CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 237
Movies and
the Impact
of Images
In every generation, a film is made that changes
the movie industry. In 1941, that film was
Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Welles produced,
directed, wrote, and starred in the movie at age
twenty-five, playing a newspaper magnate from
a young man to old age. While the movie was not
a commercial success initially (powerful newspaper
publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose
life was the inspiration for the movie, tried to
suppress it), it was critically praised for its acting,
story, and directing. Citizen Kane’s dramatic
camera angles, striking film noir–style lighting,
nonlinear storytelling, montages, and long
deep-focus shots were considered technically
innovative for the era. Over time, Citizen Kane
became revered as a masterpiece, and in 1997
the American Film Institute named it the Greatest
American Movie of All Time. “Citizen Kane is
more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all
the lessons of the emerging era of sound,” film
critic Roger Ebert wrote.1
240
Early Technology
and the Evolution
of Movies
244
The Rise of the
Hollywood Studio
System
247
The Studio System’s
Golden Age
257
The Transformation
of the Studio System
260
The Economics of the
Movie Business
267
Popular Movies and
Democracy
SOUNDS AND IMAGES
238 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
A generation later, the space epic Star
Wars (1977) changed the culture of the
movie industry. Star Wars, produced,
written, and directed by George Lucas,
departed from the personal filmmaking
of the early 1970s and spawned
a blockbuster mentality that formed a
new primary audience for Hollywood—
teenagers. It had all of the now-typical
blockbuster characteristics like massive
promotion and lucrative merchandising
tie-ins. Repeat attendance and positive
buzz among young people made
the first Star Wars the most successful
movie of its generation.
Star Wars has impacted not only the
cultural side of moviemaking but also
the technical form. In the first Star
Wars trilogy, produced in the 1970s
and 1980s, Lucas developed technologies
that are now commonplace in
moviemaking—digital animation, special
effects, and computer-based film editing.
With the second trilogy, Lucas again
broke new ground in the film industry.
Several scenes of StarWars: Episode I—
The Phantom Menace (1999) were shot
on digital video, easing integration with
digital special effects. The Phantom
Menace also used digital exhibition,
becoming the first full-length motion
picture from a major studio to use digital
projectors, which have steadily been
replacing standard film projectors.
For the current generation, no film has
shaken up the film industry like Avatar
(2009). Like Star Wars before it, Avatar
was a groundbreaking blockbuster.
Made for an estimated $250–$300
million, it became the all-time domestic
box office champion, pulling in about
$760 million, and more than $2.7 billion
worldwide. Avatar integrated 3-D
movie technology seamlessly, allowing
viewers to immerse themselves in
the computer-generated world of the
ethereal planet Pandora, home of the
eleven-foot-tall blue beings called
the Na’vi. Director James Cameron
worked with Sony to develop new 3-D
cameras (a major technical innovation),
which were an essential element of the
filmmaking process and story, rather
than a gimmicky add-on. The late Roger
Ebert likened the movie to a blockbuster
he saw a generation earlier: “Watching
Avatar, I felt sort of the same as
when I saw Star Wars in 1977. That
was another movie I walked into with
uncertain expectations. . . . Avatar is
not simply a sensational entertainment,
although it is that. It’s a technical break-
through.”2
Though Avatar was released in both
conventional 2-D and 3-D versions, it
was the 3-D version that not only most
impressed viewers but also changed
the business of Hollywood. Theaters
discovered they could charge a premium
for the 3-D screenings and still draw
record crowds. The success of Avatar
paved the way for more 3-D movies like
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug;
Iron Man 3; and Star Trek Into Darkness.
But 3-D, which can add 20 to 30
percent to the budget of a film, isn’t a
guarantee of success. In fact, savvy
filmgoers are rejecting 3-D films where
the format seems like an unnecessary
gimmick.
“In one way or another all
the big studios have been
trying to make another
Star Wars ever since.”
ROGER EBERT
DATING BACK TO THE LATE 1800s, films have had a substantial social and cultural
impact on society. Blockbuster movies such as Star Wars, E.T., Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Shrek,
Avatar, and The Avengers represent what Hollywood has become—America’s storyteller. Movies
tell communal stories that evoke and symbolize our most enduring values and our secret
desires (from The Wizard of Oz to The Godfather and the Batman series).
Films have also helped moviegoers sort through experiences that either affirmed or deviated
from their own values. Some movies—for instance, Last Tango in Paris (1972), Scarface (1983),
Brokeback Mountain (2005), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), and The Dictator (2012)—have allowed audiences
to survey “the boundary between the permitted and the forbidden” and to experience, in a
controlled way, “the possibility of stepping across this boundary.”3
Such films—criticized by some
for appearing to glorify crime and violence, verge on pornography, trample on sacred beliefs, or
promote unpatriotic viewpoints—have even, on occasion, been banned from public viewing.
Finally, movies have acted to bring people together. Movies distract us from our daily
struggles: They evoke and symbolize universal themes of human experience (the experience of
childhood, coming of age, family relations, growing older, and coping with death); they can help
us understand and respond to major historical events and tragedies (for instance, the Holocaust
and 9/11); and they encourage us to rethink contemporary ideas as the world evolves, particularly
in terms of how we think about race, class, spirituality, gender, and sexuality.
In this chapter, we examine the rich legacy and current standing of movies. We will:
• Consider film’s early technology and the evolution of film as a mass medium
• Look at the arrival of silent feature films, the emergence of Hollywood, and the development
of the studio system with regard to production, distribution, and exhibition
• Explore the coming of sound and the power of movie storytelling
• Analyze major film genres, directors, and alternatives to Hollywood’s style, including independent
films, foreign films, and documentaries
• Survey the movie business today—its major players, economic clout, technological advances,
and implications for democracy
• Examine how convergence has changed the way the industry distributes movies and the
ways we experience them
As you consider these topics, think about your own relationship with movies. What is the
first movie you remember watching? What are your movie-watching experiences like today?
How have certain movies made you think differently about an issue, yourself, or others? For
more questions to help you think through the role of movies in our lives, see “Questioning the
Media” in the Chapter Review.
“The movie is not
only a supreme
expression of
mechanism, but
paradoxically it
offers as product
the most magical
of consumer
commodities,
namely dreams.”
MARSHALL MCLUHAN,
UNDERSTANDING
MEDIA, 1964
Past-Present-Future:
Movies
In film technology’s nascent years, just seeing a few minutes
of film screened on a white wall was an event, the fascination
of moving images being sufficiently entertaining. Soon,
nickelodeons brought movies to the masses, and they have
remained shared cultural experiences ever since, continuing
on to today’s digital screens and giant IMAX theaters.
There have been points in the history of film in which
Hollywood was concerned that television, then videotapes
and DVDs, would end the movie industry. For example, the
video industry took off in the 1970s only after the motion
picture industry lost a court battle. But people still flocked
to theaters. Similar concerns about the movie industry’s
demise are popping up today. Movie theater owners fear
that the ease of watching movies at home and on mobile
devices will mean fewer people going to the theaters.
Because of this fear, they have insisted on maintaining a
longer “window” between a theatrical release and video on
demand release. Are these concerns valid? Would a shorter
waiting period between theatrical releases and streaming
undermine the theater box office? Should movies open
in all venues—streaming, downloads, and theaters—at the
same time? If they did, would theaters still survive? As the
film industry confronts its future, it might take solace in
the fact that throughout its history, disruptions in media
technology never stopped people from desiring the shared
cultural experience that movies offer.
