Entertainment World Research Articles

Beyond One Image Fits All: Bono and the Complexity of Celebrity Diplomacy

The previous article, by Heribert Dieter and Rajiv Kumar, raises a number of issues about the role of celebrities in global governance. Although the performance of this self-selected cast of performers remains highly contentious, it must be accepted that this activity is one more signal that the traditional script of international relations is changing. This shift is exciting but also bewildering. Views on what to make of this phenomenon are sharply divided. For sympathizers, this form of public engagement by celebrities represents an inexorable force tied in with the onward rush of globalization with all its attendant elements of mass technology in global communications. It also reflects the wider crisis of credibility and efficiency that currently effects international organizations, whether international financial institutions (IFIs), the World Trade Organization (WTO), or the G8. For the resisters, the challenge is cast as part of a spillover from the wider gauge of celebrity culture, with the global sphere providing an inviting stage for opportunistic self-indulgence. To more fully understand the nature and impact of this phenomenon, with respect to both its positive and its negative connotations, the level of analysis must be extended beyond these parameters. In other words, at play here is a different set of traps, which need to be avoided. Attempts to trivialize celebrity engagement, reducing it to feel-good activity, may paradoxically feed an image that discounts a bigger set of difficulties with the enterprise of global governance. Attempts to caricature this type of agency, lumping stars together without differentiating their distinctive attributes and projects, can have similar effect. Dieter and Kumar's analysis of Jeffrey Sachs and Bono is a significant example of this dilemma. In many ways, the article itself is a testament to the authentic importance of celebrity agency--a step in the right direction--since the phenomenon is being accorded a fairly serious treatment. However, the analysis fails to truly escape those simplicity traps. Instead of a one-image-fits-all perspective, a more nuanced perspective is needed. Otherwise, the complexity of this phenomenon is missed. If it is clear then that my view concerning the engagement of celebrities in international relations is more positive than that of Dieter and Kumar, I should note that I do not see these actors as a deus ex machina. Indeed, I fault the article not only for misrepresenting the nature of celebrity activism--or what I prefer to call celebrity diplomacy (1)--but also for distorting the weight of celebrities as agenda setters, especially in the context of Africa. While individual agency outside the usual orthodox sources matters in a manner that would have been unanticipated at the end of the Cold War, the hold of structural forces as determinants of policy outcomes cannot be neglected. This is true of the weight of colonialism as well, reinforced by the inequalities imposed on African states by the international trade system. That being said, it is misleading to imply that Africa is just one big continent-wide zone of failure. Instead of embracing a one-image-fits-all perspective, opportunities (as well as constraints) need to be factored into any analysis. Rather than getting into an overextended debate--in an already crowded field (2)--about Africa and development, I prefer to concentrate on the deficiencies of conflating very different types of celebrities into one single image. It is indicative of this problem that Dieter and Kumar chose to contrast the role of celebrities on opposite ends of the definitional spectrum: Jeffrey Sachs and Bono. Jeffrey Sachs has built his fame (or, as the authors would have it, his notoriety) through his achieved status. (3) As a high-profile professor of economics at Harvard and Columbia, and a robust public intellectual cum policy entrepreneur, Sachs is not treated as a product of the media the way that celebrity diplomats from the entertainment world are. …

Fast play: a novel feature for digital consumer video devices

The advent of digital devices with innovative features has changed the world of home video entertainment. Nowadays we have access to devices that store several hours of video material, skip commercials, and even pause the play out of a live event. Despite these innovative features, modern digital devices access to recorded material in a way very similar to old analog VCRs. In this paper we propose Fast Play, a mechanism that uses simple low-level audio and video analysis to provide a novel feature in digital video devices. This novel feature is a hybrid between the classic Play service and the Fast-Forward service, and aims at playing out videos in a time-reduced manner, by maintaining the time evolving nature of the original video, and by providing videos with completely intelligible audio. An experimental assessment shows that Fast Play produces videos that are informative, enjoyable, largely reduced, and also shows that users really appreciate the Fast Play feature as it produces a pleasant surrogate of the original video.

