FMS 200 notes
Professor Vasquez
midterm study guide
-historiography: the writing of history, how history is told and from what perspectives
- class is a form of historiography
- examining multiple media texts
- film
- tv
- music
- comic books
- multiple angles of analysis
- media as art/style
- media as industry
- media & audiences
- primarily hollywood focused
- hollywood as an industrial practice & a cultural institution/presence
- we can never capture everything on the canvas of history, but we can acknowledge the choices
we make and acknowledge the complexity of history as a narrative we craft
- “if the past is a landscape, history is the way we represent it” - creating pathways & narratives
film history
- history as an approach to studying film & media: need to remember who is doing the telling
-historiography – the writing of history
- every act of presenting history is a form of historiography
- k. huysmans: “history/events…are only a springboard for style and ideas since all
facts could be emphasized or played down depending on the…bias of the
historian who assembled them.” (1891)
-tracing stylistic, industrial, technological, and social developments in (and context for) cinema
over time
- specializations related to broad topics
-aesthetic approach: great works and great filmmakers/works acknowledged to be
“masterpieces”
-technological approach: changes in tech and development
-economic approach: how movies get made and how systems of production form
-social history approach: who made the films? who saw them? who regulated them?
- we can locate patterns and developments in film & media as aesthetic, industrial (commercial)
and cultural artifacts
- yet media mediates what it presents (media as mediation)
-mediation – intervention in something
- example – the camera’s lens:
- there is always an “eye” looking through the camera, a hand turning it on and off,
deciding what it “sees” by creating a frame
- frame as the literal borders of the image
- frame as the more abstract way that something is presented
- pov
- style & form
- intention
- choices
film as a form of history
- narrative & visualization = storytelling & style
- style
- look, performance, feel/atmosphere
- spectacle
- visually compelling display/aiming to have an impact
- storytelling
- organization of narrative
- perspective of the storytellers
- differences in film form can be reflective of different ways of representing history
- documentary impulses, recording reality
-fiction: creating impressions of history
- film & and the documentary impulse: greater levels of (and proximity to) fact and the real
- Night and Fog
- Dealing with the Holocaust
- Filmed in 1955 : 10 years after the liberation of the Nazis death camps
- what techniques does the film use to document or convey a sense of
realness/reality?
- how does the film convey a sense of history?
- how does the film present itself ?as history
- Ed Wood
- film as (a form of) imaginative history
- how does Ed Wood present a narrative drawn from history but not quite history
as actual fact (at least compared to Night and Fog)?
- how is it an interpretation of history?
early film
- a complicated origin story
- growing out of a larger culture of visual technologies
- thomas edison not the inventor of cinema
- louis la prince patenting a camera in 1888, years before edison patented his cinema device
- k.l. dickson
- edward muybridge
- thomas armat & charles jenkins
- the lumiere brothers
- william friese-greene
- charles-emile reynaud
- there were multiple lines of development happening at the same time
- recording the real
- documentary impulse…
- la poste
- “it all moves, it swarms. it is life itself, movement captured live”
- “death will cease to be absolute…life will have left an indelible trace”
- “we will be able to see our loved ones move long after (they have died)”
- la radical
- “we can now record and playback life. we will be able to see our families again, long after
they are gone”
three foundational conventions
- documentary/realism
- lumiere bros.
- invented the cinemetographe - 1895
- “the birth of cinema”
- could record and project
- early social media = could be shown to a mass audience
- edison co. shorts
- naturalistic presentations/dramatized scenes
- staged scenes for the camera
- mini stories within a theatrical space
- performances
- often tied to a stage or carnival workers
- fantasy/antirealism
- cinema of imagination, special effects, magic
the cinema of attractions
-the cinema of attractions: Tom Gunning
- spectacle/tourism/entertainment
- ultimately more like a fairground amusement
- grounded in the very novelty and newness of the technology
- slapstick
- the body becomes elastic
- a “klutzy” grace and elegance
- tension between danger & survival
- pain but no lingering effects
The Creation of Hollywood & The Studio System
- The Image as Commodity
- film invented and quickly capitalized on
- the novelty period: 1895-1897
- exhibition at various sites
- theaters
- fairgrounds
- churches
- saloons
- parks
- lecture halls
- exhibitor would provide a kind of package
- equipment
- projectionist
- film shorts
- traveling exhibitors would take programs around the country
- projectionists/exhibitors took the product of producers and refashioned them into longer
programs
- would at times alter films, add sound effects, and music, and create narration to
be performed with film
- rise of film brokers or distributors (situated between producers and exhibitors)
- distributors would buy from producers and then rent the same films to different exhibitors
(costs determined in part by production costs, profits per film)
- distributors making fortunes
- exhibitors not having to worry about so much initial outlay for product, and
producers benefited from the increasing demand for product
- everyone making tons of money
- establishing a film specific exhibition spaces
-peep shows: a film loop is viewed through an individual machine
-nickelodeons: small theatrical spaces for group shows
- originally associated with working class audiences
- movie palaces of the 1920s
- attempt to create a respectable space for middle class patrons
- expanding theatrical exhibition because that’s were the money was
- mass audience = mass profits
- popularity of film became so great the demand was outstripping the product
- any 1908 film has become a solid investment and fixed industry
- about 20 manufacturers churning out product
- industrialization of the process of production
- streamlining of the product
- cost-efficient productions
- centralization & increasing division of labor
- get it done faster
- battle with edison
- edison claimed patents for essential motion picture technology but many
companies using his tech without paying royalties
- most powerful american companies banded together
- motion oicture oatents company (1908) : “edison trust”
- helped stabilize motion picture production into a regulated industry
- independent distributors and exhibitors pushing back
- move west
- move west
- partly to get away from edison co.
