Journal articles on the topic 'Ralph Lauren'

The following research aims to analyze the effect of esteem needs on consumer purchase intentions with brand trust as a mediating variable. The research was conducted with Path Analysis data analysis techniques. The sample was obtained by using a purposive sampling method of 100 respondents. Based on the results of the analysis it can be concluded that the needs esteem has a positive and significant effect on consumers' purchase intention. Esteem needs have a significant positive influence on the customer's brand trust. Brand trust has a positive and significant influence on consumers' purchase intentions. Brand trust mediates the positive influence of esteem needs on consumer buying intentions. Suggestions that can be given to Polo producers Ralph Lauren must pay attention to consumers about whether or not a Polo Ralph Lauren product is useful to be an inspiration and give an increase in esteem needs. Keywords: esteem needs, brand trust, purchase intention

A partir da globalização da comunicação da moda de luxo, o trabalho analisa a interpretação realizada por um grupo de informantes sobre anúncios das grifes Dior, Ralph Lauren e Marc Jacobs. A interpretação dos informantes - um grupo de mulheres de classe alta do Rio de Janeiro - permite identificar, nas representações veiculadas nos anúncios e nas práticas de consumo ali inscritas, uma experiência que, além de outras dimensões, pode ser percebida como de entretenimento, lazer ou ocupação prazeirosa do tempo.

Collecting old cars, like a cocaine habit, seems to be one of nature’s ways of telling you you are making too much money. Think of Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason and his private collection of Ferraris. Think of the American pharmaceutical heir Josiah K. Lilly III and his vintage automobiles displayed in an imitation Shaker barn-house at a heritage park on Cape Cod. Or remember Hans and Fritz Schlumpf, Alsatian textile magnates unable to resist another Bugatti. Indeed, the brothers’ passion helped lead their firm into bankruptcy and their collection––more than 500 vehicles, including 150 Bugattis––ended up as France’s national motorcar museum, the Cité de l’Automobile, opened at Mulhouse in 1982.

In the context of globalisation of production of sports apparel and the plundering of semiotic cultural resources in the design of fashionable sportswear, this paper examines the language of the interpersonal elements of Company Annual Reports in the US sports/fashion industry, in particular the Letter to Shareholders in recent Annual Reports from Hilfiger, Nike, Polo Ralph Lauren and Reebok. In these Reports, financial reporting is increasingly being colonised by marketing discourse, and the flexible potential of the Annual Report genre is being exploited to represent companies to (potential) shareholders in a compound of the discourses of sports, business, and finance with those of globalisation, primacy, and Americanism. Globalisation for these companies is effectively presented as the outward expansion of American values into the world market.

The main goal of this study is to examine the communication that fashion brands make through Facebook. It is intended to ascertain if the fashion brands use a communication strategy based on dialogue with their followers. In order to reach the objectives indicated above, a content analysis has been carried out (quantitative methodology) of 326 publications made through Facebook by H&M, Zara and Ralph Lauren between January 1st and June 30th of 2017. The main results of this work show that, although Facebook has a wide dialogical potential, fashion brands do not use it to a great extent. Although we consider appropriate to have analyzed only the social network Facebook given its importance, this situation could be considered as the main limitation of the present study, since the fashion brands could, or not, be taking advantage of the dialogical potential of other social networks, such as Twitter or Instagram. It could be considered that this research stands out for studying a series of variables that allows organizations to know if they are using the dialogical potential offered by digital communication.

What biblical critical insights might re-reading the Song of Songs through its contemporary musical afterlives produce? I propose that certain offbeat musical settings of the Song participate in the discursive composition of specifically postmodern versions of love (e.g. those of Berlant, Belsey, Illouz), and thereby disrupt the transmission of normalizing socio-romantic energies within what Lauren Berlant calls “the intimate public sphere.” In this intertextual case study, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 1925Flos campi– a work usually praised for its harmonious reconciliation of sensual and spiritual musical moods and idioms – becomes a dystopic allegory of postmodern love. Gestating during WWI as Vaughan Williams served in France and Greece, then composed during a post-war decade of collective disenchantment with the Great War’s socio-political balance sheet,Flos campiconstitutes an ambivalent response to both the composer’s individual as well as a more collective experience of national post-war trauma. With help from Roland Boer’s Lacanian reading of the Song (2000), I locate this ambivalence in the composer’s enigmatic treatment of musical pastoralisms and modal-tonal harmonies as well as his expressive deployment of formal, motivic, and thematic repetition. The dissonant erotic semiotics that these techniques produce inFlos campican be enlisted today to challenge religio-rhetorical co-optations of the Song to bolster heteronormative institutions of love, sexuality, marriage and family by way of the Song’s supposedly timeless message that “Love Conquers All.” Correlatively, readingFlos campias a product of post-war trauma and an allegory of postmodern love invites biblical critics to hear the text’s pastoralisms with fresh “ears.”

