The Media in Europe’s Small Nations.

The Media in Europe’s Small Nations


Edited by

Huw David Jones

The Media in Europe’s Small Nations, Edited by Huw David Jones

This book first published 2014

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2014 by Huw David Jones and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

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ISBN (10): 1-4438-5417-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5417-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ............................................................................................. vii Foreword .................................................................................................... ix Steve Blandford Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The Media in Europe’s Small Nations Huw David Jones Part I: Developing the Media in Small Nations Chapter One ............................................................................................... 19 Will Small Nations be the Winners of the Twenty-First Century? John Newbigin Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 Public Service Broadcasting in Slovenia and Macedonia: Creating Stars Sally Broughton Micova Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47 National Reconstruction and the Media in Catalonia Josep Àngel Guimerà and Ana Fernández Viso Part II: Media Representation of Small Nations Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 69 State-Funded Icelandic Film: National and/or Transnational Cinema? Agnes Schindler Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 87 Changing Narratives of Identity in Welsh and Basque Film Dilys Jones

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Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 105 Staging Scotland: National Theatre of Scotland and Shifting Conceptions of Scottish Identity Trish Reid Part III: Audiences in Small Nations Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 123 Language, Accent and Identity in Scottish Film: Audience Perceptions Jacqui Cochrane Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 141 Domesticating Portuguese Television Anabela de Sousa Lopes Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 157 Welsh Language Children’s Television Production: Applying Audience Research Methods Merris Griffiths Contributors ............................................................................................. 181

LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1. Broadcasting revenue in Slovenia and Macedonia 2010 .......... 37 Table 3-1. Media output on CCRTV/CCMA ............................................ 58 Table 3-2. Generalitat subsidies to the CCRTV/CCMA ........................... 59 Table 3-3. Subsidies to Catalan language media ....................................... 61 Table 3-4. Subsidies to private media in Catalonia ................................... 62 Table 5.1. Three categories of Welsh and Basque film ............................. 88

FOREWORD

In 2011 Cyfrwng, the organisation of scholars engaged in research about media and culture in Wales, asked the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations at the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales) to host its annual conference. With Cyfrwng’s permission the Centre used the opportunity to broaden the debate out from Wales to embrace similar national contexts across the world. The result was a wonderful gathering of scholars, all dedicated to the idea that in the era of globalisation the organisation of media and culture in small nations (in all the different senses of that term) offered insights that were of potential benefit to all nation-states. This volume offers a small selection of the large number of papers from the 2011 conference in the hope of stimulating future work and debate.

The definition of a “small” nation is of course a contested one and perhaps best seen in terms of power relations rather than, say, geographical area. In this sense, then, Canada, one of the largest countries in the world, becomes of interest through its relationship to the culture of the United States. In turn, Quebec’s relationship to the rest of Canada creates another layer of complexity. Such instances have the potential to reveal both the problems facing nations so apparently dominated by larger neighbours, but also the clear advantages possessed by artists, cultural entrepreneurs and academics. Examples of the latter might include strong relationships to ideas of identity, better dialogue with government and large scale institutions and a sense of responsiveness to audiences.

It is in pursuit of an enhanced understanding of such contexts that this fascinating volume of essays is published in the hope of stimulating further work in what remains a small but rapidly expanding field.

At the time of writing, in Europe alone, the question of the role of the small nation has acquired a particular urgency as simultaneously the European Union continues to expand its membership whilst referenda on independence are pending in contexts as diverse as Scotland and Catalonia. At such a moment the way that the media approaches questions of national identity―and indeed the very idea of the nation―take on special importance. It has become something of a cliché to cite films such as Braveheart (dir. Mel Gibson 1995) as key elements in the rise of, in this case, contemporary Scottish nationalism. Even if this kind of analysis is

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somewhat crude and reductive, it is clear that the media has a crucial role to play in the way that people think of the nation in the formation of their individual identity. In small nations this is, arguably, particularly true where power relations with larger neighbours are themselves central to any sense of nationhood.

Conversely many people living in small nations long to be free of what can become sterile, reductive debates about an essentialist idea of national identity, one that limits the imagination and imprisons culture in a limiting sense of history. It is in this spirit that artists complain, particularly in small nations, about the “burden of representation”, something that obliges every piece of work to be about the idea of national identity.

It is therefore vital that scholars working to open up the ways that the media operates with small national boundaries are conscious of such a diverse range of questions and remain vigilant about the dangers of narrow insularity whilst also understanding what there is to celebrate about diverse and pluralistic national identities.

The essays that have been collected in this volume are keenly conscious of how complex the questions are surrounding both the proliferation of small nations in a (predominantly) fracturing post-imperial environment and, in turn, the ways that media organisations and artists operate in diverse national contexts. They were all written after the benefit of coming together and discussing their perspectives with scholars from analogous contexts across the globe and therefore provide a highly stimulating and well-informed set of arguments which will in turn stimulate further debate.

In Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie’s collection The Cinema of Small Nations a fictional character is quoted wryly musing about the invisibility of his particular small nation:

I watch the Pakistani news, mainly to see if they’ve included Iceland on their world map. The anchor is a ball of hair: hair all over Europe and Greenland. I wait for him to bend his head a little. Iceland isn’t there. That’s the deal with Iceland. Iceland is the kind of country that sometimes is there and sometimes isn’t. (Helgason 2002 cited in Norðfjörð 2007, 43)

I am certain that this volume will make a strong contribution to the growing body of work that seeks to ensure that all small nations are permanently “there”.

Steve Blandford Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations

University of South Wales

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References Norðfjörð, Björn. 2007. “Iceland”. In The Cinema of Small Nations, edited

by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, 43-59. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

INTRODUCTION

THE MEDIA IN EUROPE’S SMALL NATIONS

HUW DAVID JONES

This volume examines the media in Europe’s small nations. It comes out of an international conference on the media and culture in small nations organised in summer 2011 at the University of Glamorgan (now part of the University of South Wales) by the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations on behalf of the Welsh media association Cyfrwng. The volume brings together perspectives from across Europe, including scholarship on Catalonia, the Basque Country, Iceland, Slovenia, Macedonia, Portugal, Scotland and Wales, and aims to build upon the growing body of work on the media in small nations and states, as well as contribute to wider debates about media policy, representation, national identity, audience reception and research methods.

While the terms “small nation”, “small state” and “small country” enjoy growing currency within media and cultural studies, there is no comprehensive definition of what these terms actually mean. Of course, we can perhaps distinguish between “nations” and “states”—the latter being a sovereign political unit recognised by international law—but the question of what is meant by “small” is a little more problematic.

Maurice Paupis (2009, 8) suggests that “small” nations or states can be defined in absolute, attributive or relative terms. An absolute approach is one which uses measurements like population, territory or gross national product to determine a country’s size. Paupis himself defines small states as countries with a population between 100,000 and 18 million inhabitants. The advantage of this approach, he argues, is that it provides an indication of the size and strength of a country’s media system. Yet, as Paupis himself concedes, it also presents the problem of where to draw the line between a small country and a big one. A cut-off point of, say, 18 million can seem quite arbitrary and may lead to countries being miscategorised. Poland, for example, has about 38 million citizens. But in

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terms of the size and strength of its media system, it has much more in common with countries with small populations.

The attributive approach rests upon the perception of smallness. A small nation is one “whose leaders consider that it can never… make a significant impact of the system” (Keohane 1969 cited in Paupis 2009, 8). “Smallness” can also be defined in relative terms. A country can be seen as “small” in some contexts and “big” in others. This is not solely a matter of population or territorial size. It also has to do with power relationships (Blandford 2012). Small countries are those which are seen as “peripheral” or “marginalised”. They lack autonomy and are easily influenced by larger neighbours. Often this is the consequence of historical inequalities formed under colonialism or imperialism. Thus, for Miroslav Hroch (1985 cited in Hjort and Petrie 2007, 6), small countries are those which have existed “in subjection to a ruling nation for such a long period that the relation of subjection took on a structural character for both parties”.

Attributive or relative definitions of “smallness” are useful in terms of understanding the particular challenges which small nations face. Yet they are also quite subjective. A country can choose to define itself as “small” in order to gain sympathy or moral support by identifying itself with the underdog. This may obscure its own contribution to inequalities of power. Wales, for example, is a small nation which for some has long lived under English domination. Yet it was also a junior partner in the British Empire (which at the height of its expansion in 1922 was led by a Welshman), and continues to enjoy a privileged position within the rich Western world. Small nations can be both coloniser and colonised.

Not only are small nations and states defined in different ways. They also fall into different categories. Paupis et al. (2009) argue that small states can be distinguished according to their political and historical traditions. Drawing on the work of Hallin and Macini (2004), they identify four basic categories: liberal (e.g. Ireland), democratic-corporatist (e.g. Austria), polarised-pluralist (e.g. Greece) and post-socialist (e.g. Czech Republic). They further distinguish between those small states which share a common language with a larger neighbour and those which do not. We might also distinguish between small nation-states and those small nations such as Wales, Scotland or Catalonia which are “stateless” or have some degree of “devolved” autonomy. Furthermore, Blandford (2012) argues that First Nations―i.e. the indigenous peoples of colonised territories like Canada or Australia―can also be seen as a type of small nation.

The present volume does not seek to resolve the issue of how small nations should be defined or categorised. While some contributors have chosen to make explicit the case for identifying their country of interest as


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a “small nation”, others use the term at the level of general intuition. What mattered more from an editorial point of view was to include a range of different national perspectives and approaches to the media as well as hear from those countries which are rarely or less frequently discussed in Anglophone academic literature. This is simply because media scholars in small nations often face particular difficulty in getting their work internationally recognised due to the relative smallness of their research community or because they publish in minority languages. Nevertheless, the fact that the initial call for papers generated such interest amongst scholars working in so many different contexts suggests the term “small nations” is one many do recognise and identify with.

Small nations and states have certainly grown in prominence since the mid-twentieth century. The end of European colonialism after the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early-1990s have led to the proliferation of new nation-states, many of them absolutely small or bearing the legacy of external domination which is seen as characteristic of small nations. In 1950, there were 22 sovereign European states with a population below 18 million. Today there are 36. Meanwhile, stateless nations like Wales, Scotland and Catalonia have pushed for greater political autonomy or even independence from their larger neighbours in order to address issues of economic inequality, democratic accountability, or cultural and linguistic rights. The number of European states may well increase further over the coming decades.

Media researchers first began to take an interest in small nations during the early-1990s (e.g. Trappel 1991; Wood 1992). At a time when broadcasting in Europe was entering a new era characterised by deregulation, commercialisation and globalisation, many questioned whether countries with a low population and limited media market were sustainable in this more competitive environment. Attention focused on the policies which governments and broadcasters in small nations could use to protect their media from foreign influence or domination.

Over the next 10-15 years, the study of the media in small nations seemed to fall off the research agenda (although there were exceptions – e.g. Siegert 2006). Attention turned instead to the transnational or globalised nature of the modern media industry (e.g. Higson 2000, Morris 2004). Nations—both big and small—seemed to matter less when content, technology, capital and labour could so easily flow across national boundaries. Yet, over the last five years or so, there has been a revival of interest in the media in small nations (e.g. Hjort and Petrie 2007; Puppis and d’Haenens 2009; Blandford et al. 2011; Lowe and Nissen 2011; Hand and Traynor 2012). Research continues to focus on how small nations and

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states can create a sustainable media in a globalised world. But at the same time new lines of enquiry have also opened up into such questions as how small nations are represented in the media or what these images mean for audiences (e.g. Blandford and Lacey 2011). Scholars in related areas of research like theatre and performance studies have also begun to show an interest in small nations (Blandford 2012).

The present volume seeks to contribute to this existing body of work. Part one examines the challenges and potential advantages faced by small media systems, as well as the policies and strategies open to small nations to develop a sustainable media ecology. Part two looks at how small nations are represented in the media. And part three examines how audiences respond to the media in small nations. Although there is much overlap between the three sections, the chapters have been grouped together in this way in order to highlight common themes and connections.

Developing the media in small nations

Part of the reason why small nations remain an important area of research has to do with the particular challenges these countries face. Josef Trappel (1991), for example, argues that media companies operating in countries with a low population are hampered by certain obstacles (see also Burgelman and Pauwels 1992). They suffer from a shortage of resources and face higher production costs than larger countries. They are more vulnerable to foreign takeovers and are often dependent on importing media content, threatening both their economic potential and their national identity. Even domestically successful companies can struggle to break into larger markets. Their programmes are often seen as too culturally specific and they lack the capital reserves needed to market themselves abroad. Countries which share a common language with larger neighbours are seen as particularly vulnerable, because they are more easily penetrated by foreign competitors. At the same time, small nations and states lack influence over the international regulatory bodies which might help to resolve these issues. One clear example of this was the failure of Europe’s small states to gain any special concessions within the 1989 “Television without Frontiers” Directive, which forms the cornerstone of the European Union’s (EU) audiovisual policy (see Wood 1992).

But while attention has focused on the particular challenges faced by the media in small nations, there is a growing recognition that they may also possess certain advantages over their larger neighbours. Small nations may lack the sense of confidence which comes from being a large, powerful state, but as Blandford (2012, 5) points out, this lack of certainty


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can also make them more willing to question and debate “the received wisdoms of globalisation and the hegemony of the superpower”. As such, they are perhaps more willing to develop alternative models and innovative ways of doing things. Furthermore, as Olfasson (1998 cited in Hjort and Petrie 2007, 7) argues, “the citizen of a small state has a better possibility to influence decision making than a citizen in a large state”, meaning they are more likely to see these models put into practice.

In the opening chapter of this volume, John Newbigin identifies some of the other advantages which small nations may possess. Newbigin observes that the old industrial economy based on mass production, heavy investments, transport infrastructure and concentrated labour is being replaced by a new economy based on intangibles like skills, knowledge, data and software. In this new “creative” economy, small nations are apparently leading the way. Because they rely on limited resources, they are used to thinking creatively. Their restricted size makes it easier for new policies to be developed and implemented, and they are more likely to have the ability, agility and survival instinct to respond to changing market conditions. In short, they are “nimble, niche and networked”. Newbigin concludes that a handful of big countries and corporations may still dominate the global creative economy. But at the very least, being “big” is no longer automatically better than being “small”.

Newbigin’s chapter raises the question of how small nations can strengthen their media in the global creative economy. This has long been a concern for scholars interested in government media policy and the business strategies of broadcasters. According to Puppis (2009, 14), small states, particularly those which conform to a democratic-corporatist model of government, tend to favour interventionist policies rather than the competitive, free-market approach seen in larger countries (although Wood (1992) argues there is often a mismatch between rhetoric and reality). “Achieving diversity through competition between several domestic media organisations is not possible given the small audience and advertising market,” he explains. Thus broadcasting licences in small nations tend to be issued with strong public service obligations. Broadcasters and the press often receive generous public subsidies. Tough regulation prevents media concentration and cross-ownership, and in some cases quotas may even be used to limit foreign programming, even at the risk of restricting diversity and audience choice.

However, in today’s ultra-competitive globalised media market, interventionist policies—let alone protectionist ones—are much harder to implement. EU rules limit the subsidies which can be offered to media providers, and policies which restrict the free flow of media content

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between member states are outlawed. Moreover, the financial crisis which began in 2008 and which became a sovereign debt crisis in 2010 has forced governments across Europe to cut subsidies for broadcasters, filmmakers and the press. According to Petros Iosifidis (2007), for small countries to maintain a healthy media in this hostile climate they not only need strong political support for government intervention and public service broadcasting. They also need broadcasters which are willing to embrace new digital technology and combine their traditional public service obligations with more mainstream, populist programming.

But while these observations come largely from the experience of countries in western Europe, scholars has only recently begun to consider the policies and strategies used to strengthen their media in other political contexts, such as former communist states in central and eastern Europe (e.g. Balčytienė and Juraitė 2009). Sally Broughton Micova’s chapter contributes to this literature by examining the situation in Slovenia and Macedonia—two states which became independent only in the early-1990s after splitting from the former Yugoslavia.

Slovenia and Macedonia first developed their own “regional” broadcasting institutions when part of the federal Yugoslavia, but with independence, these were suddenly transformed into “national” public service broadcasters. Faced with new competition from foreign and commercial operators as well as audience fragmentation—with older generations tuning into programmes in neighbouring Serbia and Croatia and younger viewers switching to global English-language media—quotas were introduced to protect domestic content. Yet, with only a limited pool of local talent, these proved hard to meet.

Drawing on her interviews with senior media executives, Broughton Micova explores some of the ways Slovenian and Macedonian broadcasters have tried to overcome these challenges. One strategy has been to create new talent or “stars” through investing in events like the Eurovision song contest or international formats like Pop Idol or X-Factor. While such programmes can be seen as part of the process of globalisation through which indigenous cultures are eroded, they have also helped to generate new talent who can go on to provide content for other television and radio programmes. Despite the commercialistic nature of this strategy, Broughton Micova concludes that public service broadcasters are better placed than commercial operators to invest in new talent, because their production budgets are bigger. Thus, as is the case in western Europe, interventionist policies combined with populist programming strategies seem to be the preferred way of strengthening the media in the small, post-socialist countries of central and eastern Europe.


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One of the reasons why small nations place such emphasis on developing a strong media is because of the media’s capacity to strengthen and promote national identity. While media systems do not always coincide with national territory, film, television, radio and the press can certainly help to create a national “imagined community” through constructing and circulating national imagery amongst a mass audience (Anderson 1983). For small nations, the power of the media to strengthen and promote national identity is particularly important, because it increases their visibility and helps legitimise their claims to political and cultural sovereignty. This is particularly the case for new nation-states or stateless nations which lack real geopolitical power (Wood 1992).

Josep Àngel Guimerà and Ana Fernández Viso illustrate the importance of the media to the process of nation-building in stateless nations in their chapter on media policy in Catalonia. During the Franco dictatorship (1939-1978), Catalonia lost political autonomy, and the use of the Catalan language was proscribed. Following the advent of democracy in Spain in the late 1970s, Catalonia became an “autonomous community” and began a project of national, cultural and linguistic reconstruction. Guimerà and Fernández Viso argue that the Catalan Government’s media and communications policy formed an essential part of this process. It helped to normalise the everyday use of Catalan and create an autonomous public sphere in Catalonia. Though power over the media officially rested with the Spanish state, the Catalan Government managed to achieve these goals through wrestling more and more control away from Madrid. In 1983, it established the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (Corporación Catalana de Radio y Televisión), and more recently it has formed its own media regulator, the Catalan Audiovisual Council, which has the power to grant radio and television licences. The Catalan News Agency, a Catalan internet domain and three multiplex channels for digital television have also been established in recent years. At the same time, Europe’s sovereign debt crisis threatens to undermine Catalonia’s autonomous media system. The Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (or Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals as it was renamed in 2007) has seen its budget slashed by 21.1% from €330m to €260m between 2010 and 2012, forcing it to reduce its portfolio of television channels from seven to five. Cuts in public subsidies to private media companies have been even more severe. Guimerà and Fernández Viso conclude that the Catalan Government has managed to build up an autonomous media system through strong political will and its efforts to secure increased control over media policy. How much of this system will survive the current economic crisis remains to be seen.

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Media representation of small nations

Given the importance which small nations place on the media for strengthening and promoting their national identity, it is no surprise that scholars have become increasingly interested in how small nations are represented. Much of this work involves the close textual analysis of the films and television programmes which construct and circulate national imagery. But in Agnes Schindler’s chapter on Icelandic cinema, we are offered one of the few examples to consider how national portrayal may be influenced by the wider structural context in which small media systems operate.

Like many small nations faced with the challenge of operating in with limited resources, Icelandic cinema is heavily dependent on state aid. Even so, rising production costs, demands for better quality films, and the limitations imposed by the size of the island’s market means that local filmmakers often need to secure additional funding through international co-financing and distribution deals. This has led to the appearance of “transnational” patterns within Icelandic cinema, such as the targeted use of international stars in lead roles or the use of foreign characters or storylines, as filmmakers look to cater for an international audience. Whereas in the past Icelandic films drew their inspiration primarily from national literary sources and subject matter, many now deal with international themes. Yet Schindler argues that the appearance of transnational patterns has not necessarily eroded the identity of Icelandic cinema. Indeed, they may even have helped to maintain its distinctiveness, for the use of foreign characters often helps to accentuate Icelandic national identity. Films like Cold Fever (dir. Friorik Por Frioriksson 1995), in which a Japanese businessman visits Iceland to perform a memorial service for his parents who died on the island, certainly deal with international themes, but do so through an “Icelandic canvas, where the travelling through—and discovering of—the country play a central role”. Schindler concludes that, “While international financing and funding is undoubtedly necessary for small national cinemas—and in some cases even the only possibility for a small national cinema to keep a continued film production alive—the Icelandic case shows that maintaining a distinctive national cinema in a globalised world is yet possible”. The categories of “national” and “transnational” cinema are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Just as few close textual readings of the way small nations are represented consider the broader structural context in which these texts are produced and circulated, there is also little comparative analysis on how


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small nations are portrayed. Comparative analysis is a useful approach, because it can potentially reveal common patterns in the way small nations are represented, or help to explain why some small countries have, say, a more diverse or progressive national image than others.

Dilys Jones’s contribution to this volume provides some answers to these questions. Drawing on an exhaustive survey of 123 Welsh and Basque films and documentaries, Jones presents a threefold classification system for minority national cinema. The first category of film, which she calls the “Preserved”, refers to films which present an uncontroversial or stereotypical idea of the nation, its history and identities. Jones argues these types of film act like a “comfort blanket”, providing a reassuring safety-net during times of national anxiety, yet can also perpetuate stereotypical and potentially oppressive ideas of gender, race, sexuality, national identity, community and family. The second category of film, “Reserved”, challenges and subverts the stereotypes of the “Preserved”, yet only ends up creating equally oppressive images of identity. Gender roles, for example, may be inverted so that men are shown as figures of ridicule and fun rather than authority and respect.

Jones’s third category of film, “postcolonial”, seeks to transcend the binary division between the “Preserved” and the “Reversed” by offering a new way of thinking about minority national identity—one which is both pluralistic and different. This final category partly corresponds with the end of external dominance and the start of a new phase of political autonomy. Yet it is not necessarily a moment of liberation, for it also “incorporates narratives of identity collapsing inwards from collective towards the individual and a movement towards a sense of placelessness”, as the country faces the new challenge of operating in a globalised world. Of course, Wales and the Basque Country are different countries with very different cultures. But in showing the similar ways in which they have been represented in film, Jones offers a classification system which could be applied to the analysis of media texts produced in other small nations.

Trish Reid’s chapter on the National Theatre of Scotland also deals with shifting conceptions of national identity in a small nation. Although more in the remit of theatre and performance studies, it nevertheless offers important lessons for media scholars. The National Theatre of Scotland was founded in 2006. Although the idea of establishing a Scottish national theatre had been an aspiration for many since the early-twentieth century, it took the introduction of political devolution in 1999 and the backing of the new Scottish Government to fulfil this goal. Reid argues that the National Theatre of Scotland has helped to redefine national identity in post-devolution Scotland. Rather than looking to the past, the new

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company has chosen to produce theatre that is “contemporary, confident and forward-looking”. Its innovative production model—the company has no building and produces work in collaboration with existing theatres, companies and venues—has allowed it to reach out to a broader section of Scottish society than conventional theatre.

Yet, although critically acclaimed by the theatre community and audiences alike, some traditional Scottish nationalists have attacked the new company for failing to fulfil what they see as the primary duty of a national theatre: “creating a national repertoire by performances of the best plays the country has produced”. The lack of Scottish personal on the senior management board has also been a bone of contention. Reid suggests that these disputes might be generational, and concludes that it is time for the debate to move on from the question of what is a “Scottish” theatre or play, to consider more pressing issues, such as the implications for the rest of the theatre scene in Scotland of having such a dominant national theatre. This is an important reminder that, although the issue of national identity remains important to the media in small nations, there is a danger of burdening media practitioners and institutions with the responsibility of representing the nation at the expense of other creative considerations.

Audiences in small nations

The last three chapters all focus on audiences. This represents a relatively new area of research on the media in small nations, although the methods and techniques audience analysis are well established. It can be argued that audiences in small nations have a slightly different relationship with the media to those who live in larger countries. Because their media system is more localised, they often have a closer relationship with broadcasters and policymakers, who can more easily respond to their needs and interests. They are also said to value locally-produced media content more highly. Blandford el al. (2010), for example, note the appeal in Wales of locally-made television dramas like Doctor Who and Torchwood. Similar observations have been made by Dhoest (2011) in relation to Flemish soap operas. On the other hand, Chan (2011) argues that the popularity of locally-produced television dramas in Singapore has declined in recent years due to an increasingly fragmented television market, coupled with competition from Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, suggesting that the loyalty of audiences in small nations is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain within a globalised media.


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Jacqui Cochrane’s chapter on the Scottish film 16 Years of Alcohol (dir. Richard Jobson 2003) adds to this growing body of work. She pays particular attention to how audiences respond to the accent of the film’s protagonist, Frankie Mac, a working-class Scot whose “hard man” voice belies a thoughtful and reflective side to his personality. Accents can present particular obstacles for filmmakers in small nations. As with the use of language, the right accent can lend authenticity to a film. But it can also limit its appeal outside the nation. It is not unknown for Scottish working-class accents to be subtitled or dubbed into mainstream English for the benefit of international audiences. Accents also come loaded with certain connotations. Cochrane, for example, notes that critics of 16 Years of Alcohol remained unconvinced that someone with Frankie’s accent would be quite so reflective and thoughtful about his life. Focus groups likewise associated the lowland working-class accent with low education and social status. Films like 16 Years of Alcohol may well seek to challenge stereotypes and offer new images of social and national identity. But there is no guarantee these will be accepted by audiences.

Anabela de Sousa Lopes offers a slightly different approach to audience research. Drawing on the theory of “domestication”, which seeks to explain how people integrate new and potentially disruptive forms of technology into their homes, Lopes examines the role of television in Portuguese family life. Television was first introduced into Portugal in the late-1950s. The visit of the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II to Portugal in 1957 provided the country’s first major broadcasting event, and like the Queen’s Coronation in Britain in 1953, it generated huge interest in the new medium. Television was something people first saw in public places. Many of Lopes’ older interviewees recall gathering in cafes and theatres to watch shows like the popular Brazilian telenovela Gabriele. But gradually television entered people’s homes and living rooms, often on the insistence of the male head of the household—something which Lopes says reflects the patriarchal structure of Portuguese society in the decades following television’s introduction.

The television landscape has continued to change over the years. The monopoly of the Portuguese state broadcaster was broken in the early-1990s with the creation of the first private television station, and the number of channels has continued to increase with the introduction of cable and most recently digital television. Since then, the Portuguese audience—like audiences across Europe—has fragmented. Yet, despite competition from new forms of media like the Internet, television consumption remains high. For the older people Lopes interviewed, television is often seen as part of the family. It has become “part of their

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lives, marking important moments in their collective experience”. For young people, the story is slightly different. Television is described as “just another medium”, ranking second or third in terms of media preference. Yet it continues to punctuate family life—Lopes, for instance, found that watching television news at 8pm while eating an evening meal was still a common ritual for many of the families she interviewed. In a sense, Portugal is much like any other European country in terms of its patterns of television consumption. Yet one thing which stands out from Lopes’ research is the fact that, since the financial crash in 2008, television consumption has increased within many Portugal households. Lopes suggests this is not only because television provides a relatively cheap form of entertainment. It can also, as the process of domestication reveals, be a familiar “friend” for families during periods of increased anxiety.

The final chapter by Merris Griffiths reflects on some of the challenges of doing audience research in small nations. Her case-study is a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) which she conducted in collaboration with the Cardiff-based media production company Boomerang+ on how children in Wales engage with multiplatform media. KTP partnerships differ from conventional academic projects in the sense that researchers need to work closely with commercial businesses and industry. Griffiths argues that this is perhaps easier to do within a small national context. Relationships are easier to forge, and the research potentially has more impact. At the same time, this can make KTP partnerships more politically or commercially sensitive—which is one reason why Griffiths is unable to discuss the actual findings of her research. She concludes that, in a small nation like Wales, researchers need a clear understanding of how organisations interrelate and co-exist, because such linkages are often carefully balanced.

Conclusion

It is perhaps appropriate to end with a chapter on research methods, for part of the purpose of this volume is to encourage further research on the media in small nations. These are interesting times for small media systems. While new digital technology makes them more vulnerable to foreign penetration, it has also made it easier for small nations to reach a global market. The worldwide success of Scandinavian crime dramas like The Killing (2007-) and The Bridge (2011-) illustrates that small nations can make an impact on the global stage without losing their distinctive identity. At the same time, as has been alluded to throughout this introduction, the European sovereign debt crisis is having a devastating


13

effect on public service broadcasting and the other forms of subsidised media on which small nations traditionally depend. As noted above, the Catalan Media Corporation saw its budget slashed by 21.1% from 330m to 260m between 2010 and 2013. Similarly, the Welsh language broadcaster S4C and BBC Cymru Wales, which provides both Welsh- and English-language media services in Wales, are facing budget cuts of 24.4% and 16% respectively in the period up to 2015 (BBC News 2010; BBC News 2011). In Greece, the situation has got even worse. In June 2013, the Greek government decided to completely switch off the state television and radio service and sack its 2,300 workers in order to address the country’s mounting debt problems (BBC News 2013).

Within this context, it is never been more important for scholars to understand the media in small nations—the particular challenges it faces but also its potential advantages; the strategies and policies used to strengthen small media systems; and the question of how small countries are represented and what these images mean to audiences. It is hoped that the reader will not only find answers to these questions in this volume, but will also be inspired to pursue new lines of inquiry.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Balčytienė, Auskė and Kristina Juraitė. 2009 “Impact of Economic and Cultural Factors in Television Production in Small Nations.” Medijska istraživanja 15 (2): 33-47.

BBC News. 2010. “S4C Seeks Judicial Review Over BBC Funding Move.” Last modified 20 October 2010.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11581346. —. 2011. “BBC Wales to Cut 100 Jobs in £10.7m Five-Year Saving.” Last

modified 6 October 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-15199135.

—. 2013. “Greece Suspends State Broadcasters ERT to Save Money.” Last modified 21 June 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22861577.

Blandford, Steve, Stephen Lacey, Ruth McElroy and Rebecca Williams. 2010. Screening the Nation: Wales and Landmark Television. Cardiff: BBC Trust/Audience Council Wales.

Blandford, Steve, Stephen Lacey, Ruth McElroy and Rebecca Williams. 2011 “Editorial: Television Drama and National Identity: The Case of ‘Small Nations’.” Critical Studies in Television 6 (2): xiv-xvii.

Introduction

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Blandford, Steve and Stephen Lacey. 2011. “Screening Wales: Portrayal, Representation and Identity: A Case Study.” Critical Studies in Television 6 (2): 1-12.

Blandford, Steve. 2012. “Introduction.” In Theatre and Performance in Small Nations, edited by Steve Blandford, 3-18. Bristol: Intellect.

Burgelman, Jean-Claude, and Caroline Pauwels. 1992. “Audiovisual Policy and Cultural Identity in Small European States: The Challenge of a Unified Market.” Media, Culture and Society 14 (2): 169-183.

Chan, Brenda. 2011. “Home, Identities and Transnational Appeal: The Case of Singaporean Television Drama.” Critical Studies in Television 6 (2): 114-126.

Dhoest, Alexander. 2011 “When Regional Becomes National: The Production and Reception of Flemish TV Drama in a Culturally Divided Country.” Critical Studies in Television 6 (2): 13-23.

Hand, Richard and Mary Traynor. 2012. Radio in Small Nations: Productions, Programmes, Audiences. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Hallin, Daniel C. and Paolo Mancini. 2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Higson, Andrew. 2000. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”. In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 63-74. London: Routledge.

Hjort, Mette and Duncan Petrie. 2007. “Introduction.” In The Cinema of Small Nations, edited by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, 1-22. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Iosifidis, Petros. 2007. “Public Television in Small European Countries: Challenges and Strategies.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3 (1): 65–87.

Lowe, Gregory F., and Christian Nissen. 2011. Small Among Giants: TV Broadcasting in Smaller Countries. Göteborg: Nordicom.

Morris, Meaghan. 2004. “Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema: Hong Kong and the Making of a Global Popular Culture.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5 (2): 184-199.

Puppis, Maurice. 2009. “Introduction: Media Regulation in Small States.” The International Communications Gazette 71 (1-2): 7-17.

Puppis, Maurice and Leen d'Haenens. 2009. “Editorial”. The International Communications Gazette 71 (1-2): 5-6.

Puppis, Manuel, Leen d’Haenens, Thomas Steinmaurer and Matthias Künzler. 2009. “The European and Global Dimension: Taking Small


15

Media Systems Research to the Next Level.” International Communication Gazette 71 (1-2):105-112.

Siegert, Gabriele. 2006. “The Role of Small Countries in Media Competition in Europe.” In Media Economics in Europe, edited by Jürgen Heinrich and Gerd G. Kopper, 191-201. Berlin: Vistas.

Trappel, Josef. 1991. “Born Losers or Flexible Adjustment? The Media Policy Dilemma of Small States.” European Journal of Communication 6 (3): 355-71.

Wood, Nancy. 1992. “Editorial: The Media in Small European Countries” Media, Culture and Society 14 (2): 163-168.

PART I:

DEVELOPING THE MEDIA IN SMALL NATIONS

CHAPTER ONE

WILL SMALL NATIONS BE THE WINNERS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

JOHN NEWBIGIN

Human beings have always enjoyed debating the question, “does size matter?” Whether it is land, cars, marrows or bits of the human anatomy, the underlying assumption is almost always that biggest is best. But at the start of the twenty-first century, when it comes to debating the relative advantages of big nations versus small, the jury is very definitely still out.

The conventional wisdom may still be that size matters—that we need more companies “of scale”; that we need a bigger share of world markets; that we need to have more banks, more brands and more Nobel prizes than the people next door. But a look at many international league tables could lead you to the conclusion that small is the new big. The UN globalisation index, the per capita wealth index, the Change Readiness Index (first floated in 2011 at the Davos World Economic Forum as a measure of a country’s capacity for innovation), the Human Development Index, assorted indices of educational attainment, even the league tables of which countries are the most active collaborators in academic research—all are dominated by small or very small countries. They appear to show that being small is the way to be successful in the global economy of the twenty-first century. Confusingly, the analysis that flows from such findings is wonderfully contradictory. It is because small nations have highly active governments with highly focused policy themes; but it is also because they are all Hayekian neo-liberals who believe in an almost complete absence of government. It is because they are much more homogenous in their community make-up; but it is also because they open themselves to diversity and heterogeneity.

All of which raises some very obvious questions: what do we mean by “success” and, if small nations have some kind of competitive advantage in the twenty-first century, what is it and why do they have it?

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What is often left out of these analyses is the simple fact that small nations vastly outnumber big ones and therefore, statistically, should have a reasonable chance of scoring well in any league table. In 1914 there were only 62 entities in the world generally recognised as independent nation-states. Today there are about 200, of which 140 have populations under 15 million and almost half have populations of 5 million or under. Much of that huge increase can be attributed to the collapse of the British, French and Soviet empires and the consequent birth of new states able to learn from the past, or at least be unencumbered by centuries of accumulated constitutional and institutional baggage. And there is no doubt that the remorseless drive towards more open global markets has fundamentally changed the dynamics of international trade, making it less likely for small independent states to be shut out of the party. But, does it really point to what one enthusiastic Scottish commentator has called “the triumph of the dwarves”?

If size of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not the ultimate criterion, what does “triumph” or even simple “success” actually mean? The growth rate of the economy? A balance of trade surplus? A sovereign wealth fund? Or is success something less tangible—a nation’s image in the eyes of the world? Its brand? Its ability to project soft power? Or is it something very tangible indeed, such as winning the World Cup, or even the Eurovision Song Contest?

One obvious limitation with nearly all these measures, tangible or intangible, is that they reveal nothing about the circumstances of individual citizens. The United States combines the world’s biggest GDP with health, mortality and inequality indicators that would shame some of the poorest nations. The UK, after more than 60 years of the welfare state and still one of the wealthiest nations on Earth, has returned to levels of inequality of income and life-chance that prevailed a hundred years ago, and the gap is growing wider.

We also know that the equation of size with success fails to acknowledge that we are rapidly running out of room on our little planet. Growth in the conventional sense is becoming, quite literally, unsustainable. If the exuberant capitalism of the 1990s and early 2000s, based on financial services, was unsustainable, what some politicians still like to call the “real economy” of hi-growth, hi-consumption and resource-hungry manufacturing is even more unsustainable. When there are nine or ten billion people on the planet, it could be terminal.

As the costs of conventional growth creep ever upwards, whether measured in commodity and energy prices, over-consumption and obesity, or waste and pollution, and as the evidence piles up that growth is no

Will Small Nations be the Winners of the Twenty-First Century?

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insurance against our feeling less secure, less at ease or less confident about the future, it is no wonder that governments, large and small alike, are looking with increasing interest at other more nuanced and relevant ways of measuring success. The fashionable focus on well-being, happiness, social cohesion, even the “big society”—these are all moves in that direction, ranging from the work that President Sarkozy commissioned from Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to the research of Richard Layyard and others in the UK. And when it comes to measuring the well-being of citizens or the extent to which there is a broad equality of life chances and life expectancy in a country, the league tables are, once again, dominated by small nations.

Integral to these new so-called “non-GDP” measures of success has been the need for governments to re-think the way they organise themselves. If “hard” economic policies are to be effectively interwoven with “soft” social policies, the functional silos of twentieth century government organisation begin to look very inadequate. The UK Government is a case in point. During the last fifteen years what used to be the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) has gone through a veritable alphabet soup of new acronyms, from BERR to BIS, passing through “enterprise”, “regulatory reform”, “innovation”, “universities” and “skills” on the way. The plain old “Education Department” has had skills added (and then subtracted), “families” added, and, at local level has absorbed, or been absorbed by, children’s services.

It would be easy to dismiss this as the traditional lust of politicians to tinker with the structures of government rather than address their quality and purpose, but there is no doubt that around the world governments are genuinely wrestling with how best to adjust to these new perspectives. At the same time, they are struggling to make the transition from an analogue to a digital world, and all that goes with it—rising citizen expectation; the escalating value (and vulnerability) of data; the relentless speed and penetration of 24-hour news; and the extraordinary mobilising power of social media.

This new and sudden interest in different ways of measuring success is not driven primarily by a desire to placate the citizenry. What governments are trying to get their collective heads around is the reality of a global economy in which creativity, knowledge and the ability to generate and retain the value of intellectual property are the crucial differentiators between success and failure. That makes the business of nurturing a climate for success more complex and subtle than ever before.

Of course, all modern states with a yearning to improve their national performance have sought to have energetic and inclusive education and

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social policies that help feed their economic ambitions. But if creativity and individual creative talent are now the real magic ingredient of economic success (as well as contributors to a sense of well-being), then there is no way that culture, in its widest sense, can be left out of the equation. Writing as director of the creative economy programme at the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) the Brazilian economist Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg set out the significance of this new reality for public policy:

The key issue is how to stimulate creativity and innovation. Undoubtedly the primary inputs to support a robust creative economy are intellectual capital and knowledge led by education and continuous learning. Nowadays, young people are attracted by unconventional creative activities that usually provide greater levels of satisfaction, providing for more autonomy, diversity and flexibility.

However, to respond to the new job opportunities they have to develop creative capacity and entrepreneurship in ways that transform ideas into marketable products, tangible or intangible. Public investment must prioritise human capital through capacity-building and human resources development. Curriculum of schools and universities should be revisited and adapted to new realties, motivating creativity and emphasising a multi-disciplinary approach. Today, it is no longer possible to think or work in silos; we have to deal with cross-cutting daily issues of our interconnected world. (Edna dos Santos-Duisenberg 2013)

All around the world, governments are addressing these “cross-cutting

daily issues of our interconnected world”. China’s current Five-Year plan highlights culture and creativity as key elements of economic growth, under the slogan “moving from made in China to designed in China”. However, as in so much else, it seems it is small nations that are leading the way. Perhaps that is unsurprising—their small size makes it relatively easier to re-purpose parts of the government machine. If you can get all the key players, literally, round a table, it is easier to rethink and reconfigure the way they work together. In Latvia (population 2.2 million) and Macedonia (population 2 million) the governments are exploring ways of integrating the functions of their economics, education, culture and regional development departments to deliver a more creative economy and society.

