Sensory Ownership

It's a nightmare. Or, more to the point, it's a capitalist's dream.

Scratch that, it's reality. So much of what you touch, smell, taste, hear, and see, is owned.

Forget sensory overload, think sensory ownership.

Perhaps you come to the table with some knowledge of intellectual property law. You are, in that case, a rarity. Most corporations tend to act under the premise that we, the general public, know little or nothing of cultural ownership. Sure, most of us are faintly worried about downloading a song or movie "illegally", but most of us are completely unaware to the extent of which our world is owned.

The facts:

McDonald's has a trademark on the smell its french fries. Harley Davidson has made attempts to trademark the sound of its engine ("potato, potato, potato"), likewise MGM owns the sound of its lion roar. According to an article from National Geographic, "20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities." You heard right, the very things that make us who we are, are privately held. Everywhere your eyes fall, you see ownership. From product placement in films (007 drives the car of the highest bidder, Jennifer Aniston drinks that Smartwater for a reason) to the green on BP's gas stations and the green of starbucks cups(no other similar company may use it). Chocolate isn't safe either, Toblerone owns the rights to using a triangular shape in the candy market in Europe.

According to the NY Times the average American sees somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 advertisements a day. While Stewart Hall and contemporary cultural studies theorists are correct in asserting human agency when it comes to the creation of meanings in consumption, it's difficult not to be bought and sold when you see logos and slogans everywhere you turn.

All this seems very disheartening, but there is hope. Power comes in numbers as well as with dollars. The more people who become aware of such laws and make attempts to fight them, the more likely the government and large companies are likely to respond. As explained in my previous post, one can always turn to the media a la Sut Jhally. Or

Take a page out of de Certeau's book and do a bit of textual poaching, turn the whole system on its massively inflated head.

Kembrew McLeod's California

Dream Worlds Part One

Background: Use me, fairly

In 1991 Sut Jhally, lauded media studies scholar at University of Massachusetts Amherst, produced a documentary entitled Dreamworlds. The film criticized the image of women presented in music videos (specifically those shown on MTV,) with a conclusion that many music videos present women as objects of male domination and concurrently promote sexual violence (Jhally on MTV, 2008). Jhally supported his argument by placing images of popular music videos alongside film rape scenes in order to highlight the similarity of woman’s portrayal in the two.

MTV obviously saw this as bad press: while sex sells, being accused of objectifying women so horrifically does not. The cable television network attempted to halt usage of the film by issuing a cease and desist letter to Jhally and UMass Amherst on the grounds that “Dreamworlds” used clips of copyrighted, or MTV owned, music videos. Jhally replied to MTV, stating that he was not in copyright violation, that under the copyright law of 1996 he was able to use copyrighted material for the sake of teaching and academic criticism (Jhally on MTV, 2008). Furthermore, Jhally threatened to take the case to the press, which would reveal MTV as a corporate bully bent on saving face and money rather then promoting education. Jhally, as they say, “called MTV’s bluff.”

The network retreated from its lawsuit and, fortuitously, though the process the Media Education Foundation (MEF) was born. The goal of the MEF is to - produce and distribute documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical reflection on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media (MEF mission statement). Jhally triumphed over the media giant, and came out with a nonprofit organization promoting Fair Use and critical reflection to boot.