- but also a demand for product (nickelodeon boom – needing 20-30 new films a week)
- year-round systematic production schedule
- warm weather
- temperate climate
- various topographies
- within 50 mile radius you had mountains, desert, forests, seacoast,
valleys, lakes,
- los angeles offered land/space, cheap and plentiful labor, and low taxes…also
one of the theatrical centers in the country
- production companies buying up tens of thousands of acres of land on which to build
studios, backlots, and standing sets
- pursuing ever-increasing fortunes
- rise of the feature film
- success of several european films that were “multiple reelers” convinced american
producers they were profitable
- in particular an italian super-spectacle Que Vadis? (1913)
- vast crowd scenes
- lavish sets
- more than 2 hrs. long
- first film to show exclusively in more prestigious movie palaces rather than nickelodeons
and thus attracted a more sophisticated and prosperous audience
- anticipated the epic films of d.w. griffith, like intolerance…
- exhibitors realized feature-length films could command higher ticket prices and
longer theatrical runs
- single titles cheaper to advertise than multiple short packages
- on the side of production, higher cost was offset by higher volume sales to distributors
who then got more money from exhibitors in rental fees
- new theaters creating a new ethos for film going
- movie palaces: spectacles for the spectacles
- owing to their luxuriance, they required regular features to attract large audiences
- close of the nickelodeon era and the start of the studio system
- international production
-european markets: france dominated by charles pathé (pathé frères founded 1896)
- acquired the lumiere patents and eventually brought main competitor méliès into
the fold
- started an assembly line business churning out films
- acquired exhibition sites in all the major european cities
- italian superspectacles (cines studios built in 1905)…early “blockbusters”
- pre wwi german film production not as advanced but after the war it exploded
(1919-1929)
- cinema of the weimar period
- creation of a nationally subsidized conglomerate ufamerger of german production
companies into a single unit to produce higher quality films (greater resources)
- soviet cinema: 1917-1931 (before the revolution) mostly european productions but post
revolution centralized production
- a general movement towards industrialization and streamlined production process
- new studio alignments
- by 1915, 60% of production is centered in hollywood
- variety reported that year that the total investment in moviemaking was $500 million (10
years after it was the domain of fairgrounds and peep shows)
- independents forming into alignments:
- famous players-Lasky became paramount
- universal founded in 1912 by merging imp with powers, rex, nestor, champion,
and bison
- goldwyn founded in 1916 and metro founded in 1915
- fox corporation becoming 20th century fox
- the men who controlled these new studios had all been independent exhibitors and
distributors who had refused to let the edison trust run them out of business
- merging production companies, organizing national distribution networks and acquiring
vast theater chains
- saw the business as basically a retail enterprise
- studio heads were largely small tradesmen who gambled on movies and moved from
penny arcade and nickelodeon operators to manufacturer their own product
- many were first-generation jewish immigrants from eastern europe with little
formal education
- the studio head or mogul organized the talent (putting together the right director,
performers, writers, etc.) and providing the tools and framework for production
-vertical integration: owning production, distribution, and exhibitions sites
- major studios diversified their holdings and created multiple avenues for film production
(shorts, cartoons, newsreels)
- as features became the norm:
- star salaries and screen rights payments increased dramatically
- production costs rose (from around $500 to $1,000 per film to around $12,000 to $20,000
per film on average)
- the production code
- a number of very public scandals involving hollywood personalities became tabloid fodder
in the 1920s
- moscoe Arbuckle rape trials
- william desmond taylor, director and producer, found murdered after
conducting simultaneous affairs
- wallace reid, a performer who had a star image of being the prototypical
clean living american male, died of a drunk overdose
- producing a storm of public outrage
- hollywood producers founded the motion picture producers and distributors of america
(mppda) as a self-regulatory trade organization
- point was to stave off government censorship and regulation by instituting self-regulation
system
- eventually referred to as the hays office (will hays was the figurehead) it did little real
censorship for the first years of its existence
- more a public relations operation
- established in 1930 (but really enforced beginning in 1934)
- an attempt to regulate moral content on the screen
- in response to complaints from powerful citizens groups such as the catholic league of
decency
- studies indicated that by the end of the 1920s, 90 million tickets were being sold
every week of which 40 million were judged to be minors/children
- payne fund studies on the impact of movies on children
- generally a negative impact
- certain things not allowed:
- no picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who
see it. hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of
crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin
- correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and
entertainment, shall be presented
- law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its
violation
- prohibitions on:
- nudity
- suggestive dances
- details of crime or discussions of weapons
- no crimes justifiable and always punished
- discussions of sexual perversity (i.e. homosexuality, etc)
- superfluous use of liquor
- ridicule of religion
- miscegenation
- lustful kissing
- scenes of passion
ethos: no corruption in government, police and military had absolute authority, the
institution of the family was sacred, crime was always punished and never rewarded
-extremely repressive: prohibiting almost everything related to the situation of everyday
human adults
- infantilized movies
Hollywood & WWII
● Media Industry impacted by historical circumstances
● History influencing Media texts (content)
● WWII: Germany, Japan, Italy (Axis Powers) & US, Britain, France, Soviet Union, etc. (Allied
Powers)
● “Official” start: Germany invades Poland in Sept. 1939, Britain declares war on Germany…
● General rise of international Fascism/fascist authority in the 1930s
● International tensions even before war declared…
● In 1938: Japan and Germany cut all economic ties to the U.S.
○ Opinion Divided about whether to enter the War
○ America First movement championed isolationism
○ Hollywood Anti-Nazi League: Encouraging Entering the War and Battling
fascism…
○ Production Code Administration (PCA) saw political neutrality as being good for
business
■ Memo: “To represent Hitler ONLY as a screaming madman and a
bloodthirsty persecutor and is manifestly unfair…Arenothing else
we ready to Depart from the pleasant and profitable course of
entertainment to engage in propaganda?”
■ Joseph Breen (head of PCAS) was extremely
antisemitic…
■ Desired unoffensive, political disinterested film…
■ Two isolationist senators convened ”propaganda hearings” on
September 9th 1941,,,
■ Argued that Jews in Hollywood were running a propaganda machine
of war mongering…
○ The war cut into the Studio’s overseas revenues
Selling the war
● Difficult to release a film anywhere in Europe after 1941
● Turning to South America as a new market: “Good Neighbor” Policies…
○ Also a political choice to stave off alignment with the Axis powers
● 11 days after Pearl Harbor was attacked, established Bureau of Motion Picture Affairs
(BMPA)
● Supervisory production unit that answered to the Office of War Information (OWI)
○ Suggested Studios make
■ movies that reminded audiences of what was at stake in the war and
what might be lost if the Allies lost
■ Make obvious the evil of those the country was fighting against
(cultural differences, barbarism vs. democracy, etc.)
■ Celebrate history the culture of the allies as essentially good people
with a way of life well worth fighting for and preserving
○ Elmer Davis (radio commentator) headed the OWI: "the easiest way to
propagandize people is to let a propaganda theme go in through an
entertainment picture when people do not realize they are being propagandized."
○ Studios organized the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry
○ Making Patriotic and topical fictional as well as documentary films
○ Placed a war tax on ticket sales (going to the movies positioned as a patriotic
act)
Hollywood at War
● War Department involved in fiction films
● Early years saw a series of at times superpatriotic & corny melodramas that glorified the
battlefield and portrayed Fascists as cowardly, incompetent buffoons (lacking nuance in their
depictions): Black Dragons, Commandos Strike At Dawn, Atlantic Convoy (All 1942),
○ Can you speculate what the issue might have been with this approach?
