Abstract
In the midst of what has come to be called the great recession, our attention has been riveted on the loss of jobs. The fragility of many people’s income and employment prospects in the contemporary economy is, however, a consequence of changes in work organization over a much longer period of time. If we want to fully understand the implications of the crash, we need to take account of these longer-term trends. They include increased self-employment, contingent and project-based work, and changing and more uncertain boundaries around skill and between amateur and professional.
Vicki Mayer’s book, Below the Line, illuminates some of these critical trends within the context of a broader examination of work in and the production of television. Below the Line encompasses four ethnographic studies of work. The first is in production of the television set in Manaus, Brazil, where Mayer explores why we disassociate creativity from the manual work that produces the television receiver. A second case study looks at the issue of professionalism and professional identity and its permutations through the lens of producers of soft-core pornography. These largely male videographers consider themselves professionals, as measured by a set of skills and a professional network, but they are marginal to what is conventionally perceived of as television entertainment production, both in terms of prestige and remuneration. This chapter looks at how skills and recognition in what was once a clearer professional hierarchy have become disjointed with the generalization of the basic skills associated with the producer and the fragmentation of genre. The second half of the book shifts the focus to questions of identity. The third chapter, on reality program “Casters,” is possibly the most compelling in the collection, examining how reality caster/program producers negotiate the boundaries between obtaining reality “subjects” who can be turned into objects or products. The casters use emotional skills to maintain the participants’ confidence while, at the same time, they are being exploited for commercial gain by the program sponsors. The fourth ethnographic study takes place in the civic realm where self-appointed representatives of community groups participate in complex games of identity politics.
This mélange of ethnographies is only loosely connected but serves Mayer’s broader objective to extend the definition of television “producers” and television production to include a wide range of “labor”—physical and mental, emotional and creative. Her ultimate goal is to raise issues and controversies around the concept of production and to encourage the reader to question assumptions about boundaries, such as those typically drawn around creative and noncreative work.
One major contribution of the book, beyond the insights provided within the individual case studies, is the author’s ability to illuminate how various facets of industry work and worker identity are transforming in the context of industry restructuring and macroeconomic forces. The ethnographies are set in the present and a bit of historical context would have been useful to contextualize the work practices Mayer describes. Some of the television production she describes, such as the manufacturing of the television receiver in low-wage enterprise zones, has been taking place since the late 1960s. The emergence of other occupations, such as reality casters, is a more recent phenomenon. It is a consequence of the merger of television and film-production companies, the loss of revenue in broadcast television, and the search for low-cost programming. The degradation of work, in what has always been a cutthroat industry, is largely invisible to the product producers who have only known the contemporary industry. As Mayer demonstrates, their work process, though intrinsic to the product, is also invisible to the public who buys the product. The aura of glamour persists, even in the face of work, that for most television producers is unreliable and unremunerative.
Mayer’s book draws on the sociological and semiotic literature that understands work life and occupational identity as constructed in time and place and the boundaries between work and nonwork as in constant flux rather than fixed. In the case of many media producers, the question of boundaries is of key significance as work skills have been generalized and hierarchical relationships disrupted. This process of deprofessionalization has been hastened by the loss of dominant television producer unions. Although Mayer is skeptical about the concept of the “professional” because of its artificial exclusivity, unions and guilds certifying professional status played a critical role in maintaining the bargaining power of identifiable groups of workers. The loss of collective occupational identity and solidarity—whether among writers, actors, or casting directors—has placed enormous power in the hands of those who distribute the products of television entertainment. Mayer’s book is a chronicle of the loss of occupational identity and blurred boundaries that characterize contemporary television production.