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- 6. THE MEDIA STUDIES TOOLKIT In this critical primer, Michael Z. Newman introduces newcomers to the key concepts, issues, and vocabulary of media studies. Across ten chapters, Newman examines topics from text and audience to citizenship and consumerism, drawing on a myriad of examples of media old and new. Film and TV rub shoulders with mobile games and social media, and popular music and video sharing platforms with journalism and search engines. While the book takes a critical, cultural approach, it cov- ers topics that apply across many kinds of media scholarship, bridging the humanities and the social sciences and looking at media as a global phenom- enon. It considers media in relation to society and its unequal structures of power, and relates media representations to their conditions of production in media industries and consumption in the everyday lives of audiences and users. Spanning the historical periods of mass media and online participa- tory culture, it also probes assumptions about media that were formulated in a previous era and looks at how to update our thinking to address an ever-changing digital mediascape. With its clear and accessible style, this book is tailor-made for under- graduate students of media, communication, and cultural studies, as well as anyone who would like to better understand media. Michael Z. Newman is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and in the programs in Film Studies and Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies. He is the author of Indie: An American Film Culture (2011), Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium (2014), Atari Age: The Emergence of Video Games in America (2017), and co-author of Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (2012).
- 8. THE MEDIA STUDIES TOOLKIT Michael Z. Newman
- 9. Cover image: Egor Suvorov / Getty Images First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor & Francis The right of Michael Z. Newman to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367–44115-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367–43252-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003–00770-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003007708 Typeset in Joanna by codeMantra
- 10. For my students – past, present, and future
- 12. CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi 1 Introduction 1 Analytical, Critical, Cultural 4 Surveying the Terrain 6 2 Industry 11 Revenue Streams 14 Political Economy and the Structures of Media Companies 18 Horizontal and Vertical Integration 22 Legacy Media and the Tech Giants 25 Studying the Media Industries 28 Following the Money 30 3 Text 34 Breaking It Down 36 Levels of Analysis 41 Textual Analysis in Practice 45 Meanings and Intentions 51 Denotation and Connotation 55 Texts and Readers 57
- 13. viii CONTENTS 4 Audience 60 Naming and Counting the Audience 61 Why Care About Audiences? 64 Audiences Making Meaning 65 Dominant, Oppositional, Negotiated 70 Communication as Transmission and Ritual 72 Fans in the Audience 74 Researching Audiences 75 A Useful Fiction 77 5 Representation 80 Refecting, Constructing, and the Work of Representation 82 Visibility and Symbolic Annihilation 86 The Burden of Representation 90 Positive and Negative Images 92 Stereotypes and Regimes of Representation 95 Modes of Address 99 Voice and the Power to Represent 101 All Your Faves Are Problematic 104 6 Ideology 110 Ideology Critique 114 Ideological Formations 119 Identities and Ideologies 123 Tensions and Contradictions 127 The Whole Ideological Environment 130 7 Policy and Regulation 135 Public and Private Interests 137 Regulation of What? 140 Why Broadcasting Is Different 147 Public Service Media 151 National Cultural Policy and Canadian Media 152 Boundaries of Expression 155 8 Citizenship 159 The Public Sphere 162 Journalism as Civic Culture 163 Pop Culture Is Civic Culture Too 167 The Internet as Democratizing Media 173 Citizenship as Belonging 180
- 14. ix CONTENTS 9 Consumerism 186 Advertising Then and Now 189 Pop Culture and Gendered Consumerism 196 The Citizen-Consumer 200 Social Media and the Branded Self 204 Always Be Selling 207 10 Technology 211 From Mass Media to Participatory Culture 213 New and Renewed Media 215 From Novelty to Domestication 219 Technologies as Agents, Users as Innovators 223 The Politics of Media Technologies 228 Thinking Historically 232 11 Global and Local 238 Media and Empire 242 Global Media Flows 247 Global Media Hybridity 251 Audiences and Users as Localizers 255 Asymmetry and Interconnection 259 Index 265
- 16. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any book like this is the product of a whole network of cooperation, and I am grateful to many friends, colleagues, and family members for their sup- port and input. My former Routledge editor, Erica Wetter, encouraged me to pursue this project and gave me all kinds of essential advice. Rebecca Pearce was also helpful in the initial stages of proposing the book, and I am grateful for Martin Pettitt’s copy editing. Emma Sheriff has been a patient and support- ive editor throughout our time working together. Many thanks to scholar-friends who read chapters of this book as work in progress and offered excellent advice and suggestions, including Kathleen Battles, Ron Becker, Katie Day Good, Elana Levine, Rick Popp, and Ira Wagman. The special expertise of David Allen, Kyle Barnett, Eric Harvey, and Michael Socolow helped me understand particular points. I am grate- ful to my broader social media networks, including many friends I also know offine, and even more I do not (yet). I also appreciate the feedback of anonymous reviewers. All of these friends and colleagues have made my work much better. The Interlibrary Loan offce at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries are heroes to me, as are the many ILL librarians, wherever they are, who work to facilitate the research and scholarship of people they will never meet. This resource was particularly essential during the months of
- 17. xii ACkNOWLEDGMENTS the COVID-19 pandemic when my campus library was closed. I could not have produced this work without the support of our librarians. I am blessed to have an amazing community of UWM media scholars (past and present) who are serious intellectuals, dedicated educators, and warm and supportive friends. I am so thankful for David Allen, Gilberto Blasini, Xiaoxia Cao, Christine Evans, Zach Finch, Lane Hall, Taisik Hwang, Richard Grusin, Elana Levine, Eric Lohman, Michael Mirer, Stuart Moulthrop, Rick Popp, Maureen Ryan, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Marc Tasman, Tami Williams, and Lia Wolock. Thanks as well to the students in the MA program in Media Studies who were the attentive audience for a presentation about this book project in its early stages of writing and asked sharp questions. I was able to write this book in part thanks to a Fall 2020 faculty sabbati- cal. I am grateful to my colleagues and my institution, and to the University of Wisconsin System, for sustaining faculty sabbaticals and giving us time and space to do our work. I am grateful to the many undergraduate students (a number in the thou- sands) whom I have been fortunate to teach over more than 20 years of offer- ing courses on media, including those taking Introduction to Film Studies, Introduction to Mass Media, Principles of Media Studies, and New Media History. Some of these former pupils have become good friends and outstand- ing scholars in their own right, proving true the old saw that teachers learn more from their students than the students learn from us. The ideas in this book have been circling through my mind for as long as I have been teaching these courses. I could not have written this without my years of classroom engagement with introductory-level undergrads, some of the most rewarding teaching experiences I have ever had. This book is dedicated to them. My family has given me so much, and made possible everything I do. My parents, Alvin and Ruby, were my frst and best teachers, and their infuence and example have shown me the way. My sons, Leo and Noah, have helped me more than they probably know. Just hearing them ask how the Toolkit is going, just knowing that they care, has been enough to push me along the road to fnishing a chapter or even just work out an idea I was trying to express more clearly. I strive to be worthy of their admiration. Finally, Elana Levine has done way more for my writing than giving feedback on chapters or listening to me talk through ideas, both of which she does so well. She is my closest colleague, co-parent, and life partner, and I could not have written this book – or any book – without her editorial skills, but more importantly, her support, encouragement, and love.
- 18. 1 INTRODUCTION You already know a lot about media. Anyone who has come of age in the past century in most parts of the world has been exposed to a constant stream of reproduced images and sounds, storytelling, advertising, updates, and diversions – a torrent of information and entertainment. For modern folks like us, knowing about media is like knowing about driving automo- biles or eating factory-made foods like canned soup and Doritos. It’s just a normal, unremarkable part of life. But historically, these are all very recent experiences that would have been unfamiliar to our ancestors just a few generations back. We have known only a media-saturated world, though over time it feels like the saturation keeps getting more intense. In our own lifetimes, we have experienced so much media change. Over the years, media has come to mean many diverse things as new forms of culture and technology have fallen under its umbrella. A hun- dred years ago, the media business was often called “the press” (after the printing press technology essential to newspaper publishing). Beginning in the 1940s in English-speaking places, cinema, radio, and television, along with print technologies like newspapers and magazines, were coming to be known as “the mass media.” In later times, when dropping “mass” from “mass media,” we lost the connotation of a one-to-many fow of culture from a small number of powerful sources like the broadcast networks and Hollywood studios. But we have retained the idea of many different kinds of published or transmitted culture belonging together in one category: books, shows, stories, songs, flms, photos, videos, and games are all media. DOI: 10.4324/9781003007708-1
- 19. 2 INTRODUCTION Of course there is considerable heterogeneity among these different media, but we persist in thinking of them belonging together in one category. So in the early decades of the 21st century, media covers journalism but also all kinds of popular culture, from movies to mobile apps. It refers to the channels and platforms that bring us content, like Netfix and Facebook, but also to the companies that make the media products we consume, or sell us access to them, like Disney and Comcast. Sometimes it seems as if practically everything is media, as we use our networked digital devices to shop, pay bills and exchange money, work and attend school, socialize, and express ourselves. As media historian Richard Popp (2021, 601) observes, “each generation of ‘new media,’ among other things, has generally meant more things count as media.” This book is about how we can make sense of this environment of media all around us and use what we already know to go deeper. At its heart is a set of concepts, of words and ideas. These concepts are tools for knowledge. Put together, they make up a toolkit to be employed in understanding media and their signifcance to our lives and in the world around us. Just as a screwdriver or a pair of pliers each has its purpose, each concept in this book allows you to accomplish a certain kind of task of understanding something better. This kind of understanding is the purpose of media studies, a loosely organized academic feld made up of researchers and teachers whose focus is media of many kinds. Media scholars are experts, but not necessarily in making media, though many of us have some experience in media pro- duction. Our specialty as scholars is in understanding media, in creating new knowledge about specifc media topics, and sharing that knowledge and understanding with others via our writing, speaking, and teaching. The purpose of this book is to reveal the ways that experts think about media and help you think about media the way we do, using our vocabu- lary and background assumptions and our informed sense of media’s past and present. In opening up the toolkit, I want to show you how each of the items inside works: how they help us to increase our knowledge about aspects of media by placing them in a meaningful context, and by making connections among ideas and examples. You might have encountered these concepts already, and some of them are similar to terms that come up in contexts other than media studies. But in this book they are explored as tools for use in particular kinds of analysis and interpretation within a feld, a community of scholars who share common intellectual perspectives and investments, even as they may also disagree about some things.
- 20. 3 INTRODUCTION Why should we want tools for making sense of media? For starters, media are among the most important ways that we are informed about the world beyond our immediate everyday experience. We live in large and diverse societies, where our fellow citizens number in the millions or the hundreds of millions. Our sense of our place in the world – and of the relationship between ourselves, our communities, and the broader social environment – comes largely via media. We need to know how we take in this informa- tion, what kind of information it is, and whose interests are served by its circulation. This helps us function effectively as citizens: as participants in our communities who feel a sense of belonging to them. Thinking critically about the relationship between media, ourselves, and our communities can ultimately make us better at participating in civic life. Media are also the format and the conduit for much of our cultural life. While human societies once told stories, sang and danced, and participated in religious rituals in ways that we would regard as tech-free, our culture is largely mediated. Understanding media is understanding the whole sym- bolic universe of modern life. It means grappling with a media culture that plays a key role in shaping our social and political environments. Working toward a world characterized by equity and justice can be accomplished in many spaces. We should demand a media culture that addresses our problems rather than contributes to them, and media studies can help us appreciate these cultural dynamics, and maybe even work toward chang- ing them. For many people who fnd themselves in a media studies class, their ambitions also go beyond earning credits toward a diploma or degree – or learning for its own sake – to include working in a media industry, whether on the creative or business side or in some combination. If this describes you, understanding media can be instrumental in helping you become a well-informed and thoughtful, socially responsible producer. The critical and analytical perspectives informed by traditions of media studies research can serve you well by orienting you toward problems in media that should be on the minds of those with the power to do something about them. Whether this book can help you become a more critical consumer of media or a more critical producer of media or both, the “so what” of it all really comes down to this: media are a crucial force in modern societies that have the power to shape our individual imaginations, our identities, and our sense of the world around us. The more we know and understand about these things, the better off we will all be.
