EMILY RIEBE
Assistant Video Producer at Lightswitch Video
Film and Cultural Insights Media Researcher
MEDIA EDITORIALS
In addition to my work as a Producer and Qualitative researcher, I have also written articles for media columns concerning social justice in the media. You can find excerpts from these articles below.
Baby, is it hot in here? A cultural analysis of the discourse surrounding the hit song "Baby It's Cold Outside" in the era of #MeToo
Emerging social justice movements advocating for change such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have created a space where societal discourse about topics such as sexual harassment and assault is welcomed with the hopes of rewriting the damaging, hegemonic script pertaining to said topics that have plagued our society for decades. Through her implicit implementation of a cultural studies approach to media messages, journalist Jacey Fortin of the New York Times was able to capture the way in which individuals have enacted an oppositional code (Hall, 1993) to the classic Christmas song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” by calling out the way the song perpetuates damaging gender archetypes (Croteau and Hoynes, 2014) that are still prevalent in society today.
While the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” was written in 1949, it’s blatant messages concerning stereotypical gender archetypes have resurfaced amidst movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp that aim to call out gender-related inequalities when they arise. Gender and media content intersect in the sense that the media has a long history of depicting individuals embodying cliched gender practices. Croteau and Hoynes (2014) touch on this practice when they write, “The media images of women and men reflect and reproduce a whole set of stereotypical but changing gender roles” (p. 206). The reason that the song possesses an immense amount of stereotypical gender images is largely due to the historical context in which it was written. Fortin (2018) touches on this idea when she writes, “... the song was written as World War II was upending societal norms; more women were entering the workforce, and military deployments were interrupting traditional courtships (para 24). The way that gender was portrayed in the media in the 1950s compared to now has shifted due to historical context, yet there are still lingering gender stereotypes that continue to be reproduced in current media.
The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, while fairly new in the realm of social activism, have garnered immense notoriety through their colorful method of substituting oppositional codes to hegemonic tropes pertaining to messages within both the media and society. Theorist Stuart Hall would outline this as a Cultural Studies approach to media, being that it evokes one of the three methods audiences can partake in when engaging in media, being opposition. Substituting an oppositional code means that an individual can understand what the meaning behind a media message is, but instead of accepting it they choose to object to it. This substitution of an oppositional code is expanded upon when Hall (1993) writes “it is possible for a viewer perfectly to understand both the literal and the connotative inflection given by a discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way (p. 103). Fortin (2018) points out how individuals in society today are engaging with this opposition as it pertains to the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” when she explains, “In the #MeToo era, some say it makes sense to look at those old lyrics with fresh eyes” (para 26). Some individuals have even gone so far as to rewrite the song, changing the lyrics from “Baby, it’s cold outside” to “Baby, I’m cool with that” (Fortin, 2018, para 28). This idea of opposition to media messages exemplifies the way in which society has entered a new era, one defined by the act of resistance.
Resistance, while an act of defiance, is not built upon ideals of spitefulness. Individuals involved in both the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have rather built their movement upon attaining justice, justice that they hope will enact change in society. Since individuals have substituted an oppositional code to the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” numerous stations have pulled the song from the radio waves. It’s important that as a society we continue to maintain critical discourses about media artifacts, no matter how classic or well known they are, in order to truly progress society forward instead of letting it remain stagnant.
The Crazy Series of Events that Led to the Creation of Crazy Rich Asians
In thinking about the means in which media artifacts are cultivated, a somewhat mundane series of events are inherently woven into the depiction of what happens before a media artifact can be seen by audiences. To demonstrate the integral impact that production and political economy processes have on media artifacts and their parent industry, I will critically analyze the film Crazy Rich Asians in terms of its production company’s utilization of multinationalism, (Wasko, 2005) how the film was produced through a defiance of industry trends, (Shiller, 1989) and the impact that the ideologies of those who worked on the film had on its ability to shatter the homogeneous nature that is the Hollywood film industry (Croteau & Hoynes, 2014).
In order to grow his small production company known as Ivanhoe Pictures into a business that possessed more potential at the box office, film producer Jon Penotti ventured into the Asian film market, explaining that,“unlike many of the Hollywood studios that in recent years traveled across the Pacific seeking global projects, the boutique-size Ivanhoe has undertaken a local and curatorial approach in the process creating a business model for a continent that has long vexed American entertainment executives” (Zeitchik, 2018, para 2). This decision that led Penotti to produce the hit film Crazy Rich Asians is an example of multinationalism, a process that involves the permeation of production and distribution practices of media companies overseas. However, this process often has downsides for film creators that wish to maintain their media artifacts’ cultural authenticity, as author Janet Wasko (2005) states that“the authors outline Hollywood’s global dominance in political economic terms, analyzing the strategies that the US film industry has used to ‘Americanize’ the production, distribution, and exhibition of film” (pg 39-40).
Nina Jacobson, the creator of the production company Color Force, sought the rights to Crazy Rich Asians when it was first published as a book in 2013. Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan dreaded that his book would be stripped of its cultural roots in order to succeed in the competitive landscape of the film industry, thus perpetuating this idea that “the typical film from which investors anticipate a profit may be art or non-art, but it is always a commodity” (Shiller, 1989, pg 266). In order to ease Kwan’s fears, Ivanhoe Pictures partnered with Color Force in order to “develop the movie outside the studio system, believing they could protect Kwan’s vision” (Faughnder, 2018, para 19). This defiance of industry trends gave producers the ability to affect change by showcasing the talents of traditionally marginalized groups of people.
The fierce commitment of each member of the Crazy Rich Asians team to preserving ideals of loyalty to culture is the reason why the film was able to be break free from the hegemonic nature that is the Hollywood film industry. Hegemony is the idea that “media generally adopts the dominant assumptions and draws on the commonsensical views of the world that everyone knows” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2014, pg 161). The Crazy Rich Asians production team defied that hegemony by courting a bidding war between Netflix and Warner Brothers, turning down a massive payout from Netflix in order to, “ensure the first Asian American studio movie in 25 years would be seen in theaters and, if all goes well, reshape the Hollywood landscape” (Sun & Ford, 2018, para 1).
The influence that political economy and production processes had on Crazy Rich Asians is a prime example of how integral these facets of critical media studies are on the final products of media artifacts, as well as how they can work to indelibly change the foundation in which industries are able to operate upon in society today.