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how counterfeit users estimate the probability of being detected and how this probability affects their counterfeit consumption behaviour. Specifically, it addresses three questions: do perceived social consequences influence counterfeit users’ probability estimate of being detected? What is the psychological mechanism underlying the estimation of this probability? And how does this probability estimate affect counterfeit purchase and usage intentions? Design/methodology/approach – The authors used three scenario-based experimental studies with university students in Hong Kong, a place where counterfeit products are widely available. First study used a factitious brand of jeans as the stimulus and the other two studies used a Ralph Lauren polo shirt. In each study, the authors measured participants’ responses towards counterfeit purchase and the probability of being detected after they read the relevant brand information and had a close-up view of the attributes in the genuine and counterfeit versions. Findings – The authors found that counterfeit users are susceptible to a pessimism bias such that they estimate a higher probability of being detected when they judge the outcome of being detected as more severe and this bias is driven by the spotlight effect in that counterfeit users judging the outcome as more severe tend to perceive that others pay more attention to their counterfeit usage. Moreover, this pessimism bias is mitigated when the target user is another person instead of oneself, thus suggesting the egocentric nature of the bias. Research limitations/implications – The authors used undergraduate students and scenario-based experimental approach in all the studies that may limit the generalisability of the findings. Practical implications – The results suggest that brand managers should emphasise the importance of negative social consequences and highlight the role of outcome severity and egocentric bias in their advertising and communication programmes in order to curb counterfeit consumption. Originality/value – The research contributes to the growing literature on counterfeit consumption by studying the process underlying estimation of the probability of being detected by others, an important but often neglected factor that influences counterfeit purchase decision. The authors also highlight the role of outcome severity and egocentric bias in this process.

Background:For patients (pts) with PsA, several disease activity measures are available including very low/minimal disease activity (VLDA/MDA), cutoffs based on the Disease Activity in PsA (DAPSA) score, and on the Psoriatic Arthritis Disease Activity Score (PASDAS) score.Objectives:To assess the rates of pts achieving these remission or low disease activity (LDA) criteria at Wk 24 using data from the SELECT-PsA 1 and SELECT-PsA 2 phase 3 studies;1,2 Additionally, we assessed the distribution of individual MDA components among pts who did or did not achieve MDA criteria at Wk 24.Methods:In SELECT-PsA 1 and SELECT-PsA 2, pts with PsA and prior inadequate response (IR) or intolerance to ≥1 