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Communication Faculty Publications Department of Communication

2004 Hollywood Alisa Perren Georgia State University, [email protected]

Thomas Schatz

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Recommended Citation Perren, Alisa and Schatz, Thomas, "Hollywood" (2004). Communication Faculty Publications. 2. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_facpub/2

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24

HOLLYWOOD

Thomas Schatz and Alisa Perren

ny effort to assess, analyze, or even describe “Hollywood” A inevitably begins with a definitional dilemma. The term Hollywood refers to an actual place, of course—a community north of Los Angeles that emerged, nearly a century ago, as a primary base of operations for the burgeoning American film industry. But the industry involved far more than the Hollywood environs even then, and as it continued to develop, the meanings associated with the term Hollywood became increasingly complex and multivalent. Most fundamentally, the term Hollywood refers to three interrelated aspects of American cinema: the industrial, the institutional, and the formal-aesthetic. As an industry, Hollywood is a vast, integrated com- mercial enterprise with specific business practices and standard operat- ing procedures geared primarily to producing and distributing feature-length films (“Hollywood movies”). The film industry, like most capital-intensive entertainment and media enterprises, has always tended toward an oligopoly structure—that is, a system whereby a few compa- nies control a particular industry. This invokes the institutional aspect, in that the film industry has been dominated from the outset by a hand- ful of movie studios—Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros.—many of which still operate and still rule the industry. During the “classical” era of the 1920s through the 1940s, the most powerful studios controlled all phases of the industry (production, distribution, and exhibition) through a vertically integrated system that mass-produced movies for a receptive mass audience. The studios lost their collective control of the industry

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during the postwar era due to a combination of factors, including antitrust litigation, the rise of independent film production, and the jug- gernaut of commercial television. The studios adapted and survived, and since the 1970s, they have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence and have reasserted their collective control of the so-called New Hollywood. Now the studios’ film divisions produce far more than simply feature films, however, and the studios themselves are all subsidiaries of massive, transnational multimedia conglomerates such as Sony, Viacom, News Corp, and TimeWarner. But even as subsidiaries, the studios represent the “core assets” of these media conglomerates due to the enormous popu- larity of Hollywood movies in the global entertainment marketplace. The widespread appeal of Hollywood movies is due not only to the studios’ economic power and marketing prowess but also to the formal-aesthetic qualities of the films themselves. This third aspect of the term Hollywood has changed somewhat less than the industrial and institutional aspects, in that the cinematic style and narrative struc- ture of Hollywood movies have persisted over the decades, despite the obvious need for novelty and innovation. In other words, what we call a “Hollywood movie” is much the same artifact today as it was in the late teens and early 1920s. Recent changes in Hollywood’s industrial and institutional operations threaten this formal-aesthetic stability, however, due to demands of the global entertainment marketplace and the conglomerates’ quest for “synergy” between their hit movie and other media-related divisions (TV, music, publishing, theme parks, etc.). But another crucial aspect of the New Hollywood, and one that may help maintain the formal-aesthetic integrity of its movies, is the parallel development of independent films and filmmaking. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the studios’ blockbuster mentality has been offset by an unprecedented “indie boom.” Consequently, the film industry has been increasingly split between big-budget, franchise-spawning, global-marketed blockbusters and low-budget “specialty films” designed for carefully targeted niche markets. Although these so-called independent films generally are produced outside the direct control of the Hollywood studios, the studios often provide financing and distribution. Thus, most indie films are scarcely independent of the Hollywood system. And in terms of style and content, independent films tend to be every bit as conservative and classical as their block- buster counterparts. As the entertainment industry has become an increasingly global enterprise in recent years, Hollywood continues to occupy the central role in the production and commercialization of culture. Just as classi- cal Hollywood’s domination of the movie industry a half-century ago induced critic Gilbert Seldes (1978) to say that “the movies come from America,” so might one argue today that “entertainment comes from America”—and, more specifically, from Hollywood. And when one considers the widespread appeal of Hollywood movies and thus the col- onization of cultural consciousness on a global scale, it is worth noting that the term Hollywood becomes increasingly conflated with the notion of “Americanization” (Seldes, 1978). This further complicates our definitional dilemma, particularly in the era of the New Hollywood 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 497

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with its blockbuster films, new delivery technologies, and expanding entertainment marketplace dominated by a cadre of global media conglomerates. As even these preliminary comments should indicate, Hollywood has experienced a rich and dynamic history. The aim of this chapter is to chart that history in more detail and also to trace the efforts of film crit- ics and scholars to make sense of it. Journalistic film criticism dates back to Hollywood’s earliest years, and the film industry always has been subject to heavy coverage in both the trade and popular press. But the systematic scholarly study of Hollywood did not really take hold, interestingly enough, until after Hollywood’s postwar collapse. Not until the studio system and classical era were pronounced dead, in other words, were scholars and academics ready to conduct an autopsy. And not until the emergence of the New Hollywood several decades later did “film studies” approach the status of a mature academic discipline. Much of that scholarship has looked back at Hollywood’s classical era, of course, whose reputation has undergone rehabilitation over the past few decades. This is due not only to enduring appeal of Hollywood’s “classic” films but also the increasingly sophisticated understanding of its interdependent industrial, institutional, and formal-aesthetic aspects—an understanding we hope to share in the pages that follow.

♦ A Brief History of Hollywood movie palaces and downtown theaters catering to a middle-class clientele (e.g., see Balio, 1985; Finler, 1988; Jowett, 1976). The colonization of Hollywood in the 1910s These developments fueled the emerg- actually occurred as an “independent” ini- ing Hollywood film industry, although tiative in defiance of the industry’s earliest the signal factor in the formation of the oligopoly: the so-called Motion Picture Hollywood studio system, per se, was the Patents Trust, a cartel of film companies integration of factory-based production, (Edison, Biograph, et al.) that controlled the nationwide distribution, and first-class patents for cameras and projectors. The exhibition within individual motion picture Trust was broken via aggressive commercial corporations. The first of the Hollywood competition and relentless legal challenges studios to pursue vertical integration was by men such as Carl Laemmle, William Fox, Adolph Zukor’s Paramount Pictures, which and Adolph Zukor—the studio pioneers and utterly dominated the industry in the late oligopolists of the Hollywood era. Mean- teens. Others followed suit, and during the while, the cinema rapidly matured into a 1920s, a cadre of integrated companies— modern business enterprise due to the com- Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros., Fox, and bined effects of the standardization of the RKO—became the ruling studio powers in feature-length narrative film as the key Hollywood. A second tier of studios was movie commodity, the regulation and occupied by Universal, Columbia, and centralization of feature filmmaking in a United Artists, which were deemed “major factory-based mode of production, the minors”—major because they produced development of a nationwide distribution A-class features and had their own nation- system, and the brisk evolution from nick- wide distribution arms and minor because elodeon and storefront theaters to lavish they did not have their own theater chains. 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 498

