Cultural Industry

 cultural industry  David Hesmondhalgh

Cultural industries follow the normal 'capitalist patter' of increasing concentration and integration- cultural production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates who 'vertically integrate across a range of media in order to reduce risk. For example Disney used vertical integration when producing the jungle book in 1967 through their distribution company Buena Vista Distribution, instead of outsourcing to another company.

Risk is particularly high in the cultural industries because of the difficulty in prediction success, high production costs, low reproduction costs and the fact that media products are public goods- meaning they are not destroyed on consumption but can be reproduced. This means that the cultural industries rely on 'big hits' to cover the costs on failure. Hence the reliance on bankable stars, popular genres (action/romance), repeatable narratives and so on to sell formats to the audiences, then industries and governments try to impose 'scarcity' through copyright laws. A great example of this is in 1998, when the US congress was lobbied to push back the entrance of Disney's Mickey Mouse entry into the 'public domain' meaning that Disney has and will maintained complete control over the character's public usage until 2024.

The internet has created new powerful IT corporations, and has not transformed cultural production in a liberating and empowering way- digital technology has sped up work, commercialised leisure time and increased surveillance by governments and companies. Conglomerates like Disney have used social media sites like Facebook and twitter in order to create excitement about movies, products and TV shows, as well as tracking users private information to see who would be the most optimal targets for their movies.

David Hesmondhalgh's theory applies very heavily to Conglomerate Disney as he describes industries taking minimal risk by relying on stars, genres and repeatability like sequels and remakes. The easiest example of this is the Jungle book released in 2016. Disney chose to remake their 1967 classic as it is les risking, cheaper and quicker than creating an entirely new story, Disney also hired several big name actors to play the leading roles Such as Idris Elba as Shere Khan, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa, Bill Murry as Baloo and Christopher Walken as King Louie. 

Disney have also changed the Genre of the remake as while the classic was more of a musical adventure, the remake is much more action heavy with much more tension and sense of danger, This can be seen with characters like King louie, who in the original was comedic and vibrant singer/dancer, being changed to a threatening and sinister Gigantopithecus who remain almost completely stationary for his time on screen. These changes are to connect with what is currently popular, that being action, which seems to be a trend with the last few Disney films.