Introduction

This book sets out to right a deficit in media studies. It is a clinical book, or what I shall call here a book of theory and practice in one. There is a malady afflicting media studies and I want to help students to overcome its adverse side effects. It is a book for students. But it was also my intention in writing it to do something more. In this respect I ask those students for whom the following brief diagnosis of their subject may sound unfamiliar for their patience, although what I am about to say may ring true for many of them. It is important to understand the institutional tensions that define media studies, and which have led it into its present state of ill health, before being able to recover its true creative potential. In many ways this book is a byproduct of almost ten years of university teaching, mostly on media studies courses. After so much time teaching and thinking often too much about media studies I have come to the conclusion that those responsible for managing media studies courses have very little, if any, idea about what media studies is and what it might be for (I am talking about the situation in UK universities, but no doubt much of what follows will hold true for Australia and other parts of the world).

Now, of course, intellectually speaking I admit that media studies is not for anything, unless one subscribes to the instrumental rationality of the Department for Education and Skills. However, in recent years its importance as an intellectual discipline has become increasingly overshadowed by the question of its vocational relevance. Ever since Jim Callaghans famous Ruskin Lecture of 1976, the myth has been spread that media studies is a subject which exists so as to enable students to pursue a career in the media industry, providing them with the skills and training to gain competitive advantage over non-media graduates when applying for jobs. Through my own albeit fleeting experience as a journalist, and as someone who has discussed this proposition time and again with media workers, I now know it to be untrue. Firstly, the figures bear it out. Only two out of five media studies graduates who find work within six months are employed in journalism, advertising or marketing. Secondly, there is anecdotal evidence aplenty. BBC producers dont occupy positions at the apex of the media profession because they did a degree in media studies, but because they studied at Oxbridge. Channel 4 News anchorman and Oxford graduate Krishnan Guru-Murthy freely admits that he only attended three lectures during his time at university. Oxford was full of people who didnt want traditional jobs, he recalls. Money or fun seemed to be the two options and TV seemed to epitomise the latter. Figures for the number of Oxbridge students

stuck for career options who end up with equally fun jobs presenting the news are not widely available, but suffice to say media studies graduates dont tend to be among them. Conversations with certain TV producers, no doubt those familiar with the Conservative Education Minister John Pattens speech to his party conference in 1993, will even reveal that a media studies degree is a positive disadvantage in securing a job in the media profession. Given that media studies, on Pattens interpretation, serves up Chaucer with chips and Milton with mayonnaise is it any wonder that graduates from the elite universities with degrees in history and modern languages are more likely to outnumber those non-Oxbridge graduates with degrees in media and cultural studies at least those in positions of executive power in organizations like ITN, the BBC and Channel 4? Am I going to suggest then that a degree in media studies is inferior to one in modern languages from Oxbridge or Manchester or Durham? Certainly not. Naturally there are more Oxbridge graduates with glittering careers in the media than there are media graduates from Any Other University, but this is down to the class-bound nature of education in Blairs Britain, not to the intrinsic value of an Oxbridge degree. What I want to suggest here is that the failure, or indeed any measure of success, of media studies education does not depend on the exit profile of its graduates, or in the fact that they remain decisively

outnumbered as media professionals by non-media graduates. The failure lies in the nature of media studies courses themselves, courses which so often inhibit the potential of their students, offering them bogus opportunities to think in tune with the demands of an industry which doesnt really exist, rather than encouraging them to imagine the media for themselves, and to create a possible media world in which they might actually be inspired to work. Media studies is a relentlessly burgeoning subject, consistently disproving conservative predictions about its longevity as a viable academic discipline, even if its methodologies are borrowed from other, more solid ones (sociology, linguistics, literary theory, anthropology, philosophy, etc). The number of students taking media studies courses at university has doubled in the space of two years. Why is it, then, that media studies generates such anxiety about its future direction from its would-be ambassadors, and especially from its course leaders on the ground? One could hardly imagine mathematicians being so torn by the future direction of mathematics, or even physicists or biologists over the future of their disciplines, since historically theirs have been heuristic in nature, which means that their supporting philosophies tend to be generated spontaneously through

research. Of course, mathematicians, physicists and biologists especially biologists may have due reason to be concerned about the ethical dimensions of what they are doing, and about where their research is leading us. The public controversy over stem cell research and the mapping of the human genome attest to an anxiety equally as great, if not more so, as the hysteria periodically induced by our moral guardians over the value and integrity of media studies to a generation of couch potatoes. However, the difference between the sciences on the one hand and the arts and humanities on the other, and of which media studies provides a special case, is that while mathematicians and to a lesser extent physicists and biologists are influenced by internal pressures, for media studies in particular, and arguably more so than any other arts subject, the tensions and anxieties are overwhelmingly external in origin. How so? Since at least the late 1980s media studies has been in a state of extreme anxiety and nervous tension. The reasons for this are complicated, although suffice to say that this state has coincided with a wholesale decline in the teaching of media studies in secondary schools throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. During the corresponding period university courses offering media, cultural and communication studies proliferated, largely in an effort to readdress the lack of provision and the huge demand among school-leavers for this new and glamorous subject.