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The movie industry at the time was and efficiency to production operations essentially bicoastal, with the direction of while differentiating the studio’s output; capital and the control of distribution and they also carried the studio’s entire program exhibition handled out of New York, while of pictures (through a trade practice known feature films and various other commodities as block booking) with the nation’s inde- (shorts, newsreels, etc.) rolled off the assem- pendent theaters. Moreover, given the bly line of the West Coast studio. The cost importance of stars (and the “star system”), of converting to sound film (“talkies”) in the these star-genre formulations were money in late 1920s and the subsequent economic the bank for the studios, veritable insurance devastation of the Depression brought Wall policies against box-office failure. Street into the picture, enabling the studios to Collectively, the Hollywood studios consolidate their collective—and increas- developed a repertoire of genres and house ingly collusive—control. The “Big Five” styles that were variations on what has been integrated major studios owned only about termed Hollywood’s classical narrative one sixth of America’s theaters, but this paradigm (Bordwell, 1986; Bordwell, included most of the crucial urban and Thompson, & Staiger, 1985). The key downtown theaters where Hollywood did attributes of this paradigm are a three-act the bulk of its business. And together with (fundamentally Aristotelian) story design of the three major minors, these companies exposition, complication, and resolution; a completely controlled all feature film distri- goal-oriented protagonist whose objectives bution in the United States. Other studios, and obstacles (invariably accompanied by a such as Monogram and Republic, did secondary “love interest”) define the plot emerge in the 1930s but were relegated to line and narrative trajectory of the film; and “Poverty Row” status as producers of patterns of psychological editing and B-movies for secondary markets. “Major “invisible narration” in which the camera independent producers” such as Samuel work, cutting, and production design are Goldwyn, David Selznick, and Walt Disney geared to the psyche of both the central also emerged, who produced A-class pic- character(s) and the viewer. A combination tures through financing-and-distribution of commercial, regulatory, and ideological deals with one of the studios. imperatives induced the studios to develop Control of the marketplace ensured the narrative variations that not only generated studios sufficient income to maintain pro- and resolved conflict but did so in a funda- duction operations geared to a blend of mentally prosocial fashion—that is, A-class star vehicles, B-grade program fod- through a “Hollywood ending” that con- der, and occasional “prestige pictures.” veyed both a moral and ideological resolu- Their cash flow also enabled the big studios tion to the conflicts raised in the course of to maintain thousands of contract employ- the film and one that invariably reinforced ees, including “stables” of top talent— the status quo. This is not to say that producers, directors, composers, and, most all Hollywood movies blindly or naively important, stars—under long-term contract. reinforced the dominant ideology. On the Each studio developed a distinctive person- contrary, many top filmmakers—writer- ality and “house style” during the 1930s directors such as Billy Wilder, John Huston, and 1940s, keyed to specific star-genre for- and Preston Sturges, for instance, or pro- mulations that often were produced and ducer-director teams David Selznick and maintained by specialized “units” of top Alfred Hitchcock—created films that were contract talent. Warner’s gangster films with highly complex in their treatment of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, for American ideology and whose “happy end- instance, or RKO’s dance musicals with Fred ings” were patently ironic or ambiguous. Astaire and Ginger Rogers were essential to Moreover, various genres and period styles the company’s success. They brought stability such as the women’s film, the gangster and 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 499

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horror genres, and film noir did as much to the introduction of commercial television— flesh out and critique certain aspects of the brought an end to the studio system and to American experience as they did to system- Hollywood’s classical era. The impact of atically reinforce the status quo. these factors on American moviegoing was By the late 1930s, as French film critic swift and devastating. After peaking in 1946 André Bazin (1968/1999) aptly noted, at 80 to 100 million theater admissions per Hollywood cinema had reached a certain week (when the U.S. population was only “equilibrium” whereby its social, economic, about 130 million), attendance fell to barely industrial, and stylistic aspects were in bal- half that by 1950. Although the population ance. Hollywood feature film output from surged during the 1950s, theater admissions 1939 to 1941 (generally regarded as the continued to fall, and “watching TV” height of the classical era) certainly supports replaced “going to the movies” as America’s this view, as evidenced by such productions preferred ritual of narrative entertainment. as The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, And the studios, without the cash flow Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, from their theaters and a tightly controlled and Dark Victory in 1939; The Grapes of marketplace, were forced to abandon their Wrath, The Great Dictator, Philadelphia factory-based mass-production system, with Story, and Rebecca in 1940; and Citizen its regular output of A-class features and its Kane, How Green Was My Valley, The legions of contract personnel. Lady Eve, The Little Foxes, Sergeant York, The studios survived the 1950s, due and The Maltese Falcon in 1941. mainly to three distinct and eminently suc- The 1940s brought monumental changes cessful strategies. The first was their collec- to Hollywood, from the unprecedented tive decision to maintain control of wartime boom to the industry’s rapid post- distribution and to cut back significantly on war decline. World War II was, in many active production, which they left to the ways, Hollywood’s finest hour as a social growing ranks of independent producers. institution, considering its contribution to The studios still produced films of their the “war effort,” and the studios enjoyed own, but they dramatically cut production enormous profits due to war-related eco- and began to focus primarily on financing- nomic conditions. A key factor here was the and-distribution operations—an effective suspension “for the duration” of the gov- strategy that persists today. The second suc- ernment’s antitrust campaign against the cessful survival strategy, and another trend Hollywood studios that had been initiated that continues today, was the studios’ shift by the Justice Department in 1938. That to “big” pictures. The 1950s saw a massive campaign resumed after the war, however, increase in the number of big-budget culminating in a 1948 Supreme Court “blockbusters” augmented by Technicolor decision—the legendary Paramount decree, and new widescreen formats, from costume so named for the first company cited in the spectacles such as The Robe (1953) and suit—which forced the integrated studios to The Ten Commandments (1956) to epic sell their theater chains and also put an end westerns such as Shane (1952) and The to the marketing practices (block booking, Searchers (1956). This burgeoning block- blind bidding, etc.) that had enabled the buster mentality was countered, signifi- eight studio-distributors to control the movie cantly enough, by independent outfits such business. The Paramount decree effectively as American International Pictures (AIP) disintegrated the industry, forcing the stu- that turned out low-budget “exploitation dios to produce and market movies on an films” for specific target markets, particu- individual basis. This ruling, along with larly for the teenage crowd that flocked to two other major postwar developments— rock ’n’ roll films such as Rock Around the namely, suburban migration (with its atten- Clock (1956) and horror teenpics such as I dant baby/family/housing “boom”) and Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Many of 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 500

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these films were geared specifically for the Hollywood. Indeed, the development of drive-in market, whose explosive growth MCA during the 1950s and 1960s provided (from virtually nil after the war to some a template for the media conglomerates that 6,000 screens by 1960) provided yet would rule the New Hollywood, with MCA another indication of suburban migration itself as the dominant industry force for the and the emerging teen culture, as well as next half century. of postwar America’s obsession with the The seeds of MCA’s postwar rise were automobile. planted just before the war, when founder A third factor facilitating Hollywood’s Jules Stein moved the agency headquarters postwar survival was the major studios’ to the West Coast and began signing movie eventual coming-to-terms with television. talent. Stein’s second-in-command, Lew This involved opening their “vaults” of old Wasserman, oversaw MCA’s Hollywood pictures for TV syndication and also their operations and became company president move into “telefilm” series production. in 1946 at the age of 33. Wasserman was Following the lead of Disney, which allied the chief architect of MCA’s subsequent with ABC and produced the hit Disneyland success, which came in three distinct areas series in 1954, several of the majors began of endeavor. The first involved top film TV series production in 1955, the same stars, whose postwar status and income year that the majors began syndicating their changed enormously thanks to a watershed pre-1948 films—and, in effect, began think- 1949 deal between MCA and Universal ing of their vaults as “libraries.” The most Pictures for the services of James Stewart. aggressive studio in terms of telefilm pro- Universal wanted the star but could not duction was Warner Bros., which, by the afford his usual rate of $200,000, so late 1950s, was producing one third of Wasserman and studio boss William Goetz ABC’s primetime schedule. All the majors worked out a two-picture arrangement (for took the plunge by 1960, and by then, Harvey and Winchester ’73) whereby Hollywood was producing far more hours Stewart waived his salary in lieu of 50% of of TV programming than feature films. the films’ profits. Profit-participation deals Although the studios adapted both to were scarcely new to Hollywood, but this independent film production and to the bur- level of participation was unprecedented, geoning television age, other industrial and effectively making Stewart a partner with institutional developments during the 1950s the studio on his pictures. Although other significantly altered the Hollywood land- studio heads protested, Universal and scape. The most obvious was the relocation Stewart reaped the benefits of the deal—the of network production from New York to first of many such arrangements with the West Coast, as well as the related shift Stewart and other stars throughout the from live video for film as the preferred 1950s. In fact, Stewart soon became the primetime program format. Another was highest paid Hollywood actor and also one the enhanced status and authority of top of the lowest taxed because he could sell his talent in both the film and TV industries, participation and be taxed on a capital particularly stars who formed their own gains basis rather than at a much higher production companies. These companies salary-based rate. generally were created by talent agencies The second strategy involved MCA’s such as William Morris and the Music move into telefilm series production through Corporation of America (MCA), whose its subsidiary, Revue Productions. This move status also changed dramatically during the was made possible by a 1952 agreement postwar era. The key player here was MCA, with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) that which grew from a band-booking operation granted MCA-Revue a “blanket waiver” to in the 1920s and 1930s to become the use SAG members in its productions, thus most powerful entertainment company in allowing MCA to both represent talent 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 501

