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.

摘要

回顾历史上的清洁、护理实践和配件，本文探讨了各种演员——从唱片听众和音乐记者到发明家、广告商和公司——如何在追求“干净的声音”的过程中解决清洁黑胶唱片的问题在 1950 年代和 1970 年代之间的时期。详细说明清洗和保存唱片如何成为收藏家的商业化、科学和经常性别化的看护过程，这件作品为研究与家政、保存和具体实践相关的音乐生产/消费的未充分探索维度提供了理由。为此，本文提出了“媒体卫生”的概念，作为在媒体研究中发起关于脆弱性和混乱在日常媒体互动中的作用的更广泛讨论的工具。