240 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
History often credits a handful of enterprising individuals with developing the new technologies
that lead to new categories of mass media. Such innovations, however, are usually the result of
simultaneous investigations by numerous people. In addition, the innovations of both known
and unknown inventors are propelled by economic and social forces as well as by individual
abilities.4
The Development of Film
The concept of film goes back as early as Leonardo da Vinci, who theorized in the late 1400s
about creating a device that would reproduce reality. Other early precursors to film included
the Magic Lantern in the seventeenth century, which projected images painted on glass plates
using an oil lamp as a light source; the invention of the thaumatrope in 1824, a two-sided carde
with different images on each side that appeared to combine the images when twirled; and
finally, the introduction in 1834 of the zoetrope, a cylindrical device that rapidly twirled images
inside a cylinder, which appeared to make the images move.
Muybridge and Goodwin Make Pictures Move
The development stage of movies began when inventors started manipulating photographs to
make them appear to move while simultaneously projecting them on a screen. Eadweard Muybridge,
an English photographer living in America, is credited with being the first to do both.
He studied motion by using multiple cameras to take successive photographs of humans and
animals in motion. One of Muybridge’s first projects involved using photography to determine if
Early Technology and
the Evolution of Movies
 Movies and the Impact of Images
Big Five and Little Three
The Big Five studios
(Paramount, MGM, Warner
Brothers, Twentieth
Century Fox, and RKO)
and the Little Three
(Columbia, Universal, and
United Artists) form a
powerful oligopoly in the
late 1920s (p. 247).
1880 1890 1910 1920 19301900
Film Screenings in Paris
In 1895, the Lumière
brothers show short
films in a Parisian
café (p. 243).
Celluloid
In 1889, U.S.
minister Hannibal
Goodwin develops
the transparent,
flexible film that
enables motion
pictures to be
created (p. 242).
1940
Kinetoscope Parlors
Thomas Edison’s team
opens the first such
parlor of coin-operated
machines in New York in
1894 (pp. 242–243).
The Vitascope
Edison’s vitascope
invention of 1896
popularizes
large-screen film
projection in the
United States
(p. 243).
Nickelodeons
Starting in 1907,
storefront movie
theaters with a
five-cent admission
price begin to flourish
in the United
States (p. 244).
Movie Studio
System
During the
1920s, a movie
studio system
gains control of
the production,
distribution, and
exhibition of movies
(pp. 244–245).
Movie Palaces
The first of a
national trend of
opulent movie
palaces opens
in New York in
1914 (p. 247).
Sound Comes to Movies
The Jazz Singer (1927)r
and The Singing Fool
(1928), both starring
Al Jolson, bring sound
to the screen
(pp. 248–249).
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 241
a racehorse actually lifts all four feet from the ground at full gallop (it does). By 1880, Muybridge
had developed a method for projecting the photographic images on a wall for public viewing.
These early image sequences were extremely brief, showing only a horse jumping over a fence
or a man running a few feet, because only so many photographs could be mounted inside the
spinning cylinder that projected the images.
1950 1990 2010 20201960 1970 1980 2000
The Hollywood Ten
The House Un-American
Activities Committee
investigates ten
unwilling witnesses
in 1947 on grounds
of allegedly having
communist sympathies
(p. 257).
The Rise of the Indies
Independent films,
particularly those that
screen at the Sundance
Film Festival,
become an important
source for identifying
new talent in the
1990s (p. 256).
Avatar
The blockbuster
becomes the
all-time highest
earning film at the
box office, and
propels 3-D into
great popularity
(p. 238).
DVDs
The new digital
movie format is
quickly adopted in
1997 as a format
superior to the
VHS cassette
(p. 260).
Paramount Decision
In 1948, the Supreme
Court forces studios
to divest themselves
of their theaters to
end the vertical integration
of the industry
(p. 258).
Ratings System
In 1967, the
MPAA introduces
a system to rate
movies for age
appropriateness
(p. 259).
Video Transforms
the Industry
VHS-format videocassette
recorders (VCRs)
hit the consumer market
in 1977, creating a
movie rental and purchase
industry (p. 260).
Megaplex Mania
A building wave of
giant movie complexes
begins
in the mid-1990s
(p. 263).
Digital Film Production
By 2000, the digital production
and distribution
format gains strength
in Hollywood and with
independents (p. 266).
Netflix
Netflix eliminates
any waiting time
with its streaming
service in 2008,
allowing customers
instant access
to thousands of
films and television
shows (p. 265).
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE’S
study of horses in motion,
like the one shown, proved
that a racehorse gets all four
feet off the ground during a
gallop. In his various studies
of motion, Muybridge would
use up to twelve cameras at
a time.
242 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
Meanwhile, other inventors were also working on capturing moving images and projecting
them. In 1884, George Eastman (founder of Eastman Kodak) developed the first roll film—a huge
improvement over the heavy metal and glass plates used to make individual photos. The first
roll film had a paper backing that had to be stripped off during the film developing stage. Louis
Aimé Augustin Le Prince, a Frenchman living in England, invented the first motion picture
camera using roll film. Le Prince, who disappeared mysteriously on a train ride to Paris in 1890,
is credited with filming the first motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene, in 1888. About two
seconds’ worth of the film survives today.
In 1889, a New Jersey minister, Hannibal Goodwin, improved Eastman’s roll film by using
thin strips of transparent, pliable material called celluloid that could hold a coating of chemicals
sensitive to light. Goodwin’s breakthrough solved a major problem: It enabled a strip of
film to move through a camera and be photographed in rapid succession, producing a series
of pictures. Because celluloid was transparent (except for the images made on it during filming),
it was ideal for projection, as light could easily shine through it. George Eastman, who also
announced the development of celluloid film, legally battled Goodwin for years over the patent
rights. The courts eventually awarded Goodwin the invention, but Eastman’s company still
became the major manufacturer of film stock for motion pictures by buying Goodwin’s patents.
Edison and the Lumières Create Motion Pictures
As with the development of sound recording, Thomas Edison takes center stage in most
accounts of the invention of motion pictures. In the late 1800s, Edison initially planned to
merge phonograph technology and moving images to create talking pictures (which would not
happen in feature films until 1927). Because there was no breakthrough, however, Edison lost
interest. He directed an assistant, William Kennedy Dickson, to combine Edison’s incandescent
lightbulb, Goodwin’s celluloid, and Le Prince’s camera to create another early movie camera,
the kinetograph, and a single-person viewing system, the kinetoscope. This small projection
system housed fifty feet of film that revolved on spools (similar to a library microfilm reader).
KINETOSCOPES allowed
individuals to view motion
pictures through a window in
a cabinet that held the film.
The first kinetoscope parlor
opened in 1894 and was
such a hit that many others
quickly followed.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 243
Viewers looked through a hole and saw images moving on a tiny plate. In 1894, the first kinetoscope
parlor, featuring two rows of coin-operated machines, opened on Broadway in New York.
Meanwhile, in France, brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière developed the cinematograph,
a combined camera, film development, and projection system. The projection system was particularly
important, as it allowed more than one person at a time to see the moving images on a
large screen. In a Paris café on December 28, 1895, the Lumières projected ten short movies for
viewers who paid one franc each, on such subjects as a man falling off a horse and a child trying
to grab a fish from a bowl. Within three weeks, twenty-five hundred people were coming each
night to see how, according to one Paris paper, film “perpetuates the image of movement.”
