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Introduction

This book sets out to right a deficit in media studies. It is a

clinical book, or what I shall call here a book oftheory and

practice in one. There is a malady afflicting media studies and I

want to help students to overcome its adverse side effects. It is a

book for students. But it was also my intention in writing it to do

something more. In this respect I ask those students for whom the

following brief diagnosis of their subject may sound unfamiliar

for their patience, although what I am about to say may ring true

for many of them. It is important to understand the institutional

tensions that define media studies, and which have led it into its

present state of ill health, before being able to recover its truecreative potential.

In many ways this book is a byproduct of almost ten years of

university teaching, mostly on media studies courses. After so

much time teaching and thinking often too much about media

studies I have come to the conclusion that those responsible for

managing media studies courses have very little, if any, idea

about what media studies is and what it might be for (I am talking

about the situation in UK universities, but no doubt much of what

follows will hold true for Australia and other parts of the world).

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Now, of course, intellectually speaking I admit that media studies

is not for anything, unless one subscribes to the instrumental

rationality of the Department for Education and Skills.

However, in recent years its importance as an intellectual

discipline has become increasingly overshadowed by the question

of its vocational relevance. Ever since Jim Callaghans famous

Ruskin Lecture of 1976, the myth has been spread that media

studies is a subject which exists so as to enable students to pursue

a career in the media industry, providing them with the skills

and training to gain competitive advantage over non-media

graduates when applying for jobs. Through my own albeit

fleeting experience as a journalist, and as someone who has

discussed this proposition time and again with media workers, I

now know it to be untrue. Firstly, the figures bear it out. Only twoout of five media studies graduates who find work within six

months are employed in journalism, advertising or marketing.

Secondly, there is anecdotal evidence aplenty. BBC producers

dont occupy positions at the apex of the media profession

because they did a degree in media studies, but because they

studied at Oxbridge. Channel 4 News anchorman and Oxford

graduate Krishnan Guru-Murthy freely admits that he only

attended three lectures during his time at university. Oxford was

full of people who didnt want traditional jobs, he recalls.

Money or fun seemed to be the two options and TV seemed to

epitomise the latter. Figures for the number of Oxbridge students

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stuck for career options who end up with equally fun jobs

presenting the news are not widely available, but suffice to say

media studies graduates dont tend to be among them.

Conversations with certain TV producers, no doubt those familiar

with the Conservative Education Minister John Pattens speech to

his party conference in 1993, will even reveal that a media studies

degree is a positive disadvantage in securing a job in the media

profession. Given that media studies, on Pattens interpretation,

serves up Chaucer with chips and Milton with mayonnaise is

it any wonder that graduates from the elite universities with

degrees in history and modern languages are more likely to

outnumber those non-Oxbridge graduates with degrees in media

and cultural studies at least those in positions of executive

power in organizations like ITN, the BBC and Channel 4?

Am I going to suggest then that a degree in media studies is

inferior to one in modern languages from Oxbridge or

Manchester or Durham? Certainly not. Naturally there are more

Oxbridge graduates with glittering careers in the media than there

are media graduates from Any Other University, but this is down

to the class-bound nature of education in Blairs Britain, not to

the intrinsic value of an Oxbridge degree. What I want to suggest

here is that the failure, or indeed any measure of success, of

media studies education does not depend on the exit profile of

its graduates, or in the fact that they remain decisively

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outnumbered as media professionals by non-media graduates.

The failure lies in the nature of media studies courses themselves,

courses which so often inhibit the potential of their students,

offering them bogus opportunities to think in tune with the

demands of an industry which doesnt really exist, rather than

encouraging them to imagine the media for themselves, and to

create a possible media world in which they might actually be

inspired to work.

Media studies is a relentlessly burgeoning subject, consistently

disproving conservative predictions about its longevity as a viable

academic discipline, even if its methodologies are borrowed from

other, more solid ones (sociology, linguistics, literary theory,

anthropology, philosophy, etc). The number of students takingmedia studies courses at university has doubled in the space of

two years. Why is it, then, that media studies generates such

anxiety about its future direction from its would-be

ambassadors, and especially from its course leaders on the

ground?

One could hardly imagine mathematicians being so torn by the

future direction of mathematics, or even physicists or biologists

over the future of their disciplines, since historically theirs have

been heuristic in nature, which means that their supporting

philosophies tend to be generated spontaneously through

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research. Of course, mathematicians, physicists and biologists

especially biologists may have due reason to be concerned

about the ethicaldimensions of what they are doing, and about

where their research is leading us. The public controversy over

stem cell research and the mapping of the human genome attest to

an anxiety equally as great, if not more so, as the hysteria

periodically induced by our moral guardians over the value and

integrity of media studies to a generation of couch potatoes.

However, the difference between the sciences on the one hand

and the arts and humanities on the other, and of which media

studies provides a special case, is that while mathematicians

and to a lesser extent physicists and biologists are influenced by

internal pressures, for media studies in particular, and arguably

more so than any other arts subject, the tensions and anxieties areoverwhelmingly externalin origin. How so?