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(as an agency) and also employ talent (as a on—that further expanded the Hitchcock producer). This exclusive deal was negoti- franchise. In the early 1960s, Hitchcock ated by Wasserman with SAG president sold his stake in all of these media products (and MCA client) Ronald Reagan, absolv- to MCA in exchange for stock, making him ing MCA of any conflict of interest and the company’s third largest stockholder giving Revue an enormous advantage over (behind Stein and Wasserman) and the competing telefilm producers. Revue was a wealthiest filmmaker in Hollywood. resounding success and, by the late 1950s, In formal-aesthetic terms, Hitchcock’s was supplying the three TV networks with case is equally instructive of Hollywood’s roughly 20% of their prime-time programs. postwar transformation. By the 1950s, he MCA’s third strategy involved TV syndica- had directed hits such as Rebecca (1940), tion. In the early 1950s, the company began Suspicion (1941), and Notorious (1946), buying or leasing previously broadcast tele- and thus both the industry and the public vision series as well as feature films released were quite familiar with the nature and before 1948. Given the uncertainty of mar- appeal of a “Hitchcock picture” from the ket demand and audience taste at the time, “Master of Suspense.” With Wasserman MCA began this operation cautiously. Its managing his career in the 1950s, first major movie syndication deal was with Hitchcock was able to work with top stars Republic Pictures for packages of Roy (and MCA clients), such as Stewart, Cary Rogers and Gene Autry westerns. But here, Grant, and Grace Kelly, and to make “big- too, MCA’s efforts were phenomenally ger” pictures in terms of budget and specta- successful—more so, in fact, than its highly cle—films such as his 1959 hit, North by profitable agency and TV production Northwest, a sophisticated geopolitical operations. romance (and prototype for the upcoming In the course of the 1950s, MCA devised Bond cycle) starring Grant and Eva Marie ways to combine these diverse operations. Saint, which was Hitchcock’s most expen- Consider, for example, the case of Alfred sive and most commercially successful film Hitchcock. Early in the decade, Wasserman to date. Hitchcock immediately followed cut a lucrative deal with Paramount that blockbuster hit with a low-budget Pictures, giving Hitchcock a share of the exploitation film that he considered more profits and eventual ownership of his films of an experiment and a diversion than (which included To Catch a Thief, Rear a major project. In fact, it was shot by Window, Vertigo, and Psycho). In the Hitchcock’s TV series crew for roughly one process, Wasserman assembled a produc- fifth the cost of North by Northwest. The tion unit around Hitchcock that ensured a film was Psycho, which radically undercut certain consistency and stability in terms of the classical Hollywood narrative (with its production as well as additional income for heroine murdered halfway through the MCA because most of the unit members film, its oddly sympathetic serial killer, were MCA clients.1 With Hitchcock’s film etc.), reinvented the horror genre, con- career set, Wasserman turned to television. founded critics, and was by far Hitchcock’s He arranged with NBC to create a new most popular and commercially successful series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to be pro- film. And although films such as Vertigo duced by Revue. Here, too, Wasserman set and Psycho were exposing a much darker up the deal so that ownership of the TV side of Hitchcock’s trademark style, the hit programs would revert to Hitchcock’s com- TV series presented a purposefully toned- pany, Shamley Productions. As with the down version, suitably domesticated for films, Hitchcock’s TV shows were syndi- family consumption and doled out in cated by MCA, which also developed vari- weekly, 30-minute doses. ous media tie-ins—a mystery magazine, With revenues from its agency, produc- multiple short-story anthologies, and so tion company, and syndication arm flowing 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 502

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in, MCA raised its sights in the late 1950s. The studios began to rebound in To accommodate Revue’s growth, MCA 1972–1973, when The Godfather, purchased the Universal City studio lot in American Graffiti, The Sting, and The 1959. Then, in 1962, it dissolved its talent Exorcist proved immensely popular with agency (at the behest of the Justice both the youth market and mainstream Department) and purchased Universal audiences. The turning point for the indus- Pictures along with its parent company, try came with the 1975 release of Jaws by Decca Records, thus becoming the first Universal, a watershed hit that pioneered modern U.S. media conglomerate. MCA- the summer blockbuster and used a ground- Universal flourished during the 1960s due breaking nationwide “saturation” market- primarily to the fit between its film and tele- ing and release campaign.2 Aesthetically, the vision divisions and its unparalleled syndi- film combined New American cinema sty- cation operation. With its expanded listic techniques with classical Hollywood resources, MCA pioneered the long-form conventions. Complementing the film’s TV series format (with The Name of the wide release and extensive use of television Game, Columbo, and others) as well as the advertising were marketable stars, a popu- “movie of the week” format. lar blend of genres, merchandising and Although MCA’s TV operations flour- marketing hooks, and striking visuals—all ished in the 1960s, Universal Pictures characteristics, according to Justin Wyatt struggled—as did all of the Hollywood (1994), of high-concept films. The $125 movie studios at the time. The relentless pur- million-plus in North American rentals for suit of blockbusters led to huge hits such as Jaws reaffirmed more than just the effec- The Sound of Music (1965) but also huge tiveness of blending cinematic styles and misses such as Cleopatra (1963). By the late genres. In fact, it demonstrated that “high- 1960s, even box-office successes such as concept” movies—movies that, according Hello, Dolly! (1969) were losing money due to Steven Spielberg, could be summed up in to their enormous budgets, and costly flops 25 words or less (and could be effectively such as Dr. Doolittle (1968) and Tora! marketed in 30-second TV ads)—were the Tora! Tora! (1970) threatened to bankrupt most profitable and reliable business their studio-distributors. Meanwhile, low- prospects for the studios. The explosive budget “youth market” films such as Bonnie growth of shopping center multiplexes, and Clyde (1967), The Graduate (1967), combined with the studios’ increasing 2001 (1968), Easy Rider (1969), Midnight expenditures on network TV advertising, Cowboy (1969), and M.A.S.H. (1970) were further fueled the drive toward saturation doing solid business—albeit with a relatively marketing-release campaigns. Although limited, countercultural audience—and sow- marketing costs rose in the process, so did ing the seeds of a New American cinema that box-office returns, as one film after another was, in many ways, distinctly at odds with began to hit the $100 million mark in both classical Hollywood and the main- domestic grosses during the late 1970s and stream audience. Consequently, the movie early 1980s. industry found itself in a deep recession in Films such as Star Wars (1977), Super- 1969–1970, as movie studio stock values man (1978), and Raiders of the Lost Ark plummeted. The undervalued studios thus (1981) not only brought in large profits for were prime takeover targets, resulting in their studio-distributors but also launched a merger-and-acquisition wave that saw lucrative multimedia “franchises”—entertain- Gulf & Western acquire Paramount, Kinney ment product lines geared to a blockbuster National Services acquire Warner Bros., movie hit. Along with the income generated Transamerica acquire United Artists, and by a widening array of product tie-ins, the real estate magnate Kirk Kerkorian acquire studios also enjoyed additional revenues MGM. from the emerging video and cable markets. 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 503

