1. THE OBAMA COALITION AS A MODEL FOR MASS AUDIENCE Higher Ground Productions, Consensus Taste, and Streaming Media's Centrism
- Author
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Elkins, Evan
- Subjects
Streaming media -- Service development -- Social aspects -- Political aspects ,Aesthetics -- Social aspects -- Political aspects ,Entertainment industry -- Service development ,Consensus (Social sciences) -- Political aspects ,Company service development ,Streaming media technology ,Company investment ,Arts, visual and performing - Abstract
This article examines Barack and Michelle Obama's entertainment company, Higher Ground Productions. Founded in 2018, Higher Ground has produced and distributed several films, television programs, and podcasts for Its exclusive streaming partners, Netflix, Spotify, and Audible. Drawing on media-industry analysis, scholarship on representation and politics in streaming media, and cultural studies of mass culture and entertainment, I argue that these streaming companies leverage the Obamas' reputation as popular tastemakers and the pair's diverse coalition of supporters as part of the broader project of building a mass audience. This coalitional audience is based on drawing different demographic groups toward the platform, smoothing over political and identity differences by curating explicitly diverse yet agreeably centristliberal (and thus not partisan or radical) programming, and offering up the Obamas as moguls and curators who enable their host platforms to present themselves as services open to all viewing and listening constituencies. Although the Obamas are sui generis figures in American life, Higher Ground's partnerships tell us much about how contemporary streamers attempt to produce massness in part by positioning themselves as lightly politicized, but not overly controversial, purveyors of sophisticated infotainment., THE FIRST EPISODE OF NETFLIX'S 2022 SERIES THE G WORD WITH ADAM CONOVER, A SATIRICAL documentary examining the US federal government, begins with a self-referential joke. Lying on an office [...]
- Published
- 2024
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