Michele Hilmes - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Michele Hilmes
This was published as “Radio’s Lost Critical History,” Australian Journalism Review Special Editi... more This was published as “Radio’s Lost Critical History,” Australian Journalism Review Special Edition “Radio Reinvented: the enduring appeal of audio in the digital age,” 36:2, Spring 2015. For an art form to flourish, a sense of expressive continuity – a knowledge of aesthetic roots and a sense of how the new connects with the old – is vitally necessary, both for creative producers and for audiences. Yet, across the world but in the US in particular, soundwork’s critical history remains in a largely neglected state. Imagine the field of literature without access to the vast majority of books; imagine a contemporary cinema that cannot clearly recall what film was like before Star Wars, or Gone With the Wind. This is more or less the state of soundwork today. In this article I focus primarily on the United States, but most of what I say applies to other national contexts as well, with a few notable exceptions that I highlight.
Radio Journal, 2003
This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the Brit... more This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the British public service broadcasting system versus the US private profit system - in fact demonstrates not only a self-conscious mutual involvement but a set of common objectives that overrides many of their differences. From each broadcasting system's earliest history, a mutual construction of a loudly proclaimed dualism can be observed, built largely around matters of ownership, funding, and cultural values. What is suggested here is that each system, in practice, was based only on those versions of central social and economic control that were operationally different: meanwhile, the proclamation of national differences served to justify the stifling of an alternative model of 'popular' broadcasting, which threatened each system's dominance in their respective states.
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2011
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2010
RadioDoc Review, 2017
The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate stor... more The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate storytelling, much of it told by women. Freed from the bonds of technology, scale, and forms of support and distribution that keep traditional radio relentlessly mainstream, the new "digital privacy" of the last fifteen years has allowed new kinds of stories to be told: or rather, has allowed some of the oldest stories in the world to finally be spoken aloud. In both "Mariya" and "A Life Sentence" sexual violence against women is portrayed in all its complexity, tragedy, and terrible familiarity. In "A Life Sentence," Samantha Broun confronts the rape and brutalisation of her mother Jeremy that occurred two decades earlier, and the personal and public consequences that radiated out from it, partially through her own actions as a loving daughter. Broun's and Allison's skillful and compelling interweaving of the personal and political throughout this nearly hour-long piece makes for a hypnotically engaging experience. In "Mariya," Mariya Karimjee relates the physical and emotional consequences of the genital mutilation inflicted on her by her loving mother, also a victim of the practice, and what that means for both of them. More meditation than documentary, this story is told with a dreamlike yet matter-of-fact intensity by its author, who reads from a previously published account. Both stories plunge us into the dark complexities of power and victimisation, innocence and complicity, love and pain. Mothers and daughters: in this era of the digital private, radio 3.0, now their stories can be told.
A tide of high-quality television drama is sweeping the world. The new transnational television s... more A tide of high-quality television drama is sweeping the world. The new transnational television series has developed not only global appeal but innovative new modes of production, distribution, and reception. Nowhere is the transnational exchange of television drama more vital than between Britain and the United States, where it builds on more than sixty years of import, adaptation, coproduction, and fandom. This edited volume explores the transatlantic flow of television drama, focusing on key programs, industry strategies, critical debates, and audience reception, from an international roster of scholars and researchers. The chapters explore some of the most widely discussed programs on the transatlantic circuit. The book's first part focuses on media industries, tracing the history of transatlantic exchange and investigating contemporary practices such as coproduction, digital distribution, global partnerships, promotion, and branding. The second part concentrates on specific...
Resonance, 2020
In the 1990s, thanks to digital convergence, many disciplines centrally concerned with the mediat... more In the 1990s, thanks to digital convergence, many disciplines centrally concerned with the mediated uses of sound from a variety of different orientations—communication, musicology, speech, ethnography, history of technology, journalism, theater and drama, and art, to name a few—began to recognize the need for a new term to indicate their shared focus. Here I propose soundwork as that term, laying out the reasons why we need it, how it can change our thinking across a broad range of cultural forms, the kind of cultural and political work it can perform, and how linking sound to our understanding of lived experience changes the way that we perceive the world around us.