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The “home video revolution” started with institutional structure fundamentally the introduction of the Sony Betamax VCR changed due to the combined forces of in 1975, the same year that HBO intro- deregulation, conglomeration, and global- duced the pay-cable “movie channel.” Basic ization. This began during the 1980s, when cable was just beginning its ascent as the corporate giants of the 1960s, such as well, and by the late 1970s, Ted Turner’s Gulf & Western, Transamerica, and Kinney Atlanta-based WTBS station would start National, either got out of the entertain- the “superstation” trend with its then-novel ment business or reorganized their opera- combination of satellite with cable, provid- tions through a combination of downsizing, ing still another significant new outlet for regrouping, and selling unprofitable divi- movies. sions. Transamerica sold its controlling Cumulatively, these mid-1970s develop- interest in United Artists, for example, ments dramatically altered Hollywood’s whereas both Kinney (owner of Warner industrial practices as well as the aesthetics Bros.) and Gulf & Western (owner of of its films, auguring a new era in media Paramount) shed their nonentertainment entertainment that was dubbed the “New divisions to focus on media-related ventures. Hollywood” by various critics and media Meanwhile, the quest for synergy across scholars and that overwhelmed the New different “software” divisions intensified. American cinema of the late 1960s and Disney broke with its “family entertain- early 1970s. That earlier period of creative ment” tradition to create more “mature” ferment had been heralded as a veritable films such as Down and Out in Beverly Hollywood renaissance, due especially to Hills and Pretty Woman through its new the rise of a new breed of filmmakers such Touchstone division, for instance, and as Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Arthur Warner Bros. moved into videogames Penn, Martin Scorsese, and Hal Ashby. In through the purchase of Atari. Another tactic the later 1970s, however, the complex involved studio mergers with deep-pocketed interplay of economic, aesthetic, and tech- conglomerates, which were motivated by nological forces sent the movie industry in a the widening array of media technologies very different direction. As Anderson and “delivery systems” and facilitated by (1994), Balio (1996), Schatz (1993, 1997), Reagan-era deregulation. In 1986, Rupert and Wyatt (1994) all concur, the New Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased Hollywood emerged via high-concept Twentieth Century Fox and, within months blockbusters that were financed and dis- of the purchase, created a fourth U.S. broad- tributed by the major studios. The studios’ cast television network. Later, two Japanese power increased exponentially through the technology giants bought movie studios in 1980s and 1990s with the stabilization of an effort to wed a “software” producer to the blockbuster trend and the rise of an their established “hardware” divisions; increasingly diversified, globalized “enter- Sony bought Columbia-TriStar in 1989, and tainment industry” in which motion picture Matsushita purchased MCA-Universal in operations represented only one component 1990. The entry of Sony, Matsushita, and of the vast conglomerates that owned the Australian-owned News Corp. also under- studios. This New Hollywood, which still scored the increasingly global stakes continues to evolve, consists of tightly involved in the expanding entertainment diversified and horizontally integrated industry and the eagerness of foreign media companies focused on exploiting investors to have a stake in Hollywood. synergies between their various publishing, Of course, the “Hollywood” being film, television, videogame, merchandising, invested in was not a Hollywood of film and music divisions. studios. In this Hollywood, television and Indeed, we might view the 1980s and motion picture divisions were fundamen- 1990s as a period when Hollywood’s tally intertwined—a longstanding impulse 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 504

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that now, thanks to deregulation, had the biggest success stories was Viacom’s become a veritable requirement of industry MTV, which turned several of its successful survival. Though intended to benefit inde- cable TV programs into hit feature films. pendent television producers by fostering a The half-hour MTV animated cartoon/ more competitive environment in televi- music video hybrid Beavis and Butthead sion, the rolling back of media regulation (1993–1997), for instance, generated the ultimately benefited the studios (and their feature-length film, Beavis and Butthead parent companies), which were better able Do America (1996), through another to finance television productions and to Viacom subsidiary, Paramount. Thus, the exploit hit programs through their syndica- franchise mentality that pervaded film tion divisions. In the emerging multichannel began to dominate the television environ- universe, ever-increasing profits could be ment as well, as entertainment conglomer- generated from television production, but ates sought new ways to exploit popular the established “Big Three” TV networks products and create new “brands” across were unable to reap the full benefits. The the company’s various divisions. launch of the Fox TV network also signaled Nowhere was this strategy more appar- a moment of crisis in the television industry, ent than with the high-concept “event” as all three TV networks changed ownership film. From the release of Jaws to Jurassic and management in 1985–1986 due in Park 3 (2001), the marketing and distribu- large part to these broad economic, techno- tion strategies of the major studios evolved logical, and regulatory changes. The churn substantially. At the time of its release, the in the television and cable industries $12 million-budgeted Jaws opened on a steadily intensified, and the network record-setting 464 screens nationwide. By upheaval that began in the mid-1980s the time of Jurassic Park 3’s release a quar- reached a peak with the Telecommuni- ter century later, neither its $93 million cations Act of 1996, which gave a broad- budget nor 3,434-screen opening was out based federal sanction to the deregulatory of the ordinary. Perhaps more striking trends of the previous decade. This act coin- about Jurassic Park 3 was its absence of cided—although it was hardly a coinci- top talent either behind or in front of the dence—with yet another merger-and- camera—although Steven Spielberg’s brand acquisition wave in the mid-1990s involv- name was behind the film itself. The selling ing various major players in the television points for this film—along with so many arena. Disney purchased ABC, Viacom other high-concept film and television purchased CBS (along with Paramount, products—were its spectacle, its special Blockbuster, MTV, and Nickelodeon), and effects, and its “presold” status. Time-Warner purchased Turner Broad- The rise of the big-budget blockbuster casting. In addition, Warner Bros. and brought other important changes in Paramount created two new “netlets”— Hollywood’s market strategies and hence cable networks—in the form of the WB its motion picture output. As conglomer- channel and UPN (Aufderheide, 1999; ates continued to focus on franchise-scale Holt, 2003). films, their studio subsidiaries placed less The dozens of new television channels put emphasis on the standard star-genre fare an increasing emphasis on narrowcasting that defined the classical Hollywood studio and niche programming. Not only were system. As the average motion picture bud- shows increasingly targeted to specific demo- get approached $50 million by 2002, with graphic groups (Fox’s Martin for African an additional $30 million in marketing Americans, ABC’s Sabrina the Teenage costs, the studios became less inclined to Witch for young adults), but entire cable finance the kinds of “mainstream” come- channels were being developed for specific dies, mysteries, and romances that had been age groups, ethnicities, and lifestyles. Among standard during the studio era. Occasional 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 505