Nevertheless the tension continues, often unnoticed, invariably unacknowledged, in spite of the unabated attraction of these courses among university students. It is a tension that finds expression in the so-called theory versus practice debate. For many years now there have been strongly held and conflicting views over the pedagogic values underpinning media-related courses. Without trying to overstate the case I speak as a former active participant in such debate the conflict might best be understood as an institutional power struggle, one that recalls those famous comments by Marx and Engels in their Manifesto of the Communist Party on the role of the educators in society. The question to be wrestled over was this: Who was going to run media studies in Britain? Who was going to dictate its future pedagogic rationale and strategic philosophy? Media academics? Or media practitioners? Who would be the future stakeholders, investors and beneficiaries of media studies? Was media studies out to service the needs of industry by producing suitably qualified graduates? Or to strengthen the research profiles of arts and humanities departments? No doubt there will be those who feel I am overstating the case, and that this struggle was (is) an imaginary one, or at least a convenient stereotype that belies a much more subtle set of institutional relations. All I would be prepared to concede by way of response is that industry versus research is indeed a founding

myth, although one that is no less real in terms of its institutional effects. I freely admit that the idea of theory being opposed to practice, or that academics are abstract thinkers and media practitioners are doers, or even inherently creative and productive, is errant nonsense. What is more surprising however is just how much support this stereotype constantly receives from media departments up and down the country, whose aggressive recruitment of media practitioners is borne out by the glaring disparity in the earnings of the latter over their non-practitioner colleagues. The starting salary of a journalist or graphic designer entering the teaching profession is virtually guaranteed to be significantly higher (as much as 10,000 in some cases) than that of a postgraduate student, even though the journalist or graphic designer is unlikely to have had any significant lecturing experience. This sends out a clear signal regarding the perceived merits of academics, whose conventional career path is postgraduate research, and media practitioners, whose career path is not. The disparity is seldom acknowledged, but ultimately justified by media departments on the grounds that their students need to be kept abreast of the latest professional practice and creative innovations as if journalists and graphic designers are the only ones worthy of the creative tag and that media departments are forced to pay the market rate in order to attract suitably qualified staff.

Of course, it is debatable quite how well-placed a graphic designer contemplating a career move, especially into teaching, is likely to be to the cutting edge of his or her profession, but lets leave that aside (along with those high flying media personalities who manage to fit in a bit of lecturing on the side). What is undeniable is that media studies curricula are especially prone to influence from the external (and yet imaginary) pressures of meeting the needs of industry. As someone who once taught on a journalism course in a media department for four years I fully recognize the anxieties among students that the courses they have chosen to study, in order to be authentic, must secure relevant industry recognition or accreditation. Let me try to address those concerns directly by reassuring students that such accreditation, whether it be from the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists), the ICAD (Institute of Creative Advertising and Design) or from whoever else, is likely to enhance the value of your degree about as much as if it were sponsored by McDonalds. None of this is meant as a criticism of media practitioners, even if it betrays the very tensions I am out to expose. The problem with media studies education is not the fact that media practitioners are being recruited to teach on, and in many cases lead, media studies courses. The problem is that an impression has emerged among course leaders and deans of media arts faculties that media

practitioners and industry personnel understand far more intuitively than academics what media education should be for. In other words, the ability of media studies to define itself through teaching and academic research has significantly diminished over the last twenty years. What we have today is a situation in which an intellectual gap has opened up between course leaders on the one hand and those who have traditionally been the subjects creative visionaries on the other, i.e. media academics and researchers. The result is that a growing number of media studies curricula are being written with at least one eye fixed firmly on what course leaders believe media students need to be taught in order to meet the requirements of a media industry, nebulous to say the least, which in reality often has no idea or firm opinion as to what media studies education actually is. But shouldnt the career aspirations of students, imaginary or otherwise, be taken seriously? Why shouldnt media studies curricula be geared at least in part towards enabling students to acquire a measure of technical expertise and media industry know-how? Nothing whatsoever. In fact, Im all for media literacy and training. The problem is that in my experience this training tends to involve nothing more technically sophisticated than learning how to edit some video footage of the local recreation centre, or simply giving in to the technological determinism of the PowerPoint presentation. Invariably media

students take modules in Desktop Publishing or Corporate Identity in which they have to design a magazine cover or a company logo. Those students particularly frustrated by the patronizing assumptions of their tutors in setting them these type of sixth form assignments should at least understand the rationale which underpins it all. If truth be told, the reason why universities lay so much emphasis on media skills has less to do with the career aspirations of media students which always tend to be mixed and a lot more to do with the allocation of resources for media studies courses. Typically the cost base for a media studies course will be relatively low. Media studies is not medicine, it doesnt require any specialist equipment of the kind it takes to train doctors and scientists, so the cost per unit to a university offering it will be that much lower. However, in cases where a university is unable to fill as many places as it would like one has to consider alternative sources of funding. Attracting high numbers of students to media studies courses becomes increasingly difficult the more students choose to study it, since more courses are then set up to meet the rising demand, which means that, overall, numbers will be that much more spread out. Where a university might have been able to attract sixty students to its media studies programme in the past, faced with competition from a neighbouring university it might now only be able to attract half that number. This has been the