Small nations with limited resources are forced to think creatively. Iceland (population 319,000) realised that rather than building a higher education system of its own it would make much more sense to offer students a bursary to study at any university in the world where they could


23

win a place. The result is not only cost-effective but also hugely beneficial to the cultural and social life of the country as well as to its economy.

Perhaps the pre-eminent example of a radical re-orientation of government machinery is Estonia (population 1.3 million) with its extraordinary forced march to e-government, driven by a desire to leave the deadweight of soviet bureaucracy as far in the past as possible, but driven, too, by the simple need to save money in a country with relatively little in the way of resources. The effects are easy to see: more efficient, effective and cost-effective government; whole new sectors of economic activity spun into life by the action of government; a national “brand” identity that opens doors around the world; and, in its wake, a burgeoning sense of national pride.

Estonia’s story epitomises a phrase coined by Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times in 2007, when he opined that the likely winners of the twenty-first century would be “nimble, niche and networked”—adjectives that could as well be used to describe many small countries as to identify successful companies.

If there is validity in the proposition that small is the new big, perhaps it lies here. If being “nimble, niche and networked” is the way to succeed in the global creative economy of the twenty-first century, it is the direct opposite of the formula for success in the industrial economies of the nineteenth and twentieth century which could be summed up as “massive capitalisation to achieve mass-production and a mass-market”. Where size and scale were crucial factors in the past, they bring no prospect of advantage in the future; they may even be an impediment.

But is that not a wildly romantic and partial view of the future? What is the “global creative economy” other than another name for a rather woolly attempt to describe the collision between capitalist economics and digital technology?

There is no denying that it is an infuriatingly imprecise term. The rather tighter term “creative industries” is not much better. It has been in use for barely two decades and has almost no common currency beyond a small coterie of policy-wonks and academics. Economists still argue about the definition of the creative industries; statisticians argue about their scale; and policy analysts argue about their value and how to calculate it. Yet almost every government in the world not only believes in their importance as part of a wider “creative economy” but is actively promoting them. And every international analysis, whatever the basis upon which it is constructed, shows that creative industries are growing fast, generating new jobs and, often, outperforming the rest of the economy. What is more, this phenomenon is noticed in every region of the world,

Chapter One

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not just in the developed north. The UN calculated that global trade in cultural and creative goods and services grew by an astonishing annual average of 8.7% between 2002 and 2008, while South-South trade in creative goods and services grew even faster, at an average annual rate of 20%, over the same period (UNDP 2010).

It is also generally recognised that, however it is defined, there are some characteristics that do exemplify what is meant by “creative industries” or “the creative economy”. At their core is individual creative talent. The earliest formal attempt by any government to define the creative industries, by Britain’s Labour Government in 1998, was: “those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent” (DCMS 2001, 4). They do not start with large-scale investment or large labour forces. They start in the heads of bright people—wherever they are and whatever their circumstances. The common cry of many small creative entrepreneurs is that their creativity is their capital, a pitch that fails to convince many bankers or investors, but is hugely attractive to tens of millions of aspirational young people and, for obvious reasons, is equally attractive to countries that lack capital, sophisticated infrastructure or a pool of conventionally skilled labour.

The basic business model of the creative economy is to turn those sparks of individual creativity into tradable intellectual property. In his book The Creative Economy, John Howkins (2007, xi) wrote “people who own ideas have become more powerful than people who work machines and, in some cases, more powerful than people who own the machines”. As the stream of innovation and good ideas grows, forcing down the relative costs of manufacturing and pushing up the value of the ideas themselves, that statement becomes ever truer, and the enthusiasm of governments and investors to back people and companies that generate Intellectual Property (IP) grows with it. It is already the case that investment in intangibles (human skills, data and software) is significantly greater than investment in tangibles (plants and machinery) in all the developed economies, and that is a trend that can only continue and intensify.

The creative economy is also a curious mixture of local and global. Much of its value lies in its ability to produce bespoke products and services that meet particular needs or, at the level of the individual consumer, pander to particular tastes. It is the antithesis of “pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap”. And whereas in the past one of the accepted golden rules of business was only to build foreign sales on the back of a strong and well-established domestic market, in the new creative economy any


25

sole trader can be building global partnerships and seeking global sales from their first day in business.

Even more confusingly, in wide swathes of the digital economy, the distinctions between professional and amateur are dissolving and the relationship between producer and consumer is altering. It has become one of the established truths of the digital world that Google’s astonishing success was built by taking the old adage of persuading the consumer to trust the producer and completely reversing it to persuade the producer to trust the consumer. This has been described as “enabling customers to become collaborators”. This, in turn, alters the conventional ways in which businesses assess and manage risk, putting a much greater premium on innovation. The Cisco Corporation famously encourages its staff to take risks by telling them that it is “better to ask for forgiveness than seek permission”. All these changes alter the odds in business relationships between Davids and Goliaths. The significance of scale is changing.

Another characteristic of the creative economy is the relative “stickiness” of many creative industries. They lend themselves to clustering. Much has been written in recent years on the phenomenon of clustering, though it is as old as urban civilisation itself and simply describes the way in which related occupations, skills and interests tend to congregate together. In the case of the creative industries the basic ingredients of clusters include such obvious elements as cheap work space, good broadband communications and available labour skills, but they also depend on a rich social and cultural infrastructure—that means the arts, universities and research bodies, of course, but it also means bars, cafés and a dynamic popular culture of music, art or fashion. Culture and identity are parts of the mix. This tends to make the businesses place specific. Unlike clothing factories or car plants, most genuinely creative businesses cannot be shifted around the world to wherever labour is cheapest and regulation weakest. They are “sticky”—and that means their success contributes, long-term, to the quality of life and standard of living in the communities that nurture them—which is a further reason for their being a more attractive long-term investment for governments of poor and resource-hungry nations than simply setting up “enterprise zones” to catch the passing trade of cut-price offshore manufacturing. And, like all clusters, they depend on social interaction. The most effective way of developing talent and skills in this sector seems to be by peer-to-peer learning. Social exchange and professional support merge to become indistinguishable. Alex Graham (2009, 32) the Chief Executive of Wall-to-Wall, one of the UK’s most successful television production companies says, “the digital economy is about partnerships rather than hierarchies”.

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Clusters, then, contribute to the social cohesion of a community and at the same time feed off it. An apparent paradox is that much of the writing about clusters argues that diversity—of experience, outlook, knowledge, tradition, culture—is central to their success. A UK Government strategy paper of 2007, Staying Ahead, went as far as to argue that “diversity is more important than ability” in building a successful creative economy (The Work Foundation 2007, 140). The implication was that the cosmopolitan culture of world cities such as London, New York or Hong Kong was richer soil than the often commented upon homogeneity and social cohesion of small cities in small countries.

But diversity comes in many forms. One of the founders of the Lithuanian City of London Club, an informal network of Lithuanian business people in the City, told The Guardian newspaper on 8 January 2013:

[W]hat we have experienced so far is not so much a brain drain but a cycle of five to seven years, whereby Lithuanians leave, carry out their studies, work, maybe raise start-up capital and then return to Lithuania with money and experience. It is only now, at the end of this first cycle, that we are starting to reap the benefits of this foreign experience.

Last but not least, it is becoming ever more evident that the creative industries do have significant impact on the wider economy. In a strategy paper of 2010 the European Commission’s Directorate General for Enterprise (2010, iv) expressed the view that “creative industries are not only an important economic factor in themselves but also fuel the rest of the economy with knowledge and dynamism”. Research from around the world is beginning to point to a growing trend of creative businesses working in the Business-to-Business (B2B) rather than Business-to-Customer (B2C) sectors. In other words, they are providing services and goods that feed other areas of economic activity, rather than feeding directly to consumer markets. These B2B services range from the obvious, such as advertising and marketing to the unexpected and surprising—inputs into product and service design, contributions to hi-end manufacturing, radical innovations to health and other public service provision. As proved to be the case in Estonia, governments with few resources and no economies of scale, are obliged to look harder than most for innovative solutions and, in doing so, may help drive innovation in other sectors of the economy. Where policy development in larger countries may start from a consideration of what the government should be doing to help drive creativity and innovation, in smaller countries with fewer resources the question is more likely to be the other way around—


27

what can creativity and innovation do to help deliver better and cheaper government?

None of these characteristics are unique to the creative industries, but it is in the creative sector that they come together in the most visible way. And they are all radically different from the hallmarks of the old industrial economy that typically depended for success on volume of production, scale of markets, heavy capital investment, transport infrastructure, repetitive tasks and clear demarcation of functions for workers, and a career-long ladder to climb for managers.

The real significance of the creative industries lies less in their immediately quantifiable value in cash and jobs and more in their being harbingers of a new and different world. In the same way that the factory system of the nineteenth and twentieth century in Europe and North America shaped communities, cities, education systems and, ultimately, society itself (even though big factories only ever employed a small minority of working people), the creative industries of today are shaping the way we work, live and learn in a way that far exceeds their direct impact.

Compared with the successful industrial economies of the last century they are fast-moving, niche, relatively low in capital requirement, low in their use of raw materials and energy. It is not difficult to see that to be “nimble, niche and networked” is a good place to be.

Of course that is not the same thing as handing victory to the dwarves. But, in public policy terms, it is the case that small nations are more likely to have the ability, agility and sheer necessity to be more responsive in creating the conditions in which their economies and societies adapt to rapid global changes. Put another way: the evidence suggests that there is more appetite and capacity for fleetness of foot and flexibility of response where the distance between people and government is lessened. That undeniably tends to benefit smaller nations. At the very least, “big” is no longer automatically better than “small”.

In the nineteenth and twentieth century world of Great Powers, it was easy to write off small nations as backward, parochial, inward-looking Ruritanias. In the new twenty-first century world of ubiquitous e-communication and of specialisation rather than standardisation, small nations—whether through choice or necessity—are demonstrating that their ability to look outwards, to take risks, to explore new relationships between the public and private spheres, is putting them ahead of the game.

But there is an elephant in the room. For all the nimbleness and adaptability of the small-fry, a handful of corporations—Apple, Google, Facebook and others that are less well-known because they are not directly

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consumer-facing—dominate the new economy and are doing everything they can to consolidate their market power, seeking to corral what presently is publicly available data behind high walls of brand propriety, enclosing the digital commons. As the power of nation-states visibly shrinks in the face of global corporate power-flexing, to talk about “success” in terms of nations is itself becoming something of an anachronism. But this is a game being played out at many different levels. Talking of his country’s success in establishing partnerships with international corporations, the former President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, re-tweeted: “They know they can invite us into the house, even into the bedroom, and know we will never want to take over the whole house.” Another point to the dwarves.

Where does that leave the UK—an extraordinarily diverse nation of 60 million which is neither small nor large, but is certainly highly creative? As devolution moves into its second decade, Wales and Scotland are exploring new ways of tackling the challenges of twenty-first century government, creating what are emerging as research and development labs of comparative practice across the whole island. And the distinctive identities of some English regions, or city-regions, with populations of 5 or 6 million, puts them on a par with many successful nation-states, while the UK’s membership of the European Union puts it on a par with the US and Chinese economies, single-currency crises notwithstanding.

The UK is not necessarily lost in the middle. As in much else it has a handful of cards that give it an extraordinary and almost unique set of advantages at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is made up of a number of small nations; it is itself a medium sized nation and, as long as it does not take leave of its sense and throw itself overboard from the European Union, it is part of a larger community and market that equals in size and power both the US and China. Put the other way round—the complete disintegration of the UK, the abandonment of any serious regional policies for England, and exit from the EU would be a truly spectacular (and utterly suicidal) “triple whammy”. Until then, our future is dependent neither on the triumph of the dwarves nor on their subjugation to the power of larger states or global corporations. We can all play at the tables in the casino, and wait to see if the little guys win.


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References

DCMS. 2000. Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001, by Lidia Varbanova. London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry, European Commission. 2010. European Competitiveness Report 2010. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Graham, Alex. 2009. “Profit with a Purpose”. In After the Crunch, edited by Shelagh Wright, John Newbigin, John Kieffer, John Holden and Tom Bewick, 32-33. Creative and Cultural Skills/British Council, London.

Howkins, John. 2007. The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas. London, Penguin.

dos Santos-Duisenberg, Edna. 2013 “Towards a More Creative and Green Economy.” Last modified May 2013. http://creative-blueprint.co.uk/ thinkpieces/item/towards-a-more-creative-and-green-economy.

UNDP. 2010 Creative Economy Report 2010: Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option. Geneva: UNDP.

The Work Foundation. 2007. Staying Ahead: The Economic Performance of the UK’s Creative Industries. London: The Work Foundation.

CHAPTER TWO

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING IN SLOVENIA AND MACEDONIA:

CREATING STARS

SALLY BROUGHTON MICOVA

During the early 1990s, scholars in Western Europe first began to consider the challenges faced by small state media systems. Research was partly prompted by the 1989 “Television without Frontiers” Directive (TVWF), which formed the basis of the European Union’s (EU) new audiovisual policy. It also coincided with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the emergence of several small and newly independent nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe. Focusing on the experience of Switzerland and Austria, Trappel (1991), for example, argued that small states often operate media systems which are hampered by limited advertising markets, low production capacity and―because of its importance to the survival of the media in small states and the country’s cultural and linguistic identity in general―a heavy reliance on Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) (see also Meier and Trappel 1991; Burgelman and Pauwels 1992; Trappel 2010).

More recently, the importance of size in relation to media systems and particularly broadcasting has been reiterated in a special edition of the International Communications Gazette (Puppis et al. 2009) and the edited collection Small Among Giants (Lowe and Nissen 2011). This work not only affirms the earlier characterisations of the media in small states but also suggests that small states are unduly affected by EU policies which preclude things like the use of state aid for the media, for these can prevent the kind of interventionist policies which small states rely on to address problems of low production capacity and low commercial revenues. Puppis et al. call for more research into the impact of EU market policies on small state media systems and EU support for audiovisual production,

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such as the EU MEDIA programme.1 They also suggest that the EU’s strict rules on state aid in PSB might nonetheless be “a chance rather than a threat” and may even help strengthen the PSB in markets hampered by small advertising revenues (Puppis et al. 2009, 108).

Thus in the last two decades there have been consistent claims that small media systems are limited by low production capacity and small advertising markets, as well as questions raised about what kinds of policies might hurt or protect such media systems. However, while research has tended to focus on small nations and states in Western Europe, little has been written about the experience of Central and Eastern European countries. This chapter helps to address this gap in the literature by considering these issues in relation to the Republics of Slovenia and Macedonia, two newly independent small states in southeast Europe.

“Smallness” can be defined in various ways, and scholars have debated the relevance of geographic and population size, economic indicators and international influence (Maas 2009. See also Baehr 1975). “Smallness” can be considered relative when looking at cultural industries (Hjort and Petrie 2007), though less quantifiable factors such as language and political culture can also come into play in relation to media systems (Lowe, Berg and Nissen 2011). Slovenia and Macedonia have unique languages but also have some linguistic overlap with larger neighbours. They are small both in terms of commonly accepted population parameters and overall economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Slovenia and Macedonia’s PSBs—Radio Television Slovenia (RTVSLO) and Macedonia Radio Television (MRT) respectively—developed from the 1960s onwards as part of the federal Yugoslav Radio Television network (Zei 2004). With independence these regional centres became national PSBs. Yet the transition was not easy. When the newly independent Slovenia passed a law on RTVSLO in 1994 requiring a certain percentage of Slovenian music to be broadcast, radio producers were forced to keep repeating the same songs, because they did not have enough material by Slovenian artists or composers. One television executive was forced to recycle the same guests on his Sunday morning talk shows and other programmes. In both countries, producers lacked indigenous content—in particular, they lacked stars.

Within small media systems, the characteristic of “low production capacity” needs to be unpacked. We need to understand more about the 1 The EU’s Measures to Encourage the Development of an Audiovisual Industry (MEDIA) programme was launched in January 1991 to support the production and distribution of European audiovisual works, namely film and television productions. http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/about/index_en.htm

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challenges of creating content and the efforts made to overcome them in order to inform both European and national policy. These problems may be unique to those small nations and states that recently emerged from larger systems or have roots in the post-socialist era. Slovenia and Macedonia are not alone in this category. Their experience may therefore offer insights into the kinds of policies small state media systems might use to encourage production and generate new content.

Focusing on the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Macedonia, this chapter therefore explores what low production capacity means for small state media systems and will specifically examine some of the policy interventions and efforts to boost production being used in these two cases. I begin by offering an overview of the audiovisual media in Slovenia and Macedonia and the production capacity challenges they both face. I will then discuss some strategies and experiences of those working in these small media systems. Some telling differences between the two countries support the arguments mentioned above that PSB is crucial in small media systems. Yet I conclude that it is not necessarily the entire mandate traditionally associated with PSB that is important but the specific functions that can then be leveraged to generate more production and content throughout these small media systems.

Audiovisual media in Slovenia and Macedonia

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, the newly independent states of Slovenia and Macedonia gained both the opportunity and the responsibility to redefine their respective media systems. Within the former Yugoslavia, broadcasting was essentially synonymous with Yugoslav Radio Television (JRT), a network of eight regional radio-television centres. Though each centre produced its own programming and had its own channels, there was a great deal of shared content, with production centred largely in Belgrade and Zagreb.2 Like other European countries emerging from communism or socialism, Slovenia and Macedonia did not attempt to devise completely new models for their media systems. Instead, they sought to imitate or mimic Western practices, characterised by liberalisation and de-monopolisation of the media sector (Splichal 2001; Jakubowicz 2007). Soon after independence, both Slovenia and Macedonia went from essentially having one state broadcaster that operated a few different channels to having a multitude of broadcasters. By 2012, Slovenia (with a 2 The Socialist Alliance of Working People formed a second public broadcasting network of sorts, but this consisted only of a number of local radio stations in each republic managed at the community level.

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population of just over 2 million) had 81 television and 90 radio stations, while Macedonia (also with just over 2 million people) had 75 television and 87 radio stations, including PSB channels. Yet despite this abundance, there is concentration within each of the markets, with just a few players capturing most of the audience share and advertising income.

In both Slovenia and Macedonia the majority of the populations speak a unique language. Each country also has several minority groups that speak other languages, usually ones shared with neighbouring countries. In both cases the PSB provides programming in both the majority language and minority languages.

Penetration of multi-channel subscription services through cable or other platforms is also high in both countries, with audience shares for foreign channels between 20% and 25%.3 One main difference between the two countries is that, whereas Slovenia’s PSB is the second largest player in the market in terms of audience share and advertising revenues, Macedonia’s MRT is marginalised. In addition, the levels of concentration among broadcasters and foreign investment are higher is the Slovenian broadcasting market than in the Macedonian.

The first commercial broadcaster in Slovenia, the Ljubljana television Kanal A, was launched months before the republic gained independence from Yugoslavia. The new Slovenian state then granted licences for broadcasting to local stations, though the legal conditions made transfer of licences and consolidation possible. In the mid-1990s, the commercial company ProPlus formed a network of local television stations under the PopTV brand with shared content and advertising sales (Bayer 2002, 21-22). Though started locally, ProPlus really took off when American-owned Central European Media Enterprises (CME) acquired 78% of the company alongside the two Slovenian owners (Sparks 1999). ProPlus acquired Kanal A in 1999 and eventually the national networks were legalized as national broadcasters, giving ProPlus the two leading national television stations. Similar networks formed among radio broadcasters. TV3 and Radio Ognjišče, which just days before the passage of the country’s first Mass Media Act in 1994 were the only broadcasters to receive national licences (Bašić-Hrvatin and Milosavljević 2001), eventually found

3 Macedonia’s average audience share for foreign channels averaged 24.2% between 2006 and 2010 (see BCRM Annual Reports). For Slovenia it is more difficult determine a precise figure because foreign channels are not separately categorised. AGB Neilson disaggregates the Croatian channels, which reached almost an 8% share in 2005 and 2006, but had only 3.2% by 2011. The other foreign channels are grouped along with the regional and local stations and the share of this group has grown steadily since 20.4% in 2006 to 26.6% in 2011.


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themselves dwarfed by the national players that emerged through consolidation and network formation. TV3 was bought by Sweden’s Modern Times Group in 2006, although the foreign owners pulled out of the station in early 2012, complaining of unfair competition in the advertising market (Slovenian Press Agency 2012; STA 2012).

According to data from AGB Nielson Media Research Slovenia, the channels of ProPlus and those of Slovenia’s PSB had the largest audience shares in 2011, with PopTV and Kanal A holding 35.6% combined and RTVSLO’s three channels holding 26.3%. TV3 was a distant third place with just under 5%. The remaining audience share was split among several local and regional channels, as well as the foreign channels, with Croatia’s PSB holding the largest share among them.

In post-independence Macedonia relaxed licensing regulations allowed commercial broadcasters to pop up like mushrooms. Ciunova-Suleska (2007, 145) estimate the number of broadcasters reached as many as 250 before the first Law on Broadcasting was passed in 1997. By the time the law came into effect and the Macedonian government legalized broadcasters through the granting of concessions, televisions A1 and SITEL—as well as radio stations Antenna 5 and Kanal 77—had already established themselves as national players. A new media law passed in 2005 changed the government concession system to one in which a statutorily independent regulator issued licences. However, Skopje stations TV Kanal 5 and TV Telma had already by then been allowed to go national and a national commercial Albanian language station had been launched. When the transfer was made from concessions to licences in 2006 there were five private national television stations, the three channels of MRT and 50 local television stations, as well as three national commercial radio stations and 65 local commercial radio stations (BCRM 2008). Throughout this period MRT steadily lost both audiences and advertising revenue and licence fee collection decreased. The 2005 law moved the responsibility for licence fee collection from the electric company to MRT itself, which proved disastrous with collection rates sinking below 5% (Beličanec 2009; Broughton Micova 2012). MRT subsisted almost exclusively on ad-hoc government transfers until an amendment to the law in 2011 began to improve the situation by making the Public Revenue Office responsible for licence fee collection. Nevertheless, commercial stations held onto the lion share of the audience.

As MRT declined A1 and Sitel televisions held audiences through 2010. AGB Nielson Media Research Macedonia’s annual audience share figures for A1 and Sitel for that year were 26.7% and 17.9% respectively. In 2010 financial investigation of all the companies owned by A1’s owner

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lead to the eventual bankruptcy of the company. A1 lost its radio spectrum frequency as a result of the bankruptcy and ceased to broadcast in July 2011. According to audience figures in 2011 it appears that Sitel and Kanal 5 benefited the most from this closure. Between 8% and 9% of the audience share is held by the national Albanian language stations. The remaining audience share is divided among foreign channels with only a small percentage held by many other domestic channels.

Within both of these markets of approximately 2 million people only a few national players have most of the audience share for television and therefore are able to convert it into advertising revenue. In Slovenia this is ProPlus and RTVSLO, which until October 2011 was allowed almost as much advertising time as commercial stations. In Macedonia national commercial stations divide most of the audience’s attention, and MRT struggles to fill the minimal advertising time that it is allowed by law. Some audience data for radio is available in both countries, but I have focused on television both in the interest of space and because in both countries radio production is minimal outside PSB and has far lower audiences than television. Having given an overview of each audiovisual media market and its major players, I will now discuss the production capacity within each market as a whole.

The lack of production capacity

Being a big fish in a small pond may have advantages, but one can still only grow as big as the pond allows. The first issue in terms of production capacity is the revenue available to finance production within each system as a whole. As mentioned above, media scholars writing about small state media systems have already pointed out that such systems are limited in terms of the amount of advertising revenue that they can generate. Another challenge for small states is also the amount of income they can raise for PSB or other interventions in the market such as subsidies (Picard 2011). On the one hand, increasing the licence fee is rarely a popular move, so both economic and political considerations can limit the licence fee amount. In Macedonia’s 2006 election the licence fee became a contentious issue, and following through on its campaign promise the government cut the licence fee amount by more than 60% in 2008 (Broughton Micova 2012, 135). Although according to law it is supposed to keep pace with inflation, the licence fee in Slovenia has been the subject of political manipulation since 1994 (Bašić-Hrvatin and Petković 2007, 150-153). On the other hand, there are only about half a million households and a limited number of businesses in each country from which to collect the


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licence fee. The table 2-1 gives a picture of advertising and PSB revenues, including those from budget transfers. Table 2-1: Broadcasting revenue in Slovenia and Macedonia 2010

Slovenia (€) Macedonia (€) PSB TV €123m €12m Non-PSB TV €77m (€53m ProPlus) €18m TV advertising: gross value €406m €579m TV advertising: revenue €69m €16m

Sources: Mediana; BCRM; Milosavlević et al. (2012); Radio Television Slovenia; Macedonian Radio Television

As table 2-1 shows, Slovenia’s RTVSLO received about ten times more revenue than Macedonia’s MRT in 2010. Yet by comparison, the total revenue of RTVLSO that year was still less than the €125 million that the incoming Dutch Government at the time promised to cut from its PSB budget in 2012 (Government of the Netherlands 2012). The amount a small population can provide for PSB is further constrained by GDP and income per capita (Picard 2011), and these two cases illustrate this clearly. The table also shows that the amount of advertising revenue generated by these small populations does not outstrip PSB revenues. Despite the limitations, the budgets of the PSBs are still greater than those generated by individual commercial stations through advertising and other sources.

The challenge in financing audiovisual media production is only one aspect of the lack of production capacity in Slovenia and Macedonia. There are other resources required, such as the skilled individuals needed to produce content, studio spaces and technical equipment. In both of these cases these individuals are concentrated in the PSBs and the handful of national broadcasters. Independent production is weak and smaller broadcasters have minimal resources. Tomaz Gorjanc of Slovenia’s Agency for Post and Electronic Communications (APEK) explained in an interview that the weak independent production sector means the market has trouble producing enough Slovenian content for broadcasters:

[T]here are maybe just one or two bigger producers and all the others are smaller, they don’t even have their own studio.... They just ad-hoc hire some studio and get together and make some audiovisual work. (Interview, April 2011)

It seems also there is not much incentive to develop this sector either.

For one thing, because of its unique language, there is little market for

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Slovenian content outside of Slovenia. Within Slovenia there does not seem to be much of a market for true independent production. One producer at RTVSLO said he uses independent production teams mainly as freelance replacements for RTVSLO staff on the production of regular programmes made outside normal working hours, such as the Sunday church service broadcasts, because they do not have to be paid the overtime rates required by the RTVSLO union. The director of a regional TV station said that his station co-operates with other regional stations by trading programmes to fulfil the quota for independent production rather than actually buying or commissioning from independent producers.

In Macedonia the resources within the broadcasters themselves are also a problem. Roberto Beličanec of the Media Development Centre argued that because of the high number of broadcasters the country’s professional capacity is spread too thin to support production, saying there just is not the workforce available. Selver Ajdini, director of a local television station in Macedonia, reinforced this claim by saying that, even though he had a studio and decent equipment thanks in part to foreign donations, he did not have enough personnel. According to the Broadcasting Council of the Republic of Macedonia (BCRM) there were 1,475 people employed in television in 2011 and 39.3% of those were in MRT, while 467 in total were employed in radio and 64% of those were in MRT (BCRM 2012). These figures include journalists and administrative personnel. As in Slovenia, broadcasters also do not seem to create much demand for independent production. Producers in both the PSB and commercial stations explained that the most affordable—and therefore most common—productions for them were one-off programmes in their own studios. Independent production is used primarily if it comes with its own sponsors and advertising, of which the station can get a cut. This has been the case with some of the more popular local versions of foreign formats.

A third aspect of the lack of production capacity experienced in these small countries is material from which to generate content. As described at the outset of this chapter, one of the basic issues is not having enough domestic music to put on the radio and television. This appears to be a particular problem for PSBs that in both cases have higher quotas for domestic content than commercial stations. People in both RTVSLO and MRT cited it as a problem. One person in RTVSLO complained:

[T]he [quota] level for Slovenian music is 40% Slovenian music in programmes and as you can imagine we have our own programme for classical music—40% Slovenian classical music isn’t easy to get. (Interview, April 2011)


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However, insufficient material from which to generate content is an issue that spills over into entertainment programming on television and radio, documentaries and other non-news formats. States with small populations can offer a limited amount of talent, events and famous people and the stories or gossip that goes along with them. This not only affects PSBs but also commercial stations. One producer from the private TV Sitel in Macedonia explained:

First of all this is a small market and that market doesn’t allow you to create that kind of programme that they have say in Serbia—as a population we are small, as an intellectual capacity, and the possibility to find good guests, good TV hosts in this space is a problem. (Interview, May 2011)

Producers find themselves competing with other stations in the region

for stars from the larger linguistic populations in Serbia, Croatia and Albania or Kosovo. Celebrities from other countries in the region are usually also well known in both Slovenia and Macedonia. In the face of competition from foreign channels, Slovenian and Macedonian broadcasters are finding it hard to compete not only on the level of celebrity culture; both RTVSLO and MRT are obliged to create a certain amount of documentary and informational programming as well. Subject matter for this kind of programming is also a problem, particularly in light of what is available on other channels. As one producer at RTVSLO remarked:

If you are trying to tell them [the public] about a rabbit that lives in Slovenian fields they will say, ‘what’s that to the anaconda that I saw on the Discovery Channel?’ (Interview, July 2010)

Aljoša Simjanovski of MRT talked about his challenges filling the

regular agricultural programme saying that material is very quickly “used up”. He explained that harvests or problems in one of the lakes or reservoirs are topics for studio discussion for a while, but that such themes are quickly exhausted, saying “it’s easy for CNN that covers a huge territory” (Interview, March 2010). Producers in Slovenia and Macedonia cannot do much to expand the selection of wildlife available in their countries and would probably stop short of inciting a revolt by dairy farmers in order to have something to talk about in their studios. However, they describe some strategies that may increase the amount of material from which they can draw content and perhaps add to the overall capacity of the market. Looking at these strategies can give insight into the kind of

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interventions that might be most possible and useful in small state media systems.

Investing in stars

In both Slovenia and Macedonia the needs of producers to have something to put on air interact with other concerns for the preservation of each country’s unique language and national culture. Older generations that grew up in Yugoslavia easily gravitate towards content in Serbian or Croatian, while younger ones tend to be fluent in English and other languages. With foreign content coming in freely on a variety of platforms, people in the audiovisual media sector—as well as policymakers and regulators—are looking for ways to encourage local production and content less as an industrial measure and more to protect their identity. Vojko Stopar, who was Head of the Sector for Media in the Ministry of Culture at the time, expressed it directly:

It’s a phrase “globalisation”, but I really think that we are attacked by this standardisation of cultural patterns.... And I think English is becoming everyday language among our youth…. I’m not against [it], but on the other hand I think that we are slowly, slowly losing our identity. And okay, we can slow down this process. Media has a very important role in this slowing down this process of this melting pot—this universal melting pot. But I’m not very optimistic about in 100 years where we shall be. How many people will still speak Slovenian or even think in the Slovenian tradition? (Interview April 2011)

Broadcasting quotas for domestic content are in place in both

countries. In Macedonia broadcasters are required to broadcast at least 30% of original content in the Macedonian language or a language of one of the country’s minority ethnic groups. This applies to all programming, and the same percentage applies to music for both television and radio. In Slovenia television stations are required to include at least 5% Slovenian programmes. Both radio and television must air 20% Slovene music daily and their in-house production must reach 30% and 20% respectively. In both cases the obligations are higher on PSB. Content quotas such as these do not necessarily ensure quality programming and may even encourage less culturally valuable content (Iosifidis et al. 2005; Anderson et al. 1997). Quotas do serve to ensure the presence of the language and music on the airwaves, which remains an important objective in such small states (Broughton Micova 2013). However, quotas do not solve the producers’ problem of how to fill programmes in a way that will attract audiences,


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and, as noted above, the obligation can even exacerbate it. At the same time, the media professionals I interviewed were keenly aware of the fact that if their programming is not interesting to audiences the point of having the language and music on air is lost. One of the things they are doing is investing in music and films: in other words in creating stars.

Even as PSBs across Europe faced cutbacks and despite reductions in its own budget, RTVSLO in 2010 was investing in studios for recording music. Head of Radio Production Janez Ravnikar described how the broadcaster had modernised the studios for its in-house orchestra and big band ensemble and was also producing folk and rock music. In this way the broadcaster fills its own programme while generating new music that can be used by other media and helping to popularise Slovenian talent. After years of financial crisis MRT no longer has its own orchestra or big band. Nevertheless, PSB events such as the Eurovision song contest and the song production that goes along with it create opportunities to generate new music and new stars.

MRT’s Simjanovski argued that the PSB has an important role to play in popularising rising stars in Macedonian music and helping to create celebrities that can then generate material for other forms of content. None of the commercial broadcasters in Slovenia or Macedonia have the capacity or the tradition of investing in music production that RTVSLO and MRT have, but they can and do invest in international formats such as Pop Idol and X-Factor or create cheaper versions of the same. International formatted programmes may be part of globalisation and the trend of approximation of television content (Esser 2007; 2009), but in countries in which celebrities are in short supply, they can also have a knock on effect in other genres by launching new musicians.

Feature films are expensive undertakings. For small states such as Slovenia and Macedonia with unique languages they are not likely to be commercial ventures, but can be an important investment. Both countries have film funds financed from the state budget. The one in Slovenia is significantly better funded than the one in Macedonia, but there are differences between the two in terms of their investment in film that goes beyond the difference in the film fund budgets.

Slovenian producers have the advantage of accessing the MEDIA programme of the EU. According to the records of the Slovenian Film Centre (SFC), Slovenian producers received grants from MEDIA for 26 feature films from the fund as of July 2012. The SFC by that time had supported 44 films since its inception in 2003. The SFC’s investment of €40,672,329 was much greater than the €846,989 from the EU’s funds, but the MEDIA programme is only intended to compliment national support

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schemes. Another thing that could be seen from the SFC’s data is that, of the 44 films funded by the SFC, 28 were co-produced with RTVSLO including six of those with MEDIA funding.

Perhaps more significant than Slovenia’s access to EU funds is the fact that it has strong PSB with resources and an interest in investing in film. According to one of the television producers at RTVSLO, the broadcaster has a specific strategy to invest in film and explained that film is an important tool for preserving the language. He said that as opposed to educational programmes about the Slovene language or even a dramatic series, which he claimed were not popular: “Film is something that means you can have them for two hours, watching in Slovene language something that reflects their conditions” (Interview, July 2010). If given more resources he said his priority would be to hire younger, promising people for production and make more films.

The Macedonian Film Fund (MFF) is less well-endowed than SFC and according to its published records granted only just over €9 million to film productions between 2008 and 2010. Looking into each of the projects supported showed no evidence of co-production with MRT or with commercial broadcasters. This is a stark difference to the Slovenian case.

The projects supported include a number of short films, documentaries and animated productions, which can be thought of as television-friendly formats. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be a direct link with broadcasting as there is in Slovenia, nor is there the added investment by the PSB in film production. MRT’s Simjanovski saw investment in feature films and drama as an important part of what the PSB should be doing and greatly regretted the fact that the broadcaster was not able to make such investments. His argument for this priority was that film is important for generating cultural material in general. He talked about it in the context of creating celebrities, but also, according to him, feature film production was space in which to really work with young directors and producers on a common project and build production capacity in the country.

Conclusion

As Turner (2006) has pointed out, films have a life beyond the cinema or even their re-runs on television, because the stars and key films become part of a culture and identity. In Slovenia and Macedonia feature film production was seen by those interviewed in exactly that manner. Investment in films can also contribute to the national celebrity culture and serve as a shared theme in public discourse, thereby generating content for other programmes. The producers cited above also seemed to see the very


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process of making films, which involves large crews, as a training ground for young production cadre. Those working in the audiovisual sector in each of these cases also showed an awareness of the importance of music production, both to the preservation of the national culture and as material for generating programme content. Investment in popularising local musicians addressed the needs of these small states to protect their national identity and the practical needs of producers to fill their programmes.

Film production is expensive—as is maintaining an orchestra or participating in the Eurovision Song Contest. As could be seen by the evidence presented above, within these small and financially limited media markets, the PSB is still the most equipped to make such investments. As cash-strapped as they might be, PSB budgets are still larger than those of commercial broadcasters, and advertising does not provide the kind of revenues needed for such production. As a legacy from JRT days they also have a variety of studio spaces and a tradition of music production. Commercial stations, particularly in Macedonia, are mainly able to maintain news output and produce cheap in studio or format based programmes. Following the models of PSB in Western Europe, both RTVSLO and MRT have full mandates, including the production of news and informational programmes, documentaries, educational shows and entertainment. Considering the scale at which they are operating all of this might not be possible for these PSBs to do well. Neither will they be able to compete for audiences in certain genres with the Discovery Channels and other foreign content so readily available.

This is likely to be the case in other small states in the region. As Puppis et al. (2009) have suggested the EU’s requirement of more precise definitions of the PSB’s role in each national context can be an opportunity to narrow and re-affirm the mandate of PSB in small media systems. What the experiences of Slovenia and Macedonia indicate is that PSB remains crucial to small state media systems particularly as the production potential of the commercial sector is limited. They suggest that where PSB can make the biggest contribution is through investments that not only fill its own programmes but also generate material the rest of the audiovisual industry can leverage in the production of its other content. However, while producers in RTVSLO spoke of large current investments in music and film production, the producers in MRT could only refer to minor investments and things they would do if they could. In order to play this important role in creating stars and material for the industry as a whole, PSBs must have stable financing systems that maximise the potential of their small markets.

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Handbook, edited by Mary Kelly, Gianpietro Mazzoleni and Denis McQuail, 214-223. London: Sage.

CHAPTER THREE

NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION AND THE MEDIA IN CATALONIA

JOSEP ÀNGEL GUIMERÀ AND ANA FERNÁNDEZ VISO

Since 1980, Catalonia has had a policy of developing its own media and communication system. The organisation of this system is not a goal in itself; it has been designed as a tool to achieve a wider political objective: the national, cultural and linguistic reconstruction of Catalonia after the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1978).

During the Franco regime, Catalonia lost the self-government which it had achieved in the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939), and the use of Catalan in public life was prohibited and persecuted (Guibernau 2002). Following the advent of democracy in Spain in the late 1970s, Catalonia regained its political autonomy with the restoration in 1977 of the Generalitat de Catalunya (a centuries-old self-government institution that was abolished in 1714 and recovered only briefly during the Republican interval). With the election of the centre-right nationalist party Convergencia i Unió (CiU) in 1980, a process of Catalan national reconstruction was initiated with two clear aims: firstly, the recovery and expansion of self-government; and secondly, the preservation and revitalisation Catalan cultural identity (Guibernau 2002). This reconstruction project was based on the widely supported idea of Catalonia as a “stateless nation”, a political entity which Guibernau (1998, 12) defines as:

cultural communities that share a common past, that are linked to a clearly demarcated territory, that want to decide on their political future and lack their own State. These communities are included within one State, or within various States, which they tend to consider as alien. Stateless nations demand the right to self-determination, which at times is understood as an increase in the autonomy it exercises within the State, while in other cases it is interpreted as the right to secession.

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Successive Catalan governments have viewed the media as a key tool in the process of Catalan national reconstruction. Consequently, a comprehensive set of policies aimed at achieving three complementary objectives have been implemented: firstly, and most importantly, the normalisation of the Catalan language within the media; secondly, the creation of an autonomous public sphere in Catalonia; and thirdly, the strengthening of the powers of self-governance over communications.

The significance given to the Catalan language is no accident. For many Catalan nationalists, the continuity of Catalonia as a nation depends on the preservation of Catalan. Since the Franco dictatorship, when the public use of the Catalan language was prohibited and persecuted, there has been a wide social and political agreement (especially between political parties of Catalan origin) on the importance of language as a basic component of Catalonia’s national identity and the need for its promotion. This position was particularly defended by Jordi Pujol (CiU), president of the Generalitat de Catalunya between 1980 and 2003 (Guibernau 2002, 233-34 and 266-75).