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exceptions such as Jerry Maguire (1996) the real breakthrough film was Steven and A Beautiful Mind (2001) indicated that Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, a $1.1 there was a strong market for more routine million production that generated close to A-class star vehicles, as long as a star such $25 million at the North American box as Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe was office alone and took the festival circuit by “attached.” But the economics of the New storm. sex, lies and videotape demonstrated Hollywood generally encourage either big- to many in the industry and the press that budget or low-budget production. Indeed, there was money to be made in the “qual- the industry has become increasingly bifur- ity” film business, particularly with the cated, with the majority of releases falling kind of skillful marketing that Miramax at either end of the budget spectrum. gave Soderbergh’s film. The film’s success This trend began in the late 1970s and put Miramax at the forefront of the early 1980s, when the studios’ blockbuster American independent movement, a posi- impulse was countered by a number of tion it would maintain throughout the companies that began to distribute low- 1990s. Indeed, the fate of Hollywood’s budget films with smaller, character-driven independent film world paralleled that of stories targeted to specific niches such as Miramax, which became the shaping force African Americans, gays and lesbians, and in the production, marketing, and distribu- art-cinema connoisseurs. Further fueling tion of low-budget films and filmmaking. the trend were new avenues for film financ- Moreover, the string of subsequent ing such as foreign presales, as well as addi- Miramax hits, including The Grifters tional avenues of distribution such as video (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Passion and cable. Thus, as mogul-auteurs such as Fish (1992), and particularly The Crying Spielberg and Lucas dominated high-end Game (1992), led to another defining event Hollywood, a new crop of indie-auteurs, in the New Hollywood’s industrial and including Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, John institutional development. In April 1993, Sayles, Gus Van Sant, and Joel and Ethan Disney purchased Miramax. As an indie Coen, staked out the low-budget indepen- subsidiary, Miramax maintained its exist- dent realm. During the 1980s, independent ing management while enjoying quasi- filmmakers and distributors remained on autonomy status and access to Disney’s vast the margins of the industry, as successful resources, financial and otherwise. And the independent films such as the Coen broth- deal gave Disney prestige at a relatively low ers’ Blood Simple and Sayles’s Brother cost, as well as additional product for its From Another Planet (both 1984) brought voracious pipeline. in a few million dollars at the box office, The purchase of Miramax by Disney whereas most earned far less. Yet many started a trend, and by the late 1990s, every films (and their directors) established them- studio had at least one niche division geared selves with a number of critics and movie- toward producing low-budget, “indie,” or goers, particularly through film festivals, “art house” features. Generally speaking, which were growing in number and atten- these films were characterized by genre dance during this time. blending, a high degree of stylization, The turning point for Hollywood’s inde- excessive sex or violence, an emphasis on pendent movement came in 1989. At the dialogue and character development over time, only a select few independent compa- plot, and name talent working “on the nies—notably New Line, Miramax, and cheap.” Landmark films of the era included Samuel Goldwyn—were faring well in the The Piano (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), The uncertain, marginal world of “indie” Usual Suspects (1995), Boogie Nights financing and distribution. A few films such (1997), and Good Will Hunting (1997). as Hairspray, Drugstore Cowboy, and Some studios had an additional division Henry V had done well in 1988–1989, but oriented toward low-budget “genre” fare, 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 506

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specifically horror films (Scream, 1996), primarily on the aesthetics of film as urban comedies (A Thin Line Between theorists and intellectuals debated its nature Love and Hate, 1996), science fiction and status as an art form. The most signifi- (Mimic, 1997), and teen romances (She’s cant of these was poet Vachel Lindsay’s All That, 1999). Although some studio- (1915) monograph, The Art of the Moving based divisions such as Fox Searchlight, Picture, which staked a claim for cinema as Paramount Classics, Miramax, and Fine a new and distinctly democratic art that Line readily exploited the label of “inde- combined traditional forms such as paint- pendence” for the purposes of marketing ing, sculpture, and architecture into a com- and publicity, others, such as Dimension, pletely new form of expression. Another Screen Gems, and New Line, took a more important early study, The Photoplay: A aggressively commercial tack. And even as Psychological Study, was written by Hugo the term indie became synonymous with Munsterberg (1916), a professor of psy- edgy, hip, and cutting-edge cinema, it lost chology at Harvard who saw film as a sig- much of its meaning as anything beyond a nificant new form due to its unique capacity marketing tool. to “objectify mental processes” via camera Thus, by the early 2000s, the lines work, cutting, and narrative construction. between art house and multiplex, alternative Manuals for screenplay construction also and commercial, independent and main- emerged at this same time, including The stream Hollywood were utterly blurred in Art of Photoplay Making by Columbia both industry and press discourse. And literature professor Victor O. Freeberg despite the bifurcation of movie product (1918; see also Koszarski, 1990, pp. 95–97). between mass-marketed blockbusters and This debate about “film art” continued niche-marketed, low-budget films, the in the 1920s, as theorists and filmmakers industry was more integrated and, in a from outside the United States began writ- sense, more “balanced” than it had been ing about cinema and specifically about since the classical Hollywood era. This was Hollywood, including Sergei Eisenstein a function of conglomerate control, how- (1991) in a series of brilliant essays on ever, which would cause as much concern “American montage.” In the United States, and controversy for critics and scholars business schools began to examine the as the “studio system” had a half century cinema’s industrial and economic aspects, earlier. most notably perhaps in a series of lectures organized at Harvard’s MBA school, which resulted in a 1927 anthology, The Story of ♦ Hollywood the Films, edited by the organizer of the and Film Studies lecture series, Joseph P. Kennedy (Boston banker and film financier, later cofounder of RKO Pictures, and father of JFK). In the Film studies as a distinct academic and 1930s, the academic discourse about scholarly discipline, especially in terms of Hollywood was dominated by sociologists autonomous departments and advanced and social scientists, who were increasingly degrees, is a relatively recent phenomenon, concerned with the “effects” of movies on dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, audiences, particularly children. Among the although intellectuals and scholars from more notable assessments were two 1933 other disciplines have been teaching publications: the Payne Fund’s Motion and writing about film—and specifically Pictures and Youth (Charters, 1933), a rea- about Hollywood—since the early years of sonable scholarly treatise based on a 5-year American cinema. The earliest writings of study by a group of respected researchers, any real consequence about the cinema and Henry James Forman’s alarmist appeared in the mid-teens and focused diatribe, Our Movie-Made Children, which 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 507

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held Hollywood responsible for a host of Europe, particularly from a group of young social woes. critics in Paris writing for Cahiers du A few years later, at the height of Cinéma under editor André Bazin (see Hollywood’s classical era, two cogent Browne, 1990). This included François scholarly studies significantly advanced this Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and others social science approach. Hollywood: The who, as filmmakers a few years later, would Movie Colony, the Movie Makers, a 1941 create the French New Wave. The Cahiers best-seller, was sociologist (and later critics formulated the politique des auteurs, screenwriter) Leo Rosten’s analysis of the a polemical view of commercial cinema— mores, attitudes, and lifestyles of the film and most notably Hollywood—that posited community. Mae D. Huettig’s Economic the director as “author” of his or her films. Control of the Motion Picture Industry, The Cahiers critics also preferred the published in 1944 (and based on her doc- dynamic vitality of Hollywood genre films toral thesis at Pennsylvania University, to the ponderous “quality” of literary adap- funded by the Rockefeller Foundation), tations and prestige pictures. Thus, John examined the institutional structure and Ford was valued more highly for Stagecoach economic practices of the Hollywood stu- and The Searchers than for The Grapes of dio system. A much less sanguine industry Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. analysis was written at about this time by More important, these critics championed Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno as important auteur filmmakers such as (1972), two German exiles residing in the Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, routinely L.A. environs, ironically enough. During dismissed by American critics as commer- the war, they composed their influential cial hacks. Other European critics picked Marxist analysis of mass culture, Dialectic up the auteur chant, particularly the young of Enlightenment, which included the Turks writing for Movie in Britain. Then, in groundbreaking essay, “The Culture Indus- 1962, American critic Andrew Sarris try: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”—a (1962–1963) wrote “Notes on the Auteur savage critique of Hollywood movies and Theory in 1962” for the journal Film other forms of popular entertainment. This Culture, setting off a firestorm of critical study helped spark the so-called “mass cul- and cultural debate. By decade’s end, ture debates” that raged during the postwar when he published The American Cinema: era and engaged such leading U.S. intellec- Directors and Directions, 1929-1968 tuals as Gilbert Seldes (1978), Dwight (1968), Sarris had transformed auteurism Macdonald (1961), and Robert Warshow from a polemic to “a theory of film history” (1962). In 1950, anthropologist and UCLA and had thoroughly won over the growing professor Hortense Powdermaker wrote ranks of American cinephiles. Hollywood: The Dream Factory, a less pes- The auteur theory, especially as it was simistic view of both the filmmaking process presented and promoted by Sarris, provided and films themselves as manifestations of a conceptual schema and critical approach contemporary social values and conditions. that rendered film studies safe for academia— An even more adept analysis of Hollywood and not just as a sidelight for scholars in filmmaking was written at the same time by other disciplines but as a field of study unto Lillian Ross (1952), whose book Picture itself. Current changes in the film industry (based on a series of New Yorker articles) lent additional credence to this approach, traced the making of a single movie, The Red notably the international art-cinema move- Badge of Courage, and provided a com- ment, with filmmakers Antonioni, Fellini, pelling inside look at MGM during Holly- Bergman, Kurosawa, and Truffaut enjoying wood’s panic-stricken postwar free fall. widespread success in the United States. By The most significant writing about the late 1960s, as noted above, Hollywood Hollywood during the 1950s came from was experiencing its own “new wave,” as 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 508