With innovators around the world now dabbling in moving pictures, Edison’s lab renewed
its interest in film. Edison patented several inventions and manufactured a new large-screen
system called the vitascope, which enabled filmstrips of longer lengths to be projected without
interruption and hinted at the potential of movies as a future mass medium. Staged at a music
hall in New York in April 1896, Edison’s first public showing of the vitascope featured shots from
a boxing match and waves rolling onto a beach. The New York Times described the exhibition as
“wonderfully real and singularly exhilarating.” Some members of the audience were so taken
with the realism of the film images that they stepped back from the screen’s crashing waves to
avoid getting their feet wet.
Early movie demonstrations such as these marked the beginning of the film industry’s entrepreneurial
stage. At this point, movies consisted of movement recorded by a single continuous
camera shot. Early filmmakers had not yet figured out how to move the camera around or how
to edit film shots together. Nonetheless, various innovators were beginning to see the commercial
possibilities of film. By 1900, short movies had become a part of the entertainment industry,
being utilized in amusement arcades, traveling carnivals, wax museums, and vaudeville theater.
The Introduction of Narrative
The shift to the mass medium stage for movies occurred with the introduction of narrative
films: movies that tell stories. Audiences quickly tired of static films of waves breaking on
beaches or vaudeville acts recorded by immobile cameras. To become a mass medium, the
early silent films had to offer what books achieved: the suspension of disbelief. They had to
create narrative worlds that engaged an audience’s imagination.
Some of the earliest narrative films were produced and directed by French magician and
inventor Georges Méliès, who opened the first public movie theater in France in 1896. Méliès may
have been the first director to realize that a movie was not simply a means of recording reality.
He understood that a movie could be artificially planned and controlled like a staged play.
Méliès began producing short fantasy and fairy-tale films—including The Vanishing Lady (1896),y
Cinderella (1899), and A Trip to the Moon (1902)—by increasingly using editing and existing camera
tricks and techniques, such as slow motion and cartoon animation,
that became key ingredients in future narrative filmmaking.
The first American filmmaker to adapt Méliès’s innovations
to narrative film was Edwin S. Porter. A cameraman who had
studied Méliès’s work in an Edison lab, Porter mastered the
technique of editing diverse shots together to tell a coherent
story. Porter shot narrative scenes out of order (for instance,
some in a studio and some outdoors) and reassembled,
or edited, them to make a story. In 1902, he made what is
regarded as America’s first narrative film, The Life of an American
Fireman. It also contained the first close-up shot in U.S. narrative
film history—a ringing fire alarm. Until then, moviemakers
thought close-ups cheated the audience of the opportunity to
GEORGES MÉLIÈS trained
as a stage magician before
becoming interested in
film—a talent he brought to
his movies. Méliès is widely
known as one of the first
filmmakers to employ “tricks,”
or special effects, such as
time-lapse photography,
the stop trick, and multiple
exposures. His impressive
body of work includes the
famous A Trip to the Moon
(1902), The Impossible
Voyage (1904), and The
Merry Frolics of Satan
(1906, pictured).
244 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
see an entire scene. Porter’s most important film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), introduced
the western genre as well as chase scenes. In this popular eleven-minute movie that inspired
many copycat movies, Porter demonstrated the art of film suspense by alternating shots of the
robbers with those of a posse in hot pursuit.
The Arrival of Nickelodeons
Another major development in the evolution of film as a mass medium was the arrival of
nickelodeons—a form of movie theater whose name combines the admission price with the
Greek word for “theater.” According to media historian Douglas Gomery, these small and
uncomfortable makeshift theaters were often converted storefronts redecorated to mimic
vaudeville theaters: “In front, large, hand-painted posters announced the movies for the day.
Inside, the screening of news, documentary, comedy, fantasy, and dramatic shorts lasted about
one hour.”5
Usually, a piano player added live music, and sometimes theater operators used
sound effects to simulate gunshots or loud crashes. Because they showed silent films that transcended
language barriers, nickelodeons flourished during the great European immigration at
the turn of the twentieth century. These theaters filled a need for many newly arrived people
struggling to learn English and seeking an inexpensive escape from the hard life of the city.
Often managed by immigrants, nickelodeons required a minimal investment: just a secondhand
projector and a large white sheet. Between 1907 and 1909, the number of nickelodeons grew
from five thousand to ten thousand. The craze peaked by 1910, when entrepreneurs began to
seek more affluent spectators, attracting them with larger and more lavish movie theaters.
The Rise of the Hollywood
Studio System
By the 1910s, movies had become a major industry. Among the first to try his hand at dominating
the movie business and reaping its profits, Thomas Edison formed the Motion Picture
Patents Company, known as the Trust, in 1908. A cartel of major U.S. and French film producers,
the company pooled patents in an effort to control film’s major technology, acquired most
major film distributorships, and signed an exclusive deal with George Eastman, who agreed to
supply movie film only to Trust-approved companies.
However, some independent producers refused to bow to the Trust’s terms. There was too
much demand for films, too much money to be made, and too many ways to avoid the Trust’s
scrutiny. Some producers began to relocate from the centers of film production in New York
and New Jersey to Cuba and Florida. Ultimately, though, Hollywood became the film capital of
the world. Southern California offered cheap labor, diverse scenery for outdoor shooting, and a
mild climate suitable for year-round production. Geographically far from the Trust’s headquarters
in New Jersey, independent producers in Hollywood could also easily slip over the border
into Mexico to escape legal prosecution brought by the Trust for patent violations.
Wanting to free their movie operations from the Trust’s tyrannical grasp, two Hungarian
immigrants—Adolph Zukor, who would eventually run Paramount Pictures, and William Fox,
who would found the Fox Film Corporation (which later became Twentieth Century Fox)—
played a role in the collapse of Edison’s Trust. Zukor’s early companies figured out ways to
bypass the Trust, and a suit by Fox, a nickelodeon operator turned film distributor, resulted in
the Trust’s breakup for restraint of trade violations in 1917.
“The American
cinema is a
classical art, but
why not then
admire in it what
is most admirable,
i.e., not only the
talent of this or
that filmmaker, but
the genius of the
system.”
ANDRÉ BAZIN, FILM
THEORIST, 1957
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 245
Ironically, entrepreneurs like Zukor
developed other tactics for controlling the
industry. The strategies, many of which are
still used today, were more ambitious than
just monopolizing patents and technology.
They aimed at dominating the movie business
at all three essential levels—production— , everything
involved in making a movie from securing
a script and actors to raising money and
filming; distribution, getting the films into theaters;
and exhibition, playing films in theaters.
This control—or vertical integration—of
all levels of the movie business gave certain
studios great power and eventually spawned
a film industry that turned into an oligopoly,
a situation in which a few firms control the
bulk of the business.
Production
In the early days of film, producers and
distributors had not yet recognized that fans would not only seek particular film stories—like
dramas, westerns, and romances—but also particular film actors. Initially, film companies were
reluctant to identify their anonymous actors for fear that their popularity would raise the typical
$5 to $15 weekly salary. Eventually, though, the industry understood how important the
actors’ identities were to a film’s success.
Responding to discerning audiences and competing against Edison’s Trust, Adolph Zukor
hired a number of popular actors and formed the Famous Players Company in 1912. His idea
was to control movie production not through patents but through exclusive contracts with
actors. One Famous Players performer was Mary Pickford. Known as “America’s Sweetheart”
for her portrayal of spunky and innocent heroines, Pickford was “unspoiled” by a theater background
and better suited to the more subtle and intimate new medium. She became so popular
that audiences waited in line to see her movies, and producers were forced to pay her increasingly
larger salaries.
An astute businesswoman, Mary Pickford was the key figure in elevating the financial status
and professional role of film actors. In 1910, Pickford made about $100 a week, but by 1914 she
earned $1,000 a week, and by 1917 she received a weekly salary of $15,000. Having appeared in
nearly two hundred films, Pickford was so influential that in 1919 she broke from Zukor to form
her own company, United Artists. Joining her were actor Douglas Fairbanks (her future husband),
comedian-director Charlie Chaplin, and director D. W. Griffith.