non-biologic DMARD (N=1705) or ≥1 biologic DMARD (N=642), respectively, were randomized to once daily upadacitinib (UPA) 15mg, UPA 30mg, adalimumab (ADA) 40mg every other week (SELECT-PsA 1 only), or placebo (PBO). Remission and LDA were assessed using VLDA/MDA, DAPSA scores of ≤4/≤14, and PASDAS scores of ≤1.9/≤3.2, at Wk 24 (Table 1). Non-responder imputation (NRI) was used for handling missing data; pts rescued at Wk 16 were considered non-responders. Pairwise comparisons between UPA doses and PBO or ADA were conducted using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test.Results:Overall, 2345 pts were analyzed; mean age 51 years, 53% female. In both studies, higher rates of remission and LDA were observed with both UPA doses vs PBO at Wk 24 (nominal P-values <0.05 for both time points; Table 1). Generally, higher rates of remission and LDA were also observed with UPA30 vs ADA in non-biologic DMARD-IR pts (nominal P-values <0.05). Greater rates of MDA/VLDA were observed at Wk 24 with UPA15 and UPA30 vs PBO in both studies and with UPA30 vs ADA in non-biologic DMARD-IR pts (nominal P-values <0.05 for all comparisons). The proportion of responder or non-responder pts receiving UPA15 or UPA30 was similar for each of the MDA components in both studies. At Wk 24, more responder and non-responder pts in both studies achieved Swollen Joint Count (SJC) 66 ≤1, Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) ≤1 or Body Surface Area-Psoriasis (BSA-Ps) ≤3%, and Leeds Enthesitis Index (LEI) ≤1 (Figure 1). Conversely, the proportion of pts Achieving Tender Joint Count (TJC) 68 ≤1 and Pt’s Global Assessment of Pain ≤1.5 tended to be lower.Conclusion:Regardless of previous biologic DMARD failure, pts treated with UPA15 or UPA30 achieved a higher rate of remission or LDA measured by various disease activity measures vs PBO at Wk 24; higher rates of response were observed in most of the remission and LDA measures with UPA30 vs ADA in non-biologic DMARD-IR pts. Among pts who did or did not achieve MDA criteria at Wk 24, a greater proportion of UPA-treated pts achieved physician derived measures such as SJC ≤1, PASI ≤1 or BSA-Ps ≤3%, and LEI ≤1.References:[1]McInnes IB, et al. Ann Rheum Dis, 2020; 79:12.[2]Genovese MC, et al. Ann Rheum Dis, 2020; 79:139.Table 1.Proportion of Patients Achieving Remission and LDA Measures at Week 24Endpoint, n (%)SELECT-PsA 1SELECT-PsA 2PBON=423ADA 40mg EOWN=429UPA 15mg QDN=429UPA 30mg QDN=423PBON=212UPA 15mg QDN=211UPA 30mg QDN=218MDA52 (12.3)143 (33.3)157 (36.6) *, #192(45.4) *, †, #6 (2.8)53 (25.1) *, #63 (28.9) *, #≥6 VLDA components25 (5.9)90 (21.0)105 (24.5) *134 (31.7) *, †3 (1.4)26 (12.3) *44 (20.2) *VLDA11 (2.6)62 (14.5)55 (12.8) *72 (17.0) *3 (1.4)16 (7.6) *21(9.6) *DAPSA REM9 (2.1)43 (10.0)47 (11.0) *79 (18.7) *, †1 (0.5)15 (7.1) *28 (12.8) *DAPSA LDA70 (16.5)198 (46.2)204 (47.6) *235(55.6) *, †14 (6.6)73 (34.6) *91 (41.7) *PASDAS REM12 (2.8)51 (11.9)60 (14.0) *91 (21.5) *, †4 (1.9)20 (9.5) *31 (14.2) *PASDAS LDA63 (14.9)168 (39.2)195 (45.5) *211 (49.9) *, †9 (4.2)69 (32.7) *82 (37.6) **P ≤ 0.05 for UPA15 and UPA30 vs PBO; †P ≤ 0.05 for UPA30 vs ADA; #Statistically significant