● Were quickly replaced by far more authentic (relatively speaking) versions of the war on
screen: Heightened Realism
○ the hardships and certain ambiguities of war…
● Films such as meet John Doe (1941) and ministry of Fear (1944) and Lifeboat (1944)
portrayed the dangers of fascism with greater sophistication
● More sober and serious-minded combat films : Bataan (1943), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), A
Walk in the Sun (1945)
● mefront audiences getting news by way of Newsreels regulated by the War Department
● S. Army Signal Corps Fighting Man series
● Education on topics related to service men (Weapons, shell shock, venereal disease)
●Why We Fight series
● Using documentary footage to educate viewers and create patriotic enthusiasm for the war &
Making films to persuade Draftees to fight
● Disney and Warner Bros using humor and animation as anti-Axis messaging (racist
stereotyping of Japanese as subhuman)
● Humor: The Great Dictator, The Three Stooges mocking Hitler and the Axis powers…
The Negro Soldier (1944)
●Negro Soldieras a form of historiography: a writing or presentation of history. What historical
story/narrative does the film want to present/tell in terms of America and African American
soldiers? Is anything left out? What perspective is the film attempting to put forth and why?
Meet Me in St Louis:
● Why have it set over the course of the 4 seasons?
○ waiting for the move: Much of the movie is about worrisome, uncertain
expectations…
● War on everyone’s mind as a background but no narrative presence…
● Food and Family ritual
● War as a structuring absence
○ War time rationing of food
○ Concerns for those fighting overseas
○ The impact on the family of change and separation
● “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” – emotional tone of the song…
○ Original version opened with “Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it might be
your last”…
○ Looking to the future…
● Telling the audience what might be lost if the axis powers win…
Rise of TV
● “It may be reflective of our sense of values, but the sundered atom is far behind the TV tube
as the greatest technological influence on the daily lives of millions of Americans” – M.C.
Faught (1950)
● When the set first came into the house, I was convinced the opponents were right and
conversation in our home was dead…we thought nothing of sitting in the dark for hours at a
stretch without exchanging a word…”– Bianca Bradbury (1950)
● “At first there will, of course, be great excitement over this new and wonderful thing that has
come into your children’s lives…”- Henrietta Battle (1949)
● “Television began to take over the American living room as a loud-mouthed, sometimes
delightful, often shocking, thoroughly unpredictable guest” - Dorothy Barclay (1958)
● Educators warning too much viewing TV would create a generation of passive, pale,
“bug-eyed” children addicted to TV
● Fears young people would become aggressive after being exposed to too much violence on
TV
● Might replace the Father’s authority in the home
● Husband’s attention straying from Wife (sports and scantily clad women on late night TV)
● Tension between wives already working in the domestic space wanting to go out at night and
husbands coming home from work to then retreat to TV
TV: An invention long anticipated
● A lot of public relations work to build excitement for TV…
● Throughout the 1920s and 30s the press discussed it extensively…
○ TV relied on the same basic theories of electric communication as the telegraph
and the telephone…
● Hoopla sessions (generating interest and potential investment) marketed as scientific
demonstrations…
●Standardization: In America, battles over technical standards developed
● Organization that became the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) founded in 1927
(renamed the FCC in 1934)
● FCC avoided controversy by arguing TV was not yet ready for public domestic use…
● David Sarnoff, President of RCA, had sunk 20 million into developing TV and so he worked to
generate public interest in the medium
● With no FCC approval, they couldn’t sell commercial time so had to provide a “public
service”…
1938 Worlds Fair
● World’s Fair: International exposition of new technologies called “The World of Tomorrow”
○ Elite group of New York Businessman conceived of a civic initiative as a way to
stimulate the economy and investments in the future…
● Linked to the general idea of the Fair: progress and world advancement
○ With industrialization came the notion of progress
○ Technology = improvements
● Sarnoff of RCA gave a televised address on the future of the medium…
● RCS hosted the first night of TV: May 3rd 1939 by NBC (sponsored programming)
● Performance and News and Interviews
Experiencing TV
●Spectatorship - the way in which a medium imagines, positions and addresses its audience
● Domestic context - lots of distractions
● Part of everyday life/routines
● Sometimes attentive, sometimes not
○ Sensory stimulation
○ Easier to watch TV in various states of engagement
● Uses of TV were Indeterminate at first
○ Is it a public amusement (like film)?
○ One-to-one communication device (like telephone)?
○ Domestic medium (like radio)?
● Development interrupted by WWII
TY Form
● LIVENESS
○ Conveys immediacy
○ Event seeming accessible
● FLOW
○ TV never ends/always in “motion”
○ Continuous, uninterrupted stream
○ Not discrete entities
■ Programs, bumpers, commercials
○ SERIALITY
■ Most TV programs not single instances = most are series
■ Recurrent nature of TV programming
■ Schedules seriality
Transmission View of Communication
● Message/content centered view
● Purpose of communication is to convey messages across space
● Modern view (late 19th century to now)
● Separation between sender and receiver
● Goals: Understanding, social control/compliance/persuasion
● Encoding: meaning encoded into message
● Decoding: meaning understood at site of reception
● Ritual View of Communication
● Message/content is less important
● Fact of communication is important
● Purpose of communication: serves as social glue, binding us together
● Older View of communication (pre 19th century)
● Goal: Maintain social bonds/values/traditions over time
TV as a Cultural Forum
● Each understanding of communication frames how we interpreted TV
● Transmission: focus on TV texts/messages, emphasis on TV’s effects
● Ritual: focus on fact of TV in everyday life, emphasis on how TV creates/transforms cultural
bonds and values
● TV as public space where “conversations” about culture take place
● TV poses problems
○ Prompt to engage problems
○ Solutions often ambivalent
● TV represents & challenges people’s beliefs/morals/values
“Strange Fruit” as a type of cultural forum
Post War Era: Reinventing Hollywood
● Postwar Status While Foreign markets had been disrupted, Hollywood enjoyed the most
profitable 4 year period during the war (1941-1945)
○ Technical assistance from the government and military lessened budgets in
terms of free production value
○ Tax on tickets
○ Full employment and prosperity after the Depression helped as well
○ Therapeutic function movies can fulfill in times of stress
● Hollywood ‘s industrial machine was well-oiled and functioning: America was the only country
to come through the War with a thriving movie making machine
● BUT…
● 8 month studio strike in 1945
● Spiraling post war inflation (supply shortage, lifting hold of price controls, need to pay for
public debt accumulated in fighting the war)
● European countries and England levied import taxes on films
● Eastman and DuPont (the suppliers of film stock) raised their prices…
● Most devastating of all was the Paramount Decree of 1948…
Studios as Trusts
● Monopolies: controlling production, distribution, and exhibition
● Studios owned most first-run urban theaters
● Independently owned theaters had no choice but to accept studios’ terms if they wanted a
chance to show first-run screenings of the big upcoming films…
● Blind bidding: licensing films sight unseen
● Block booking: licensing an entire slate of films to get the big releases
● Kept theaters under the Studios’ control…
● Justice Department went after the Studios with an antitrust suit…
●PARAMOUNT DECREE – 1948
● Studios had to divest themselves of total control: needed to divest themselves of their
lucrative theater chains and block booking practices
● Effectively the end of the powerful studio system economic machine
● Revenues took a drastic hit (decreased by over 20% over the next few years): production
budgets slashed
● In general theatrical attendance declined after the war (from 120 million in 1946 to 31 million
in 1950)
● But overseas sales, especially Europe and England, remained high…why might this have
been?