It is important to bear in mind that, while in 1975 as many as 79.9% of Catalonia’s inhabitants understood Catalan, only 53.1% spoke it. Thus, at the time of negotiating the Spanish Constitution of 1978, one of the main objectives set out by political Catalanism was to ensure that Spain’s minority languages would be co-official in the territories where they were spoken (Guibernau 2002). With this explicit constitutional recognition, the Generalitat governments could then implement a linguistic policy to promote the Catalan language.

Catalonia’s linguistic policy has been designed around two objectives: firstly, the development of the media in Catalan; and secondly, what was known as linguistic immersion—the use of Catalan as the language of instruction in all public primary and secondary schools in Catalonia. The result has been an improvement in the state of the language. The Catalan government’s latest Language Policy Report (2010) reveals that 95% of inhabitants of over 15 years of age understand Catalan, while 65% claim they know how to speak it. Furthermore, 36% of Catalan citizens state that Catalan is their usual language, while 12% say they use it indistinctly with Spanish (Generalitat de Catalunya 2010, 244). Thus 48% of people who live in Catalonia use the Catalan language in their daily life.

All of this political action was carried out on the legal basis of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. In this regard, it is important to bear in mind that Catalonia is one of the 17 autonomous communities of the Spanish state. This has led, on several occasions, to conflicts between the central Spanish government and the

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Catalan government over the powers and specific policies applied within Catalonia. However, Catalonia’s demographic and economic weight—and therefore its political weight—within the Spanish state has helped the Generalitat to win some of these conflicts: it is the second most populated autonomous community (it has 7,565,603 inhabitants, more than countries such as Denmark and Norway) and has a per capita income of €27,430 in 2011, higher than the Spanish average (€23,271) and the European Union average (€25,134) (National Statistics Institute of Spain 2012).

The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyse the communication policies developed by the Generalitat between 1980 and the autumn of 2012 (the time of writing), along with the main successes of these policies in relation to the creation of a Catalan media system. Although on a local level other public bodies in Catalonia have also developed communication policies, the chapter essentially focuses on the work of the autonomous Catalan government, for this is the institution that has come to define the core aspects of the communication system under construction.

The Catalan communication policy has generated large legislative instrumentation, numerous government actions, and has had abundant financial resources available to it (Corbella 1991; Moragas and Corominas 2000; Fernández Alonso, Guimerà i Orts and Fernández Viso 2012). This chapter is based on the results of previous research carried out both by the authors and by other researchers in this field (Fernández Viso and Guimerà Orts 2012). Our methodology is based on documentary analysis and interviews with some of the key individuals responsible for the communication policies in Catalonia between 2000 and 2012.1

The chapter is organised into five sections. The first details the powers in the field of communication in Catalonia. The second sets out the communication policies applied and the central objectives guiding them, while the third summarises the main results obtained in the organisation of an own media system. Section four analyses the impact of the current economic and financial crisis both on policies and on the system itself from 2010 onwards. The fifth and final section offers some additional considerations by way of conclusion.

1 David Madí (The Catalan Secretary for Communication 2001-03), interviewed by Josep Àngel Guimerà, February 2007; and Enric Marín (The Catalan Secretary for Communication 2004-06), interviewed by Josep Àngel Guimerà, February 2007. See also Tresseras (2010) and Martí (2011).

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Catalonia and the Spanish State

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 recognised Catalonia as a “nationality” and guaranteed the right to autonomy of all the “nationalities and regions” that make up Spain. This started a political and administrative decentralisation process that resulted in a new model of territorial organisation of the State: the State of autonomies (Spanish: Estado de las autonomías). The State of autonomies combines the principles of self-government and shared government. The two levels of government—central and regional—enjoy constitutionally guaranteed parliamentary institutions and separate powers and competencies. This means that the authority of the regional level is an entity in its own right: it is not a delegation of the central government.

The Statute of Autonomy is the basic institutional norm of each autonomous community. Among other elements, it contains the competences that each autonomous community assumes within the framework established in the Spanish Constitution. Article 149 of the Constitution states: “Matters not expressly assigned to the State by this Constitution may fall under the jurisdiction of the Self-governing Communities by virtue of their Statutes of Autonomy”. Catalonia passed its first Statute of Autonomy in accordance with this constitutional norm in 1979 and its second Statue of Autonomy in 2006.

The powers to regulate the fields of media and culture are distributed between the central Spanish State and the Generalitat. The Constitution grants the former exclusive power in matters of telecommunications (including, for example, the planning of the radio spectrum), as well as the power to establish the basic rules relating to organization of the press, radio and television and, in general, all mass-communications media. For its part, the autonomous Government of Catalonia has assumed full competences in the following areas: the development and implementation of the basic regulation of media and communications (for example, the development of the planning of the radio spectrum carried out by the Spanish Government); cinema; promotion of the Catalan language and culture; and the establishment of its own public communication media.

However, as noted above, the powers and rights of the autonomous communities are not clearly defined and delimited in a list. On the one hand, there is a substantial margin to interpret the powers that could be assumed by the autonomous communities (all those not specifically reserved for the State in the Constitution). On the other hand, Article 150.2 of the Constitution authorises the State to transfer or delegate some of its powers to autonomous communities. In this way, the issue of distributing


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powers has been—and continues to be—a subject of disputes and negotiations. In fact, the deployment of the State of Autonomies in Spain has followed a process of transfer and/or devolution of State powers to the autonomous communities, forced in many cases by the demands of the latter. During the late 1970s, there was a broad social and political consensus in Catalonia about the fundamental importance of the media, both for the national reconstruction of Catalonia after the Franco dictatorship and for the survival of Catalan cultural identity (Fernández Viso and Guimerà i Orts 2012). Consequently, since the establishment of democracy in Spain, Catalonia has demanded full regulatory power and authority over its media and communication system and has tenaciously negotiated this demand with the successive Spanish governments over the last thirty years. The Catalan government, as we will see below, has even managed to force the legal framework in order to obtain the granting of new powers in this field.

This line of political action has received the support of the Catalan academic community, which has proposed the political organisation of a Catalan media and communication system as an essential requisite not only for the survival of Catalan identity but ultimately of the Catalan nation itself. The most complete and influential proposal has been that made by the communications scholars Josep Gifreu and María Corominas in their book Construir l’Espai Català de Comunicació (Constructing the Catalan Communication Space 1991), which was the result of an in-depth research project carried out with public funding. Such investment in communication research has also been an important line of political action in Catalonia (Fernández Viso and Guimerà i Orts 2012).

Catalan communication policy 1980-2010

Since 1980, when the first elections for the Catalan Parliament in the new democratic era were held, Catalonia has had ten governments, the last of which was elected in November 2012. All of these governments have had the presence of Catalan nationalist political parties. The centre-right nationalist CiU party governed Catalonia without interruption between 1980 and 2003, when a nationalist coalition comprised of three left-wing parties (socialist, pro-independence and ecologist) came to power. The members of this coalition included the pro-independence Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) party, which assumed responsibility for communication and cultural policy. The conservative CiU returned to power in November 2010, and two years later, in 2012, it called early elections, but lost almost 20% of its seats in the Parliament. CiU still rules

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Catalonia, but only thanks to the support of the left-wing and pro-independence ERC, which doubled its seats and became the second political party in the Parliament.

The communication policies adopted by the different Catalan autonomous governments in the last three decades have sought to contribute to the national, cultural and linguistic reconstruction of Catalonia by fulfilling three essential—and interrelated—objectives: firstly, and as a central focus, the normalisation of the use of the Catalan language in all spheres of daily life; secondly, the configuration of an autonomous media sphere in Catalonia; and thirdly, the increase in the powers of self-governance to design and regulate the Catalan media system, pushing to the limit the possibilities opened up in this regard by the constitutional design and even openly challenging it.

In the 1980s the linguistic normalisation policy of the Generalitat gave central importance to promoting the use of the Catalan language in the media in order to provide citizens with access to information and cultural products produced in their own language. Following the passing of the Ley de Normalización Lingüística 7/1983 (Law of Linguistic Normalisation 7/1983) in 1983, the Catalan administration established a grant system for publications written fully or partially in Catalan. Considering the discretionary nature with which part of these public subsidies were awarded up to 2003, there is very little data corresponding to the total amount of money invested in the first two decades of this programme. Nevertheless, Fernández Alonso and Blasco Gil (2005) claim that €25 million was distributed for this purpose in 2003 alone.

The second central objective of Catalan communication policy—the construction of an autonomous media sphere—has been closely linked to the goal of linguistic normalisation. Thus, the desire to set up a separate communications space was initially expressed in the creation of a Catalan public media system designed to give priority to the Catalan language, culture and interests. The Corporación Catalana de Radio y Televisión (Catalan Radio and Television Corporation) (CCRTV) was set up in 1983, despite the fact that it was not permitted by Spanish legislation until the passing of the Ley del Tercer Canal (Third Channel Act) later that year.2

The challenge presented to the Spanish state by the establishment of CCRTV—a challenge initiated by the Basque autonomous government, which had set up its own public broadcasting service several months previously—serves to illustrate the third central objective of Catalan 2 Ley 46/1983, de 26 de diciembre, reguladora del Tercer Canal de Televisión. (Regulatory Law 46/183, of 26th December 1983, on the Third Television Channel).


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communication policy: the constant struggle with the Madrid government to increase the capacity and powers of the Catalan government to control and regulate Catalonia’s media and communication system. After arduous negotiations, the Spanish state legalised and authorised the Basque and Catalan public television channels by passing the above mentioned Third Channel Act. The previous year it had done the same after the Generalitat assumed the power to regulate FM radio broadcasting licences in Catalonia on the understanding that the Catalan government was responsible for developing the planning of the use of the radio spectrum. (The Spanish state took the conflict to the Constitutional Court, where judgement was pronounced in favour of the Generalitat.)

In the 1990s the Catalan government continued to map media and communication in Catalonia with two new public calls for applications for the granting of FM licences (granted in 1991 and 1999 respectively) and the maintenance of public subsidies for publications in Catalan. With the progressive expansion of material and human resources during those years, CCRTV helped to strengthen the Catalan communication sphere, helped by the Act on Linguistic Policy 1/1998, which consolidated the normalisation of the Catalan language in Catalan public media by obliging radio and television broadcasters under licence granted by the Generalitat to guarantee at least 50% of their broadcasting time would be provided in Catalan. In order to guarantee a significant presence of Catalan in films shown in Catalonia, a decree made in the same year also obliged film distributors to dub or subtitle into Catalan half of the copies of those films of which 18 or more copies were distributed in Catalonia.3 Due to pressure from multinational distribution companies, this measure did not come into effect. Nevertheless, many distributors did agree to dub films into Catalan and provide a suitable number of showings in cinemas (Jones 1999).

It is important to point out that the majority of the political measures that we have described thus far received wide, if not unanimous, support from the different political forces represented in the Parliament of Catalonia. The recovery of the Catalan language and culture was an unquestioned goal and one that was also demanded by Catalan society. This implicit consensus on the subject of communication policy became evident again in December 1999 with the unanimous passing in the Catalan Parliament of a decision about audiovisual media in Catalonia. 3 This quantity would be reduced to 16 after the third year of the decree being applied. Decreto 237/1998, de 8 de septiembre (publicado en el DOGC 2725, del 16), sobre Medidas de Fomento de la Oferta Cinematográfica Doblada y Subtitulada en Lengua Catalana (Decree 237/1998, of 8th September, on measures to promote the cinema offering dubbed and subtitled in Catalan).

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This called for the legal framework of the Catalan communication system to be modified in order to, on the one hand, promote a space for communication in the Catalan language that would also encompass other territories and regions where Catalan is spoken, and, on the other hand, to develop the capacity for self-governance in this area.4 The political agreement involved acknowledging the strategic, economic and political importance of the audiovisual sector and the need to further the development of its own regulations in this matter.

Catalan communication policy experienced a notable boost in the decade from 2000 to 2010 with the passing of important measures to continue developing the objectives pursued to date. The first of these measures was the enactment of Law 2/2000 of the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC). This regulation made the CAC—created in 1996 as a media advisory body—into the audiovisual regulatory authority of Catalonia, the first of its kind to be set up in Spain. More specifically, the new law gave the CAC regulatory and sanctioning powers and increased its powers of inspection. Subsequent legislative decisions have further broadened the CAC’s powers considerably. For example, the Audiovisual Communication in Catalonia Act (passed in 2005) granted the CAC full powers in the processes of allocation and renewal of radio and television licences in Catalonia, as well as greater sanctioning powers. This important regulation, which systematised and updated the Catalan legislation relating to the audiovisual sector, defended the Generalitat’s right to have competences over the use of the radio spectrum. However, it was not recognised by the Spanish Constitutional Court.

Along this same line of increasing the capacity for self-governance in Catalonia regarding communication issues, the Generalitat presented a new tour de force to the Spanish State in 2003. Firstly, it granted one hundred provisional authorisations (not legally valid) for FM radio broadcasting as a pilot plan. It did this not as part of the development of a national technical plan previously devised by the State, but to demonstrate that radio spectrum was still available in Catalonia in order to demand the consequent planning of that free space from the Spanish state and thereby make it possible for new local and regional FM broadcasting licences to be granted. The Madrid government eventually approved a National Technical Plan for FM Broadcasting in 2006, which contained the majority of the spectrum demands anticipated in the Catalan pilot plan.

4 Resolución 3/VI del Parlament de Catalunya, de 15 de diciembre de 1999, sobre el mitjans audiovisuals de Catalunya (Resolution 3/VI of the Parliament of Catalonia, of 15th December 1999, on audiovisual media in Catatonia).


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Secondly, and in the framework of the rollout of Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) in Spain, the Catalan government obtained in 2003 a second DTT full multiplex channel (a group of television channels transmitted over a single digital bandwidth) with regional coverage, which it granted to a major private Catalan communications group (Godó), even though the National Technical Plan for DTT approved by the State in 1998 had reserved only one digital multiplex for each autonomous community. That same year CiU came to an agreement with the governing conservative party in Spain for legalizing the exception made with the allocation of two DTT full multiplexes to Catalonia. Later, the National Technical DTT plan of 2005 increased the number of digital multiplexes that could be assigned to each autonomous community to two. Catalonia requested and obtained a new multiplex, meaning it now had de facto three digital multiplexes (and is the only Spanish autonomous community to have this privilege).

The arrival of the pro-independence ERC party to the areas of communication and culture of the Generalitat—through the coalition government that rose to power in Catalonia in 2003—led to an intensification of the political action in this field, mainly concerning the linguistic normalisation of Catalan, which was a goal not only for Catalonia, but also for the other territories where the language is spoken. The Generalitat continued its commitment to supporting the use of the Catalan language in the media, but it modified the subsidy-granting procedure in order to make it more transparent and to include digital media as well. Furthermore, it promoted the creation of the Barometer of Communication and Culture, a publicly funded project that aims to measure media audiences and cultural consumption in both Catalonia and the other two Spanish autonomous communities where Catalan is spoken (Valencia and the Balearic Islands).

The normalisation of the international use of Catalan reached an important milestone when, in 2005, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the generic Internet domain “.cat”. This was the first time that a domain of this type had been granted to a linguistic and cultural community. Catalan civil society had demanded it for a long time, and it was fully supported by the Catalan government. The PuntCAT Foundation presented the application for the domain .cat to ICANN in March 2004, backed by the signatures of more than 68,000 Catalan citizens, companies and institutions.

Continuing with the aim of strengthening and regulating a Catalan sphere of communication, the coalition government completed the legislative reform initiated with the Catalan Audiovisual Council Act and

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the Audiovisual Communication in Catalonia Act with a new law regarding the Catalan public broadcasting service. Passed in 2007, the new regulatory framework of the CCRTV—which had now changed its name to Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA)—aimed to de-governmentalize the management of this public body by substantially modifying both the procedure to elect the members of the Governing Council of the CCMA and the duration of their mandate. This was done to avoid it coinciding with the duration of the parliamentary term of office. The Catalan Corporation of Audiovisual Media Act again insisted that Catalan should be the institutional language of Catalan public media and laid down the obligation that the CCMA must devote a minimum of 6% of its income to funding the Catalan film sector.

Moreover, between 2000 and 2010 the Generalitat decidedly promoted the consolidation of a private Catalan media sector. In this regard, as well as the new FM concessions facilitated by the success of the abovementioned pilot plan and the awarding of a full DTT multiplex with regional coverage to a private group, the Catalan government, between 2005 and 2006, granted local DTT licences—for both the public and private sector—from the spectrum planning carried out by the Spanish government. The CAC played a decisive role in this process, since it issued binding reports on the competition rules and on the candidates that applied. Previously, in 2003, digital radio licences with regional, county and supra-county wide coverage had also been granted.

During the second mandate of the left-wing coalition government (2006-2010), the Generalitat gave renewed support to the production and dissemination, within Catalonia and beyond, of news and cultural programmes in Catalan and about Catalan society. Firstly, the budget of the Catalan News Agency (ACN) was notably increased in order to encourage its expansion abroad. The ACN had been created in 1999 by several Catalan local administrations, but three years later the CCMA became its majority shareholder, followed by the Generalitat in 2007. The budget increase enabled the news agency to open several offices abroad and to set up the Catalan News Agency portal and the Catalan Views blog in order to explain the current situation of Catalonia to an international audience. Secondly, the Generalitat undertook a negotiation process with the authorities of other territories in which Catalan is spoken, with a view to signing agreements that would make the reciprocal reception by DTT of its main public television channels possible. The first agreement was signed with the autonomous government of the Balearic Islands, and the second, with the Executive of the Principality of Andorra (a small country located in the Pyrenees, between Spain and France). It also received the


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consent of the autonomous government of Aragon for programmes from the main public Catalan television channel to be received in a border area between Catalonia and Aragon. Similar agreements are still being negotiated with the authorities of the autonomous community of Valencia and of some territories in the south of France, where, in any case, the DTT signal of the different Catalan public television channels could, in 2010, already be picked up (Moragas et al. 2011, 247).

Lastly, in 2010 the Catalan Law of Cinema was passed.5 This established the general regulatory framework for the production and the distribution, commercialisation, and showing of films and audiovisual works. Its output was based on the verification of the economic importance of the cinema sector in the twenty-first century, on the one hand, and on the fact that cinema was—and is—one of the cultural sectors in which the range of programmes offered in Catalan language is more limited, on the other. Consequently, this law established an increase in the volume of public funding for the sector and made the requirements for the dubbing and subtitling in Catalan of films shown in Catalonia considerably tougher. The possibility of sanctioning those distributors that did not fulfil the obligation to dub or subtitle half of the copies of films shown in more than 16 cinemas—except films in Spanish—gave rise to angry protests and to the big American cinema distributors threatening to reduce their activity in Catalonia. Eventually, a European Commission ruling in June 2012 stated that this precept hinders the distribution of non-Spanish films in Catalonia and is therefore incompatible with the EU norms on the free movement of services (El País 2012).

The return to power of the centre-right nationalist CiU party at the end of 2010 coincided with the worsening of the economic crisis in Spain and Catalonia. This marked the start of a process of significant change in the communication policy of the Generalitat, which was essentially forced by the grave budgetary restrictions facing the Spanish and Catalan public administrations. The main patterns of change observed in this on-going process will be returned to in the final sections of this article.

The creation of a Catalan media system

The intense political activity described above has resulted in the creation of a range of media, both public and private, that allow us to discuss the existence of a dense media system in Catalan. The main breakthroughs are: the formation of a public broadcasting corporation;

5 Ley 20/2010, de 7 de julio, del Cine (Law 20/2010, of 7th July, on Cinema).

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support for the creation of competitive multimedia groups; and the establishment of a large and plural press in the Catalan language.

The public company CCMA is considered the main actor in the media system in Catalonia. Since its creation in 1983, it has continued to evolve, becoming a very competitive multiplatform body. As shown in table 3-1, it has progressively increased its output across all media formats with the exception of satellite. Table 3-1. Media output on CCRTV/CCMA 1983 1989 2003 2011 Radio stations 1 3 3 4 Terrestrial television channels 1 2 4 7 Satellite television channels 0 0 1 1 Websites 0 0 4 11

Source: CCMA website: http://www.ccma.cat/corporacio/corporacio_historia_eng.htm

The increase in terrestrial television channels in the past 10 years has been especially significant. In 2011 this included a general channel (TV3, also in HD), a cultural channel (33), a news channel (3/24), a children’s channel (Súper3), a channel for adolescents (3XL) and a sports channel (Esports3). The number of websites is also very large because, along with news, music and sports, it also includes an on-demand television service and cookery, education and Catalan language channels. The growth of radio has been less ambitious, but the service does include both general programmes (Catalunya Radio) and specialised programmes (Catalunya Informació, Catalunya Música and iCat FM). All these media are broadcast entirely in Catalan and make up a service that seeks to satisfy the needs and interests of Catalan speakers.

The biggest increase in television output came in the 2000s as a result of the combination of two factors: firstly, the establishment of DTT in Spain, which increased the number of channels available; and secondly, the left-wing coalition government’s commitment to increase the number of channels after 2004. Its goal was to counteract, albeit partially, the creation of almost 40 new State-wide digital channels in Spanish (Marín 2007; Tresserras 2010). Indeed, the fact that the CCMA used up to seven channels is, as has already been explained, one of the clearest examples of how Catalonia has forced the Spanish legal framework to increase its capacity for self-governance in the field of communication.


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In order to be able to provide these services, the CCMA budget has constantly risen. However, the increase in public subsidies made an important leap at the end of the 1990s, and especially from 2003 onwards (see table 3-2). In fact, the increase in channels observed from that year onwards was essentially financed by public funding. This made up between 75% and 85% of the budget during the period 2004-2010.6 One piece of information shows the importance of the CCMA in the Catalan communication and cultural policies in recent years: from 2006 to 2010 it accounted for between 50% and 60% of the budget of the Department of Culture and Media.7 Table 3-2. Generalitat subsidies to the CCRTV/CCMA

1983 1989 1993 1998 2003 2008 2010 €12.0m €110.7m €174.5m €208.3m €309.4m €311.3m €357.5m

Source: CCRTV/CCMA annual budgets

This media output is very well received, in general terms, by the Catalan population. TV3 has always competed for leadership in audience share in Catalonia. In 2009, after several years in second and third position, it recovered the leadership and remained in that position until 2011 (Moragas et al. 2009; 2011). Several opinion polls also show that Catalans consider it to be the most credible television channel (its news programmes have the most viewers) and the most entertaining (Moragas et al. 2009, 90). Similarly, in the last decade Catalunya Radio has been one of the two most listened to radio channels in the country (Moragas et al. 2009 and 2011).

As well as the implementation of a powerful and competitive public service, the Generalitat has also sought to create private Catalan multimedia groups with a strong presence in Catalonia. This line of political action was essentially based on the granting of radio and digital television frequencies to press publishers. Hence the importance the Generalitat attributed to granting concessions to use the radio spectrum.

Since the end of the 1980s, different Catalan companies have been granted radio frequencies, although they have not all been successful. In the 1980s, for example, Cadena 13 did not survive, and in the 2000s Ona Catalana, created by another Catalan multimedia group (Grupo Zeta, publisher of El Periódico de Catalunya), also failed. The granting of an 6 See CCMA budgets (2006-10) and information provided by Televisió de Catalunya SA (CCMA company that manages the television channels). 7 See Generalitat de Catalunya budgets (2006-10).

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autonomous television frequency took place in 2003, already within the framework of the DTT rollout.

The main beneficiary of this policy was Grupo Godó, which received radio (1999) and television (2003) concessions. Organised around the newspaper La Vanguardia (one of the oldest Catalan newspapers), it manages two radio channels with Catalan coverage (the general channel RAC1 and the music channel RAC105) and a television company (Emissions Digitals de Catalunya) that uses a full multiple digital channel with four channels. The success of this output varies greatly in terms of audience. While the television is marginal (approximately 3% of the audience between 2010 and 2012), RAC1 competes with Catalunya Radio. In fact, one of the two radio audience studies carried out in Catalonia considered it to be the leader in 2009 and 2010, while the other placed it just behind the public channel for these same years.

Lastly, a varied output of press printed in Catalan has become consolidated in Catalonia, largely as a result of public subsidies. There are two main types of funding: firstly, generic subsidies for media published in Catalan (which are automatic and are received by media publishing wholly or partially in Catalan); and secondly, project grants, which support both the creation of new media and the development of new products, technological investments and so on (Moragas et al. 2007: 228).

The first newspaper published fully in Catalan, Avui (founded in 1976), has been subsidised historically. The same was also true for the second, El Punt (1978). When these two newspapers merged in 2009 (after years of financial problems in both cases), the Generalitat helped them financially. Likewise, the appearance in 1997 of a Catalan edition of El Periódico de Catalunya (founded in Spanish in 1978) and of La Vanguardia in 2011 came about as a result of public funding. The same occurred in 2010 with the launch of a new newspaper in Catalan with distribution throughout Catalonia, Ara (Moragas and Corominas 2000; Moragas et al. 2009 and 2011). As a result, the four autonomous community-wide newspapers published entirely in Catalan in 2012 have all received public subsidies in different measures.

From 2004 onwards, the left-wing coalition government extended the subsidies to all types of media (press, radio, television and Internet), which facilitated the creation and/or maintenance of other media. The subsidies also helped to consolidate multimedia groups. Since then, the radio and television channels of Grupo Godó have received public money. As can be observed in table 3-3, the extension to all media types involved an increase in the money distributed: if the value of the subsidies distributed between


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1995 and 2010 amounted to almost €200 million, more than half that amount was allocated in the last six years. Table 3-3. Subsidies to Catalan language media

1995–2004 2005-2010€90m €107.3m

Source: Generalitat de Catalunya (excludes institutional advertising).

The impact of these policies on Catalan media consumption reveals varying results depending on the market being considered. Looking at the most recent data by Moragas et al. (2011) for 2010, the most popular media for the Catalan language is general radio, in which 54.2% of listeners tuned into radio stations broadcasting in Catalan. In news radio the figure is 56.2%, although the total number of listeners is much lower. Conversely, fewer people listen to music radio in Catalan (29.3%). As regards printed daily press, consumption is very low at 19.4%. In October 2012, five Catalan online press publications had, for the first time, more than half a million unique users. In television, 22% watched the CCMA channels and/or 8TV (where not all the programmes are in Catalan).

Historical trends also show varying behaviour in the consumption of media in Catalan. While general radio consumption has constantly increased at the same rate as the audience of the private RAC1, slight fluctuations can be observed in the press. In television, the Catalan language has been dropping positions since the start of the century, especially since the arrival of new state channels in Spanish since 2005 (Moragas et al. 2009; 2011).

The impact of the economic crisis

As revealed in the previous section, the Generalitat has demonstrated a historical trend to increase the economic resources it contributes to the Catalan media system. However, the economic crisis of 2008, which became a financial crisis for the public administrations in 2010, has halted this trend. In the framework of a plan to restrict expenditure and reduce public deficit, the Catalan government elected in 2010 has applied huge cuts in the field of communication, bringing about a radical shift compared to the previous policies. This change can be easily observed by analysing the evolution of the CCMA budget and the resources allocated for private media subsidies.

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Public budget allocations to the CCMA decreased from €330 million to €260 million between 2010 and 2012—a reduction of 21.2%. This has resulted in major changes in the company. In 2011 some of the companies making up the CCMA merged, workers’ salaries were reduced by 5%, and the management organisation chart was simplified. By 2012 this was affecting output: the number of television channels was reduced from 7 to 5 (the adolescents’ channel 3XL stopped broadcasting and the channels 33 and Súper3 started to share frequency), iCat FM stopped broadcasting, and the satellite broadcasts of the international channel were removed. Although CCMA is an autonomous public company, these cuts reflect a suggestion made by the Catalan government in 2011 to close two television channels for an annual saving of €12.4 million.8

Public subsidies to the private sector have been reduced even more than those experienced by public radio and television broadcasters in relative terms. As shown in table 3-4, the allocation was decreased by €10.4 million between 2010 and 2012 (a fall of 52.4%). It is one of the largest cutbacks applied in the field of communication in the two years under consideration. The reduction could have been bigger, but contrary to all forecasts, the amount budgeted for 2012 rose again by 37.8%. The procedure to grant subsidies was also reopened, despite the fact that it had been announced at the start of the year that no subsidies would be granted as a result of the Generalitat’s delicate financial situation.

Table 3-4. Subsidies to private media in Catalonia

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 €20.87m €18.33m €16.37m €19.82m €6.85m €9.44m

Source: Fernández Alonso et al. (2012) and the Catalan government In fact, the Catalan government’s behaviour as regards the CCMA and

subsidies to private media has been erratic and shows a clear lack of coherence. While the discourse highlights the strategic character of public radio and television broadcasting services (Martí 2011), the substantial cuts have forced them to reduce their output. At the same time, the Catalan executive announced at the end of 2011 the need to reorganise the subsidies for private companies and to start reducing the budget for them.

8 The Catalan government’s suggestion generated strong political and media controversy in late 2011 and early 2012. On April 15, 2012, the newspaper Ara published a report relating the possible consequences of this cut. The report contained expressions of concern—and even hostility—from different intellectuals and representatives of Catalan civil society towards this restructuring.


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In the end, the subsidies were not redefined and the budget was increased (Martí 2011).

The budget cuts have gone further than the CCMA and subsidies to private media (Fernández Alonso et al. 2011). For example, following substantial growth to finance its expansion, the ACN has seen its budget reduced by 12.4% between 2010 and 2012 (from €4.9 million to €4.2 million). This reduction resulted in redundancies and the closure of branches abroad. The continued operation of the Barometer of Communication and Culture was compromised when the Generalitat announced its intention to pull out of the project, although in the end it reduced its contribution by 45% (from €2 million to just over €1 million). Consequently, some of its studies are no longer carried out and the breadth of its survey has been reduced. For its part, the CAC has faced a 41.1% reduction (from €10.6 million to €6.2 million), which has resulted in a 50% reduction in the number of members of its governing body. That has meant that some of its leading projects of the past decade have also been downsized after years of expansion.

Conclusion

If we take into account the three objectives that guided the Catalan communication policy between 1980 and 2010, we can state that the results of the Generalitat’s actions in the communication sector during this period have been generally positive. Firstly, unlike the situation of only three decades ago, Catalonia today has an autonomous system of public and private media in the Catalan language. Secondly, it has managed to considerably increase its powers of self-governance that were recognised by Spain’s new democratic regime at the end of the 1970s. Thirdly, the presence of the Catalan language in the media output offered to Catalan citizens has improved, albeit, as we have seen, with varying results depending on the sector being analysed. In this regard, and especially in the fields of television and cinema, there is a still long way to go to balance output offered in Catalan with the output in Spanish.

However, the preservation and the deepening of these achievements are being seriously threatened by the grave economic and financial crisis which Spain and Catalonia have been experiencing with even greater severity since 2010. The impact of the crisis on Catalan communication policy has resulted in a significant reduction in the public budget allocations to the sector. These cuts have caused a reduction in the public media output and the appearance of serious doubts concerning the viability of many Catalan private media services without the support of public

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subsidies. In this context, the contradictions observed between, on the one hand, the political discourse and action, and, on the other, the erratic behaviour of the Catalan government in making media-related decisions have revealed a worrying absence of a clearly defined strategy in the communication policy of the Generalitat from 2010.

Aside from the economic crisis, another element has raised new questions in 2012 about the future of public communication policy in Catalonia: the start of an intense social, political and media debate about the possibility of Catalonia becoming an independent State within the European Union. If this goal is confirmed and consolidated, Catalonia will need to initiate a debate about the communication policies that will be necessary in this new context.

Authors such as Anderson (1987) and Habermas (1994) have highlighted the central role played by the media in the process of modern nation-state formation. Catalan governments have been aware of this role over the last three decades, and it has been taken very much into account during the process of national reconstruction that has been undertaken in Catalonia after the return to democracy at the end of the 1970s.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1997. Imagined communities. London: Verso. Corbella, Josep Maria 1991. La Comunicació Social a Catalunya 1981-

1991: Una Década de Canvis. Barcelona: CEDIC. El País. 2012. “Catalan Cinema Dubbing Discriminatory, Says Brussels,”

Accessed January 17, 2013. http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/06/24/inenglish/1340560084_755254.html. Fernández Alonso, Isabel, and José Joaquín Blasco Gil. 2005. “Las

Ayudas a la Prensa en Cataluña (2000-2003).” Sphera Publica 5: 181-199.

Fernández Alonso, Isabel, Josep Àngel Guimerà and Ana Fernández Viso. 2012. “Impacto de la Crisis Económica en las Políticas de Comunicación en Cataluña.” Derecom 8: 1-17.

Fernández Viso, Ana and Josep Àngel Guimerà Orts. 2012 “National Communication Policies: Genesis, Reception and Evolution of the Concept in Democratic Catalonia.” Obsevatorio 6 (1): 211-233.

Generalitat de Catalunya. 2010. “Language Policy Report 2010.” Accessed January17, 2013.

http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/Llengcat/Documents/InformePL/Arxius/IPL2010_EN.pdf.


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Gifreu, Josep. 1983. Sistema i Polítiques de la Comunicació a Catalunya. Premsa-Ràdio-Televisió i Cinema (1970-1980). Barcelona: L'Avenç.

Gifreu, Josep and María Corominas. 1991. Construir l’Espai Català de Comunicació. Barcelona: Centre d'Investigació de la Comunicació.

Guibernau, Montserrat. 1998. Nacions sense Estat. Nacionalisme i Diversitat en l’era Global. Barcelona: Columna.

—. 2002. Catalan Nationalism: Francoism, Transition and Democracy. London: Routledge

Habermas, Jürgen. 1994. Historia y Crítica de la Opinión Pública. La Transformación Estructural de la Vida Pública. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.

Jones, Daniel. 1999. “Catalunya Davant la Prepontència de Hollywood: Mercats Globals i Cultures Minoritàries.” Trípodos 14: 29-44.

Martí, Josep. 2011.“L’actual Sistema de Mitjans Català no és Sostenible,” ESCACC, accessed January 17, 2013.

http://www.escacc.cat/ca/contingut/josep-marti-l-actual-sistema-de-mitjans-catala-no-es-sostenible-economicament-3249.html.

Moragas, Miquel de and Maria Corominas. 2000. Informe de la Comunciació a Catalunya. Barcelona: El Periódico de Catalunya.

Moragas, Miquel de, Isabel Fernández, José Joaquín Blasco, Josep Àngel Guimerà, Joan M. Corbella, Marta Civil and Oriol Gibert. 2007. Informe de la Comunicació a Catalunya 2005-2006. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya.

Moragas, Miquel de, Isabel Fernández, Núria Almirón, José Joaquín Blasco, Joan M. Corbella, Marta Civil and Oriol Gibert. 2009. Informe de la Comunicació a Catalunya 2007-2008. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya.

Moragas, Miquel de, Marta Civil, Isabel Fernández, José Joaquín Blasco and Bernat López. 2011. Informe de la Comunicació a Catalunya 2009-2010. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya.

National Statistics Institute of Spain. 2012. “Notas de prensa. Producto Interior Bruto Regional. Año 2011”, Accessed February 8, 2013. http://www.ine.es/prensa/np706.pdf

Tresserras, Joan Manuel. 2010. “Entrevista al Conseller Tresserras sobre Polítiques de Comunicació,” Accessed January 17, 2013.

http://www.escacc.cat/ca/contingut/entrevista-al-conseller-de-cultura-i-mitjans-de-comunicacio-de-la-generalitat-de-catalunya-joan-manuel-tresserras-sobre-l-espai-catala-de-comunicacio-i-les-politiques-de-comunicacio-1530.html.

PART II:

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF SMALL NATIONS

CHAPTER FOUR

STATE-FUNDED ICELANDIC FILM: NATIONAL AND/OR TRANSNATIONAL

CINEMA?

AGNES SCHINDLER

A project supported by the Icelandic Film Fund must have connections with Icelandic culture unless special cultural grounds exist for deciding otherwise. (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 2003)

Until 1979, Iceland had produced only a handful of films—normally in

cooperation with international investors, and then only sporadically. Yet since this time, support for local film production has been supported by the Icelandic government through its Icelandic Film Fund (IFF), providing the basis for consistent cinematic development on this small north Atlantic island. As noted in the above cited regulation, the IFF requires projects to show “connections with Icelandic culture” in order to receive funding. Nevertheless, it does not prohibit cooperation with international partners:

An Icelandic film is a film which is produced and sponsored by Icelandic parties or is a co-production of Icelandic and foreign parties. (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 2003)

The IFF is not only active in the financial promotion of Icelandic film but also the ideational promotion of the Icelandic film brand. This is clearly stated in the requirement for funded films to be unambiguously associated with Icelandic nationality:

A work receiving a grant from the Icelandic Film Fund must be promoted as an Icelandic work at film festivals and on markets abroad. In co-productions, the Icelandic nationality of the produced film must be mentioned together with any others. (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture 2003)

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It is notable here that Icelandic films receive a label denoting their nationality. Both the Icelandic and the English translation of this regulation specifically use the term “nationality” rather than the more generic term “land of origin”. This is a clear example of national affinity.

Despite the support of the IFF, increasing demands on the quality of films, the rising costs of production and the limitations on sales imposed by Iceland’s small market size due to its population often leave Icelandic films facing substantial financial difficulties. Because of these challenges, Icelandic filmmakers must often rely on both international co-financing and international distribution. So-called “Icelandic national cinema” therefore exists in a state of tension between national and transnational influences and ramifications.

The concepts of “national” and “transnational cinema” have often been described in opposition to one another by researchers in film studies (Hjort and MacKenzie 2000. See also Nestingen and Elkington 2005). This article aims to ascertain whether this is also true in the case of Iceland. The first part of the article examines the circumstances under which Icelandic film production has developed over the past century. The second part discusses some of the key transnational patterns within Icelandic film composition since the 1980s. It will also examine whether these transnational influences modify the function of Icelandic film as a space for a discourse on national identity. In other words, do transnational influences endanger the distinctive character of Icelandic national identity as it is expressed through the cinematic media landscape?

National and/or transnational cinema

Research on “national cinema” is often based on Benedict Anderson’s (1993, 15) definition of the nation as “an imagined political community ―and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. Yet the relevance of this definition to “national cinema” has been repeatedly criticized in film studies, for it was formulated without respect to the medium of film. Furthermore, the inherently international nature of film production and distribution has led to increasing emphasis on the “transnational” nature of cinema (see Hjort and MacKenzie 2000, 1). Andrew Higson (2000, 73) warns that the concept of “national cinema” cannot simply be pushed aside. He emphasises both the national and transnational aspects of film, and his argument that film culture is not bound within the borders of nation-states applies to Iceland as well. Nevertheless, a post-national approach to Icelandic cinema must keep in mind that Iceland’s national culture and social structure have only recently

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come under the clear and observable influence of immigration and related social changes, such as plurality, heterogeneity and diversity.

This article understands the correlation between Anderson’s definition of the nation, on the one hand, and the concept of national cinema and its relevance for film studies, on the other hand, as predicated by the term “imagined”. A short digression in relation to film character analysis should make this clearer. According to Jens Eder (2008, 69), film characters exist through the communicative process between the filmmaker and recipient as imagined constructions of the viewer. This is analogously true of nations. Films allow viewers to develop an imagined construct of the nation through presenting ideas about characters and their distinct national identities. This ideational construct of the cinematically presented nation is always related to the nation imagined by the viewers beyond cinema. The individual construction of a nation is a conglomeration of a multitude of different aspects, pieces of information, and impressions. Elements of the cinematic presentation of a nation can also contribute to this milieu.

As noted above, the term “transnational cinema” has been used with increasing frequency in a variety of studies. The term seems to be repeatedly used in direct opposition “national cinema”. This contrastive opposition can, however, lead to the erroneous conclusion that “transnational cinema” has somehow displaced “national cinema”. William Brown (2010, 29) correctly refutes this conclusion by pointing out that the transnational springs from the national. Brown argues that the term “transnational” must be more tightly defined: firstly because of its inflationary use; and secondly, because cinema can, in a wide variety of manners, be described as transnational (Brown 2010, 17; 29). This article therefore understands the transnational aspects of film and film production as parts of the larger concepts of national cinema and also of the cinematic negotiation of national identity.

In Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie’s edited volume The Cinema of Small Nations (2007), Icelandic national cinema is treated as a “small national cinema”. The defining criteria for small nations are population, geographical size and gross national product, as well as the political independence of the nation. With the exception of gross national product (at least in the period up till the financial crisis of 2008), Iceland qualifies as a small national cinema.1 Hjort and Petrie go further to describe small national cinemas as not only small nations producing films (e.g. Ireland) but also countries with marginal film production (e.g. Canada). Iceland fulfils both criteria. Despite its relatively small market for films, the last 30 years have shown a remarkable productivity, particularly given its low 1 Iceland’s GDP has fallen since the financial crash in 2008.

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population.2 Additionally, the description of early films made in smaller producing nations by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell (2003, 79) can be equally applied to Iceland: many its films are shot on location (without large studio facilities) and many of the country’s filmmakers seek to “differentiate their low-budget films from the more polished imported works by using national literature and history as sources for their stories”, as well as presenting the unique local landscape in their cinematic works.3

In a world of globalized media, it is a particular challenge for small nations to maintain a distinct national identity. The ratio of domestic to foreign programming in television broadcasts in Iceland, as described by Broddason and Karlsson (2004, 367), illustrates this particularly well: only one-third of television content in Iceland is of domestic origin, while the other two-thirds (mostly with Icelandic subtitles but also occasionally dubbed) come from foreign countries. It is, however, precisely such media, including feature films as cultural products (national and transnational), that offer public spaces for discourses concerning national identity.

National affinities in early Icelandic film

Beginning with the first film presentations in 1906 (see Bernharðsson 1995a; 1995b; 1999a; 1999b), the Icelandic public quickly developed an interest in the then new form of entertainment that still remains popular today:

Among the highest per capita achievements is going to the movies. The average Icelander visits the theatres 5.2 times a year, which is a rate quite out of tune with the rest of Europe (the EU average being 2.22 visits a year) and equalling the US average. (Norðfjörð 2005, 13)

In addition, the Icelandic public has a high level of acceptance for local films, going so far as to pay higher prices for domestic content. The first cinema owners—Danes by the name of Alfred Lind and Peter Petersen—had already begun in 1906 to present local occurrences in short films of documentary and contemporary character as part of their cinematic

2 The number of feature films produced per year has been steadily increasing. While between 1980 and 1989 only 2.7 feature films were produced on average per year, the number rose for the period to 3.2 per year between 1990 and 1999 and increased even further to 4.7 feature films per year between 2000 and 2009. 3 The criteria described by Bordwell and Thompson were conceived in relation to early cinema but are still accurate concerning contemporary Icelandic films.


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programme in their movie theatre Gamla Bíó (Bernharðsson 1999a, 806). These recordings were very popular and were often proudly described as being “Icelandic” (Bernharðsson 1995b, 4). They marked the beginning of a new documentary film genre, the so-called Íslandsmyndir4―“Icelandic films” or “films/pictures from Iceland”―which was thematically centred around Iceland and the way of life on the island (see also Guðmundsson 2001).

With fictional films, foreign filmmakers were quick to show interest for Icelandic literature that they considered appropriate for film production. In the summer of 1919, The Story of the Borg Family/Saga Borgarættarinnar (dir. Gunnar Sommerfeldt 1921), brought the first (Danish) film production of an Icelandic subject to Icelandic shores. The movie was shot in Iceland by the Nordisk Film Kompagni from Copenhagen, and it was based on the book of the same name by Icelandic Author Gunnar Gunnarsson, who at the time lived in Denmark (see Cowie 1992, 79). Eggert Þór Bernharðsson has described and commented on contemporary reports regarding the recordings in the Icelandic daily newspaper Morgunblaðið. According to the reports, Gunnarsson travelled to Iceland to oversee the shooting in order to ensure that the film would be as “Icelandic” as possible:

This was considered extremely important, in particular because the Icelandic audience had recently been exposed to a film with Iceland related content that was also based on a literary source, this time from Jóhann Sigurjónsson: the Swedish production Berg Ejvin och hans hustru or Fjalla Eyvind, which was presented as the Easter film program in 1919…. The film was not however shot in Iceland but rather in Sweden and Lapland. The film's debut led to a vigorous debate, it was written in the Morgunblaðið on 22 July 1919 that: ‘Foreign film companies are now showing interest for Iceland and Icelandic themes. Fjalla Eyvind was however not filmed here but instead in northern Lapland and the film let the residents of Reykjavik see with their own eyes that despite all the costs and care, it did not possess the Icelandic tone. What is being seen is a false and failure plagued description of Iceland, which is to be expected when there is no Icelandic director included in the production as an advisor.’ (Bernharðsson 1995b, 4)

Hence Berg Eyvind and His Wife/Fjalla-Eyvind (dir. Victor Sjöström 1917) was then understood by the Icelandic audience to be a film about Icelandic people, but it was not appropriated by the Icelandic viewers as being in itself “Icelandic”.

4 An example of this is Ísland í lífandi myndum (dir. Loftur Guðmundsson 1925).

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Despite this problem, the foreign film productions gave the Icelanders the opportunity to gather their own experience in the techniques of film production. With this opportunity came also an increasing awareness of the cinematic presentation of the Icelandic identity in foreign films—an identity dilemma relating to self-perception and the perception of one’s self by others. Iceland—as a colony first of Norway and then of Denmark—has long been subject to identity dilemmas, in which the desire for independence has played a constant role. The Íslandsmyndir of the 1920s and 1930s were a conscious effort approaching the theme of Icelandic identity through documentary films. The proclamation of the Icelandic Republic in 1944 was followed by a wave of national identification and the realization that Iceland was finally an independent, autonomous nation. Erlendur Sveinsson (1999, 869) describes the development of a hope under these conditions that independent domestic film production could be possible and could serve as an alternative to the mainly foreign films being shown in Icelandic cinemas.

Excited by the relevance of this task, as Sveinsson explains further, Icelandic film makers invested their trust in the Icelandic public, who had remained loyal documentary viewers, by risking the production of the first Icelandic feature films, starting in 1949 with Between a Mountain and a Shore/Milli fjalls og fjöru (dir. Loftur Guðmundsson 1949), Niðursetningurinn (dir. Brynjólfur Jóhannesson 1951), and A New Role/Nýtt Hlutverk (dir. Ævar Kvaran 1954). The same year also saw the establishment of the Icelandic film production company Edda-Film. This company wanted to produce, with the help of international partners, feature films in Icelandic that either dealt with Icelandic themes or were based on Icelandic literary materials (Indriðason 1999, 887). In 1953, Edda-Film produced, in cooperation with Swedish filmmakers Salka Valka (dir. Arne Mattson 1954), a movie based on the book of the same name by Halldór Laxness. The projects Gilitrutt (dir. Jónas Jónasson 1957), The Girl Gogo/Sjötíu og níu af stöðinni (dir. Erik Balling 1962) and The Red Mantle/Rauðu skikkjuna (dir. Gabriel Axel 1967) followed. Even though these films were shot on location in Iceland, only a very few Icelandic actors were actually involved.

After 1967, there came a ten-year period in which no films were produced in Iceland. Norðfjörð (1995, 40) and Indriðason (1999, 891-3) argue that the main reasons for this lost decade were the small domestic market and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of government funding. According to Indriðason, the primary reasons for the lack of film export were that the films were produced for an Icelandic audience in the Icelandic language. Indriðason also highlights Edda-Film’s insistence on


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the use of Icelandic literary backgrounds in its films, the rejection of productions in other languages, and the firm’s concentration on more traditional nationalistic themes as additional factors.

It should be noted that the so-called “spring” of Icelandic film in 1979 was less the beginning of true film making in Iceland and more an outgrowth of the earlier initiatives described above (see also Sveinsson 1999, 873). Nevertheless, the foundation of the IFF in 1979 was decisive for the establishment of continual film production. In connection with the Reykjavík Arts Festival in 1978, the first Reykjavík Film Festival was held. This was a sign of the acceptance of the film medium as a legitimate form of art or cultural production. In its wake, the first concrete concepts of a nationally funded film sponsorship were established.

One of the central figures in this initiative was the former Minister of Culture Vilhjálmur Hjálmarsson (who in 2005 received an Edda Honorary Award for his engagement in the creation of the IFF). The rules and processes for the funding of the IFF grants have been further specified and professionalised in the time since 1979. The current director of the IFF, Laufey Guðjónsdóttir, drew attention to the importance of cooperation with foreign film production companies, because of the limited domestic market and emphasized that Icelandic directors are, and have always been, energetic and successful in their efforts to raise foreign financial support.5 Yet Iceland is not alone concerning its need of international and fund-based financing for the domestic film scene. Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington (2005, 11), for example, note that “50% of a financing of every Nordic film comes from the film institutions”.

In total the IFF has supported approximately 86% of all Icelandic feature films (101 from 118 of the films made between 1980 and 2010). An impressive majority of all Icelandic films have therefore been produced under the condition of their “connection to Icelandic culture”.6

It is difficult for Icelandic films to produce high enough viewership numbers in the domestic market alone, which is precisely why filmmakers are reliant, especially for particularly costly productions, on foreign partners and financing. In addition to larger budgets and the value of international creative cooperation, it has become easier to enter foreign film markets. In some projects it even seems to be the case that access to

5 Laufey Guðjónsdóttir (Director of the Icelandic Film Centre), in interview with the author, September 26, 2007. 6 One exception to this is A Little Trip to Heaven (dir. Baltasar Kormákur, 2005), which was supported by the IFF because it was shot and produced in Iceland and the Director, Screen-play writer, cameramen, and many other members of the film team were Icelandic.

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foreign film markets can be actively created through, for example, casting foreign stars. Based on data from Statistics Iceland, the following countries can be identified as distinctly central partners for Iceland in international film production from 1986 to 2010: Danish companies were co-production partners for Icelandic feature films 26 times during that period, followed by 24 co-productions with German companies. Also important were companies from Norway (18 co-productions), the United Kingdom (11 co-productions) and Sweden (9 co-productions). In contrast, American companies co-produced only six Icelandic feature films.7

The conditions for international cooperation in Icelandic film production have also been supported by the Invest in Iceland Agency and its reimbursement legislation.8 This allows foreign film productions (with the exception of advertisements and music videos) to be reimbursed with 20% of all costs incurred in Iceland. According to the project Film-in-Iceland, run by the Invest in Iceland Agency, the goal of this legislation is: “‘to enhance domestic culture and promote the history and nature of Iceland’ by supporting motion pictures and television programmes produced in Iceland” (Film-in-Iceland 2012). Invest in Iceland also recommends Icelandic film companies as partners who, due to their local knowledge and competence on set in Iceland, can support foreign film production companies. Through foreign partners, Icelandic filmmakers can also profit from the rebates associated with the reimbursement legislation in their projects.9 Important international institutions for Iceland filmmakers are the EURIMAGES (film fund of the European Council), the Nordic Film and TV Fund and the Danish Film Institute. Anne Jäckel (2003, 78) stresses the central meaning of project finance through organizations like EURIMAGE, most notably in countries with a limited production capacity. Apart from this, projects use further country specific 7 http://www.statice.is/statistics/culture/cinemas 8 The Invest in Iceland Agency was founded by the Trade Council of Iceland and the Ministry of Commerce in 1995 as an information centre for foreign investors and is also responsible for the Film-in-Iceland. 9 The Film in Iceland website names the following Icelandic feature films as examples of productions which have in the past profited from reimbursements: Beowulf and Grendel/Bjólfskviða (dir. Sturla Gunnarsson 2006), A Little Trip to Heaven/Nói albino (dir. Dagur Kári 2003), Niceland/Næsland (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 2004) and Falcons/Fálkar (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 2002). It also gives the following examples of foreign productions: Journey 3-D (dir. Eric Brevig 2008), Stardust (dir. Matthew Vaughn 2007), Hostel: Part II (dir. Eli Roth 2007), Flags of Our Fathers (dir. Clint Eastwood 2006), Batman Begins (dir. Christopher Nolan 2005), Die Another Day (dir. Lee Tamahori 2002) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (dir. Simon West 2001).


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financing elements that emerge from individual international partnerships (e.g. funding through German federal states).

Icelandic film history is often divided into two distinct periods: before and after the establishment of national funding for film making in 1979. Certainly this development was decisive and followed by a number of positive changes in the film branch. Nevertheless, by considering the early developments in Icelandic film it should also be clear that film making with unambiguous national affinities and with a strong association with the country and its national identity was taking place long before the creation of the IFF in 1979. It is also plain to see that, because of the small market in which they operate, Icelandic filmmakers have always been reliant on international cooperation and co-production. At the same time, this state of affairs created an area of tension where the need for international cooperation also meant that project development was tied to the exigencies of international distribution and marketing.

The following section will offer some examples where transnational influences on Icelandic film production can be seen. In particular, the nation-specific negotiation of internationally adaptable films themes, the use of foreign film characters in Icelandic film, and the contributions of foreign actors will be used as examples to illustrate transnational patterns that have influenced the composition of Icelandic film content.

The transnational influence of film composition

The film productions of the 1980s were purely Icelandic with the only exception being the Swedish-Icelandic co-production of When the Raven Flies/Hrafninn flygur (dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson 1984). These films show clear nationally oriented areas of focus, and as Norðfjörð (2007, 47) puts it “addressed in Icelandic to Icelanders only”. They are found primarily in themes involved with social critique such as Iceland’s urban-rural divide. Examples include Land and Sons/Land og Synir (dir. Ágúst Guðmundsson 1980) and Father’s Estate/Oðal feðranna (dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson 1980), in which the rapid and pervasive social changes associated with Iceland's expeditious economic expansion were presented and problematized. There are also examples of films dealing explicitly with tradition and links to the past such as The Outlaw/Útlaginn (dir. Águst Guðmundsson 1981) and When the Raven Flies/Hrafninn flygur (dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson 1984).

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International references in terms of content during the 1980s point generally to the US occupation of Iceland.10 Such references were typically marginal and shaped largely in relation to the local effects of the occupation.11 One exception is the film Atomic Station/Atómstöðin (dir. Þorsteinn Jónsson 1984), a production of the novel of the same title by Halldór Laxness. The film is about Iceland’s international position as an independent nation in the power struggles of the Cold War, and whether or not it should function as an atomic base for US military operations. In comparison with the rather nationally oriented perspective of the above mentioned films, the attention was drawn here to a more international perspective than before. Whereas other 1980s Icelandic films tended to deal with Icelandic nationality in isolation, this film directed the viewer’s attention to Iceland in its international role.

The Icelandic director Friðrik Þór Friðriksson became internationally known through an Oscar nomination for his film Children of Nature/Börn náttúrunnar (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1991), bringing him into closer connection with the international network of film producers. With Cold Fever/Á köldum klaka (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1995) he was able to implement a new concept for Icelandic film production that was based on his earlier developed international connections. Cold Fever was a co-production project brought to life by Friðriksson and the American producer Jim Stark. Because it was shot in English, the film was not financed by the IFF. The film tells the story of a Japanese businessman who flies to Iceland in order to perform a memorial ceremony for his parents who died there tragically. The film allows the audience to discover Iceland through the eyes of the Japanese man. The principally international thematic direction can be separated from its Icelandic national context. Furthermore, by integrating international characters, played by Japanese (e.g. Masatoshi Nagase) and American film stars (e.g. Fisher Stevens and Lili Taylor), the production team hoped to attract greater international interest. The film’s narrative―a journey of self- 10 As Gunnar Karlsson (2003, 313f) describes, the British government offered Iceland military protection against Germany and declared to prevent it from Denmark’s fate that became occupied by German troops in April 1940. The Icelanders first refused the garrison of British troops, Karlsson explains, but then quickly accepted it and in May 1940 the first British troops arrived in Iceland. In 1941 US troops that stayed in Iceland until 2006 replaced them. The garrison had manifold consequences for the Icelanders as for example the construction of the international airport in Keflavík to name just one. 11 For example: Golden Sands/Gullsandur (dir. Ágúst Guðmundsson 1984), Cool Jazz and Coconuts/Hvítir mávar (dir. Jakob F. Magnússon 1985) and Movie Days/Bíódagar (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1994)


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discovery through travel and coping with grieving and death―is also internationally accessible. However, these universal themes were painted on an Icelandic canvas, where the travelling through—and discovering of—the country played a central role. Through this, the international oriented film received an individual (Icelandic) polish. This strategy of consciously freeing a film from purely national contexts is one which can create an increased value for international markets.

By initiating international cooperation and the targeted use of international stars Friðriksson ushered in a new form of film production that has been utilized by many other Icelandic directors. Friðriksson himself also used the same strategy 15 years later in his film Mamma Gógó (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 2010). It is also the case here that, by dealing with themes such as Alzheimer, death and financial struggles, Friðriksson created a film with universal subject matter that was therefore accessible to international audiences. The processing of these themes through a national lens seemed to take place almost in passing. Mamma Gógó is the story of an anonymous director with strong autobiographical links to Friðriksson. The film goes as far as to stage the Icelandic premiere of the protagonist’s film, also titled “Children of Nature”. It includes extracts from the actual film (and during later parts extracts from Friðriksson's Movie Days/Bíódagar (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1994), and weaves quotations from Friðriksson’s earlier feature films. Friðriksson even reaches back into Icelandic film history by using extracts from The Girl Gógó and by casting the actors Kristbjörg Kjeld und Gunnar Eyjófsson, who had played the two protagonists in The Girl Gógó. The director therefore draws together Icelandic national themes and film history into a film with larger universally adaptable subject matter.

Incidentally, a national connection was also made during the staging of the film premiere. In Mamma Gógó, the Icelandic President Ragnar Grimsson plays himself as Iceland’s President. Through connections such as these, the borders between the fictional world of the film and reality become blurred. By integrating people from the actual Icelandic society, such as the president in Mamma Gógó, Friðriksson creates a special connection to the Icelandic national identity.

The integration of foreign film stars can also be seen as an attempt to reach to other audience groups outside of Iceland. Moreover, it is very often the case that such foreign characters help present and negotiate issues of Icelandic national identity through their contrastive presence. For the film Cold Fever it can be established that, despite the previously listed international thematic focus, the film still succeeds in presenting an intense involvement with aspects of Icelandic national identity. This takes

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place especially through the interaction of foreign characters with Icelandic characters and the Icelandic environment and their juxtaposition. With the help of a Japanese protagonist who plays the part of a neutral focalizer, the audience discovers Iceland. The film goes further than merely providing the opportunity to watch or passively discover. The Japanese protagonist is repeatedly asked by Icelandic characters: “How do you like Iceland?” This is a conscious thematization of the international perception of Iceland and Icelandic identity. Through his brief answers such as “very cold” or “very strange country”, the protagonist maintains his neutrality and leaves room for the audience's own judgement.

The implementation of US military characters is also contrastive regarding the negotiation of aspects of Icelandic national identity. Their purpose in the film is not primarily related to their role as soldiers but more often used in conjunction with Icelandic women, who repeatedly enter relationships with the soldiers stationed on the island and, in doing so, turn their backs on Iceland’s men and also, to a certain extent, Iceland itself. Both of the female protagonists, Freyja from The Seagull’s Laughter/Mávahlátur (dir. Ágúst Guðmundsson 2001) and Gógó from Devil’s Island/Djöflaeyjan (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1996) marry American Officers with the hope that, by emigrating to the USA, they will find a better life. This supposed hope is deconstructed in both films and the protagonists return alone to Iceland.

In reference to issues of nationality or the ancestry of film characters and related plot construction, Baltasar Kormákur’s 101 Reykjavík (dir. Baltasar Kormákur 2000) offers a particularly interesting example. In 101 Reykjavík, a young man named Hlynur, who is decidedly comfortable with his work and career, and still lives with his mother, is confronted with his mother’s coming-out for a Spanish Flamenco teacher named Lola. Hlynur also falls in love with Lola and even has a one-night stand with her. The love triangle becomes increasingly complicated as it becomes clear that Lola is pregnant. The film took certain liberties with the literary source material (see also Norðfjörð 2007, 53). In the book, Lola was of Icelandic descent, but the Spanish star Victoria Abril received the role. While this can be attributed to the international cooperation and distribution strategy, it also has consequences for the negotiation of aspects of national identity. By changing the national origin of one of the characters, the film received a point of identification for foreign audiences, as well as greater use of English than first planned. At the same time, by using a foreigner in the role of Lola as opposed to an Icelandic actress, the filmmakers were able to bring national idiosyncrasies into juxtaposition with one another. An example of this is the continued conversation between Lola and Icelandic


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figures about Iceland’s weather. In addition to this, the foreign identity of Lola creates a series of situations that are presented as “in and out of the Icelandic society”, where due to her Icelandic language deficiency she cannot pierce the language barrier.

A similar concept can be seen in The Icelandic Dream/Íslenski draumurinn (dir. Róbert I. Douglas 2000). In comparison to 101 Reykjavík, The Icelandic Dream is a purely Icelandic production. The films are similar in that the partners of the Icelandic characters are of foreign descent and possess only limited Icelandic language competence. Due to the language barrier, they only know their Icelandic counterparts in a rudimentary way and are completely shut out when their partners speak with other Icelanders (sometimes even about the foreign partner in question). Because of their poor experiences in relationship with their own nationality, the Icelandic characters escape into relationships with foreigners that seem to offer a variety of benefits. In this case, the foreign characters are less of a figure for foreign audiences to identify with and are more the object of a socially critical conflict.

Readings of Icelandic film reviews show that the use of foreign characters and the casting of foreign actors in those roles are acceptable for the Icelandic audience, although it does not necessarily merit their particular attention. It is interesting to note, however, that when foreign actors are cast in Icelandic roles the audience’s reaction is much more critical. This was, as previously mentioned, already a problem during the production of the first feature films in Iceland.

Since the 1990s, foreign characters have become more common in Icelandic films. As a result, the use of foreign film stars has risen as well. Yet few foreign actors play Icelandic roles. One exception is the German actor Heino Ferch, who plays Björn Theodor in The Seagull’s Laughter.

Icelandic reviews often discuss the question of whether or not the performances of the actors in general (not only of foreign actors) are realistic, or more specifically “Icelandic” enough. Reviews of The Seagull‘s Laughter, for instance, criticised Heino Ferch’s acting as being less than believable, because he did not appear to be truly “in love” with the Icelandic protagonist Freyja. The Icelandic dubbing of the actor was also criticized for being too conspicuous and a disturbance for Icelandic audiences (see Gunnarsdóttir 2001, 36; Jóhannsdóttir 2001, 28). By comparison, the presentation of the male protagonist in Jar City/Mýrin (dir. Baltasar Kormákur 2006) was described as almost perfect and very “Icelandic” by reviewers (e.g. Sigurjónsson 2006, 65).

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Conclusion

Hjort (2007, 11) points out both the centrality of transnational relations and interactions as well as the persistence of questions having to do with various forms of nationhood in the context of contemporary film studies. Icelandic national cinema is a good example for this, as it has been shown here. This chapter has explored some of the ways in which transnational tendencies associated with international cooperation can be found in Icelandic feature films. The appearance of transnational patterns, such as the modification of literary sources in terms of character nationality, could lead to the conclusion that the integration of international elements leads to a “watering down” of national identity in Icelandic films. In fact, the opposite is true: it is through the use of foreign characters that an accentuation of aspects of Icelandic national identity takes place. The maintenance of a distinct national identity is not in fact endangered but supported by the appearance of such transnational patterns. The influence of transnational tendencies on the negotiation of national identity in Icelandic feature films can be seen, for example, by the way in which the early purely national focus has changed to the kind of thematic construction which is supported by international distribution strategies. Yet this has not necessarily led to the suppression of national identity in Icelandic feature films. Instead the cinematic negotiation of national identity integrates national and international perspectives. The negotiation of identity does not in these cases solely take place within Icelandic culture but in dialogue with―and in differentiation from―other national identities. Thus it can be observed that the negotiation of identity is amplified rather than suppressed by transnational tendencies.

While international financing and funding is undoubtedly necessary for small national cinemas—and in some cases even the only possibility for a small national cinema to keep a continued film production alive—the Icelandic case shows that maintaining a distinctive national cinema in a globalised world is yet possible. It also reveals that such aspects as a small market, a specific national language or a location far away from other countries do not necessarily have to be decisive regarding the question whether a national cinematic production can be held alive or not. The maintaining of a distinctive national cinema and the negotiation of distinctive national identity can even be made possible or encouraged by transnational approaches. There is a need for more research regarding the variety of transnational approaches in small national film production. Moreover, studies comparing national and international reception of films


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might give interesting insights into the films’ connections to a specific national—here Icelandic—culture.

As has been pointed out by Hjort (2007, 15), the establishment of national institutions is central to the creation and consolidation of national cinema. For “Icelandic national cinema” it remains important that, due to the need for international financing, transnational tendencies within the film industry are absolutely necessary for the survival of Icelandic film production. The examples of transnational patterns in film composition highlighted in this chapter do not present a danger to the presentation of a distinct national identity of Iceland, nor do they bring into question the function of feature films in the negotiation of aspects of national identity. National affinities, such as the nation-specific processing of internationally adaptable themes, serve to bind the national audience. In contrast to this, transnational approaches also serve to bind international audiences. Norðfjörð explains for the film Movie Days/Bíódagar (dir. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson 1994):

While Iceland is still in the heart of the narrative, it is framed in a global context that makes it readily accessible to foreign audiences. (Norðfjörð 2007, 48)

National affinities also meet the requirement for national financial support—that there should be a “connection with Icelandic culture”―and lead to a continuing development of the international “Icelandic Film” brand. In the case of Iceland, the categories “national” and “transnational cinema” are not mutually exclusive. Thanks to the compositional concepts of the films, Icelandic small national cinema asserts itself with content that is successful with both international and domestic audiences.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1993. Die Erfindung der Nation: Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts. Frankfurt/Main: Campus-Verlag.

Bernharðsson, Eggert Þór. 1995a. “Kvikmyndaöld gengur í garð.” Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, April 22.

—. 1995b. “Ísland: 'Land kvikmyndanna'?”Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, May 20.

—. 1999a. “Landnám lifandi mynda. Úr sögu kvikmyndanna á Íslandi til 1930.” In Heimur kvikmyndanna, edited by Guðni Elísson, 803-831. Reykjavík: Forlagið.

—. 1999b. “Saga af kvikmynd.” In Heimur kvikmyndanna, edited by Guðni Elísson, 859-867. Reykjavík: Forlagið.

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Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 2003. Film History: An Introduction. London: McGraw-Hill.

Broddason, Þorbjörn and Ragnar Karlsson. 2004. “Medien in Island.” In Internationales Handbuch Medien, edited by Hans-Bredow-Institut. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.

Brown, Williams. 2010. “Lost in Transnation.” In Cinemas, Identities and Beyond, edited by Ruby Cheung and D. H. Fleming, 16-32. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Cowie, Peter. 1992. Scandinavian Cinema. A Survey of the Films and Film-Makers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. London: Tantivy Press.

Eder, Jens. 2008. Die Figur im Film: Grundlagen der Figurenanalyse. Marburg: Schüren.

Elkington, Trevor G. and Nestingen, Andrew. 2005. Transnational Cinema in a Global North. Nordic Cinema in Transition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Film-in-Iceland. 2012. “Incentives.” Accessed November 11. http://www.filminiceland.com/incentives/. Guðmundsson, Ásgeir. 2001. “Ísland í lifandi myndum: Áform um

kvikmyndatöku á Íslandi á 3. og 4. áratug 20. aldar.” Tímarit Máls og menningar 62 (4): 48-59.

Gunnarsdóttir, Síf. 2001. “Konur standa saman,” DV, October 22. Higson, Andrew. 2000. “Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” In

Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, 63-74. London/New York: Routledge.

Hjort, Mette, and Scott MacKenzie. 2000. Cinema and Nation. London/New York: Routledge.

Hjort, Mette, and Duncan Petrie, eds. 2007. The Cinema of Small Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Indriðason, Arnaldur. 1999. “Stofnun og saga kvikmyndafyrirtæksins Edda-film”. In Heimur kvikmyndanna, edited by Guðni Elisson, 886-893. Reykjavík: Forlagið.

Jäckel, Anne 2003. European Film Industries. London: British Film Institute.

Jóhannsdóttir, Heiða. 2001 “Kíkt undir sauðargæruna,” Morgunblaðið, October 23.

Karlsson, Gunnar. 2003. The History of Iceland. Minneapolis: Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Nestingen, Andrew, and Trevor G. Elkington. 2005. Transnational Cinema in a Global North. Nordic Cinema in Transition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.


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Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. 2012. “Regulations on Icelandic Film Fund. No. 229/2003.” Accessed January 29.

http://eng.menntamalaraduneyti.is/Acts/nr/2438. Norðfjörð, Björn Ægir. 2005. “Icelandic Cinema: A National Practice in a

Global Context.” PhD diss., University of Iowa. Sigurjónsson, Hávar. 2006. “Mannlegri þátturinn”. Morgunblaðið,

October 21. Sveinsson, Erlendur. 1999. “Árin tólf fyrir daga Sjónvarps og

Kvikmyndasjóðs.” In Heimur kvikmyndanna, edited by Guðni Elísson, 868-873. Reykjavík: Forlagið.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHANGING NARRATIVES OF IDENTITY IN WELSH AND BASQUE FILM

DILYS JONES

This chapter explores relationships between film and changing narratives of minority national identity. It outlines a threefold system of classification, developed from an analysis of 123 Welsh and Basque feature and documentary films, and derives from research into changes in the way that Welsh and Basque people have been represented on screen. These changes are evident, for example, in terms of the minority nation’s relationship with an external, dominant power (e.g. from subjugation and oppression towards autonomy), changing gender relations and the increasing recognition of multiplicity within narratives of minority national identity (e.g. a shift from a singular, monolithic and essentialised notion of a singular national identity to a plurality of national identities).

Writing on Basque cinema tends to focus on directors, and much of it is only available in Spanish. Meanwhile, Welsh film tends to have been more generally neglected, except for Berry’s (1994) work on its history. It is notable that Hjort and Petrie’s (2007) edited collection of writings on minority nation film ignores Welsh and Basque film. Other authors have focused on films from a single minority nation, and have structured their analysis around the kinds of shifts in wider contexts mentioned above (e.g. Marshall 2001 on film from Quebec), film genre (e.g. Martin-Jones 2010 on Scottish film), or around themes within films such as gender, class, childhood and travel (Petrie 2004 on Scottish film).

Previous analysis of film has delivered categories such as “heritage” as a way of categorising films depicting history (e.g. Higson 1997; Hjort 2000; Blandford 2005). The system of classification outlined in this chapter takes the conceptualisation of links between film and identity further. It reveals the presence of longstanding national stereotypes as well as more recent changes in narratives of identity (table 5-1).

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Table 5-1: Basic elements of the three categories of Welsh and Basque film

Preserved Reversal postnational Focus on men and patriarchy

Focus on Women, men in crisis parodied

Gender less significant

Welsh/Basque as morally “good”

Welsh/Basque as morally suspect

Moral complexity

Welsh/Basque suffering and hardship.

Exploitation and oppression by Welsh/Basque.

Privileging of the self

Celebrations of cultural heritage, shared history and identity.

New narratives of identity, outsiders take centre stage

“Placelessness”

Freedom fighters and “martyrs”

Radicals and terrorists Apathy towards nationalism

“The rural”― connectedness between people and land

The decaying urban, change, new ethnicities.

Discordant or submerged landscapes, mobility

Past and future are the same

Links with past are looser, the future is uncertain or offers little

Past and future are irrelevant

The first category of film examined in this chapter is called the

“Preserved”. It can be regarded as a “comfort blanket” of known, uncontroversial and stereotypical ideas, histories and narratives of minority national identity contained within simplistic moral frameworks. These films are based on systems of dualisms shaped around the dictates of patriarchal social organisation. Although they may provide a reassuring safety net at times of national crisis, they also comprise of stereotypically oppressive ideas concerning gender, race, sexuality, community and family and the relation between the minority nation and an external power.

The second category, named “Reversal”, is used to describe films in which national stereotypes are reversed. The chapter then examines a third class of film, in which the dualisms on which the other two categories are based are transcended, thus shaping new ways of thinking about minority national identity as something “postnational” in the sense of being pluralised and distinctly different. In this postnational category of films, it may seem as though the longstanding narratives evident in Preserved and to some extent parodied in Reversal become mislaid or even abandoned. But the term “postnational” is not used to suggest that ideas of national

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identity have become redundant or no longer matter, and for this reason it appears in this chapter with a lower case “p”.

Although not meant to indicate a linear progression through time, this chapter also discusses the extent to which these three different classes of film each tend to coincide with different stages in the relation between the minority nation and an external power―from oppressive subordination towards autonomy, and with more global scale economic, social and culture change. The categories are not entirely clear cut; they do overlap, and some films classed as Preserved were made more recently than films classed as Reversal or postnational. The three categories partly accord with ideas in postmodern and postcolonial theory (e.g. Jameson 1991; Said 1993) relating to the shift from the dominant’s view of the minority through to the minority’s views of themselves as these change from celebratory to self-criticism, doubt and anxiety. The third category incorporates narratives of identity collapsing inwards from the collective towards the individual and a movement towards a sense of placelessness, a sense of impermanence and what I refer to as discordant and submerged landscapes.

Before continuing further, I want to flag up that the arguments presented here are made in relation to Welsh and Basque film. These two minority nations were selected in order to develop an understanding and conceptualisation potentially applicable to a variety of different minority nations. Wales reflects my own personal grounding, while the Basque Country was chosen because of its similarities to Wales in terms of the economic and cultural significance of rural landscape, mountains and cultural events. Both countries also share a recent history in which questions of autonomy and independence have been central.

It is not my intention to address issues such as language, finance, production and distribution in this chapter, or to define minority nation film. All of these are vital, for instance, in terms of films finding audiences and filmmakers getting further opportunities to make new films, and each would be worthy of their own chapter. Instead, this chapter addresses the representation of minority national identity and culture through focusing on film elements including characters and plot, the depiction of place, communities, family structures, everyday life, morality and power.

Preserved

Films within this category privilege elements of a presumed homogenous national culture, of particular forms of gender and gendered relations and particular forms of stereotypical socio-cultural identity.

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These tend to be presented as singular, in that these films may seem to imply that there are a very few, limited ways in which people may legitimately or recognisably be defined as “Welsh” or “Basque”. Such “correct” ways of being tend to be represented as essentialised certainties, as stable and fixed natural givens. These films are classed as “preserving”, since they may seem to attempt to achieve the highly political project of presenting and maintaining minority national identity in terms of a single, unified “truth”.

Some of these films celebrate cultural activities such as rural crafts, sport, literature, poetry, music and art; examples include the Basque films Ama Lur/Mother Earth (dir. Néstor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert 1968), Gipuzkoa/Guipúzcoa (dir. Pío Caro Baroja 1979) and Agian/Maybe (dir. Arkaitz Basterra Zalbide 2006). In Ama Lur/Mother Earth, for example, Basque men are shown weaving hand baskets and making balls for the traditional male sport of pelota. Welsh examples tend to focus on particular forms of cultural expression such as art (e.g. Piano With Many Strings. Dir. John Ormond 1967), music (e.g. Beautiful Mistake. Dir. Marc Evans 2001) and poetry (e.g. Dal:Yma/Nawr. Dir. Marc Evans 2003).

Narratives of identity in this class of film collectively tend to be based around a relationship of mutual co-construction between people and landscape—that the landscape has somehow shaped people and vice versa. There is a strong connectedness between people and land, they nurture each other. In theoretical terms, this single “truth” can be seen to be closely linked to Raymond Williams’ (1977) notions of “the dominant” and “the residual”, and with Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. This is because, as they challenge or retell versions of history in ways that reclaim it from the dominant external oppressor, these narratives themselves legitimise a kind of internal dominance and can be linked to a dominant form of patriarchal social and cultural organisation. Through their repetition, these narratives preserve (in the sense of naturalising and maintaining) certain stories about identities and particular stereotypes of Basqueness and Welshness that are closely linked to patriarchy.

My argument therefore takes the works of commentators on cultural identity such as Castells (1997), Anderson (1983) and Hall (1996), as well as Higson’s (2000) work on film, a little further. Welsh examples of these kinds of films include How Green Was My Valley (dir. Ronald Wilson 1975), Johnny Be Good (dir. Marc Evans 1984), On the Black Hill (dir. Andrew Grieve 1987), Stormydd Awst/August Storms (dir. Endaf Emlyn 1988) and Solomon a Gaenor (dir. Paul Morrison 1999). These depict male characters in lead roles; for instance as farmers or miners, as the only breadwinners and heads of households. These men lead public lives, have


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paid employment, are homosociable (socialise in groups with other men), and pass on wealth, property, possessions and knowledge to their sons. Basque examples include Vacas/Cows (dir. Julio Medem 1991), Silencio roto/Broken Silence (dir. Montxo Armendáriz 2001) and Secretos del corazón/Secrets of the Heart (dir. Montxo Armendáriz 1997). Each of these is dominated by stereotypical male characters, patriarchal family units, rural communities, and men skilled in rural ways of working (e.g. wood cutting, charcoal burning). Pelota features again in Tasio (dir. Montxo Armendáriz 1984) and La casa de mi padre/Blacklisted (dir. Gorka Merchán 2008). Another narrative strand in Vacas/Cows and Silencio roto/Broken Silence is men as warriors within the Basque country, respectively during the Carlist and Civil wars, as well as during the Second World War. This connects with other narrative strands relating to oppression and resistance mentioned below, as well as to the violence of Basque experiences during and after the Spanish Civil War, under the oppressive rule of General Franco (which covered the period 1936-1975). This has been credited with hardening “the formation of Basque national identity into a political struggle” (Barry and Mark 2005, 148).

Interwoven with a monolithic sense of a highly masculine grand narrative of Welsh or Basque identity is a postcolonial commemoration of oppression and sufferings experienced as a subject people (but not subject peoples). Basque examples include El proceso de Burgos/The Burgos Trial (dir. Imanol Uribe 1979), La fuga de Segovia/The Segovia Breakout (dir. Imanol Uribe 1981) and Ke arteko egunak/Días de humo/Days Of Smoke (dir. Antxon Ezeiza 1989). Welsh examples include Ar Waelod y cof/Deep in the Memory (dir. Richard Watkins 1984), Penyberth (dir. Peter Edwards 1985), Milwr Bychan/Boy Soldier (dir. Karl Francis 1986), Rebecca’s Daughters (dir. Karl Francis 1991), Hedd Wyn (dir. Paul Turner 1992) and Y Weithred (dir. Richard Lewis 1995).

In this sense, one component of Preserved films is the celebration and (re)circulation of a past that exists in spite of colonial oppression and pressures to adopt the culture of the dominant. In Basque film this encompasses resistance to Spanish rule. This is evident in the depiction of members of the Basque Homeland and Freedom movement (ETA) as heroic martyrs willing to kill and to themselves die for the cause of autonomy in films such as The Burgos Trial, The Segovia Breakout, and Ehun metro/100 Metres (dir. Alfonso Ungría 1986). In Welsh film, in the context of a less intense and recent experience of external oppression, this encompasses the enrolment of Welsh men to serve British military aims, in addition to resistance to British rule (e.g. in Penyberth and Y Weithred).

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Though seen by some as radical during the period of external domination, this sense recedes as the bonds of the colonial oppressor weaken.

Preserved tends to feature a moral certainty and the reduction of complex moral issues into simplistic dualistic notions of “good” or “bad”. Welsh people tend to be presented as united via Nonconformity (belonging to Welsh chapels rather than the established Church of England), whereas Basques are portrayed as Catholic. This moral certainty goes hand in hand with the simplistic boldness in narratives of identity and the set of recurring themes or elements linked with notions of “authentic” life such as “the rural” (or small town valley life in Wales), functional families, and domestically oriented women in various forms. In addition to stereotypes of the Welsh “mam” and Basque matriarch, the other main way that women tend to feature in Preserved is as “wayward” daughters, who fail to meet the moral standards of their local communities. These wayward daughters appear in films where critical discussion of traditional families, communities and their moral standards starts to emerge. Welsh examples include Solomon and Gaenor and On The Black Hill. Basque examples include Urte ilunak/Los años oscuros/The Dark Years (dir. Arantxa Lazkano 1992) and Alas de mariposa/Butterfly Wings (dir. Juanma Bajo Ulloa 1991). However, these films do not go far enough in terms of critiquing patriarchy, since the wayward daughters end up in exile or worse for their “failings”.