Since at least the late 1980s media studies has been in a state of

extreme anxiety and nervous tension. The reasons for this are

complicated, although suffice to say that this state has coincided

with a wholesale decline in the teaching of media studies in

secondary schools throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.

During the corresponding period university courses offering

media, cultural and communication studies proliferated, largely in

an effort to readdress the lack of provision and the huge demand

among school-leavers for this new and glamorous subject.

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Nevertheless the tension continues, often unnoticed, invariably

unacknowledged, in spite of the unabated attraction of these

courses among university students. It is a tension that finds

expression in the so-called theory versus practice debate. For

many years now there have been strongly held and conflicting

views over the pedagogic values underpinning media-related

courses. Without trying to overstate the case I speak as a former

active participant in such debate the conflict might best be

understood as an institutional power struggle, one that recalls

those famous comments by Marx and Engels in theirManifesto of

the Communist Party on the role of the educators in society. The

question to be wrestled over was this: Who was going to run

media studies in Britain? Who was going to dictate its future

pedagogic rationale and strategic philosophy? Media academics?Or media practitioners? Who would be the future stakeholders,

investors and beneficiaries of media studies? Was media studies

out to service the needs of industry by producing suitably

qualified graduates? Or to strengthen the research profiles of arts

and humanities departments?

No doubt there will be those who feel I am overstating the case,

and that this struggle was (is) an imaginary one, or at least a

convenient stereotype that belies a much more subtle set of

institutional relations. All I would be prepared to concede by way

of response is that industry versus research is indeed a founding

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myth, although one that is no less real in terms of its institutional

effects. I freely admit that the idea of theory being opposed to

practice, or that academics are abstract thinkers and media

practitioners are doers, or even inherently creative and

productive, is errant nonsense. What is more surprising

however is just how much support this stereotype constantly

receives from media departments up and down the country,

whose aggressive recruitment of media practitioners is borne out

by the glaring disparity in the earnings of the latter over their

non-practitioner colleagues. The starting salary of a journalist or

graphic designer entering the teaching profession is virtually

guaranteed to be significantly higher (as much as 10,000 in

some cases) than that of a postgraduate student, even though the

journalist or graphic designer is unlikely to have had anysignificant lecturing experience. This sends out a clear signal

regarding the perceived merits of academics, whose conventional

career path is postgraduate research, and media practitioners,

whose career path is not. The disparity is seldom acknowledged,

but ultimately justified by media departments on the grounds that

their students need to be kept abreast of the latest professional

practice and creative innovations as if journalists and graphic

designers are the only ones worthy of the creative tag and that

media departments are forced to pay the market rate in order to

attract suitably qualified staff.

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Of course, it is debatable quite how well-placed a graphic

designer contemplating a career move, especially into teaching, is

likely to be to the cutting edge of his or her profession, but lets

leave that aside (along with those high flying media personalities

who manage to fit in a bit of lecturing on the side). What is

undeniable is that media studies curricula are especially prone to

influence from the external (and yet imaginary) pressures of

meeting the needs of industry. As someone who once taught on

a journalism course in a media department for four years I fully

recognize the anxieties among students that the courses they have

chosen to study, in order to be authentic, must secure relevant

industry recognition or accreditation. Let me try to address those

concerns directly by reassuring students that such accreditation,

whether it be from the NCTJ (National Council for the Trainingof Journalists), the ICAD (Institute of Creative Advertising and

Design) or from whoever else, is likely to enhance the value of

your degree about as much as if it were sponsored by

McDonalds.

None of this is meant as a criticism of media practitioners, even if

it betrays the very tensions I am out to expose. The problem with

media studies education is not the fact that media practitioners are

being recruited to teach on, and in many cases lead, media studies

courses. The problem is that an impression has emerged among

course leaders and deans of media arts faculties that media

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practitioners and industry personnel understand far more

intuitively than academics what media education should be for. In

other words, the ability of media studies to define itself through

teaching and academic research has significantly diminished over

the last twenty years. What we have today is a situation in which

an intellectual gap has opened up between course leaders on the

one hand and those who have traditionally been the subjects

creative visionaries on the other, i.e. media academics and

researchers. The result is that a growing number of media studies

curricula are being written with at least one eye fixed firmly on

what course leaders believe media students need to be taught in

order to meet the requirements of a media industry, nebulous to

say the least, which in reality often has no idea or firm opinion as

to what media studies education actually is.

But shouldnt the career aspirations of students, imaginary or

otherwise, be taken seriously? Why shouldnt media studies

curricula be geared at least in part towards enabling students

to acquire a measure of technical expertise and media industry

know-how? Nothing whatsoever. In fact, Im all for media

literacy and training. The problem is that in my experience this

training tends to involve nothing more technically sophisticated

than learning how to edit some video footage of the local

recreation centre, or simply giving in to the technological

determinism of the PowerPoint presentation. Invariably media

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students take modules in Desktop Publishing or Corporate

Identity in which they have to design a magazine cover or a

company logo. Those students particularly frustrated by the

patronizing assumptions of their tutors in setting them these type

of sixth form assignments should at least understand the rationale

which underpins it all. If truth be told, the reason why universities

lay so much emphasis on media skills has less to do with the

career aspirations of media students which always tend to be

mixed and a lot more to do with the allocation of resources for

media studies courses. Typically the cost base for a media studies

course will be relatively low. Media studies is not medicine, it

doesnt require any specialist equipment of the kind it takes to

train doctors and scientists, so the cost per unit to a university

offering it will be that much lower. However, in cases where auniversity is unable to fill as many places as it would like one has

to consider alternative sources of funding.

