The management and labor culture of the entertainment industry.
In popular culture, management in the media industry is frequently
understood as the work of network executives, studio developers, and
market researchers--"the suits"--who oppose the more productive forces
of creative talent and subject that labor to the inefficiencies and risk
aversion of bureaucratic hierarchies. However, such portrayals belie the
reality of how media management operates as a culture of shifting
discourses, dispositions, and tactics that create meaning, generate
value, and shape media work throughout each moment of production and
consumption.
Making Media Work aims to provide a deeper and more nuanced
understanding of management within the entertainment industries. Drawing
from work in critical sociology and cultural studies, the collection
theorizes management as a pervasive, yet flexible set of principlesdrawn
upon by a wide range of practitioners--artists, talent scouts,
performers, directors, show runners, and more--in their ongoing efforts
to articulate relationships and bridge potentially discordant forces
within the media industries. The contributors interrogate managerial
labor and identity, shine a light on how management understands its
roles within cultural and creative contexts, and reconfigure the complex
relationship between labor and managerial authority as productive rather
than solely prohibitive. Engaging with primary evidence gathered through
interviews, archives, and trade materials, the essays offer tremendous
insight into how management is understood and performed within media
industry contexts. The volume as a whole traces the changing roles of
management both historically and in the contemporary moment within US
and international contexts, and across a range of media forms, from film
and television to video games and social media.