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directors such as Arthur Penn, Mike interaction and cultural expression with Nichols, Paul Mazursky, and Robert Altman profound implications for the study of were heralded as auteurs in their own right, popular cinema. and “film schools” in New York and Los Whereas early structuralism and semi- Angeles began producing a new generation otics tended to emphasize cinematic codes of filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, and conventions, later “poststructuralist” George Lucas, Brian DePalma, and Martin developments shifted the emphasis to both Scorsese, who were fiercely committed to an the process of interpretation (“decoding” auteurist aesthetic. films) and the “subject”—that is, the indi- A crucial complement to auteurism in vidual spectator. The feminist and civil the 1960s and 1970s was genre study. rights movements were pertinent here, in Indeed, the industrial and economic nature their apt insistence that different cultural of Hollywood meant that the majority of its constituencies (different “reading forma- canonized auteurs were genre directors, tions” or “interpretive communities”) tend and some of the most significant writing to decode and deconstruct texts in very dif- about Hollywood cinema at the time—Jim ferent ways—even Hollywood film texts Kitses’s (1970) Horizons West, for instance, designed to be read effortlessly and consis- and Peter Wollen’s (1972) Signs and tently by an undifferentiated mass audience. Meaning in the Cinema—focused on the Perhaps the single most significant scholarly interplay of authorship and genre. Although publication in this area was Laura Mulvey’s auteur-oriented genre studies often dis- “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” played a limiting literary and elitist bias, published in 1975 in the British film journal important intellectual movements in Europe Screen, which combined feminist and psy- promised to radically transform genre choanalytic approaches to formulate an theory—and media studies generally. These indictment of Hollywood cinema whose centered on structuralism and semiotics— influence would be felt for years to come. notably, the structural anthropology of Mulvey’s argument, simply stated, focused Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963) and the theory on the narrative, stylistic, and technological of semiology (a “science of signs”) pro- practices through which Hollywood films posed by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de systematically reinforced a sociocultural Saussure (see Bally, Sechehaye, & Riedlinger, system wholly invested in patriarchal 1986). The two intellectual strains devel- authority and phallocentric desire. Although oped in tandem and posited a very different Mulvey herself would later pull back from view of culture, language, the arts, mythol- the somewhat strident claims of her ground- ogy, and virtually all other forms of human breaking essay, clearly she struck a chord communication. In essence, structuralism with a wide range of film students and and semiotics viewed culture not, as scholars, feminist or otherwise.3 Matthew Arnold (1993) and academic tra- With the growth of cultural studies and ditionalists would have it, as “the very best multiculturalism during the 1980s, of what’s been thought and said” but rather Hollywood provided an endless supply of as “lived experience” itself, manifested in convenient targets for various minorities the myriad rituals, stories, social institu- and marginalized groups, thanks to the tions, and other rule-bound (hence “struc- fundamentally conservative (if not reac- tured”) signifying systems that constitute tionary) ideology of many of its films. everyday life. This view was refined by a Douglas Kellner (1997), Michael Ryan and cadre of European intellectuals, including Kellner (1988), Susan Jeffords (1994), and Roland Barthes (1972), Louis Althusser Thomas Doherty (1988) were among the (1984), Umberto Eco (1994), Jacques media analysts who employed a cultural Lacan (1977), and Christian Metz (1974, studies perspective in their wide-ranging 1982), who reconceptualized human analyses of the 1980s Hollywood product, 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 509

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exploring the “dominant” Hollywood example), more frequently the approach ideologies and also the means by which was used to explore consumption practices both media producers and audiences and text-reader relationships. The classic in responded to these ideologies. Cultural this area was John Fiske’s (1989) work, studies seemed a useful analytical tool for Understanding Popular Culture, which many scholars in part because of its diverse suggested ways that people exercised agency theoretical and methodological approaches. in their daily lives as they consumed Holly- From its initial formulation by Raymond wood product. Although such “reader- Williams (1958), E. P. Thompson (1963), oriented” perspectives were initially per- and Richard Hoggart (1957) in the 1950s ceived as a crucial political move on the part and 1960s through its later development by of cultural studies scholars, soon the preva- the Birmingham Centre in the 1970s and lence of such analyses—at the expense of 1980s, cultural studies was continually exploring institutional agency and other reinvented and reformulated, incorporating industry-related topics—brought the field structuralism, feminism, race theory, post- under attack both from those working colonial theory, poststructuralism, hege- within the cultural studies tradition (in mony theory, discourse analysis, and Meaghan Morris’s 1996 polemical essay postmodernist theory as necessary to suit “Banality in Cultural Studies,” for example) the particular object of study. Similarly, the and from those working outside a cultural terrain of cultural studies proved malleable studies framework. and fertile; industry, text, and audience Critical political economists actively were all viewed as viable subjects for the countered the consumption-oriented cul- cultural studies scholar. tural studies scholars during the 1980s by The unifying element across this diverse focusing on questions of institutional field of cultural studies was the belief that power rather than on popular responses to culture is a terrain of struggle and contesta- media texts. North American political tion, where battles over how society is economists such as Vincent Mosco (1996) defined and controlled are evident in the and Robert McChesney (1993) and their texts and practices of everyday life. Among European counterparts, including Nicholas the primary ways that cultural studies Garnham (1995) and Peter Golding and enriched media studies during the 1980s Graham Murdock (1991), although differ- was through its analysis of the relations of ing on a number of key points, agreed that power and the social and cultural contexts communication scholars had a responsibil- within which people view the “dominant” ity to analyze and evaluate how specific Hollywood product. In the Reagan-era modes of production and relations of Hollywood, during which cultural studies power shape in determinate ways the ter- came of age in the United States, this per- rain on which cultural practices take place spective enabled scholars to interrogate (Kellner, 1997, p. 71). European critical the ideologies present in Hollywood films political economists retained a more explic- such as First Blood (1982), Conan the itly Marxist political orientation, arguing Barbarian (1982), and Sudden Impact that viable solutions to social inequalities (1983), which exemplified Hollywood’s could not be found by working within the tendency to privilege a reactionary White contemporary capitalist system; thus, the male authority figure at the expense of less Hollywood film industry has not been cen- empowered groups. tral to their concerns about cultural produc- Although a cultural studies framework tion. North American political economists, was occasionally applied to analyses of on the other hand, took a slightly different the Hollywood mode of production during tack that centered more directly on popular the 1980s (in Todd Gitlin’s 1994 work cinema, specifically on the Hollywood on prime-time television production, for film industry. Although equally critical of 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 510

