{"title":"Sticky fingers and smudged sound: vinyl records and the mess of media hygiene","authors":"Rachel Plotnick","doi":"10.1080/15295036.2022.2043556","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Looking historically at cleanliness, care practices, and accessories, this article examines how a variety of actors—from record listeners and music journalists to inventors, advertisers, and corporations—grappled with the problem of cleaning vinyl records in the pursuit of “clean sound” in the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Detailing how washing and preserving records became a commercialized, scientific, and often gendered caretaking process for collectors, the piece makes the case for studying under-explored dimensions of music production/consumption related to housekeeping, preservation, and embodied practices. To this end, the article offers the concept of “media hygiene” as a tool for initiating broader discussions in media studies about fragility and the role of mess in everyday media interactions. Thinking with media hygiene provides insight into the ways that people are encouraged to take responsibility for media technologies’ lifespan.","PeriodicalId":47123,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":"260 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Studies in Media Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2043556","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
ABSTRACT Looking historically at cleanliness, care practices, and accessories, this article examines how a variety of actors—from record listeners and music journalists to inventors, advertisers, and corporations—grappled with the problem of cleaning vinyl records in the pursuit of “clean sound” in the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Detailing how washing and preserving records became a commercialized, scientific, and often gendered caretaking process for collectors, the piece makes the case for studying under-explored dimensions of music production/consumption related to housekeeping, preservation, and embodied practices. To this end, the article offers the concept of “media hygiene” as a tool for initiating broader discussions in media studies about fragility and the role of mess in everyday media interactions. Thinking with media hygiene provides insight into the ways that people are encouraged to take responsibility for media technologies’ lifespan.
期刊介绍:
Critical Studies in Media Communication (CSMC) is a peer-reviewed publication of the National Communication Association. CSMC publishes original scholarship in mediated and mass communication from a cultural studies and/or critical perspective. It particularly welcomes submissions that enrich debates among various critical traditions, methodological and analytical approaches, and theoretical standpoints. CSMC takes an inclusive view of media and welcomes scholarship on topics such as • media audiences • representations • institutions • digital technologies • social media • gaming • professional practices and ethics • production studies • media history • political economy. CSMC publishes scholarship about media audiences, representations, institutions, technologies, and professional practices. It includes work in history, political economy, critical philosophy, race and feminist theorizing, rhetorical and media criticism, and literary theory. It takes an inclusive view of media, including newspapers, magazines and other forms of print, cable, radio, television, film, and new media technologies such as the Internet.