● OWI still active in peace time: working with the MPAA to push pro-American films to the rest
of the world…
Image vs Reality
● Hollywood’s collaboration with the OWI had worked to create an image of America that was
largely positive, a purely democratic society where equality and justice ruled…
● But with the War over, senses of unity began to crumble…
● This image of basic goodness and decency seemed more fleeting after the War was over and
the soldiers came home…
● Wartime struggles had called for the need of such an image (even if it had never existed as
the propaganda suggested)
● Racial prejudices and social inequalities abounded everywhere in the country
● A kind of social malaise set in…
● Something only increased by Anti-Communist investigations…
● In general theatrical attendance declined after the war (from 120 million in 1946 to 31 million
in 1950)
● A constellation of factors…
○ Increased domesticity (spending time home rather than going out)
○ TV as increasingly a new technology in the home
○ Less interest in the narratives being offered by Hollywood? (Oversaturation of
product?)
● The discrepancy between Wartime enthusiasm for unity and post-war reality lead, in part, to a
certain social malaise
○Malaise: a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact
cause is difficult to identify
● Anti-Communist investigations…
The Popular Front
● Broad association of socially minded artists ”formed” in the 30s during the economic strife of
the Depression
● A stance against fascism and for progressive agendas
● Communist party affiliation was common among intellectuals in the 30s (and in the 40s the
Soviets were allies…)
● The question becomes one of intent and policy: is a general liberal agenda the same as
radical communist affiliation? But also, did what “communism” mean change over time?
● Some intellectuals who were pro-Stalinist even after they should have known better…
○ But others distanced themselves from Stalinism and communism once Soviet
abuses became public knowledge…
● Fights within the American communist party…
Hollywood Blacklist
● Fall of 1947: House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC) began inquires into
Communist activities in Hollywood (and America in general)…
● “Are you now, or have you ever been , a member of the Screen Writer’s Guild?”
● “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”
●The Hollywood 10: 10 writers and directors who refused to answer questions believing them
improper…
● General anti-communist hysteria beginning to build but also…
○ General dislike of Unions, Hollywood in general, and the prominent Jews who
the HUAC members believed owned and ran Hollywood…
● Conflating Unionism with Communism and opposition to racism as a “Jewish
cause”…conflating Jewishness with communism…
○ Popular Front seen as a hot bed for communist sympathies…
● Oddly, the Committee claimed that the actual work the 10 had produced didn’t really matter
as much since Communists were so clever that you couldn’t always see the propaganda in
what they created…
● Congress voted to hold the 10 in contempt and give them jailtime…MPAA at first backed
them up but then folded and blacklisted all of them…
● Tension between the New York corporate offices and the actual studio bosses based in
Hollywood
● All told, 300 writers, directors, producers, and actors were blacklisted between 1947 and
1957…
● MPAA statement: “We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our
employ and we will not re-employ any of the ten until such time as he is acquitted or has
purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a communist”
● Lawsuits that resulted actually set the foundation for a lot of the animosity between
Hollywood management and talent to this day…
HUAC & The Blacklist
● People being called on to publicly recant and condemn colleagues
● The Irony of American “Show Trials”
● Studios using it to their benefit? (Claims they could slash pay and pacify unions…)
● Rampant anti-Semitism from politicians in Washington…
● Naming names: Not a black and white issue…
○ There’s a tendency to engage in “after the fact” moralism by saying it comes
down to either being ethically resolute or naming names…
● Many had grown disenfranchised with the Communist party and were reluctant to lose
careers for something they didn’t really believe in anymore…
International Cinema Movements
Art Film as a Category / Italian Neo-Realism & French New Wave
Classical Hollywood Cinema
● Classical Hollywood Style – A Developed System and Practice
●Clarity: Viewers should not be confused about setting, time, events, or character motivations
●Unity: Connections between cause and effect must be direct and complete
●Characters: They should invite viewer identification, be active, and seek goals
●Closure: Third acts and epilogues should tie up loose ends and answer all questions
● Unobtrusive craftsmanship
● “Standard form is not an arbitrary detail of a passing mood, but a composite assemblage of
all that has proved effective in past expression”– Henry Albert Philips,1921
Art Film – Context
● Post-World War II international productions: France, Italy, Japan, Sweden, etc.
● Emerged as a result of:
● Hollywood’s waning power
● The needs of overseas markets and exhibitors to compete with television
● The facilitation of film export and co-productions after the reestablishment of international
commerce.
Art Cinema
● Heightened Ambiguity
● Defined against the narrative mode of Classical Hollywood (looser and more tenuous
cause-effect linkages)
○ A kind of “endless wandering through” rather than “a pursuit of…”
○ Narrative clarity obscured: Cause & Effect loosening
● Character’s lacking clearly expressed motivation
○ Characters often lack clear goals/desires and may act passively and
inconsistently. Their choices may be vague or non-existent, and thus the
narrative unfolds episodically and solutions may be open-ended.
● Narrative motivated by objective and subjective “realism”
○ shows us more psychologically complex characters and psychological causation
■ A Psychological Cinema of Interiority
■ Less about good & evil and more about people & situations
■ A cinema of reaction over action, of psychological effects in search
of causes, and of enigmas and ambiguity. Attempts to pronounce
judgments on modern life and the human condition.
○ shows us real locations and real social problems
○ shows us more explicit sexuality
○ More human-ness
● “There are no answers, only choices” – Solaris
● Enmeshed in international film festivals, art house film series and retrospectives, film criticism
and academic film studies
● Foregrounds the director as central creative force (the auteur or author of the film) as a
structure in the film’s system
○ Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, etc.
○ Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave
○ Creative freedom, expression, and experimentation
○ Authorial “intrusion” and reflexivity
Italian Neo-Realism
● Post WWII Italy
● Largely concerned with life in post-war Italy, a ruined state
● Turning away from artificiality and embracing realism
○ Non-actors, actual locations, low budget grit
○ Avoiding “dead formulas over living social facts”
○ Making people reflect less on metaphorical situations/symbols and more on “the
real things exactly as they are” – Cesare Zavattini (scriptwriter)
● Key Filmmakers: Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio de Sica
● Key Films:
●Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945)
●The Bicycle Thieves (de Sica, 1948)
●La Terra Trema (Visconti, 1948)
●Umberto D. (de Sica, 1952)
●The Nights of Cabiria (Fellini, 1956)
● Pre-history: Pre-War Italian film industry heavily controlled and subsidized by Benito
Mussolini’s fascist government.