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capitalism, the latter group nonetheless production/distribution (The Hollywood accepted its continued existence and there- Studio System, 1986) to the history of exhi- fore sought reforms within the system. A bition (Shared Pleasures, 1992) to broader primary goal of scholars such as Mosco institutional operations (Who Owns the (1996) and McChesney (1993), as well as Media? [Compaine & Gomery, 2000]). Herbert Schiller (1989) and Noam The cumulative influence of cultural Chomsky (see Peck, 1987), was to demon- studies, critical political economy, and strate how transnational media (which in media economics has been considerable. their work were often synonymous with From the 1970s to the present, the chal- Hollywood) were exploitative and undemo- lenge for those working in film studies has cratic (Mosco, 1996, p. 19). The standard been to incorporate and integrate these remedy within this school of thought was approaches into historical and critical the pursuit of public policy measures to analyses of contemporary media. The evo- facilitate the redistribution of resources. lution of film studies in the past quarter There has been a general tendency century has been a bumpy one, as scholars among critical political economy scholars have attempted to strike a balance between working with media to treat Hollywood as industrial/institutional analyses and textual/ a monolithic (and fundamentally oppres- interpretive studies (and, by extension, sive) entity. However, a number of schol- between social scientific and humanistic ars, including Janet Wasko, Eileen Meehan, theories and methodologies). The efforts of and Thomas Guback, have retained their film studies scholars have been further com- critical edge toward Hollywood while plicated by developments both inside and more closely and carefully interrogating outside the academy: From within, televi- the industry’s processes and practices. sion studies has forced film studies to For example, Wasko’s (1994) book, Holly- broaden its framework; from without, the wood in the Information Age, was useful in emergence of new technologies, the integra- exploring how Hollywood accommodated tion of media industries, and the consolida- and incorporated new technologies into its tion of (global) entertainment conglomerates production, distribution, and exhibition have posed continued challenges to the processes from the 1970s to the 1990s. field. Although coming from a critical political Film studies began this evolution in the economy perspective, Wasko also incorpo- mid-1970s with significant advances in film rated ideas from media economics and cul- history, which until then was little more tural studies into her analysis. Media than a journalistic enterprise that chronicled economics developed into a fruitful subdis- Great Films by Great Men. Two books pub- cipline of political economy studies during lished in the mid-1970s, Garth Jowett’s the 1980s. As practiced by such individuals (1976) Film: The Democratic Art and as Alan Albarran, Barry Litman, James Robert Sklar’s (1994) Movie-Made Owers, and Alison Alexander, this field America, propelled these advances not only incorporates elements of micro- and macro- in their integration of economic and indus- economics and industrial organization trial factors into the historical analysis but theory into the study of entertainment prac- also in their efforts to situate Hollywood tices (Albarran & Chan-Olmsted, 1998; within the larger social and cultural context. Alexander, Owers, & Carveth, 1998; A few years later, Robert C. Allen and Litman, 1998). Since the 1980s, Douglas Gomery’s (1985) concise historiographic Gomery has been among the most prolific treatise, Film History: Theory and Practice, media economists writing about Holly- argued that the study of Hollywood should wood. His work spans the whole history of integrate aesthetic, economic, sociological, Hollywood and covers the entire range of and technological research. Few historians its industrial practices, from studio-era have accomplished this, however—not even 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 511

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Gomery himself in his invaluable (if limited) for decades. Michele Hilmes’s (1990) monograph, The Hollywood Studio System Hollywood and Broadcasting and (1986), which surveyed the industrial, insti- Christopher Anderson’s (1994) Hollywood tutional, and economic landscape of TV were important, indeed imperative, American cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. interventions into both U.S. film history and Another key contribution to film history also our basic conceptualization of “the in the mid-1980s was The Classical media” as industrial, economic, and cultural Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode forms in American life. Although conglom- of Production to 1960, by Bordwell eration and globalization encouraged many et al. (1985). At once a conservative and scholars to regard contemporary media somewhat radical treatment of classical (and their products) as manifestations of Hollywood, this book argues quite convinc- the postmodern condition, Hilmes and ingly that the narrative and stylistic “para- Anderson suggested that this condition is as digm” of classical American cinema was old as the media industries themselves. in place by the late teens—by 1917, to be Although some scholars attempted to precise—and only then did the studio system make cultural studies more relevant by develop as a means to systematically repro- reconciling political economy and cultural duce the paradigm and also, crucially, to studies approaches, others proposed a constrain innovation and variations on that wholesale overhauling of cultural studies. model. These and other books moved well In yet another effort to make cultural stud- beyond the naive auteurism of the 1960s but ies more engaged with regulatory and indus- without abandoning the concept of directo- trial issues, a group of Australian and British rial authorship altogether. Indeed, they rec- media scholars began to advance cultural ognize that the director’s personal style and policy studies in the late 1980s. As initially vision are vital to the success of a film but defined by Tony Bennett (1998) and Stuart that these elements must be factored into a Cunningham (1992), and later amended highly complex equation when the collabo- by Tom O’Regan (1992) and Toby Miller rative complexities and institutional author- (1998), cultural policy studies raised a ity of Hollywood studios are involved. number of ideas, values, and analytical These reassessments of Hollywood were strategies that incorporated textual and insti- written at the same time, interestingly tutional analysis into the study of media enough, that the studios were returning to and provided a useful theoretical frame power (albeit as subsidiaries of massive con- through a reinterpretation of Foucault’s glomerates) and as new technologies such concept of governmentality. In addition, cul- as cable and home video were delivering tural policy studies enabled a way of visual- an ever-expanding array of classic films to izing the possibility for change “within the an increasingly cine-literate audience— system” via a reformist politics that kept insistently reminding us, in other words, of issues of power at the forefront of analysis. the creative vitality and efficiency of classi- Cultural policy research also addressed cal Hollywood. Meanwhile, media con- ethical considerations concerning the roles glomeration underscored the fundamental and responsibilities of academics and media connectedness of various entertainment scholars. media, particularly film and television. And Not until fairly recently has a cultural thus it is scarcely surprising that television policy approach been taken up by North studies rapidly emerged as a distinct disci- American scholars and applied to American pline—or rather, as a subdiscipline of media media industries. A significant early effort studies alongside film studies—and that appeared in 2002, in a collection of essays scholars began to examine the vital inter- edited by Lewis and Miller (2002) under dependence between the two, an interde- the title Critical Cultural Policy Studies. pendence that had eluded film historians This publication signals the growing 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 512

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interest among U.S. media scholars in a concluding this chapter, we briefly sketch policy-based approach, although this out our rationale for such an assertion. remains a remarkably difficult endeavor in As mentioned above, a policy-oriented an era of deregulation and conglomeration. approach to contemporary Hollywood The challenge for academics in the United requires significant modification of the States involves finding ways to develop cul- schema developed in Britain and Australia, tural policy analysis within a context in given the twin forces (and governing ide- which policy tends to be set internally by ologies) of media deregulation and free- media conglomerates. American media market capitalism in the United States since scholars face an additional challenge as the 1980s. U.S. media policy has been they attempt to become involved in media shaped primarily by the economic policies, regulation because of the ways in which, market strategies, and corporate customs of historically, they have been marginalized in the media industrialists themselves—with public policy discussions. This differs dra- the implicit endorsement of the federal matically from Britain and Australia, where government. Thus, policy studies of Holly- there is more direct interaction between wood further require a political economy government and industry and where the approach attuned not only to the patterns academy has a longstanding tradition of of ownership but also, crucially, to the contributing to the public sphere. complex and ever-shifting relations of power in the New Hollywood. The interre- lated effects of deregulation, conglomera- ♦ Conclusions: Industry Trends tion, diversification, and globalization have and Research Priorities transformed both the structure of the U.S. entertainment industry and the conduct of its dominant institutions. Despite the obvious applicability of both As mentioned above, the studios are cultural policy and political economy now subsidiaries of global media conglom- analysis to Hollywood, particularly to the erates, but they assume a privileged posi- New Hollywood of the past two decades, tion vis-à-vis both the parent company and American film scholars are just beginning its other divisions due to the tremendous to use these approaches effectively. More- importance of blockbuster hits and movie- over, media scholars have yet to integrate driven entertainment franchises, as well as these approaches into a coherent concep- the syndication value of filmed entertain- tual and analytical schema, which seems ment throughout the global media market- not only advisable but also absolutely place. And because TimeWarner, Sony, essential in light of recent (and current) News Corp, Disney, Viacom, and the conditions. And despite qualifying both other media conglomerates are all config- approaches with the term critical, neither ured somewhat differently, it is challenging devotes sufficient attention to the creation, indeed to gauge the position and relative composition, and meanings of media prod- importance of their Hollywood holdings— ucts themselves. If we define Hollywood, including the studios themselves and their as suggested at the outset, as a synthesis various film-related subsidiaries. As of of industrial, institutional, and formal- 2003, TimeWarner, for instance, included aesthetic forces, then in our view, the inte- Warner Bros., the New Line and Fine Line gration of political economy and cultural indie subsidiaries, several Turner (TBS) tele- policy approaches, in a method that is in vision and cable channels, the WB cable fact critical and is properly sensitive to the channel, HBO, and still other operations economic and regulatory environment, may (see Chapter 15, this volume). well provide the tools necessary to examine Further complicating matters, particularly and understand the New Hollywood. In since the mid-1990s, has been the massive 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 513