Cowboy Capitalist

Page 28 American Book Review Cowboy Capitalist Michael Schumacher Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry Holly George-Warren Oxford University Press http://www.oup.com 480 pages; cloth, $28.00 Like most Baby Boomers, I spent countless hours of my childhood watching such television Westerns as Wagon Train, Have Gun, Will Travel, Rawhide, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Maverick, The Rifleman, and, of course, the most popular of them all, Bonanza. The Western seemed to hang on to the last traces of an adventuresome spirit and moral order, cast in a bygone era, yet teeming with timeless elements of universal human drama. It could be as politically incorrect as all hell, but what did we know? We were kids. We wore Davy Crockett (fake) coonskin caps and Gene Autry cap guns in genuine imitation leather holsters, and we made certain that the sounds of little brothers and sisters didn’t interfere with the sights and sounds of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Lone Ranger, or the Cisco Kid, all transmitted on decisively low-def, rabbit-eared, black-and-white television. Then, we got older and forgot. Cynics might contend that it’s the mind’s way of protecting us from the dismay we’d suffer if we were reminded of a time when we, as Americans and individuals, had faith, when hearts were less easily broken by reality. Better to hurtle into the future with as little recall clutter as possible. Fortunately, we have writers like Holly GeorgeWarren to remind us of how wrong-headed this line of thinking really is. George-Warren is a masterful researcher and storyteller, and in Public Cowboy No. 1, her biography of “singing cowboy” Gene Autry, she has given us an account of a fascinating life lived at wide-open throttle (or gallop); of the American Dream fully imagined, pursued, and realized ; and, ultimately, of the evolution of the entertainment industry itself. And somehow, by the time you’ve reached the final pages of the book, you feel as if someone’s dropped a little loose change back in your pocket. That might not be faith, but it’s a decent feeling, in any event. It would be easy to suggest that Autry’s good fortune was the product of fortuitous timing, a fierce work ethic, the right connections, and a healthy spicing of fate, all judiciously blended to cater to a country grasping for hope, first in the wake of the devastating effects of the Depression, and, later, the hardships of World War II.All of this is true enough, but it was true of any number of other entertainers in the first half of the twentieth century. What made Autry different? What made him an entertainment pioneer rather than someone simply latching on to the latest trend? The answer, George-Warren suggests in her biography, might be found inAutry’s humble Oklahoma roots. From the beginning, Orvon Grover Autry (who would change his name to Gene when he started his professional career) had to find a way to make things work. His father, in a strange way, acted as a reverse role model, as an example of what not to do. DelbertAutry drifted from job to job, jail to jail, and marriage to marriage , leaving his sickly wife and children to fend for themselves. Orvon had no choice but to earn money to help with the bills, and self-discovery came along the way. He worked on the railroad, learned to play guitar, and, by initially imitating the popular recording and performing artists of the day, and making the most out of marginal talent, he began a career that would eventually place him near the top of the entertainment world. The key, George-Warren suggests, wasAutry’s ability to take a time-testedAmerican obsession—the West—and plug its nineteenth-century mythology and allure into the different elements of the following century’s popular culture. “Gene Autry embraced the tools of the twentieth century,” George-Warren writes in her introduction , “to make his way in the world—cutting phonograph records, broadcasting over the radio, appearing in motion pictures and, later, television— yet he found stardom by reinventing...

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (B)

Global Paper is a major player in the worldwide office-products market. It has served Entertainment World, a West Coast business, for many years. Entertainment World has issued an RFP for a global supply of its office products, asking for a proposal with maximum mutual partnership benefits. How should Global Paper respond to this request? This case is part of a series of cases on value-based selling. The A case (UVA-M-0719) provides the background. The B case provides the value mapping and value proposition.

The ‘talking machine’ comes to the Dutch East Indies: The arrival of Western media technology in Southeast Asia

The invention of sound recording technology in the nineteenth century was a modern miracle. Making possible the storage and preservation of sounds across time and distance, which previously could only be dreamed of, this invention contributed significantly to the developing entertainment world. Thomas Alva Edison first realized this dream in 1877 when he invented the tin-foil phonograph, which then inspired other scientists to perfect and develop his invention. During the last two decades of the 1800s sound recording machines were exhibited outside the United States of America, first in Europe and then in Australia and Asia. In Europe the machine was first demonstrated at the Academy of Science in Paris on 11 March 1878, where a French professor named Bonjour accused Edison of cheating. He stated that Edison was a ventriloquist.

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (a)

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (a)

Interview with David Wertheimer

David Wertheimer is Executive Director of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California. Prior to his ETC post, he was the executive director of USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. His experience also includes terms as the president of the Digital Entertainment division of Paramount Pictures; founder and CEO of WireBreak Entertainment; and technology and business management positions at Oracle and NeXT. In the video interview, you will hear answers to the following questions: 1. What are the technological and sociological implications of providing content to consumers who desire it at any time and any place? 2. You once said that "The world of interactivity and entertainment is converging." Would you like to elaborate on your statement? 3. Can you tell us about the state-of-the-art Digital Content Center that you are building at the ETC? 4. What is the biggest challenge for the ETC today and what is your grand vision for the future of the ETC? 5. What are some of the current activities at the ETC?

