Author: kailily

Culturalization of the Economy: Barclays

Modernity and the economization of the human experience resulted in financial incentives motivating the distribution of culture. According to Yudice in The Expediency of Culture (2003) “culture has simply become a pretext for social and political amelioration and economic growth” (Yudice, 2003: 10). The public sphere depends on sharing culture; a process many argue significantly enhances quality of life. Therefore, it benefits financial institutions to support culture in order to beget more economical and productive individuals. I will specifically refer to the normalization of banks and other corporations sponsoring cultural events like music festivals, lectures and other creative projects. For example, Barclays bank sponsored the popular UK festival called “Wireless”, for a number of years. The first sponsor of the Wireless festival was a telecommunications company, and the current sponsor is Yahoo! Corporate sponsorship of cultural events is direct representation of culturalization of the economy, in that these banks aim to curry the favor of targeted demographics by providing creative and cultural outlets attached to the brand.

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I visited a Barclays Bank to try and distinguish the initiatives of the company and how they define their services as a cultural commodity. The branch I visited in Peckham Rye provides an ATM machine outside the premises, while inside a long line of bank goers wait to speak to a human representative of the brand. It maintains the appearance of a shop, while the bank-tellers encased in a bulletproof box look like shopkeepers. The people who work at Barclays are dressed in sharp uniform suits, labeled with nametags and are identifiable by their friendly affect. When you speak to one of these bank tellers, not only do they provide you with knowledge about your own finances, but also how the bank itself devised mechanisms that can help you lead a more ‘economical life’. The walls are plastered with images of a diverse demographic range of smiling models, as well as emotive images of children and old people. These images express the bank’s desire to infiltrate the normative reason around how families should operate, as well as indicating that providing the best for one’s family begins with Barclays.Image result for barclays adverts Best and Paterson (2010) label this emotive rational as typical of the financial underpinnings of culture. The Barclays website includes savings plans, methods of protection against theft, holiday finance assistance and page dedicated to ‘life skills’. Barclays aims to establish a “common sense identity” which synonymizes banking and life style, “to shape consumption patterns” (Best and Paterson, 2010: 14). Many of the provisional applications that Barclays bank offers to customers, may be considered politically divisive in that they promote lifestyle behaviors that would benefit the economy, like interest on savings or low rate loans. Locating bank incentives as socially advertised, but politically charged also provides the foreground for understanding how banks encouraging home ownership caused the economic crisis. Banks fund cultural events and utilize marketing campaigns that capitalize on individualism and the emergence of identity politics that value cultural differences in a globalized world.

Networks, Digital Media, and The Global Economy: Films and Culture

As a child my father and I would head to the video store every Friday night. We would leave the store with a load of DVD’s to last us through the weekend. A little over 10 years ago, the family owned store we frequented went under, followed shortly after by the Blockbuster franchise stationed just around the corner. These events coincided with the immense transition to the digital economy, in which people could find any film imaginable, for free and without ever having to leave their homes. Combined with the generational expectation of immediate availability and instant gratification, the time it took for a film to transition from cinema to DVD rental, or appearance on television started to seem like a lifetime.

Image result for putlocker imagesAt first, platforms like iTunes attempted to provide legitimate ways of renting films online, but savvy internet users adapted to the pay-walls, enacting such sites like “Pirate Bay” and “Putlocker.” Although the tangible aspects of renting films from local businesses died, according to White (2014) the new digital economy relies on open sourcing of information and connectivity, using online crowds to add new material. Therefore the potential for community based culture sharing still exists, but in the immaterial stratosphere of web 2.0. This freedom to exchange films online for free did not bode well with divisive corporate interests. According to Aigrain (2012) prior to the information sharing capacities of the internet, sharing ‘physical culture’ was of no consequence to those holding copyrights. In fact, it was seen as a creative and personalized form of embracing culture. ‘Peer to peer’ sharing of films arguable provides “attention diversity,” that allows individuals to consume culture and media outside of the mainstream. The capacity to watch any film from any time period provides people with an infinite repertoire from which to build their lexicon, and makes for more interesting and culturally diverse individuals, that are knowledgeable about varying perspectives and genres. Not to mention, capitalizing on historical filmic work, provides a cultural understanding that will breed newer, more informed creative products.

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However, industries based on information sharing are now “policed with strict intellectual property regimes” (White, 2014), that seek to create the illusion of information scarcity. This proposed scarcity benefits corporations that produce and publish many films by means of monopolization and cumulative wealth. Meaning that, sharing films online, or ‘piracy’, was deemed an illegal action by neoliberal governments pandering to the will of corporate entities. Aigrain (2012) recalls the collaboration of Hollywood with the Clinton administration in the late 90’s to illegalize copyright circumvention acts, like DVD copying, and more recently file sharing. Major film production companies like MGM, Paramount and Warner Bros. are the only true beneficiaries of preventing film sharing online. The outrageously expensive, and rising, cost of going to see a film at the cinema declares that these film producers have no interest in sharing films with the public as a means of promoting culture. Instead it reveals their true intentions extracting profit from film-loving spectators.