Attracting high numbers of students to media studies courses

becomes increasingly difficult the more students choose to study

it, since more courses are then set up to meet the rising demand,

which means that, overall, numbers will be that much more

spread out. Where a university might have been able to attract

sixty students to its media studies programme in the past, faced

with competition from a neighbouring university it might now

only be able to attract half that number. This has been the

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constant, market-driven dilemma, not just for media studies, but

for higher education in general, since its expansion in the early

1990s: media studies booms in popularity, more courses are then

set up quickly in order to meet the demand, which fuels it even

further before tailing off just as quickly due to oversupply. Many

media studies courses have fallen victim to this pattern over the

years. However, in order to counter this problem, universities

have found that there is another, less drastic option in keeping

their courses afloat, which basically involves revising their cost

base. All higher education courses are banded in terms of the

amount of government funding they receive. These bands

correspond to the costs involved in running university courses,

with clinical subjects like medicine and dentistry (which involve

a high level of practice-based study and hence specialistequipment) occupying the upper bands, and courses like media

and social work (which generally require nothing more specialist

than some chairs and computers) occupying the lower ones. For

media courses with declining student numbers a preferred option

has been to add on a practice-based element in order to justify

higher costs, thereby securing more government funding. For the

less scrupulous HE institutions, say for those art colleges that

already possess technical facilities for broadcast training and

graphic design, but which dont currently run courses in media

studies, the market trend has been to set them up, thereby

circumventing the problem of how to generate more revenue

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when their existing bona fide practice-based courses are already

full.

The lure of attending an art college or film school is immensely

attractive to students even and especially if courses in film and

graphic design are unavailable due to over-subscription, and

media studies is presented to them as the next best thing. The

attraction would be somewhat diminished perhaps if students

were made aware that the practice-based element of their media

studies course has more to do with the financial priorities of their

university than with any media production ethic. In the

circumstances it makes much more sense nowadays for

universities to perpetuate the myth that the media industry is

essentially in the same business as it finds itself in by default:income generation. The message sent out to media students in any

case comes down to the same thing: namely, that media studies

exists in order to service the media industry with professionals,

and that the success of media studies as an academic discipline is

to be measured in terms of how well its students live up to this

brief; in other words, how well they manage to put theory into

practice.

My task in this book is to show students and lecturers just how

cynical, misguided and downright dishonest this message is, and

just how much it misrepresents the intellectual history of media

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studies, of what it is still capable of, and how it might rediscover

a possible future. I use intellectual here in the broadest possible

terms. My task is not to reinforce stereotypes or to seek to drive a

wedge (at least not any deeper) between theory on the one hand,

and practice on the other. Readers of this book may even be

surprised to learn that I often dont find such labels all that

helpful or informative. My task instead is to enable media studies

students to thinkand to do in novel and experimental ways

against the grain of current media studies theory (and practice) in

its many forms.

In a recent visit to one of Londons new universities I was

proudly informed by a member of staff, without so much as a hint

of irony, that the media faculty alumni included the current editorof the celebrity magazineHeat. In my view this is perfectly

indicative of the narrow-mindedness presently afflicting media

academics and their profound misrepresentation of the

experiences and aspirations of their students. Media studies has

come to be defined through the instrumental rationality of its

corporate philosophy and the glamour and public visibility of

its leading lights, those exceptional talents who have made it in

the profession and now make their living from the public lecture

circuit, lucrative newspaper columns and book contracts.

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Undoubtedly I dont seek to deny it media students need role

models. What they dont need, however, and what does media

studies no favours at all, is its association with these puffed-up

talking heads, who turn up on panel discussion shows in order to

mouth some patently obvious drivel about violence on television,

or to cast their critical eyes over the latest exhibition, novel or

film. Such vain appearances by high-flying media commentators

and academics, although undoubtedly helping to reel in awestruck

students by the bucket-load to their host institutions, do nothing

for the reputation of media research or for media studies as an

intellectual discipline. What is more, it helps to perpetuate the

myth that working in the media is all about disinterested

commentary punctuated by bursts of creative energy, all of which

leads, for the talented ones, to a glamorous lifestyle and well-deserved financial rewards. The real impression one draws from

this situation is actually quite simple, it doesnt take much

working out: nice work if you can get it.

My advice to those media students in search of glamour,

spectacle and financial rewards is simple: audition for Big

Brother, dont waste your time with media studies (although you

might want to read chapter 2 before you do). To those students

curious, stubborn and determined enough to want to think and

to rethink media studies beyond the limits of its current

orthodoxy, beyond what are ultimately meaningless distinctions

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between theory and practice, intelligence and creativity,

knowledge and invention my advice is to read on.