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constant, market-driven dilemma, not just for media studies, but for higher education in general, since its expansion in the early 1990s: media studies booms in popularity, more courses are then set up quickly in order to meet the demand, which fuels it even further before tailing off just as quickly due to oversupply. Many media studies courses have fallen victim to this pattern over the years. However, in order to counter this problem, universities have found that there is another, less drastic option in keeping their courses afloat, which basically involves revising their cost base. All higher education courses are banded in terms of the amount of government funding they receive. These bands correspond to the costs involved in running university courses, with clinical subjects like medicine and dentistry (which involve a high level of practice-based study and hence specialist equipment) occupying the upper bands, and courses like media and social work (which generally require nothing more specialist than some chairs and computers) occupying the lower ones. For media courses with declining student numbers a preferred option has been to add on a practice-based element in order to justify higher costs, thereby securing more government funding. For the less scrupulous HE institutions, say for those art colleges that already possess technical facilities for broadcast training and graphic design, but which dont currently run courses in media studies, the market trend has been to set them up, thereby circumventing the problem of how to generate more revenue

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when their existing bona fide practice-based courses are already full. The lure of attending an art college or film school is immensely attractive to students even and especially if courses in film and graphic design are unavailable due to over-subscription, and media studies is presented to them as the next best thing. The attraction would be somewhat diminished perhaps if students were made aware that the practice-based element of their media studies course has more to do with the financial priorities of their university than with any media production ethic. In the circumstances it makes much more sense nowadays for universities to perpetuate the myth that the media industry is essentially in the same business as it finds itself in by default: income generation. The message sent out to media students in any case comes down to the same thing: namely, that media studies exists in order to service the media industry with professionals, and that the success of media studies as an academic discipline is to be measured in terms of how well its students live up to this brief; in other words, how well they manage to put theory into practice. My task in this book is to show students and lecturers just how cynical, misguided and downright dishonest this message is, and just how much it misrepresents the intellectual history of media

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studies, of what it is still capable of, and how it might rediscover a possible future. I use intellectual here in the broadest possible terms. My task is not to reinforce stereotypes or to seek to drive a wedge (at least not any deeper) between theory on the one hand, and practice on the other. Readers of this book may even be surprised to learn that I often dont find such labels all that helpful or informative. My task instead is to enable media studies students to think and to do in novel and experimental ways against the grain of current media studies theory (and practice) in its many forms. In a recent visit to one of Londons new universities I was proudly informed by a member of staff, without so much as a hint of irony, that the media faculty alumni included the current editor of the celebrity magazine Heat. In my view this is perfectly indicative of the narrow-mindedness presently afflicting media academics and their profound misrepresentation of the experiences and aspirations of their students. Media studies has come to be defined through the instrumental rationality of its corporate philosophy and the glamour and public visibility of its leading lights, those exceptional talents who have made it in the profession and now make their living from the public lecture circuit, lucrative newspaper columns and book contracts.

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Undoubtedly I dont seek to deny it media students need role models. What they dont need, however, and what does media studies no favours at all, is its association with these puffed-up talking heads, who turn up on panel discussion shows in order to mouth some patently obvious drivel about violence on television, or to cast their critical eyes over the latest exhibition, novel or film. Such vain appearances by high-flying media commentators and academics, although undoubtedly helping to reel in awestruck students by the bucket-load to their host institutions, do nothing for the reputation of media research or for media studies as an intellectual discipline. What is more, it helps to perpetuate the myth that working in the media is all about disinterested commentary punctuated by bursts of creative energy, all of which leads, for the talented ones, to a glamorous lifestyle and welldeserved financial rewards. The real impression one draws from this situation is actually quite simple, it doesnt take much working out: nice work if you can get it. My advice to those media students in search of glamour, spectacle and financial rewards is simple: audition for Big Brother, dont waste your time with media studies (although you might want to read chapter 2 before you do). To those students curious, stubborn and determined enough to want to think and to rethink media studies beyond the limits of its current orthodoxy, beyond what are ultimately meaningless distinctions

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between theory and practice, intelligence and creativity, knowledge and invention my advice is to read on.