TV’s Betty Goes Global, 2013
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 2003
This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the Brit... more This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the British public service broadcasting system versus the US private profit system - in fact demonstrates not only a self-conscious mutual involvement but a set of common objectives that overrides many of their differences. From each broadcasting system’s earliest history, a mutual construction of a dualism loudly proclaimed can be observed, built largely around matters of ownership, funding, and cultural values. What is suggested here is that each system, in practice, was based on only versions of central social and economic control that were operationally different: meanwhile, the proclamation of national differences simply served to justify the stifling of an alternative model of ‘popular’ broadcasting, which threatened each system’s dominance in their respective states.
Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 1985
Media History, 2010
... Taylor , Philip M. British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: Selling Democracy Edinburgh :... more ... Taylor , Philip M. British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: Selling Democracy Edinburgh : Edinburgh UP , 1999 . ... on American experiments in democracy – the country teems with projects that are gallantly run … To ... Linda Gross, 'She Battles for Minorities', LA Times (28 Jul. ...
Media, Culture & Society, 2007
During the 1930s and 1940s, the BBC resolutely held out against the program form most notoriously... more During the 1930s and 1940s, the BBC resolutely held out against the program form most notoriously associated with ‘vulgar’, commercial, feminized US radio culture: soap operas, or serial drama with a domestic setting directed primarily at an audience of women. Yet the first British soap opera, Front Line Family, made its debut in 1941 on the North American Service, as a propaganda vehicle aimed expressly at encouraging US entry into the Second World War. It became part of the Light Programme schedule after the war and led directly to Mrs Dale's Diary and The Archers. This article traces the controversial origins and contested life of the first British soap, within the context of the ‘women's culture’ largely missing from the BBC in its early years. The terms of the debate over its origins show clearly how notions of ‘quality’ and public service were both gendered and linked to notions of national identity, and how a popular yet ‘feminine’ and ‘American’ form like the domesti...
Introduction : TV Nations TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTIONS: FROM ORIGINS TO STABILITY INSTITUTIONS: CONF... more Introduction : TV Nations TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTIONS: FROM ORIGINS TO STABILITY INSTITUTIONS: CONFLICT AND CHANGE PROGRAMMING: FROM THE 50S TO THE 80S PROGRAMMING: NEW VENUES, NEW FORMS AUDIENCES Bibliography Index
This was published as “Radio’s Lost Critical History,” Australian Journalism Review Special Editi... more This was published as “Radio’s Lost Critical History,” Australian Journalism Review Special Edition “Radio Reinvented: the enduring appeal of audio in the digital age,” 36:2, Spring 2015. For an art form to flourish, a sense of expressive continuity – a knowledge of aesthetic roots and a sense of how the new connects with the old – is vitally necessary, both for creative producers and for audiences. Yet, across the world but in the US in particular, soundwork’s critical history remains in a largely neglected state. Imagine the field of literature without access to the vast majority of books; imagine a contemporary cinema that cannot clearly recall what film was like before Star Wars, or Gone With the Wind. This is more or less the state of soundwork today. In this article I focus primarily on the United States, but most of what I say applies to other national contexts as well, with a few notable exceptions that I highlight.
Radio Journal, 2003
This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the Brit... more This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the British public service broadcasting system versus the US private profit system - in fact demonstrates not only a self-conscious mutual involvement but a set of common objectives that overrides many of their differences. From each broadcasting system's earliest history, a mutual construction of a loudly proclaimed dualism can be observed, built largely around matters of ownership, funding, and cultural values. What is suggested here is that each system, in practice, was based only on those versions of central social and economic control that were operationally different: meanwhile, the proclamation of national differences served to justify the stifling of an alternative model of 'popular' broadcasting, which threatened each system's dominance in their respective states.
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2011
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2010
RadioDoc Review, 2017
The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate stor... more The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate storytelling, much of it told by women. Freed from the bonds of technology, scale, and forms of support and distribution that keep traditional radio relentlessly mainstream, the new "digital privacy" of the last fifteen years has allowed new kinds of stories to be told: or rather, has allowed some of the oldest stories in the world to finally be spoken aloud. In both "Mariya" and "A Life Sentence" sexual violence against women is portrayed in all its complexity, tragedy, and terrible familiarity. In "A Life Sentence," Samantha Broun confronts the rape and brutalisation of her mother Jeremy that occurred two decades earlier, and the personal and public consequences that radiated out from it, partially through her own actions as a loving daughter. Broun's and Allison's skillful and compelling interweaving of the personal and political throughout this nearly hour-long piece makes for a hypnotically engaging experience. In "Mariya," Mariya Karimjee relates the physical and emotional consequences of the genital mutilation inflicted on her by her loving mother, also a victim of the practice, and what that means for both of them. More meditation than documentary, this story is told with a dreamlike yet matter-of-fact intensity by its author, who reads from a previously published account. Both stories plunge us into the dark complexities of power and victimisation, innocence and complicity, love and pain. Mothers and daughters: in this era of the digital private, radio 3.0, now their stories can be told.