As a sense of resistance to external political and cultural forces recedes, the overall effect of films classed as Preserved can be likened to an avoidance of present and future through a nostalgic retreat into the past. Through repetition this “preserves” a particular kind of past in ways that seem to provide a kind of safety net or comfort blanket which provides succour and softens crisis in times of trouble. “Preserved” conveys a sense of something kept, arrested, perhaps during a moment in time when most ripe, or at a peak, with any sense of alteration held at bay. In relation to change, the act of “preserving” prevents―or at least postpones―any kind of decline or decomposition. In this sense “preserving”, in relation to narratives of national identity, is an explicitly conservative political act which may, at the very least, see any kind of change as problematical and more usually linked to dangerous social and moral shifts. Preserved may thus represent a place of psychological safety to which members of a minority nation can retreat in times of anxiety. What is being Preserved is being kept in good order for potential future use or to be admired.

Since elements of Preserved are closely bound up with moral and patriarchal certainties, these narratives seek to simplify in times of crisis, to revert and refer back to the known and the predictable when faced by


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change and challenge. This includes a kind of knowing one’s place, on the part of the minority nation, and in a sense reverting back to a position of the minority nation as subject to the dominant power, since the dominant power has to be there for the minority nation to be able to make sense of itself. In this sense, Preserved is quite conservative, and cannot include the complete overthrow of all forms of external domination (e.g. from Spain or England). In terms of past and present, the future in Preserved is simply the continuation of the past, and this links closely with the relationship between people and landscape.

Reversal

This describes a class of films in which implied dualisms on which Preserved is based are reversed. So, for example, gender roles and relations are reversed as traditional narratives of identity are parodied. In these films women are presented as more powerful and no longer constrained within the domestic, whilst men are not in positions of power, are not the breadwinning heads of family and are not figures of authority and respect. A Welsh example of a film that parodies traditional forms of masculinity is Grand Slam (dir. John Hefin 1978), which features multiple masculinities (see Jachimiak 2006). This celebrates one of the most popular and masculine icons of Welsh identity: rugby. It focuses on a motley collection of men travelling to Paris to support the Welsh team at an international match. We see how one character, Mog Jones (Windsor Davies), a normally very sober and upright middle-aged man who takes responsibility for organising the trip, gets progressively more and more drunk the night before the match. He strips off his rugby club blazer, club tie and shirt at a strip club. In just his patriotic red underpants, vest, shoes and socks, he is arrested by the police and kept overnight in a cell. His inability to speak French contributes to this situation. When Mog is released by the police, a blanket is thrown over his naked shoulders, reminiscent of a Welsh Mam’s shawl. He then arrives at the stadium too late to see the match, and returns to Wales as a comic failure, the victim of his own sexualised misbehaviour, inability to adapt to the language and customs of another country, and alcoholic excess―all stereotypes of masculine behaviour away from home. Comedic effect is generated from the audience’s understanding of how Mog usually behaves when at home in Wales and how this contrasts with his misbehaviour in Paris.

Grand Slam also features several other male characters. These include Sion (Maldwyn Pugh), a “feminine” hairdresser, a stereotyped gay man who is equally a member of the group of rugby supporters. We learn that

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he hates the strip club, does not get drunk, does get to see the match, and thus maintains his dignity in comparison to Mog’s fall from grace. He is physically marked out from the others in the group through his choice of coat (fawn with a fur collar) and sunglasses. His is the hidden gaze of a gay man who admires more than merely the rugby, but also the sight of the players as sexual objects. We learn that another member of the group, Caradog (Hugh Griffith), was in Paris during the Second World War, and whilst the others are getting drunk and going to the strip club, he finds and is entertained by a former wartime girlfriend “Madame” (Marika Rivera). This can be seen to refer back nostalgically to the warrior icon of Preserved fighting for Britain. Now in Paris his illicit liaison, if audiences assume he is married, is prioritised over attending the rugby match.

This reversal of the gender dualism deconstructs patriarchy through parodying some of its elements, in turn highlighting the narratives of identity, morality and power relations that characterise Preserved films. Furthermore, Reversal also highlights how many of the supposedly “naturally fixed” and stable meanings on which narratives of Preserved are based are constructed and open to (re)negotiation. Reversal can be seen as the first step in a process of deconstruction, which continues when the dualisms associated with Preserved and Reversal are transcended in postnational, the third category of film. These are discussed later. Reversal coincides with a shift away from rural, patriarchal narratives of identities towards what has been described as urban modernity (Iordanova 2003).

This coincides with the era of neo-liberalism under the administration of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain (which covered the period 1979-90) and the start of the post-Franco era in Spain. A feature was deindustrialisation and the collapse of traditional forms of male employment. Women characters in films in this category tend to be independent and strong. An example of a Welsh film in this category is Rhosyn a Rhith/Coming Up Roses (dir. Stephen Bayly 1986), a comedic parody which mocks Thatcherism whilst at the same time portraying the harsh realities of life within a former mining community in the valleys. Men are unemployed, and in one scene women in miner’s helmets pick mushrooms being grown in the dark in a closed down cinema. Similarly, Streetlife (dir. Karl Francis 1995) portrays a group of women working together to set up a laundry business, detailing the problems that they face in a post-industrial setting. These films often portray women trying to make a new future for themselves in times of transition and uncertainty. Another example is Oed Yr Addewid/Do Not Go Gentle (dir. Emlyn Williams 2000), in which the central character, Wil (Stewart Jones), is encouraged to buy his own house under Thatcher’s government policy,


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only to have to sell it again to pay for his own nursing care when he succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease.

A Basque example is Airbag (dir. Juanma Bajo Ulloa 1997), which presents a comedic parody of a high society wedding. The white groom inadvertently showers the priest with cocaine and then elopes with a black prostitute before the startled bride and her mother. Todo por la pasta/Anything for Bread (dir. Enrique Urbizu 1991) features the matron of a retirement home and a nightclub singer/sex worker. Having quite non-traditional occupations for women in films, these two characters are able to keep their criminal activities hidden from others. As the title suggests, during the film they develop the art of following the 1980s mantra of “greed is good”, of advancement in a world of moral ambiguity in which money is the only thing that is worthwhile. The same mantra also features in the Welsh films Bydd Yn Wrol/Be Brave (dir. Terry Dyddgen Jones 1997) and Twin Town (dir. Kevin Allen 1997). Twin Town also features drugs smuggled inside a rugby ball.

These parodies upset the stable certainties evident in Preserved, such as moral certainty, which is replaced complexity and ambiguity. Instead of being largely virtuous icons, men are portrayed variously as corrupt local politicians, criminal and self-serving, or as powerless, undermined by their own blinkered vision and stubbornness, as well as sexual desire. This moral complexity extends into a much more self-critical perspective on members of the minority nation. In Welsh films this takes the form of films that portray Welsh characters exploiting or oppressing other Welsh characters. Examples include In the Company of Strangers (dir. Endaf Emlyn 1999), which portrays corruption and political chicanery amongst members of the newly formed Welsh Government. Martha Jac a Sianco (dir. Paul Jones 2008) portrays rivalry and exploitation amongst family members, with each seeking to maximise their own personal inheritance of the family farm. A Way of Life (dir. Amma Asante 2004) portrays a white racist gang of unemployed young Welsh people who also use drugs, led by a young single mother Leigh-Ann (Stephanie James). They terrorise a Turkish family, and this culminates in them killing the father of this family. The film maker has described this act as “disempowered children committing a crime against a disempowered minority” (Asante 2004, 9). Collectively, these films can be regarded as a warning that contemporary Welsh society has lost its direction and moral values.

In Basque films this self-critical perspective is perhaps most evident in films which critique ETA and its methods or which portray young Basques in urban settings engaged in criminal activities such as dealing in and taking drugs (sometimes to the point of fatal overdose), theft, violence,

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and murder. In relation to critiques of ETA, based on a true story, the central character in Yoyes (dir. Helena Taberna 2000) is a female ETA operative who rises through the ranks, only to flee when she comes to question ETA’s methods. On her return to the Basque Country following an amnesty declared by the authorities, she is murdered by ETA. Similarly, El viaje de Arián/Arian’s Journey (dir. Eduard Bosch 2000) portrays another female ETA operative who becomes disillusioned with its methods and ends up being killed by a female colleague on the orders of their ETA superiors. To further underline the extent to which films in this category feature the types of character previously ignored or regarded as outsiders, the eponymous central character in La muerte de Mikel/The Death of Mikel (dir. Imanol Uribe 1983) Mikel (Imanol Arias) is a gay man involved with ETA.1 His sexuality is regarded by his ETA colleagues as problematic. The film ends ambiguously in a way that leaves audiences unsure as to who might be responsible for Mikel’s death. Possible candidates are the Spanish authorities, ETA, or even Mikel’s own mother (Monserrat Salvador). She is portrayed in the film as a small town, religiously straight-laced, middle class, conservative matriarch, who is always smartly turned out and complete with handbag. Some audiences may feel they recognise her as a pastiche of Margaret Thatcher.

Further critiques of ETA and its methods also include Asesinato en Febrero/A Killing in February (dir. Eterio Ortega Santillana 2001), La pelota vasca La piel contra la piedra/The Basque Ball Skin Against Stone (dir. Julio Medem 2003), Perseguidos/Pursued (dir. Eterio Ortega Santillana 2004) and Tiro en la cabeza/Bullet in the Head (dir. Jaime Rosales 2008). ETA emerges from these films as a murderous organization and not as the heroes and martyrs portrayed in Preserved. In the absence of an equivalent to ETA and its methods in Wales, there have been no films that critique the actions of those pursuing autonomy from English rule. Because there are merely films already mentioned in Preserved that portray the relatively very mild forms of Welsh resistance, this narrative strand is unavailable as a means of discussing transitions of Welshness in Reversal.

Ander and Yul (dir. Ana Díez 1989) is another condemnation of ETA’s extreme methods, but it combines this with the portrayal of drug culture. The character Ander (Miguel Munarriz) is from a relatively well-off background. We see the large detached house he grew up in and to which 1 Other Welsh films that feature gay men as central characters (unlike Grand Slam in which the character Sion is more peripheral) include Gadael Lenin/Leaving Lenin (dir. Endaf Emlyn 1992), Dafydd (dir. Ceri Sherlock 1993) and Atgof (dir. Ceri Sherlock 1998).


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he returns when he is released from prison after serving a sentence for drug dealing. He returns to the drug business and comes to renew his childhood friendship with Yul (Isidoro Fernández), who is now an ETA member, when he recognizes him carrying out an assassination on the street. By time of the film ETA had begun a policy of executing drug dealers in order to demonstrate that they too, as well as the authorities, were concerned with the wellbeing of the wider community. After Yul finds drugs hidden in Ander’s apartment, his ETA cell decides that Ander must be killed, and they select Yul to do this.

Drug culture can be seen as symbolic of a “poisoning” of a generation, in ways that distance it from dominant versions of Basque or Welsh culture and community. This notion is clearly evident in other Basque films such as El Pico 1/The Needle (dir. Eloy de la Iglesia 1983) and 27 Horas/27 Hours (dir. Montxo Armendáriz 1986), which both feature young principal characters dying from overdoses. Much like the Welsh film Way of Life, the Basque film Salto al vacío/Jump into the Void (dir. Daniel Calparsoro 1995) features an urban young women gang member, Alex (Najwa Nimri), involved in crime and drugs. We see how the gang murder a policeman and search the now silent and abandoned docks at Bilbao to find somewhere to dump the body. Again, this film can be seen as a warning to audiences of a “lost generation” of young Basques who perhaps see no future for themselves beyond immediate and nihilistic actions and pleasures. The decaying urban settings for Basque and Welsh films can be seen as metaphors for a generation whose hopes have decayed; they have seen the future and it seems to offer them little. Again, links between past and future, and people and landscape are closely interwoven.

postnational

This category contains films in which there is a movement away from the dualisms of Preserved and Reversal. Characters and plots are no longer constrained within their bounds. This means that the old stabilities of elements like gender, age and family are not so evident. What it means to be Basque or Welsh is no longer straightforward, necessarily to be celebrated or critiqued, or perhaps even relevant any more. In contrast to being a comfort blanket, the past is seen as something to be escaped. This is apparent, for example, in the Basque film La ardilla roja/The Red Squirrel (dir. Julio Medem 1993), which starts with one of the central characters, Sofía (Emma Suárez), being involved in a motorcycle crash, possibly intended as a suicide attempt, in which she loses her memory. We

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are similarly unsure of the past of the central character, “the man” (Dyfan Roberts), in the Welsh film Un Nos Ola Leuad/One Moonlit Night (dir. Endaf Emlyn 1991). It is only as these films unfold that we learn that Lisa is escaping from a psychotic husband, and the man is haunted by a murder he committed when a child, which drives him to commit suicide at the end of the film.

Films in this category also tend to feature the blurring of distinctions between fantasy and reality. In Tierra/Earth (dir. Julio Medem 1995) the character Ángel (Carmelo Gómez) is introduced to audiences as having come from the cosmos and able to be in more than one place at a time. He is supposedly a heavenly being that will bring good into the lives of others. We also learn that he has spent time in an asylum. The character has been described as his own “imaginary friend” who creates “an indecipherable view of what is real and what isn’t” (Stone 2007, 99).

In House of America (dir. Marc Evans 1997) members of the Lewis family on whom the film focuses Sid (Steve Mackintosh) and Gwenny (Lisa Palfrey) use a fantasy of emigrating to America and worshipping of the author Jack Kerouac to shield themselves from the harsh realities of their present situation. They are consumed by guilt stemming from the murder of their father by their mother and their own incestuous relationship. They live in an almost unrecognizable rural setting, a village in the valleys of south Wales, which is during the final, savage throws of mineral exploitation. Open cast quarrying for coal extends almost to the front door of the family home, which is an isolated dwelling away from any sense of physical or social community. The landscape is discordant, it neither provides nor nurtures; the young are unemployed and without opportunity; the icon of the Welsh miner in Preserved is definitely not present. Similarly, in the Basque film Los amantes del Círculo Polar/Lovers of the Arctic Circle (dir. Julio Medem 1998) the Arctic Circle is a blank space that two children, Otto (Victor Hugo Oliveira) and Ana (Kristel Díaz), fill with dreams and hopes, as a place where their shared destiny lies. This dream of a somewhere else binds them together from looking in an atlas as children, through an incestuous relationship between half-brother and half-sister, to Ana’s death, which is both the starting and ending point of the film. Medem seems to employ this circularity of plot that echoes the circle around the world defining the Arctic, to encourage multiple interpretations of the film. There is a similar circularity surrounding Ana’s death where Otto the narrator is saying “I am alone” as the film reverts to its opening scene. As Evans puts it in her discussion of Medem’s films, “it does not matter so much how we think the films end as what those endings convey” (Evans 2007). Where


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Preserved deals with historical narratives, Reversal with gritty urban reality, this illustrates how postnational film seems to sidestep the increasingly complexity of issues of identity by retreating into ambiguity and fantasy. But in both House of America and Lovers of the Arctic Circle dreams and fantasy end in tragedy. Like the man in Un Nos Ola Leuad, Sid also kills himself. There are no happy endings.

As these two films suggest, distinctions between the categories of adult and child, so clear in Preserved and Reversal, become blurred or collapse. The childhood of the Lewis family members in House of America encompasses fratricide. Their mother, described as the “Welsh Mam ‘obliterated’”, suffers from depression, and tries her best to prevent them from leaving (Ffrancon 2007, 81). Only the youngest son, Boyo (Matthew Rhys) seems to recognise the realities of Lewis family life, his mother’s mental illness and his siblings’ incestuous relationship. This type of feature is also evident in I Know You Know (dir. Justin Kerrigan 2009), in which a schoolboy, Jamie (Arron Fuller), effectively parents his own father, who is caught up in delusions and daydreams of wealth and importance since he thinks he is an undercover agent. In Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade 2010), another schoolboy, Oliver (Craig Roberts), believes that only he can repair his parents’ relationship. In the Basque film Aupa Etxebeste!/Go Etxebeste! (dir. Asier Altuna and Telmo Esnal 2005) an only son Iñaki (Iban Garate) must confront his parents with the truth about his life goals. They believe that he has been attending business college for years, when in fact they do not know him and he has instead been pursuing a career as a musician. A prime feature that arises from this transition in family roles is the rejection by children of an adult view of the world. Instead, children seem more worldly wise, grounded and sensible in comparison to their parents. It is as though the young are capable of being at least the equals of their elders and are more at home in a contemporary world, in which simplistic notions of identity may no longer be relevant.

Another feature of postnational film is that people are mobile, situations are in flux, and there is little continuity with the past, and at the same time the future seems to be irrelevant. Instead of featuring rooted social collectives like “communities” or villages, urban gangs or even minority nation, the focus shifts down in scale onto individual characters that are complex combinations of hopes, dreams and motives. Instead of a collective good, characters are more motivated by individualism, to selfishly exploit each other where possible. One film that amply exhibits all of these features is The Red Squirrel. Much of the action is set on a caravan and camping site, a place of the temporary and the mobile. This is

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a hasty choice of destination by the two principal characters, who are both on the run. As mentioned earlier, Sofía is escaping from a violent partner, whilst Jota (Nancho Novo) is trying to escape from the heartbreak of losing his girlfriend, which has already prompted him to one suicide attempt. They are attempting to break free of the past, of family and community. They also exploit each other. He does so by deceitfully telling her that she is Lisa, his girlfriend, whilst she suffers from amnesia. She then maintains a pretence of this when she recovers her memory, so that Jota will protect her from her husband. In the Welsh film Patagonia (dir. Marc Evans 2010), an elderly and infirm woman Cerys (Marta Lubos) travels from Patagonia to Wales, to try to find her family roots and a farm that was owned by her grandparents. She cannot speak Welsh or English and has no idea where the farm may be. Her companion, a young Patagonian man Alejandro (Nahuel Bisayart), has been tricked into accompanying her, since she told him they were merely going to Buenos Aries for her to have an eye operation. When they arrive at the valley that the farm was in, they discover that it was flooded some years earlier to make a reservoir. They find temporary refuge within a tepee by the bank of the reservoir, and having finally found the relocated grave stone from her grandparents’ grave, she then dies.

Both of these films also feature what can be characterised as “submerged landscape”.2 Beyond physically having been drowned, the landscape is also unavailable to characters as a means through which minority national identity can be co-constructed. The family farm is lost forever in Patagonia. Red Squirrel also features a reservoir, part of a campsite that is contrived and promoted as a “Mediterranean” resort. We learn that beneath the water lie the remains of a forest, that staple icon of the Basque countryside in Preserved. The landscape in Red Squirrel can also be regarded as “discordant” because it is fake. An even more glaring example is in Go Etxebeste!, when the central family fake going on holiday to Marbella in order to keep up appearances with their neighbours. They have gone bankrupt. They “sunbathe”, drink cocktails and promenade within their own flat behind blocked out windows, to a background of tape recordings of the sea. A discordant landscape is one that is fake, fails to nurture and provide, and is one within which characters in films are out of place rather than at home. 2 The theme of submergence is also evident in the Welsh film Flick (dir. David Howard 2006), which at the start of the film shows a car belonging to the central character Johnny (Hugh O’ Connor) being retrieved from the bottom of a harbour. Johnny died when his car plunged off the dock forty years earlier, following a fight over a young woman at the local dancehall rock ‘n’ roll night.


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A further example of a discordant landscape is evident in Arriya/La Piedra/The Stone (dir. Alberto J. Gorritiberea 2011), which is set in a small village in the Basque countryside. However, it is not the rural featured in Basque films in Preserved. The countryside features a derelict mill, the farmers are more intent on gambling with their farms and land on the outcome of a traditional competition involving a horse and a mule dragging a stone up and down the village square. The land is not shown as productive, and one character in particular mocks the village and its inhabitants as being backward. The old clock in the village church tower goes backwards and cannot be mended. When the police come and confiscate a stone being used for the contest, the main character, Sabino (Joseba Apaolaza), galvanises the men of the village to drag the altar stone from the village church out into the square to be used instead.

Contemporary rural culture is thus portrayed as being about stubborn greed and a lack of respect for Catholicism. In Tierra a village is threatened by a plague of woodlice that is decimating vineyards. The local maize crop is infested with wild boars, who are feasting on it. The land is thus unproductive to the local population; it has ceased to sustain and nurture them; it has become a problematical territory, out of their control. They also struggle with the land and the “rules” of nature. Older methods for eradicating woodlice in the vineyards are neglected in favour of fumigation, carried out by Ángel, who organises some gypsies who are staying locally (a reference to mobility and the temporary) as hired labour to carry out the work.

In the Welsh film Elenya (dir. Steve Gough 1991) a young girl, Elenya (Pascale Jones), looks after a downed German airman in woods close to her village during the Second World War. She is treated as an outcast in the village, because she is of Italian descent. She is followed, and the German flyer is chased through the woods, to be shot and then finally killed by dogs before her eyes as he tries to cross a stream to safety. Again, the nurturing, bountiful rural landscape of Preserved is in sharp contrast to this site of intolerance, rejection and murderous bloodlust.

These examples illustrate this major transition in how relations between characters and the land are configured, from co-construction to situations where characters clash with the rural landscape. The bond between people and land is broken, perhaps a progressive transition since in the past this has often been a narrative of identity taken up by fascist causes. At the same time, there is apathy towards nationalism. This is evident in a scene in Lovers of the Arctic Circle, where Ana and Otto ignore their own (step-)mother on television as she reads a news bulletin regarding an apology from the German government for the notorious

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bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. In House of America and Flick central characters are obsessed with American and not Welsh culture. In Go Etxebeste! the family have gone bankrupt because of declining demand for years for the product of their beret factory. They have failed to take into account changes in the ways that Basque men dress, and they are apathetic towards contemporary Basque culture.

In combination, these features suggest a sense of identity as mislaid somehow. There is no framing of minority identity as abandoned, shrunk, smashed, nor globalised, and no character expresses any real concerns over a loss of identity. For instance, Cerys in Patagonia comes to Wales for the first time, but simply to trace her grandparents and find the family farm. There is no sense of her connecting with Welshness. No characters in the films Lovers of the Arctic Circle, Red Squirrel, Tierra, Submarine, I Know You Know or Flick express identification with or concern about minority national identity. It must be acknowledged that the films Elenya and Un Nos Ola Leuad are both made in Welsh and have features of setting and circumstance that tie them to Wales, but as already mentioned these films feature quite distinct narratives of Welsh identity and thus features that locate them firmly within the category of postnational. This loss of identity somehow therefore takes the form of a factor that does not really matter, it is not a concern.

In postnational film the past is depicted in different ways, as holding no value, as being painful or traumatic in some way, and as something that somehow cannot be escaped, which ends up destroying some characters. Combined with the dislocation from the land and the sense of identity mislaid, this presents characters as though they are in a kind of limbo in the present, in which the future is uncertain. Some characters die (e.g. in House of America, Elenya, Lovers of the Arctic Circle, the father dies by the end of I Know You Know, the central character in Flick is a ghost, Un Nos Ola Leuad), but for others there seems to be no future mapped out for them in any case. In one sense, this suggests a futility, as though the harshness of realities will always triumph over fantasy, and characters will always fail to achieve their goals.

Conclusion

To recap, what emerges in this chapter is that the category of Preserved can be regarded as a “comfort blanket”, there to be used in times of stress. A minority nation can lose itself once more in heritage, times when morality was simple and an external power was readily available to take


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the part of the villain, the oppressive exploiter that had sought to colonise peoples’ minds. Reversal can be seen as therapeutic, about highlighting social problems and anxieties about the next generation. Reversal is about embracing the present, in all its grittiness, and about the large scale changes associated with the crisis of masculinity. It is a necessary step in the direction of transcending the dualisms on which Preserved, and dominant versions of minority identity, are based. Reversal perhaps satisfies the needs of younger generations who are seeking stories about themselves and their heritage that do not simply hark back to the simplicities of Preserved.

In some ways, postnational also satisfies the needs of another younger generation, who are not satisfied with previous generations’ versions of minority identity. They may seem to look forward and outward, in comparison to the backwards and inwards looking perspectives of their elders, for stories about themselves and their place in the contemporary world. This is perhaps why intergenerational relations in this class of films are portrayed as so fraught, so different, and ultimately as so problematic and toxic. Arguably, Basque postnational film is more in keeping with Baudrillard’s (2012) account of postmodernism as “hyperreal”, as liberating, positive, and involving self-empowerment. In contrast, Welsh postnational film seems to be more akin to Jameson’s account of postmodernism as bleak, selfish, evasive, aimless and involving “social confusion” (Jameson 1991).

This chapter has discussed transitions in narratives of minority national identity through a focus on Welsh and Basque film. It has introduced a new threefold system of classification for films which seems to assist in understanding these transitions, and locating them within the context of changes in the relationship between minority and dominant, and wider social and economic changes. Further research may clarify the extent to which this threefold system of classification may be more widely applicable to other minority nations and other forms of cultural expression beyond film.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Asante, Amma. 2004. “Being Half of Everything: Interview with Steve

Blandford.” New Welsh Review 65 (9). Baudrillard, Jean. 1997. “The Precision of Simulacra.” In Media and

Cultural Studies (Key Works in Cultural Studies), edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, 453-481. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Berry, Dave. 1994. Wales and Cinema: The First Hundred Years. Cardiff:

University Wales Press. Blandford, Steve. 2005. “Wales at the Oscars: Heritage Cinema and

Welshness in the 1990s.” Cyfrwng 2: 101-114. Evans, Jo. 2007. Critical Guides to Spanish and Latin American Texts and

Films. London: Grant and Cutler. Ffrancon, Gwenno. 2007. “Glân, Gofalus a Gwallgof: Datblygiad y

Portread o’r Fam Gymreig ar y Sgrîn.” Cyfrwng 4: 71-86. Hall, Stuart. 1996. “Introduction: Who Needs Identity?” In Questions of

Cultural Identity edited by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 1-17. London: Sage.

Higson, Andrew. 1997. Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema. London: Cassells.

Higson, Andrew. 2000. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 63-87. London: Routledge.

Hjort, Mette. 2000. “Introduction.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie, 1-16. London: Routledge.

Hjort, Mette, and Duncan Petrie. 2007. The Cinema of Small Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Iordanova, Dina. 2003. Central European Film. London: Wallflower Press.

Jachimiak, Peter Hughes. 2006. “Coll Gwynfa, Adferiad Gwynfa’: Grand Slam, Gwrywdod ac Adennill y Gymru a Gollwyd.” Cyfrwng 3: 93-100.

Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism. London: Verso. Jordan, Barry and Mark Allinson. 2005. “Other Nationalities: The Case Of

Basque Cinema.” In Spanish Cinema A Student’s Guide, edited by Barry Jordan and Mark Allinson, 148. London: Hodder.

Marshall, Bill. 2001. Quebec National Cinema. Montreal: Queen’s University Press.

Martin–Jones, David. 2010. Scotland: Global Cinema Genres, Modes and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Petrie, Duncan. 2004. Contemporary Scottish Fictions, Film Television and the Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Said, Edward W. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage. Stone, Rob. 2007. Julio Medem. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Williams, Raymond. 1997. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

CHAPTER SIX

STAGING SCOTLAND: NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND

AND SHIFTING CONCEPTIONS OF SCOTTISH IDENTITY

TRISH REID

Since its acclaimed inaugural season in 2006 the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) has achieved sustained cultural prominence, attracting praise for its extensive work in Scotland and also for the ways in which it has brought the work of Scottish theatre-makers to international attention. In particular, the innovative and flexible co-producing model on which the new company was constituted—the NTS has no permanent theatre building—has been admired and imitated. A similar model was adopted for the new National Theatre Wales in 2009, for example. Importantly, the co-producing model meant that the success of the NTS was predicated from the outset on collaboration with existing theatre artists, companies and venues. The new company was therefore, by virtue of its structure, “plugged in”. In the event, it has provided an inclusive framework, both geographically and conceptually, through which twenty-first century conceptions of Scotland and its people can be articulated. Even before the NTS began producing work, the campaign surrounding its establishment was animated by broad and complex debates around notions of Scottish cultural identity in the years leading up to―and immediately after―devolution in 1999. That theatre, and the arts in general, have a significant role to play in Scotland under the new constitutional arrangements has been recognised by successive administrations in Edinburgh. Since 2007, along with Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet and the country’s two major orchestras, the NTS has been funded directly by the devolved Scottish Government, a clear signal that the national companies are seen as both ambassadors for and custodians of Scottish culture.

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In the wider context, devolution has transformed Scotland’s political and cultural scene in ways not intended by the New Labour administration that set it in motion with the referendum of 1997. Most significantly, the devolved parliament has enabled the Scottish National Party (SNP) to effect a rapid “transition from being a small oppositional force, heavily dependent on voluntary activity, into a party of government” (Mitchell, Bennie and Johns 2012, 12). The first election to the new parliament in 1999 produced a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition with Labour holding the largest number of seats. The 2003 election brought no change in terms of overall control. However, in contrast to the other main political parties, the SNP saw a steady increase in membership after 2003. Subsequently, it emerged from the 2007 Scottish parliamentary elections with 47 seats, one more than the incumbent Labour Party, and went on to form a successful minority administration. More remarkably, in 2011 the party secured 69 seats from a possible 129, thus becoming the first to form a majority administration since the establishment of the new parliament in 1999. An agreement signed in Edinburgh in October 2012 by Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, paved the way for a referendum on Scottish Independence scheduled for September 2014. Although at the time of writing support for Independence is hovering around the 30% mark, few commentators would confidently predict the eventual outcome. What is clear, however, is that the SNP has been able to set the agenda in Scottish politics in ways few would have imagined in 1997.

In part the SNP has advanced by occupying ground traditionally held by the Labour Party, especially in the central belt. As Gerry Hassan has observed, although the idea of statehood is clearly central to their ethos, “SNP members and activists see themselves as firmly and without qualification on the centre-left” (Hassan 2009, 6). Similarly, David McCrone, in Understanding Scotland, emphasises that “Labour and SNP voters are virtually identical with regard to social values and policy preferences” (McCrone 2001, 125). Labour and SNP voters differ significantly only in relation to the question of Independence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, successive SNP administrations have shared Labour’s commitment to the arts, which had been significant in the aftermath of devolution. Writing in 2005, Jen Harvie, for example, notes how far “New Labour political discourse about the importance of the creative industries… helped secure much needed funding for the arts, and particularly for theatre in Scotland” (Harvie 2005, 32). The establishment of the NTS was one concrete result of this commitment. More recently, austerity measures have complicated the landscape of arts funding across

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the UK. England has lost 30% of its arts council budget—with the caveat that only 15% will be passed on directly to arts organizations—and by March 2013 local-authority spending on the arts and culture in England will be down 16% on 2009-10. This figure masks an uneven picture. In 2010, Somerset County Council, for example, announced a 100% cut in arts provision. Meanwhile the arts in Scotland, notwithstanding the recent damaging row between Creative Scotland and the arts community, have remained on standstill funding. Relatively speaking then, the environment for theatre and performance in Scotland remains healthy.

Theatre has contributed to on-going debates about civic identity in Scotland both obliquely and directly. For example, since 2005 the Scottish parliament has hosted its own Festival of Politics, operating alongside the larger summer Festivals for which Edinburgh is internationally renowned. This event has included performance from the outset. As Joanne Zerdy, in her article “Stages of Governance”, rightly notes:

A Festival of Politics that includes the performing arts, notably theatre, and occurs within the national house of governance makes an exciting proposition: theatre performances contribute to the shaping of political discourse and the production of citizenship within a devolved nation. (Zerdy 2011, 173)

In order to frame her discussion about theatre and civic identity, Zerdy focuses on two performances: a 2006 performance of Legislative Theatre by Lung Ha’s Theatre Company and Rowan Tree Theatre Company’s The Journey of Jeannie Deans (2007). Edinburgh based Lung Ha works primarily to provide opportunities for people with learning disabilities to become actively involved in the performing arts and their interactive Legislative Theatre focused on disability rights especially in relation to independent living. The performance utilised the parliament building in engaging its audience in consideration of issues that are of on-going concern for policy makers in Scotland as elsewhere.

Rowan Tree is a small scale touring company that works out of Selkirk in the borders. Judy Steel’s Jeannie Deans is an hour-long adaptation of the narrative strand in Walter Scott’s novel The Heart of Midlothian (1818) in which the courageous Jeanie walks from the outskirts of Edinburgh to London to seek a pardon for her sister Effie who has been wrongly convicted of infanticide. Notwithstanding its historical setting, when performed inside the debating chamber of the new Parliament Jeanie Deans had significant contemporary resonances. As Joyce MacMillan commented in her review for The Scotsman:

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[T]he brilliant strand of political and constitutional commentary that accompanies the tale—set in an 18th century Edinburgh still smarting from the loss of its own king and parliament—makes the story as gripping, and full of contemporary resonances, as it is invigorating. (McMillan 2007)

Most recently, the 2012 Festival included a performance of Des Dillon’s classic anti-sectarian comedy I’m No A Billy I’m a Tim (2005) alongside a panel discussion sponsored by the University of Aberdeen entitled Scottish and Irish Conversation on Sectarianism and a debate on attitudes to migration in Scotland. As these examples demonstrate, the performance strand of the Festival of Politics has an established reputation for engagement with key discourses and debates currently live in Scottish political and cultural life.

Since 1999 important issues of governance have transferred from London to Edinburgh, and Scottish theatre artists have unsurprisingly devoted a significant amount of time to reviewing and reimagining their own brand of national citizenship, which they have defined as sometimes connected to―but often separate from―the larger geopolitical entity of Britain. The UK does not exist in a vacuum, of course, and the precise scope of Scotland’s engagement with European and global contexts has also been a preoccupation for contemporary theatre artists and commentators. Nadine Holdsworth has touched on this trend in “The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama” (2008), for instance, as has David Pattie in “Mapping the Terrain: Modern Scottish Drama” (2008). Among his contemporaries the playwright David Greig has received particular attention in this regard. Subtitled Transnational Identities in David Greig’s Theatre, Anja Muller and Clare Wallace’s recent edited collection Cosmopotia, explicitly situates an appreciation of Greig’s work in relation to ‘the ways in which globalization and postmodernity have transformed contemporary identity politics and the possibility of an engaged theatre’ (Muller and Wallace 2011, 2). In this chapter, I would like to explore further this notion of an “engaged theatre” in relation to the NTS, the post-devolutionary landscape, and the wider context of globalization with which all small nations and their cultural as well as economic practices are currently engaged. In particular, I’d like to use my discussion to problematize a number of tensions about the relationship between tradition and innovation—especially in relation to repertoire—that have crept into recent debates about the company against the backdrop of wider debates about Scottish nationalism and the approaching referendum.

Although widely viewed as an unqualified success, the NTS has attracted criticism from some quarters in relation to programming, especially its perceived lack of interest in major Scottish plays of the past.

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One significant intervention in this debate came in early 2010 in a Scotsman article by the cultural and historical commentator and veteran SNP campaigner Paul Henderson Scott. Arguing from the position that every “national theatre in the world has as its primary purpose: the creation of a national repertoire by performances of the best plays the country has produced”, Scott complained that Scotland’s “rich resources of plays which modern audiences would enjoy” had been ignored by the management team of the NTS in favour of new work (Scott 2010). By way of explanation for this perceived oversight Scott cited ignorance of Scotland’s theatre history, which he in turn related to the fact that “no member of the management of our national theatre is Scottish” (ibid.). This intervention would not necessarily have been worthy of note, if a linking of the choice of repertoire with the nationality of the NTS management team—particularly its English artistic director Vicky Featherstone—had not subsequently persisted in the Scottish media. Subsequently, with the election of a majority SNP government, questions of whether and why Scots were “under-represented in [their] country’s cultural power structure” became live and the row spread to other aspects of cultural life (Eaton-Lewis 2012). The recent controversy surrounding the funding quango Creative Scotland and the resignation of its English Chief Executive Andrew Dixon widened the debate, for example, as did the hullaballoo generated by the online publication of Alasdair Gray’s 2012 essay “Settlers and Colonists” (Gray 2013). It is not my purpose in this chapter, to explore these questions in any significant detail (see Watson 2003). My interest is rather in the set of tensions that ethnically oriented objections to Featherstone’s programming might obscure tensions between programming for main stages and less conventional performance spaces, for instance, or between definitions of “theatre” versus “performance”. Such tensions are, as I hope to show, substantially generational.

Largely because of the co-producing model on which it was founded, the NTS has only been as innovative and experimental as the Scottish theatre scene into which it was born allowed. The preponderance of new and often experimental work in its programme should not be read as evidence of indifference to a unified national tradition in Scottish playwriting. It should instead be considered a welcome manifestation of locally grounded and resistant performance practices working in the interests of a small nation and its diverse communities in opposition to expectations of both the cultural elite and larger centralising forces. As Loren Kruger has demonstrated—in spite of Scott’s confident assertion, about their “primary purpose”—the very idea of national theatres has

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carried inherent contradictions since its emergence in the European Enlightenment. Persistent tensions can be observed, for example, between “advocates of a centralized national theatre that might reconcile the nation from above and rival, perhaps antagonistic, ‘popular’ cultures on the social and geographical periphery which resist this reconciliation under duress” (Kruger 1992, 3). It seems important to bear in mind in this regard that the building-less model on which the NTS was constituted has repeatedly, if not exclusively, privileged the geographical periphery. This privileging, which is evidenced in the many community-based projects the NTS has facilitated, might even be thought of as constituting a positioning of “the local as a site of resistance to the global” and thus as a fundamentally democratic and inclusive programming strategy (Rebellato 2006, 98).

One can certainly understand the integrity of the NTS’s inaugural Home projects in these terms. In February 2006 the NTS launched with ten simultaneous site-specific productions: Home Aberdeen, Home Caithness, Home Dumfries, Home Dundee, Home East Lothian, Home Edinburgh, Home Glasgow, Home Inverness, Home Shetland, and Home Stornoway. Each project, connected solely by the theme of “home”, was created in collaboration with local artists and embedded in local communities (see Leach 2006 and Reid 2007). Rather than looking to the past by engaging in a project of recovery or canon-building, the new company chose to action its manifesto commitment to produce theatre “that is contemporary, confident and forward-looking” by abandoning traditional theatre buildings and invading the material spaces of contemporary Scotland (National Theatre Scotland 2009). By virtue of both its geographic coverage and its site-specific bias, Home offered a snapshot of a confidently diverse and creative contemporary Scotland.

The NTS also commissioned a major site-specific work from the Edinburgh based company Grid Iron for its first season. Subsequently, the award-winning Roam was performed by an international cast at Edinburgh International Airport in April 2006. Again, rather than reflecting on Scotland’s past, Ben Harrison’s production utilised the liminal space of the airport to emphasise the constructed nature of identity and its relationship to place in a trans-national context, while in the process engaging with contentious questions about the War on Terror and the status of political refugees in the post-9/11 world. In terms of contemporary theatre practice, Home and Roam had the effect both of emphasising the efficacy of site-specific work in the exploration of identities at local, national and global levels, and also of positioning the NTS as forward looking and contemporary. These programming choices also indicated the new company would not be privileging “the play” as a vehicle for actioning its

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manifesto commitments. The NTS did of course produce larger scale productions in its first season including Anthony Neilson’s Realism, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, and Gregory Burke’s Black Watch, at the Edinburgh Fringe. The latter became the NTS’s most successful large-scale production to date. As David Pattie has noted, “Black Watch quickly became as iconic a production for the NTS as John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil was for 7:84 in the 1970s” (Pattie 2011, 31). Tracing its history as it moved from an the University of Edinburgh’s Drill Hall to worldwide acclaim, can provide further insight into the complicated relationship between the local and the global, and between tradition and innovation in the work of Scotland’s national theatre company.