- 21. 4 INTRODUCTION Analytical, Critical, Cultural Some key terms in this discussion so far have been analytical, critical, and cultural. The tools in this book’s toolkit are meant to be all of these things. To be analytical is to break things down into their parts and appreciate how they ft together. Analyzing media means getting up close, and taking seri- ously even types of media that might seem trivial or ephemeral. It means wanting to know about how media products are made and how they are used and understood. These processes include the constraints on media production and consumption, the forces that give shape to media. And analyzing means exploring meanings and implications, and making con- nections between different examples of media and the ways they relate to the social world. To be critical is not necessarily to be negative. In scholarly circles, a criti- cal perspective typically includes questioning and probing, and digging beneath the surface to discover underlying assumptions. Just as critical thinking means testing the logic and evidence behind different perspec- tives, a critical approach to media studies casts a skeptical eye and asks, why is this the way it is, and how might it have been different? How can we imagine a media environment other than the one we have come to know? In academic circles, critical also frequently has another shade of meaning suggesting a political investment. A critical media studies approach would not pretend to be objective in observing media. It would, rather, see the media of modern, Western nations as having important connections to an unequal and unjust social structure characterized by inequality of many kinds on a global scale. To be critical of media is to be critical of this status quo, to look at how media and larger structures are related, and to consider how current arrangements might be challenged. Not all media scholars take a critical perspective, but no one book can represent every possible point of view. My orientation as a critical media scholar points me toward a perspective that takes media as one key institu- tion within a capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist society. The critical perspective in this book is concerned with media’s role in either maintain- ing or resisting these forms of inequality and oppression. This isn’t to say that every chapter and every section of every chapter addresses such matters directly. Some topics in media studies are closer to this critical discussion than others, and sometimes politics is an undercurrent rather than being at the surface. But the overall perspective takes media as having political
- 22. 5 INTRODUCTION functions within a given society, which only makes sense considering how pervasive and infuential media tend to be. Our third critical term, cultural, is always a challenge to defne. The cul- tural theorist Raymond Williams (1983, 87) famously named it “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” To see media as culture is to recognize it as a part of our way of life and our everyday experience. It also means seeing culture as a system of symbolic objects and activities that have shared meaning and purpose within particular communities. In its anthropological sense, culture is a vast area that includes language and food and religious practice and living arrangements. All media is cul- ture, but not all culture is media. By this way of thinking, culture contrasts with nature and refers to all of the ways human societies construct mean- ing and organize our lives. It’s our nature to speak a language, but it’s our culture to speak North American English or any other particular language. In a different, more elitist sense, culture can refer to works of art, literature, and performance, practices valued for their beautiful or expressive qualities, and can also extend to “popular” forms like movies and TV, comics, and rock and hip-hop music, hence the term “pop culture.” (What’s elitist here is distinguishing culture proper, which is associated with class privilege, from popular culture, which is defned as being “of the people.”) Thinking of media as culture draws upon both of these senses of the word. Media is deeply ingrained in our way of life, and media is also made up of many different kinds of cultural products that have their own qualities and mean- ings that we can approach critically and analytically, wherever they fall on a dubious cultural hierarchy. Culture has one additional connotation in media studies. It relates to a particular school of thought called cultural studies, originally a British move- ment of the left that became infuential in the 1970s and 1980s. For this tradition of media scholarship, separating the notion of culture from the elitist concept was a key move. Another was to recognize that culture is a site of struggle between groups in society, an arena in which the powerful assert their dominance and impose their ways of thinking, but in which less powerful groups can also exercise resistance. One key contribution of cultural studies was to regard media (and other cultural objects) as part of a circuit that links production and consumption within a social world and its unequal structures. To do cultural studies of
- 23. 6 INTRODUCTION media can mean looking at all kinds of media products or experiences as worthy of our critical attention, as signifcant in playing a role in everyday life, and as potentially political. It can mean looking at media as the prod- uct of the social world and also as contributing to its systems of meaning and value. To see media culture as a circuit, we have to cast aside the simplistic idea that producers create meanings that are transmitted via media to con- sumers who receive and understand them. This “communication model,” in which a media text’s purpose is to convey information from one party to another, is too simplistic according to a cultural approach to media studies. In place of this linear notion of transmission, the circuit of cul- ture pictures a circle in which producers, texts (media content) and their representations, consumers or users, and the social world are all linked together by lines of infuence, and the whole environment matters for creating meaning. This requires taking into account many different things. As Richard Johnson (1986–1987, 46) describes his formulation of this circuit, “if we are placed at one point” on it, “we do not necessarily see what is happening at others.” But to adequately study a cultural text, argues Paul Du Gay (2013, xxx–xxxi), drawing upon Johnson’s theorizing, we must pass through all of the steps in its circuit. In reference to the example of the Sony Walkman, Du Gay argues that “to study the Walkman culturally one should at least explore how it is represented, what social identities are associated with it, how it is produced and consumed, and what mechanisms regulate its distribution and use” (xxx). Different versions of a circuit of culture might vary in their specifcs, but they have in common a notion that conditions of production, consumption, and the social world all matter to the cultural study of media, and that we can better understand each one by thinking of it in relation to at least some of the others. The Media Studies Toolkit shares this basic orientation to the critical analysis of media, which comes from cultural studies. Surveying the Terrain Media studies is an unusual kind of feld, and a relative newcomer to many colleges and universities. As media have grown and multiplied and become ever more enmeshed in our moment-by-moment existence, scholarly dis- course about media has tried to keep pace. There was no feld called media
- 24. 7 INTRODUCTION studies already established a few decades ago, and the study of media grew wherever hospitable conditions existed. The feld as it exists today is the product of its origins in different kinds of fertile environments and its spread on the fringes of other academic disciplines. This can make media studies seem less cohesive than some academic areas of study, or more like a set of different clusters rather than one unifed feld. One introductory book cannot be representative of every approach to a sprawling topic like media, but I have tried in the Toolkit to present concepts that are widely shared and relevant to many kinds of topics. One tradition of media studies, which is the one I come from, began in the humanities as an offshoot of English literature. (I was an English major as an undergraduate and earned a PhD in Communication Arts with a Film Studies concentration, and now I teach in an English department.) First flm and later TV studies grew out of literature research, applying many of the concepts of textual interpretation and analysis to audiovisual media. Popular music and game studies have some things in common with this tradition as well, though these pursuits are also connected to other disciplines like musicology or anthropology. Humanities approaches to studying media often overlap with qualitative studies in the social sciences, and scholars from these different traditions can coexist within a department and draw on common theories and assumptions about media. But within the humanities tradition, it is more common to regard media as artistic forms of expression and to center authors, texts, genres, and representations in analysis, though this hardly accounts for all kinds of inquiry in this tradition. Another strain of media studies, more distant from my own experience, began in the social sciences and has often been known as “mass communica- tion” research. Journalism, public opinion, media effects, and other aspects of mass media have often been studied in settings that draw upon tradi- tions in psychology, sociology, political science, and related areas. Whereas humanities research tends to be textual and interpretive, mass communica- tion research follows a more objective approach in adherence with the sci- entifc method. Whereas humanists might speak of doing readings of their objects of research, social scientists might speak of collecting and analyzing data about them. Actually both groups do both kinds of activities, but they surely differ in their worldviews and orientations toward their topics of study, and the way they formulate questions about them. Both of these kinds of media studies grew as students wanted to take courses in media topics like journalism, advertising, public relations, and
- 25. 8 INTRODUCTION flm and video production. They also grew as scholars in many disciplines wanted to understand more about media. As a new and hybrid feld, media studies incorporated many ideas and approaches from other parts of the scholarly world. This book contains insights and concepts from an array of disciplines, including English/literary studies, communication, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, economics, and philosophy, as well as science and technology studies, gender and ethnic studies, and law. Media studies poaches concepts, blending them oppor- tunistically. Different kinds of research borrow different kinds of ideas. It follows that media is not so much a discipline defned by the marriage of a subject and method as it is a broad topic to be approached by varied meth- ods as they suit the agenda of the researcher. This book aims to be useful across these differing approaches by focusing on concepts that inform many kinds of media research. This book covers journalism and entertainment, old and new media, traditional one-to-many broadcasting and networked digital platforms. It aims to show that the tools in the toolkit can be useful across these distinctions. Scholars, like any people organized into groups defned by their shared identities, sometimes draw boundaries around their areas of interest and police those boundaries by excluding some people from their circle based on a failure to conform to group expectations. In media studies, these boundaries can be based on topics of research (e.g., flm scholars may avoid television) or on approach (e.g., humanists may avoid social science). I have written this Toolkit as a critical cultural scholar of popular media, especially flm and TV. But I have tried to present the topics in this book in a way that would speak to the broadest possible media studies readership and avoid marking off stark bound- aries. I have drawn for my examples on flm and television, but also music, journalism, advertising, video games, and social and digital media. None of the chapters in this book are specifc to any one medium or form of media, and all of them contain discussions of diverse kinds of culture. I propose that we see the feld as a big tent rather than as scattered clusters of hostile factions. The ten chapters that follow are all meant to be able to stand alone, which is often how books like this one are used. But they are all related to some of their neighboring chapters and are intended to be companions to one another. The chapters “Audience,” “Text,” and “Industry” are the ones most central to the circuit of culture, and this trinity is most essential for becoming oriented to the basics of media studies (at least in my opinion).
- 26. 9 INTRODUCTION These three are also concerned more than the rest of the book with explain- ing how media research is conducted. “Representation” and “Ideology” are both connected to “Text” frst of all, but also crucially to “Audience” and more tangentially to “Industry.” “Citizenship” and “Consumerism” are both directly connected to “Audience,” but also to the other two in the trinity. “Policy and Regulation” is most closely connected to “Industry.” “Technology” is connected to all three, and also has some important links to “Ideology,” in the discussion of the politics of technologies. “Global and Local” is connected to “Industry” and “Audiences,” but also to “Ideology,” in the discussion of the unequal global fows of media and the concept of cultural imperialism. I have written this book from my own particular social position and perspective that I think should be acknowledged at the outset. I was born in 1972 and grew up in Toronto, Canada. I have lived in the Midwestern US since 1997, when I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to go to graduate school. I am a straight, white, cisgender man, married, father of two sons. I am a tenured full professor at a public university, as is my spouse. I am Jewish, and aside from needing glasses and some hearing loss, I have no disabilities. Why are these things relevant? For one thing, I think we all bring our individual identities – our age, race and ethnicity, religion and nationality, gender and sexuality, class, ability or disability – to the expe- rience of media and to the task of making sense of it. There is no disem- bodied brain that understands the true meaning of things and speaks in neutral, value-free facts. Every meaning is a situated interpretation. Your identity matters too, and shapes your understanding. For another thing, I fnd that I learn better from a teacher I feel some connection to, and I hope to appear in the pages of this book now and then as a person you can get to know a little bit, and not just as some authority who wrote a text you were assigned to read. One more thing about me: I fnd the topics explored in the pages to come to be endlessly fascinating. I have assembled this Toolkit because I have sometimes struggled to introduce my own students to these con- cepts so that they could join with me in my particular kinds of deep interest in media. This book is meant as a guide along a journey not just into new knowledge but toward the satisfaction and even pleasure that come from working out new ideas and appreciating things you fnd to be fresh and revealing.
