'll be discussing in these videos.