1. Theory and Practice

The history of media theory and its relation to media production,

or what I shall call practice for the sake of argument, is somewhat

complicated. I wont even set out to touch the surface of this

history in what follows. Nor should it be of prime concern to

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media students. There is no single history or unique category of

media studies education.

The most important thing media students need to understand

about the media is, firstly, what (and whether) it thinks and,

secondly, what it does. My aim in this chapter will be to

demonstrate that these questions, although apparently distinct, are

in actual fact a lot more closely connected than they appear.

Theory and practice always imply one other; theory seldom exists

that can avoid some sort of relation with practice. However, as

well as trying to convey the mutual relations between theory and

practice I will also try to propose something a bit more ambitious:

that theory and practice can also be shown to be the same thing.

The idea that what or how something thinks and what it does may

be identical is not a widely held view, no less so among media

academics. Traditionally, the main division of social labour, not

just in university departments but in most walks of life, is the

division between intellectual workers and manual workers, or

thinkers and doers. Ever since the industrial revolution of the

19th century, people have been defined and identified by

profession. What is more, their professions doctors, bricklayers,

teachers, carpenters have traditionally fallen into two main

categories: that of manual work, where the worker is said to be

skilled at producing things walls or chairs and that of

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intellectual work, where the worker is said to be skilled at dealing

with ideas about health or history, the English language, etc.

Karl Marx was the first among modern thinkers to point out that,

in intellectual terms, the distinction between the man of theory

and the man of practice was largely superficial. Obviously the

doctor was more learned than the carpenter in the sense that the

depth of specialist knowledge required of the doctor far exceeded

that of the carpenter. However, the main difference between them

was not the intellectual complexity of their respective

professions, or even the superior intelligence required of doctors

over carpenters, but the relativesocial standingof the two

professions.

Historically doctors had always received a far higher degree of

public acclaim and prestige and material benefits than common

tradesmen, since most if not all were drawn from the upper class

oligarchs and their attendants, or in other words from the social

elite of European aristocracy. But by the middle of the 19th

century the situation was radically changing. A social revolution

was sweeping out from England over the rest of the world in

which the age-old distinction between intellectual and manual

workers, and the prestige accorded to both, was gradually

collapsing. What was changing was not that carpenters were

suddenly beginning to earn as much money as doctors, but that

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the distinction between doctors and carpenters was no longer

regarded as an intellectual one. It was now a commercial

distinction.

According to Marx, the difference between the doctor and the

manual worker and the relative value of each to the newly

emergent capitalist society was defined largely in market terms. A

doctors intellect was no longer what afforded him respect from

the rest of the community. Instead, his social standing now came

to depend on the quality of his services. For Marx, there really

was nothing to choose between the man of theory and the man of

practice. Under capitalism the doctor and the carpenter are

equal because both are wage earners. What separates them is

material wealth, which is directly related to their labour poweror their capacity to make money. Whether the doctor treated his

patients ailments well, or whether the carpenter could make a

chair entirely to his customers satisfaction was a question for the

customer, not for the doctor or carpenter. In capitalist society, one

was always free to employ someone else if one wasnt happy

with a particular service: you pay your money and take your

choice.

Indeed, Marx believed that there would come a time when the

distinctions between doctor, bricklayer, teacher and

carpenter ceased to be meaningful. Not that these professions

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would some day cease to exist, but that they would cease to be the

preserve of experts. In a communist society the needs of the

community would decide who was an expert and who wasnt, the

only difference being that under communism those needs would

no longer be subject to the law of supply and demand.

So what conclusions can we draw from Marxs predictions? How

do they help us to understand the relationship between thinking

theory and doing practice? The answer depends largely on the

accuracy of Marxs predictions, which is a question I shall leave

to the reader although rest assured I shall provide more than a

few clues to help students answer it in what follows. Lets just

say that Marxs work continues to hold enormous relevance for

contemporary media regardless of whether we choose to agreewith him or not. For TV producers, magazine editors and the

public relations industry the media has become the great cultural

leveller, if not exactly the commercial leveller Marx wanted to

help bring about. The media is an example of what Jrgen

Habermas calls a public sphere in the way it represents the life-

world of its viewing public, reflecting back at them their own

experiences, aspirations and desires. The exposure of consumers

to the media spotlight has more or less become a democratic

right. In the future, as Andy Warhol predicted, everyone will

be world famous for 15 minutes.

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But how successful has the media been in fulfilling Marxs

communistpredictions? In other words, by how much has the gap

between theorists and practitioners narrowed? Let me outline four

possible answers to this question.

The Conservative Typology: Theory or Practice

In at least one respect, and despite Marxs predictions to the

contrary, today there is still a substantial gulf separating theory

and practice. I shall call this the conservative typology.

Conservatives tend to believe in clearly defined distinctions

between theory and practice. They regard the difference between

thinking and doing in absolute terms. For the conservative there

are experts, those pre-disposed toward thinking; and there aretradesmen, those pre-disposed toward doing. But there are no

grey areas in-between. Admittedly one can have practical theory

or theoretical practice. But one always takes priority over the

other: eitherpractice is governed by theory; ortheory is governed

by practice. They are never equal partners.