1. Theory and Practice The history of media theory and its relation to media production, or what I shall call practice for the sake of argument, is somewhat complicated. I wont even set out to touch the surface of this history in what follows. Nor should it be of prime concern to

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media students. There is no single history or unique category of media studies education. The most important thing media students need to understand about the media is, firstly, what (and whether) it thinks and, secondly, what it does. My aim in this chapter will be to demonstrate that these questions, although apparently distinct, are in actual fact a lot more closely connected than they appear. Theory and practice always imply one other; theory seldom exists that can avoid some sort of relation with practice. However, as well as trying to convey the mutual relations between theory and practice I will also try to propose something a bit more ambitious: that theory and practice can also be shown to be the same thing. The idea that what or how something thinks and what it does may be identical is not a widely held view, no less so among media academics. Traditionally, the main division of social labour, not just in university departments but in most walks of life, is the division between intellectual workers and manual workers, or thinkers and doers. Ever since the industrial revolution of the 19th century, people have been defined and identified by profession. What is more, their professions doctors, bricklayers, teachers, carpenters have traditionally fallen into two main categories: that of manual work, where the worker is said to be skilled at producing things walls or chairs and that of

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intellectual work, where the worker is said to be skilled at dealing with ideas about health or history, the English language, etc. Karl Marx was the first among modern thinkers to point out that, in intellectual terms, the distinction between the man of theory and the man of practice was largely superficial. Obviously the doctor was more learned than the carpenter in the sense that the depth of specialist knowledge required of the doctor far exceeded that of the carpenter. However, the main difference between them was not the intellectual complexity of their respective professions, or even the superior intelligence required of doctors over carpenters, but the relative social standing of the two professions. Historically doctors had always received a far higher degree of public acclaim and prestige and material benefits than common tradesmen, since most if not all were drawn from the upper class oligarchs and their attendants, or in other words from the social elite of European aristocracy. But by the middle of the 19th century the situation was radically changing. A social revolution was sweeping out from England over the rest of the world in which the age-old distinction between intellectual and manual workers, and the prestige accorded to both, was gradually collapsing. What was changing was not that carpenters were suddenly beginning to earn as much money as doctors, but that

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the distinction between doctors and carpenters was no longer regarded as an intellectual one. It was now a commercial distinction. According to Marx, the difference between the doctor and the manual worker and the relative value of each to the newly emergent capitalist society was defined largely in market terms. A doctors intellect was no longer what afforded him respect from the rest of the community. Instead, his social standing now came to depend on the quality of his services. For Marx, there really was nothing to choose between the man of theory and the man of practice. Under capitalism the doctor and the carpenter are equal because both are wage earners. What separates them is material wealth, which is directly related to their labour power or their capacity to make money. Whether the doctor treated his patients ailments well, or whether the carpenter could make a chair entirely to his customers satisfaction was a question for the customer, not for the doctor or carpenter. In capitalist society, one was always free to employ someone else if one wasnt happy with a particular service: you pay your money and take your choice. Indeed, Marx believed that there would come a time when the distinctions between doctor, bricklayer, teacher and carpenter ceased to be meaningful. Not that these professions

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would some day cease to exist, but that they would cease to be the preserve of experts. In a communist society the needs of the community would decide who was an expert and who wasnt, the only difference being that under communism those needs would no longer be subject to the law of supply and demand. So what conclusions can we draw from Marxs predictions? How do they help us to understand the relationship between thinking theory and doing practice? The answer depends largely on the accuracy of Marxs predictions, which is a question I shall leave to the reader although rest assured I shall provide more than a few clues to help students answer it in what follows. Lets just say that Marxs work continues to hold enormous relevance for contemporary media regardless of whether we choose to agree with him or not. For TV producers, magazine editors and the public relations industry the media has become the great cultural leveller, if not exactly the commercial leveller Marx wanted to help bring about. The media is an example of what Jrgen Habermas calls a public sphere in the way it represents the lifeworld of its viewing public, reflecting back at them their own experiences, aspirations and desires. The exposure of consumers to the media spotlight has more or less become a democratic right. In the future, as Andy Warhol predicted, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.

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But how successful has the media been in fulfilling Marxs communist predictions? In other words, by how much has the gap between theorists and practitioners narrowed? Let me outline four possible answers to this question. The Conservative Typology: Theory or Practice In at least one respect, and despite Marxs predictions to the contrary, today there is still a substantial gulf separating theory and practice. I shall call this the conservative typology. Conservatives tend to believe in clearly defined distinctions between theory and practice. They regard the difference between thinking and doing in absolute terms. For the conservative there are experts, those pre-disposed toward thinking; and there are tradesmen, those pre-disposed toward doing. But there are no grey areas in-between. Admittedly one can have practical theory or theoretical practice. But one always takes priority over the other: either practice is governed by theory; or theory is governed by practice. They are never equal partners. Of course, this is not to say that conservatives would deny that there are individuals who can do and think a bit of both. Clearly all of us make use of our intellects as much as we do our bodies, often without thinking. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, famously declared that even tradesmen could be regarded as a