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impact of digital technology, both actual approach is altogether possible, however, and anticipated, on Hollywood—and on the and that studies will be forthcoming of U.S. economy in general. New technologies “film style and mode of production” and “delivery systems” have been crucial (following Bordwell et al.’s 1985 analysis throughout Hollywood’s history, of course, of classical cinema) within the New Holly- and cable television and home video were wood’s larger industrial and institutional key incentives in the merger-and-acquisition context. waves of the late 1980s and early 1990s. To be properly attuned to the structure of The ensuing digital revolution that accom- contemporary Hollywood and the nature of panied the rapid emergence of the Internet, its products, analysts would do well to e-commerce, and the “new economy,” avoid reductive assumptions about studio along with the Holy Grail (for Hollywood) production and the products themselves and of media “convergence” and online delivery to acknowledge the remarkable—and, in of filmed entertainment, led to further many ways, unprecedented—complexity of media industry realignments. The most current media conditions. More specifically, notable of these was the merger of AOL analysts might note several interrelated (America Online) and Time-Warner in early paradoxes that pervade current media pro- 2000, whose initial $150 billion price tag duction and that effectively govern the New well indicates both the overheated state of Hollywood. The first of these paradoxes the new economy and the overinflated valu- involves the bifurcation of movie products ation of online delivery. The value of the between big-budget blockbusters designed merger would fall precipitously over the for global consumption, on one hand, and next several years with the collapse of the production of niche-market films for the “new economy” and the general down- specialized and relatively sophisticated mar- turn of the U.S. economy. These develop- kets, on the other hand. This invokes a sec- ments brought new cries for regulation and ond paradox involving the concurrent dramatic shifts in the relations of power expansion and fragmentation of media mar- within the media industries. kets, as Hollywood designs products for This underscores, yet again, the need for both global and niche-market consumption. an analytical approach to Hollywood—and These markets involve actual consumers and to media in general—that integrates both a active audiences, whose “citizenship” in a political economy and a cultural policy per- range of communities—global, regional, spective. And because these industrial, insti- national, local, and so forth—is increasingly tutional, technological, and economic a function, for better or worse, of media factors dramatically affect media products, consumption. This paradoxical role of citi- including Hollywood movies, this analyti- zen/consumer speaks to a related paradox cal approach also should entail a “critical” involving Hollywood itself as both an inter- perspective that takes formal-aesthetic fac- national and a distinctly American phenom- tors into account. Indeed, this dimension of enon. Finally, we might note a more general film and media studies, particularly those paradox involving not only media products, addressing the New Hollywood, has been markets, and consumers but the Hollywood sorely lacking. Although scholars examin- studios and their parent conglomerates as ing classical Hollywood have become well, and that has important implications increasingly adept at integrating these vari- regarding the political economy of the New ous factors into a coherent analysis of the Hollywood. That governing paradox is this: industry and its products, remarkably few The increasing concentration of media own- studies of postclassical Hollywood have ership on a global scale has coincided with, done so. Christopher Anderson’s (1994) and in fact has directly entailed, the increas- Hollywood TV and Justin Wyatt’s (1994) ing fragmentation of markets and audi- High Concept do indicate that such an ences, the diversification of media products, 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 514

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and the demands for critical media Althusser, L. (1984). Essays in ideology. consumption on the part of individuals. London: Verso. Given these conditions, we might be Anderson, C. (1994). Hollywood TV: The studio thoroughly dismayed or somewhat encour- system in the fifties. Austin: University of aged about the prospects for Hollywood in Texas Press. the new millennium. But whatever one’s Arnold, M. (1993). Culture and anarchy and general view, we cannot help but marvel at other writings (S. Collini, Ed.). New York: Hollywood’s remarkable adaptability and Cambridge University Press. at the persistence of the cinema as Aufderheide, P. (1999). Communications policy America’s dominant culture industry and and the public interest: The Telecommuni- defining art form. This demands, however, cations Act of 1996. New York: Guilford. that film scholars and media analysts be as Balio, T. (1985). The American film industry. adaptable as the culture industry we exam- Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ine and that we develop “ways of seeing” Balio, T. (1996). Adjusting to the new global the media and its products that discern both economy: Hollywood in the 1990s. In the complexity of the industry and the A. Moran (Ed.), Film policy: Inter- ongoing appeal of its products. national, national and regional perspectives (pp. 23–38). London: Routledge. Bally, C., Sechehaye, A., & Riedlinger, A. (Eds.). ♦ Notes (1986). Course in general linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. 1. The principal members of the Hitchcock Barthes, R. (1972). Critical essays (R. Howard, unit were cinematographer Robert Burks, editor Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern George Tomasini, composer Bernard Herrmann, University Press. costume designer Edith Head, assistant director Bazin, A. (1999). The evolution of the language (and later associate producer) Herbert Coleman, of cinema. In L. Braudy & M. Cohen (Eds.), and writer John Michael Hayes. Film theory and criticism: Introductory 2. Jaws exploited the saturation marketing readings (pp. 43–56). New York: Oxford tactics pioneered by such independent distribu- University Press. (Original work published tors as American National Enterprises (ANE) 1968) and Sunn Classics. Bennett, T. (1998). Culture: A reformer’s 3. For the original article, see Mulvey science. London: Sage. (1975); for her later thoughts on the topic, see Bordwell, D. (1986). Classical Hollywood Mulvey (1989). cinema: Narrational principles and proce- dures. In P. Rosen (Ed.), Narrative, appara- tus, ideology (pp. 3–17). New York: ♦ References Columbia University Press. Bordwell, D., Thompson, K., & Staiger, J. (1985). The classical Hollywood cinema: Albarran, A., & Chan-Olmsted, S. (Eds.). Film style & mode of production to 1960. (1998). Global media economics: Commer- New York: Columbia University Press. cialization, concentration, and integration Browne, N. (Ed.). (1990). Cahiers du Cinéma of world media markets. Ames: Iowa State 1969–1972: The politics of representation. University Press. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alexander, A., Owers, J., & Carveth, R. (Eds.). Charters, W. W. (Ed.). (1933). Motion pictures (1998). Media economics: Theory and and youth: A summary. New York: practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Macmillan. Allen, R., & Gomery, D. (1985). Film history: Compaine, B. M., & Gomery, D. (2000). Theory and practice. New York: Knopf. Who owns the media? Competition and 24-downing.qxd 7/27/2004 5:28 PM Page 515

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