Of course, this is not to say that conservatives would deny that

there are individuals who can do and think a bit of both. Clearly

all of us make use of our intellects as much as we do our bodies,

often without thinking. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist,

famously declared that even tradesmen could be regarded as a

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certain type of intellectual, since intelligence was part and parcel

of how we operated in the world and related to those around us.

The only sense in which the conservative would be likely to

disagree with this observation would be in terms of its

implications for class society. For the conservative, individuals

are free to do or think whatever they want as individuals. But the

freedom of individuals doesnt alter the essential nature of their

respective social backgrounds, or their class belonging. An

intellectual doesnt become less of one if he changes

profession, any more than a manual worker ceases to be one if

he lands an office job. For the conservative, X = X. In other

words we are what we are, and in the final analysis nothing we

think or do will make any difference.

According to the conservative typology, then, theory is theory

and practice is practice even if each one implies the other. A more

accurate way of looking at the relation between them would be to

say this: theory is theory because it is notpractice, and vice versa.

In reality, the conservative is always defined as what he is by

virtue of what he is not. The man of learning, the expert, likes to

pretend that his intelligence is natural, inbred, rather than due to

the existence of non-experts. One might argue that this is how the

education system has traditionally operated. The spread of

knowledge and learning has always been placed in the hands of

teachers whose wisdom also gave them respect in the eyes of the

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wider community. But how much of their wisdom can be put

down simply to what they know, and how much of it can be put

down to what their students dont know?

Could the teacher really exist without the student? Isnt the

teachers wisdom always relative to that of the student? After all,

a teacher is liable to seem very intelligent to a student who knows

next to nothing. However, when a student knows a lot more by

comparison the teacher will no doubt appear a lot less

knowledgeable. And given that no one can know it all the

difference in intelligence between teachers and students is always

likely to be relative. For the conservative, being a teacher depends

on a certain type of intellect, a certain pre-disposition toward

knowledge and learning. But on closer inspection we can see howthe teachers intelligence is reinforced by the students thirst for

knowledge. The relationship between them is astructuralone. In

slightly more technical terms it is a disjunction. X = X because

X Y.

The Aristocratic Typology: Theory

Unlike the conservative, the aristocrat is a theorist who is defined,

not by his opposition to practice, but by his hatred of the idea of

it. What is more, not only does the aristocrat detest practice, he

denies against all common sense that there is any such thing. For

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the aristocrat there is only one type of work, that of the theorist,

and everyone must aspire to be one whether they like it or not.

But how can everyone be a theorist? The conservative typology

requires some of us to be theorists and some practitioners. Surely

if everyone spent his or her time thinking then nothing would

ever get done? From this point of view the aristocrats hatred of

practice would seem socially irresponsible. Dont experts need a

public in order to be experts?

The aristocrat answers these objections in the following way:

everyone is a theorist. The only difference being that some are

more expert at it than others. Put differently, everyone is a

potentialtheorist; we can all aspire to think, even if we haventquite perfected the art of thinking yet. As far as practice is

concerned, it serves no useful purpose. For the aristocrat, those

who engage in practice are simply second-rate thinkers, people

who havent quite learned how to do without it. Whereas the

conservative says: be true to your profession, the aristocrat says:

follow in my footsteps. He is the Jesus Christ of theory.

But how could such a strange way of looking at the world

possibly work in practice? Where would we be for example if

novelists suddenly demanded of their readers to put down their

books and pick up their pens? What sort of society would emerge

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if everyone stopped doing things and started thinking? What

would happen to the family if homemakers stopped doing the

ironing and spent all day reading, in schools if pupils began

teaching themselves, to the legal and political systems if prisoners

put themselves on a par with judges and ordinary citizens began

to work alongside politicians? What would happen to the national

culture if philosophers knew no more than the masses, or if

people with no formal medical training began calling themselves

doctors? What would happen if expert talking heads were

replaced by double glazing salesmen on TV panel shows?

Stretching the point slightly one could argue that much of this has

taken place already, albeit on a relatively small scale. Admittedly,

ordinary people are a long way from helping to run the country,and prisoners are unlikely to be invited to try legal cases in the

courts anytime soon. However, in certain respects we are

becoming a population of thinkers. Many more young people are

studying at university compared with a decade ago and, once

there, are staying on for longer to study for postgraduate degrees.

In addition, mature students are returning to education in order to

fulfil a lifelong ambition to learn. And as far as culture is

concerned, the interest in the arts and the popularity of art

galleries has surged since the early 1990s, no doubt prompted by

Young British Artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin and

their own brand of intellectual iconoclasm. If one extends the

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definition of thought to include spontaneous political awareness

(as opposed to the passive intellect of the TV couch potato) then

the public demonstrations across the world against the war in Iraq

would qualify millions of people not just in Britain, but in France,

Germany, Australia, the United States and so on, as aristocratic

thinkers.

Despite all this, however, the real response of the aristocrat to the

prospect of a world in which practice has been made redundant

by theory is as follows: its a practical problem, not a theoretical

one. For the aristocrat, the more people who follow his lead, the

more of us who aspire toward and attain intellectual mastery and

self-sufficiency, the more practice becomes socially irrelevant.