in the multiplicity-controlled analysis.MDA (5/7) and VLDA (7/7): TJC ≤ 1; SJC ≤ 1; PASI ≤ 1 or BSA-Psoriasis ≤ 3%; Patient’s Assessment of Pain NRS ≤ 1.5; PtGA-Disease Activity NRS ≤ 2.0; HAQ-DI score ≤ 0.5; and tender entheseal points ≤ 1.DAPSA REM ≤ 4; DAPSA LDA ≤ 14.PASDAS REM ≤ 1.9; PASDAS LDA ≤ 3.2.Figure 1Acknowledgements:AbbVie and the authors thank the patients, study sites, and investigators who participated in this clinical trial. AbbVie, Inc was the study sponsor, contributed to study design, data collection, analysis & interpretation, and to writing, reviewing, and approval of final version. No honoraria or payments were made for authorship. Medical writing support was provided by Ramona Vladea, PhD of AbbVie Inc.Disclosure of Interests:Philip J Mease Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Galapagos, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sun Pharma, and UCB., Consultant of: AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Galapagos, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sun Pharma, and UCB., Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Galapagos, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sun Pharma, and UCB., Arthur Kavanaugh Consultant of: AbbVie Inc., Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, BMS, Celgene, Centocor-Janssen, Pfizer, Roche, and UCB, Grant/research support from: AbbVie Inc., Amgen, Astra-Zeneca, BMS, Celgene, Centocor-Janssen, Pfizer, Roche, and UCB, Dafna D Gladman Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene Corporation, Eli Lilly, Galapagos, Gilead, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer Inc, and UCB, Oliver FitzGerald Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and UCB, Consultant of: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and UCB, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and UCB, Enrique Soriano Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and UCB, Consultant of: AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and UCB, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, Bristol Myers, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, and UCB, Peter Nash Speakers bureau: AbbVie, BMS, Roche, Pfizer, Janssen, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, UCB, Eli Lilly, Novartis, and Celgene, Consultant of: AbbVie, BMS, Roche, Pfizer, Janssen, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, UCB, Eli Lilly, Novartis, and Celgene, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, BMS, Roche, Pfizer, Janssen, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, UCB, Eli Lilly, Novartis, and Celgene, Dai Feng Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Apinya Lertratanakul Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Kevin Douglas Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Ralph Lippe Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Laure Gossec Consultant of: AbbVie,Amgen, Biogen, Celgene, Janssen, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Samsung, Sanofi, UCB, Grant/research support from: Lilly, Pfizer, and Sandoz.