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certain type of intellectual, since intelligence was part and parcel of how we operated in the world and related to those around us. The only sense in which the conservative would be likely to disagree with this observation would be in terms of its implications for class society. For the conservative, individuals are free to do or think whatever they want as individuals. But the freedom of individuals doesnt alter the essential nature of their respective social backgrounds, or their class belonging. An intellectual doesnt become less of one if he changes profession, any more than a manual worker ceases to be one if he lands an office job. For the conservative, X = X. In other words we are what we are, and in the final analysis nothing we think or do will make any difference. According to the conservative typology, then, theory is theory and practice is practice even if each one implies the other. A more accurate way of looking at the relation between them would be to say this: theory is theory because it is not practice, and vice versa. In reality, the conservative is always defined as what he is by virtue of what he is not. The man of learning, the expert, likes to pretend that his intelligence is natural, inbred, rather than due to the existence of non-experts. One might argue that this is how the education system has traditionally operated. The spread of knowledge and learning has always been placed in the hands of teachers whose wisdom also gave them respect in the eyes of the

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wider community. But how much of their wisdom can be put down simply to what they know, and how much of it can be put down to what their students dont know? Could the teacher really exist without the student? Isnt the teachers wisdom always relative to that of the student? After all, a teacher is liable to seem very intelligent to a student who knows next to nothing. However, when a student knows a lot more by comparison the teacher will no doubt appear a lot less knowledgeable. And given that no one can know it all the difference in intelligence between teachers and students is always likely to be relative. For the conservative, being a teacher depends on a certain type of intellect, a certain pre-disposition toward knowledge and learning. But on closer inspection we can see how the teachers intelligence is reinforced by the students thirst for knowledge. The relationship between them is a structural one. In slightly more technical terms it is a disjunction. X = X because X Y. The Aristocratic Typology: Theory Unlike the conservative, the aristocrat is a theorist who is defined, not by his opposition to practice, but by his hatred of the idea of it. What is more, not only does the aristocrat detest practice, he denies against all common sense that there is any such thing. For
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the aristocrat there is only one type of work, that of the theorist, and everyone must aspire to be one whether they like it or not. But how can everyone be a theorist? The conservative typology requires some of us to be theorists and some practitioners. Surely if everyone spent his or her time thinking then nothing would ever get done? From this point of view the aristocrats hatred of practice would seem socially irresponsible. Dont experts need a public in order to be experts? The aristocrat answers these objections in the following way: everyone is a theorist. The only difference being that some are more expert at it than others. Put differently, everyone is a potential theorist; we can all aspire to think, even if we havent quite perfected the art of thinking yet. As far as practice is concerned, it serves no useful purpose. For the aristocrat, those who engage in practice are simply second-rate thinkers, people who havent quite learned how to do without it. Whereas the conservative says: be true to your profession, the aristocrat says: follow in my footsteps. He is the Jesus Christ of theory. But how could such a strange way of looking at the world possibly work in practice? Where would we be for example if novelists suddenly demanded of their readers to put down their books and pick up their pens? What sort of society would emerge

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if everyone stopped doing things and started thinking? What would happen to the family if homemakers stopped doing the ironing and spent all day reading, in schools if pupils began teaching themselves, to the legal and political systems if prisoners put themselves on a par with judges and ordinary citizens began to work alongside politicians? What would happen to the national culture if philosophers knew no more than the masses, or if people with no formal medical training began calling themselves doctors? What would happen if expert talking heads were replaced by double glazing salesmen on TV panel shows? Stretching the point slightly one could argue that much of this has taken place already, albeit on a relatively small scale. Admittedly, ordinary people are a long way from helping to run the country, and prisoners are unlikely to be invited to try legal cases in the courts anytime soon. However, in certain respects we are becoming a population of thinkers. Many more young people are studying at university compared with a decade ago and, once there, are staying on for longer to study for postgraduate degrees. In addition, mature students are returning to education in order to fulfil a lifelong ambition to learn. And as far as culture is concerned, the interest in the arts and the popularity of art galleries has surged since the early 1990s, no doubt prompted by Young British Artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin and their own brand of intellectual iconoclasm. If one extends the

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definition of thought to include spontaneous political awareness (as opposed to the passive intellect of the TV couch potato) then the public demonstrations across the world against the war in Iraq would qualify millions of people not just in Britain, but in France, Germany, Australia, the United States and so on, as aristocratic thinkers. Despite all this, however, the real response of the aristocrat to the prospect of a world in which practice has been made redundant by theory is as follows: its a practical problem, not a theoretical one. For the aristocrat, the more people who follow his lead, the more of us who aspire toward and attain intellectual mastery and self-sufficiency, the more practice becomes socially irrelevant. Theory is certainly not a recipe for class struggle or social revolution or at least social revolution is not the aim of theory. After all, what is there to revolt against? The point of theory is not to help us solve social problems. Theory, along with thinking, is its own reward an end in itself which means that it doesnt need to earn its keep or justify its existence through practice. The theorist solves the worlds problems (assuming the world even exists for him) by the force of his intellect alone. The Artisanal Typology: Practice