Theory is certainly not a recipe for class struggle or socialrevolution or at least social revolution is not the aim of theory.

After all, what is there to revolt against? The point of theory is

not to help us solve social problems. Theory, along with thinking,

is its own reward an end in itself which means that it

doesnt need to earn its keep or justify its existence through

practice. The theorist solves the worlds problems (assuming

the world even exists for him) by the force of his intellect

alone.

The Artisanal Typology: Practice

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The artisan is an aristocrat in reverse. She disagrees with the

aristocratic pretensions to theorize, preferring instead to practice

what the aristocrat merely preaches, and so challenges the

aristocrats right to exist. The artisan hates theory as much as the

aristocrat detests practice. But what is it that the artisan does that

the aristocrat doesnt? Better still: what does the artisan do that

the aristocrat refuses to do?

For the artisan practice is the way for people, ordinary, untutored

people, to get in touch with reality. Practice doesnt require

anyone to teach it. Instead, its something you pick up by

yourself, oracquire through trial and error. The practitioner likes

to think of herself as a great doer, sometimes creative, often with

artistic pretensions, who produces things. A carpenter produceschairs, while a director produces films; both ply their trade

largely through instinct, know-how and skills acquired on the

job. By contrast teachers and doctors strike the artisan as

excessively abstract thinkers. In other words, with a lot less

studying and exam taking and a lot morepractical experience of

teaching and treating patients they could do their jobs a lot better

(a perception which perhaps owes as much to the rampant

bureaucracy in the education and health systems as to the work

teachers and doctors are actually employed to do).

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The artisans suspicions of theory are not limited to theorists. The

practitioner is also wary of the influence theory might exert over

her own practice. This is especially true of artists and entertainers,

who dont traditionally regard themselves as great thinkers. Art

has always thrived on impulse and spontaneity, of doing things on

the spur of the moment without thinking. This is why the

practitioner puts so much faith in experiences and feelings that

cant generally be accounted for, and that only emerge with the

aid of intuition. Of course, the recording artist makes records, but

this is simply what she does for a living, a byproduct of her life as

an artist. What she thrives on and what makes her an artist in

practice is live performance, the peculiarity of the real-life

encounter. This sublime moment is what photographers like

Cartier Bresson, or jazz musicians like Miles Davis, or novelistslike Hubert Selby Jr., seek to capture through their work.

Perhaps the other phobia for the artisan is authority. For the

artisan intelligence seems like a compromise that risks

undermining her independence of spirit and creative energy. For

artisans of every persuasion the whole point is one of not losing

the freedom to practice their art wherever they choose. The

artisan is the self-styled, modern equivalent of a journeyman; this

is not just a job, its a vocation. Therefore exercisingones rights

as a practitioner is more than a choice, its a must. This is the

only way to ensure that practice is not diluted by the superficial

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philosophizing of the theorist. Ultimately, however, what the

practitioner and the theorist have in common is arguably more

than what sets them apart (although needless to say this is not

something either of them would ever dream of admitting).

Namely: a blind faith in their own vocation to the total exclusion

of all detractors. Both hold up their own work as an example for

non-believers to follow.

The Communist Typology: Theory and Practice

The communist stands for what many people would call a utopian

illusion. This is the idea that theorists and practitioners can not

only co-exist, but can unite together as one, thereby enhancing the

whole of society in the process. Whereas for the conservativesociety is what it is because of its differences, the communist sees

all difference as a barrier to social equality. The conservative

wants to defend differences while the communist wants to destroy

them.

Is the communist the true exponent, then, of Marxs philosophy?

As I have already suggested, this depends not least on how we

define equality today. For example, the conservative need not

deny being a democratic exponent of equality. For the

conservative, equality has nothing to do either with what one does

or what one thinks. Unlike for the aristocrat and the artisan, for

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the conservative achieving equality is certainly not a question of

belief. Instead, she enshrines equality in the rights of individuals

to choose to be different. In her view equality is not so much an

act of faith as a constitutional right. Difference has the law on its

side.

For the communist, however, the law makes no difference.

Theorist and practitioner are just labels, they only reflect

artificially imposed divisions in society and tell us nothing about

the true talents of individuals. In an ideal world, the one the

communist wants to bring about, people wont any longer be

forced to choose between theory and practice, they will be

encouraged to do both, to be practitioners in the daytime and

theorists at night. The condition for making this state of affairs areality, as we have already seen, is the elimination of what Marx

called the division of labour, which forces individuals to

specialize in only one type of work. The communist regards the

conservative approach to identity, and identity itself, as

superficial. For the communist human beings are essentially all

the same.

Of all previous typologies this would appear to involve the most

ambitious of propositions. We live in a world of such seemingly

insurmountable contradictions and unbridgeable differences. We

are informed repeatedly through the mass media that people are

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more socially divided than ever before, that the gap between rich

and poor is growing, and that social inequality is leading us

toward a state of crime, lawlessness and social anarchy. Marxs

response to such dire warnings was simple enough: dont believe

the hype. Marx was wary of journalism, which he regarded as no

more than bourgeois propaganda despite having written political

articles for countless newspapers. It was certainly no surprise to

him for conservatives to warn of the dangers posed to law and

order by the communists. After all the communists wanted to

destroy all difference, or at least to eliminate the privileges

associated with different professions, especially the bourgeois

professions. But how did Marx believe this could be achieved?

