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

AuthorMatt Stahl
Pages206-226
206
EE

Intellectual Property, Employment,
and Talent Relations: A Media Studies
Perspective
 
 : This chapter considers twentieth century contests over the
terms of creative employment in the United States lm 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 “labour relations”) at the star and rank-
and-le levels. This chapter oers 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’ col-
lective bargaining eorts to stem and compensate for the technological dis-
placement of their members. It argues that, surveyed together, these very
dierent 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 extra-
ordinary gains by organized creative craspeople. Stars’ great economic
rewards can come at the expense of radical constraint; the AFM, AF(T)RA,
and other organizations have been able to signicantly democratize their
employment.
 : Ce chapitre étudie les luttes du vingtième siècle concernant
les conditions d’emploi créatif dans les industries américaines du lm et de
Intellectual Property, Employment, and Talent Relations 207
la musique. Les domaines d’emploi créatif sont de façon prédominante des
lieux de relations de pouvoir; les employeurs dans l’industrie de la culture
dépendent de courants continus de propriété intellectuelle originale, ce qui
est en corrélation avec les formes de conits en «relations de talents» (une
adaptation sectorielle des «relations de travail») au niveau des vedettes et
des créateurs ordinaires. Ce chapitre donne un compte rendu succinct des
poursuites judiciaires d’Olivia De Havilland et d’Olivia Newton-John pendant
la durée de leurs contrats respectifs (de même que des changements perti-
nents apportés au droit du travail), ainsi que des eorts de négociation col-
lective de l’American Federation of Musicians et de l’American Federation of
Radio Artists dans le but de freiner le remplacement technologique de leurs
membres et leur obtenir compensation. Il soutient que ces très diérentes
formes de contestations révèlent des logiques distinctes de contrôle corpo-
ratif dans les industries centrales du droit d’auteur. La gestion des tensions
entre l’innovation et le contrôle dans les industries du spectacle a produit des
régimes restrictifs de contrats pour les vedettes, mais elle a aussi permis aux
professionnels organisés de la création d’en retirer des bénéces importants.
Les récompenses astronomiques des vedettes peuvent être versées, mais
seulement aux frais de contraintes importantes; le AFM (American Federa-
tion of Musicians of the United States and Canada), l’AF(T)RA (American Fed-
eration of (Television and) Radio Artists (AF TRA)) et d’autres organismes ont
réussi à démocratiser de façon signicative ce type d’emploi.
“[T]he work site is where we often experience the most immediate, unambiguous,
and tangible relations of power that most of us will encounter on a daily basis.1
A. INTRODUCTION
Intellectual property rules allocate proprietary rights to some people and
groups and correspondingly dispossess or exclude others; in addition to al-
locating (intellectual) property rights,2 employment also assigns rights to
command to some people and nds in others a duty to obey.3 The distinctive
1 Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork
Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011) at 2.
2 David P Ellerman, Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy
(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992) at 20.
3 Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988) at 146–51
[Pateman, The Sexual Contract].

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