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The artisan is an aristocrat in reverse. She disagrees with the aristocratic pretensions to theorize, preferring instead to practice what the aristocrat merely preaches, and so challenges the aristocrats right to exist. The artisan hates theory as much as the aristocrat detests practice. But what is it that the artisan does that the aristocrat doesnt? Better still: what does the artisan do that the aristocrat refuses to do? For the artisan practice is the way for people, ordinary, untutored people, to get in touch with reality. Practice doesnt require anyone to teach it. Instead, its something you pick up by yourself, or acquire through trial and error. The practitioner likes to think of herself as a great doer, sometimes creative, often with artistic pretensions, who produces things. A carpenter produces chairs, while a director produces films; both ply their trade largely through instinct, know-how and skills acquired on the job. By contrast teachers and doctors strike the artisan as excessively abstract thinkers. In other words, with a lot less studying and exam taking and a lot more practical experience of teaching and treating patients they could do their jobs a lot better (a perception which perhaps owes as much to the rampant bureaucracy in the education and health systems as to the work teachers and doctors are actually employed to do).

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The artisans suspicions of theory are not limited to theorists. The practitioner is also wary of the influence theory might exert over her own practice. This is especially true of artists and entertainers, who dont traditionally regard themselves as great thinkers. Art has always thrived on impulse and spontaneity, of doing things on the spur of the moment without thinking. This is why the practitioner puts so much faith in experiences and feelings that cant generally be accounted for, and that only emerge with the aid of intuition. Of course, the recording artist makes records, but this is simply what she does for a living, a byproduct of her life as an artist. What she thrives on and what makes her an artist in practice is live performance, the peculiarity of the real-life encounter. This sublime moment is what photographers like Cartier Bresson, or jazz musicians like Miles Davis, or novelists like Hubert Selby Jr., seek to capture through their work. Perhaps the other phobia for the artisan is authority. For the artisan intelligence seems like a compromise that risks undermining her independence of spirit and creative energy. For artisans of every persuasion the whole point is one of not losing the freedom to practice their art wherever they choose. The artisan is the self-styled, modern equivalent of a journeyman; this is not just a job, its a vocation. Therefore exercising ones rights as a practitioner is more than a choice, its a must. This is the only way to ensure that practice is not diluted by the superficial

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philosophizing of the theorist. Ultimately, however, what the practitioner and the theorist have in common is arguably more than what sets them apart (although needless to say this is not something either of them would ever dream of admitting). Namely: a blind faith in their own vocation to the total exclusion of all detractors. Both hold up their own work as an example for non-believers to follow. The Communist Typology: Theory and Practice The communist stands for what many people would call a utopian illusion. This is the idea that theorists and practitioners can not only co-exist, but can unite together as one, thereby enhancing the whole of society in the process. Whereas for the conservative society is what it is because of its differences, the communist sees all difference as a barrier to social equality. The conservative wants to defend differences while the communist wants to destroy them. Is the communist the true exponent, then, of Marxs philosophy? As I have already suggested, this depends not least on how we define equality today. For example, the conservative need not deny being a democratic exponent of equality. For the conservative, equality has nothing to do either with what one does or what one thinks. Unlike for the aristocrat and the artisan, for

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the conservative achieving equality is certainly not a question of belief. Instead, she enshrines equality in the rights of individuals to choose to be different. In her view equality is not so much an act of faith as a constitutional right. Difference has the law on its side. For the communist, however, the law makes no difference. Theorist and practitioner are just labels, they only reflect artificially imposed divisions in society and tell us nothing about the true talents of individuals. In an ideal world, the one the communist wants to bring about, people wont any longer be forced to choose between theory and practice, they will be encouraged to do both, to be practitioners in the daytime and theorists at night. The condition for making this state of affairs a reality, as we have already seen, is the elimination of what Marx called the division of labour, which forces individuals to specialize in only one type of work. The communist regards the conservative approach to identity, and identity itself, as superficial. For the communist human beings are essentially all the same. Of all previous typologies this would appear to involve the most ambitious of propositions. We live in a world of such seemingly insurmountable contradictions and unbridgeable differences. We are informed repeatedly through the mass media that people are