Students analyze a photograph to solve mathematical questions related to the images captured in the photograph. This month, a photograph of Ralph Lauren perfume bottles leads to some permutations and some geometry.

Alex Abou-Chebl, MD Michael Abraham, MD Joseph E. Acker, III, EMT-P, MPH Robert Adams, MD, MS, FAHA Eric Adelman, MD Opeolu Adeoye, MD DeAnna L. Adkins, PhD Maria Aguilar, MD Absar Ahmed, MD Naveed Akhtar, MD Rufus Akinyemi, MBBS, MSc, MWACP, FMCP(Nig) Karen C. Albright, DO, MPH Felipe Albuquerque, MD Andrei V. Alexandrov, MD Abdulnasser Alhajeri, MD Latisha Ali, MD Nabil J. Alkayed, MD, PhD, FAHA Amer Alshekhlee, MD, MSc Irfan Altafullah, MD Arun Paul Amar, MD Pierre Amarenco, MD, FAHA, FAAN Sepideh Amin-Hanjani, MD, FAANS, FACS, FAHA Catherine Amlie-Lefond, MD Aaron M. Anderson, MD David C. Anderson, MD, FAHA Sameer A. Ansari, MD, PhD Ken Arai, PhD Agnieszka Ardelt, MD, PhD Juan Arenillas, MD PhD William Armstead, PhD, FAHA Jennifer L. Armstrong-Wells, MD, MPH Negar Asdaghi, MD, MSc, FRCPC Nancy D. Ashley, APRN,BC, CEN,CCRN,CNRN Stephen Ashwal, MD Andrew Asimos, MD Rand Askalan, MD, PhD Kjell Asplund, MD Richard P. Atkinson, MD, FAHA Issam A. Awad, MD, MSc, FACS, MA (hon) Hakan Ay, MD, FAHA Michael Ayad, MD, PhD Cenk Ayata, MD Aamir Badruddin, MD Hee Joon Bae, MD, PhD Mark Bain, MD Tamilyn Bakas, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN Frank Barone, BA, DPhil Andrew Barreto, MD William G. Barsan, MD, FACEP, FAHA Nicolas G. Bazan, MD, PhD Kyra Becker, MD, FAHA Ludmila Belayev, MD Rodney Bell, MD Andrei B. Belousov, PhD Susan L. Benedict, MD Larry Benowitz, PhD Rohit Bhatia, MBBS, MD, DM, DNB Pratik Bhattacharya, MD MPh James A. Bibb, PhD Jose Biller, MD, FACP, FAAN, FAHA Randie Black Schaffer, MD, MA Kristine Blackham, MD Bernadette Boden-Albala, DrPH Cesar Borlongan, MA, PhD Susana M. Bowling, MD Monique M. B. Breteler, MD, PhD Jonathan Brisman, MD Allan L. Brook, MD, FSIR Robert D. Brown, MD, MPH Devin L. Brown, MD, MS Ketan R. Bulsara, MD James Burke, MD Cheryl Bushnell, MD, MHSc, FAHA Ken Butcher, MD, PhD, FRCPC Livia Candelise, MD S Thomas Carmichael, MD, PhD Bob S. Carter, MD, PhD Angel Chamorro, MD, PhD Pak H. Chan, PhD, FAHA Seemant Chaturvedi, MD, FAHA, FAAN Peng Roc Chen, MD Jun Chen, MD Eric Cheng, MD, MS Huimahn Alex Choi, MD Sherry Chou, MD, MMSc Michael Chow, MD, FRCS(C), MPH Marilyn Cipolla, PhD, MS, FAHA Kevin Cockroft, MD, MSc, FACS Domingos Coiteiro, MD Alexander Coon, MD Robert Cooney, MD Shelagh B. Coutts, BSc, MB.ChB., MD, FRCPC, FRCP(Glasg.) Elizabeth Crago, RN, MSN Steven C. Cramer, MD Carolyn Cronin, MD, PhD Dewitte T. Cross, MD Salvador Cruz-Flores, MD, FAHA Brett L. Cucchiara, MD, FAHA Guilherme Dabus, MD M Ziad Darkhabani, MD Stephen M. Davis, MD, FRCP, Edin FRACP, FAHA Deidre De Silva, MBBS, MRCP Amir R. Dehdashti, MD Gregory J. del Zoppo, MD, MS, FAHA Bart M. Demaerschalk, MD, MSc, FRCPC Andrew M. Demchuk, MD Andrew J. DeNardo, MD Laurent Derex, MD, PhD Gabrielle deVeber, MD Helen Dewey, MB, BS, PhD, FRACP, FAFRM(RACP) Mandip Dhamoon, MD, MPH Orlando Diaz, MD Martin Dichgans, MD Rick M. Dijkhuizen, PhD Michael Diringer, MD Jodi Dodds, MD Eamon Dolan, MD, MRCPI Amish Doshi, MD Dariush Dowlatshahi, MD, PhD, FRCPC Alexander