Black Watch’s success has been on a global scale. Although originally conceived as a site-specific production—the Drill hall setting and traverse staging recalling both the annual Edinburgh Military Tattoo and the generations of soldiers who had used the hall—the key measures of the production’s success have been the number of oversees venues to which it has travelled, the number of overseas critics it has wowed, and the number of awards it has received outside Scotland.1 John Tiffany’s production has been recast and re-launched on five occasions, most recently in 2012/13 when it visited Korea for the first time and toured the UK and the US. In contrast to Home and Roam, which are notable for their pronounced ephemerality, Black Watch has been repackaged and marketed in ways that call to mind forms of contemporary theatre most closely associated with the commodity form such as the mega-musical. It might be noted for instance that the multiple re-castings work to place restrictions on the freedom of individual actors, who are inevitably subordinate to the production’s design, choreography and the direction. Such practices inevitably hint at the notion that actors are replaceable. Indeed, the promotional trailer currently used to market the production closes with the slogan “Be part of it”—a phrase that strongly implies the production itself is the product. Such performance practices and marketing strategies can of course be understood as a guarantee of quality and consistency in experience. However, they also risk becoming an assurance of predictability, and

1 The NTS website on the current production reads: “To date Black Watch has played to tens of thousands of people across three continents and has garnered 22 awards, including four Laurence Olivier Awards—Best Director, Best Theatre Choreography, Best Play and Best Sound Design—and the National Theatre of Scotland won its first US award with the New York Drama Circle naming Black Watch Best Foreign Play” (National Theatre Scotland 2012a). Note than no direct mention is made of awards received in Scotland.

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predictability is a key component of commodity theatre, which relies on the principle that wherever a given production is seen its effects will be exactly the same. Essentially commodity theatre relies on effacing difference. This is not to argue that Black Watch is an example of the fully globalised commodity form, of course. Rather it is to suggest that the assumption that large-scale touring productions which showcase iconic aspects of Scottish culture and history justify the existence of the NTS in ways that small-scale, experimental, or site specific ones do not, should be carefully interrogated.

In fact, only about one third of the 200 or so productions made by the NTS since its inception have been main stage productions targeted at adults. The most recent Annual Report of Activity for the National Performing Companies, published in March 2012, summarised the NTS’s achievements as follows:

In February 2011 the Company celebrated five years of operation, and is now firmly established as a major feature of the Scottish cultural landscape. Over the five years the Company has created 161 productions reaching an audience of 730,000 people, and delivered 5736 workshops involving 129,000 participants. (Scottish Government 2012)

The Annual Report also provides comparative data on the activities of the five centrally funded companies. In the period covered by the report the NTS staged 501 performances—around four times as many as its nearest rival, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra—and hosted 2,422 education and outreach events, more than four times that of any other national company. The NTS reached an audience of 154, 316—an increase of 19% on 2009-10 (Scottish Government 2012). These figures do not describe a company whose management team have been ignoring their responsibilities. On the contrary, the eclecticism of its output and the varied range of modes of engagement it has employed, has positioned the NTS as a leading innovator in its field. In his 2011 survey of twenty-first century British Theatre, Rewriting the Nation, Aleks Sierz described the NTS as “the most exciting new kid on the block” (Sierz 2011, 38). The company has continued to break new ground as the following example demonstrates.

Five Minute Theatre (2011) exemplifies the NTS’s continuing commitment to innovation. Exactly five years after the success of its inaugural Home projects, on 25 February 2011, the NTS issued an open invitation to members of the public to submit ideas for pieces of five-minute theatre. Successful applicants were to be given assistance in developing their work for inclusion in a 24-hour online broadcast

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commencing at 5pm on Tuesday 21st June 2011. On the day, 235 performances were streamed in a 24-hour period. Around 80 of these were broadcast live, although all 235 as stipulated in the NTS brief “were performed and recorded in front of a live audience” (National Theatre Scotland 2012b). A total of 1,000 performers—professional, amateur and novice—aged between 5 and 75 took part. 202 pieces were performed in Scotland, thirteen across the rest of the UK, four elsewhere in Europe and sixteen across the rest of the world. On the day of its initial broadcast the event attracted 6,300 viewers from 51 countries who visited the site 22,000 times and since June 2011 the site been accessed a further 28,000 times, creating a total Five Minute Theatre audience of approximately 50,000. In June 2012 Five Minute Theatre won the Best Technical Presentation award at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland, but by that time the project had already been deemed successful enough to be repeated in amended form. In 2012 five shorter events were scheduled. The first on the theme “Protest” was broadcast on May 1, and the second on “Youth” on July 14. Both dates, it might be noted, have proletarian associations, and provided a platform for school, community and youth theatre groups, as well as for work created in collaboration with prisoners and other marginalised constituencies.

By utilising online participation as a mechanism for the extension of cultural democracy, Five Minute Theatre raised interesting and pertinent questions about how public space and/or the public sphere might be constituted in the digital age, and how participation in national or international theatre and performance events might be enabled or controlled via online platforms. Rather than positioning itself in relation to a unified national tradition, this NTS anniversary project engaged with recent trends in digital performance and fore grounded the developing relationship between performance and new media. In the event, because of its focus in widening participation, Five Minute Theatre was notable for its relative simplicity in this context. The Internet was employed as a “neutral” tool for dissemination of work and participants were able to work only within a relatively tight predetermined framework—most obviously the work could be no more than five minutes long. Interactivity —a key feature of “virtual” theatres in other contexts—was limited to live chat facilities and Twitter. In addition, audience members, whether in attendance at performances or viewing online, had no power to affect the course of individual performances. This is something rather different to a virtual theatre defined by Gabriella Giannachi (2004, 11) as constructing itself “through the interaction between the viewer and the work of art”. Indeed, the audiences for Five Minute Theatre had no more power to

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shape events than those in more conventional settings. A number of other signatures associated with performance and new media were also absent. The project was not immersive, for instance, nor did it involve live performers interacting with projections that had been digitally created or manipulated. Five Minute Theatre was clearly a digital performance project, however, in so far as “computer technologies play[ed] a key role rather than a subsidiary one” in the form of its delivery (Dixon 2007, 3).

Most significantly, Five Minute Theatre privileged the idea of cyberspace as “public” even though, as Steve Dixon has noted, “this notion is largely metaphoric… and indeed romantic” (ibid., 462). While, the individual online viewer was in a real sense simply sitting alone in front of a screen, he or she was aware, at least conceptually, of the presence of multiple viewers in other locations. This awareness in turn concretised the viewer’s sense that Five Minute Theatre was a meeting point, and thus a distinct location. Consequently, the idea of space privileged by this project recalls conceptions of the public sphere famously defined by Jurgen Habermas as “a realm of our social life, in which something approaching public opinion can be formed” (Habermas 1974, 49). Importantly, this discursive understanding of the public sphere implies both a jurisdiction where discussion of public interests can take place and a realm of social life generated through such discussion. Public life relies on discourse and, most specifically, on the existence of a public capable of forming common understanding through conversations of one kind or another. Five Minute Theatre attempted to open up a space for people of like minds and shared interests to congregate and converse. This conversation took place via live chat facilities and the Twitter feed and also at the various performance “hubs” operating on the day where people could congregate both to view performances as they are streamed and to participate as audience members during performances that went out live as part of the prearranged schedule. Tickets for the performance hubs were free and distributed on a first come first served basis.

A significant number of Five Minute Theatre performances took place in streets, while others were filmed in toilets, car parks, parks, cemeteries, shopping malls, launderettes and other spaces associated with the idea of “public” or civic space. The focus of the project was less on the aesthetic quality or content of individual performances, however, than on providing a platform for the sharing of work that collapsed physical distance and was self-consciously inclusive. In summary, Five Minute Theatre utilised online platforms primarily as an aid to participation but in the process it allowed individuals greater autonomy in interrogating and reinterpreting the cultural creations of others, thus facilitating a greater sense of

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ownership of the culture they occupy. The project was underwritten by the assumption that, as Yochai Benkler has suggested, the Internet offers, “a more attractive cultural production system in two distinct ways: (1) it makes culture more transparent, and (2) it makes culture more malleable” (Benkler 2006, 15). Projects such as Five Minute Theatre are intended to make participants better “readers” of their own culture and thus potentially more critical of the culture they occupy. They might even enable individuals to become more self-reflective participants in conversations within culture, which would in turn contribute towards Scottish culture becoming more democratic and participatory.

In the same year it launched Five Minute Theatre, the NTS responded to its critics by launching the Staging the Nation programme, a series of events running throughout its fifth year, which directly addressed questions relating to Scotland’s theatre history and its legacy. Billed as “a conversation about theatre in Scotland” Staging the Nation involved rehearsed readings, panel discussions, lectures and related activities. The first event, “The Traverse, New Writing and How It Changed the World”, centred on a discussion hosted by playwright Chris Hannan of the impact of John Byrne’s The Slab Boys (1978) which reunited the original creative team, including writer John Byrne, director David Hayman and actor Robbie Coltrane. The Slab Boys was notable for the exuberance of its West of Scotland working-class Scots vernacular and the dexterity with which it combined comic and serious elements. In addition, in privileging the perspective of victimised factory worker the play carried strong “implications for a specifically Scottish socialism” and can thus be understood as part of a theatrical tradition that dates at least from the early decades of the twentieth-century and finds full expression in the work of Glasgow Unity Theatre in the 1940s and 7:84 Scotland in the 1970s and 80s (Stevenson 2011, 78). Staging the Nation continued with a series of rehearsed readings titled “Favourite Plays”, each selected by prominent theatre makers. On 31 March Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre hosted a reading of Joe Corrie’s In Time o’ Strife (1927) chosen by playwright Peter Arnott, and readings of Tony Roper’s The Steamie (1987), John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1973) and Mike Cullen’s The Cut (1995) followed, selected by Johnny McKnight, Graham McLaren and Gregory Burke respectively. The scope of Staging the Nation’s engagement was not limited to discussion of particular plays, however. On September 30 the playwright Nicola McCartney hosted a discussion about the impact and legacy of Glasgow’s Tramway Theatre, for instance, and Alan Cumming devised a 90-minute front-of-curtain entertainment on the

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influence of pantomime, variety and the Music Hall on Scottish performance styles. The initiative was well reviewed (e.g. McMillan 2011).

More pertinently, in relation to the focus of this chapter, in late October 2011 Ian Brown, Chairman of the Scottish Society of Playwrights and editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, facilitated a conversation between Paul Henderson Scott and David Greig. Greig, who has been very active in his defence of the NTS and Featherstone in particular, offered a fairly inclusive and relaxed description of Scottish playwriting:

Some writers have explored Scots language, others have explored the variety tradition, some have used the Scottish novel as a source, still others have responded to location and politics. Some writers have tried to avoid the question of national identity entirely. But whatever their individual response, all Scottish writers have found their work and its reception shaped by powerful currents of identity moving through Scottish society. (Staging the Nation 2011)

As the pre-eminent Scottish playwright of his generation, Greig has more than anyone exemplified through his practice a generational shift in Scottish playwriting. He has worked in a wide range of styles, modes and genre and his prodigious output has been markedly internationalist and outward-looking. The influential Glasgow-based performance company Suspect Culture, which he founded with Graham Eatough and Nick Powell, became leading innovators in Scottish theatre in the 1990s. Not only have many of Greig’s major plays managed, in Janelle Reinelt’s (20011, 204) phrase, “to be simultaneously about Europe or another elsewhere as well as Scotland”, they have tended to privilege discourses of “agency and action” and in the post-devolutionary context, of an “aspirational future bold enough to confront and progress away from the assumptions and prejudices of the past” (Scullion 2007, 71).

The international success achieved by Greig and his contemporaries, Gregory Burke, David Harrower and Anthony Neilson, has added to an increasing sense of confidence among contemporary Scottish playwrights. Along with institutions like the Traverse, the NTS has fed into and utilised this existing pool of talent while maintaining its customarily varied programme. The 2013 season will include a revival of David Harrower’s adaptation of Roger Hutchinson’s Calum’s Road, first seen in 2011, Gregory Burke’s ever present Black Watch, and no fewer than three productions by Greig: Dunsinane, The Strange Undoing of Prudentia Hart and Glasgow Girls. The season will also include a new site-specific production by associate director Graham McLaren of Joe Corrie’s In Time

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o’ Strife (1927). This follows McLaren’s successful revival in 2011 of Ena Lamont Stewart’s Men Should Weep (1947). Presumably these revivals were designed partly to address the criticisms outlined earlier in this chapter. Rather cannily, however, they had the added effect of quoting 7:84 Scotland’s famous 1982 Clydebuilt season, which in “aiming to retrieve a series of Scottish working-class plays from the first half of the twentieth century”, had featured revivals of both plays (Holdsworth 2002, xviii).2

From the outset, the absence of the huge running costs associated with a large building meant that the NTS could put almost all of its resources into the creation of performance work. Consequently, the new company appeared prolific almost immediately and has continued to do so. The remainder of its 2013 season will be predictably diverse. Highlights will include a main stage adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s cult Swedish vampire movie, Let the Right One In by John Tiffany and Stephen Hogget who collaborated on Black Watch and the Tony award winning Once (2011). In March, Wils Wilson will lead a team engaging the population of Shetland in an ambitious site-specific production about the car and its impact on island life. Stewart Laing’s Glasgow based Untitled Projects, will reconstruct Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner at the Tramway in June and five new pieces of work, by Rob Drummond, Kieran Hurley, Gary McNair, Nic Green and Claire Cunningham, will emerge from the NTS and The Arches’ Auteurs Creative Development Programme.

In January 2013 the NTS announced, following a £2m cash injection from the Scottish Government, its intention to consolidate its headquarters in a new £5.5 million home to include rehearsal, administration, technical and storage space, in the north of Glasgow. Its second artistic director, Laurie Sansom, will be in post from March 2013. Rather than focusing on the precise details of the company’s programming strategy in relation to perceived understandings of a Scottish theatrical canon, or complaining that its output is not Scottish enough, commentators should focus their attention on the potentially negative consequences of the NTS’s remarkable success. The NTS may indeed cast a shadow so wide that it prevents small scale or new companies flourishing. It is after all, only by safeguarding the future of smaller companies that Scotland can consolidate its innovative performance culture and continue to provide the strong foundation on which the success of the NTS has been built. 2 Holdsworth stresses it was the 7:84 revival that established Lamont Stewart’s play as a Scottish classic.

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References Benkler, Yochai. 2006. The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale

University Press. Eaton-Lewis, Andrew. 2012. “The Year of Creative Scotland: A Branding

Exercise Overshadowed by Controversy.” The Scotsman, December 30.

Cameron, Ewen. 2010. Impaled Upon a Thistle: Scotland Since 1880. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Dixon, Steve. 2007. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art and Installation. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Giannachi, Gabriella. 2004. Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1974. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article.” New German Critique 3: 49-55.

Hassan, Gerry. 2009. The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Harvie, Jen. 2005. Staging the UK. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Holdsworth, Nadine. 2002. “Introduction.” In Naked Thoughts That Roam About: Reflections on Theatre 1958-2001, by John McGrath, edited by Nadine Holdsworth, xv-xxii. London: Nick Hern Books.

—. 2008. “The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama: Place, Politics and Identity.” In A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama, edited by Nadine Holdsworth and Mary Luckhurst, 125-145. Malden: Blackwell.

Kruger, Loren. 1992. The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France and America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Leach, Robert. 2006. “The Astonishing History of the National Theatre of Scotland.” New Theatre Quarterly 23 (2): 171-183.

McDrone, David. 2001. Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Nation. London: Routledge.

McMillan, Joyce. 2011. “Thorn in Their Side: Nursing the Thistle of Scottish Political Theatre.” The Scotsman, December 17.

—. 2007. “The Journey of Jeanie Deans.” The Scotsman, August 9. —. 2006. The Scotsman, February 4. Mitchell, James, Lynn Bennie and Rob Johns. 2012. The Scottish National

Party: Transition to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Muller, Anja and Clare Wallace, eds. 2011. Cosmopotia: Transnational Identities in David Greig’s Theatre. Prague: Univerzita Karlova.

National Theatre Scotland. 2012a. “Black Watch”. Accessed December 2. http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_BlackWatch2012.

—. 2012b. “Five Minute Theatre.” Accessed December 2. http://fiveminutetheatre.com/sign-up/. —. 2009. “Manifesto.” Accessed December 2. http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s7_7. Pattie, David. 2011. “Gregory Burke.” In The Methuen Drama Guide to

Contemporary British Playwrights, edited by Aleks Sierz, Martin Middeke and Peter Schnierer, 22-41. London: Methuen.

—. 2008. “Mapping the Terrain: Modern Scottish Drama.” In Cruel Britannia: British Political Drama in the 1990s, edited by Rebecca D’Monté and Graham Saunders, 143-157. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Rebellato, Dan. 2006. “Playwriting and Globalisation: Towards a Site-Unspecific Theatre.” Contemporary Theatre Review 16 (1): 97-113.

Reid, Trish. 2007. “‘From Scenes Like These Old Scotia’s Grandeur Springs’: The New National Theatre of Scotland.” Contemporary Theatre Review 17 (2): 192-201.

Reinelt, Janelle. 2011. “David Greig.” In The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights, edited by Aleks Sierz, Martin Middeke and Peter Schnierer, 203-222. London: Methuen.

Scott, Paul Henderson. 2010. “Ignorance is No Excuse When it Comes to Culture.” The Scotsman, February 25.

Scottish Government. 2012. “National Performing Companies: Annual Report of Activity 2010/11.” Accessed December 2.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/ 2012/03/4177/4. Scullion, Adrienne, 2007. “Devolution and Drama.” In The Edinburgh

Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature, edited by Berthold Schoene, 68-77. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Sierz, Aleks. 2011. Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today. London: Methuen.

Staging the Nation. 2011. “David Greig and Paul Henderson Scott: The Scottish Play.” Accessed December 2. http://stagingthenation.com/the-scottish-play/.

Stevenson, Randall. 2011. “Drama, Language and Revival.” In The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama, edited by Ian Brown, 73-84. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Watson, Murray. 2003. Being English in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Zerdy, Joanne. 2011. “Stages of Governance: the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics and National Subjects in Performance.” Contemporary Theatre Review 21 (2): 171-188.

PART III:

AUDIENCES IN SMALL NATIONS

CHAPTER SEVEN

LANGUAGE, ACCENT AND IDENTITY IN SCOTTISH FILM:

AUDIENCE PERCEPTIONS

JACQUI COCHRANE

The focus of this chapter is on the use of Lowland working-class Scottish accents within film as a means of reproducing a national class identity.1 It is based on audience research carried out in 2010, and examines how the accents within Richard Jobson’s 2003 film 16 Years of Alcohol function among the film’s various audiences to inform understandings of Scottish identity. 16 Years was chosen of the focus for two main reasons: firstly, it was filmed in post-devolution Scotland; and secondly, the film is notable for challenging a number of historical representations which are often employed in the construction of Scottish identities (see also Cochrane 2013). The chapter is informed by Benedict Anderson’s (1983) theory of print capitalism, the establishing of standard languages and their utility in the construction of the nation as an “imagined community”, and the resulting power relations within those nations. The standard language of a nation is argued to stem from the vernacular, which was modified and standardised through print, so that speakers of various dialects could also share a common language. This common language became the language of the state and thus of authority.

Accents are a stylistic mode of language (how we pronounce words). Again, through the discourse of power, some accents are attributed with higher prestige than others. An example of this in Britain is Received 1 Scotland is often divided geographically into the Highlands and Lowlands. In simplified terms, the Highlands were largely settled by the Gaels; the Lowlands by the Angles. Many of the cultural products associated with Scotland, such as kilts and tartan, were historically attributed to the Highlands. The adoption of “Highland culture” as “Scottish culture” was above all due to the influence of the Romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott (see Paterson 1994, 42-43; Martin 2009).

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Pronunciation (RP). RP is often associated with the south of England, and now also known as BBC English after the BBC’s first Director General John Reith’s insistence on its use by radio broadcasters.2

Within this essay the discourses surrounding identity and accent are also explored in terms of Bourdieu’s (1991, 66-89) theory of strategies of condescension. Bourdieu asserts that:

Utterances receive their value (and their sense) only in their relation to a market, characterised by a particular law of price formation. The value of the utterance depends on the relation of power that is concretely established between the speaker’s linguistic competences, understood both as their capacity for production and as their capacity for appropriation and appreciation; it depends, in other words, on the capacity of the various agents involved in the exchange to impose the criteria of appreciation most favourable to their own products. (Bourdieu 1991, 67)

I argue it is not only the use of the Scots language, as has been illustrated by Corbett (2008) and O’Donnell (2008), which sustains preconceptions in contemporary understandings and reconstructions of Scottish identity, but also accent, for where Lowland working-class Scottish accent is used, some audiences appear unable to see beyond the stereotypical uneducated persona of many mediated representations of Scottish working-class identity. Initially, I outline a brief socio-historic perspective of the erosion of Scots as a language of authority, and a short insight into some older and some more up-to-date uses of Scottish accents in film. The findings from the audience research, in terms of accent and working-class Scottishness, are discussed in relation to the film 16 Years of Alcohol in three parts: the director Richard Jobson’s perceptions; discourses emerging from press reviews; and the perceptions of audience focus groups.3

It is important to note that the present discussion centres exclusively on the masculine mediated voice. The reason for this is due to themes emerging from the data. There may appear to be an assumption running throughout this discussion that Scottish working-class identity in the media is synonymous with masculine identity. This is a perception which has been widely discussed (Petrie 2004; Neely 2008; Sillars and MacDonald 2008). I would argue that 16 Years does incorporate challenges to perceptions of Scottish masculinity and Scotland as a “masculine” nation, drawing on a number of female narratives to do so. However, this discussion is not within the scope of the current chapter. 2 See the British Library website for more information on Received Pronunciation: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/find-out-more/received-pronunciation/ 3 Richard Jobson, interviewed by the author, June 2010.

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Scots as a language: a brief history

Before the mediated connotations of Lowland working-class Scottish accent are examined in more detail it is important to understand the historic background of the move towards Scots as a “poor relation” of Standard English. Prior to James VI of Scotland’s ascension to the throne of England as James I in 1603, the Scots language is argued to have existed in a standardised form as well as in numerous dialects or vernaculars as is the case with English today (Daiches 1964; Smith 2000; Brown 2011). After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 Scotland remained politically independent of England, but the countries were now joined by their shared monarchy. King James moved his permanent residence to London and many of the Scottish nobles followed suit. Daiches (1964, 20) purports that it was around this time that Scotland’s literati began to make a conscious shift from Scots to the English of the Royal Court in London. This was due to the King’s Court (and his associated patronage of the arts) now being located in London. The suggestion put forward by Daiches is that this shift resulted in the eventual reduction of Scots from the status of a language to that of a vernacular. In 1707, after years of negotiation, the Scottish and English parliaments joined under the Act of Union. Paterson’s (1994) analysis of the construction of modern Scotland accords with Diaches’ (1964) views on the use of Scots as diminished in terms of stature. Patterson contends that the Act of Union produced a new Scottish middle-class (1994, 27), who along with Scotland’s existing elite, became proficient at maintaining a dual identity, choosing when to be Scottish and when to be British. As the Scottish middle-class evolved they learned how to eschew what were by then considered to be “Scotticisms” in their speech, and in order to compete with their English counterparts, became increasingly linguistically versatile (ibid., 43-44). Finally, the Scots language received a further blow in the nineteenth century when Lowland Scots was banned from Scottish classrooms (Billig, 1995, 27). Educating Scotland, a Scottish Government website, shows for just how long and until how recently this ban existed:

From the time of Burns to the banning of the belt in the 1980s, children in Scotland could be given corporal punishment for speaking their own language. Schools made no provision for those who brought Scots to the classroom and teachers were told they had a duty to rid their pupils of their Scots tongue. (Educating Scotland 2012)

Within Scotland there are many variations of spoken Scots. O’Donnell

(2008) maintains that the effects of centuries of language division within

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Scotland described above still resonate today. He argues that irrespective of the regional origins of specific Scots dialects, “Scots operates [within the media] to suggest working-class origins, lack of education, and even lack of ambition” (ibid., 126), the consequence being that it is not only some of the more anglicised upper and middle-classes who look down upon the Scots language, regarding it in some instances as unattractive and backwards. O’Donnell states that some speakers of Scots themselves see Scots as “inferior and even as a sign of narrow horizons” (ibid., 134). As a result, there is evidence of the use of Scots being used as a signifier of binary opposites in performed identities in order to reflect differences in authority and power relations between characters in Scottish soap operas (ibid., 131-5).

It is understandable, then, that within realist media texts, Scots is widely accepted as a means of representing the Scottish working-class and underclass (Corbett 2008; O’Donnell 2008). I argue that due to the economic requirements of mainstream media to be accessible to a wide audience, the use of Scots can be replaced, sometimes completely, by a Lowland working-class accent to produce similar understandings of intelligence and hierarchy within the narrative. And, that where this understanding is challenged, it may be perceived as inauthentic by some audiences.

Language and accent in Scottish films

Depending on the narrative, the predominant use of Scots (language) in a film is seen by some film-makers as adding to the authenticity of the piece. However, Scots can also be deemed a drawback to audience reach. For example, in a recent interview Daniel Boyle discussed the production of his film Leaving (1989) and the debate surrounding the use of Scots for a network production.4 The film mainly uses Scottish Standard English (SSE), but does include a few Scots words. Boyle stated that the producers conceded to the retention of some key Scots words in order to provide an air of naturalism, but not too many as to make the film inaccessible for a wider British audience. However, the same cannot be said for films such as Ken Loach’s (2002) Sweet Sixteen or Danny Boyle’s (1996) Trainspotting. Both these films are heavily inflected with dialects of Scots, as well as strong Lowland working-class accents. The distributors of Sweet Sixteen even had to add subtitles for the first fifteen minutes of the film. Sweet Sixteen was, after the subtitles cease, described by Evening

4 Daniel Boyle, interviewed by the author, July 2012.


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Standard columnist Alexander Walker as “often unintelligible”. Walker argues that:

[M]uch of the time, one can’t understand what people in it are saying; their Glaswegian accents are near-impenetrable. They might be speaking Norse, or some Baltic tongue… foreshortening the queues to see it by ill-judged concern for the authenticity of Glaswegian speech is itself a mini-tragedy (sic). It should be subtitled all the way through. Foreign nations will comprehend it this way: why not the British? (Walker n.d.)

The benefit of subtitles can be seen in the earlier film Trainspotting.

Trainspotting achieved cult status among many of its audience and achieved the added bonus of spinoff sales of its music soundtrack. Other films not subtitled, but instead dubbed for the benefit of a wider audience, include Ken Loach’s (1980) That Sinking Feeling and Peter McDougall’s (1979) A Sense of Freedom. In fact, Peter McDougall was quite unimpressed with the anglicised dubbing of his film. At the 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival McDougall stated:

I wrote that. I wrote that as a younger man. An I watched my language being bastardised in order ti appeal tae what? Sumbidy in London? Because it wisnae that they changed ma lines… they changed the accents. (McDougall 2009, n.p.)

Both these films portray some of the harsh lived realities of sections of Scottish society in different times and places, realities which are not confined to within the borders of Scotland. But, does a film set in Scotland, or anywhere else, require the use of Scots rather than SSE to articulate a sense of understanding regarding the working-class identity of its Scottish protagonist? And must that understanding be burdened with all the negative baggage (as discussed by O’Donnell 2008 and Corbet, 2008) that apparently goes along with this identity?

Blain and Burnett (2008, 8-9) contend that popular mediated understandings of Scottishness are male and working-class. They argue that characters such as Rab C. Nesbit embody a “stunted version of Glaswegian identity” (ibid., 9) which is projected as symbolising Scottishness generally. By extension, this identity can be argued to encompass a degree of irrationality (invariably induced through the consumption of alcohol). Two recent examples of films which draw more on versions of Lowland working-class accents than language to help provide their characters with a well understood sense of “Scottishness” are the Disney productions of Alice in Wonderland (dir. Tim Burton 2010),

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and the animation film Brave (dir. Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman 2012). Johnny Depp’s (Alice in Wonderland) Hatter periodically draws on Depp’s version of a guttural West of Scotland Lowland working-class accent (along with sporadic use of “Highland” regalia as either a further signifier of his hardy and purposeful character or perhaps just to clear up any confusion over the accent).5 The Hatter recites dark poetry when he slips into his Scottish/Highland warrior persona. However, this poetry seems to act as a pointer to the unhinged/irrational element of his identity rather than any semblance of accepted understandings of intelligence or sanity.

The second film, Brave, uses accent in a similar semiological manner, along with images of loud, violent men who are partial to a regular “swally” (drink of alcohol). Billy Connolly, the discourses of whom Ian Mowatt acknowledges as playing “a crucial part in other people’s perceptions of Scotland” (2008, 137), was widely publicised as one of the leading characters, Fergus. The depiction of the Standing Stones and the reference to Stornoway by the Witch (also referred to as the Crafty Wood Carver) suggest that the film is set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.6 However, the accents among the males are working-class Lowland (notably Billy Connolly’s unmistakable and very pronounced voiceover). Clan Dingwall which, given the name, would be expected to sound more Highland in their register (Dingwall being geographically northwest of Inverness)7 are a mix of Central Belt and Aberdeenshire (North East coast of Scotland) accents, with the overall pejorative connotations of lacking intelligence. The male characters of Brave could be described as almost Neanderthal in their behaviour and attitudes—that is in relation to Emma Thompson’s character Elinor’s (wife of Fergus) more refined middle-class accent, mannerisms and characteristics. Attitudes to accents of the Scots are naturalised further within Brave by an apparent “in joke” regarding the impenetrable nature of the Northeast coast Scottish dialect and accent for other communities of Scotland—a concept previously discussed by Corbett (2008, 28-29).

5 See Blain and Burnett (2008, 4) for further discussion on the semiological function of Highland garb. 6 There are only two sets of Standing Stones in Scotland: one in Callanish on the Isle of Lewis; the other in Stenness on the Isle of Orkney. 7 Inverness is widely regarded as the capital of the Highlands.


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16 Years of Alcohol

16 Years is shot in a dream-like sequence with the protagonist retrospectively looking back over his past while he is kicked to death. The film is set in Edinburgh and follows the life of protagonist Frankie Mac, played by Kevin McKidd, through three distinct periods: pre-teen; late-teens; and ultimately his 30s. Murray gives a very apt, concise synopsis of the film when he states, “16 Years of Alcohol explores a man’s attempts to redeem the damage inflicted on his psyche by immersion in an urban upbringing soaked in machismo, gang violence and hard liquor” (2007, 84).

Between the film’s title and descriptions such as this, it is easy to form an opinion of the film before viewing it. However, I would like to draw attention to the language and the Scottish accent of the protagonist, Frankie Mac, who provides the narration throughout the film. Unlike films such as A Sense of Freedom or Trainspotting, this is not a film immediately identifiable as one which requires dubbing or subtitles. Although the narrator has a very distinctive Lowland Scottish working-class accent, he speaks clearly in well-paced SSE. For example, at the very beginning of the film the narrator quite clearly says: “sometimes, for some people, things don’t work out as they might’ve hoped”. If this were to be spoken in a more realistic working-class Scottish regional (Central Belt) dialect it may have sounded a bit more like: “some’imes, fur some folk, hings dinnae work oot is th(e) migh-a hoped”.

As the film progresses, the use of accent in relation to representing power relations becomes more visible—not only in a hierarchical sense of class within a British context but also a Scottish one.8 In the art exhibition scene (52min16s) Frankie asks two middle-class Scots (signified through various mise-en-scène elements including dress, posture, language and accent) what makes one painting better than another. Although Frankie appears to display a genuine inquisitiveness, the middle-class woman tells him to “piss off”, and her husband soon instructs Frankie to “please fuck off”. The way in which these middle-class characters respond to Frankie is not a middle-class riposte; instead it illustrates what Bourdieu (1991, 72) refers to as effects of symbolic domination. The social conditions within the art gallery—the way in which the couple dress, speak and refer to the art-work on display, in opposition to Frankie’s apparent ignorance and his mode of speech—demonstrate the couple’s symbolic capital. The couple’s use of such direct language, particularly when foregrounded by “please”, 8 See O’Donnell (2008, 131) for a fuller account of Scottish internal hierarchy of language and class in relation to soap operas.

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exemplifies their feeling of class superiority as it suggests that this is the only form of language which Frankie will understand. It is made abundantly clear that it is Frankie who does not belong in the “artistic and educated” environment. A similar condescension (Bourdieu, 1991) is repeated in the drama club scene (1hr 14mins 30s). Frankie has turned up late yet again, and is held to account by the middle-class English organiser (again primarily positioned via accent). The director immediately adopts a mode of speech, full of expletives, which Frankie “will understand”.

Richard Jobson

With reference to the drama club scene, director Richard Jobson was asked if there was significance behind his decision to cast an overtly English actor as the drama club Director (played by Jim Carter). The Director speaks in SE with, what can be described in some circumstances, as a “soft” English middle-class accent in comparison to Frankie’s “harsher” Scottish Lowland working-class accent. Jobson’s view that an English voice is more effective, in that particular role, than a middle-class Scottish voice can be seen as evidence of the discursive formations which appear to stem from the earlier outline of the demise of Scots as a prestigious language in its own right:

What I think I’ve found in my journey through the various things that I’ve been involved with in my cultural life in Scotland is that the people in charge invariably end up being English. And it’s a question that I kind of ask myself ‘isn’t there somebody here good enough to do that job? Haven’t we educated someone within our own country who is able?’ And they don’t even have to be Scottish, just someone who’s from here, been educated here who is capable of doing that job.... So yeah I think it’s a small point I made but I think there was a kind of edge to that, I mean I could have easily made it a kind of Kelvinside9 middle-class Scot or from Morningside or something but I think by differentiating his voice I think it was important. Also I don’t really like accents in films so I just want the actors to use their own voices. (Interview 2010)

The first part of Jobson’s response reproduces an understanding of perceptions of Scotland as being subordinate to England. However, Jobson

9 Kelvinside is a district of Glasgow and Morningside is a district of Edinburgh. Both are the butt of working-class jokes in Scotland as they are areas associated with the pretentions of the Scottish petit bourgeois due to their perceived over concern with outward appearances and overly corrected use of English. See Bourdieu (1991: 82-87) for his theory on the “logic of pretension”.


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is adamant in his assertion that there was no overt intention on his part to convey a wider political or social message. Instead, Jobson prefers to see his film as a story of one working-class man’s struggle to find love and ultimately peace within his life. Despite that, it is argued here that having seen Kevin McKidd in other films and television roles performing a representation of a Scotsman, including his recent BBC Scotland drama One Night in Emergency (2010), his accent within 16 Years is noticeably stronger than in many of those roles. Additionally, McKidd during an interview in 2009 discussed the difference between his indigenous accent and the accent he generally uses now. At this time he stated, “the voice I have essentially is a very middle-class kind of neutral Scottish accent” (McKidd 2009).

In the context of Jobson’s full response, and McKidd’s Lowland working-class accent within the film, I suggest that despite Jobson’s assertion at the end that he does not really like accents in films, there appears to have been some direction, not necessarily conscious, within the construction of the narrative regarding the strength of the Scottish accent used. Another explanation may be that McKidd himself felt it appropriate, and was left by Jobson, to adjust his everyday accent. Due to the characterisation which Jobson wishes to portray of his protagonist, and the wider mainstream audience he intended to reach, it would have been difficult for Jobson to have Frankie Mac (McKidd) speak in a dialect of Scots. Prolific use of Scots, as identified earlier, would have required subtitling and a possible further narrowing of audience appeal. This suggests then that Jobson, in his direction of the film, found it perfectly reasonable to substitute accent in preference to language as a signifier of the protagonist’s national and social identity, as is argued to have been the case in Brave and Alice in Wonderland.

Having said that, Jobson is conscious of problematizing what he considers to be the dominant notion of the working-class Scotsman within the media. The interview extract below illustrates Jobson’s conscious decision to challenge some of these unflattering images. This extract also provides an account of the obstacles Jobson and other film-makers face:

I was very aware of how working-class men are depicted in Scottish films. Often [they are depicted] as the hard man or as you know a kind of dysfunctional creature. I wanted my man to have those qualities because that is part of him but he’s also quite a poetic lyrical man who’s got, you know, deep in his soul there is a bit of compassion that he tries to ignore but then it becomes so big he can’t ignore it, but he’s wrapped in his own sense of history… in the context of this man he’s Scottish, but I wanted him to be different from other depictions on the big screen; I wanted him to

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have a poetry about him. Some people didn’t like that, some of the funding bodies I went to see said it was too poetic for a man from that background which I found very insulting ‘cos you know I’m from that background and you know I like poetry and so you know, what does that mean? (Interview 2010)

Jobson insists that 16 Years is not his autobiography, but instead reflects elements of his own familial and wider cultural upbringing. From a Foucauldian (Foucault 2002) perspective of discourse, Jobson appears to be speaking from a Scottish working-class subject position. Consequently Jobson feels that his portrayals provide a more authentic perspective of a working-class male in Scotland, labelling those film-makers with no experiences of working-class life as voyeurs in their work.

The following section provides some evidence that sections of the film’s audience (professional film reviewers) did indeed appear to find the poetic nature of the narration, in conjunction with the working-class identity of the protagonist, problematic. However, a conflict of opinion also emerges amongst the reviewers.

Press reviews

The discourses of 27 reviews were analysed. There were more available but repeat reviews by reviewers who wrote for more than one publication were excluded from the collection process, as were public internet blog-type reviews. This process facilitated the analysis of the contribution of a public institution (journalism) attributed with an “authoritative voice” (Foucault, 1981). To make efficient use of time, the British Film Institute’s (BFI) archive service department was contacted to commission a search of their databases for reviews pertaining to the film. As the results of the BFI only related to British issues, a search of the web-based newspaper database LexisNexis was carried out for specifically Scottish issues. A further search of the film review website Rotten Tomatoes “Top Critics” was carried out for any other national reviews.

The style of film narration used throughout 16 Years generally received a mixed response. Ten articles on the film were informative pieces based on interviews with either Jobson or McKidd; they avoided explicit opinion and made no mention of the film’s non-diegetic narration. A further two reviewers liked the film but not the narration. There is no national or social discourse within these two reviews. For example, Dan Fainaru in his review for Screen International (2003, 20) states:


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16 Years of Alcohol is very much a writer’s film, relying on the spoken word more than the impact of images, although they are carefully planned and executed.... But it all drowns in massive off-screen voiceovers, which instead of helping, eventually become counterproductive.

As these two reviewers actually give an overall positive impression of the film it appears that the narration as a film aesthetic is the problem for them. Contrary to this opinion eleven other overall positive reviews of the film, although on occasion pointing out various perceived flaws, praised Kevin McKidd’s narration as enhancing the poetic and lyrical nature of the film. The following extract from Hannah McGill’s review in The Herald (Glasgow edition) (2004, 8) illustrates this view:

16 Years distinguishes itself with its decisive rejection of unobtrusive naturalism. It is unapologetically a piece of art, which strives to express human experience through an impressively synthesised combination of visual, sonic and verbal impressions, and which is unafraid to employ boldly anti-naturalistic devices along the way.

Thus far I have broadly outlined the opinions from across 23 of the 27

reviews. The corpus of data here is drawn from a mixture of Scottish tabloid and broadsheet press, British broadsheets and professional film industry magazines. In particular, Hannah McGill’s (2004) review demonstrates that Jobson’s comfort with working-class Scottish men being portrayed as intelligent, poetic and lyrical is shared by others with an “authoritative voice” on film. However, the final four reviews analysed run counter to this opinion.

These final four reviews are particularly negative in nature. Much of the negativity draws on what is often described as the pretentious nature of the narration. These reviews range across two Scottish broadsheets, an American broadsheet and a film magazine. Alastair McKay of The Scotsman (2004, 16) suggests that the poetry is unsophisticated, but that this is only to be expected from a “character such as Frankie”:

The pretentiousness of the voiceover frequently takes the film to the point of self-parody. It is, of course, arguable that a character such as Frankie would speak in bad poetry, about hope being ‘a currency for people who know they are losing’.

This quote could be read as reproducing a common media discourse in relation to the Tartan Army, the supporters of Scotland’s national football team, recognised certainly by the British press as living in a constant state of hope (even when they are losing). This and the nature of football in

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Scotland as a signifier of working-class identity, albeit that the game is now argued to have a much more mixed following (O’Donnell 2010, 219), suggests that the use of Scots in 16 Years has not been necessary to inform McKay’s views. Accent, along with the other narratives have sufficed. Andy Dougan of the Evening Times (Glasgow) (2004, 2) also derides the film for its “sombre, sonorous voiceover” and further states “unfortunately people don’t think in Frankie’s kind of language nor do they speak in anything like the dialogue in the rest of the film”.

