FIMS Publications

Intellectual Property, Employment, and Talent Relations: A Media Studies Perspective

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2014

Journal

Intellectual Property for the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Approaches

First Page

206

Last Page

226

Abstract

This chapter considers twentieth century contests over the terms of creative employment in the United States film and music industries. The sites of creative employment are pre-eminently sites of power relations; cultural industry employers' dependence on continuous streams of novel intellectual property correlate to contrasting forms of struggle in "talent relations" (a sectorial adaptation of "labor relations") at the star and rank-and-file levels. This chapter offers brief accounts of Olivia de Havilland's and Olivia Newton-John's court disputes over the duration of their contracts (as well as a related change of relevant employment law), and of the American Federation of Musicians' and the American Federation of Radio Artists' collective bargaining efforts to stem and compensate for the technological displacement of their members. It argues that, surveyed together, these very different forms of contest reveal distinct logics of corporate control in core copyright industries. The management of the entertainment industries' constitutive tension between innovation and control has produced regimes of highly constrictive star contracts but it has allowed openings for extraordinary gains by organized creative craftspeople. Stars' great economic rewards can come at the expense of radical constraint; the AFM, AF(T)RA, and other organizations have been able to significantly democratize their employment.

Notes

In Courtney B. Doagoo, Mistrale Goudreau, Teresa Scassa & Madelaine Saginur (Eds.) (2014). Intellectual Property for the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Approaches (pp. 206-226). Toronto: Irwin Law Inc.

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