Dressel, MD Carole Dufouil, MD Dylan Edwards, PhD Mitchell Elkind, MD, MS, FAAN Matthias Endres, MD Joey English, MD, PhD Conrado J. Estol, MD, PhD Mustapha Ezzeddine, MD, FAHA Susan C. Fagan, PharmD, FAHA Pierre B. Fayad, MD, FAHA Wende Fedder, RN, MBA, FAHA Valery Feigin, MD, PhD Johanna Fifi, MD Jessica Filosa, PhD David Fiorella, MD, PhD Urs Fischer, MD, MSc Matthew L. Flaherty, MD Christian Foerch, MD Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, FAHA Andria Ford, MD Christine Fox, MD, MAS Isabel Fragata, MD Justin Fraser, MD Don Frei, MD Gary H. Friday, MD, MPH, FAAN, FAHA Neil Friedman, MBChB Michael Froehler, MD, PhD Chirag D. Gandhi, MD Hannah Gardener, ScD Madeline Geraghty, MD Daniel P. Gibson, MD Glen Gillen, EdD, OTR James Kyle Goddard, III, MD Daniel A. Godoy, MD, FCCM Joshua Goldstein, MD, PhD, FAHA Nicole R. Gonzales, MD Hector Gonzalez, PhD Marlis Gonzalez-Fernandez, MD, PhD Philip B. Gorelick, MD, MPH, FAHA Matthew Gounis, PhD Prasanthi Govindarajan, MD Manu Goyal, MD, MSc Glenn D. Graham, MD, PhD Armin J. Grau, MD, PhD Joel Greenberg, PhD, FAHA Steven M. Greenberg, MD, PhD, FAHA David M. Greer, MD, MA, FCCM James C. Grotta, MD, FAHA Jaime Grutzendler, MD Rishi Gupta, MD Andrew Gyorke, MD Mary N. Haan, MPH, DrPH Roman Haberl, MD Maree Hackett, PhD Elliot Clark Haley, MD, FAHA Hen Hallevi, MD Edith Hamel, PhD Graeme J. Hankey, MBBS, MD, FRCP, FRCP, FRACP Amer Haque, MD Richard L. Harvey, MD Don Heck, MD Cathy M. Helgason, MD Thomas Hemmen, MD, PhD Dirk M. Hermann, MD Marta Hernandez, MD Paco Herson, PhD Michael D. Hill, MD, MSc, FRCPC Nancy K. Hills, PhD, MBA Robin C. Hilsabeck, PhD, ABPP-CN Judith A. Hinchey, MD, MS, FAHA Robert G. Holloway, MD, MPH William Holloway, MD Sherril K. Hopper, RN Jonathan Hosey, MD, FAAN George Howard, DPH, FAHA Virginia J. Howard, PhD, FAHA David Huang, MD, PhD Daniel Huddle, DO Richard L. Hughes, MD, FAHA, FAAN Lynn Hundley, RN, MSN, ARNP, CCRN, CNRN, CCNS Patricia D. Hurn, PhD, FAHA Muhammad Shazam Hussain, MD, FRCPC Costantino Iadecola, MD Rebecca N. Ichord, MD M. Arfan Ikram, MD Kachi Illoh, MD Pascal Jabbour, MD Bharathi D. Jagadeesan, MD Vivek Jain, MD Dara G. Jamieson, MD, FAHA Brian T. Jankowitz, MD Edward C. Jauch, MD, MS, FAHA, FACEP David Jeck, MD Sayona John, MD Karen C. Johnston, MD, FAHA S Claiborne Johnston, MD, FAHA Jukka Jolkkonen, PhD Stephen C. Jones, PhD, SM, BSc Theresa Jones, PhD Anne Joutel, MD, PhD Tudor G. Jovin, MD Mouhammed R. Kabbani, MD Yasha Kadkhodayan, MD Mary A. Kalafut, MD, FAHA Amit Kansara, MD Moira Kapral, MD, MS Navaz P. Karanjia, MD Wendy Kartje, MD, PhD Carlos S. Kase, MD, FAHA Scott E. Kasner, MD, MS, FAHA Markku Kaste, MD, PhD, FESO, FAHA Prasad Katakam, MD, PhD Zvonimir S. Katusic, MD Irene Katzan, MD, MS, FAHA James E. Kelly, MD Michael Kelly, MD, PhD, FRCSC Peter J. Kelly, MD, MS, FRCPI, ABPN (Dip) Margaret Kelly-Hayes, EdD, RN, FAAN David M. Kent, MD Thomas A. Kent, MD Walter Kernan, MD Salomeh Keyhani, MD, MPH Alexander Khalessi, MD, MS Nadia Khan, MD, FRCPC, MSc Naim Naji Khoury, MD, MS Chelsea Kidwell, MD, FAHA Anthony Kim, MD Howard S. Kirshner, MD, FAHA Adam Kirton, MD, MSc, FRCPC Brett M. Kissela, MD