- 27. 10 INTRODUCTION References Du Gay, Paul. 2013. “Introduction to the First Edition.” In Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, edited by Paul Du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Andes koed Madsen, Hugh Mackay, and keith Negus, xxviii–xxxii. London: Sage. Johnson, Richard. 1986–1987. “What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?” Social Text 16: 38–80. Popp, Richard k. 2021. “Media.” In Information: A Historical Companion, edited by Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton, 601– 607. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Williams, Raymond. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
- 28. 2 INDUSTRY Media has to come from somewhere, and most often commercial media comes from companies in an industry. An industry is an arena of production, so a media industry produces media. One industry, such as the newspaper industry, is made up of all of the companies that make the same kind of products, such as print papers and digital news sites. Media texts, often called content within the business of media, are the output of media industries. These include movies, TV shows, magazines, videos, records, and games. In the circuit of culture, industry is at one point along a circle that includes text and audience, and together these three concepts form a loop. You can’t have one without the others. As a tool in our toolkit, industry tells us where media texts originate and what forces shape their creation. When media are produced by corporations in business to make money, their success or failure are measured in business terms. The businesses making a particular form of media compete or cooper- ate to produce goods or services, and the term industry implies a certain size and complexity. It comes with a sense of scale, and brings to mind factories and warehouses, distribution channels, and established work routines and conventions. Industries of all kinds have their own trade papers tracking developments, and they have conventions where people who work in the industry and journalists who cover the industry come together to show what they have made and talk about what’s new and what’s on the horizon. Two of the oldest and most famous American media trade papers are Editor & Publisher and Variety, which have covered the news and popular entertainment DOI: 10.4324/9781003007708-2
- 29. 12 INDUSTRY industries, respectively, since the early 20th century. An example of an industry convention is Cinecom, an annual gathering for flm exhibitors. If you set up shop making handmade jewelry to sell at art fairs, you prob- ably wouldn’t say you work in the jewelry industry as you would be missing that sense of scale. You would be a craftsperson or artisan, and perhaps an entrepreneur. But if you went to work for a company that mass produces jew- elry to sell at Walmart or on Amazon, that would be an industry job. In an age of social media creators, it’s increasingly hard to tell where amateur, artisanal production ends and professional, industrial production begins. This distinc- tion can be pretty fuzzy. If you produce makeup tutorial videos for YouTube and get participation from brands that send you samples and help you earn advertising revenue, you might be part of the online creator industry, even if you can barely make a living at it. Your YouTube videos would be serving the commercial interests of the platform’s parent company, Google, one of the biggest and most powerful forces in the media business of the digital age. Industry is a singular term, but our topic here could as easily be plural – industries – as there are many. Each medium has its own, though they are interlocking and interdependent. Film, radio, television, recording (music), games, newspapers and magazines, publishing (books, comics), and social media are all media industries. There is also an advertising industry, which is integral to many of these other industries. Industries are local, regional, national, and global. There are many flm industries: the American flm industry, often synonymous with Hollywood, also includes small-scale independent productions far from Hollywood, and other nations have their own industries. The British or Japanese or Brazilian flm industries might have some points of contact with Hollywood, but they are also distinct. The American flm industry is also in the television busi- ness as the same companies and the same workers might go back and forth between making feature flms and television series, which are produced using many of the same tools and following many of the same conventions of production. Over time, the distinction between these media has become blurry as most content is viewed in the home or on mobile screens, and platforms like Netfix and Disney+ offer entertainment that can be hard to categorize as strictly either TV or cinema. Netfix and Disney are global companies, but much of our media is produced locally for nearby audiences all over the world. Some media, like feature flms, tend to be more national or global, but news is often local or regional in both its production and consumption. Where I live,
- 30. 13 INDUSTRY in southeastern Wisconsin, in the Midwest region of the US, the newspa- pers, news websites, and the television and radio stations employ journalists who live in the community and report on matters of local concern. If they are advertising-supported, the local advertising industry and the local busi- nesses that advertise (e.g., supermarkets, hardware stores, car dealers, health care providers, lawyers) are also part of this local news industry ecosystem. If you are aiming to work in media and don’t plan to live in a major media capital like Los Angeles or Toronto, the most likely workplaces to employ you are probably local or regional news or advertising companies. With some exceptions, these local media companies are for-proft busi- nesses. Much if not most of the media you consume is made by media professionals working in a commercial industry. This would be true of the shows on Netfix, the songs on Spotify, the news stories watched or read on smartphone apps, and the games played on a mobile device or con- sole. Commercial media means media run as a business, earning revenue to support the operations. A for-proft media company ultimately serves an agenda of keeping the business going and making more money than it spends. This may not be its only agenda – it also may aim to inform and entertain audiences – but we should never lose sight of it. Some of the media that people consume in the US and other Western countries is professionally made but in the non-proft sector, such as public radio and television. The American media network NPR is funded differently from most other news organizations in the US. It gets a small amount of funding in grants from the government, and the lion’s share of its budget – and of its member stations’ budgets – is from contributions from charitable organizations, corporations, and individual members (people like me who support their local public radio station). Even though it is public and non- proft rather than private and for-proft, the workers at NPR and its member stations are part of the broader news industry. Like the social media creator or the jewelry maker, there are many kinds of production that are smaller-scale than something you’d call industrial. In the case of YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, however, the users might be non-professional and unpaid, but the platforms are huge for-proft businesses, so we might consider this kind of media to be a hybrid of indi- vidual and industrial production that has some of the qualities of each. Workers in conventional industries labor under different conditions from social media content creators, with types of risk, reward, and compensation that vary from one kind of work to another.
- 31. 14 INDUSTRY These distinctions matter for the same reason that media industries more generally matter: we know more about how media work when we understand how they were made. Understanding how they were made needs to include understanding the goals and agendas of the individuals making media, and of the organizations they work in or work with. The agenda of public, non-proft media, or of individual online creators, might be different from conventional for-proft industries, but all types of media likely share the common agenda of needing to reach audiences and com- mand their attention, driving their varied metrics of success and failure. The professional identities of the workers at public media companies often are defned in ways quite similar to for-proft media workers: they want to make an impact, to be recognized for their work, and to reach the public with meaningful messages. The most basic, essential, fundamental truth of commercial media in a capitalist society, such as the media of the US and other rich free-market countries, is that it functions as any business functions, and is subject to the same incentives and constraints. When we ask, “why is this the way it is?” it always pays to remember that most media we experience are produced by an industry in business to make money. Revenue Streams For-proft media companies, whatever they produce, generally have two ways of generating revenue. (Revenue refers to all of the earnings coming into a company, while proft refers to revenue minus expenditures. It’s possible to have large revenue and small profts, or none at all, if expenditures are high.) Some make money exclusively or almost exclusively from consumer spending, that is, from making a product that people are willing to pay for. When you go to the movies and spend your money to buy a ticket, some of it goes to the theater, and a lot of it goes to the flm distributor, who divides it up among the many different people and companies that get paid a share of a flm’s revenue. It’s true that some movie theaters show advertising before the feature, but revenue from those ads, which goes to the movie theaters, is a tiny amount compared to the money collected at the box offce. Video games, books, recordings, cable television, and news are all businesses that sell something to the consumer. Anything that offers monthly or yearly subscriptions, like a magazine or a streaming service, is making money this way.
- 32. 15 INDUSTRY Some media forms make money exclusively or almost exclusively from advertising. Radio over the air, which you can listen to on the AM and FM dials, is free to you the listener. You probably receive many commercial sta- tions over the air wherever you live, and these stations are mostly for-proft businesses that earn revenue from businesses that pay for the attention of audiences. Social media is another example of a for-proft media industry that is advertising-driven. No one yet pays to have a Twitter or Instagram account, except indirectly by being the target market for advertising on these platforms. If I buy a pair of shoes I saw advertised on social media (which I have done), you might think of the money I spent on them as an indirect cost that I paid to use a photo-sharing platform. As the old saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Some kinds of media rely on a combination of consumer and advertiser support. The news business is a good example, and so is cable television. A newspaper or website may charge readers for single copies of the paper or for unlimited digital access via a subscription. Cable providers offer dozens or hundreds of channels for the monthly fee they charge. But the news and the cable content you receive also carries ads, and with some rare excep- tions, cable networks and newspapers absolutely need the revenue from both streams to sustain themselves. A network like CNN gets paid twice: once from the subscriber, whose monthly cable bill is sliced up into the many fractions that go to the various channels they receive, and once from sponsors like drug companies and insurance agencies, whose commercials run in between segments of the network’s programs. Traditionally, in the mass media industries, there have been clear demar- cations of businesses by their revenue streams. Broadcasting was strictly advertising-supported. The recording industry earned its revenue from record sales for many decades, and as new formats emerged (LPs, CDs, MP3s), they adapted to selling their products for different kinds of devices and uses. Movies were made to be seen in the theater, by paying customers, and later adapted to being shown on television and released on home video for rental or purchase. Newspapers and magazines depended on a combina- tion of both kinds of revenue for hundreds of years. The digital age has upended many industry conventions and blurred many of the clear lines between the different industries. Television became a consumer-spending medium as cable TV grew in the 1980s. By the third decade of the 21st century, television is still broadcast for free over the air and supported with advertising, but it’s also seen commercial-free via platforms
- 33. 16 INDUSTRY like HBO Max and Netfix, and in both ad-free and ad-supported versions of platforms like Hulu and Peacock. Emerging media like podcasts and email newsletters have tried these different revenue streams with varying degrees of success. In some instances, new revenue streams have emerged that com- plicate the simple breakdown into two forms of income. For instance, some recording artists might earn as much revenue in the Spotify era licensing their work for use in television episodes or advertisements than in payments for streams. Catalogs of popular songs can have high value thanks to the revenue they earn this way (Hogan 2021). Podcasts might sell the rights to a story they told in an audio series to be made into a streaming series. In these examples, the customer for one kind of media is another kind of media. But these deals wouldn’t exist if the products were not, in the frst place, consumer-facing texts aiming for the attention and spending of a person listening to music or podcasts. A key insight about advertising-supported media like commercial radio and television is that the audience is not the customer, and is only indirectly the source of the industry’s revenue. The sponsor, not the viewer or listener or reader, is the one whose money the media producers are after. In this scenario, the audience functions as a commodity (Smythe 1981). Its atten- tion is being packaged and sold by the media producer to the advertiser, who sees value in targeting commercial messages at desirable consumers. A movie producer benefts from the largest number of people buying tickets, and while studios market flms at particular segments of the general public (for instance, addressing audiences of a particular age range and gender), they beneft from ticket sales being as high as possible. For a strictly advertising-supported business, though, the measure of suc- cess is likely to be rather different. Since many or most goods and services are marketed to a particular segment of the population, advertisers are inter- ested in engaging their potential customers more than they care about their appeals reaching the largest possible audience. Not all people who drive cars will ever seriously consider buying a new imported luxury vehicle, so Mercedes-Benz is wasting its advertising budget reaching the largest pos- sible audience for its commercials. It makes more sense for them to spend their money to target people who might actually buy a Benz. So they adver- tise in places where they believe they are likely to capture the attention of these particular people. In American ad-supported television, the key slice of the audience has long been viewers between 18 and 49 years of age, aka “the demo.” These
- 34. 17 INDUSTRY are the potential customers that many advertisers fnd most desirable, because people younger than 18 have less money and less power to direct consumer spending, and audiences 50 and older are believed to be set in their ways and harder to persuade. Many kinds of television are more nar- rowly pitched at male or female viewers 18–49, or at a smaller age range. If a sponsor is paying to advertise to men 18–49 (e.g., during a basketball game), then younger, older, and non-male audiences simply don’t have value to the television network. They might watch, but they don’t really count; the ads are simply not meant for them. Being advertising-driven brings benefts to a media company, one of which is offering its products at a low price or even for free. Social media has become so enmeshed in our lives by being so easy to access at no direct cost. Broadcasting over the air continues to be free to the consumer, though most television is now accessed via some form of subscription service. Before the internet disrupted the news business, free papers were widely distributed in many cities from stands by the front doors of stores and res- taurants. These “alt-weekly” tabloids contained local reporting and com- mentary, often from a sharply left-wing perspective, along with arts and culture criticism, events listings, classifed ads, and display advertisements for local businesses. Some still exist as online news sites, or even as print publications. The revenue for these free papers would come entirely from the advertising, so the circulation of the papers could be as high as the num- ber of people interested enough to pick up a free copy. In many ways the functions of free papers and the revenues from publica- tions like these have been taken over by digital versions of political, cultural, and personal discourse – social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are likewise free to the user, generating their revenue from advertising. By being free, these platforms have extended their reach into the lives of enor- mous numbers of people. The power and reach of advertising-supported media can be staggeringly broad. In advertising-supported media, the sponsor rather than the audience is the consumer, and the media producer might be mindful of the sponsor’s interests. Many newspapers rely on advertising from car and truck dealers, and may be unlikely to cover the automotive industry in highly critical terms, given who their customers are. Advertisers are notoriously sensitive to controversy, and in some instances consumer activists have called for advertiser boycotts of broadcasting or cable programming that they fnd objectionable. Over the years, several personalities on Fox News have faced
