Page 124 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Enthusing 115

fandom when first confronted with them. Sandvoss coins the term ‘neu-
trosemy’ to characterize the ‘semiotic condition in which a text allows for so
many divergent readings that, intersubjectively, it does not have any mean-
ings at all’ (p. 126). Thus, the openness of the text in Sandvoss’ argument allows
the text to become more a part of the identity of the subject and less something
that is engaged with reflexively. Fans’ involvement with the text is mirror-like.
While this has important aspects, there is a danger that contradictory aspects
of these processes become subsumed beneath this overarching theory. While
this is recognized by this account, there is in my view a danger of psychologiz-
ing social processes to a greater extent than is warranted. To develop this point
of view, I turn to the work of Couldry.

Place, space and the extended audience
I have argued throughout this book that it is important to conceptualize the
relationships between space, social activity and audiences. Couldry has
explored these ideas in his work on media, power, and ritual. In his earlier
work, he sought, while recognizing the significance of arguments such as those
in Audiences, to argue that there was a shift away from the adequate study of
power. While, I have argued in Chapter 4, these sorts of argument are not to be
followed in general, I have suggested that perspectives on power do need to be
reformulated to take account of the issues raised in the audiences’ text.
In The Place of Media Power, Couldry (2000b) theorizes the symbolic
power of the media in terms of five processes: framing, ordering, naming,
spacing and imagining. The media frame our views of reality, but, more partic-
ularly in Couldry’s analysis, they ‘sustain the frame in which our experiences
of the social occur’ (p. 178). Another way of thinking this is that the media
sustain the scenic constitution of social life that I have argued for previously.
Furthermore, in Couldry’s view this frame is ordered hierarchically: ‘Naming
refers to the media’s authority as the principal source of social facts’ (p. 178).
The interconnection between these processes is ‘reinforced further by a dimen-
sion that is normally hidden: spacing’ (p. 178). The media, argues Couldry,
are bounded. Borders are erected around the media world that continue
to reinforce media power. Certain media places where ‘ordinary’ people are
allowed contact with such spaces of media power seem to open these spaces,
but actually they are ultimately controlled by the media institutions and prac-
tices. The sites of reality TV and their participants are regulated, as are the visits
to media places, such as the Vancouver of The X-Files, the sets of series such
as Coronation Street or the home of Elvis at Graceland.
Finally, Couldry considers imagining, which ‘refers to our imaginative
and emotional investments in the symbolic hierarchy of the media frame’
(p. 178). Thus, in a sophisticated and neo-Durkheimian fashion (see also
Couldry 2003 for a consideration of media ritual), Couldry seeks to reconsider
the ways in which media power operates – this is ‘an abstract way of bringing
out the complexities in a process of naturalisation which would otherwise be
an undifferentiated object: “media power”’ (p. 179). Thus he argues that his
argument has shown ‘on the one hand, the increasing thematisation, and
public awareness, of the media production process and, on the other hand, the