Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture

by Andrew Dewaard

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Economics, Film, Criticism

300 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Breann Hunt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't lie and say I didn't learn anything, but I also found the author said a lot without proving anything. Would have preferred reading this as a long-form essay that focused on 2 or 3 case studies, rather than a litany of lists, poorly constructed and rendered Tableau graphs, and an anti-capitalist "fervor" that felt trite and unconvincing.

[LightIssues · Rating 3 out of 5]

Valuable! I'm stupid, uninformed, and economically illiterate enough that a lot of the stuff here about the specific workings of private equity, hedge funds, venture capital etc, and their points of origin, historical rises, and effects on media industries were, while not "new" to me in the broader sense, explained with a helpful, appreciated simplicity and level of detail. At the end of the day, I do think this largely is very much meant for people who are interested in why contemporary media is becoming as homogenized, nostalgia-based, and franchise-oriented as it as specifically from the perspective of pure economics, but don't really have a lot of knowledge about that topic. Which is absolutely fine, this sort of stuff is necessary, and frankly should be advertised more (although of course there's a "good" reason why it isn't beyond the author's obscurity), but it also makes it hard for me to sincerely argue this is great or thought-provoking to any superlative degree . Everything about the television and film sections for example I was practically aware of already because I'm just too much of a movie buff, and there was very little new to me in the hip-hop section as well, which I think sort of does indicate how much any of this is new. Nonetheless, this isn't meant as a grand indicator of bare-bones quality or any real critical view of this, just a statement that there's a limit to what it does have to offer. I did really like all the economic stuff once again; and Dewaard actually giving some suggestions for US legislative change and then writing a counterpoint in which he recognizes the inherent problematics of a capitalist system + the age-old questions of its dismantling is quite inspired.

[Logan Macnair]

What I really wanted was a comprehensive account of why most modern media (or, I suppose, 'content' would be the more fitting word) has devolved into unambitious and formulaic slop, and that's sort of what I got with this although the emphasis here is really on the economics of the media industry (or certain parts of it anyway, video games being the most notable omission here, a little strange considering that, as Dewaard correctly points out, they are bigger than the music and film industries combined, but I suppose that's a different book altogether) and how these economic factors 'water down' or otherwise influence the media being produced.

The argument here is simple and compelling enough - that the continuous growth that capitalism requires means increased conglomeration and monopolization (and eventual 'slopification') of the media industry - and Dewaard supports this with many (and I mean many) quantifiable graphs and metrics (I get the sense he's a bit of a data-head, no judgement). I think there are some other contributing factors at play here that could be discussed (for instance, the increased importance of foreign markets in the film industry and how these markets ultimately influence the finished product), but at the end of the day Dewaard is still taking aim at the right people.

I found the specific case studies (music via hip-hop and Jay-Z and television via 30 Rock) to be a little arbitrary (though if you're a fan of 30 Rock, there is some excellent and interesting data on display here) and though I suspect I don't have enough of a background in economics to fully appreciate the detailed arguments that frontload the book, it was nonetheless an informative (albeit a disheartening) read.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The situation he describes is pretty heartbreaking and demoralizing.. he tries to pull back the veil and convey the extent of how mergers and acquisitions keep creating vaster and more inclusive monopolies, and how the owners of these monopolies vacuum up every scrap of value and potential value at the expense of artists and creative laborers. It’s pretty grim and makes me feel bad about my dependence on YouTube, amazon, apple, Netflix, and iTunes. The lack of alternatives to these oligarchies. I renew my commitment to buying CDs, and going to local concerts outside the conglomerate media system.

The explanations and definitions of financialization are I suppose useful, but they’re tedious without being that illuminating. The first two chapters especially are kind of a whirlwind intro to abstract terms and complicated systems, not rewarding to read. Chapters 3 and 4, where he describes the financialization of the music and film/tv industries, are easier to grasp.

I was especially curious about his case studies of hip-hop and 30 Rock, but these fell a little flat… in the case of 30 Rock especially, explaining the jokes feels earnest and tedious. I liked the final section of that chapter where he shows how the show has been cut to pieces for the purpose of marketing via clips on streaming platforms… confronting the kind of sickening irony that jokes about product placement and corporate sponsorship have been pressed into service as ads.

I found myself wishing for more about the “surveillance capitalism” aspects … how user behavior with music and entertainment is an ever more commodified form of attention and fodder for the marketing and behavior-predicting algorithms.

A valuable if sometimes difficult and depressing analysis.

[David Sogge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book’s argument – that predatory financial systems centred on Wall Street are impoverishing popular music, film and television – is persuasive. And chilling. It carries a serious assertion about financialized US capitalism: “It is redistributing wealth upward, making creative work more precarious, and producing derivative, intellectual-property-based culture.” The author’s assiduous scholarship (apparent in a massive bibliography, footnotes and discussions of main debates in his field), clear prose, pertinent graphics and logical construction all add force to the arguments.

The book may appeal chiefly to specialists. But I found it wholly accessible, despite my knowing almost nothing about pop music, sitcoms, blockbusters &c and the sector-specific interests that drive them and make a lot of money by so doing. The opening chapters, the first on the US political economy and the second on financialization and the rise of derivatives, are themselves worth the price of admission. The focus remains rigorously on the USA, although European dimensions get occasional mentions. From that focus arise towering ironies. For the USA is the place Roberto Unger has termed “the national headquarters of the ethic of self-fashioning and non-conformity” – an ethic that, in light of Derivative Media proves to be self-delusional, being fed from cradle to grave by corporate-controlled products of image and illusion.

[Mike Goemaat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough, and grim look at the ways that financialization have "gotten their meat hooks in" to every aspect of our culture. It is obviously timely, coming on the backs of the 5-month WGA and SAG labor strikes that disrupted Hollywood, but more so than just being a contemporary analysis, Dewaard shows us through his chosen examples that the financial destruction of our culture industries is not new. He makes a compelling argument for scholars and consumers alike to not just familiarize themselves with the language of finance culture, but also to be more aware of the shadow strategies of private equity players, hedge funds, and conglomerates to keep producing derivative media that only benefits those at the top.

[Alex Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a concise, useful, approachable book about Wall Street's effect on culture. I think we're all intimately aware of the remake / revampification of Hollywood, but I found the ties between that and financial derivatives extremely interesting. The case studies in particular were fun to read - I have always found the sort of wink wink "we know we're evil" approach to story writing to be grating.

[TheEoJMan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the discussions of “speculative lyrics” and “references as fungible assets” compelling. deWaard does a good job providing a material explanation as to why so much of our TV shows and movies are nothing but amalgamations of brand deals and “metaverse” tie-ins. I can see a future work that builds on this being truly great—as it stands it does what it sets out to do.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer on Wall Street and finances role in modern media. The title gets at the idea but the book lacked an analysis of why these derivative things are popular. This is why they are made but there is a demand for these things. I am more interested in the Richard Seymour angle of what need do these things fulfill in us.

[Richard Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on the topic I've yet to read.