[ecrea] CFP: Media Fails: What Flops, Fiascos, and Bungles Tell us About Media History

MEDIA FAILS: What Flops, Fiascos, and Bungles Tell us About Media History

Ed. By Phoebe Bronstein and Carol Stabile

Media histories are generally told from the standpoint of industrial
successes: the VHS and DVDs rather than the failure of Betamax and
LaserDiscs; Skype and Facetime rather than videophones; the Nintendo
Entertainment System rather than the Nintendo Virtual Boy; the iPhone rather
than the Newton; and so on. Market successes, however, tell only one side of
much more complicated stories about technological, industrial, and cultural
change and innovation.

Alternative technologies and programs that were never introduced, introduced
only to fail, that failed during the period in which they were introduced,
but, like Arrested Development, Firefly, and Veronica Mars, had second
lives, provide rich counter-narratives that allow us to understand media
history as a site of struggle and tension. This history is one built on epic
failures, failures that later became successes, and failures that speak of
untimely aspirations. In this collection, we hope to consider the role that
failure plays in creating conditions for what ultimately succeeds, as well
as failure’s potential as a site of imagination, innovation, and despair.

This collection sees failure as a productive site of inquiry for media
studies in and of itself. Defining media studies broadly, the essays we seek
will address what media failures can tell us about a given cultural,
political, economic, and/or industrial moment. This volume is interested in
the extent to which failure can be valuable in and of itself, as an analytic
framework or way into considering the limits of specific historical moments.
While we are asking that all contributions address the role of failure
(whether economically, culturally, or politically) in the twentieth or
twenty-first centuries, the editors are soliciting articles that address a
wide range of topics for this collection, including, but not limited to, the
following:

Television shows that were never produced or that ran for less than one 
season;

Television pilots that were never produced;

Films that flopped or were never produced;

Technological devices like the videophone or Google Glass;

Massively multiplayer online games that tanked;

Films or television shows that flopped;

Films or television shows that were never produced;

Social media that did not really take off (Napster, MySpace, Friendster,
Google Plus).

Completed essays should be no more than 5,000 words in length, inclusive of
notes and bibliographies. Please send 500 word abstracts and short bios to
(cstabile /at/ uoregon.edu) and (phoebe.bronstein /at/ lmc.gatech.edu) by Dec. 1, 2015.



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