Readers will perhaps be disappointed to learn that the actualquestion of how to make social revolution is the weakest part of

Marxs philosophy. Marxs predictions were based on his

analysis of the economic system of capitalism. It didnt provide

any detailed advice on how people should act in order to make

revolution happen. Marx hasnt left us with a set of instructions.

For Marx, the key to the question was class struggle, by which

he meant the hidden tensions in society between the middle and

working classes, as well as between its theorists and practitioners.

It is capitalism, an economy based on unfair competition and

profit making, that creates tensions between these classes. But the

tensions were not destined to last forever. On the strength of

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Marxs meticulous interpretation of how capitalism exploited

people and of how this exploitation would intensify in future,

there was only one conclusion: revolution was inevitable. The

only question which was the much more difficult one was

when.

Much of the so-called Marxist philosophy that emerged after

Marxs death, most notably in the writings of both Lenin and

Mao Tse-tung, deals with this very question. For Lenin, although

we are unable to predict the timing of revolution, there are things

we can do in the meantime and ways of thinking that will make it

more likely to happen in the not too distant future. Basically, we

canprepare. Like Marx, Lenin agreed that all social divisions

must be eliminated. But what if they were eliminated too soon?Wasnt the discrimination between theory and practice, apart

from being unjust, precisely what generated the social tensions

that would lead to revolution in the first place? Didnt

revolutionaries need social conflict in order to eliminate it? And,

if so, how could theory and practice ever be one? Isnt there a risk

that, in claiming to unite theory and practice, the communist will

resemble the conservative who denies theirtrue differences? In

other words: how can theory and practice be united when

communists and conservatives both have a vested interest in

seeing them kept apart?

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Needless to say these are not easy questions to answer (although I

develop them a lot more in chapter 5). However, Lenins basic

response was that the most effective way of bringing social unity

about was through party organization. Revolutionaries may not be

capable of completely eliminating discrimination from society,

but they could certainly hope to eliminate it from their own ranks.

In forming an organization of theorists and practitioners whose

respective knowledge and skills were equivalent to one another,

and equally important in making the revolution, Lenin had a

working model for the rest of society: the party is the revolution

in microcosm. Lenins task was now to inject the non-

revolutionary remainder of society with the partys revolutionary

consciousness.

For the communist, then, revolution is possible on the strict

condition that everyone is equal. For both him and his party, X =

Y. In other words, the condition for social equality is that

everyone should be the same. The relationship between theory

and practice here is a dialectical one. In slightly more technical

terms it is a conjunction. X = Y because X & Y.

Theory and Practice in One

I began this chapter by suggesting that the key to understanding

theory and practice was to understand the relations between them.

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I then outlined four possible typologies: conservative, aristocratic,

artisanal, and communist. My aim in doing this was to encourage

students to identify their own work and interests in media studies

with at least one of these typologies. However, in the course of

writing this chapter a problem arose. It appeared that my job was

done. In setting out the typologies it suddenly struck me that I had

given students all the guidance they would need in order to start

theorizing and practising media for themselves. After all, it had

certainly not been my intention to sum up the history of media

studies, to assess the work of practitioners or to explain the subtle

nuances of particular theories. As I make clear in my

introduction, my aim in this book is to enable students to think for

themselves without the external pressures of making their work

relevant to the so-called media industry. Students on mediastudies courses are constantly reminded of the industry

standards required of them when presenting their work. Some of

this advice is obvious and uncontroversial; for instance, the

proper acknowledgement of sources in writing feature articles, or

the 180 degree system of spatial continuity in film editing. But

much of it serves to perpetuate the myth that the media needs

workers who can conform to its way of thinking (assuming the

media even thinks) and that a students creativity is only valid on

condition of its commercial viability. This is precisely the myth I

want to challenge. The vocational policy of very many media

studies courses invariably amounts to nothing more visionary

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than the imperative to churn out good little consumers who are

media literate, or industry apprentices who are flexible and

adaptable (i.e. who dont mind making the coffee). Media

studies would be well advised to develop a conscience and ask

itself some tough questions about its own role in servicing this

false economy. Self-criticism should involve a reorientation of

media studies towards empowering students not just through

thinking critically about questions of media ownership and

broadcasting regulation. Media studies equally needs to provide

students with the confidence to jettison their reverence for this

imaginary industry and consider instead how best to create real

media environments, ones in which they define the scope and

possibilities, through theory and practice, for thinking and doing.

It is high time for students to take control. Few other subjectsoffer quite so much potential for students to think theory and do

practice without the prohibitions of specialist knowledge,

experimental equipment and expertise that define the social and

physical sciences. Anyone can learn how to use a video camera,

design a web site, or start a magazine or e-journal. But the

potential doesnt rest with technology alone. Theory is equally

important in defining the parameters of ones work and

experimenting under the right conditions. Media studies can be

the most exhilarating of academic laboratories. Its doors are open

to all-comers.