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more socially divided than ever before, that the gap between rich and poor is growing, and that social inequality is leading us toward a state of crime, lawlessness and social anarchy. Marxs response to such dire warnings was simple enough: dont believe the hype. Marx was wary of journalism, which he regarded as no more than bourgeois propaganda despite having written political articles for countless newspapers. It was certainly no surprise to him for conservatives to warn of the dangers posed to law and order by the communists. After all the communists wanted to destroy all difference, or at least to eliminate the privileges associated with different professions, especially the bourgeois professions. But how did Marx believe this could be achieved? Readers will perhaps be disappointed to learn that the actual question of how to make social revolution is the weakest part of Marxs philosophy. Marxs predictions were based on his analysis of the economic system of capitalism. It didnt provide any detailed advice on how people should act in order to make revolution happen. Marx hasnt left us with a set of instructions. For Marx, the key to the question was class struggle, by which he meant the hidden tensions in society between the middle and working classes, as well as between its theorists and practitioners. It is capitalism, an economy based on unfair competition and profit making, that creates tensions between these classes. But the tensions were not destined to last forever. On the strength of

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Marxs meticulous interpretation of how capitalism exploited people and of how this exploitation would intensify in future, there was only one conclusion: revolution was inevitable. The only question which was the much more difficult one was when. Much of the so-called Marxist philosophy that emerged after Marxs death, most notably in the writings of both Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, deals with this very question. For Lenin, although we are unable to predict the timing of revolution, there are things we can do in the meantime and ways of thinking that will make it more likely to happen in the not too distant future. Basically, we can prepare. Like Marx, Lenin agreed that all social divisions must be eliminated. But what if they were eliminated too soon? Wasnt the discrimination between theory and practice, apart from being unjust, precisely what generated the social tensions that would lead to revolution in the first place? Didnt revolutionaries need social conflict in order to eliminate it? And, if so, how could theory and practice ever be one? Isnt there a risk that, in claiming to unite theory and practice, the communist will resemble the conservative who denies their true differences? In other words: how can theory and practice be united when communists and conservatives both have a vested interest in seeing them kept apart?

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Needless to say these are not easy questions to answer (although I develop them a lot more in chapter 5). However, Lenins basic response was that the most effective way of bringing social unity about was through party organization. Revolutionaries may not be capable of completely eliminating discrimination from society, but they could certainly hope to eliminate it from their own ranks. In forming an organization of theorists and practitioners whose respective knowledge and skills were equivalent to one another, and equally important in making the revolution, Lenin had a working model for the rest of society: the party is the revolution in microcosm. Lenins task was now to inject the nonrevolutionary remainder of society with the partys revolutionary consciousness. For the communist, then, revolution is possible on the strict condition that everyone is equal. For both him and his party, X = Y. In other words, the condition for social equality is that everyone should be the same. The relationship between theory and practice here is a dialectical one. In slightly more technical terms it is a conjunction. X = Y because X & Y. Theory and Practice in One I began this chapter by suggesting that the key to understanding theory and practice was to understand the relations between them.

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I then outlined four possible typologies: conservative, aristocratic, artisanal, and communist. My aim in doing this was to encourage students to identify their own work and interests in media studies with at least one of these typologies. However, in the course of writing this chapter a problem arose. It appeared that my job was done. In setting out the typologies it suddenly struck me that I had given students all the guidance they would need in order to start theorizing and practising media for themselves. After all, it had certainly not been my intention to sum up the history of media studies, to assess the work of practitioners or to explain the subtle nuances of particular theories. As I make clear in my introduction, my aim in this book is to enable students to think for themselves without the external pressures of making their work relevant to the so-called media industry. Students on media studies courses are constantly reminded of the industry standards required of them when presenting their work. Some of this advice is obvious and uncontroversial; for instance, the proper acknowledgement of sources in writing feature articles, or the 180 degree system of spatial continuity in film editing. But much of it serves to perpetuate the myth that the media needs workers who can conform to its way of thinking (assuming the media even thinks) and that a students creativity is only valid on condition of its commercial viability. This is precisely the myth I want to challenge. The vocational policy of very many media studies courses invariably amounts to nothing more visionary

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than the imperative to churn out good little consumers who are media literate, or industry apprentices who are flexible and adaptable (i.e. who dont mind making the coffee). Media studies would be well advised to develop a conscience and ask itself some tough questions about its own role in servicing this false economy. Self-criticism should involve a reorientation of media studies towards empowering students not just through thinking critically about questions of media ownership and broadcasting regulation. Media studies equally needs to provide students with the confidence to jettison their reverence for this imaginary industry and consider instead how best to create real media environments, ones in which they define the scope and possibilities, through theory and practice, for thinking and doing. It is high time for students to take control. Few other subjects offer quite so much potential for students to think theory and do practice without the prohibitions of specialist knowledge, experimental equipment and expertise that define the social and physical sciences. Anyone can learn how to use a video camera, design a web site, or start a magazine or e-journal. But the potential doesnt rest with technology alone. Theory is equally important in defining the parameters of ones work and experimenting under the right conditions. Media studies can be the most exhilarating of academic laboratories. Its doors are open to all-comers.