- 35. 18 INDUSTRY boycott calls targeting their advertisers after saying things many people found offensive, though the effectiveness of this strategy has been ques- tionable (Adgate 2020). Producers of some kinds of radio or television pro- gramming might seek to avoid certain controversial topics out of a fear of offending advertisers. The product of these dynamics can be a logic of safety in mainstream media, and a tendency to repeat inoffensive but successful formulas (Croteau and Hoynes 2019, 93; Gitlin 2000). Of course, consumer spending industries also beneft from playing it safe in many instances, but the kinds of constraint and pressure they face is likely to be different with- out needing to account for the interests of advertisers. By contrast to free ad-supported media, some media is expensive to the consumer, and being expensive also might bring advantages to the industry. Media industries that appeal to large audiences, such as Hollywood, can bank on signifcant revenues even from modestly priced offerings like movie tickets, which tend to be cheaper than many competing forms of entertainment, such as concerts, sporting events, and live theater. This allows them to make movies on a lavish scale, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Media industries that base their business model on consumers’ monthly subscrip- tions, including news outlets and streaming services, not only have the poten- tial for large numbers of consumers, depending on their market and product, but also regular income month after month, avoiding some of the volatility of the industries that are constantly appealing to audiences. Regardless of the particular revenue sources of any particular company or industry, the money always matters. Thinking about industries in relation to their business models yields insights into how media are made to appeal in certain ways to particular people. This can shed much light on how they got to be the way they are. (One bit of clarifcation may be useful here: advertisements are also com- monly known as commercials, but any media company in business to make money is part of a commercial media industry, even if its revenue is entirely from consumer spending. Commercial means that the media industry functions within a market of exchange of goods and services for money. It means that value is judged in relation to earnings, to the bottom line.) Political Economy and the Structures of Media Companies The area of media studies that focuses on how media are produced within a capitalist system includes a number of different approaches, including
- 36. 19 INDUSTRY prominently the political economy of media (McChesney 2013). Political econo- mists look at connections between, on the one hand, media companies and their ways of making money, and on the other hand, the forms of media produced by these companies. It is highly critical of the for-proft nature of most media in Western, capitalist societies and sees the proft motive as a factor that generally trumps other values in media production, such as the need to inform citizens about the world they live in, the better to serve all of the citizens in a democracy. The terms political and economy here suggest the way that economic forces determine relations of power. Political economists argue that the capitalist foundation of media companies determines what kind of content they produce. The particular kinds of media companies in an industry (e.g., their size and scope, their ways of earning profts) are critical economic factors shaping media products. An enduringly infuential account of mass media as the product of a capitalist system or production is the 1947 essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer (2002), two German-Jewish critics from the Frankfurt School who escaped the Nazis and settled in the United States. By joining the terms “culture” and “industry,” Adorno and Horkheimer meant to force a col- lision between incompatible ideas: culture had connotations of unique works of art, while industry by contrast suggested mass production of cheap amusements. To these critics, mass production of radio, music, movies, advertisements, and consumer goods was standardizing culture, imprinting a repetitious sameness on every product, and erasing the individualism of creators and audience members. This mass appeal, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, had the same kinds of effects on society as the fascist regime from which they fed: using media as propaganda to enforce conformity to one system, in this case the American capitalist system. It was being used, they argued, to keep audiences in a state of distraction or escape from criti- cal thought, a mindset that would beneft the powerful within the economic system. This is a key point for a political economy of media: the products of the media industries ultimately serve the interests of those with the eco- nomic power. Critical readers today might point out that the “Culture Industry” essay overstates some of its points for rhetorical effect, lacks an empirical basis, or fails to capture the authentic pleasures of popular culture and the potential of audiences to make their own meanings. But many of its points resonate so many years after its publication, and have given inspiration to critics of
- 37. 20 INDUSTRY media industries from the left. Its argument about the standardized, formu- laic qualities of mass culture, the conventionalized sameness of so much corporate media, makes a clear connection between political economy and the products of media industries that seems no less pertinent to 21st-century media than it was in the mid-20th century. In the years since the publication of “The Culture Industry,” the trend- line in Western media industries has gone in the direction of increasing the power of the capitalist industries. In the last few decades of the 20th cen- tury in the US, there was a dominant pair of intertwined trends in media industries: a concentration of media ownership and a spread of media conglomeration (Croteau and Hoynes 2006). Concentration refers to the shrinking number of owners of media companies. When several big newspaper chains buy up many local papers, the total number of newspaper owners becomes smaller, and ownership of news companies becomes more concentrated. (Think of the quart and a half of orange juice being reduced to a 12-ounce concentrate in a frozen can for sale in the supermarket.) This is exactly what has happened as the American newspaper industry has gone from having thousands of locally owned papers to a small number of massive chains, basically the news equivalents of the CVS outlets that have taken the place of locally- owned drug stores. The urban region where I live, Milwaukee, once had two major daily papers, the Journal and the Sentinel, both with local owners. They merged in the 1980s to become the Journal-Sentinel, which meant that the city went from having two daily newspaper companies to having one. Ownership of newspapers in this town became more concentrated when the number of owners was cut in half. But more recently, the Journal-Sentinel was acquired by a massive national chain, Gannett, which also owns USA Today and dozens of other daily news- papers, each of which was at one point independently and locally owned. Say 100 local papers with local owners eventually come to be acquired by one large chain like Gannett. In this case, media concentration will be much more drastic and intense than in the case of a single merger, as the number of owners will have shrunk down to 1 percent of its original value. A similar process has happened in many industries as the number of inde- pendently owned advertising agencies, record labels, and radio and televi- sion stations has shrunk considerably as major companies expand through mergers and acquisitions. You are probably familiar with this practice from the world of online media, such as Facebook’s ownership of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
- 38. 21 INDUSTRY Just looking at newspapers, the effects of media concentration on the content of media, i.e., the news, has been very clear. A single large chain standardizes the offerings in its outlets and reduces labor costs by eliminat- ing positions in each city, substituting national chain content for what would previously have been local reporting. Local papers have fewer newsroom workers in the age of media concentration than they had when they were independent businesses. They have shed their television and book critics, their city desk reporters, and much of their coverage of local politics and local affairs more generally. These changes have many causes, but one of them is media concentration. The pursuit of proft by large national chains may be incompatible with producing news that serves local communities in every part of a country as large and spread out as the United States. In combination with the rise of digital media and other changes in media industries, these forces have led to a drastic reduction in the number of newsroom employees in the frst decades of the 21st century (PEN America 2019; Walker 2021). A related phenomenon is media conglomeration. A conglomerate is a big company made up of many other companies in different lines of busi- ness. Gannett is mainly a newspaper chain. It is not the best example of a media conglomerate because it focuses on just one form of media, the news. Disney, by contrast, is an excellent example of a media conglomerate as it is made up of many different kinds of media businesses that came together through mergers and acquisitions (Wasko 2020). Disney in the 2020s is a sprawling empire comprised of local television stations, a broadcast televi- sion network (ABC), cable channels (ESPN and Disney Channel, among oth- ers), a streaming platform to rival Netfix (Disney+), a massive flm and television production operation that includes Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and 20th Century (acquired from 20th Century Fox), and Disney theme parks on three continents. The company began, under Walt Disney, as an anima- tion studio that made cartoon flms. In the 1950s, it expanded by creating a theme park, Disneyland, and a television show by the same name (Anderson 1994, 133–155), and this provided a model of transmedia synergy, with content from movies being turned into rides and television show segments, and with each product promoting the others (Wasko 2020). Many rides at Disney’s parks have been based on Disney’s feature flms, and sometimes the process works in reverse, as rides like Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise have been adapted into blockbuster flms. A media conglomerate has many tentacles in different areas of the busi- ness of media, and some of them will have little to do with one another.
- 39. 22 INDUSTRY But the bundling together of movies, television and streaming, and theme parks in the case of Disney lends itself to certain kinds of creative decision- making. Conglomerates often favor media franchises, such as Disney’s Star Wars and Marvel properties. Franchises can milk intellectual property over a period of years or decades via multiple releases on various platforms, from feature flms to comic books to video games to television or streaming series to theme park attractions (Johnson 2013). The structure of the conglomerate makes such convergences possible and proftable. It dictates that transmedia synergy will be one of the strategies for developing content. As a conse- quence, the development of movies that have little potential to become a media franchise, to be the basis for a theme park attraction or a stream- ing series spinoff, will be less central to the conglomerate’s ways of doing business (Meehan 1991). A political economy approach to media industries prompts us to see these connections between media ownership and the products of media industries as deeply embedded in the logic of advanced capitalist media enterprises. Horizontal and Vertical Integration Looking at media industries and their structures of ownership, we can see two kinds of patterns of integration of their supply chain (Croteau and Hoynes 2006, 96–102). Integration here refers to the combination of two or more elements of a media business. If a business does nothing but sell products, you would not say that it is integrated at all, but if it produces products, moves them to market, and sells them to consumers, then you would say that it integrates production, distribution, and retail sales, controlling its supply chain. For example, if you make candles and open a candle shop to sell them, you integrate those two aspects of a candle business. Some media companies are integrated in this way. The classic example was the Hollywood studios in their golden age, the 1920s to 1940s (Balio 2011). These studios, including Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, and 20th Century Fox, were flm producers as well as flm distributors (they rented movies to theaters in exchange for a percentage of box offce revenue) and flm exhibi- tors (they owned cinema chains all over the US). As it happens, the major studios operated as a cartel that dealt only in their own and each other’s products and required any theater renting their movies to take a whole block of pictures rather than rent them one by one, a practice called block book- ing. The Supreme Court of the United States found this whole setup to be an
- 40. 23 INDUSTRY illegal business practice, and in 1948 ordered the studios to divorce from their theater chains, which meant they had to take an integrated business and dismantle it by selling off their movie houses to other owners. The kind of integration that the Hollywood studios had in their golden age was vertical integration. They combined production, distribution, and exhi- bition of motion pictures into individual companies. But they were primar- ily in the movie business and had not moved into other kinds of media. In this period of American media history, each form of media was more or less in its own world. The recording industry, the broadcasting industry (radio and then TV), the newspaper industry, the magazine industry, the book publishing industry, and the motion picture industry were all much more separate from one another industrially than they would become later on. Other industries, like cable and satellite TV, video games, and online social or streaming media did not yet exist. In the second half of the 20th century and into the frst decades of the 21st, this separation between the different industries began to erode as many mergers and acquisitions brought together companies in different sectors of the media trade, ultimately forming massive conglomerates like Comcast and Disney (Balio 1990). By the beginning of the 21st century, all of the major Hollywood studios and national television broadcast networks were part of media conglomerates that included other media in addition to cinema and broadcasting. A conglomerate that combines news and enter- tainment, flm and television, publishing and theme parks, is not necessarily vertically integrated like the movie studios were in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Rather, this kind of combination of different kinds of media within one large company is horizontally integrated. It should help to visualize this spatially. Each industry is lined up side- by-side: movies, television, newspapers, magazines, video games, etc. Companies that combine production, distribution, and/or exhibition or sales are vertically integrated. A contemporary example of a vertically inte- grated media conglomerate would be Comcast, which is both the parent companies of movie and television producers (NBCUniversal) as well as internet and television service providers, effectively selling the means for consumers to connect to the content they produce. They are involved in making media but also in selling media products directly to consumers. By contrast, companies that combine the production of two or more kinds of media are horizontally integrated. In its heyday from the 1980s to the 2010s, the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. combined many
- 41. 2 4 INDUSTRY news and entertainment businesses, including major daily newspapers in sev- eral countries, 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood, the Fox television network (he started it), cable channels including Fox News, and the book publishing giant HarperCollins. Before it was acquired by AT&T in 2018, Warner Bros. was part of a conglomerate, Time-Warner, that at various times included magazines, comics, video games, movies, cable television, music, an internet portal (AOL), and a broadcast network, the WB (one of the networks that merged to become The CW). When visualized spatially, each of these separate media is lined up one by one next to one another in a broad array, so integrating the different kinds of media is a horizontal combination. Time- Warner and Comcast are also examples of horizontal integration. The typi- cal American media conglomerate since the 1990s has combined, at the very least, broadcast and cable television and movie companies with some other forms of media or entertainment, whether music, publishing, or theme parks. The reason to pay attention to vertical and horizontal integration brings us back to the political economy of media. Vertically integrated businesses exercise control over every part of their product’s lifespan. They can beneft from setting terms of their trade at all levels. A recent example would be the streaming media portals like Netfix and Disney+ (Lotz 2017). Netfix began as an online version of a video store, basically a retailer with a monthly subscription movie rental business. It was in need of large amounts of con- tent to make the subscription worthwhile to the consumer, and it paid the Hollywood studios (among other producer-distributors) for this content, frst by buying their DVDs, and then by licensing their shows and movies for online streaming. When it began to produce its own television series and movies during the 2010s, Netfix moved into vertical integration. Its origi- nal content is exclusive to Netfix, and is an attraction to non-subscribers to sign up, as well as a way of keeping consumers who already subscribe from dropping the service (which in the subscription business is called churn). It also benefts Netfix by saving it the expense of paying someone else for content, and may prove lucrative over the long run as the content produced now will likely continue to have value in the future, just as old movies and television series from before the streaming age (e.g., Friends, The Offce, Harry Potter flms) continue to make money in reruns and on the various streaming platforms. The point is that by moving into vertical integration, Netfix has strengthened its position in the media industries. By contrast, Disney+, which launched in 2020, has given its parent com- pany an opportunity to exploit both vertical and horizontal integration.