● After direct attempts at propaganda failed to attract audiences, production mostly turned to
a-political spectacle: filmed opera costume melodrama, and romance built around a box
office idol
● “White Telephone Films”
● National Film School established in 1935
● Directors who later became the bedrock creators of Neo-Realism benefitted from the core
training they received
● 1937 Cinecetta Studios “Hollywood on the Tiber”
●
● Zavattini – “the cinema used to make one situation produce another situation and another
and another…(however) when we have thought out a scene, we feel the need to ‘remain’ in
it, because a single scene itself can contain so many echoes and reverberations…give us
whatever ‘fact’ you like, and we will disembowel it, make it something worth watching.”
●Umberto D. kitchen scene
● Focusing on typical problems (and often actual incidents)
● Immediacy and reality and familiarity
● Tending to focus on lower classes and poverty
● Questions of National Identity, social turmoil, economic misery, a deep dislocation
● Overtones of documentary impulse: to record the real and the everyday
● Sometimes newsreel footage intercut with the fiction
● An avoidance of stars/movie idols
● Story/Characters used to express an ideology: a world view
○ Dealing with social problems but tend to hold them up for examination in terms
of how they impact people’s lives more than proposing solutions
○ A bad system more than there being villains
○ Still having melodrama superimposed on reality
● Style developing out of necessity: lack of resources/materials
● Money/Film Stock/Studios/Electricity
● Filmmakers who embraced this neo-reality style(while they pushed back against the
artificiality of the studio period style) had their training to sustain them / national film culture
The French New Wave & Left Banke
Major players:
New Wave: Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Alain
Resnais
Left Banke: Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Agnes Varda
● Major films:
● New Wave: The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959); Breathless (Godard, 1960); Jules and Jim
(Truffaut, 1962), Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais, 1959)
● Left Banke: Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais, 1959), Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1960),
Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)
“Questioned why we look, what we look at, how representation itself is an act of power that we,
as viewers, can counter by examination, by keeping our distance, by learning and interpreting”
(Robert Kolker)
French New Wave
● Original members wrote film criticism in Cahiers du Cinéma (co-founded by theorist André
Bazin) and pioneered auteurism
●Auteurism – the signature (personal and stylistic) of the director
● Auteur = technically competent film author
“The filmmaker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen.” –Alexandre Astruc
● An auteur is the single, controlling force who structures the entire film (typically the director,
but some exceptions)
○ Val Lewton – producer of a series of horror films in the 1940s
● Consistency in subject matter / visual style / sensibility
● Auteurs presented a coherent, personal aesthetic and worldview that develops and remains
more or less consistent across her/his body of work (e.g., Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks,
and Orson Welles)
● A creative movement out of a critical movement
● The auteur critics were polemical and partisan
○ Holding strong opinions / Strongly sided to their beliefs
○ Put theories into practice by making films themselves
● Government assistance to make films…establish a film production culture
● New Wave covering a diversity of filmmakers and was not as cohesive a movement as Italian
Neo-Realism…yet there were some basic similarities/shared elements…
● Openness of narrative structure
○ Interviewer: “Shouldn’t a film have a beginning, middle, and an end?
○ Goddard “Yes, but not necessarily in that order”
● Self-Conscious about film and filmmaking (Breathless)=life imitating art / acknowledging that
these are films
● Playfulness with form – looser editing/narrative/improvisation in performance = making us
aware we’re watching a movie
● Existentialist attitude
○ No preexisting moral codes
○ Events happening at random
○ Characters conceiving of themselves as responsible only to themselves in a
world devoid of logic/order/moral authority
● Interest in Hollywood cinema
The Left Banke Filmmakers
● Not totally separate from the New Wave but different by degrees…
● Filmmakers tended to be less interested in Hollywood Cinema and saw Film as taking its
place in larger traditions of art and art-making…
○ Perhaps less playful than New Wave filmmakers…
○ Interested in memory, nostalgia, angst, despair, uncertainty…
● Embraced central role of the author/creator of a work…
● Aligned with Modernism – a vast approach to culture and society that, for our purposes,
created art that does not attempt to pretend to be real but rather a reflection on it
● The author creates work that reflects the substance and meaning of reality
○ Privileging the subjective engagement with the real…
○ The human at the center of (and yet equally lost within) the larger movements of
History
● Deeply humanist – humanity makes meanings and finds value…existentialist philosophy
Politics of Auteurism
● The Auteur as central focus – Film as a personal expression
● A turn towards taking film seriously as a media form
○ Worthy of critical attention
○ Justified academic study of film
○ Thinking beyond “just” the commercial form
● But also conveyed “romantic individualism”/Cult of the Artist
○ Enshrining certain directors – creating hierarchies of importance
○ Privileging Knowledge of career
○ Who makes the list of canonized directors?
● Structural/material limitations of Auteurism
○ Is film an individual statement or collaborative production?
○ Does auteurism privilege a formal or structural analysis of cinema that seals off
cultural-historical issues operating outside of the text, such as marketing,
exhibition, and reception?
● Gender and race of “canonization”
○ Directors belong to an elite group (and class?) of filmmakers
○ Bias towards white men/historical exclusion of women, people of color, LGBTQ
filmmakers, etc.
● Film production = deeply collaborative
● Film as a social practice = network of people working together
● Too much weight given the idea of intentionality of expression?
● Intentionality – being purposeful or deliberate…
○ In this sense intentionality = a sense of something being “authored”
● Intentionality/authorship as one “star” in the overall “constellation” of a text…
● Other ways of finding meaning?