With amusement for all: a history of American popular culture since 1830

Popular culture is a central part of everyday life to many Americans. Personalities such as Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan are more recognizable to many people than are most elected officials. With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, dance, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, technology, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms culture, revealing that the world of entertainment constantly evolves as it tries to meet the demands of a diverse audience. Trends in popular entertainment often reveal the tensions between competing ideologies, appetites, and values in society. For example, in the late nineteenth century, Americans embraced self-made men such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie: the celebrities of the day were circus tycoons P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey, Wild West star Buffalo Bill Cody, professional baseball organizer Albert Spalding, and prizefighter John L. Sullivan. At the same time, however, several female performers challenged traditional notions of weak, frail Victorian women. Adah Isaacs Menken astonished crowds by wearing tights that made her appear nude while performing dangerous stunts on horseback, and the shows of the voluptuous burlesque group British Blondes often centered on provocative images of female sexual power and dominance. Ashby describes how history and politics frequently influence mainstream entertainment. When Native Americans, blacks, and other non-whites appeared in the nineteenth-century circuses and Wild West shows, it was often to perpetuate demeaning racial stereotypes-crowds jeered Sitting Bull at Cody's shows. By the early twentieth century, however, black minstrel acts reveled in racial tensions, reinforcing stereotypes while at the same time satirizing them and mocking racist attitudes before a predominantly white audience. Decades later, Red Foxx and Richard Pryor's profane comedy routines changed entertainment. The raw ethnic material of Pryor's short-lived television show led to a series of African-American sitcoms in the 1980s that presented common experiences-from family life to college life-with black casts. Mainstream entertainment has often co-opted and sanitized fringe amusements in an ongoing process of redefining the cultural center and its boundaries. Social control and respectability vied with the bold, erotic, sensational, and surprising, as entrepreneurs sought to manipulate the vagaries of the market, control shifting public appetites, and capitalize on campaigns to protect public morals. Rock 'n Roll was one such fringe culture; in the 1950s, Elvis blurred gender norms with his androgynous style and challenged conventions of public decency with his sexually-charged performances. By the end of the 1960s, Bob Dylan introduced the social consciousness of folk music into the rock scene, and The Beatles embraced hippie counter-culture. Don McLean's 1971 anthem American Pie served as an epitaph for rock's political core, which had been replaced by the spectacle of hard rock acts such as Kiss and Alice Cooper. While Rock 'n Roll did not lose its ability to shock, in less than three decades it became part of the established order that it had originally sought to challenge. With Amusement for All provides the context to what Americans have done for fun since 1830, showing the reciprocal nature of the relationships between social, political, economic, and cultural forces and the way in which the entertainment world has reflected, refracted, or reinforced the values those forces represent in America.

It's the End of the Tube as We Know It

The reigning display technology for more than a century, the cathode ray tube has entered its terminal decline. As a display device, the CRT served for decades as our looking glass into the virtual world of entertainment and computing, changing our aesthetics and the future of display technology. As computers became smaller and more portable, laptop PCs needed displays with low-power requirements. The LCD, already successfully applied to calculators and printers, offered an obvious solution

Oakland a's (B)

The general manager of the Oakland A's professional baseball team must evaluate two salary and bonus plans proposed by the A's star pitcher (see the A case, UVA-QA-0282). The plans call for the pitcher to receive a bonus if the next season's home attendance exceeds a specified number. Historical data are provided on team performance (number of games won), attendance, and the general manager's preseason forecast number of wins. Global Paper is a major player in the worldwide office-products market. It has served Entertainment World, a West Coast business, for many years. Entertainment World has issued an RFP for a global supply of its office products, asking for a proposal with maximum mutual partnership benefits. How should Global Paper respond to this request? This case is part of a series of cases on value-based selling. The A case provides the background. The B case (UVA-M-0720) provides the value mapping and value proposition. A newly appointed vice president for Corporate Communication at the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese multinational corporation must choose among different methods for aligning corporate philanthropy programs with long-term corporate philosophy and business strategy. This case illustrates the key strategic role of corporate communication in enacting social responsibility. This note introduces basic principles of organizational design and the advantages of several common organizational structures. The principles of design are fit, differentiation, integration, technology, size, span of control, staffing, unity of command, and line versus staff. The structures diagrammed and described are functional, product, customer, geographic, divisional or M-form, matrix, amorphous, and hybrids. The note also discusses the new emerging Information Age organizational forms, which the author calls infocracies.

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (a)

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (a)

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (B)

Office Supplies for Entertainment World (B)

Progress against the law

The medium of Japanese animation is a powerhouse in the world of alternative entertainment. Proselytization by fans ignited the anime movement in America, despite Japanese copyright holders’ abandonment of the American market. This historical and cultural analysis demonstrates that fans’ continual infringement of copyright between 1976 and 1993 spurred the progress of commerce and the arts. Introducing the concept of cultural sinks, this analysis explains these phenomena in terms of demand formation, the role of commons and the causational links between the fans, artists, rights holders and markets that characterize the globalization of culture.