Although United Artists represented a brief triumph of autonomy for a few powerful actors,
by the 1920s the studio system firmly controlled creative talent in the industry. Pioneered
by director Thomas Ince and his company, Triangle, the studio system constituted a sort
of assembly-line process for moviemaking: actors, directors, editors, writers, and others
all worked under exclusive contracts for the major studios. Those who weren’t under contract
probably weren’t working at all. Ince also developed the notion of the studio head; he
appointed producers to handle hiring, logistics, and finances so that he could more easily
supervise many pictures at one time. The system was so efficient that each major studio was
producing a feature film every week. Pooling talent, rather than patents, was a more ingenious
approach for movie studios aiming to dominate film production.
MARY PICKFORD
With legions of fans, Mary
Pickford became the first
woman ever to make a salary
of $1 million in a year and
gained the freedom to take
artistic risks with her roles.
She launched United Artists,
a film distributing company,
with Douglas Fairbanks,
Charlie Chaplin, and D. W.
Griffith. No woman since has
been as powerful a player in
the movie industry. Here she
is seen with Buddy Rogers in
My Best Girl.
“No, I really cannot
afford to work for
only $10,000 a
week.”
MARY PICKFORD TO
ADOLPH ZUKOR, 1915
MOVIES
Distribution
An early effort to control movie distribution occurred around 1904, when movie companies
provided vaudeville theaters with films and projectors on a film exchange system. In exchangee
for their short films, shown between live acts, movie producers received a small percentage
of the vaudeville ticket-gate receipts. Gradually, as the number of production companies and
the popularity of narrative films grew, demand for a distribution system serving national and
international markets increased as well. One way Edison’s Trust sought to control distribution
was by withholding equipment from companies not willing to pay the Trust’s patent-use fees.
However, as with the production of film, independent film companies looked for other
distribution strategies outside of the Trust. Again, Adolph Zukor led the fight, developing block
booking distribution. Under this system, to gain access to popular films with big stars like Maryg
Pickford, exhibitors had to agree to rent new or marginal films with no stars. Zukor would pressure
theater operators into taking a hundred movies at a time to get the few Pickford titles they
wanted. Such contracts enabled the new studios to test-market new stars without taking much
financial risk. Although this practice was eventually outlawed as monopolistic, rising film studios
used the tactic effectively to guarantee the success of their films in a competitive marketplace.
Another distribution strategy involved the marketing of American films in Europe. When World
War I disrupted the once-powerful European film production industry, only U.S. studios were able
to meet the demand for films in Europe. The war marked a turning point and made the United
States the leader in the commercial movie business worldwide. After the war, no other nation’s film
industry could compete economically with Hollywood. By the mid-1920s, foreign revenue from U.S.
films totaled $100 million. Today, Hollywood continues to dominate the world market.
Exhibition
Edison’s Trust attempted to monopolize exhibition by controlling the flow of films to theater
owners. If theaters wanted to ensure they had films to show their patrons, they had to purchase
a license from the Trust and pay whatever price it asked. Otherwise, they were locked out of the
Trust and had to try to find enough films from independent producers to show. Eventually, the
flow of films from independents in Hollywood and foreign films enabled theater owners to resist
the Trust’s scheme.
“It’s still a business
where the hits
make up for all the
losses along the
way. Star Wars
accentuated that.
Everyone wants
to reproduce that
success, even just
once. This tells you
about the strength
of this kind of
franchise.”
JILL KRUTICK,
ANALYST, SMITH
BARNEY, 1997
MOVIE PALACES
Many movie palaces of the
1920s were elaborate,
opulent buildings. The one
pictured here includes space
for a live band at the front of
the theater, to provide music
and sound effects for the
movie.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 247
After the collapse of the Trust, emerging studios
in Hollywood had their own ideas on how to control
exhibition. When industrious theater owners began
forming film cooperatives to compete with blockbooking
tactics, producers like Zukor conspired to
dominate exhibition by buying up theaters. By 1921,
Zukor’s Paramount owned three hundred theaters,
solidifying its ability to show the movies it produced.
In 1925, a business merger between Paramount
and Publix (then the country’s largest theater
chain with more than five hundred screens) gave
Zukor enormous influence over movie exhibition.
Zukor and the heads of several major studios
understood that they did not have to own all the theaters
to ensure that their movies were shown. Instead,
the major studios (which would eventually include
MGM, RKO, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox,
and Paramount) only needed to own the first-run
theaters (about 15 percent of the nation’s theaters),
which premiered new films in major downtown areas
in front of the largest audiences, and which generated 85 to 95 percent of all film revenue.
The studios quickly realized that to earn revenue from these first-run theaters they would
have to draw the middle and upper-middle classes to the movies. To do so, they built movie
palaces, full-time single-screen movie theaters that provided a more hospitable moviegoing
environment. In 1914, the three-thousand-seat Strand Theatre, the first movie palace, opened
in New York. With elaborate architecture, movie palaces lured spectators with an elegant décor
usually reserved for high-society opera, ballet, symphony, and live theater.
Another major innovation in exhibition was the development of mid-city movie theaters.
These movie theaters were built in convenient locations near urban mass transit stations to
attract the business of the urban and suburban middle class (the first wave of middle-class people
moved from urban centers to city outskirts in the 1920s). This idea continues today, as multiplexes
featuring multiple screens lure middle-class crowds to interstate highway crossroads.
By the late 1920s, the major studios had clearly established vertical integration in the industry.
What had once been a fairly easy and cheap business to enter was now complex and expensive.
What had been many small competitive firms in the early 1900s now became a few powerful
studios, including the Big Five—Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox,
and RKO—and the Little Three (which did not own theaters)—Columbia, Universal, and United
Artists. Together, these eight companies formed a powerful oligopoly, which made it increasingly
difficult for independent companies to make, distribute, and exhibit commercial films.
BUSTER KEATON
(1895–1966)
Born into a vaudeville family,
Keaton honed his comic skills
early. He got his start acting
in a few shorts in 1917 and
went on to star in some of
the most memorable silent
films of the 1920s, including
classics such as Sherlock Jr.
(1924), The General (1927),
and Steamboat Bill Jr.
(1928). Because of Keaton’s
ability to match physical
comedy with an unfailingly
deadpan and stoic face, he
gained the nickname “The
Great Stone Face.”
The Studio System’s
Golden Age
Many consider Hollywood’s Golden Age as beginning in 1915 with innovations in feature-length
narrative film in the silent era, peaking with the introduction of sound and the development of
the classic Hollywood style, and ending with the transformation of the Hollywood studio system
post–World War II.
248 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
Hollywood Narrative and the Silent Era
D. W. Griffith, among the first “star” directors, was the single most important director in
Hollywood’s early days. Griffith paved the way for all future narrative filmmakers by refining
many of the narrative techniques introduced by Méliès and Porter and using nearly all
of them in one film for the first time, including varied camera distances, close-up shots,
multiple story lines, fast-paced editing, and symbolic imagery. Despite the cringe-inducing
racism of this pioneering and controversial film, The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first
feature-length film (more than an hour long) produced in America. The three-hour epic
was also the first blockbuster and cost moviegoers a record $2 admission. Although
considered a technical masterpiece, the film glorified the Ku Klux Klan and stereotyped
southern blacks, leading to a campaign against the film by the NAACP and protests and
riots at many screenings. Nevertheless, the movie triggered Hollywood’s fascination with
narrative films.