● Finding evidence to back up claims = critical rigor in argumentation (making a case for
something)…
● Doing “violence” to a text = distorting evidence
Readings:
Wasko “Hollywood and Television in the 1950s”
Bordwell – The Art Film
Rothman - The Screwball Comedy
Bernstein “Era of the Moguls: The Studio System”
Howe, "Charlie Chaplin in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
final review
1950s & 1960s: change abounds
hollywood teeters
-the old studio system was crumbling
- rising production costs (maintaining infrastructure)
- lingering effects of the paramount decree (loss of easy exhibition sites)
- television
- hollywood trying to push theater tv & subscription tv (developed by studios)
- trying the up the ante on movies as an experience
- new tech (widescreen & 3-D)
- ultimately turning to supply product for tv (shows & back movie catalogues)
- independent productions as competition
- productions outside of the studio system were on the rise starting in the
1950s
- a producer or production company would put together a film and then see if the
studios wanted to distribute it
- united artists was a major distributor of independent productions
- they did not have their own production facilities to maintain and were not
hit by the paramount decree because they didn’t have their own theater
chains
- by 1958, 65% of hollywood product originated with independent production
companies
- peak film attendance per week of 100M in 1946
- dropped to 46M in 1955
- productions fell from 500 films per year in the 1930s to 383 in 1950and 254 in 1955
- various factors
- international markets coming back to life
- other film production centers revived after wwii
- stiff import taxes had hurt hollywood overseas market
- demands for foreign film had grown after the war
- between 1958-1968 imported films outpaced domestic production output
- studios had limited international fare when they had the monopoly
- this shifted when the studios started losing power
- instead of just art theaters, they began to play in first run movie houses
- influence of european art cinema
- reflecting the complexities and uncertainties of real life
- a different way of creating a narrative/telling stories
scraping the production code
- in 1915 the supreme court had decided that movies were not the same protected free speech as
the press was
- in 1952 when new york state attempted to block an italian film the miracle on the grounds that it
was sacrilegious the producer took the case to the supreme court
- court: movies are “a significant medium for communication of ideas” and therefore protected
- by the early 60s, films were guaranteed full freedom of expression
- influx “unapproved” international films and unrestricted independent productions released to
increasing success
- more adult cinema tackling a wider range of topics
- sexuality
- tones of eroticism
- moral ambiguity (not so black-and-white)
- complicated relationships
- tackling social issues with even more explicitness
- drug addiction
- crime and criminality
- social disfunction
- broken families
- less moralism and more potential for multiple perspectives and even potential empathy
- excessive violence is off the table, this changed around the late 60s
-financial success killed the code
- studio system no longer profitable
- studio executives saw that a change had to happen
- showing what couldn’t be seen on tv
- spectacle but also content
- competition with european art cinema
- the audience made it clear it wanted more mature content
- establishing the ratings system (motion picture association of america – mpaa)rRating system
didn’t proscribe content of film but rather classified it according to age guidelines
- (instituted in 1968 and revised in ‘72 and ‘84)
a time of upheaval
- may 13 1960 – huac holding hearings at san francisco’s city hall
- protestors showed up, largely students from uc Berkely, and were attacked by police
(“Black Friday”)
- next day 5000 protestors showed up in response & generated fears of a leftist uprising
sponsored by communists
- by 1969 fbi and cia running secret programs to discredit the left and anti-war protestors
era of social turmoil
- civil rights struggles
- anti-vietnam protests
- generational differences
- media coverage making it even more widely distributed
- vietnam war
- very different from wwii in the cultural arena
- presented as profound generational differences (strife within the family)
- civil rights struggles
- southern police attacking black demonstrators (on tv)
- seeing the dead returning day after day
- hearing about the quagmire the war had become
- society seeming to be tearing itself apart, almost cannibalizing itself
- a tone of change was in the air, a media awareness
- a sense that a new audience was emerging, one seeking material that reflected their own
experiences and awareness of the times
new american cinema
synergies
- mutually beneficial business relationships between film and tv
- tv sales & hollywood promotions
- residuals
- payments for screenings of films on tv to stars
- studios could defer payment to stars in favor of backend profits
- tv as a cheap and easy second run exhibition system/venue
- emergence of an integrated media entertainment industry
- corporate buy-outs
- multinational conglomerates interested in diversifying their assets
- walt disney company making a deal with abc for
- weekly disney show
- amusement park
- merchandising
- moving further toward greater centralization and conglomeration
-example: gulf & western Industries bought paramount in 1966
- established links between the company’s various entertainment divisions
- film
- tv
- book and magazine publishing
- sports
- selling movies as any other corporate industry would
- part of this was getting out of the business of producing movies in favor of distributing
them
A Hollywood Renaissance
- 1968: a pivotal year in hollywood
- production code finally done away with in favor of ratings system…
- films freed to deal with more adult subject matter and raise more troubling concerns and issues in
a much more direct way
- 1968: pivotal year in america
- tet offensive in vietnam war
- surprise attack by north vietnamese forces
- protests against the war increasing
- challenges to the traditional sense of american military supremecy
- ssassinations (martin luther king jr, robert kennedy)
- riots at 1968 democratic convention in chicago
- a sense that the american dream wasn’t what it once was or perhaps it never was what
we thought
- cinema began to try to capture/reflect this tumultuous era
changes
- series of break-even at best productions (1967-1969)
-camelot
- 17 million cost
- made 14 million
-doctor doolittle
- 18 million cost
- made 8 million
-star!
- 14 million cost
- made 4 million
-sweet charity
- 20 Million cost
- made 4 million
-paint your wagon
- 20 million cost
- made 14 million
- 1969:
-midnight cowboy
- a frank studio film about a dim-witted male prostitute and the drunk street punk
who befriends him released with a self-imposed x rating
- was 7th for the year
-i am curious yellow
- a swedish soft-core film sex film
- ranked 12th
-easy rider
- a biker-road movie focused in a generally sympathetic way on the counter-culture
- ranked 11th
-three in the attic
- a teen-targeted film
- ranked 18th
- each of these films was very frank in its depiction of mature themes and social issues all
without apology or moralistic condescension
- prostitution
- drug use
- sexuality
- the generation gap
- appeals to the youth market
- these films were not so easily reduced to a formula and so not easily repeatable in terms of
recreating a success
●The Godfather (1972) – helmed by a young director made 80 million on a 6 million budget
● Industry exes noticed and began courting young directors, exploiting an auteur marketing
theory by including the director’s name in promotional material in a prominent way
● Auteurism: Directors as authors (investing personal meaning and philosophies into their
work)…inscribing their artistic signatures onto Hollywood commercial product…
● 1972: a long list of successful auteurist films (all in the top twenty releases for that year)
○A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
○The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
○Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock)
○The Getaway (Sam Peckinpah)
○Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci)
○American Graffiti (George Lucas)
“New Hollywood”
● New Hollywood Cinema – typically referring to a new generation of filmmakers being given
opportunities to craft a far more personal & stylized cinema
● Older executives getting the sense that a younger generation had more purchase on what
younger audiences wanted to see
○ Generation growing up in a far more visually literate and aware culture…
○ Film beginning to be studied on an academic level
○ More culturally permissive values
● Many young directors who had gone to film school and had become aware of auteurism and
film history & theory…
○ Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Robert Altman, Steven
Spielberg, John Carpenter
● On the one hand, filmmakers who absorbed the influences of international cinemas and just a
sense of greater creative freedom…
● On the other hand, group of cinema-literate film fans coming of age at a time when there was
a sense that film could mean something…
● All coming together at the right place at the right time to try something new with an audience
ready to experience it…
● This new marriage between auteurist film and Hollywood lasted as long as it was profitable…
● Working in and with Hollywood offered bigger budgets and larger scale productions…
● And you could avoid the hassles of working independently…
● Yet studios were still anxious that one day an expensive “arty” bomb would come along and
wreck their investments…
● And it did: Heaven’s Gate (Dir. Michael Cimino) tanked in 1980 so badly that studios
collectively gave up on auteurist leaning film…
● But a different model of had already been established with two films in particular breaking all
records and expectations…
●Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977)
● Once again, everything changed, and the Hollywood Post-WWII slump was well and truly
over…
The Political Film
● A fraying confidence in the political establishment, particularly among the young…
● Protests & activism & generational conflict & challenges to norms = a fractured political
landscape…
● The Age of Watergate: The Nixon White House engaged in various criminal conspiracies
involving bribes, covert surveillance, using the US intelligence community to spy on those
deemed “disloyal”
● Profound distrust and a sense of paranoia…who to trust? How far does corruption run?