Electronic strategies for information and research: cyberNephrology/cyberMedicine in the emerging world

Communication and medicine have evolved together. Internet resources now provide an unprecedented opportunity to provide health assistance to the developing world. The International Society of Nephrology Informatics Commission and National Kidney Foundation cyberNephrology initiative (http://www.cybernephrology.org) have created e-mail discussion groups (e.g., NEPHROL, NEPHKIDS, and so forth) and online texts and web resources (e.g., the Schrier Atlas: http://www.kidneyatlas.org) that are, in many respects, ahead of other areas of medicine. On the other hand, nephrology is quite behind in its embrace of some specific communications initiatives that could benefit emerging nations: the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative program, which provides free full-text access to medical journals and books in poorer countries; the Global Health Network Supercourse, which provides specially designed online lectures for the developing world; and Internet2/Abilene and similar research networks around the world, which provide reliable, guaranteed bandwidth for high-quality Internet videoconferencing as an alternative to face-to-face lectures and meetings. The intent of many educational ventures in nephrology, particularly in the clinical practice guideline realm (National Kidney Foundation Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative, Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes, and so forth), is not just to disseminate information but to change human behavior: physician practice and referral patterns, patient compliance, and so forth. Concepts from the worlds of marketing and entertainment, where the science of changing human behavior is highly evolved, can be used to create high-impact, educational offerings to promote health. They can also be highly beneficial to share Internet educational innovations and future vision across boundaries of medical specialties, which is part of the intent of the cyberMedicine joint venture (http://www.cyber-medicine.org).

Online recreation: The relationship between loneliness, Internet self-efficacy and the use of the Internet for entertainment purposes

In this study, 150 undergraduates answered questions about their Internet usage and completed a loneliness and an Internet self-efficacy questionnaire. A factor analysis of the Internet usage items revealed three facets of online recreation, including, using the Internet for: computer-based entertainment, to facilitate offline entertainment, and for information about the entertainment world. Those who scored higher on loneliness were more likely to use the Internet for computer-based entertainment, as well as, use the Internet to obtain information about the entertainment world. Individuals higher in Internet self-efficacy were more likely to use the Internet for computer-based entertainment and to facilitate offline entertainment. Implications for the study of the psychological influences of the Internet are discussed in this paper.

Celebrating Two Decades of Unlawful Progress: Fan Distribution, Proselytization Commons, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation

The medium of Japanese animation is a powerhouse in the world of alternative entertainment. Proselytization by fans ignited the anime movement in America, despite Japanese copyright holders' abandonment of the American market. This historical and legal analysis demonstrates that, in at least one case spanning two decades, fans' continual infringement of copyright spurred the progress of knowledge of and commerce in animation. In light of the evidence, this article proposes a doctrine that recognizes both the value of grassroots activists and the property interests of copyright holders.

The battle for broadband [Internet protocol television

This paper discusses the role of Swiss telephone carriers and cable providers in the highly competitive telecommunications market. A key technological development is the software platform called Internet Protocol television (IPTV). At the forefront is the Bern-based Swiss phone company, Swisscom AG. Swisscom has conducted tests to determine its ability to deliver video and win customers from cable using IPTV technology. Results of the tests will significantly alter the future direction of the telecommunication industry, and that of a big chunk of the entertainment world as well.

The battle for broadband [Internet protocol television

This paper discusses the role of Swiss telephone carriers and cable providers in the highly competitive telecommunications market. A key technological development is the software platform called Internet Protocol television (IPTV). At the forefront is the Bern-based Swiss phone company, Swisscom AG. Swisscom has conducted tests to determine its ability to deliver video and win customers from cable using IPTV technology. Results of the tests will significantly alter the future direction of the telecommunication industry, and that of a big chunk of the entertainment world as well.

Murderabilia

Murderabilia

Living More “Like Oneself”

This paper looks at the development of transgender identities in twentieth-century Japan, from their “professional” antecedents in the kabuki theater, through post-war paradigms based in the entertainment world, to recent notions of “amateur” transgenderism and cross-dressing. It is argued that early paradigms of transgenderism centered on occupational categories and that, despite modern understandings that associate transgender performance with homosexuality, the traditional bisexual potential of the transgender body was never completely occluded. In recent years transgender individuals have emerged who, distancing themselves from the entertainment world, have sought to interrogate mainstream notions of “normal” sexual and gender identities-arguing instead for a “gender free” society in which gender expression and sexual orientation are not tied to biological sex.