Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours CultureA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture. |
Contents
A Brief Illustrated History of the Current U S Political Economy | 23 |
Derivative Media and the Tools of Financialization | 41 |
The Financialization of Music | 75 |
The Financialization of Hollywood | 104 |
Derivative Music and Speculative Hip Hop | 145 |
Derivative Television and Securitized Sitcoms | 159 |
Derivative Film and Brandscape Blockbusters | 180 |
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30 Rock acquisition Amazon American artists asset managers Bain Capital banks billion Blackstone brand brandscape blockbuster capitalist catalog Cinema Comcast conglomerates consolidation contemporary corporate venture capital creative cultural industries Cultural Studies cultural texts Data David debt derivative media Digital Disney dividends economy of media Ellison Entertainment episode FIGURE film and television financial engineering firms Framed Roger Rabbit Global hedge funds hip hop Hipgnosis Hollywood Reporter iHeartMedia inequality intellectual property intertextuality investment investors Jay-Z Journal LEGO Movie leveraged media companies Media Industries media system metaverse Music Group Music Industry musicians Neoliberalism Netflix networks ownership Partners percent platform Political Economy Popular Music private equity profit radio references revenue Routledge sector share social song Sony Space Jam speculation Spotify stake stock buybacks strategy streaming synergy tech tion trillion Universal Music Group University Press video game Wall Street Warner Bros Warner Music Group wealth