● Networks of established power associated with deep corruption
● A tone of unease…
The Blockbuster: ‘70s & ‘80s
The Blockbuster
● A film that is enormously popular and/or a film that’s so expensive that it must5 be
enormously successful to make a profit…
● Blockbusters were nothing new:
○ W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance (1915/1916)
○Ben Hur (1925)
○Gone With the Wind (1939)
● BUT industry changes signaled a change in the nature of the blockbuster…
The Modern Blockbuster Begins
● 1970s – Inflation hitting Hollywood at unprecedented levels
○ Between 1972-1977 production costs rose 178%, 4 times the general rate of
inflation
● Fewer films produced yet more spent on promotion/advertising campaigns
● Often Rising to twice as high as the production costs
●Jaws (1975) & Star wars (1977)
● By late 1970s: Paramount or 20th century Fox would have all of their capital tied up in 5 or 6
productions…every one planned as a potential blockbuster
● The profits reaped by a single mega-success could be immense but one massive flop could
be ruinous…
● So caution set in, restricting creative freedom: Creating a Hit-or-miss mentality among
executives
○ Trapped between the need to reap huge, ever-increasing profits and the
absence of any real guarantee of the film being a hit…
● Difficult for untried talent to be given a chance to work on even modestly budgeted projects…
● In 1978: 3000 directors competing to make about 70 major films…
The New Blockbuster
● Calculated for success…programmed as much as produced
● A single massive success could carry a studio for years and so marketing
● Average production costs rose more than 500 percent during the ’70s and it cost even more
to sell the movie
● Studios became the distributors of packages put together by agent-packaged deals
● Extending the life of a film through product licenses and multiple sequels & franchise
concepts…
● Developing Home video market
● Hollywood largely run by corporate attorneys and accountants who relied on vehicles with
proven track records…
● The high-concept film = based on a clear, easily conveyed, straight forward premise with
broad appeal
● The “Kidpix” - Greatest success from films aimed at children and teenagers
● Marketed to young people even if aimed at a broader demographic…
● Pg & PG-13 ratings…..Age Regression??
Synergies & conglomeration
● Moving further toward greater centralization
● Studios swallowed up by corporate mechanisms…conglomeration
○ Established links between the company’s various entertainment divisions: film,
TV, book and magazine publishing and sports
○ Selling movies as any other corporate industry would
● For most of these conglomerates film and tv production accounted for a small percent of their
annual revenues
● Anthony Hoffman, investment firm executive, said in 1977:
○ “one thing that is obvious about this industry, and what has attracted the
conglomerates to it in the first place, is that you take any recent four to five year
period, and you match total investment in production costs with pre-tax profits, it
is not unusual to come up with average rates of return of 40 to 50 percent…no
other industry has that rate of return…”
● Becoming cogs in a larger profit-making machine…bottom line = profit to cost ratio
● Studio Era: some forgiveness/allowance for prestige over just profit…
Blaxploitation
● In 1970, African-Americans made up 15 % of the US population
● market research showed that 15% accounted for 30% of the national first run film audience
○ Largely untapped resource for film business
● Films featuring black performers in the ‘60s tended towards tales of racial integration
(essentially how to fit into “white society”)
○ The “Perfect” Character
● 1968-1974: Blaxploitation – referring to the anticipated audience (black) and the genre style
and marketing scheme (exploitation)…
○ Exploitation: a term referring to generally lower budget B movies designed to
succeed commercially by appealing to certain subject matter expressed in
certain ways
■ Sex, violence, criminality, taboo subjects presented in often lurid
detail and visual sensationalism
■ Emphasis on action
■ Newer narratives focused on the black community and new black
celebrity
○ 1968-1974: Blaxploitation – referring to the anticipated audience (black) and the
genre style and marketing scheme (exploitation)…
■ Exploitation: a term referring to generally lower budget B movies
designed to succeed commercially by appealing to certain subject
matter expressed in certain ways
■ Sex, violence, criminality, taboo subjects presented in
often lurid detail and visual sensationalism
■ Emphasis on action
■ Many Blaxploitation narratives focused on the black community and
new black celebrity
■ Several of the early Blaxploitation stars were celebrities
before the films: former professional athletes like Jim
Brown and Fred Williamson
■ Proud, defiant, strong black masculinity not looking for integration
● 1 part cartoon, 1 part social commentary, 1 part action & Crime genre mix…
● Some films (like Truck Turner) fell more heavily on the side of cartoon action
● Others like Sweet Sweetbacks Badasssss Song (1971) seemed to be parodying stereotypes
of black masculinity
○ As a way to critique their previous use in white cinema …
○ but also as a way to play with the fears generated in the white community in
reaction to black identities…
● Still others (like are relatively more serious combinations of crime thriller & socialShaft)
commentary
● Putting African American filmmakers behind the camera as well
○ Ossie Davis, Melvin van Peeples…
○ Gordon Parks (director of Shaft) – Photojournalist 1940s-1970s
■ focusing on issues of Poverty, civil rights & urban life
The “L.A. Rebellion”
● movement led by a group of African, Caribbean, and African American filmmakers emerging
on the far margins of Hollywood
● Telling stories set within the Black Community
● Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) – family melodrama about a father who works at a
slaughterhouse
●Bush Mama (1979) – a realist study of a black veteran trying to adjust to life after a tour in
Vietnam
●penitentiary (1979) – A prison boxing film that had some crossover with blaxploitation
filmmaking
● Led to the resurgence of black filmmaking in the late 80s and ‘90s
○ Tackling social issues and personal struggles within the black community and
addressed racial tensions that had largely disappeared from Hollywood films in
the 1980s…
● 1990s: “The Black New Wave”
○Do The Right Thing
○Boyz n the Hood
○New Jack City
○Deep Cover
○Menace II Society
**See list at the bottom of guide and/or “Files” on Canvas for Dr. Holmes’ lecture material on
Video Games**
Independent Film: Industry, Style & Ethos
● 1984:
○Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
○Ghost Busters
○Gremlins
○Beverly Hills Cop
○Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
○Back to the Future
○Rambo: First Blood Part 2
○Rocky IV
○A View to a Kill (James Bond series)
● Sequels and (potential) Franchise Builders (tied to the Blockbuster formula)
● Cross-pollination: studios increasingly expanding the film market into a subsidiary
information-entertainment marketplace…
○ Home venue material
○ Merchandise (toys, promotions, ephemera)
○ Beginnings of multi-platform storytelling (tie ins with videogames, books, comics,
etc…)
● Marketing campaigns: Stars, Music, High Concept ideas, Cross-Promotions
○ Scope & Scale
The Independent Film
● Definitions of Independent Film? Core elements?