A tide of high-quality television drama is sweeping the world. The new transnational television s... more A tide of high-quality television drama is sweeping the world. The new transnational television series has developed not only global appeal but innovative new modes of production, distribution, and reception. Nowhere is the transnational exchange of television drama more vital than between Britain and the United States, where it builds on more than sixty years of import, adaptation, coproduction, and fandom. This edited volume explores the transatlantic flow of television drama, focusing on key programs, industry strategies, critical debates, and audience reception, from an international roster of scholars and researchers. The chapters explore some of the most widely discussed programs on the transatlantic circuit. The book's first part focuses on media industries, tracing the history of transatlantic exchange and investigating contemporary practices such as coproduction, digital distribution, global partnerships, promotion, and branding. The second part concentrates on specific...
Resonance, 2020
In the 1990s, thanks to digital convergence, many disciplines centrally concerned with the mediat... more In the 1990s, thanks to digital convergence, many disciplines centrally concerned with the mediated uses of sound from a variety of different orientations—communication, musicology, speech, ethnography, history of technology, journalism, theater and drama, and art, to name a few—began to recognize the need for a new term to indicate their shared focus. Here I propose soundwork as that term, laying out the reasons why we need it, how it can change our thinking across a broad range of cultural forms, the kind of cultural and political work it can perform, and how linking sound to our understanding of lived experience changes the way that we perceive the world around us.
TV’s Betty Goes Global, 2013
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 2003
This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the Brit... more This article argues that what has often been presented as a simple, crucial opposition - the British public service broadcasting system versus the US private profit system - in fact demonstrates not only a self-conscious mutual involvement but a set of common objectives that overrides many of their differences. From each broadcasting system’s earliest history, a mutual construction of a dualism loudly proclaimed can be observed, built largely around matters of ownership, funding, and cultural values. What is suggested here is that each system, in practice, was based on only versions of central social and economic control that were operationally different: meanwhile, the proclamation of national differences simply served to justify the stifling of an alternative model of ‘popular’ broadcasting, which threatened each system’s dominance in their respective states.
Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 1985
Media History, 2010
... Taylor , Philip M. British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: Selling Democracy Edinburgh :... more ... Taylor , Philip M. British Propaganda in the Twentieth Century: Selling Democracy Edinburgh : Edinburgh UP , 1999 . ... on American experiments in democracy – the country teems with projects that are gallantly run … To ... Linda Gross, 'She Battles for Minorities', LA Times (28 Jul. ...
Media, Culture & Society, 2007
During the 1930s and 1940s, the BBC resolutely held out against the program form most notoriously... more During the 1930s and 1940s, the BBC resolutely held out against the program form most notoriously associated with ‘vulgar’, commercial, feminized US radio culture: soap operas, or serial drama with a domestic setting directed primarily at an audience of women. Yet the first British soap opera, Front Line Family, made its debut in 1941 on the North American Service, as a propaganda vehicle aimed expressly at encouraging US entry into the Second World War. It became part of the Light Programme schedule after the war and led directly to Mrs Dale's Diary and The Archers. This article traces the controversial origins and contested life of the first British soap, within the context of the ‘women's culture’ largely missing from the BBC in its early years. The terms of the debate over its origins show clearly how notions of ‘quality’ and public service were both gendered and linked to notions of national identity, and how a popular yet ‘feminine’ and ‘American’ form like the domesti...
Introduction : TV Nations TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTIONS: FROM ORIGINS TO STABILITY INSTITUTIONS: CONF... more Introduction : TV Nations TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTIONS: FROM ORIGINS TO STABILITY INSTITUTIONS: CONFLICT AND CHANGE PROGRAMMING: FROM THE 50S TO THE 80S PROGRAMMING: NEW VENUES, NEW FORMS AUDIENCES Bibliography Index