Takanari Kitazono, MD, PhD Steven Kittner, MD, MPH Jeffrey Kleim, PhD Dawn Kleindorfer, MD, FAHA N. Jennifer Klinedinst, PhD, MPH, MSN, RN William Knight, MD Adam Kobayashi, MD, PhD Sebastian Koch, MD Raymond C. Koehler, PhD, FAHA Ines P. Koerner, MD, PhD Martin Köhrmann, MD Anneli Kolk, PhD, MD John B. Kostis, MD Tobias Kurth, MD, ScD Peter Kvamme, MD Eduardo Labat, MD, DABR Daniel T. Lackland, BA, DPH, FAHA Kamakshi Lakshminarayan, MD, PhD Joseph C. LaManna, PhD Catherine E. Lang, PT, PhD Maarten G. Lansberg, MD, PhD, MS Giuseppe Lanzino, MD Paul A. Lapchak, PhD, FAHA Sean Lavine, MD Ronald M. Lazar, PhD Marc Lazzaro, MD Jin-Moo Lee, MD, PhD Meng Lee, MD Ting-Yim Lee, PhD Erica Leifheit-Limson, PhD Enrique Leira, MD, FAHA Deborah Levine, MD, MPh Joshua M. Levine, MD Steven R. Levine, MD Christopher Lewandowski, MD Daniel J. Licht, MD Judith H. Lichtman, PhD, MPH David S. Liebeskind, MD, FAHA Shao-Pow Lin, MD, PhD Weili Lin, PhD Ute Lindauer, PhD Italo Linfante, MD Lynda Lisabeth, PhD, FAHA Alice Liskay, RN, BSN, MPA, CCRC Warren Lo, MD W. T. Longstreth, MD, MPH, FAHA George A. Lopez, MD, PhD David Loy, MD, PhD Andreas R. Luft, MD Helmi Lutsep, MD, FAHA William Mack, MD Mark MacKay, MBBS, FRACP Jennifer Juhl Majersik, MD Marc D. Malkoff, MD, FAHA Randolph S. Marshall, MD John H. Martin, PhD Alexander Mason, MD Masayasu Matsumoto, MD, PhD Elizabeth Mayeda, MPH William G. Mayhan, PhD Avi Mazumdar, MD Louise D. McCullough, MD, PhD Erin McDonough, MD Lisa Merck, MD, MPH James F. Meschia, MD, FAHA Steven R. Messe, MD Joseph Mettenburg, MD,PhD William Meurer, MD BA Brett C. Meyer, MD Robert Mikulik, MD, PhD James M. Milburn, MD Kazuo Minematsu, MD, PhD J Mocco, MD, MS Yousef Mohammad, MD MSc FAAN Mahendranath Moharir, MD, MSc, FRACP Carlos A. Molina, MD Joan Montaner, MD PhD Majaz Moonis, MD, MRCP Christopher J. Moran, MD Henry Moyle, MD, PhD Susanne Muehlschlegel, MD, MPH Susanne Muehlschlegel, MD, MPH Yuichi Murayama, MD Stephanie J. Murphy, VMD, PhD, DACLAM, FAHA Fadi Nahab, MD Andrew M. Naidech, MD, MPh Ashish Nanda, MD Sandra Narayanan, MD William Neil, MD Edwin Nemoto, PhD, FAHA Lauren M. Nentwich, MD Perry P. Ng, MD Al C. Ngai, PhD Andrew D. Nguyen, MD, PhD Thanh Nguyen, MD, FRCPC Mai Nguyen-Huynh, MD, MAS Raul G. Nogueira, MD Bo Norrving, MD Robin Novakovic, MD Thaddeus Nowak, PhD David Nyenhuis, PhD Michelle C. Odden, PhD Michael O'Dell, MD Christopher S. Ogilvy, MD Jamary Oliveira-Filho, MD, PhD Jean Marc Olivot, MD, PhD Brian O'Neil, MD, FACEP Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, FAHA Shahram Oveisgharan, MD Mayowa Owolabi, MBBS,MWACP,FMCP Aditya S. Pandey, MD Dhruvil J. Pandya, MD Nancy D. Papesh, BSN, RN, CFRN, EMT-B Helena Parfenova, PhD Min S. Park, MD Matthew S. Parsons, MD Aman B. Patel, MD Srinivas Peddi, MD Joanne Penko, MS, MPH Miguel A. Perez-Pinzon, PhD, FAHA Paola Pergami, MD, PhD Michael Phipps, MD Anna M. Planas, PhD Octavio Pontes-Neto, MD Shyam Prabhakaran, MD, MS Kameshwar Prasad, MD, DM, MMSc, FRCP, FAMS Charles Prestigiacomo, MD, FAANS, FACS G. Lee Pride, MD Janet Prvu Bettger, ScD, FAHA Volker Puetz, MD, PhD Svetlana Pundik, MD Terence Quinn, MD, MRCP, MBChb (hons), BSc (hons) Alejandro Rabinstein, MD Mubeen Rafay, MB.BS, FCPS, MSc Preeti Raghavan, MD Venkatakrishna Rajajee, MD Kumar Rajamani, MD Peter A. Rasmussen, MD Kumar Reddy, MD Michael J. Reding, MD Bruce R. Reed, PhD Mathew J. Reeves, BVSc, PhD, FAHA Martin Reis, MD Marc Ribo, MD, PhD David Rodriguez-Luna, MD, PhD Charles Romero, MD Jonathan Rosand, MD Gary A. Rosenberg, MD Michael Ross, MD, FACEP Natalia S. Rost, MD, MA Elliot J. Roth, MD, FAHA Christianne L. Roumie, MD, MPH Marilyn M. Rymer, MD, FAHA Ralph L. Sacco, MS, MD, FAAN, FAHA Edgar A. Samaniego, MD, MS Navdeep Sangha, BS, MD Nerses Sanossian, MD Lauren Sansing, MD, MSTR Gustavo Saposnik, MD, MSc, FAHA Eric Sauvageau, MD Jeffrey L. Saver, MD, FAHA, FAAN Sean I. Savitz, MD, FAHA Judith D. Schaechter, PhD Lee H. Schwamm, MD, FAHA Phillip Scott, MD, FAHA Magdy Selim, MD, PhD, FAHA Warren R. Selman, MD, FAHA Souvik Sen, MD, MS, MPH, FAHA Frank Sharp, MD, FAHA, FAAN George Shaw, MD, PhD Kevin N. Sheth, MD Vilaas Shetty, MD Joshua Shimony, MD, PhD Yukito Shinohara, MD, PhD Ashfaq Shuaib, MD, FAHA Lori A. Shutter, MD Cathy A. Sila, MD, FAAN Gisele S. Silva, MD Brian Silver, MD Daniel E. Singer, MD Robert Singer, MD Aneesh B. Singhal, MD Lesli Skolarus, MD Eric E. Smith, MD Sabrina E. Smith, MD, PhD Christopher Sobey, PhD, FAHA J David Spence, MD Christian Stapf, MD Joel Stein, MD Michael F. Stiefel, MD, PhD Sophia Sundararajan, MD, PhD David Tanne, MD Robert W. Tarr, MD Turgut Tatlisumak, MD, PhD, FAHA, FESO Charles H. Tegeler, MD Mohamed S. Teleb, MD Fernando Testai, MD, PhD Ajith Thomas, MD Stephen Thomas, MD, MPH Bradford B. Thompson, MD Amanda Thrift, PhD, PGDipBiostat David Tong, MD Michel Torbey, MD, MPH, FCCM, FAHA Emmanuel Touze, MD, PhD Amytis Towfighi, MD Richard J. Traystman, PhD, FAHA Margaret F. Tremwel, MD, PhD, FAHA Brian Trimble, MD Georgios Tsivgoulis, MD Tanya Turan, MD, FAHA Aquilla S. Turk, DO Michael Tymianski, MD, PhD, FRCSC Philippa Tyrrell, MB, MD, FRCP Shinichiro Uchiyama, MD, FAHA Luis Vaca, MD Renee Van Stavern, MD Susan J. Vannucci, PhD Dale Vaslow, MD, PHD Zena Vexler, PhD Barbara Vickrey, MD, MPH Ryan Viets, MD Anand Viswanathan, MD, PhD Salina Waddy, MD Kenneth R. Wagner, PhD Lawrence R. Wechsler, MD Ling Wei, MD Theodore Wein, MD, FRCPC, FAHA Babu Welch, MD David Werring, PhD Justin Whisenant, MD Christine Anne Wijman, MD, PhD Michael Wilder, MD Joshua Willey, MD, MS David Williams, MB, BAO, BCh, PhD, Dip.Med.Tox, FRCPE, FRCPI Linda Williams, MD Olajide Williams, MD, MS Dianna Willis, PhD John A. Wilson, MD, FACS Jeffrey James Wing, MPH Carolee J. Winstein, PhD, PT, FAPTA Max Wintermark, MD Charles Wira, MD Robert J. Wityk, MD, FAHA Thomas J. Wolfe, MD Lawrence Wong, MD Daniel Woo, MD, MS Clinton Wright, MD, MS Guohua Xi, MD Ying Xian, MD, PhD Dileep R. Yavagal, MD Midori A. Yenari, MD, FAHA William L. Young, MD Darin Zahuranec, MD Allyson Zazulia, MD, FAHA Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri, PhD John H. Zhang, MD, PhD Justin Zivin, MD, PhD, FAHA Richard Zorowitz, MD, FAHA Maria Cristina Zurru, MD

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisements for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>