As opposed to McGill (2004) and the other positive reviews, these reviewers do not refer to the surreal, non-naturalistic element of 16 Years. Rather the discourse of these reviewers appears to centre more on their understandings of social identity within Scotland. The way in which Dougan employs the terms “people” and “they”, and given that the filmic style has not been mentioned, infers that Dougan may actually mean “those” people. Certainly, within the context of this film at least, it is a viewpoint which does not sit well with Jobson himself.

The language used by the latter group of reviewers reproduces a similar discourse to that of the film funding bodies mentioned in Jobson’s earlier interview extract. It would seem here then, that within some “cultural elite” positions, that Scottish accent is understood in the same terms as mediations of the Scots language, the implied “them” and “us” echoing what Tom Leonard condemned as differentiation of “‘the language of the gutter’ from ‘the language of the intellect’” (Leonard cited in Corbett 2008, 29) and remains consistent with seventeenth and eighteenth century constructions of Scottish identity through perceptions of language. However, it is important to note that this field is a space of dissension (Foucault 2002, 166-73) from which contradicting discourses are mediated, and facilitates the on-going battle surrounding popular understandings of what it is to be a Scottish Lowland working-class male.

Audience focus groups

Two focus group sessions, approximately an hour in length, were conducted as part of the original research. One group consisted of all Scots-born participants, and the other included a mixture of Scottish, American, English and Irish participants. A full description of the audience research design is available online in Cochrane (2011, 311-3). As accent was raised explicitly only among the group of Scots born participants, I have focused on the findings predominantly from within that group.


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Rebecca (female, 20s) raised the issue of accent to explain her confusion at the narrative’s sense of place: not being familiar with any of the Edinburgh landmarks used, she assumed by the voices that the film was located in Glasgow. This in itself may be a reproduction of an existing class discourse surrounding understandings of Scottish identity where Edinburgh is perceived to be middle-class and Glasgow working-class. Certainly neither Kevin McKidd nor Stuart Sinclair Blyth who plays one of McKidd’s sidekicks Miller, are from Glasgow (West)—they are from Elgin (North East) and Edinburgh (East) respectively.10 However, Rebecca then went on to make five sets of statements to express how unattractive she considered the working-class accents in the film to be:

It was clear to me that it was Scotland, but I actually thought it was set somewhere out Glasgow way to be honest, judging purely by his (McKidd’s) accent.... I think it makes Scottish people look kind of bad actually.... I heard his accent and I kinda thought ‘oh here we go, look at me, this is going to make us look really awful’. It’s like River City11 on the telly. I refuse to watch it because I think it makes us look really bad. It’s that horrible accent, if you happen to be in on a Wednesday morning and you catch Jeremy Kyle and you get a Scottish person and you think ‘is that what we sound like? Is that what the rest of the UK thinks that we’re like?’ (Rebecca, 20s, emphasis added).

It can be seen here that Rebecca has adopted both Scottish and British subject positions. In terms of how the accent portrays Scottish people she refers to “us” and “we”, clearly identifying herself as “Scottish”. However, Rebecca’s reference to “the rest of the UK” clearly places her as British, and it is from this position that her negative connotations appears to arise. As a point of interest, Rebecca’s mother Lynn (female, 49) also took part in this focus group. Lynn, born in Scotland, describes her national identity as British and both mother and daughter are described within the full analysis as middle-class. Although less vociferous in this particular discussion, it was evident from Rebecca’s mother Lynn that she held a very similar opinion to that of her daughter. However, mother and daughter’s opinions differed on a number of other issues. As a result, it is argued here that as regards perceptions of accent in Scotland, these participants’ views are informed via similar class-bound discursive 10 There is a mix of East and West of Scotland actors in the film: Frankie’s dad and dad’s lover are from Glasgow while Ewen Bremnar, who plays Jake the art student, is from Edinburgh. 11 River City is a soap opera produced by BBC Scotland since 2002. It is aired on BBC Scotland as part of their opt-out facility.

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formations. Thus Rebecca’s statements surrounding accents in the film are argued to stem from old established attitudes to the Scots language and class identities discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Consequently, there is evidence here to suggest, as is the case with some of the film reviews discussed above, that accent can be utilised without language to reinforce particular groups’ understandings of what it is to be educated and civilised in Scotland.

Interestingly, the other two members of this focus group were a working-class man who spoke in Scots and a middle-class man who, like the female participants, spoke in Scottish Standard English. Neither found the accents within the film problematic. In fact, their readings of the text were in line with that of Richard Jobson; both felt that this was not a representation of Scotland per se as it could apply to many other areas where there is perceived to be class division. It seems relevant here then to look at these findings from the perspective of gender.

Wardhaugh maintains that “women conform more closely than men to sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed” (2010, 335). As has been outlined above, in the case of Scotland, English is now the officially prescribed norm. Wardhaugh goes on to state that women also “show a greater sensitivity to language forms, especially standard ones” (2010, 346). The implication here is that the combined female and middle-class subject positions of Lynn and Rebecca, in conjunction with each other, provide one explanation as to the strength of the respondents’ negative constructions of Scottish identity in relation to accent. Indeed, Wardhaugh’s assertion is strengthened on examination of the discourse of the third Scottish female participant, Ruth. Ruth was not present in the same focus group as Rebecca and her mother; she attended the mixed national focus group and defined herself as working-class.12 However, in line with Wardhaugh’s findings Ruth, like Rebecca and Lynn, spoke in Scottish Standard English. Ruth, however, did not share the same views on the film as Lynn and Rebecca. Ruth’s responses countered the more negative perceptions of those who speak with a working-class Scottish accent, and in turn rejected an essentialist understanding of urban working-class identity. Ruth, as with some other members of her group, voiced an understanding of family background and wider social experiences as shaping one’s identity. Although the modes of speaking of these three female respondents appear to give weight to Wardhaugh’s theory, an

12 Ruth is also married to the Scots-speaking participant (James) who took part in the focus group with Rebecca and her mother Lynn. James clearly did not fit the various negative stereotypes discussed by O’Donnell (2008).


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exploration of gender on its own is not sufficient to gain understanding of perceptions of working-class identity and accent in Scotland.

Conclusion

These more negative connotations of Lowland working-class identity, as discussed by O’Donnell (2008) and Blain and Burnett (2008: 9), are a common language of reference which facilitates international sales. Even those who may not agree with them recognise and often enjoy them particularly, as Corbett (2008) argues, when accompanied by humour (also see Mowatt, 2008). However, Corbett (2008, 30) voices concern about the narrow genres available to the Scots language—predominantly comedy. Is there a danger that the use of a strong working-class Scottish accent (and here I am not referring to the speech of actors like Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor or David Tennant who resonate a more middle-class persona), for purposes of wider saleability, is befalling the same fate as Scots on screen? Rab C. Nesbit is portrayed partly as a philosophical and intelligent man, yet this is countered in comedic fashion as he is synonymous with loud, aggressive drunken behaviour—again salient images of Scotland.13 Fergus (Brave) does display some softer, more intuitive characteristics, yet this is also done under the auspices of comedy. More serious portrayals which have attempted to counter popular masculine narratives of Scotland, such as Tutti Frutti (BBC 1987), have not always been so popular with audiences (Cook 2008, 15-16).14

Certainly within 16 Years and Brave the use of heavily inflected Lowland working-class accent is the preserve of the male characters (there are no other “Scottish” characters in Alice in Wonderland). The findings of the audience research pertaining to 16 Years suggest that a Lowland working-class Scottish accent is perceived, in some instances, in similar negative terms to that of the Scots language as discussed by O’Donnell (2008). McKidd’s accent is not only an indicator of class here; in some instances it appears to restrict, in a negative sense, the discursive limits of that Scottish masculine class identity.

I do not suggest that the media are solely responsible for the reconstruction of this discourse; I believe that my findings show that this is indeed a complex social problem within Scotland. Yet I do suggest that the media’s capacity as story teller may go some way to aid a shift in the 13 For further discussions on comedy in representations of Scotland see Mowatt (2008) and Corbett (2008). 14 The author’s PhD research into the production and reception of Scottish film and television drama (1990-2010) aims to shed more light on this issue.

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hegemonic relations of understanding Scottish identity through accent. Although accent does not work on its own within 16 Years——there are a cumulative set of references which inform understandings of Scottish working-class identity—it is nevertheless predominant and consistent throughout the film. As Jobson has shown, a strong Lowland working-class Scottish accent does not have to be impenetrable to wider audiences. The problem may unfortunately lie in the willingness of a wider audience, or those in positions of authority within the media, to break away from the more common, or comfortable frames of reference.

References

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso.

Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Blain, Neil and Kathryn Burnett. 2008. “A Cause Still Unwon: The

Struggle to Represent Scotland.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 3-19. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by G. Raymond and M. Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Brown, Ian. 2011. “Drama as a Means for Uphaudin Leid Communities.” In Sustaining Minority Language Communities: Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland, edited by John M. Kirk and Dónall P. Ó Baoill, 243-248. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona Queen’s University Belfast.

Cochrane, Jacqui. 2011. “16 Years of Alcohol: An Allegory of a Nation?” Participations 8: 308-326. http://www.participations.org/Volume%208/Issue%202/3b%20Cochrane.pdf.

Corbett, John. 2008. “Scots, English and Community Languages in the Scottish Media.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 20-34. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Cook, John. 2008. “Three Ring Circus: Television Drama about, by and for Scotland.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 107-122. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Daiches, David. 1964. The Paradox of Scottish Culture: The Eighteenth-Century Experience. London: Open University Press.

Dougan, Andy. 2004. “16 Years of Alcohol.” Evening Times (Glasgow), July 29.


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Education Scotland/Foghlam Alba. 2012. “Knowledge of Language: History of Scots.” Accessed November 21.

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/knowledgeoflanguage/scots/introducingscots/history/index.asp.

Fainaru, Dan. 2003. “Jobson’s Intense Debut Portrays a Life of Turmoil.” Screen International, August 15.

Foucault, Michael. 1981. The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality: Volume One. Translated by R. Hurley. London: Penguin.

—. 2002. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge.

Martin, Maureen, M. 2009. The Mighty Scot: Nation, Gender, and the Nineteenth-Century Mystique of Scottish Masculinity. New York: Sunny Press.

McDougall, Peter. 2012. “EIFF TV Film Rushes: Day 4.” Dailymotion. Accessed October 25. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/ x9nnss_fest ival-rushes-day-4_shortfilms.

McGill, Hannah. 2004. “Film Festival Reviews.” The Herald (Glasgow), July 29.

McKay, Alastair. 2004. “Film of the Week: 16 Years of Alcohol (18).” The Scotsman, July 29.

McKidd, Kevin. 2011. “HBO’s Rome – Kevin McKidd Interview.” indie LONDON go anywhere virtually. Accessed May 25.

http://www.indielondon.co.uk/TV-Review/hbo-s-rome-kevin-mckidd-interview.

Murray, Jonathan. 2007. “Scotland.” In The Cinema of Small Nations, edited by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, 76-92. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mowatt, Ian. 2008. “Broadcast Comedy.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 137-150. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

O’Donnell, Hugh. 2008. “Nae Bevvying, Nae Skiving: Language and Community in the Scottish Soap Opera.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 123-136. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

—. 2010. “Class Warriors or Generous Men in Skirts? The Tartan Army in the Scottish and Other Presses.” In From Tartan to Tartanry: Scottish Culture, History and Myth, edited by Ian Brown, 212-231. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Paterson, Lindsay. 1994. The Autonomy of Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Petrie, Duncan. 2004. Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and the Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Sillars, Jane and Macdonald, Myra. 2008. “Gender, Spaces, Changes: Emergent Identities in a Scotland in Transition.” In The Media in Scotland, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchison, 183-198. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Smith, Jeremy J. 2000. “Scots.” In Britain and Ireland, edited by Glanville Price, 159-170. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Walker, Alexander. 2012. Sweet Sixteen (Cert 18).” Mail Online. Accessed October 16. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-141105/Sweet-Sixteen-Cert-18.html.

Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2010. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DOMESTICATING PORTUGUESE TELEVISION

ANABELA DE SOUSA LOPES

This chapter discusses the role of television within Portuguese family life. In particular, it examines how the domestication of television within the home is influenced by the social context in which different types of families live. The research is framed around the theory of domestication and based on 50 semi-structured interviews.1

“Domestication” is the process by which the household and its surroundings (both private and the public), together with the moral and formal or objective economy, are related to each other and become mutually constitutive (Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley 1999). The metaphor of “domestication” originally comes from the taming of wild animals, but has been usefully applied to the “domestication” of information communication technology (ICT), including television, within the home. Silverstone et al. (1999) have developed a range of concepts to capture this process, of which the best known are: “appropriation”, “objectification”, “incorporation” and “conversion”. These categories describe how the entry of ICT into the home is managed; how artefacts are physically (and symbolically) placed within the home; how they are adapted into everyday routines; and how they are displayed to others (Haddon 2007, 26). These four key concepts will be used in this chapter to discuss the importance of television within Portugal as an example of a small country in which there has been little research using this particular theoretical approach. Most studies on Portuguese television have focused on televisual history or come from research into trends in television consumption. The domestication theory is a holistic framework, useful to

1 This forms part of a larger international project entitled Digital Inclusion and Participation: Comparing the Trajectories of Digital Media Use by Majority and Disadvantage Groups in Portugal and in the USA (UT Austin/Portugal Program).

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explain the meaning of television in Portuguese homes in all the stages of its presence in daily life.

The domestication approach

The “domestication” approach emerged in Britain during the 1990s. It formed part of a broader shift away from deterministic approaches to technology and the media, which saw consumers as passive, towards an emphasis on the importance of the media as part of people’s everyday social experience. For Silverstone et al., the pioneers of this approach, it was important to see individuals in a more balanced dialogue with the different forms of media with which they lived. They emphasised that consumers live in a permanent process of negotiation with the media. Sometimes the media leads this process; other times it is shaped by the needs and desires of the individual. In either case, there is “reciprocity” in the process of media consumption, whether this happens within public or private spaces, alone or collectively.

Domestication helps explain the process through which artefacts are consumed. When artefacts enter the home they help to create new family routines and challenge existing social relationships. At the same time, they are themselves shaped by the characteristics of individual family members. As Ward (2006, 150) explains: “While users have the capacity to actively shape the technology, the artefact has the potential to influence human action as well”. However, the process is not linear:

Domestication as a process of bringing things home—machines and ideas, values and information—which always involves the crossing of boundaries: above all those between the public and the private, and between proximity and distance, is a process which also involves their constant renegotiation. (Silverstone 2006, 233)

The process of domestication is characterised by active consumption and is not immune to the individual characteristics of each private sphere or each family. Indeed, technologies are appropriated to meet a specific reality—a pre-existent set of rules which certainly will be challenged, yet will be highlighted by the new “family members”. One key question is whether the new artefacts will underline these rules or become a disruptive factor. Either way, whatever happens, nothing stays the same.

Silverstone et al. outline four main steps in the domestication process. The first step—“appropriation”—relates to the concept of ownership:

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[Technology] is appropriated at the point at which it is sold, at the point at which it leaves the world of the commodity and the generalized system of equivalence and exchange, and is taken possession of by an individual or household and owned. (Silverstone et al. 1999, 21)

In other words, this first stage of the domestication process signals the transition from public to private meaning.

“Objectification”—the second step in the domestication process—refers to the placing of objects in the spatial environment of the home. The spatial differentiation (private/shared/contested; adult/child/male/female, etc.) provides an understanding about the family dynamics (Silverstone et al. 1999, 23). If objectification refers to the spatial dimension of domestication, “incorporation”—the third step—relates to its temporal dimension: how individuals manage their time living with different technologies.

“Conversion”—the final step—is the step that reveals the most surprising and unpredictable information about media consumption, since it reflects the relationship between the household and the outside world. As Hynes and Roomes explain:

In the appropriation and conversion phase, emphasis seems to be on the symbolical meaning an artefact has, whereas during the objectification and incorporation dimension, the material expression of the symbolic meaning of the artefact is more relevant. (Hynes and Rommes 2006, 127)

The domestication approach does not ignore media content. Indeed,

one of its main goals is to know more about the interpenetration of technologies and family dynamics. As Hartman explains:

The aim in the domestication concept was not to let go of the focus on media content... but to create a different framework, which would add new aspects. These new foci provide reasons for calling domestication a reception and consumption theory of the appropriation of technology within the household. (Hartmann 2006, 83)

Hartmann argues that, if researchers only focus on context, it will not be possible to understand the changes in terms of content and the technologies themselves. This puts content first; only after this is the set of choices that fall on the media as a transmitter of messages questioned.

Leslie Haddon, who worked with Silverstone on the first ethnographic research on domestication, and who continues to explore the concept, recognizes that the uses of technologies outside the domestic space represent an important challenge to the domestication approach. For

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example, the use of internet in a café requires a readjustment of the dichotomy public space/private space, as it was useful when domestication was applied only to the domestic (private) spaces. Nevertheless, the value of the approach has been confirmed through studies about new media, new uses and new contexts. According to Silverstone (2006, 246), domestication is, in a sense, a way of preserving a personal and private world, against what is foreign and intrusive. This protection is different from refusing technologies, because it occurs through the relationships between consumers and technologies, some more successful than others. This perspective is especially interesting when framed in the hectic everyday life populated by multiple electronic media before which the individual seems powerless to stem the torrent of images and sounds that floods their lives (Gitlin, 2002). “Taming” the media means building interactions with them, in harmony, to serve the consumers’ interests.

Living with television

The first media to enter the home were welcomed with enthusiasm and reverence. Media technologies were placed in central spaces of the home, around which the family would gather. Television is the most popular example of this phenomenon. However, as Lynn Spigel’s (1992) research on the entry of television into the American home in the 1945-48 reveals, television also helped to underline existing power relations within the family. The television set—which about two-thirds of American households possessed by the 1950s—not only changed the layout of the living-room physically and symbolically; it also led to the adoption of new routines depending on the programmes broadcast. Moreover, it emphasised the patriarchal structure of the family, since the husband often took responsibility for the television set, while wives tended to combine domestic work with their leisure time in the household.

Though there is a wealth of ethnographic research on conflicts around the presence of television, it is difficult to determine whether these conflicts arose with the introduction of the medium into the home or were unveiled by them. Many American women accused television of being an obstacle to social life; as their husbands wanted to watch television so it became harder to plan activities outside home (Spigel 1992, 126). For Sennett (1986, 282) electronic communication is thus one of the means by which the very idea of public life was eroded.

In the first decades of television’s life it was common to wait for a programme, broadcasted once a week, as a special event. On that particular day or hour, families got together around the television set, a


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ritual which reinforced a sense of belonging. Another appealing aspect of television characteristics was (and still is) real-time transmission. This provided a sense of communion with something or someone distant. The constraint of spatial distance was mitigated by the effect of simultaneity when watching a life transmission (Dayan and Katz, 1999).

It was precisely with a live transmission that on February 14, 1957, Portugal had its first big challenge before the beginning of regular broadcasting on March 7. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited Portugal for four days, providing the Portuguese state broadcaster, Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP), with its first major event. The existence of the basic technical infrastructure and the popular interest and enthusiasm from the public were two factors that pushed RTP to this adventure. For Portuguese people, there could be no better incentive to start watching the new medium. The royal visit offered a kind of fairy tale which could be delivered to the entire nation through television:

RTP had then the opportunity to offer to an already significant number of television viewers the full coverage of the visit, mobilizing all the technical and human sources possible at that time. Every step of the Queen was rigorously documented and recorded by the reporters and their work was received in public spaces, mainly in Lisbon, Setubal and Santarem, where television sets were available. About one million people had the opportunity to live this historical moment of Portuguese television history. (Teves 2007, 62)

Television gradually became part of all Portuguese households, while

certain programmes became part of the country’s collective memory. In the fictional field, the first telenovela—Gabriela, produced by TV Globo (a Brazilian television network)—was first broadcast in Portugal in 1977, and immediately captured the attention of all generations. This Brazilian product was a breath of fresh air in a country that was leaving behind a dictatorial regime which lasted 48 years. The cultural differences, the Portuguese language spoken in a “peculiar way”, the exciting plot—all contributed to the enormous success of Gabriela. After the political revolution of 1974, this telenovela became a kind of revolution in Portuguese society. The country almost stopped when Gabriela was on the air. Some rural theatres changed their schedules so as not to collide with the television transmission. Other theatre halls installed television sets so people could watch the show while they were waiting for the beginning of the film or the play (Teves 2007, 234).

Colour television was introduced in 1980, and in 1992 the first private station, Sociedade Independente de Comunicação (SIC), was created. The

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following year, a new commercial competitor, Televisão Independente (TVI), began transmission. The Portuguese broadcasting landscape continued to expand with the introduction of cable television in 1994. Since then, Portuguese audiences have become more fragmented. Necessarily, the variety of thematic channels in “pay television” plus the offer of very similar programmes by the four generalist television channels (RTP1, RTP2, SIC and TVI) have been responsible for this change.

The break-up of RTP’s monopoly was the most significant change to the television broadcasting sector since the introduction of the medium.

Since the early days of television in Portugal, no structural changes have occurred in the relationship between the medium and the political power. Direct censorship was abolished after the 1974 revolution but RTP remained under the control of successive governments. A structural change took place in 1992 because, although new national channels were attributed to the safest possible actors, the government of the day lost, for the first time, the power to exercise direct influence over all television political output. The new commercial channels have their own agendas and the government is no longer able to suppress all sensitive information. (Sousa 1996, chap.7) Currently, the public company operates eight channels (RTP1, RTP2,

RTPi, RTP África, RTP Açores, RTP Madeira, RTP Memória and RTP Informação). RTP1 is oriented to serve the generality of the population; RTP2 has an educational vocation and pays particular attention to different cultural expressions and arts in general. RTP Internacional (RTPi) is the international channel of RTP which broadcasts to the Portuguese communities abroad. As Portugal has a strong colonial history and cultural and economic ties with Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa, RTP África was designed to reinforce this bond, broadcasting news and entertainment programmes to both Portuguese and African audiences. RTP Madeira and RTP Açores are regional channels, covering these two autonomous regions. RTP Memória is known as one of the most popular channels among elder consumers. The purpose of this channel is to recall old successes of RTP and to give voice to Portuguese television personalities that are no longer in the spotlight. Following the trend of the private Portuguese television companies, RTP Informação is a news channel that pays attention to daily subjects and has moments of debate and analysis of Portuguese and international political scene.

The first private station, SIC, has five channels in subscription television service: SIC Notícias (news channel), SIC Radical (talk shows, films and alternative humour shows), SIC Mulher (women issues), SIC Internacional (broadcasts abroad), SIC K (juvenile programmes). In 2011


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SIC produced “Laços de Sangue”, with a partnership with TV Globo, which won the prize for best telenovela in the 39th International Emmy Awards. TVI is the market leader in audiences since 2005. Portuguese telenovelas and reality shows like Big Brother are its most popular programmes. Although it has fewer channels compared to SIC, its direct competitor, the schedules are similar. TVI 24 is a news channel; TVI Internacional broadcasts to Andorra, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique; and TVI Ficção is dedicated to fiction programmes in general.

Despite the reconfigurations of media landscape over recent years, television is still the most popular medium in Portugal. A study by Obercom (the Portuguese Media Observatory) found that 55.3% of the country could not live without television, compared with 25.6% for mobile phones, 7.6% for radio, 6.4% for internet, 3.1.% for music and 1.5% for newspaper and magazines (Gustavo et al. 2009). However, while people have more television sets and are finding new ways to watch television (such as mobile phones or computers), the study also found young people tend to spend more time on the Internet than watching television.

Curiously, the findings of Eurodata TV Worldwide show that the consumption of television has increased during the last year:

In 2012, TV viewers around the world watched an average 3 hours 17 minutes of television a day, one minute more than in 2011. Europe drove this record as it was here that the strongest growth was registered, with 7 minutes more than in 2011 to reach 3 hours 55 minutes a day. The countries that have been hardest hit by the financial crisis recorded the biggest increases. Romania is thus the European record holder with nearly 5 hours 30 mins per person per day, while viewing increased by five minutes a day in Greece (4 hours 33 mins), seven minutes in Spain (4 hours 6 mins) and two minutes in Italy (4 hours 14 mins). Viewers’ appetite for television is supported above all by big events that bring viewers together and an increasingly rich content offer, spread across different devices.

In fact, in the context of the current financial crisis suffered by the country, Portuguese television consumption seems to be increasing. According to Marketest, in 2012 the average was 5 hours 5 minutes per person per day. Television is the cheapest medium to provide information and entertainment and this is certainly the main reason for this increase.

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Portuguese television and domestication

To examine the importance of television in Portugal, from its introduction in 1957 until the present day, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 50 individuals based in Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra.2 The research was conducted as part of a larger project entitled “Digital Inclusion and Participation—Comparing the Trajectories of Digital Media Use by Majority and Disadvantage Groups in Portugal and in the USA (2009-2011)”, led by the UT Austin/Portugal Program.3 Interview participants were selected to represent a wide range of family circumstances, both in Portugal and Austin, to ensure a common social mosaic. This included:

• Families that use public access; • Rural to urban families; • Families with children under 18 and those without; • Families involved in intervention programs/community outreach

programmes that help people learn about computers; • Immigrant and non-immigrant families; • Different regions from which people migrate; and • Families that are not sending their children to university.

The selection of interview subjects was closely monitored to ensure a balance of genders, social classes, level of education and ethnicities.

Analysis of the interview data focused on the role of television in relation to the theory of domestication. Hence the findings presented here refer specifically to the consumption of television within a Portuguese context. Other researchers within the project studied other aspects of the media using the same interview data. The four phases of the domestication process—appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion—will each be addressed in turn.4

“Appropriation” refers not only to the act of buying a television set, but also how consumers make it their own possession. As expected, the interviews confirmed that television was present in all households. 42% (21) of the respondents do not remember purchasing their television or

2 Participants were interviewed in pairs (father/son, father/daughter, mother/son, mother/daughter, and grandson/grandmother). There were 4 fathers, 9 sons, 1 grandson, 20 mothers, 15 daughters and 1 grandmother. 3 For more information: http://digital_inclusion.up.pt 4 Respondents are identified by their first name, age, education level, and profession.


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who decided to buy it, although the majority of these (15) were children. Of the 58% (29) who do remember, most (25) said it was the father who bought the television set. These findings were predictable, for the social, economic and cultural context in the two decades since the introduction of television into Portugal favoured the dominance of the male in all the spheres of the Portuguese society, including domestic spaces.

It is worth underlining the importance of television consumption in public spaces such as cafés before it became prevalent in Portuguese households. This is because the symbolic appropriation of the medium began to happen before the material ownership of it:

I don’t quite remember what kind of television shows I used to watch… but when I was young everything was in black and white… I do remember that. And only few people had a television set. To watch the bullfights we had to go to the cafés. (Antónia, 65, basic education, retired)

Another important moment emerged with the introduction of colour

broadcasting. This brought television even closer to “reality”. The outside world became more alive than ever at home:

I remember television in black and white. And I do remember the triumphal entry of colour television. Other homes had it before us… but when television entered I felt the waiting had been worthwhile. Suddenly, there it was. The set was very big! I was 9 or 10, I don’t remember very well but I do remember how big the television set was (laughs). (Sérgio, 34, secondary level education, television producer)

“Objectification”—the second step in the domestication process—

looks at how objects are placed within the household and what this says about its importance. It was unsurprising that almost all the informants placed their television in the centre of their living room. The one exception was Pedro:

Television was never in the centre of the living- room. Our family liked to talk, to discuss different subjects. The radio and the hi-fi were more important than television and occupied the best place in the living-room. (Pedro, 35, higher education, company director)

For Spigel (1992), television is a totemic object that has not only entered the living-room, but has also settled into other areas of the home. This was confirmed by many of the respondents:

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The place of television…well, in fact we have one television set in each room of the house (laughs). And Cable Television, of course! (Stephan, 16, secondary level education, student).

While objectification considers where television is placed within the

home, “incorporation”—in the third phase in the domestication process—focuses on how it shapes users’ daily routines and, reciprocally, how those routines influence broadcasting schedules. As Silverstone explains:

Objectification (the location of information and communications technologies in the material, social and cultural spaces of the home) and incorporation (the injection of media technological practices into the temporal patterns of domestic life), together are the infrastructural components of the dynamics of everyday life, both, it should be said, within and outside the formal boundaries of the household. (Silverstone 2006, 235)

The research revealed that films and telenovelas were the most popular forms of entertainment. However, the news proved to be more important to daily family routines. At 8pm (dinner time) most Portuguese families are watching the news. This is a typical collective consumption, though it is suffering today due to decline of the traditional nuclear family and the growth of single-parent households.

For those under the age of 40, the memories of important television moments were still very clear in their minds:

When I was born, my parents already had a television set at their café. Television makes part of my life. I remember Eurovision... all those songs from different countries.... It was very important for us! And the bullfights on Thursdays. Thursdays were good days to make money… more people, more drinks… oh, and the Sundays were also good days. People liked to watch musical shows! The rest of the week was regular. (Etelvina, 51, secondary level education, unemployed)

When interviewees were questioned about their media diet, television was mentioned as the medium to which they dedicated most time:

I spend more time with television than with any other medium. When I wake up I immediately turn my television on. Then I do zapping.... I watch a bit of all the news channels (Sérgio, 34, secondary education, television producer). Television… maybe. (Cândida, 60, basic education of 12-14 years, clerk).


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Oh, television of course! I love to watch telenovelas! Of all media, television is my favourite (Antónia, 65, basic education, retired).

However, there was one exception:

I’d rather listen to the radio than watching television. I don’t have much time to spend with television and I have no patience for television shows. (Carla, 35, secondary level education, clerk)

“Conversion”—the last step of the domestication process—refers to

the way technology is displayed and discussed with those who are out of home. The object is used to carry symbolic values about life at home to the outside world. As Silverstone explains:

Conversion involves reconnection; the perpetuation of the helix of the design-domestication interface. Consumption is never a private matter, neither phenomenologically nor materially. It involves display, the development of skills, competences, literacies. It involves discourse and discussion, the sharing of the pride of ownership, as well as its frustration. It involves resistance and refusal and transformation at the point where cultural expectations and social resources meet the challenges of technology, system and content. (Silverstone 2006, 234)

Thus, television consumption can mean more than watching programmes. The symbolic value of this medium goes beyond its contents.

I turn the television on and I don’t feel alone. Television is my permanent companion. (Paula, 37, secondary level education, waitress)

Television consumption is also often shaped by family dynamics; it reveals how relationships are managed and who leads them.

If I watch the news… yes, I do. Only at dinner time, when we are all together, because my father turns the Television on. (Stephan, 16, secondary level education, student) Currently, I watch less television programmes than when I was a kid but I still like some channels: National Geographic, Odisseia, Panda (this one only sometimes…). When I was younger I loved Disney Channel and didn’t care about anything else. And nobody watched the news.... I didn’t allow it! (laughs). (Pedro, 15, secondary level education, student)

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For others, television links them to their cultural background and to a distant reality, though one which is emotionally very close and constantly present:

My opinion about Portuguese programmes…I prefer Ukrainian television. I like to watch the concerts, the famous artists…We watch a Ukrainian musical show every Saturday night! (Maria, 30, higher education, student/shop assistant)

And there are “simple reasons” to choose television as the only medium to which someone pays attention. The economic criteria cannot be ignored, especially in what concerns non-basic needs. For some, the purchasing decision is made based on the idea that it “costs less, delivers more”:

I don’t want to spend my money on magazines and newspapers. And television is more communicative… and it shows updated stuff. (Maria, 28, basic education, shop assistant)

Conclusion

Living in a world of technologies that continuously announces the death of their predecessors, television is still the most familiar form of media, despite the growth of the Internet in recent years. Of course, we cannot ignore that its survival—at least for certain audiences—depends greatly on new forms of consumption within the digital realm, considering the consumption of new media, as stated by Obercom. Our research makes clear that, for older people, television is a member of the family that has aged with them, becoming part of their lives, marking important moments of collective experience. For those who were born after television’s entry in their homes, this is just another medium. In some cases it is ranked second or the third in terms of media consumption. Nevertheless, television is the medium that punctuates the family life, as young Stephan emphasized when talking about the consumption of news at dinner time. Individually, younger respondents (e.g. Stephan and Pedro) are especially interested in cable television programmes. This preference is quite understandable considering its larger thematic offer and the consequent probability of finding one or more channels broadcasting several hours of their favourite content.

For immigrants, television links them to their homeland. Watching television is above all a way of being in touch with home traditions, as it was stated by the Ukrainian interviewee. In this case, the Portuguese production of news and entertainment is less important than the contents—


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whatever they are—from the country of origin. Television is, therefore, a kind of vehicle to travel across their distant cultural universe.

Considering the education level of the inquired group for this qualitative study, it is also clear that television is the chosen medium for providing information and entertainment to those who have less academic qualifications. In general, television products are addressed to the medium point of audiences, meaning that everyone can easily understand the contents and be seduced by their offers.

The financial crisis that is affecting Portugal from 2008 is an important cause for the increased time spent watching television. As it was stated in our research, television is the cheapest medium. This was underlined by one respondent (Maria, shop assistant) and is arguably an important reason for this increase in the last year. In future studies, it will be interesting to analyse whether it will be followed by any qualitative or quantitative changes in Portuguese television broadcasting. For now, there is no evidence of that; television has its comfortable role in Portuguese homes as before and the audiences are today strongly characterized by viewers with fewer economic resources to consume other media.

The main conclusion of our study is that despite the specific interests, the diverse social backgrounds and the most recent uses (e.g. watching television programmes on different platforms), television is still an important presence in the everyday life of Portuguese people—according to the findings displayed in this chapter—and domestication is a concept that truly reveals the dynamic process of living with the most popular medium of all in Portuguese households.

References

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Bachelard, Gaston. 1978. La Poétique de l’Espace. Vendôme: PUF. Bakardjieva, Maria. 2006. “Domestication Running Wild: From the Moral

Economy of the Household to the Mores of a Culture”. In Domestication of Media and Technology, edited by Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J. Ward, 62-79. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Bolin, Göran. 2004. “Spaces of Television: the Structuring of Consumers in a Swedish Shopping Mall”. In Media Space: Place, Space and Culture in a Media Age, edited by Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy, 126-144. London: Sage.

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Cardoso, Gustavo et al., 2009. “A Experiência Televisiva na Sociedade em Rede”. Obercom. Accessed April 10.

http://www.obercom.pt/client/?newsId=548&fileName=fr3_sr_2008.pdf Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. 1999. A História em Directo: os

Mediáticos na Televisão. Coimbra: MinervaCoimbra. Easthope, Hazel. 2004. “A Place Called Home”. Housing, Theory and

Society, 3 (21):128-138. Eurodata TV Worldwide. 2013. “One TV Year in the World: 2012 or the

Multiple TV Experience.” Accessed June 20. http://www.mediametrie.com/eurodatatv/communiques/one-tv-year-in-

the-world-2012-or-the-multiple-tv-experience.php?id=831 Giddens, Anthony. 1997. Modernidade e Identidade Pessoal. Oeiras:

Celta. Gitlin, Todd. 2002. Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and

Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. NY: Owl Books. Haddon, Leslie. 2006. “Empirical Studies using the Domestication

Framework”. In Domestication of Media and Technology, edited by Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J. Ward, 103-122. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

—. 2007. “Roger Silverstone’s Legacies: Domestication”. In New Media and Society 9: 25-32.

Hartmann, Maren. 2006. “The Triple Articulation of ICTs. Media as Technological Objects, Symbolic Environments and Individual Texts”. In Domestication of Media and Technology, edited by Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J. Ward, 80-102. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Hynes, D. and Rommes, E. 2006. “Fitting the Internet into Our Lives: IT Courses for Disadvantage Users”. In Domestication of Media and Technology, edited by Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J. Ward, 125-144. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Livingstone, Sonia. 2007. “On the Material and the Symbolic: Silverstone’s Double Articulation of Research Traditions in New Media Studies”. In New Media and Society 9: 16-24.

Mansell, Robin, Christonthis Argerou, Danny Qual and Roger Silverstone. 2007. The Oxford Handbook on Information and Communication Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press.


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Moores, Shaun. 2000. Media and Everyday Life in Modern Society, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Morley, David. 2007. Media, Modernity, and Technology: The Geography of the New, London and New York: Routledge.

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Rafaeli, Sheizaf. 1990. “Interacting with Media: Para-Social Interaction and Real Interaction”. In Mediation, Information and Communication: Information and Behavior, edited by B.D. Ruben and L.A. Liverouw, 125–181. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

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—. 1996. Televisión y Vida Cotidiana. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Silverstone, Roger, Eric Hirsch, and David Morley. 1999. “Information

and Communication Technologies and the Moral Economy of the Householg”. In Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, edited by Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch, 15-31. London: Routledge.

Silverstone, Roger. 2004. Por Qué Estudiar los Medios? Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

—. 2007. Media and Morality: On the Rise of Mediapolis. Cambridge: Polity.

Sørensen, Knut H. 2006. “Domestication: the Enactment of Technology”. In Domestication of Media and Technology, edited by Thomas Berker, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J. Ward, 40-61. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

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Thompson, E.P. 1971. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”. In Past and Present 50: 76-136.

Thompson, John B.1998. Los Media y la Modernidad: una Teoría de los Medios de Comunicación. Barcelona: Paidós.

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Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WELSH-LANGUAGE CHILDREN’S TELEVISION PRODUCTION:

APPLYING AUDIENCES RESEARCH METHODS

MERRIS GRIFFITHS

In April 2010, the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies (TFTS) at Aberystwyth University and Cardiff-based media production company Boomerang+ launched a two year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project1. Boomerang+ holds a prominent position within Wales’s independent media production sector, producing a broad portfolio of varied outputs.2 This particular KTP project emerged from an existing strategic partnership between Boomerang+ and TFTS.

The KTP scheme is a UK-based initiative, managed by the Technology Strategy Board and funded by a number of government organisations. Their aim is to ‘facilitate the transfer of knowledge, technology and skills’ through building links between academic institutions and companies/businesses that could potentially benefit from or enhance their performance capacity as a result of collaboration with academia.3 Traditionally, UK KTP initiatives have tended to focus on science and technology sectors, but in recent years there have been a growing number of arts, humanities, and social science projects. This particular KTP, for example, was the first arts and humanities project to be run by Aberystwyth University.

The broader socio-political agenda of higher education governance and policy is arguably an explanation for the gradual broadening of what constitutes “knowledge” and how it might be applied to contexts beyond 1 Project #KTP007568: “To investigate 7-13 year old children’s television viewing preferences and multiplatform media practices, and create a model for production and delivery of children’s television programming”. 2 In July 2012, Boomerang+ Plc was subject to a management buyout. Its production portfolio and key personnel continues under the name BoomPictures. 3 KTP scheme information: http://www.ktponline.org.uk/faqs/

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academia. Stefan Collini (2012) insightfully and often provocatively captures the evolving dynamic between government and UK universities, noting increasingly forceful political statements about how academic research needs to be held to account (in light of the public money that often underpins grant funding) and have “real-world” significance (in terms of socio-economic benefit). Within the current Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, the notion of “impact” represents this broader debate about the potential contributions of academic research to the UK economy.4 KTPs arguably have a role to play in concretising this notion of applicability, contribution, and bridging perceived “gaps” between organisations that often operate with different agendas in mind, such as striving for “understanding” in the higher education arts and humanities (Collini 2012, 77) versus generating “profit” in business.

KTP projects are different from more conventional research in the sense that team members must be mindful of the need to “bridge” and negotiate different sets of research priorities across traditionally separate settings. In the context of a small nation like Wales, too, such projects require a clear understanding of how various organisations interrelate and co-exist, because such linkages are often carefully balanced. In sketching a stylised portrait of the differing approaches to “research” typically used in academic and industry contexts, a number of characteristics emerge which arguably define the parameters within which this particular project operated.