- 42. 25 INDUSTRY As a service (like Netfix) that directly charges users a monthly fee for its service, it is combining the sale of a media product with the production and exploitation of content. This includes its original series, as well as the library of movies and shows that Disney already owned at the time of launching the service. But as it develops new products – television shows like The Mandalorian and WandaVision – Disney is able to exploit the horizontal integration of a conglomerate that has many tentacles in different media: movies, games, theme parks, etc. Netfix might have a more impressively vast smorgasbord of video entertainment for now, but Disney has the advantage of its rich holdings of intellectual property. Its many television and movie series, under the various popular brands it has developed and acquired over time from Mickey Mouse to Marvel, contribute to its appeal as a streaming service. The logic of cross-platform integration will surely continue to inform Disney’s choices about which products to develop and extend as the online audience becomes more and more dominant while motion pictures and theme parks continue to be strong attractions. It pur- sues these projects because they are proftable, and because they make eco- nomic sense when a media producer is part of a horizontally and vertically integrated conglomerate. Legacy Media and the Tech Giants As the contrast of Netfix and Disney makes clear, old and new media com- panies are often competitors to one another. Over the history of modern media, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, we have seen cer- tain patterns repeat themselves. A new medium or technology emerges, and if it succeeds in capturing popular attention in a way that is commercially successful, an industry develops and grows, establishing its own conven- tions of doing business and trying to protect itself from rivals. This was true in the early 20th century with cinema, radio, and later television. At the same time, national advertising was growing along with the consumer economy, and advertising helped the magazine industry blossom and thrive. Later in the century, the music recording industry and the cable television industry were two strong players in shaping the direction of media and threatening established business practices, and at the very end of the cen- tury, the commercial internet emerged as a major force of change in com- munication and a cause of many disruptions. All of these are more than just names of a medium or a technology; they have all been industries in their
- 43. 26 INDUSTRY own right. There is often a potential for confict or cooperation among these businesses, and the clashes and negotiations among media industries have major consequences for the media landscapes we inhabit. As in many established felds, in the media business, we can identify companies that have endured over a long period of time, such as news- papers, movie studios, and broadcast networks. Some of these are institu- tions, like the New York Times (est. 1851), Universal Pictures (est. 1912), and NBC (est. 1926), that seem so durable as to be almost like they are part of the natural environment. By contrast, some of the most proftable and powerful media companies are relative newcomers. Apple Inc. (previously Apple Computer, Inc.) and Microsoft are relatively elderly for technology companies, having been founded in the 1970s. Amazon and Google were founded in the 1990s. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all began in the 2000s. Netfix began with its DVD-by-mail service in the 1990s, but its online streaming platform did not debut until 2007 and its frst original content debuted in 2012. So many of the dominant forces in the media today are barely older than teenagers. For a time, there was considerable debate about whether big tech frms like Facebook could be considered “media companies.” There is no magic formula for determining this kind of sorting, but it was revealing that Facebook would avoid being described as part of the media business, con- sidering that its vast number of users were making and sharing media on the platform from the start, and were using Facebook to access many differ- ent kinds of media from mainstream journalism to viral videos and social media outrages making the rounds. Not to mention the fact that Facebook’s revenue model, just like broadcasting and print media, is premised on sell- ing audiences to advertisers. Of course, Facebook is a media company, but it’s not the same kind of media company as a movie studio, television net- work, or news organization. It captures its users’ attention in new ways and offers them experiences that previous media had not offered. Facebook, along with various other online media platforms, including Google, has been so successful at claiming the attention and engagement of people all over the globe that spending on advertising by companies looking to reach consumers has shifted to an extraordinary extent from print media, and to some extent from broadcasting and cable television, to Google and Facebook (Einstein 2017, 37–38). They have amassed unprecedented power by claim- ing so much attention from so many people, and in the media driven by advertising revenue, attention is currency.
- 44. INDUSTRY 27 In the media industries, the old, established frms from the pre-digital era are often called the legacy media companies. Here legacy references not just having roots in the past, but also durability, prestige, and honor. Companies like the Washington Post or CBS have stood the test of time. Any prominent digital media companies are likely to be regarded, in contrast to the legacy media companies, as newcomers shaking things up and threatening the established order. The legacy companies are incumbents, the competitors who come to the contest already having status and power. The online and digital and social media challengers are insurgents, upstart competitors aiming to diminish the power of the established companies. In reality, the two kinds of companies also typically work together and as part of a larger ecosystem. Facebook needs the legacy media companies to be content for its users to share and comment on. Netfix licenses content from Hollywood studios and other television and flm producers around the world. And in pushing their con- tent onto streaming platforms, companies like Disney and WarnerMedia are learning from the insurgents how a legacy media business can succeed in the online era by copying their strategies while also exploiting the assets a legacy company brings to the table. The tendency in advanced capitalist economies such as the US in the early 21st century has been toward a small number of large frms dominating a particular business. When one company controls all of the sales of a par- ticular product, that’s called a monopoly, and we generally dislike monopolies because they have excessive power and exploit consumers for the enrich- ment of their owners. Many nations have laws against monopoly business practices that encourage competitive business environments. In the US, the key statute in this area is the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which can be used to force companies to be broken up into different smaller companies under separate ownership to create competition. In some areas of media business, such as cable and internet service pro- viders, we do observe monopoly or duopoly situations (a duopoly is an environment in which two companies dominate). A more common arrange- ment is an oligopoly, which is the domination of a trade by a small number of companies that work in cooperation with one another. The Hollywood stu- dios were an oligopoly when the Supreme Court ordered that their theater chains be sold off in 1948. The major media conglomerates of the early 21st century, including Disney, Comcast, and Viacom, operate as an oli- gopoly as well. The biggest problem with an oligopoly has to do with its scale. When media is such a big business, with so much capital involved, it
- 45. 28 INDUSTRY inhibits participation by newcomers. The only options are the major corpo- rate mass media. In the digital age, however, we have seen that the status of the media conglomerates has been threatened by the tech giants, the insurgents like Netfix and Facebook, which threaten to become new iterations of media monopolies. Innovation in the media industries often comes from outside of the established frms, from technological change and entrepreneurial newcomers (Wu 2011). It remains to be seen if the old and new giants of media will continue to compete with one another, or if one of them will attempt to absorb the other. In either event, the power of big companies or conglomerates is likely to remain undiminished within the advanced capi- talist marketplaces of Western economies. The legacy media giants are fac- ing competition from the new media giants, but the massive scale of media industry corporate structures continues despite the many changes observed over the frst decades of the 21st century. Studying the Media Industries When we want to know more about the media industries, where can we go to learn about them? Some things about the inner workings of a business can be hard to fnd out, as private companies may prefer to keep their affairs private. But media businesses, like many companies, also like to publicize their successes. Many aspects of the workings of media industries are fairly well known because they have become part of the publicity that circulates around the media as an industry whose fortunes depend on capturing and holding the attention of the public. For decades, the movie studios have hyped their weekly box offce revenues, and the television ratings are also widely reported as a form of entertainment news. Books are marketed as “bestsellers” and music recordings have traditionally been honored by sales milestones such as “gold” and “platinum” records. All of these quantifca- tions of success appear regularly in the popular press, in news reports and marketing discourse. Much more information can be gathered from tracking a more special- ized form of journalism: the industry trade press. Most industries have at least one trade paper dedicated to covering the business for readers who work in that business. Media industry trade papers like Broadcasting & Cable (for the television industry) and Billboard (for the recording industry) are rich sources of information about how media industries work. If you are studying media industries in a class, an assignment might ask you to locate
- 46. INDUSTRY 29 articles on a particular topic in an industry trade publication, and these are often accessible through periodical databases accessible via a school or pub- lic library website. Sometimes these publications are also available for free online. A great deal of knowledge of media industries can be gathered from these sources, both the popular and trade publications. Many studies of media industries want to get closer than just reading articles about how a business works. There are drawbacks to the trade press, which often presents an optimistic side of the business that powerful peo- ple within an industry want to see circulating in coverage of their work. It can be hard to be critical of a business when your sources and subscribers all work in that business. But there are some alternatives or compliments to using trade press sources when doing research on the media industries. One method would be to talk to people who work in the media business and hear from them directly about how their industry works, and about their “cultures of production” (Caldwell 2009). Some researchers attend trade conventions where they might have a chance to interact with media professionals. Some conduct interviews via phone or email, or in person. An advantage of interviews over reading about an industry in the press is that the researcher can ask the questions they want answered, rather than be content to get the answers to someone else’s (a reporter’s) questions. A deeper level of engagement with the people who work in media indus- tries can be achieved by spending time among the workers at their places of business, on site in media production spaces. This method is called eth- nography, a term from the discipline of anthropology (Stokes 2013, 104–112). An ethnographer is a participant-observer whose object of study is a group of people. Ethnographic research is a form of feldwork, where the researcher spends time in a location and among participants, getting to know their values, their forms of knowledge, and their ways of living and working. One kind of media ethnography that has been fairly widely practiced involves the study of journalism as a profession. Journalism researchers have spent months or longer in the offces of online newsrooms, producing richly detailed accounts of the professional practices, the norms and conven- tions, of news workers during the digital transition (e.g., Boczkowski 2004; Paterson and Domingo 2008; Robinson 2010). Their insights have yielded knowledge about media that no amount of trade press coverage could reveal. Many media industry researchers are just as interested in the past as the present, and while trade papers and interviews can be ways of accessing the history of media industries, another rich source of knowledge about the past is located in archives, such as collections of the papers of media
- 47. 30 INDUSTRY professionals. As private entities, many companies do not make their archives public, but some have donated papers such as memos and cor- respondence to libraries and archives, in addition to media like flm prints and videotapes. Archives of several American movie studios are held at the University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These materials are open to researchers and many articles and books have drawn on their contents. Archives can shed light on the internal workings of companies, conficts within business among workers who had different roles and interests, and strategies pursued or avoided. These forms of research can offer new ways of understanding the indus- tries as businesses, but many of the insights that researchers fnd most useful that come from interviews, ethnographies, and archival study pertain to media texts. Knowing how the text was made within its industrial produc- tion setting can help us understand why it came out the way it did, why it contains certain kinds of form or style, or certain meanings. Newsroom ethnographies can help explain why and how journalists follow particular routines of reporting and writing, and what pressures or constraints they work under. This can help us understand the news as a business, but also the news as a product. The archives of the Hollywood Production Code Administration reveal the negotiations between flm producers and the industry’s internal censors, who applied a set of rules to Hollywood flm that allowed for certain kinds of representation but not others during the period when the studios all adhered to the same code. Research on media production can yield many kinds of knowledge. For students doing research projects for a class assignment, ethnographic and archival research may be beyond the realm of possibility. But there are so many ways of accessing information about how the business of media works in our digital age, so many publications widely available, and so many media industry workers who are easy to fnd online and possibly will- ing to answer your questions. Media industry research can be particularly rewarding to students who have the goal of working in the media business, as the knowledge produced via research in this area can be applied directly in future work, or can serve as a kind of orientation or background set of assumptions that guide students as they enter the feld. Following the Money The incredible variety of media that we encounter on a daily basis makes it hard to generalize about their origins in industries that produce these many
- 48. Industry 31 different kinds of texts, from news stories to video games and from social media environments to advertising campaigns. But there are some things that media in an advanced capitalist society will have in common, and the vast majority of the media in our everyday lives continues to be the product of major commercial industries of enormous power. Even the small-scale per- formances we see on YouTube or Twitch or TikTok, or whatever the currently popular platform is, come to us via devices and networks that are enmeshed in the same big media and tech world as the legacy media conglomerates. When it comes to digital and electronic media, there really is no going “off the grid” of the corporate, commercial system. Even media branded as “inde- pendent” or “alternative” is likely to be enmeshed in systems of distribution and publicity that are part of the larger network of commercial mass media. Whether or not there is advertising paying the bills, commercial media functions as a business and a business has interests other than the public good. A truly public media system, a system funded by tax revenue rather than subject to the vagaries of the market, might offer a worthwhile alterna- tive that would better serve democratic goals of sharing information widely and engaging citizens in community affairs. But the power of for-profit commercial media in modern Western societies has been much greater than that of public media. This has profound consequences on the culture that makes up the landscape of our everyday lives. Media as the product of a commercial industry may be made to appeal to consumers, but ultimately the agenda of any commercial business is profits. When you wonder how the media you love or hate, or merely find familiar day in and day out, got to be the way it is, you can usually learn something informative if you simply follow the money. Discussion Questions 1. What is the difference between these revenue models: consumer spending, advertising, and a mix of the two? Why do they matter? 2. What are vertical and horizontal integration? Why might it give a com- pany an advantage to be either vertically or horizontally integrated? 3. Choose any example of media that you find interesting and find out which company produced it. What does knowing about the origins of the text in an industry help you understand about it? 4. What are some similarities and differences between legacy media and new media? Do you think one or the other has a better chance of con- tinued success over the next few decades?
- 49. 32 INDUSTRY References Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 2002. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, translated by Edmund Jephcott, 94–136. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Adgate, Brad. 2020. “Do Advertiser Boycotts Work? It Depends.” Forbes, June 17, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/06/17/ do-advertiser-boycotts-work-it-depends/?sh=1fb10cb04ed8 Anderson, Christopher. 1994. Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties. Austin: University of Texas Press. Balio, Tino. 1990. Hollywood in the Age of Television. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Balio, Tino. 2011. The American Film Industry, rev. ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Boczkowski, Pablo. 2004. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Caldwell, John Thornton. 2009. “Cultures of Production: Studying Industry’s Deep Texts, Refexive Rituals, and Managed Self-Disclosures.” In Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method, edited by Jennifer Holt and Alisa Perren, 199–212. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Croteau, David and William Hoynes. 2006. The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. Croteau, David and William Hoynes. 2019. Media/Society, 6th ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Einstein, Mara. 2017. Advertising: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. Gitlin, Todd. 2000. Inside Prime Time. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hogan, Marc. 2021. “What to know About Music’s Copyright Gold Rush.” Pitchfork, January 25, 2021. https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/what-to- know-about-musics-copyright-gold-rush/ Johnson, Derek. 2013. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library. http://www. amandalotz.com/portals-a-treatise-on-internetdistributed-television McChesney, Robert. 2013. “The Political Economy of Communication: An Idiosyncratic Presentation of an Emerging Subfeld.” In The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 1st ed., edited by Angrahad N. Valdivia. Malden: Blackwell, 2013.