● 1990s saw the rise of the Independent film…As both an aesthetic object and a marketing
device…
● Productions outside the Hollywood mainstream often helmed by directors with a stronger
sense of individual vision and intent beyond adherence to marketed formulas…
○ The Coen Brothers, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Spike Lee, David Lynch, Alex
Cox, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Abel Ferrara…
● In the 1970s, so-called auteur movies were at times backed by big studio money and drew
large audiences…
● In the ‘80s and ‘90s audiences for independent movies was significantly smaller…
○ Even very successful indie films, at least critically speaking, typically only made
around 1 million or so at the box-office
● Niche films: Industry term for films produced for a specific and relatively narrow audience…
● Niche films are consistent moneymakers (even if modestly so)…small but loyal target
audiences…
● Advent of Digital cameras , editing software (don’t need post-production houses)
○ Lowering production barriers
○ Digital technologies & wider/easier platforms of distribution
● “Niche” filmmakers tend to represent a more diverse population…
○ Women, people of color, non-heteronormative…
● Charles Burnett, Martha Coolidge, Carl Franklin, Julie Dash, Jennie Livingston, Gregory
Nava, Penelope Spheeris, Robert Townsend, Wayne Wang, Albert & Allen Hughes, Greg
Araki, Todd Haynes…
● At first, Indie films ran under the Studio’s radar…but as the 90s progressed, the big
companies began to assimilate the indie scene…
● Miramax, New Line represented the new concept of the “Indie company”
○ Disney bought Miramax in 1993, Turner Broadcasting bought New Line in 1994
● Big Studios/Companies starting indie companies of their own:
○ Sony Pictures Classics (1992)
○ Fox Searchlight Classics (1995)
○ Paramount Vantage Pictures (1998)
○ Focus features (2002)
○ Warner Independent Pictures (2003)
● Specialty Divisions: Developing “quirky” projects, prestige products, recruiting new talent…
● Conglomerate owned indies…
● By the early 2000s, Hollywood was distributing 3 categories of films
○ Studio produced megapictures (far exceeding 100 million)
○ Niche market specialty movies (40 million or so) – There Will Be Blood,Solaris,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
○ And lower budget art films (costing between 5 to 15 million to produce) –
Memento,Brokeback Mountain, Lost in Translation, Mulholland Drive
●The Indie Ethos -- ETHOS – the characteristic spirit of something as evidenced in its
aspirations…
●What does Independent mean?
○ On a more industrial level…
■ Production, distribution, exhibition beyond Hollywood system
○ But on the other: a particular kind of cinema in a particular context…
○ Types or layers/forms of Independence?
■ Degrees of independence
■ Economic/Industrial
■ Formal-aesthetic
■ Social, cultural, ideological
■ Avant-Garde / Experimental cinema
○ A complex and nuanced balance of qualities…
○ Independent – a term that needs to be contextualized by the time and place of
its development
● “Indiewood”…
○ Overlaps with Hollywood / Institutionalized status of aspects of Independent
cinema
○ The business formula of Independent film…
● Selling a new kind of auteurism and having “indie cred”
○ The Coen Brothers & Steven Soderbergh: idiosyncratic directors who made the
jump to mass Hollywood appeal (relatively speaking at least)
■ Soderbergh – “one for them and one for me” approach
○ YET at the same time:
■ Art-House to Multiplex crossover…
■ Highlighting the differences between:
■ Blockbuster filmmaking driving the industry focused on
the spectacle of postproduction
■ Indie films of far smaller scale and intentionality or
purpose…
The Megapicture, The Franchise, Superheroes
● The Blockbuster mentality reconfigured Hollywood around the idea of the Megapicture…
● The “Tent Poll” property
● Michael Allen: ”It is the scale of supplementary product and the level of interaction that
differentiate the modern period of American mainstream film-making from its predecessor”
●21st Century
● American Film Industry a forge for creation of franchises and brands through synergistic
interaction of corporate parts
●Franchise – creation of an infinitely exploitable entertainment product
●Brand – a lump of content which can be exploited through transmodal outlets - Spokes of a
wheel
○ Exploitation both produces an income stream and further strengthens the brand
○ Projects developed for their exploitability and relation to other media products
● Growth of international distribution – need to make money overseas…
●Troy (2004) – made 133 million in the US but 262 internationally…
● Designing films to have international appeal – risk reduction practiced on a global scale
○ The global blockbuster
The Hero Myth
● Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces
● A core or basic pattern that is found repeated in multiple cultures – The Monomyth
○ For Campbell, this Monomyth is the tale of a Hero
● The Hero’s Task: sublime and profound and of “immemorial antiquity” –
○ Myth has fundamental structures and stages
● 1) A Separation or departure from the world
● 2) Trials and victories of Initiation (encounter with or realization of some source of power)
● 3) Return and reintegration into society (a life-enhancing return)
○ Life-enhancing for the individual and for the society
● Heroes as “symbolic carriers” of the destiny of the “Everyman”
○ Hero of the fairytale = personal triumph
○ Hero of the myth = societal regeneration
● Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical
○ But this masks the deeper “religion’s tale” that suggests that this action is moral
● The “discovery” made by this action is in fact a re-discovery
○ The “godly powers” the hero journeys to discover are revealed to have been
within the “heart of the hero” all the time
● Campbell argues: the hero is symbolic of that “creative and redemptive image which is
hidden within us all” that is only “waiting to be known”
Transmedial
● Crossing media platforms
○ Seeing media production as being spread out across multiple forms (and sites of
production as well)
■ Henry Jenkins suggests important aspect is audience
agency/involvement
○ Convergence: blurring distinctions between different media forms and
industries/sites of production
■ 3 “C’s” – Computing, communication, content
■ A kind of “uncoupling” of content from one mode of presentation
■ E-Books…
■ Podcasts…
■ Advertising…
■ Have you noticed ads that try to come across like
influencer content or teaching you hacks?
■ Using social media content & communication as a
mode of selling (convergence of social media & Ads)
■ Also blurring types of fandom…
Transmedia Storytelling
● Grounded in a recurrent set of characteristics, themes, and tropes
○ Fan expectations – allegiance to texts they love
○ Genre: Sameness & Variation = Familiarity & Difference
● Superhero media…
○ Inherent form of adaptation
● Characters…
● Stories…
● Themes…
Readings:
Monaco “The Waning Production Code and the Rise of the Rating System”
Green Lantern #76 "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" (DC, 1970)
Nystrom “The New Hollywood”
King “Independent Film: 1980s to the Present”
Scorsese “I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain”
Video Game Week:
ESA 2003 Essential Facts: https://asu:.instructure.com/courses/173050/files?preview=84401782
Ivory - Brief History of Video Games: https://asu.instructure.com/courses/173050/files?preview=84401791
Sharp - Games, Art, and Art games: https://asu.instructure.com/courses/173050/files?preview=84401780
Rogers - Level Up (excerpt): https://asu.instructure.com/courses/173050/files?preview=84401783
