Brian Saludes Bantugan

Creative Opposition: a Framework for the Study of the History of a New Mainstream Film Genre Brian Saludes Bantugan

What I presented here is a framework that bridges the study of production and consumption in media and the historical study of media artifacts. It is a critical framework that privileges both the media producer and the consumer. Unlike other critical frameworks that demonize the capitalist class, often producers who have the steep capital to produce, promote, and distribute mainstream or mass media content, this framework, instead, accepts it as a reality that is equally as powerful as media consumers that now have many ways to shape and influence mainstream media content. Because the Internet has democratized media production, this framework is made all the more relevant. No longer are audiences just powerful as users or consumers, they are equally powerful as actual producers (not just influencers of production), especially of digital content that now converges with mass media. In a media environment where the Internet and mass media infrastructures merge, postmodernity is expected, and the framework that can capture and embrace the multitude of relations emerging from the equally powerful discourses arising from mainstream and convergent media becomes the most meaningful.