- 50. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 51. Er versuchte es nicht, diese Gedanken weiter zu verfolgen; aber jene glückliche Zeit hätte er festhalten mögen durch eine mächtigere Kraft als das Gedächtnis; er hätte wieder an der Seite seiner geliebten Marie sein, ihre weiche Wange streicheln, ihren warmen Atem fühlen mögen, und schon schien es ihm, als ob über seinem Haupte … »Nikolaus Petrowitsch,« fragte dicht neben dem Gebüsch Fenitschka, »wo sind Sie?« Er erbebte. Nicht als ob er ein Gefühl von Reue oder Scham empfunden hätte … Es war ihm nie eingefallen, den mindesten Vergleich zwischen seiner Frau und Fenitschka anzustellen; aber es schmerzte ihn, daß diese ihn in diesem Augenblick überraschte. Ihre Stimme rief ihm augenblicklich seine grauen Haare, sein frühzeitiges Alter, seine gegenwärtige Lage ins Gedächtnis zurück … Die feenhafte Welt, in deren Räume er sich aufgeschwungen, diese Welt, die sich bereits auf den verschwommenen Nebeln der Vergangenheit abhob, erblaßte und verschwand. »Hier bin ich,« antwortete er; »ich komme gleich; geh nur.« – »Das,« sagte er sich fast im gleichen Moment, »sind wieder die Herrengewohnheiten, deren ich soeben noch gedachte.« Fenitschka warf einen Blick in das Gebüsch und entfernte sich still. Jetzt erst bemerkte er zu seinem großen Erstaunen, daß die Nacht ihn in seinen Träumereien überrascht hatte. Rings um ihn her wars dunkel und still, und Fenitschkas Antlitz war ihm in den wenigen Sekunden, da sie vor der Laube erschien, so bleich und zart vorgekommen. Er stand auf, um in sein Zimmer zu gehen; aber sein gerührtes Herz hatte sich noch nicht wieder beruhigt, und er ging langsam im Garten auf und ab, die Augen bald niedergeschlagen, bald zum Himmel erhoben, der schon voller Sterne glühte. Lange, fast bis zur Ermüdung, war er so gegangen, und doch wollten sich Aufregung und Unruhe in seiner Brust nicht legen. Wie hätte sich Bazaroff über ihn lustig gemacht, wenn er von diesem Zustand Kenntnis gehabt hätte! Arkad sogar hätte ihn getadelt. Seine Augen hatten sich mit Tränen gefüllt, mit Tränen, die ohne Grund quollen;
- 52. für einen Vierziger, einen Hausherrn und Ökonomen war das noch tausendmal schlimmer als Violoncellspielen. Kirsanoff setzte seinen Spaziergang fort und konnte sich nicht entschließen, in sein friedliches Nest zu gehen, in das Haus, das mit seinen erleuchteten Fenstern so freundlich einlud; er fühlte den Mut nicht, den Garten und die Dunkelheit zu verlassen, der frischen Luft, die ihm die Stirne kühlte, dieser Trauer, dieser Aufregung zu entsagen … Da trat ihm Paul bei einer Wendung des Weges entgegen. »Was hast du denn?« fragte ihn dieser; »du siehst bleich aus wie ein Gespenst. Bist du krank? Du tätest wohl daran, zu Bett zu gehen.« Kirsanoff erklärte ihm mit einigen Worten seine Empfindungen und ging ins Haus. Paul lief bis ans Ende des Gartens; auch er fing an, nachzudenken und die Augen zum Himmel aufzuschlagen. Aber seine schönen Augen spiegelten nur den Sternenschein wider. Er war kein Romantiker, und die Träumerei paßte nicht zu seinem leidenschaftlichen Wesen; er war ein prosaischer Mensch, wenn auch zärtlichen Gefühlen nicht unzugänglich, ein Menschenfeind französischer Art. »Höre!« sagte am gleichen Abend Bazaroff zu seinem Freund, »ich habe einen prächtigen Einfall. Dein Vater sagte uns heute, daß er von dem großen Hans, eurem Vetter, eine Einladung erhalten habe. Er will nicht hingehen; wie wärs, wenn wir eine Tour nach X… machten? Du bist in die Einladung dieses Herrn mitinbegriffen. Du siehst, was hier für ein Wind weht; die Reise wird uns gut tun, wir sehen die Stadt. Es kostet uns höchstens fünf oder sechs Tage.« »Und du kehrst mit mir hierher zurück?« »Nein, ich muß zu meinem Vater. Du weißt, daß er höchstens 20 Werst von X… entfernt wohnt. Ich hab sie lange nicht gesehen, ihn und meine Mutter; ich muß ihnen die Freude machen. Es sind brave Leute, und mein Vater ist dabei ein drolliger Kauz. Zudem haben sie nur mich, ich bin ihr einziges Kind.«
- 53. »Bleibst du lange?« »Ich glaube nicht. Vermutlich werde ich mich dort langweilen.« »Aber du besuchst uns auf dem Rückwege?« »Je nachdem; ich weiß es noch nicht. Nun? einverstanden? reisen wir?« »Sei's,« antwortete Arkad gleichgültig. Im Grunde war er mit dem Vorschlag seines Freundes sehr zufrieden; er hielt es aber für nötig, sichs nicht merken zu lassen; so schickte sichs für einen echten Nihilisten. Am nächsten Morgen reiste er mit Bazaroff nach X… Die Jugend von Marino bedauerte ihre Abreise; Duniascha vergoß sogar einige Tränen … Paul aber und sein Bruder, »die Alten«, wie Bazaroff sagte, atmeten wieder freier.
- 55. D Zwölftes Kapitel er Stadt X…, wohin sich die beiden Freunde begaben, stand als Gouverneur ein noch junger Mann vor, der, wie man es oft in Rußland findet, Fortschrittsmann und Despot zugleich war. Schon im ersten Jahr seines Dienstantritts war er so geschickt gewesen, sich nicht nur mit dem Adelsmarschall, einem pensionierten Generalstabsoffizier, großem Pferdezüchter und nebenbei sehr gastfreundlichem Mann, sondern auch mit seinen eigenen Beamten zu überwerfen. Die Differenzen, die daraus hervorgingen, hatten in dem Maße zugenommen, daß der Minister sich veranlaßt sah, einen Vertrauensmann an Ort und Stelle zu senden, um die Dinge wieder ins Geleis zu bringen. Diese Sendung war Matthias Ilitsch Koliazin, dem Sohn des Koliazin übertragen, der ehemals Vormund der Brüder Kirsanoff gewesen war. Er war gleichfalls ein Beamter von der jungen Schule, obwohl er die Vierziger schon überschritten hatte; er hatte sich jedoch vorgenommen, ein Staatsmann zu werden, und trug auch bereits zwei Sterne auf der Brust. Einer derselben war übrigens nur ein ausländischer, wenig geschätzter Orden. Gleich dem Gouverneur, über den er zu urteilen kam, galt er für einen Fortschrittsmann, und so einflußreich er auch war, unterschied er sich doch wesentlich von andern Beamten seines Rangs. Er hatte allerdings eine sehr hohe Meinung von sich und eine grenzenlose Eitelkeit, doch waren seine Formen einfach, und in seinem Blick lag etwas Ermunterndes; er hörte mit Wohlwollen zu und lachte so natürlich, daß man ihn beim ersten Begegnen für einen »guten Kerl« hätte halten können. Übrigens war er ganz der Mann, wenn es die Umstände erforderten, rücksichtslose Strenge walten zu lassen. »Energie ist unerläßlich,« sagte er, »sie ist die vornehmste Eigenschaft eines Staatsmanns.« Trotz dieser stolzen Sprache aber ward er fast immer düpiert, und jeder nur etwas erfahrene Beamte
- 56. führte ihn an der Nase herum. Matthias Ilitsch machte viel Aufhebens von Guizot und bemühte sich, jeden, der ihn anhören wollte, zu überzeugen, daß er keiner von jenen zurückgebliebenen Beamten sei, von jenen Männern der Routine, wie man so viele findet; daß seiner Wahrnehmung keine der großen Erscheinungen des sozialen Lebens entgehe … Derartige Schlagwörter waren ihm durchaus vertraut. Auch den literarischen Bewegungen folgte er; aber er gefiel sich darin, es mit einer majestätischen Herablassung zu tun, ungefähr wie ein Mann von reiferem Alter manchmal auf ein paar Augenblicke einem Auflauf von Straßenjungen nachgeht. In der Tat hatte Matthias Ilitsch die Staatsmänner aus der Regierungszeit Alexanders I. nicht sehr überholt, welche damals in Petersburg, wenn sie sich auf eine Soiree bei Madame Swetschina vorbereiteten, morgens ein Kapitel aus Condillac lasen; nur seine Formen waren etwas zeitgemäßer. Er war ein gewandter Höfling, ein höchst feiner Mann, nichts weiter; er hatte keinen Begriff von Geschäften und dabei Mangel an Geist; aber sein eigenes Interesse verstand er sehr gut. Darüber konnte ihn niemand täuschen, und dies ist ein Talent, dem man sein Verdienst nicht abstreiten kann. Matthias Ilitsch empfing Arkad mit dem einem aufgeklärten Beamten eigenen Wohlwollen, wir möchten fast sagen mit Heiterkeit. Doch ward er bei der Nachricht etwas verstimmt, daß die übrigen Eingeladenen auf dem Lande zurückgeblieben seien. »Dein Papa war immer ein Original,« sagte er zu Arkad und ließ die Quasten seines prächtigen Samtschlafrocks durch die Finger gleiten; dann wandte er sich rasch zu einem jungen Beamten in streng zugeknöpfter Interimsuniform und herrschte ihn mit Amtsmiene an: »Nun, und Sie?« Der junge Mann, dem langes Schweigen die Lippen versiegelt hatte, richtete sich auf und betrachtete seinen Vorgesetzten mit dem Ausdruck der Überraschung. Matthias Ilitsch aber, nachdem er ihn so verblüfft hatte, schenkte ihm nicht die geringste Beachtung mehr. Unsere Oberbeamten lieben es insgemein, ihre Untergebenen zu verblüffen; die Mittel aber, deren sie sich dazu bedienen, sind ziemlich verschieden. Eins zum Beispiel unter andern ist sehr beliebt, »is quite a favourite«, wie die Engländer sagen. Der Oberbeamte
- 57. versteht plötzlich die einfachsten Worte nicht mehr, als ob er von Taubheit befallen wäre. Er fragt z. B. nach dem Wochentag. Man antwortet ihm untertänigst: »Freitag, Euer Exzellenz.« »He? Was? Was ist – Was sagen Sie?« versetzt darauf der Oberbeamte gedehnt. »Es ist heute Freitag, Euer Exzellenz.« »Wie, was, was ist mit dem Freitag, was für ein Freitag?« »Freitag, Euer Exzellenz, ein Wochentag.« »Wie, du nimmst dir heraus, mich belehren zu wollen?« Ein Oberbeamter dieses Schlags war Matthias Ilitsch, trotz all seinem Liberalismus. »Ich rate dir, mein Lieber,« sagte er zu Arkad, »dem Gouverneur deinen Besuch zu machen. Du verstehst mich; wenn ich dir diesen Rat gebe, so darfst du darum nicht denken, ich halte noch an der alten Regel, daß man den Autoritäten den Hof machen muß; ich rate dirs, weil der Gouverneur ganz einfach ein Mann comme il faut ist; überdies hast du doch wohl die Absicht, unsere Gesellschaft zu besuchen. Ich hoffe, du bist kein Bär? Der Gouverneur gibt übermorgen einen großen Ball.« »Werden Sie demselben auch beiwohnen?« fragte Arkad. »Er gibt ihn ja meinetwegen,« sagte Matthias Ilitsch fast mitleidig. »Du tanzest doch?« »Ja, aber ziemlich schlecht.« »Um so schlimmer, es kommen einige hübsche Frauen, und zudem ist es für einen jungen Mann eine Schande, nicht tanzen zu können. Ich wiederhole dir, ich sage dies nicht aus Anhänglichkeit an den alten Brauch, ich meine durchaus nicht, der Geist stecke in den Beinen, aber den Byronismus finde ich lächerlich, er hat sich überlebt.«