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But isnt there a risk that this kind of advice will send out confusing messages? Isnt the impression generated by the theory-practice typologies that students must choose between them? Isnt the suggestion of a typology likely to encourage them to make their theory and/or practice conform to a particular model? The danger with any typology is that it defines types rather than realities. In reality the conservative will often resemble the communist. Perhaps conservatives are the modern communists, or vice versa. Communists are also regularly mistaken for aristocrats and artisans, and so on and so forth. Must we conclude from these reservations, which I point to here for the sake of clarity, that a typology is just a guide, and therefore should not be taken too seriously? Yes and no. Obviously my intentions were serious enough in devising these typologies, and nothing takes away from the fact that they still roughly account for the different theoretical and practical approaches, along with any potential future ones, in media studies. Having said that the missing realities are what shall interest us for the remainder of this book. Our typologies provide a fairly firm foundation, but we need to explore things in a bit more detail over the following chapters. By this point readers should hopefully be starting to realize that there is not just one way of thinking and/or practising media.

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There are four. But given our admission that typologies only provide rough sketches of reality, impressions rather than exact copies or predictions, wont there be many more realities than we can properly account for? If the conservative often resembles a communist and a communist an artisan, then surely we need to come up with many more typologies in order to include all the other possible realties? One might perhaps devise a conservativecommunist typology as well as a communist-conservative typology; an aristocratic-artisanal typology and an artisanalcommunist typology; and perhaps even a communist-communist typology in order to distinguish the real communist from his countless imitators. This is certainly possible and may prove a useful exercise for those students who wish to consider more complex relations between theory and practice than our four existing typologies permit. I leave such an exercise entirely up to the students own initiative. My aim in the rest of this book will be to adopt an alternate approach. Instead of multiplying the four typologies we already have I want to stick with them, not because I believe they are the most reliable approximations of reality, but because what I want to explore further are the possible realities internal to each of them. Stated simply, I want to consider how well these four typologies pass the reality test and whether they can, in theory

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and practice, not so much help to explain the world of the media, as to create it. Let me rephrase the proposition. What I want to do over the course of the following chapters is to invent possible media worlds through theory and practice. This should not be viewed as some type of abstract thought experiment. It is not (only) a theoretical exercise. How could it be, since we have already established that theory is always defined in its relation with practice, even if that relation is negative? To say that someone is conservative in their thinking is immediately to define their practical life. In the same way, to allege that someone thinks like a communist is to characterize the very world they inhabit along with its internal relations, its rules for action, its creative possibilities, its morality, law, existing media and culture, politics But we can go much further than this. If as I proposed at the beginning of this chapter thinking and doing, theory and practice, are one and the same thing, then there is nothing separating us from the worlds we are able to define in theory. Thinking about communism (assuming we really can) would be the same as doing it, no different from joining the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace (or at least Dziga Vertov filming the events) during

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the Russian Revolution in 1917. The world of theory and the world of practice would explosively come together in one. So too with the aristocratic typology, in which we find ourselves in the midst of a world where practice is practically nonexistent, where theory is in command, where priests and their disciples wage war on official media and culture, where our thinking is no longer governed by law but by inner faith Let us begin then with what I call theory and practice in one. Let us begin to speculate on how our typologies can help us to think new thoughts and do new practices, about how they can help us to create media worlds. A few final words before we begin. The worlds I have chosen to navigate are not the only possible ones. Each of the following four chapters corresponds not to a single, pre-established world, but to an attempt to build one; each chapter is an attempt to think and/or do theory and/or practice in one. They are at the time of writing creative exercises. For far too long now the possibilities inherent in media theory have been denied to practitioners. The result of this is that theory has been cast in the role of a stagnant, unhappy bedfellow of truly creative practice. The impression among media students that theory is something that has to be learned, invariably by rote, while the real creative energy comes

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from media practice (filmmaking, web design, advertising, music production, photography and digital arts) will hopefully, by the end of this book, be much less popular among students themselves. My aim throughout this book has been to avoid the scholarly use of references and footnotes that invariably detract from the main text, leaving students with the impression that further reading is required. Although I would encourage students to read as widely as they can, suggestions for further reading might be an unwelcome distraction for some, and for this reason I have left out all footnotes from the main text (a separate notes section, which doubles as an extensive bibliography, appears at the end containing what I regard to be among the most important sources in media studies education). I have used almost no quotations, preferring instead to offer selective interpretations of key theories from linguistics, philosophy and media, cultural and communication studies, and to provide practical examples from film, popular music, television, academic conferences and seminars, and everyday life. This rigid distinction between theory and practice is of course precisely what is at issue here, and by the end of the book it is hoped that my approach will have enabled students to rethink the relevance of such a distinction. This has been my guiding aim at least.

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