In the academic context, for example, research is typically carefully planned (in terms of aims, purpose and comparability) and methodologies are often multi-layered (in terms of approach), adhering to sound ethical frameworks when working with human participants (where children are conventionally regarded as a “special case”). Academic research is generally also grounded in an established terrain of published research relating to the focus of the research, and conducted using established methodological traditions/protocols (with an awareness of the relative strengths and weaknesses of various approaches). Finally, data analysis tends to be richly layered, including critical reflections intended to tease out any subtleties and/or tensions, and attempts to offer an explanation for emergent patterns (based on multi-/inter-disciplinary cross-references). The ultimate aim of academic research is to make on-going contributions to knowledge by publishing peer-reviewed materials which can, potentially, be accessed by all. 4 “Impact”, in REF2014, includes “cultural life” and “economic prosperity”. http://www.ref.ac.uk/media/ref/content/pub/panelcriteriaandworkingmethods/01_12_2D.pdf

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In the industry context, research is generally characterised a little differently. Investigations tend to be driven by a specific task, so the focus is often narrow and fails to accommodate the “big picture”. Time-scales are also compressed, with a degree of pressure to produce instant results that can be applied in real-time. As such, industry research tends to adopt a fairly simple approach, rather than something nuanced and multi-layered. Investigations tend not to be grounded in published (academic) research, but are often prompted by a “hunch” or led by instinct, based on years of practical experience. The commercial imperative to “get it right” at a given moment is arguably more important than thinking about the context of socio-cultural trends over time. Finally, data analysis tends to be minimal (largely as a consequence of “immediacy”), where bold, general patterns are seen as more useful than details or exceptions. Unlike in academia, much of what is discovered through industry research tends to remain closed and confidential, due to the commercially sensitive nature of the materials generated.

From the outset, these different notions of “research” needed to be consolidated into a coherent, rigorous and justifiable approach to meet the needs of the company (which, in the context of KTP values, is where project benefits ought to be focused). It should certainly be noted that the “knowledge transfer” which characterised this particular KTP placed an emphasis on methodology rather than broader “knowledge” about the tween audience (aged between 10 and 12) per se (although this expertise was intricately embedded), and this is where the focus on “bridging” the academic/industry contexts was placed.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTPs)

Boomerang+ is one of the UK’s largest producers of original children’s television content and boasts an established track record of notable programmes for young audiences, with emphasis on Welsh-language content. Since 2007, it has also provided branded programme packages for S4C, Wales’ Welsh-language channel, in the form of live continuity links during their pre- and after-school programme schedules and, more recently, a live studio-based Saturday morning show.

At the time of the KTP launch, Boomerang+’s long-established pre-school provision, Cyw, had been successfully running since June 2008 (previously running under the brand Planed Plant Bach). In 2010, the company secured an extension to their children’s programming contract by winning a tender to produce programming content for an older (7- to 13-year-old tween) audience and launched Stwnsh on April 26 of that year.

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The company wanted to assess how well their creative work was being received and to better understand their target audience, in order to inform their longer term strategies and future output. So, the main aim of the KTP was to help the company gauge Welsh children’s media preferences and practices, with an emphasis on multiplatform issues and the relationship between television and the Internet.

Given the perceived rapidity of change in the children’s media landscape and the reality of “digital childhoods”, the company was keen to expand on its capacity to undertake audience research. Unlike larger media organizations, such as the BBC, which tend to have a dedicated in-house research unit, Boomerang+ had limited capacity and expertise in this area. Prior to the KTP, the company had only been able to gather information on an ad-hoc, small-scale and unsystematic basis, which limited their ability to generate representative and comparable data. The KTP project was the company’s first opportunity to undertake a substantial audience study. Under the requirements of the KTP scheme, a standard three-way structure was put in place, involving myself as Academic Supervisor (responsible for advising on best practice and research design), Angharad Garlick as Company Supervisor (responsible for articulating the commercial agenda), and Helen Davies as Research Associate (responsible for executing and managing the project).

This chapter aims to outline and reflect on the two year research process, using mixed-mode and multi-layered audience research methods. To establish a foundation for the project, I will sketch an overview of the published research about children’s media preferences and practices, before evaluating some of the ways in which academic audience research methods (with children) can be applied to a commercial context. In this project, a three stage approach to data-gathering was adopted, beginning with a “creative” pre-research exercise (Stage 1), followed by Wales-wide questionnaire distribution (Stage 2), and finally a series of focus groups (Stage 3). The design, implementation and management of the data-gathering will be outlined in each instance, before offering some reflections on the pleasures and pitfalls of managing an audience-driven project of this kind whilst also attempting to bridge academic and industry contexts.

Children’s media preferences and practices

Since Boomerang+’s focused on producing original television content, it was important to review academic research relating to children’s engagement with and perception of the medium. A number of initial issues


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were identified by the company―general usage of and engagement with television; brand (channel/producer) recognition; and overriding gender and age considerations. Given the small nation linguistic particularities of the project context, the company also wanted to gauge language preference (with an emphasis on Welsh-medium content). Finally, the company sought insight into the status of television in relation to other media, especially the Internet. These issues became the overriding project remit, and will be explored below.

Generally, it is thought that the role and relative importance of television in children’s lives is shifting in the well-established multimedia reality of contemporary childhood (cf. vom Orde 2011). However, according to Ofcom (2012), television remains enduringly popular, especially for children under the age of twelve, and is still the medium that children are most likely to engage with on a daily basis. Interestingly, Ofcom’s report on the ‘nations and regions’ (Ofcom 2010, 3) noted that children in Wales were more likely than children elsewhere in the UK to have their own television. Given the evident importance of television for the tween age group, with its status in Wales seemingly higher than elsewhere in the UK, Boomerang+ was curious to know more about how Welsh-speaking children (specifically) engaged with it.

Strong brand identities for channels―especially in the context of children’s television―have become a crucially important element in establishing and maintaining a target audience. Channel brands, for example, can be powerful in terms of creating viewer loyalties and can often influence programme preferences (e.g. Abelman and Atkin 2000). In more recent years, the media landscape has seen significant change, not least in terms of becoming multiplatform, so it is arguable that the concept of “brand loyalty” has become more fluid than simply being attached to a given channel/network. Similarly, multiplatform affordances have generated the potential for interaction between programmes/producers and audiences, possibly impacting on children’s media uses and affiliations. The potential shifts and changes in media context and content were of particular interest to Boomerang+ because the company had made significant investments in the development and maintenance of online platforms to accompany their television outputs.

Gender and age often emerge as key factors in children’s media engagement. Indeed, there is evidence to support the idea that boys’ and girls’ media worlds are very different (Lemish 2010) in terms of content, form and reception. Garitaonandia et al. (cited in Livingstone and Bovill 2001, 144), for example, identified some of the broader gender patterns relating to television programme/genre preferences. They note that the

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boys in their study exhibited “more uniform” and “action-oriented” preferences, with higher levels of interest in sport, adventure and science fiction. The girls, in contrast, exhibited “more diverse” and “people-oriented” preferences, and were particularly interested in music, nature/animals, celebrity/stars, romance and (like their male counterparts) sport. However, the researchers also stressed that these emergent differences should not be overstated.

I identified similar stereotyped patterns in a study of the post/production techniques used in televised toy commercials, where boys’ advertisements featured more “extreme” camera angles, faster (cut) transitions and overall pacing, and shorter shot duration than the girls’ advertisements did (Griffiths cited in Buckingham 2002). These patterns characterized particular “male” and “female” aesthetics and conventions which arguably pervade television production practices; a sharpened awareness of such conventions at the point of production could arguably have an impact on audience capture/engagement.

Targeting by age is another key factor in children’s media, where significant differences are evident between different age groups in terms of their wants and needs, and where clever market segmentation is often the key to commercial success. Abelman and Atkin (2000, 152) underline the importance of effective audience segmentation by age and note that this should be a key consideration for production companies in what is a highly competitive business environment. The question of “age appropriateness” is a key concern in children’s media production. Often, conclusions about wants and needs are anchored in established research about stages in cognitive and social development. Logically, pre-school audiences (cf. Steemers 2010) are subject to different modes of address and “positionings” than older children or teens are (cf. Osgerby 2004). Interestingly, part of remit for Boomerang+’s children’s television tender with S4C was to produce programmes that actively included or featured children that the target audience (7 to 13 year olds) would relate to, so the question of age-appropriateness was an important one.

In addition to these television-specific focus points, questions of language and other media emerged. (Minority) language preference―in this case, Welsh―was a vital consideration for the company in light of broader debates about the perceived “crisis” in UK children’s television.5 Critics have expressed some concern that “home-grown” programming is being overwhelmed by imports, especially from the USA. This issue is arguably amplified in Wales, because Welsh-language content must compete with more dominant English language programming irrespective 5 See, for example, Save Kids’ TV: http://www.savekidstv.org.uk/


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of whether that content is created in the UK or USA. This reflects the reality of the commercial broadcasting environment in which Boomerang+ operates, and also indicates the struggle to give a minority language like Welsh genuine screen presence (ap Dyfrig, Gruffydd Jones and Jones. 2006). The relative socio-cultural status and perception of the Welsh-language in various parts of Wales introduces an additional layer of complexity. Geographic location often has an influence on attitudes to the language; perceptions in the so-called “heartlands” of Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, for example, will often differ from the way that Welsh is perceived in Clwyd and the counties of Glamorgan. Yet, Boomerang+ has a Wales-wide audience in mind, so must navigate these issues.

Other media―such as mobile phones, the Internet, and gaming devices ―also occupy important positions within children’s lives. Usefully, Ofcom (2012, 23) compares current levels of mobile phone ownership with the figures they published in 2011. They note a slight drop in ownership of mobile phones for 8 to 11 year olds (48% in 2011 to 43% in 2012), whilst the numbers remain static for 12 to 15 year olds in the same period (at 87%). In addition to this, there has been a marked increase in the ownership of smart phones, especially at the upper end of the age scale (41% in 2011 to 62% in 2012, for 12 to 15 year olds). Clearly, this begins to raise questions about multiplatform affordances and modes of engagement.

In terms of the Internet, Ofcom (2012, 19) note that 91% of the children they surveyed lived in homes with online access. However, in an earlier report (2010, 3), they noted that children in Wales were less likely to use the Internet when compared with children living elsewhere in the UK. Arguably, this reflects perceived shortfalls in the roll-out of the broadband infrastructure across Wales, with particular issues for rural areas with low populations (WLGA, 2009). This is now improving, but issues remain relating to broadband speed.

In line with ever-increasing use of mobile phones and the Internet, the last ten years has witnessed exponential growth in gaming devices (Williams, 2006). Ofcom (2012, 19) note, significantly, that 90% of children in the UK “live in a household with a fixed or portable games console”, and that these devices are the second most popular medium (after television) found in children’s bedroom spaces (ibid, 25) (although figures do appear to have dropped between 2011 and 2012).

The undeniably wide variety of platforms and media encounters is an important consideration, but for companies like Boomerang+ it is encouraging to see that television still remains significant in children’s

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lives, maintaining high levels of audience “attachment”. It continues to be the most universally accessible medium of all (Ofcom 2012, 19), despite competition from other media (Ofcom 2006, 54). With this sketch of the children’s media landscape in mind, we began to consider various data-gathering methodologies.

Doing research with children

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in how best to undertake research with children. The positioning of children within “social research” underwent a significant reconfiguration in response to James and Prout’s (1997) influential edited collection, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, which proposed a new paradigm of “childhood”. The authors present a persuasive case for needing to think of children as research participants rather than research subjects, hinged on the concept of agency which positions children as individuals who actively participate “in constructing knowledge and daily experience” (Mayall 2002, 23). Consequently, there has been a marked trend in participatory social research with children and young people (Thomas and O’Kane 2006) and this has filtered through to media-related, audience-focused projects. In acknowledgement of this participatory trend, the data-gathering process for this project involved co-construction (especially at Stages 1 and 3).

Numerous methodologies are suitable for or adaptable to working with children, and these generally echo the research techniques used when working with adults. Questionnaires remain a popular method for gathering (primarily) quantitative data. Livingstone (2009), for example, used questionnaires as the main tool when investigating perceptions of safety, risk and the Internet. The questionnaires focused on attitudes towards and experiences of using the Internet, and were distributed to several thousand children and young people across Europe. The power of such an approach to data-gathering relates to the scope and scale achievable; broad patterns can be quantified, compared and mapped to produce a compelling large-scale snap-shot of the situation under review. Shortfalls, however, arguably include the restrictive nature of the questions being asked, the fact that the agenda is set by the researcher and not the participants, and the relatively “impersonal” nature of the responses.

Qualitative interview and focus group techniques are also a mainstay of work with children and young people. Buckingham (1993), for example, utilized these approaches in his study of children’s relationship with television. These language-driven methods generate two key forms of


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interaction. In the case of (structured or semi-structured) interviews, questions are conventionally asked by an interviewer and responses given by participants, in both one-to-one and group contexts. This is often a favoured approach in situations where there is a clear research agenda. Focus groups, in contrast, facilitate a sense of co-construction, where ideas are collectively generated and discussed within a looser framework of investigation, but with an overarching “theme” in mind. Perhaps the main benefit, when compared with the broader sweep of questionnaire-driven studies, is that these approaches give participants a degree of agenda-setting power. Indeed, the importance of allowing children and young people a voice is central to the agency-oriented paradigm proposed by James and Prout (1997, 8). However, these techniques can also be problematic, especially in terms of the unequal power relationship between the interviewer and the participants, issues with group dynamics, the possibility of leading questions being asked, and the small-scale unrepresentative nature of the resultant data.

More recently, there has been interest in the use of “creative” methodologies in the social sciences (see Banks 2001). Drawing, photography, film-making, diaries, scrap-books and forms of creative play are increasingly standardized methods to encourage and scaffold self-expression, and are especially appropriate when working with children because they sit comfortably within their (school-based) frames of reference. In 2005, for example, I used drawings to investigate children’s understandings of the codes and conventions in televised toy commercials, whilst Buckingham and Bragg (2004) used scrap-books to investigate young people’s understanding of sexual content in the media. Such an approach provides participants with a mode of communication other than talk (which is especially critical when dealing with jargon-heavy, abstract or “sensitive” issues, or when working with bi/multilingual respondents) and can offer a confidence-boosting context for conversation around and about creative outputs. Drawbacks to this method, however, include difficulties in knowing how to interpret the resultant materials, managing the potential risk of generating unintended meanings, and coping with participants who are reluctant or lack the confidence to engage.

Such research methods invariably have various affordances and shortfalls, depending on the aims and intentions of the study as well as the subject-matter under investigation. In response to this issue and in light of the particular demands of working with children and young people, Punch (2002, 12) argues that using a combination of methods is often the most powerful approach to take. By utilising a range of data-gathering tools, Punch suggests that children can more easily “display their competencies”

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(ibid) and are then better placed to fully participate. With this in mind, a “layered” approach―incorporating creative workshops, questionnaires and focus groups―was adopted. This three stage process will be outlined below, after considering research ethics, followed by some reflections on the overall management of the data-gathering, and the relative “impact” of the findings on the company’s creative practices.

Integrating academic and commercial practices

Like all UK higher education institutions, Aberystwyth University has clear ethical procedures for research involving human participants. Similarly, Boomerang+’s children’s production department has set procedures for managing risk on numerous programmes, such as Stwnsh ar y Ffordd.6 The protocols followed in each context therefore had to be adhered to from the outset.

In the academic context, the project needed to comply with Aberystwyth University’s Ethics Committee guidelines. This involved clarifying the project aims and the benefits for participants. Protocols, safeguards and precautions to ensure the well-being of the participants were also detailed, such as explaining how the classroom-based research would be managed, and allowing participants to opt-out at any point. General issues of “best practice” were also noted, in terms of data storage/usage and anonymity, and templates for consent forms (for teachers, parents and children) were drafted.

This process was fairly straight-forward because the children were not considered to be “at risk” (as individuals with learning difficulties might, for example). Similarly, the subject-matter of the investigation, whilst commercial in essence, was arguably an “automatic” element of the children’s everyday lives.7 The multiplatform media content under review was designed for children and was therefore considered suitable/appropriate for the participants’ age range. The documents were approved at the “pass” level, in that: “The research (did) not expose participants to any physical or psychological conditions different to those experienced in everyday life”.8

6 Translates as Stwnsh on the Road, a programme filmed on location in various host-schools around Wales. http://stwnsh.s4c.co.uk/en/tagiau/stwnsh-ar-y-ffordd 7 Ofcom’s research (2006; 2010; 2012) on children’s media literacy indicates that television is the medium that most children engage with on a daily basis. 8 As per the University’s Ethics Committee for Research Procedures FORM02 (not publically available).


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Various procedures were also sanctioned in the company context. All individuals working within Boomerang+’s children production department are expected to consent to an enhanced CRB9 check (a standard condition of employment). In addition, those who have more direct contact with children must undergo chaperone training, which involves a training course that focuses on child protection and relevant legislation. The Research Associate met both of these requirements before undertaking the fieldwork.

Stage 1: The foundations for effective project design

As a first step in the research process, a “pre-research” exercise was organized with the aim of tuning-in to the target audience, to gauge issues of “language use, literacy and different stages of cognitive development” (Scott in Christensen and James 2000, 100). The aim was to ensure that the content and language-register of the research materials was suited to both the task and the participants.

The “pre-research” exercise was arranged in July 2010 with a class of Year 7 pupils (11 to 12 year olds) at a secondary school in Cardiff, and was conducted during a drama lesson. The group represented the upper-end of the tween target audience, making this a suitable entry-point for better understanding this sector of the market. Access to the school was secured via a teacher who was known to the researcher, which facilitated the process of obtaining gate-keeper consent.

In line with the children’s standard expectations of a drama lesson, the session began with warm-up exercises. This helped integrate the researcher, whilst making the workshop feel familiar to the children. The exercise adopted a creative and participatory approach (Punch 2002, 12). A show-reel of popular Welsh-language programmes was shown to the class to establish how familiar they were with specific programmes, characters and presenters. Discussion of these programmes and of television in general was actively encouraged during this session, allowing the researcher to gauge the language being used.

The class was then divided into smaller groups of five or six children who were asked to design a poster of their favourite and least favourite television programmes. During the set-up of the poster session, the researcher encouraged the children to be honest in their appraisals of English- and Welsh-medium programmes. The significance of reality television programmes such as X Factor and light entertainment/quiz

9 Enhanced police checks are performed by the UK Criminal Records Bureau.

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shows such as Total Wipeout became markedly apparent in the children’s poster designs.

A performance workshop followed, where the children were asked to design and enact their own television programme, and props such as wigs and costumes were provided. The majority of the children chose to (re)create reality style programmes such as X Factor and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, performing the roles of “deluded” auditionee or fearful celebrity. The children’s choice of programmes clearly reflected the broadcast landscape at the time of the research. In the case of both the poster session and performance workshop, the main aim was to note the language used by the class and to better understand their programme preferences, so that the emergent patterns could be embedded into the questionnaire design.

Stage 2: Designing and managing the questionnaire

Interestingly, many academic commentators signal the apparent disenfranchisement and exclusion of children in the context of (quantitative) questionnaires and surveys. Scott (in Christensen and James, 2000, 98) notes, for example, that official government statistics frequently overlook children altogether; their lives are somehow invisible and subsumed into the surrounding adult world. Scott also points out that researchers tend to assume that children are (cognitively, socially, linguistically and perceptually) unable to cope with tools such as questionnaires (ibid, 99-101). This is partly the result of what Scott terms “the inertia of practice” and partly related to the fear of the ethical problems associated with working with children (ibid, 101). The overarching message from many scholars in the field (of sociology) is that child research participants should not be underestimated but may simply differ from adults in the way that they respond to questions and other data-gathering activities.

With this in mind and using the Stage 1 findings as a scaffold, we set about designing a questionnaire that could appeal to a fairly expansive age range (7to 13 year olds) and meet the needs of the company. Boomerang+ had three research questions in mind, which needed to be addressed:

• Language: As a company specialising in Welsh-language output, Boomerang+ wanted to gauge children’s attitudes towards their Welsh-language programming. So, the company was interested in patterns of television viewing habits across the nation and


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whether there were any marked geographical variations in engagement with Welsh-language programmes.

• Form and content: Given the complexities often associated with

targeting the tween market, the company was also keen to know more about types of media content 7- to 13-year-old boys and girls liked to engage with and consume, and whether there were any distinct patterns of preference in relation to form and content (or genres).

• Multimedia engagement: Finally, the company wanted insight

into aspects of media engagement beyond television, and to better understand their target audiences’ multiplatform preferences and practices.

The team decided that the questionnaire should be online and there

were numerous reasons for this. The affordances of online platforms certainly make it easier to incorporate interactive components and audio-visual features, which arguably promote greater levels of engagement in children. We also thought, at this early stage, that an online activity would make distribution to schools across Wales much easier (although this turned out not to be the case, as discussed later). Furthermore, the online activity was regarded as something that could easily be pitched to schools as having educational value; developing IT skills in line with curriculum requirements.10 Finally, an appealing online format would function well as an “overlay” for a standard Microsoft Excel database, making data-gathering and analysis easier.

In order to comply with ethical best practice, an introductory splash page was designed for the questionnaire site, clarifying the aims and purpose of the research, offering reassurance that there were no “right” or “wrong” answers, and stressing that the responses would be anonymous and confidential. The participants were also informed that they could opt-out at any time if they no longer wished to contribute. Since this involved a fairly substantial piece of written text, it was accompanied by audio commentary―capitalizing on the flexibility of the medium―and the familiar voice of Stwnsh presenter, Eleri Griffiths, was used to make the participants feel part of a known community.

10 See Welsh Assembly Government. 2008. ‘Skills Framework for 3 to 19 year olds in Wales’ (33): http://tinyurl.com/cxoedpb

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We decided that the questionnaire would be limited to 20 questions, formulated to guide the participants through a systematic, simple “narrative” about their media preferences and practices. Certain questions were grouped together by theme, such as “television” and “new media”. In terms of making the activity interesting and engaging, various content elements―such as sound, an embedded film-clip and drag-and-drop features―were included, in addition to the more conventional “tick box” and Likert-style attitudinal responses (Sarantakos 2005, 250). Designing the questionnaire as an online document also made it easier to create stand-alone pages for each question, where the participants were required to perform an action (clicking or dragging something) before being able to move on to the next question, and hence ensuring that all questions were answered. In total, the completion time for the activity was estimated as being fifteen minutes.

Crucially, a final consideration in the questionnaire design was its overall aesthetic. Boomerang+ was keen to ensure that the project research was distinct from its production output, to ensure that the respondents did not automatically associate the questionnaire with Boomerang+’s brands, since this could potentially influence the answers given. So, a graphic designer not associated with the company was commissioned to create the overall “look” of the questionnaire. The designer’s work was rooted in graffiti/street art and this was evident in the visually striking “free form” images he produced for the splash page (which were reproduced throughout as the background for each question page).

The questions: demographics, television and multimedia platforms

Questions 1-4 followed the conventional pattern often seen in questionnaires, where basic demographic information is garnered―sex, age, school year, and home environment (city, town/village or countryside). Whilst standard, this information was critically important given the company’s overarching concerns about the composition of their target audience (Lemish 2010; Abelman and Atkin 2000), and any emergent variations between or characteristics associated with different regions across the nation.

Questions 5-14 centred on television, aiming to address research questions (1) and (2) on “language” and “form and content”, including questions of television ownership and viewing habits (cf. Ofcom 2006/2010/2012), and channel and programming/genre preferences (including issues of brand and programme origin) (Abelman and Atkin 2000). Since the company had established Stwnsh as a distinct brand for


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S4C, there was particular interest in measuring its position in relation to other key brands in the UK child/youth television market. So, the participants were asked to rank a range of children’s television brands in order of preference (Stwnsh; CBBC; Nickelodeon; Milkshake (Channel Five); E4 (Channel 4); and CITV).

The participants were asked about the company’s programming strategy of including or featuring children that the target audience could relate to. To this end, the questionnaire featured a clip of Boomerang+’s programme, Seren am Swper (A Star for Supper), about families (and especially children) who compete against one another to cook a meal for a celebrity. The clip featured television presenter, Alex Jones, which was a deliberate choice because she was well-known to Welsh audiences (having appeared in programmes such as Hip neu Sgip) before gaining wider media recognition in 2010 as co-host of The One Show (BBC). After viewing the clip, the participants were asked to indicate their attitude towards watching programmes that featured “people like you and me”, and programmes about children their own age.

Issues of preferred language were explored, in terms of whether or not the participants liked to watch Welsh-language programmes and/or programmes that featured local areas. This forms part of the challenge for a production company like Boomerang+, in that they not only need to produce quality programming for young audiences but must also overcome certain socio-cultural hurdles with regards perceptions of Welsh- versus English-medium programming in different parts of Wales (ap Dyfrig et al. 2006).

Questions 15-19 then shifted attention from television to consider children’s other media preferences and practices, in response to research question (3) on “multimedia engagement”. Questions focused on mobile phone ownership/usage (Ofcom 2012), internet access/usage (ibid), and engagement with gaming devices.

Finally, Question 20 was designed to measure “attachment” to certain media (Ofcom 2006, 52-55). The following scenario was presented: “If aliens were to attack earth from outer-space and steal everything, like our computers and televisions, but allowed you to keep just one thing, what would it be?” The children were asked to make a choice from a range of media devices, and once they had selected an option the questionnaire was complete and the voiceover thanked them for their input.

Before launching, the questionnaire was tested on both Mac and PC systems, and with children of various ages. The use of language was fine-tuned at this point, such as using the English word “internet” as opposed to its Welsh translation “rhyngrwyd” because the former was universally

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understood. The overall questionnaire data-gathering process spanned a period of about twelve months, and the researcher visited a total of twenty-eight schools. To ensure that the sample was representative of children in Wales, at least one school in every county was visited. A total of 1000 individual responses were logged, and there was (fortuitously) a 1:1 gender ratio overall.

Stage 3: Focus groups and co-constructed conversations

The final stage of the data-gathering process involved the use of focus groups. Given the contrastive methods in operation during Stage 1 (a relatively free, “creative” workshop) and Stage 2 (a controlled and set framework), Stage 3 was seen as a means to connect the various data-sets together by occupying a semi-structured “middle ground”. Here, the children were asked to respond to a set of loosely sketched questions, but were also able to set their own agendas and engage in co-constructed conversations with both their classmates and the researcher. During this stage of the research, a flexible protocol operated; the focus groups were grounded by a set of core questions (reflecting Boomerang+’s broad research interests), but also created space for the company to ask specific questions that required speedy, real-time responses.

Three blocks of “themed” focus groups were held, working with children from different schools than those involved in the questionnaire exercise, to consider: the presenters used by Boomerang+ (in continuity links and programmes); the form and content of magazine-style programmes (especially Tag); and general attitudes to Boomerang+’s creative work. Within the latter theme, specific questions were asked about on-air competitions, programme-related websites, and attitudes about Welsh-language content. The researcher used a range of approaches to encourage talk about and around these key issues, including clips and show-reels, and worked with a total of sixteen schools across Wales.

This process was an interesting one because not only did the focus groups create a means by which Boomerang+ production teams could “ask the audience” questions about their attitudes and opinions, but also gave the audience a direct route to the company (with the researcher acting as a conduit). Feedback was relayed to the company in “real-time”, which proved hugely valuable.


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Methodological reflections

Overall, the adoption of a multi-layered data-gathering process worked well as a means to generate both a country-wide snap-shot of Welsh tweens’ responses to television and other media (Stage 2 questionnaire), and more detailed and nuanced gauges of attitude and preference (Stage 1 pre-research workshop and Stage 3 focus groups). Stages 1 and 3 were, on the whole, easier to manage than Stage 2. Arguably, this is because the looser methodological structures made it easier for the researcher to be flexible and responsive to each unique data-gathering setting. The more “uniform” demands of the Stage 2 questionnaire proved trickier than initially anticipated and required careful management.

The aim of the project―to gather a representative sample with good geographical spread across Wales―was initially considered to be relatively easy to achieve, by writing to various schools and inviting pupils to complete the questionnaire online. This quickly proved unworkable, however, because of limited computer resources and expressions of reluctance and/or a lack of confidence on the part of teachers. Basically, all schools requested that the researcher be physically present to facilitate the data-gathering activity, which had an immediate and significant impact on the possible scope of the project. Arguably, however, the small nation context of this research made it easier to overcome what could otherwise have become a major data-gathering issue, because the researcher was able to accommodate the schools’ requests. Whilst this was not ideal and did have an impact on the scope of the project, the research team was still able to work with a sample of 1000 children from all over the country.

Some schools also declined to accommodate online questionnaires at all and requested printed copies, which created a further complication because the online questionnaire featured an embedded clip. To overcome this issue, a DVD was produced for classroom use which was an acceptable compromise. This, however, resulted in administrative difficulties for the researcher (having to input paper-based responses into the Excel database by hand) and a greater likelihood of “errors” and voided questionnaires (such as some children ticking multiple boxes in response to questions that required a single answer).

In briefly revisiting the stylised sketch of “research” as it is characterised in academic and industry contexts, this KTP project exhibited a number of key features relating to each. The staged research process was certainly carefully planned and clearly grounded in published research about children’s relationships with contemporary media, and the methods utilised were well-established and justifiable. The data-gathering

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process (although more complex than anything previously utilised by them) was consistently underpinned by the company’s specific questions/interests. The timeframe was shorter than is usual in academia, because results (especially from the focus groups) were speedily shared with production teams and had “immediacy” in the context of the company’s operations.

However, a sense of “divide” was also apparent, primarily in the treatment of emergent findings. In academic terms, the analysis of the project results would involve careful critical reflection and analysis, grounding conclusions within a clear context and seeking to interpret subtleties/exceptions in addition to presenting generalised trends. Identifiable methods, such as content or discourse analysis, would also have been employed to tease out and highlight issues. In the context of the KTP, however, industry requirements took priority, and broad-sweep approaches were used to simply flag patterns and trends rather than seek an explanation for them.

Methodologies, which constituted the main feature of ‘knowledge transfer’ in the case of this project, proved problematic at times. The specificities of the company’s needs at key points within the two year process did not necessarily follow academic research protocols. The Stage 3 focus group component would be a good example of this, because the company often wanted to ask specific production-related questions which tended to be isolated to individual schools and therefore inconsistent from group-to-group. Whilst this was valuable in one sense, in terms of generating meaningful feedback that the company could respond to immediately, it resulted in incomparable data-sets.

Issues of commercial confidentiality also made it difficult to refer to any results, especially during the lifespan of the project. In academic terms, it would have been fascinating to openly share emergent findings, but (even at the time of writing this chapter) restrictions were in place to guard the company’s market position. Yet despite the “closed” nature of the work, the project still proved insightful from an academic perspective, enhancing my own understanding and appreciation of the contexts, constraints and creative practices that characterise television production in Wales.

Research and KTPs in a small nation context

Undertaking a KTP project within a small nation context was an interesting process and prompted thoughts about a number of interrelated issues, mainly pertaining to research contexts and impacts. Each of these


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will be discussed in turn here, before offering some final reflections on the project and its outcomes.

In a nation like Wales, it is arguable that the relationship between an independent production company like Boomerang+ and its primary client S4C (certainly in the case of Welsh-language children’s television), is closer and more “intimate” than in other media production and broadcast contexts (such as in England). This creates a context-specific set of factors which invariably impact on practices. In Wales, such dynamics are often linked with socio-political debates and issues associated with language and identity, and can often touch on controversial and culturally-specific concerns. As such, any research activities which draw on the visible results of such an interrelationship—such as analysing audience responses to Welsh-language media outputs—needed to be carefully and sensitively handled.

Intriguingly, the timing of this particular KTP project coincided with a period of “disruption” within the Welsh television industry. The project launched in April 2010, in what was considered to be a relatively stable production context. However, by July of that year, as a result of the UK government’s Spending Review process, concerns were voiced about the long term implications of substantial budget cuts to S4C (see Brown, 2010). A degree of turbulence then followed as a result of the shock resignation of the channel’s Chief Executive, Iona Jones, on 28th July. Boomerang+ was caught in the midst of this, given that the proposed cuts would (and have) impacted upon S4C’s children’s television schedules, manifest in a reduction in daily broadcast time allocations. This even prompted public protests, with pre-school children’s television forming a particular point of focus.

This unfolding narrative could have been a fascinating study in its own right, in terms of evaluating the socio-economic and broader cultural impacts of government measures on the independent production sector. However, this proved impossible to pursue—at least in the context and within the remit of the KTP project—because it was important to safeguard the integrity and reputation of the company, rather than appear to implicate it in a (purely academic) critique of the Welsh broadcast media landscape at that time.

In broader terms, reflecting on the origins of the project, it is arguably easier to forge links between academia and industry in a small nation context. As mentioned previously, this KTP project grew from a strategic partnership between Boomerang+ and TFTS at Aberystwyth University, building on an already established foundation of mutual trust and understanding. The company knew where to locate the necessary academic

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expertise, and I had an understanding of their operational context. A significant component of the partnership also related to language. In order to fully engage with the creative industries in Wales and to work with their intended target audiences, the ability to speak Welsh is vital. Indeed, language (and language politics) is a unique feature of media-related research in Wales, and an understanding of the various needs, affordances and tensions that exist within and around Welsh-language media was essential in this instance.

Finally, the experience of participating in this project revealed much about the status of such ‘applied’ research within the academy. There were contradictory messages at play. On the one hand, as Collini (2012) usefully maps in his discussion of changes within the higher education research environment, there have been discernible shifts in expectation, towards encouraging broader scope, external engagement, and research accountability within the context of the so-called impact agenda. A KTP project arguably offers a useful illustration of these expectations in action. In the context of this project, the research not only generated positive impacts for the industry partner, but also contributed valuable academic knowledge by generating a unique data-set of audience-related materials and representing the very first audience study of its kind in Wales.

On the other hand, however, KTP projects tend to be quite easily dismissed (primary within academia) as not being “proper” research. This seems to be rooted in a misconception that “knowledge transfer” (i.e. from the academy to industry) is a one way process, and that industry has nothing to offer in return. This negative perspective could not have been further from the reality of this particular KTP. Having the opportunity to work closely with the company offered privileged insight into the children’s television production context—especially in terms of being able to better understand what restricts and/or enables creative practice—and will certainly enhance my future scholarly work on children’s television (especially in Wales).

Whilst the project could ultimately be described as “low impact” in academic research terms, the opposite was true in the context of the company and there were positive indicators of (academically-anchored) research “impact”. A key feature of any KTP project is to ensure throughput of “knowledge” into the business setting and we found that the research results at each stage of the project could be applied in real-time, whilst simultaneously generating a rich, multi-dimensional insight into the target audience.

In many ways, the impact of the project was instantly meaningful to the company’s creative processes and practices, and played a positive role


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in the development of current programmes. Throughout the project, the company pro-actively responded to feedback from the target audience and (where appropriate) made agile, innovative and immediate adjustments to their production practices. In response to the focus groups’ responses to presenters, for example, the company made some subtle content and tonal adjustments to its continuity links. Similarly, the company adjusted its approaches to audience interaction during their live broadcasts, in terms of modes of communication, types of competition, and the use of “dual-screen” formats. Finally, Boomerang+ was able to use the research results to gauge audience response to newly launched programmes, which was especially useful in terms of decision-making, strategic development, and new content ideas. Fundamentally, the project allowed the company to test its creative ideas in a low-risk context.

Imperceptible longer-term impacts also emerged as an outcome of the project. The results helped contribute to a deeper understanding of the company’s target audience, supporting the growth of its Welsh-language children’s television production business, increased sales to network broadcasters of children’s programmes, and improved general operations. “Facilitation” was a key word, in terms of how the KTP project contributed to the development of creative ideas, the re-directing of existing creative production concepts, and a general sharpening of the management, analysis and distribution of knowledge/information relating to cultural trends.

Overall, this project demanded a sense of flexible balance on the part of the research team, adapting traditional academic research methods for an industry setting, and ensuring a degree of sensitive responsiveness when bridging “audience” and “industry” within a specific cultural context. Arguably, the core of such a methodological approach―in terms of its aims, purposes and parameters―can be the same across the two settings despite differences in levels of analysis and anchorage. The multi-dimensional rigour which often characterises standard academic approaches to (audience) research can certainly introduce a sense of depth and richness to research conducted in the industry context, whilst still accommodating the clipped “immediacy” of industry requirements. This complex and potent combination of factors potentially has significant commercial repercussions and illustrates the unique benefits that can result from Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects.

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CONTRIBUTORS Steve Blandford is Professor of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of South Wales and director of the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations. His publications include Wales on Screen (Seren 2000), Film, Drama and the Break-Up of Britain (Intellect 2007) and Theatre and Performance in Small Nations (Intellect 2012). His latest publication is a monograph on the acclaimed television scriptwriter Jimmy McGovern (Manchester University Press 2013). Sally Broughton Micova is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Research Officer for the LSE Media Policy Project. Formerly she was Head of Media Development and Spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to Skopje, and prior to that held various positions related to media development and conflict mitigation. She publishes on media regulation and policy, Europeanization, and small state media systems. Jacqui Cochrane is a PhD candidate at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. She is currently researching the production and audience perceptions of television drama (fiction) produced by or for broadcasters in Scotland from 1990-2010. She has published work in the journal Participations and produced the entry on “Scotland” for the Dictionary of World Cinema. Ana Fernández Viso is an Associate Lecturer at the Department of Media, Communication and Culture of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), where she teaches on “Structure of Communication” and “Comparative Media Systems” among other courses. She has been doing research on Catalan communication policies at the Observatory of Communication Policies of the UAB for the last five years and she has published several articles on these issues.

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Merris Griffiths is a Lecturer in Media at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University. Her research focuses on children and the media (especially television) and the social construction of childhood. She specialises in (bilingual) audience research with young children, and she recently supervised a two year Knowledge Transfer Partnership project with a television production company. Dilys Jones is a recent PhD graduate from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Her PhD examined narratives of national identity in Welsh and Basque films. A mature student, she spent her working life on a dairy-farm in mid-Ceredigion, Wales. She won the Geoffrey Crawshay Scholarship in 2012. Huw David Jones is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of York and is currently working on the HERA-funded project ‘Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screens’ (MeCETES). He has previously worked at the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations (University of South Wales) and the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (University of Glasgow) and has published in Cultural Trends, Contemporary British History, Visual Culture in Britain, Scottish Historical Studies and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. Josep Àngel Guimerà is a Lecturer at the Audiovisual Communication and Advertising Department at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). His research is focused on media policy in stateless nations and media and minority language normalization in Europe. He is also interested in the relationship between media and nation-building. His last publication as editor and co-author is Informe de la Comunicació a Catalunya 2011-2012 (Institute de la Comunicació 2013). John Newbigin is Chair of Creative England. A cultural entrepreneur and writer, he is also Chair of the cultural we published Culture24 and the Cinema Arts Network. As a Special Advisor to the UK Minister for Culture, The Rt. Hon. Chris Smith MP, he was closely involved in developing the UK government’s first policies for the creative industries. He was Head of Corporate Relations for Channel 4 and executive assistant to Lord Puttman as the Chairman of Enigma Productions Ltd.


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Trish Reid is Deputy Head of the School of Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University. She is the author of Theatre and Scotland (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and has recently published articles and chapters on Anthony Neilson, Grid Iron, Suspect Culture and post-devolutionary Scottish drama. She is one of two theatre editors for the International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen. Agnes Schindler was awarded her doctorate at Trier University in 2012 for her dissertation on Icelandic national cinema and the negotiation of national identity in Icelandic feature films. She studied Media Studies, Japanese Studies and Teaching German as a Foreign Language at Trier University and Film Studies, Icelandic Language and Culture at the University of Iceland. She has been working on national, transnational, postcolonial, small and early cinema. Currently she is Study Abroad Coordinator at Trier University. Anabela de Sousa Lopes teaches at the Higher School of Communication and Media Studies (ESCS-IPL) and is a researcher at the Centre of Research in Media and Journalism (CIMJ). A former journalist, she holds a PhD in Communication Sciences and has been exploring technology and culture for more than ten years. Her areas of interest include media theories, digital technologies, and journalism and society. She is author of Tecnologias da Comunicação: Novas Domesticações (Edições Colibri 2011).

The Media in Europe’s Small Nations.

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