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But isnt there a risk that this kind of advice will send out

confusing messages? Isnt the impression generated by the

theory-practice typologies that students must choose between

them? Isnt the suggestion of a typology likely to encourage them

to make their theory and/or practice conform to a particular

model? The danger with any typology is that it defines types

rather than realities. In reality the conservative will often

resemble the communist. Perhaps conservatives are the modern

communists, or vice versa. Communists are also regularly

mistaken for aristocrats and artisans, and so on and so forth.

Must we conclude from these reservations, which I point to here

for the sake of clarity, that a typology is just a guide, and

therefore should not be taken too seriously? Yes and no.Obviously my intentions were serious enough in devising these

typologies, and nothing takes away from the fact that they still

roughly account for the different theoretical and practical

approaches, along with any potential future ones, in media

studies. Having said that the missing realities are what shall

interest us for the remainder of this book. Our typologies provide

a fairly firm foundation, but we need to explore things in a bit

more detail over the following chapters.

By this point readers should hopefully be starting to realize that

there is not just one way of thinking and/or practising media.

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There are four. But given our admission that typologies only

provide rough sketches of reality, impressions rather than exact

copies or predictions, wont there be many more realities than we

can properly account for? If the conservative often resembles a

communist and a communist an artisan, then surely we need to

come up with many more typologies in order to include all the

other possible realties? One might perhaps devise a conservative-

communist typology as well as a communist-conservative

typology; an aristocratic-artisanal typology and an artisanal-

communist typology; and perhaps even a communist-communist

typology in order to distinguish the real communist from his

countless imitators. This is certainly possible and may prove a

useful exercise for those students who wish to consider more

complex relations between theory and practice than our fourexisting typologies permit. I leave such an exercise entirely up to

the students own initiative.

My aim in the rest of this book will be to adopt an alternate

approach. Instead of multiplying the four typologies we already

have I want to stick with them, not because I believe they are the

most reliable approximations of reality, but because what I want

to explore further are the possible realities internal to each of

them. Stated simply, I want to consider how well these four

typologies pass the reality test and whether they can, in theory

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and practice, not so much help to explain the world of the media,

as to create it.

Let me rephrase the proposition. What I want to do over the

course of the following chapters is to invent possible media

worlds through theory and practice. This should not be viewed as

some type of abstract thought experiment. It is not (only) a

theoretical exercise. How could it be, since we have already

established that theory is always defined in its relation with

practice, even if that relation is negative? To say that someone is

conservative in their thinking is immediately to define their

practical life. In the same way, to allege that someone thinks like

a communist is to characterize the very world they inhabit along

with its internal relations, its rules for action, its creativepossibilities, its morality, law, existing mediaand culture,

politics

But we can go much further than this. If as I proposed at the

beginning of this chapter thinking and doing, theory and practice,

are one and the same thing, then there is nothing separating us

from the worlds we are able to define in theory. Thinking about

communism (assuming we really can) would be the same as

doing it, no different from joining the Bolsheviks storming the

Winter Palace (or at least Dziga Vertov filming the events) during

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the Russian Revolution in 1917. The world of theory and the

world of practice would explosively come together in one.

So too with the aristocratic typology, in which we find ourselves

in the midst of a world where practice is practically non-

existent, where theory is in command, where priests and their

disciples wage war on official media and culture, where our

thinking is no longer governed by law but by inner faith

Let us begin then with what I call theory and practice in one. Let

us begin to speculate on how our typologies can help us to think

new thoughts and do new practices, about how they can help us to

create media worlds.

A few final words before we begin. The worlds I have chosen

to navigate are not the only possible ones. Each of the following

four chapters corresponds not to a single, pre-established world,

but to an attempt to buildone; each chapter is an attempt to think

and/or do theory and/or practice in one. They are at the time of

writing creative exercises. For far too long now the possibilities

inherent in media theory have been denied to practitioners. The

result of this is that theory has been cast in the role of a stagnant,

unhappy bedfellow of truly creative practice. The impression

among media students that theory is something that has to be

learned, invariably by rote, while the real creative energy comes

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from media practice (filmmaking, web design, advertising, music

production, photography and digital arts) will hopefully, by the

end of this book, be much less popular among students

themselves.

My aim throughout this book has been to avoid the scholarly use

of references and footnotes that invariably detract from the main

text, leaving students with the impression that further reading is

required. Although I would encourage students to read as widely

as they can, suggestions for further reading might be an

unwelcome distraction for some, and for this reason I have left

out all footnotes from the main text (a separate notes section,

which doubles as an extensive bibliography, appears at the end

containing what I regard to be among the most important sourcesin media studies education). I have used almost no quotations,

preferring instead to offer selective interpretations of key theories

from linguistics, philosophy and media, cultural and

communication studies, and to provide practical examples from

film, popular music, television, academic conferences and

seminars, and everyday life. This rigid distinction between

theory and practice is of course precisely what is at issue here,

and by the end of the book it is hoped that my approach will have

enabled students to rethink the relevance of such a distinction.

This has been my guiding aim at least.

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