Feature films became the standard throughout the 1920s and introduced many of the film
genres we continue to see produced today. The most popular films during the silent era were
historical and religious epics, including Napoleon (1927), Ben-Hur (1925), and The Ten Commandments
(1923); but the silent era also produced pioneering social dramas, mysteries, comedies,
horror films, science fiction films, war films, crime dramas, westerns, and even spy films. The
silent era also introduced numerous technical innovations, established the Hollywood star
system, and cemented the reputation of movies as a viable art form, when previously they had
been seen as novelty entertainment.
The Introduction of Sound
With the studio system and Hollywood’s worldwide dominance firmly in place, the next big
challenge was to bring sound to moving pictures. Various attempts at talkies had failed since
Edison first tried to link phonograph and moving picture technologies in the 1890s. During the
1910s, however, technical breakthroughs at AT&T’s research arm, Bell Labs, produced prototypes
of loudspeakers and sound amplifiers. Experiments with sound continued during the
1920s, particularly at Warner Brothers studios, which
released numerous short sound films of vaudeville acts,
featuring singers and comedians. The studio packaged
them as a novelty along with silent feature films.
In 1927, Warner Brothers produced a featurelength
film, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, a
charismatic and popular vaudeville singer who wore
blackface makeup as part of his act. This further demonstrated,
as did The Birth of a Nation, that racism in
America carried into the film industry. An experiment,
The Jazz Singer was basically a silent film interspersedr
with musical numbers and brief dialogue. At first,
there was only modest interest in the movie, which
featured just 354 spoken words. But the film grew
in popularity as it toured the Midwest, where audiences
stood and cheered the short bursts of dialogue.
The breakthrough film, however, was Warner Brothers’
1928 release The Singing Fool, which also starred
Jolson. Costing $200,000 to make, the film took in $5
million and “proved to all doubters that talkies were
here to stay.”6
“Wait a minute,
wait a minute,
you ain’t heard
nothin’ yet.”
FIRST WORDS SPOKEN
BY AL JOLSON IN THE
JAZZ SINGER, 1927
A SILENT COMEBACK
The Artist, a tribute to silent
movies set around the dawn
of the talkies, won the
Academy Award for Best
Picture of 2011. It was the
first (mostly) silent movie to
win since the first Academy
Awards in 1927.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 249
Warner Brothers, however, was not the only studio exploring sound technology. Five
months before The Jazz Singer opened, Fox studio premiered sound-film newsreels. Fox’s
newsreel company, Movietone, captured the first film footage with sound of the takeoff and
return of Charles Lindbergh, who piloted the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic
Ocean in May 1927. Fox’s Movietone system recorded sound directly onto the film, running
it on a narrow filmstrip that ran alongside the larger, image portion of the film. Superior
to the sound-on-record system, the Movietone method eventually became film’s standard
sound system.
Boosted by the innovation of sound, annual movie attendance in the United States rose
from sixty million a week in 1927 to ninety million a week in 1929. By 1931, nearly 85 percent of
America’s twenty thousand theaters accommodated sound pictures, and by 1935 the world had
adopted talking films as the commercial standard.
The Development of the Hollywood Style
By the time sound came to movies, Hollywood dictated not only the business but also the style
of most moviemaking worldwide. That style, or model, for storytelling developed with the rise
of the studio system in the 1920s, solidified during the first two decades of the sound era, and
continues to dominate American filmmaking today. The model serves up three ingredients
that give Hollywood movies their distinctive flavor: the narrative, the genre, and the author (or
director). The right blend of these ingredients—combined with timing, marketing, and luck—has
led to many movie hits, from 1930s and 1940s classics like It Happened One Night, Gone with the
Wind, The Philadelphia Story, and Casablanca to recent successes like The Hunger Games (2012)
and Lincoln (2012).
Hollywood Narratives
American filmmakers from D. W. Griffith to Steven Spielberg have understood the allure of
narrative, which always includes two basic components: the story (what happens to whom) and
the discourse (how the story is told). Further, Hollywood codified a familiar narrative structure
across all genres. Most movies, like most TV shows and novels, feature recognizable character
types (protagonist, antagonist, romantic interest, sidekick); a clear beginning, middle, and end
(even with flashbacks and flash-forwards, the sequence of events is usually clear to the viewer);
and a plot propelled by the main character experiencing and resolving a conflict by the end of
the movie.
Within Hollywood’s classic narratives, filmgoers find an amazing array of intriguing cultural
variations. For example, familiar narrative conventions of heroes, villains, conflicts, and
resolutions may be made more unique with inventions like computer-generated imagery (CGI)
or digital remastering for an IMAX 3-D Experience release. This combination of convention
and invention—standardized Hollywood stories and differentiated special effects—provides a
powerful economic package that satisfies most audiences’ appetites for both the familiar and
the distinctive.
Hollywood Genres
In general, Hollywood narratives fit a genre, or category, in which conventions regarding similar
characters, scenes, structures, and themes recur in combination. Grouping films by category
is another way for the industry to achieve the two related economic goals of product standardization
and product differentiation. By making films that fall into popular genres, the movie
industry provides familiar models that can be imitated. It is much easier for a studio to promote
a film that already fits into a preexisting category with which viewers are familiar. Among
the most familiar genres are comedy, drama, romance, action/adventure, mystery/suspense,
“I think that
American movies,
to be honest, are
just simple. You
blow things up,
you shoot people,
you have sex
and you have a
movie. And I think
it appeals to just
the more base
emotions of people
anywhere.”
ANTHONY KAUFMANN,
FILM JOURNALIST,
2004
“The thing of a
musical is that
you take a simple
story, and tell it in a
complicated way.”
BAZ LUHRMANN, AT
THE 2002 ACADEMY
AWARDS, ON MOULIN
ROUGE!
250 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
western, gangster, horror, fantasy/science fiction, musical,
and film noir.
Variations of dramas and comedies have long dominated
film’s narrative history. A western typically features “good”
cowboys battling “evil” bad guys, as in True Grit (2010), ort
resolves tension between the natural forces of the wilderness
and the civilizing influence of a town. Romances (such as The
Vow, 2012) present conflicts that are mediated by the ideal
of love. Another popular genre, mystery/suspense (such
as Inception, 2010), usually casts “the city” as a corrupting
place that needs to be overcome by the moral courage of a
heroic detective.7
Because most Hollywood narratives try to create
believable worlds, the artificial style of musicals is sometimes
a disruption of what many viewers expect. Musicals’
popularity peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, but they showed
a small resurgence in the 2000s with Moulin Rouge! (2001),
Chicago (2002), and Les Misérables (2012). Still, no liveaction
musicals rank among the top fifty highest-grossing
films of all time.
Another fascinating genre is the horror film, which
also claims none of the top fifty highest-grossing films of
all time. In fact, from Psycho (1960) to The Cabin in the
Woods (2012), this lightly regarded genre has earned only
one Oscar for best picture: Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Yet these movies are extremely popular with teenagers,
among the largest theatergoing audience, who are in
search of cultural choices distinct from those of their parents. Critics suggest that the teen
appeal of horror movies is similar to the allure of gangster rap or heavy-metal music: that is,
the horror genre is a cultural form that often carries anti-adult messages or does not appeal
to most adults.
