1. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
Commodifying Transnationalism:
The Bridge, Television and The Culture Industry Today
Research Master Media Studies
Core Course I: Classic Texts in Media Theory
Instructors: Dr. Thomas Poell and Dr. Jaap Kooijman
Universiteit van Amsterdam
5 December 2011
2. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
* This paper analyzes the relationship between capital and culture in
the age of globalization. Focus is put on one specific
media, television, and emphasis is put on one specific site of
contestation: the Danish-Swedish co-production The Bridge
(Bron/Broen, 2011). By revisiting Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry, this essay explores and
revitalizes the question what structures and strategies the culture
industry relies upon today?
3. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
The Bridge (Bron/Broen, 2011) revolves around a spectacular murder––
taking place on the middle of the Öresund bridge between
Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmö, Sweden––which subsequently forces
Danish and Swedish police officials to cooperate to find the killer.
4. I will revisit the concept of the culture industry, primarily as it is theorized
in two texts: first, I analyze Adorno’s essay “On Popular
Music”, published in Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences; and
second “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception”, written with Max Horkheimer and published in Dialectic of
Enlightenment.
5. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
* This essay takes one particular medium as its object of analysis:
television. Focus is put on two particularly salient negotiations:
first, in the form of new technology; and second, the upsurge of
regional commodification. Both highlight many of the tensions the
television industry today faces.
6. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
Technological advancements and new media practices profoundly have
altered the way our lives are constructed, and consequently these changes
can are also visible in the culture industry. For instance, the television
media, dating back to the 1930s, now utilizes new media forms, in terms
of online broadcasting, interactive participation and transnational
narratives.
8. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
Commodification? Regional marketing is getting increasingly
important as tourism appears as a concrete way of motivating private
capital investors as well as regional funding.
Standardization? The television industry economically depends on the
creation of travelling concepts. The Bridge becomes The Tunnel?
9. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
Provisional findings:
The Bridge highlights some of the tensions the culture industry
faces in the age of globalization. Here, the rise of new
technology and new patterns of communication are central
themes, both on a textual level and in terms of production. At
the same time, the omnipresence of Adorno’s key notions––
standardization and commodification––underlines that the
relationship between culture and capital remains a significant
one.
10. Emil Stjernholm-Billing
Works Cited:
Adorno, Theodor W, and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment:
Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002. Print.
Adorno, Theodor W. “On Popular Music” (1941) Cultural Theory and
Popular Culture: A Reader. Ed. John Storey. Harlow: Pearson
Longman, 2009: 63-74. Print.
Bolter, J. David, and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New
Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999. Print.
The Bridge. Dir. Henrik Georgsson, Charlotte Sieling, and Lisa Siwe.
Danmarks Radio, Filmlance International AB and Sveriges
Television, 2011.