- 58. »Glauben Sie denn, lieber Onkel, daß der Byronismus …« »Ich werde dich mit unsern Damen bekannt machen. Ich nehme dich unter meine Fittiche,« erwiderte Matthias Ilitsch mit wohlgefälligem Lächeln. »Da wirst du warm sitzen! He?« Ein Bedienter trat ein und meldete den Präsidenten der Finanzkammer, einen Greis mit honigsüßem Blick und eingekniffenen Lippen, der für die Natur schwärmte, zumal im Sommer, wenn, wie er sagte, die fleißige Biene aus jeder Blume ihr Schöppchen zapft. Arkad zog sich zurück. Er fand Bazaroff in dem Gasthaus, in dem sie abgestiegen waren, und es gelang seinem Zureden, daß dieser einwilligte, mit zum Gouverneur zu gehen. »Meinetwegen,« sagte er, »wenn man den kleinen Finger gegeben hat, so muß man auch die Hand reichen. Wir sind gekommen, um die Herren Gutsbesitzer kennen zu lernen. Also lernen wir sie kennen.« Der Gouverneur empfing die jungen Leute freundlich, aber er lud sie nicht ein, zu sitzen, und blieb selbst auch stehen. Er hatte immer eine Amtsmiene; kaum aufgestanden, steckte er sich in seine große Uniform, legte eine enganschließende Krawatte an und ließ sich die Zeit nicht, sein Frühstück in Ruhe zu nehmen, um ja nichts von seinen Geschäften zu versäumen. Er hatte im Gouvernement den Spitznamen »Bourdaloue«, keineswegs mit Anspielung auf den berühmten französischen Prediger, sondern auf das Wort »Bourde«, was bekanntlich »Flause« bezeichnet. Er lud Arkad Kirsanoff und Bazaroff zu seinem Balle ein und wiederholte diese Einladung nach ein paar Minuten, wobei er sie für zwei Brüder nahm und ihnen den Namen Kaisarof gab. Als sie das Haus des Gouverneurs verließen, begegneten sie einer Droschke, die plötzlich stillhielt; ein junger Mann mittlerer Größe, in einem polnischen Schnurrock nach der Mode der Slawophilen,
- 59. sprang heraus und lief mit dem Rufe: »Eugen Wassiliewitsch!« auf Bazaroff zu. »Ah, Sie sinds, Herr Sitnikoff,« sagte Bazaroff, ohne stehenzubleiben. »Was führt Sie hierher?« »Stellen Sie sich vor, ich bin ganz zufällig hier,« erwiderte dieser, wandte sich nach der Droschke, winkte fünf-, sechsmal mit der Hand und rief: »Fahr nach, fahr nach! Mein Vater«, fuhr er fort, indem er über die Gosse sprang, »hat ein Geschäft hier und hat mich ersucht … Ich habe heute erfahren, daß Sie auch hier sind, und komme eben von Ihnen her. (In der Tat fanden die Freunde bei ihrer Rückkunft in den Gasthof eine umgebogene Karte vor, welche auf der einen Seite den Namen Sitnikoff mit lateinischen, auf der andern mit slawischen Lettern trug.) Ich hoffe doch, Sie sind nicht beim Gouverneur gewesen?« »Hoffen Sie nicht? Wir kommen von ihm her.« »Ah, dann gehe ich auch hin. Eugen Wassilitsch, stellen Sie mich doch Ihrem Herrn … diesem Herrn vor.« »Sitnikoff – Kirsanoff,« murmelte Bazaroff, ohne anzuhalten. »Es freut mich sehr,« hob Sitnikoff, gegen Arkad gewendet, mit anmutigem Lächeln an, während er seine Handschuhe, die von der ausgezeichnetsten Eleganz waren, rasch auszog. »Ich habe schon viel von Ihnen reden hören. Ich bin ein alter Bekannter von Eugen Wassilitsch und darf mich sogar seinen Schüler nennen. Ich verdanke ihm meine Umwandlung.« Arkad warf die Augen auf den umgewandelten Schüler Bazaroffs; sein kleines, glattes Gesicht und seine regelmäßigen Züge hatten einen unruhigen, gespannten, aber beschränkten Ausdruck; seine Augen blickten stier und unstet zugleich, sein Lachen sogar, kurz und trocken, hatte etwas Wirres. »Sie werden mir kaum glauben,« fuhr er fort; »als Eugen Wassilitsch mir zum erstenmal erklärte, man brauche keine Autorität anzuerkennen, empfand ich eine solche Freude … ich fühlte mich
- 60. wie neugeboren! Endlich doch einmal ein Mann! sagte ich mir. Apropos, Eugen Wassilitsch, Sie müssen notwendig eine hiesige Dame besuchen, die ganz auf Ihrer Höhe steht, und für die Ihr Besuch ein wahres Fest sein wird; Sie müssen schon von ihr gehört haben.« »Wer ists?« fragte Bazaroff gelangweilt. »Eudoxia Nikitischna Kukschin. Das ist eine merkwürdige Natur, emanzipiert im vollsten Sinne des Wortes, ein wahrhaft fortgeschrittenes Weib, müssen Sie wissen! Laßt uns jetzt gleich alle drei zu ihr gehen, sie wohnt zwei Schritt von hier. Wir frühstücken da … ihr habt doch noch nicht gefrühstückt?« »Nein.« »Vortrefflich! Sie lebt natürlich getrennt von ihrem Mann und ist unabhängig …« »Ist sie hübsch?« fragte Bazaroff. »Nein, das kann ich nicht sagen.« »Warum zum Teufel sollen wir sie dann besuchen?« »Scherz beiseite, sie wird uns eine Flasche Champagner auftischen.« »Wahrhaftig! Der praktische Mann verrät sich bald. Apropos, macht Ihr Vater immer noch in Branntwein?« »Ja,« erwiderte Sitnikoff rasch mit erzwungenem Lächeln. »Nun, kommen Sie mit?« »Ich weiß nicht, was ich sagen soll.« »Du wolltest ja Beobachtungen anstellen,« sagte Arkad halblaut. »Und Sie, Herr Kirsanoff,« fügte Sitnikoff hinzu, »Sie kommen doch auch? Wir gehen nicht ohne Sie.« »Wir können doch nicht alle drei nur so ins Haus fallen …« »Das tut nichts. Die Kukschin ist ein gutes Ding.«
- 61. »Sie wird uns also eine Flasche Champagner auftischen?« wiederholte Bazaroff. »Drei,« rief Sitnikoff, »ich stehe dafür.« »Womit?« »Mit meinem Kopf.« »Des Papas Beutel wäre ein besseres Pfand gewesen. Aber gleichviel, gehen wir hin!«
- 63. D Dreizehntes Kapitel as kleine Haus in moskowitischem Geschmack, welches Eudoxia Nikitischna Kukschin bewohnte, lag in einer Straße, welche erst kürzlich abgebrannt war; bekanntlich brennen unsere Landstädtchen alle fünf Jahre ab. An der Eingangstüre neben einer schief angenagelten Visitenkarte hing ein Glockenzug; eine Frau in einem Häubchen, ein Mittelding zwischen Dienerin und Gesellschaftsdame, kam den Besuchern im Vorzimmer entgegen. Lauter Zeichen, daß die Herrin des Hauses eine Freundin des Fortschritts war. Sitnikoff fragte nach Eudoxia Nikitischna. »Ah, Sie sinds, Viktor!« rief eine Fistelstimme aus dem Nebenzimmer; »nur herein!« Sofort verschwand die Frau im Häubchen. »Ich bin nicht allein,« sagte Sitnikoff und warf einen Blick voll Zuversicht auf seine beiden Freunde, während er ungeniert seinen polnischen Überrock ablegte, unter dem eine Art englischen Sackpaletots zum Vorschein kam. »Das tut nichts,« erwiderte Eudoxia Nikitischna, »nur herein!« Die jungen Leute gehorchten. Das Zimmer, in das sie eintraten, glich mehr einem Arbeitskabinett als einem Salon. Papier, Briefe, russische Revuen, deren Blätter größtenteils unaufgeschnitten waren, lagen auf den staubigen Tischen; überall waren halbgerauchte Zigarren umhergeworfen. Die Herrin des Hauses lag nachlässig auf einem Ledersofa; sie war noch jung, hatte blonde Haare und ein Spitzentuch um den Kopf geschlungen; ihre kurzfingerigen Hände waren mit schweren Brasseletten geschmückt. Sie stand auf, zog eine mit vergilbtem Hermelin gefütterte Samtmantille nachlässig über die Schultern, sagte mit schmachtender Stimme zu Sitnikoff: »Guten Tag, Viktor,« und drückte ihm die Hand.
- 64. »Bazaroff – Kirsanoff,« sagte dieser kurz, indem er Bazaroffs Art, vorzustellen, nachäffte. »Willkommen, meine Herren,« sagte Madame Kukschin; und die runden Augen, zwischen denen ein armes, winziges rotes Stülpnäschen hervorstand, auf Bazaroff heftend, setzte sie hinzu. »Ich kenne Sie,« und drückte ihm gleichfalls die Hand. Bazaroff machte eine leichte Grimasse. Das unbedeutende Gesichtchen der Emanzipierten hatte gerade nichts allzu Häßliches, aber der Ausdruck ihrer Züge war unangenehm. Man hätte sie fragen mögen: »Was ist dir? Hast du Hunger oder Langeweile? Fürchtest du dich vor irgend etwas? Wozu all dieses Mühen?« Auch sie hatte, wie Sitnikoff, das Gefühl, als ob ihr fortwährend etwas die Seele zernagte. Ihre Bewegungen und ihre Sprache waren rasch und plump zugleich; sie selbst hielt sich ohne Zweifel für ein gutes und einfaches Geschöpf, und doch, was sie auch tun mochte, immer hatte es den Anschein, als beabsichtige sie, etwas anderes zu tun. »Ja ja, ich kenne Sie, Bazaroff,« wiederholte sie. (Nach einem den Provinzbewohnerinnen und selbst einigen Frauen Moskaus eigenen Brauch nannte sie die Männer, welche sie zum erstenmal sah, beim Familiennamen.) »Rauchen Sie eine Zigarre?« »Eine Zigarre, wohl!« sagte Sitnikoff, der sich inzwischen, das eine Bein über sein Knie gelegt, in einem Lehnstuhle zurechtgesetzt hatte; »aber Sie müssen uns auch ein Frühstück geben. Wir sterben vor Hunger; lassen Sie auch gleich eine Flasche Champagner bringen.« »Sybarit!« erwiderte Eudoxia mit Lachen. (Wenn sie lachte, sah man ihr oberes Zahnfleisch.) »Ists nicht wahr, Bazaroff, daß er ein Sybarit ist?« »Ich liebe den Komfort,« sagte Sitnikoff würdevoll; »das hindert mich aber nicht, liberal zu sein.« »Doch! doch!« rief Eudoxia und befahl ihrem Kammermädchen, ein Frühstück zu besorgen und Champagner zu bringen. »Was halten
- 65. Sie davon?« fragte sie Bazaroff; »ich weiß gewiß, Sie sind meiner Ansicht.« »Da täuschen Sie sich,« erwiderte Bazaroff, »ein Stück Fleisch ist besser als ein Stück Brot, selbst vom Standpunkt der chemischen Analyse.« »Ah, Sie beschäftigen sich mit Chemie; das ist meine Passion. Ich habe sogar einen Kitt erfunden.« »Einen Kitt? Sie?« »Ja, ich, und wissen Sie wozu? Zu Puppen, zu Puppenköpfen; sie sind dauerhafter. Ich bin eine praktische Frau, ich. Aber ich bin noch nicht ganz damit im reinen. Ich muß Liebig konsultieren. Apropos, haben Sie in der ›Moskauer Zeitung‹ Kisliakoffs Artikel ›Über die Frauenarbeit‹ gelesen? Lesen Sie ihn, ich beschwöre Sie. Sie interessieren sich ja wohl für die Frauenfrage? Und für die Schulen ebenfalls? Was treibt Ihr Freund? wie heißt er?« Madame Kukschin warf diese Fragen eine nach der andern mit einer verzärtelten Nonchalance hin, ohne eine Antwort abzuwarten; verwöhnte Kinder sprechen so mit ihren Bonnen. »Ich heiße Arkad Nikolaitsch Kirsanoff,« sagte Arkad, »und treibe nichts.« Eudoxia lachte. »Das ist allerliebst! Rauchen Sie nicht? Viktor, Sie wissen, daß ich Ihnen böse bin!« »Warum?« »Sie fangen, wie ich höre, wieder an, für George Sand zu schwärmen. Das ist eine hinter der Zeit zurückgebliebene Frau und weiter nichts. Wie kann man wagen, sie mit Emerson zu vergleichen? Sie hat keine Idee weder von Erziehung noch von Physiologie noch von sonst etwas. Ich bin überzeugt, sie hat nie von Embryologie sprechen hören, und wie wollen Sie diese Wissenschaft heutzutage entbehren? (Eudoxia streckte die Arme aus, während sie