The film noir genre (French for “black film”) developed in the United States in the late 1920sr
and hit its peak after World War II. Still, the genre continues to influence movies today. Using
low-lighting techniques, few daytime scenes, and bleak urban settings, films in this genre (such
as The Big Sleep, 1946, and Sunset Boulevard, 1950) explore unstable characters and the sinister
side of human nature. Although the French critics who first identified noir as a genre place
these films in the 1940s, their influence resonates in contemporary films—sometimes called
neo-noir—including Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Sin City (2005).y
Hollywood “Authors”
In commercial filmmaking, the director serves as the main “author” of a film. Sometimes called
“auteurs,” successful directors develop a particular cinematic style or an interest in particular
topics that differentiates their narratives from those of other directors. Alfred Hitchcock, for
instance, redefined the suspense drama through editing techniques that heightened tension
(Rear Window(( , 1954; Vertigo, 1958; North by Northwest, 1959; Psycho, 1960).
The contemporary status of directors stems from two breakthrough films: Dennis
Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) and George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), which became
surprise box-office hits. Their inexpensive budgets, rock-and-roll soundtracks, and big
payoffs created opportunities for a new generation of directors. The success of these films
FILM GENRES
Psycho (1960), a classic
horror film, tells the story
of Marion Crane (played by
Janet Leigh), who flees to
a motel after embezzling
$40,000 from her employer.
There, she meets the motel
owner, Norman Bates (played
by Anthony Perkins), and her
untimely death. The infamous
“shower scene” pictured
above is widely considered
one of the most iconic horror
film sequences.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 251
exposed cracks in the Hollywood system, which was losing
money in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Studio executives
seemed at a loss to explain and predict the tastes of a
new generation of moviegoers. Yet Hopper and Lucas had
tapped into the anxieties of the postwar baby-boom generation
in its search for self-realization, its longing for an
innocent past, and its efforts to cope with the turbulence
of the 1960s.
This opened the door for a new wave of directors who
were trained in California or New York film schools and were
also products of the 1960s, such as Francis Ford Coppola
(The Godfather, 1972), William Friedkin (The Exorcist, 1973),
Steven Spielberg ( Jaws, 1975), Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver,
1976), Brian De Palma (Carrie, 1976), and George Lucas (Star
Wars, 1977). Combining news or documentary techniques and
Hollywood narratives, these films demonstrated how mass media borders had become blurred
and how movies had become dependent on audiences who were used to television and rock
and roll. These films signaled the start of a period that Scorsese has called “the deification of
the director.” A handful of successful directors gained the kind of economic clout and celebrity
standing that had belonged almost exclusively to top movie stars.
Although the status of directors grew in the 1960s and 1970s, recognition for women
directors of Hollywood features remained rare.8
A breakthrough came with Kathryn Bigelow’s
best director Academy Award for The Hurt Locker (2009), which also won the best picturer
award. Prior to Bigelow’s win, only three women had received an Academy Award nomination
for directing a feature film: Lina Wertmuller in 1976 for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion in
1994 for The Piano, and Sofia Coppola in 2004 for Lost in Translation. Both Wertmuller and
Campion are from outside the United States, where women directors frequently receive more
opportunities for film development. Women in the United States often get an opportunity
because of their prominent standing as popular actors; Barbra Streisand, Jodie Foster, Penny
Marshall, and Sally Field all fall into this category. Other women have come to direct films
via their scriptwriting achievements. For example, the late essayist Nora Ephron, who wrote
Silkwood (1983) and wrote/produced When Harry Met Sally (1989), later directed a number of
successful films, including Julie and Julia (2009). More recently, some women directors like
Bigelow, Catherine Hardwicke (Red Riding Hood, 2011), Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated, 2009),
Lone Scherfig (One Day, 2011), Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, 2010), and Kimberly Peirce
(Carrie, 2012) have moved past debut films and proven themselves as experienced studio
auteurs.
Minority groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans,
have also struggled for recognition in Hollywood. Still, some have succeeded as
directors, crossing over from careers as actors or gaining notoriety through independent
filmmaking. Among the most successful contemporary African American directors are Kasi
Lemmons (Talk to Me, 2007), Lee Daniels (The Butler, 2013), John Singleton (Four Brothers,
2005), Tyler Perry (A Madea Christmas, 2013(( ), and Spike Lee (Red Hook Summer, 2012).
(See “Case Study: Breaking through Hollywood’s Race Barrier” on page 252.) Asian Americans
M. Night Shyamalan (After Earth(( , 2013), Ang Lee (Life of Pi, 2012), Wayne Wang (Snow
Flower and the Secret Fan, 2011), and documentarian Arthur Dong (Hollywood Chinese, 2007)
have built immensely accomplished directing careers. Chris Eyre (A Year in Mooring(( , 2011)
remains the most noted Native American director, and he works mainly as an independent
filmmaker.
WOMEN DIRECTORS have
long struggled in Hollywood.
However, some, like Kathryn
Bigelow, are making a name
for themselves. Known
for her rough-and-tumble
style of filmmaking and her
penchant for directing action
and thriller movies, Bigelow
became the first woman
director to win the Academy
Award for best director for
The Hurt Locker in 2010.r
Her Zero Dark Thirty, about
the hunt for Osama bin
Laden, followed in 2012.
“Every film school
in the world has
equal numbers of
boys and girls—
but something
happens.”
JANE CAMPION, FILM
DIRECTOR, 2009
D
espite inequities and discrimination,
a thriving black
cinema existed in New York’s
Harlem district during the 1930s
and 1940s. Usually bankrolled by
white business executives who were
capitalizing on the black-only theaters
fostered by segregation, independent
films featuring black casts were supported
by African American moviegoers,
even during the Depression.
But it was a popular Hollywood film,
Imitation of Life (1934), that emerged
as the highest-grossing film in black
theaters during the mid-1930s.
The film told the story of a friendship
between a white woman and a
black woman whose young daughter
denied her heritage and passed for
white, breaking her mother’s heart.
Despite African Americans’ long
support of the film industry, their
moviegoing experience has not been
the same as that of whites. From the
late 1800s until the passage of Civil
Rights legislation in the mid-1960s,
many theater owners discriminated
against black patrons. In large cities,
blacks often had to attend separate
theaters where new movies might not
appear until a year or two after white
theaters had shown them. In smaller
towns and in the South, blacks were
often only allowed to patronize local
theaters after midnight. In addition,
some theater managers required
black patrons to sit in less desirable
areas of the theater.1
Changes took place during and after
World War II, however. When the “white
flight” from central cities began during
the suburbanization of the 1950s,
many downtown and neighborhood
theaters began catering to black
customers in order to keep from going
out of business. By the late 1960s
and early 1970s, these theaters had
become major venues for popular
commercial films, even featuring a
few movies about African Americans,
including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
(1967), In the Heat of the Night
(1967), The Learning Tree (1969), and
Sounder (1972).r
Based on the popularity of these
films, black photographer-turnedfilmmaker
Gordon Parks, who
directed The Learning Tree (adapted
from his own novel), went on to
make commercial action/adventure
films, including Shaft (1971, remade
by John Singleton in 2000).
Popular in urban theaters, especially
among black teenagers, the movies
produced by Parks and his son—
Gordon Parks Jr. (Super Fly, 1972)—
spawned a number of commercial
imitators, labeled blaxploitation
movies. These films were the subject
of heated cultural debates in the
1970s; like some rap songs today,
they were both praised for their realistic
depictions of black urban life
and criticized for glorifying violence.
Nevertheless, these films reinvigorated
urban movie attendance,
reaching an audience that had not
been well served by the film industry
until the 1960s.
Opportunities for black film directors
have expanded since the 1980s
and 1990s, although even now there
is still debate about what kinds of
African American representation
should be on the screen. Lee Daniels
received only the second Academy
Award nomination for a black director
for Precious: Based on the Novel
“Push” by Sapphire in 2009 (the first
was John Singleton, for Boyz N the
Hood in 1991). Precious, about an
obese, illiterate black teenage girl
subjected to severe sexual and emotional
abuse, was praised by many
critics but decried by others who
interpreted it as more blaxploitation
or “poverty porn.” Sapphire, the
author of Push, the novel that inspired
the film, defended the story. “With
Michelle, Sasha and Malia and Obama
in the White House and in the post–
‘Cosby Show’ era, people can’t say
these are the only images out there,”
she said.2
Breaking through Hollywood’s
Race Barrier
CASE
STUDY
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 253
Outside the Hollywood System
Since the rise of the studio system, the Hollywood film industry has focused on feature-length movies
that command popular attention and earn the most money. However, the movie industry also has
a long tradition of films made outside of the Hollywood studio system. In the following sections, we
look at three alternatives to Hollywood: international films, documentaries, and independent films.
Global Cinema
For generations, Hollywood has dominated the global movie scene. In many countries, American
films capture up to 90 percent of the market. In striking contrast, foreign films constitute only a
tiny fraction—less than 2 percent—of motion pictures seen in the United States today. Despite Hollywood’s
domination of global film distribution, other countries have a rich history in producing
both successful and provocative short-subject and feature films. For example, cinematic movements
of the twentieth century such as German expressionism (capturing psychological moods),
Soviet social realism (presenting a positive view of Soviet life), Italian neorealism (focusing on
the everyday lives of Italians), European new-wave cinema (experimenting with the language of
film), and post–World War II Japanese, Hong Kong, Korean, Australian, Canadian, and British cinema
have all been extremely influential, demonstrating alternatives to the Hollywood approach.
Early on, Americans showed interest in British and French short films and in experimental
films such as Germany’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Foreign-language movies did reasonably
well throughout the 1920s, especially in ethnic neighborhood theaters in large American
cities. For a time, Hollywood studios even dubbed some popular American movies into Spanish,
Italian, French, and German for these theaters. But the Depression brought cutbacks, and by
the 1930s the daughters and sons of turn-of-the-century immigrants—many of whom were trying
to assimilate into mainstream American culture—preferred their Hollywood movies in English.9
Postwar prosperity, rising globalism, and the gradual decline of the studios’ hold over theater
exhibition in the 1950s and 1960s stimulated the rise of art-house theaters and saw a rebirth of
interest in foreign-language films by such prominent directors as Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman (Wild
Strawberries, 1957), Italy’s Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita(( , 1960), France’s François Truffaut ( Jules
and Jim, 1961), Japan’s Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai(( , 1954), and India’s Satyajit Ray (Apu Trilogy(( ,
1955–59). Catering to academic audiences, art houses made a statement against Hollywood commercialism
as they sought to show alternative movies.
By the late 1970s, though, the home-video market had emerged, and audiences began staying
home to watch both foreign and domestic films. New multiplex theater owners rejected the
smaller profit margins of most foreign titles, which lacked the promotional hype of U.S. films. As
a result, between 1966 and
1990 the number of foreign
films released annually in
the United States dropped
by two-thirds, from nearly
three hundred to about one
hundred titles per year.
With the growth of
superstore video chains
like Blockbuster in the
1990s and online video
services like Netflix in the
2000s, viewers gained
access to a larger selection
of foreign-language titles.
“Growing up in this
country, the rich
culture I saw in
my neighborhood,
in my family—I
didn’t see that on
television or on
the movie screen.
It was always my
ambition that if
I was successful
I would try to
portray a truthful
portrait of African
Americans in this
country, negative
and positive.”
SPIKE LEE,
FILMMAKER, 1996
FOREIGN FILMS
China restricts the number
of imported films shown and
regulates the lengths of their
runs in order to protect its
own domestic film industry.
Nonetheless, China has
become a lucrative market—
for both U.S. films and its
own features like Journey
to the West: Conquering
the Demons. This comedic
reinterpretation of a classic
Chinese novel became one of
China’s highest-ever grossers
in 2013.
254 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
The successes of Life Is Beautiful (Italy, 1997), Amélie (France, 2001), ande The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo (Sweden, 2009) illustrate that U.S. audiences are willing to watch subtitled films with
non-Hollywood perspectives. However, foreign films are losing ground as they compete with the
expanding independent American film market for screen space.
Today, the largest film industry is in India, out of “Bollywood” (a play on words combining
city names Bombay—now Mumbai—and Hollywood), where a thousand films a year are produced—
mostly romance or adventure musicals in a distinct style.10
In comparison, Hollywood moviemakers
release five hundred to six hundred films a year. (For a broader perspective, see “Global
Village: Beyond Hollywood: Asian Cinema” on page 255.)
The Documentary Tradition
Both TV news and nonfiction films trace their roots to the movie industry’s interest films and
newsreels of the late 1890s. In Britain, interest films compiled footage of regional wars, political
leaders, industrial workers, and agricultural scenes and were screened with fiction shorts.
Pioneered in France and England, newsreels consisted of weekly ten-minute magazine-style
compilations of filmed news events from around the world. International news services began
supplying theaters and movie studios with newsreels, and by 1911 they had become a regular
part of the moviegoing menu.
Early filmmakers also produced travelogues, which recorded daily life in various communities
around the world. Travel films reached a new status in Robert Flaherty’s classic Nanook
of the North (1922), which tracked an Inuit family in the harsh Hudson Bay region of Canada.
Flaherty edited his fifty-five-minute film to both tell and interpret the story of his subject.
Flaherty’s second film, Moana (1925), a study of the lush South Pacific islands, inspired the term
documentary in a 1926 film review by John Grierson, a Scottish film producer. Grierson definedy
Flaherty’s work and the documentary form as “the creative treatment of actuality,” or a genre
that interprets reality by recording real people and settings.
Over time, the documentary developed an identity apart from its commercial presentation.
As an educational, noncommercial form, the documentary usually required the backing
of industry, government, or philanthropy to cover costs. In support of a clear alternative to
Hollywood cinema, some nations began creating special units, such as Canada’s National Film
Board, to sponsor documentaries. In the United States, art and film received considerable support
from the Roosevelt administration during the Depression.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the development of portable cameras had led to cinema
verité (a French term for “truth film”). This documentary style allowed filmmakers to go
where cameras could not go before and
record fragments of everyday life more
unobtrusively. Directly opposed to packaged,
high-gloss Hollywood features,
verité aimed to track reality, employing a
rough, grainy look and shaky, handheld
camera work. Among the key innovators
in cinema verité were Drew and Associates,
led by Robert Drew, a former Life
magazine photographer. Through his
connection to Time Inc. (which owned
Life) and its chain of TV stations, Drew
shot the groundbreaking documentary
Primary, which followed the 1960 Democratic
presidential primary race between
Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy.
“Bollywood has
an estimated
annual worldwide
audience of 3.6
billion.”
ANUPAMA CHOPRA,
NEW YORK TIMES,
2008
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Catfish, a documentary
released in 2010, follows a
young man as he enters an
online relationship with a
woman and then attempts
to track her down in real life.
The movie was a modest
box office success but
took on a greater life of its
own when the filmmakers
brought Catfish: The TV
Show, a weekly investigation
of online relationships, to
MTV. The authenticity of
some situations in both the
film and TV show has been
questioned, but that hasn’t
stopped viewers from
tuning in.
○
A
sian nations easily outstrip
Hollywood in quantity of films
produced. India alone produces
about a thousand movies a year.
But from India to South Korea, Asian
films are increasingly challenging Hollywood
in terms of quality, and they
have become more influential as Asian
directors, actors, and film styles are
exported to Hollywood and the world.