- 66. dies sagte.) Ach, welch herrlichen Artikel hat Elisewitsch über diesen Gegenstand geschrieben! Das ist einmal ein Genie, dieser Herr! (Eudoxia sagte immer ›Herr‹ statt ›Mann‹.) Bazaroff, setzen Sie sich zu mir auf das Sofa. Sie wissen vielleicht nicht, daß ich mich schrecklich vor Ihnen fürchte.« »Warum das? da bin ich doch neugierig.« »Sie sind ein sehr gefährlicher Herr. Sie kritisieren alles in der Welt. Aber mein Gott! ich spreche wie eine echte Landpomeranze. Im Grund bin ich wirklich eine Landpomeranze. Ich verwalte mein Gut selbst, und denken Sie, mein Starost22 Erofei ist ein wahres Original; er erinnert mich an Coopers ›Pfadfinder‹. Ich finde, daß er so etwas Waldursprüngliches hat. Da bin ich nun für immer hieher gebannt, welch unerträgliche Stadt! Nicht wahr? Aber was tun?« »Es ist eine Stadt, wie jede andere auch,« sagte Bazaroff trocken. »Man beschäftigt sich hier nur mit den kleinlichsten Interessen, das ist gräßlich. Sonst brachte ich den ganzen Winter in Moskau zu … aber der verehrungswürdige Herr Kukschin hat sich jetzt dort niedergelassen. Zudem ist Moskau jetzt … ich weiß nicht … es ist gegenwärtig alles anders. Ich möchte reisen; voriges Jahr war ich auch schon im Begriff, mich auf den Weg zu machen.« »Nach Paris, ohne Zweifel?« fragte Bazaroff. »Nach Paris und nach Heidelberg.« »Heidelberg, wozu?« »Wie! weil Bunsen dort wohnt.« Bazaroff fand auf diesen Ausruf keine Antwort. »Peter Sapojnikoff … Sie kennen ihn ja.« »Nein, durchaus nicht.« »Ists möglich! Peter Sapojnikoff … er ist ja beständig bei Lydie Chostatoff.« »Ich kenne auch die nicht.«
- 67. »Nun, Sapojnikoff hat mir seine Begleitung angeboten. Ich bin allein, Gott sei Dank! ich habe keine Kinder … Was habe ich da gesagt: ›Gott sei Dank?‹ … Übrigens ists einerlei.« Eudoxia drehte eine Zigarette zwischen ihren vom Tabak gelb gefärbten Fingern, zog sie über die Zungenspitze, steckte sie in den Mund und fing an zu rauchen. Die Dienerin trat mit dem Teebrett ein. »Ah, da ist das Frühstück! Wollen Sie einen Bissen essen? Viktor, ziehn Sie die Flasche auf. Sie sollten sich darauf verstehen.« »Mich darauf verstehen! mich darauf verstehen!« murmelte Sitnikoff. »Gibt es hier ein paar hübsche Frauen?« fragte Bazaroff, im Begriff, sein drittes Glas zu leeren. »Ja,« erwiderte Eudoxia, »aber sie sind höchst unbedeutend. Meine Freundin Odinzoff zum Beispiel ist nicht übel. Nur steht sie im Ruf, ein wenig … Das wäre übrigens kein großes Unglück; aber da ist von Erhabenheit der Ideen, von Fülle, von all dem … keine Spur. Unser Erziehungssystem sollte eben geändert werden. Ich habe schon daran gedacht; unsere Frauen sind sehr schlecht erzogen.« »Sie werden sie nicht besser machen,« sagte Sitnikoff. »Man muß sie verachten, und ich verachte sie gründlich. (Sitnikoff liebte es, zu verachten und diesem Gefühl Ausdruck zu geben; er fiel besonders über ›das Geschlecht‹ her, ohne zu ahnen, daß es ihm bestimmt war, einige Monate später vor seiner Frau zu kriechen, einzig und allein deshalb, weil sie eine geborene Fürstin war.) Da ist nicht eine, die sich zur Höhe unserer Unterhaltung erheben könnte, nicht eine, die es verdiente, daß sich ernsthafte Männer wie wir mit ihr abgeben.« »Ich sehe nicht ein, warum sie nötig haben sollten, unsere Unterhaltung zu verstehen,« sagte Bazaroff. »Von wem sprechen Sie?« fragte Eudoxia. »Von den hübschen Frauen.«
- 68. »Wie, Sie teilen also die Ideen Proudhons?« Bazaroff richtete sich mit verächtlicher Miene auf. »Ich teile niemandes Ideen; ich habe meine eigenen Ansichten.« »Nieder mit den Autoritäten!« rief Sitnikoff, glücklich, eine Gelegenheit zu haben, sich in Gegenwart eines Mannes, dessen gehorsamster Diener er war, energisch auszusprechen. »Aber Macaulay selbst,« sagte Madame Kukschin … »Nieder mit Macaulay!« rief Sitnikoff mit Donnerstimme; »Sie nehmen Partei für diese frivolen Weibsbilder.« »Ich kämpfe keineswegs für die frivolen Weibsbilder, sondern für die Rechte des Weibes, die ich bis zum letzten Blutstropfen zu verteidigen geschworen habe.« »Nieder mit …« Sitnikoff endigte seine Phrase nicht. »Ich greife sie ja durchaus nicht an,« setzte er hinzu. »Doch, ich sehe, daß Sie ein Slawophile sind.« »Durchaus nicht, ich bin kein Slawophile, obschon sicherlich …« »Doch! doch! Sie sind ein Slawophile. Sie sind ein Anhänger des Domostroi23. Es fehlt nur noch, daß Sie eine Peitsche für die Frauen in die Hand nehmen.« »Es ist was Schönes um eine Peitsche,« fiel Bazaroff ein; »aber da sind wir beim letzten Tropfen angekommen …« »Von was?« fragte Eudoxia lebhaft. »Vom Champagner, verehrte Eudoxia Nikitischna, nicht von Ihrem Blut.« »Ich kann nicht gleichgültig bleiben, wenn man die Frauen angreift,« fuhr Eudoxia fort; »das ist abscheulich! abscheulich! Statt sie anzugreifen, lesen Sie Michelets Buch ›Über die Liebe‹, das ist wunderbar schön! Meine Herren, sprechen wir von der Liebe,« fügte
- 69. sie hinzu und ließ ihre Hand schmachtend auf das zerdrückte Kissen des Ruhebettes zurücksinken. Ein plötzliches Schweigen folgte dieser Aufforderung. »Warum von Liebe sprechen?« sagte Bazaroff, »beschäftigen wir uns lieber mit Madame Odinzoff. So heißt sie ja wohl, nicht wahr? Wer ist diese Dame?« »Sie ist göttlich! göttlich!« rief Sitnikoff. »Ich werde euch ihr vorstellen. Sie ist sehr klug, sehr vermögend und Witwe. Unglücklicherweise ist sie geistig noch nicht genug entwickelt, sie sollte sich unserer Eudoxia mehr nähern. Ich trinke auf Ihre Gesundheit, Eudoxia! Stoßet an! Kling, kling, kling! Gluck, gluck, gluck!« »Viktor, Sie sind ein leichtsinniger Mensch!« Das Frühstück dauerte noch lange. Der ersten Flasche Champagner folgte eine zweite, dritte und selbst eine vierte. Eudoxia schwatzte ununterbrochen. Sitnikoff hielt ihr stand. Sie stritten sich lange, was die Ehe sei, ob ein Vorurteil oder ein Verbrechen; sie untersuchten die Frage, ob die Menschen alle mit denselben Anlagen geboren werden oder nicht, und worin eigentlich die Individualität bestehe. Es kam endlich so weit, daß Eudoxia, die Wangen vom Wein entflammt, mit ihren platten Nägeln auf den Tasten ihres verstimmten Pianos herumhämmerte und mit heiserer Stimme zuerst Zigeunerlieder und dann die Romanze von Seimour Shiff: »Granada träumt im Schlafe« sang. Sitnikoff, eine Schärpe um den Kopf, spielte den schwärmenden Liebhaber. Als die Sängerin an die Worte kam: In meiner Küsse Glut Eint meine Lippe sich der deinen, konnte sich Arkad nicht länger halten. »Meine Herren,« rief er laut, »das fängt an, etwas nach dem Narrenhaus zu schmecken!« Bazaroff hatte sich darauf beschränkt, hie und da eine spöttische Bemerkung dazwischenzuwerfen, und beschäftigte sich
- 70. hauptsächlich mit dem Champagner; er gähnte überlaut, erhob sich und ging mit Arkad weg, ohne Abschied zu nehmen. Sitnikoff rannte ihnen nach. »Nun, nun?« fragte er, untertänigst von einem zum andern laufend, »hab ichs Ihnen nicht gesagt, daß sie eine merkwürdige Persönlichkeit ist? Das ist ein Weib, wie wir viele haben sollten; sie ist in ihrer Art ein Phänomen im Gebiet der höheren Sittlichkeit!« »Gehört diese Anstalt deines Vaters vielleicht auch ins Gebiet der höheren Sittlichkeit?« fragte Bazaroff, auf eine Branntweinschenke zeigend, an der sie soeben vorübergingen. Sitnikoff antwortete mit seinem gewöhnlichen gewaltsamen Lächeln. Er errötete über seine Herkunft und wußte nicht, sollte er sich von Bazaroffs unerwartetem Duzen geschmeichelt oder beleidigt fühlen.
- 72. D Vierzehntes Kapitel er Ball beim Gouverneur fand einige Tage später statt. Matthias Ilitsch war in der Tat der Held des Festes. Der Adelsmarschall erklärte jedem, ders hören wollte, daß er nur ihm zu Ehren gekommen sei. Der Gouverneur selbst fuhr, mitten im Ball und ohne seinen Platz zu verlassen, fort, mit ängstlicher Sorge der Regierungsgeschäfte zu warten. Matthias Ilitschs Leutseligkeit tat der Majestät seiner Manieren keinen Eintrag. Er sagte jedem etwas Schmeichelhaftes; diesem mit einem Anflug von Geringschätzung, jenem mit einem Anflug von Achtung; er überhäufte die Damen mit Artigkeiten wie ein echter französischer Chevalier und lachte unaufhörlich mit jenem lauten Gelächter ohne Widerhall, wie sichs für einen großen Herrn schickt. Er klopfte Arkad auf die Schulter und nannte ihn mit erhobener Stimme seinen lieben Neffen; Bazaroff, der einen etwas überjährigen Frack angelegt hatte, beehrte er mit einem zerstreuten, aber doch wohlwollenden Seitenblick und mit einem liebenswürdigen Gemurmel, worin man nur das Wort »ich« und die Endung »ßerst« unterscheiden konnte. Er streckte Sitnikoff einen Finger hin und lächelte, aber mit abgewandtem Gesicht; er warf sogar der Madame Kukschin, die ohne Krinoline und mit schmutzigen Handschuhen, aber mit einem Paradiesvogel im Haar den Ball besuchte, ein »Entzückt« zu. Die Gesellschaft war zahlreich und es fehlte nicht an Kavalieren. Die Herren im Frack drückten sich meist an den Wänden hin, während die Militärs mit Leidenschaft tanzten, besonders einer von ihnen, der fast sechs Wochen in Paris gewesen war und von dort gewisse charakteristische Ausdrücke, wie: ah, fichtrrre, pst pst, mon bibi usw., mitgebracht hatte. Er sprach sie mit Vollendung, mit echtem Pariser Schick aus, was ihn jedoch nicht hinderte, »si j'aurais« statt »si j'avais« zu sagen und »absolument« in der Bedeutung von »certainement« zu gebrauchen; kurz er sprach jenes Russisch-Französisch, worüber sich die Franzosen lustig
- 73. machen, wenn sie's nicht für nötig halten, zu versichern, daß wir Französisch sprechen wie die Engel. Arkad tanzte, wie gesagt, wenig und Bazaroff gar nicht; sie zogen sich mit Sitnikoff in eine Ecke des Saals zurück. Letzterer machte mit verächtlichem Lächeln Bemerkungen, die bösartig sein sollten, schaute mit herausforderndem Blick umher und schien sehr mit sich zufrieden. Plötzlich jedoch veränderte sich der Ausdruck seiner Züge, und zu Arkad gewendet, sagte er mit einer Art Unruhe: »Da ist Madame Odinzoff.« Arkad wandte sich um und gewahrte eine hochgewachsene, schwarzgekleidete Frau, die in der Türe des Saales stand. Das Vornehme ihrer ganzen Erscheinung überraschte ihn. Ihre bloßen Arme fielen anmutig an dem schlanken Körper herab; leichte Fuchsiazweige senkten sich gleichfalls anmutig aus ihrem glänzenden Haar auf ihre schönen Schultern nieder; ihre klaren Augen, über denen sich eine weiße Stirn leicht wölbte, waren mehr ruhig und klug als sinnend. Ein kaum merkliches Lächeln schwebte auf ihren Lippen. Ihr ganzes Wesen atmete eine liebliche und sanfte Kraft. »Sie kennen sie?« fragte Arkad Sitnikoff. »Ganz genau. Soll ich Sie vorstellen?« »Ich bitte darum … nach diesem Kontertanz.« Bazaroff erblickte Frau Odinzoff ebenfalls. »Wer ist dies Gesicht da?« fragte er, »sie gleicht dem andern Weibervolk nicht.« Als der Kontertanz zu Ende war, führte Sitnikoff Arkad zu Madame Odinzoff; allein er schien lange nicht so gut mit ihr bekannt zu sein, als er gesagt hatte; er verwirrte sich bald in seinen Worten, und sie sah ihn mit einer Art von Erstaunen an. Doch malte sich ein freundlicher Ausdruck auf ihrem Gesicht, als er den Familiennamen