India
Part musical, part action, part romance,
and part suspense, the epic
films of Bollywood typically have
fantastic sets, hordes of extras, plenty
of wet saris, and symbolic fountain
bursts (as a substitute for kissing and
sex, which are prohibited from being
shown). Indian movie fans pay from
75 cents to $5 to see these films, and
they feel short-changed if they are
shorter than three hours. With many
films produced in less than a week,
however, most of the Bollywood fare
is cheaply produced and badly acted.
But these production aesthetics are
changing, as bigger-budget releases
target middle and upper classes in
India, the twenty-five million Indians
living abroad, and Western audiences.
Beyond Hollywood: Asian Cinema
Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012), a romance
starring Shahrukh Khan, India’s most
famous leading man, had the most
successful U.S. box office opening
of any Bollywood film. The film was
released just weeks after the death
of Yash Chopra, its award-winning
director.
China
Since the late 1980s, Chinese cinema
has developed an international reputation.
Leading this generation of directors
are Zhang Yimou (House of Flying
Daggers, 2004; The Flowers of War,
2011) and Kaige Chen (Farewell My
Concubine, 1993; Caught in the Web,
2012), whose work has spanned genres
such as historical epics, love stories,
contemporary tales of city life, and
action fantasy. These directors have
also helped to make international stars
out of Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha,
2005; What Women Want, 2011) and
Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005;
Dangerous Liaisons, 2012).
Hong Kong
Hong Kong films were the most talkedabout—and
the most influential—film
genre in cinema throughout the late
1980s and 1990s.The style of highly
choreographed action with often breathtaking,
balletlike violence became hugely
popular around the world, reaching
American audiences and in some cases
even outselling Hollywood blockbusters.
Hong Kong directors like John Woo, Ringo
Lam, and Jackie Chan (who also acts
in his movies) have directed Hollywood
action films; and Hong Kong stars like Jet
Li (Lethal Weapon 4, 1998; The Forbidden
Kingdom, 2008; The Expendables 2,
2012), ChowYun-Fat (The Replacement
Killers, 1998; Shanghai, 2010), and
Malaysia’s MichelleYeoh (Memoirs of a
Geisha, 2005; The Lady, 2011) are landing
leading roles in American movies.
GLOBAL
VILLAGE
Japan
Americans may be most familiar with
low-budget monster movies like Godzilla,
but the widely heralded films of the late
director Akira Kurosawa have had an
even greater impact: His Seven Samurai
(1954) was remade by Hollywood as
The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The
Hidden Fortress (1958) was George
Lucas’s inspiration for Star Wars. Current
forces in Japanese cinema include
Hayao Miyazaki (The Wind Rises, 2013;
Ponyo, 2009), the country’s top director
of anime movies. Japanese thrillers
like Ringu (1998), Ringu 2 (1999), and
Ju-on: The Grudge (2003) were remade
into successful American horror films.
Another Hollywood sequel to the Ringu
franchise, tentatively titled The Ring 3D,
is in development.
South Korea
The end of military regimes in the late
1980s and corporate investment in the
film business in the 1990s created a
new era in Korean moviemaking. Leading
directors include Kim Jee-woon (Doomsday
Book, 2012); Lee Chang-dong
(nominated for the Palme d’Or award at
Cannes for Poetry, 2010); and Chanwook
Park, whose Revenge Trilogy films
(Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, 2002;
Old Boy, 2003; and Lady Vengeance,
2005) have won international acclaim,
including the Grand Prix at Cannes in
2004 for Old Boy. Korean films are hot
properties in Hollywood, as major U.S.
studios have bought the rights to a number
of hits. Korean directors are working
in Hollywood, too. Chan-wook Park’s
U.S. directing debut came with Stoker
(2013), starring Nicole Kidman and
Mia Wasikowska, while Kim Jee-woon
directed The Last Stand (2013), star-d
ring Arnold Schwarzenegger. 
Bollywood Star Aishwarya Rai stars in 2008’s
Jodhaa Akbar.
256 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
Perhaps the major contribution of documentaries has been their willingness to tackle controversial
or unpopular subject matter. For example, American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore
often addresses complex topics that target corporations or the government. His films include Roger
and Me (1989), a comic and controversial look at the relationship between the city of Flint, Michigan,e
and General Motors; the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine (2002), which explored gun violence;e
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), a critique of the Bush administration’s Middle East policies; Sicko (2007), an
investigation of the U.S. health-care system; and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), about corporatey
culture in the United States. Moore’s recent films were part of a resurgence in high-profile documentary
filmmaking in the United States, which included The Fog of War (2003),r Super Size Me (2004), An
Inconvenient Truth (2006), The Cove (2009),e Waiting for Superman (2010), and Bully (2012).y
The Rise of Independent Films
The success of documentary films like Super Size Me ande Fahrenheit 9/11 dovetails with the rise of
indies, or independently produced films. As opposed to directors working in the Hollywood system,
independent filmmakers typically operate on a shoestring budget and show their movies in thousands
of campus auditoriums and at hundreds of small film festivals. The decreasing costs of portable
technology, including smaller digital cameras and computer editing, have kept many documentary
and independent filmmakers in business. They make movies inexpensively, relying on real-life situations,
stage actors and nonactors, crews made up of friends and students, and local nonstudio settings.
Successful independents like Kevin Smith (Clerks, 1994; Cop Out, 2010), Darren Aronofsky (t The
Fountain, 2006; The Wrestler, 2008; Black Swan, 2010), and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation(( , 2003;
The Bling Ring, 2013) continue to find substantial audiences in college and art-house theaters and
through online DVD services like Netflix, which promote work produced outside the studio system.
The rise of independent film festivals in the 1990s—especially the Sundance Film Festival held
every January in Park City, Utah—helped Hollywood rediscover low-cost independent films as an
alternative to traditional movies with Titanic-size budgets. Films such as Little Miss Sunshine (2006),e
500 Days of Summer (2009),r Our Idiot Brother (2011), andr Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) were
able to generate industry buzz and garner major studio distribution deals through Sundance screenings,
becoming star vehicles for several directors and actors. As with the recording industry, the
major studios see these festivals—which also include New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, the South by
Southwest festival in Austin, and international film festivals in Toronto and Cannes—as important
venues for discovering new talent. Some major studios even purchased successful independent film
companies (Disney’s purchase of Miramax) or have developed in-house indie divisions (Sony’s Sony
Pictures Classics) to specifically handle the
development and distribution of indies.
But by 2010, the independent film business
as a feeder system for major studios
was declining due to the poor economy and
studios’ waning interest in smaller, specialty
films. Disney sold Miramax for $660 million
to an investor group comprised of Hollywood
outsiders. Viacom folded its independent unit,
Paramount Vantage, into its main studio; and
Time Warner closed its Warner Independent
and Picturehouse in-house indie divisions.
Meanwhile, producers of low-budget independent
films increasingly looked to alternative
digital distribution models, such as Internet
downloads, direct DVD sales, and on-demand
screenings via cable and services like Netflix.
“My stuff always
starts with interviews.
I start interviewing
people,
and then slowly
but surely, a movie
insinuates itself.”
ERROL MORRIS,
DOCUMENTARY
FILMMAKER, 2008
INDEPENDENT FILM
FESTIVALS, like the
Sundance Film Festival,
are widely recognized in
the film industry as a major
place to discover new talent
and acquire independently
made films on topics that
might otherwise be too
controversial, too niche,
or too original for a major
studio-backed picture.
One of the breakout hits of
Sundance 2012, Beasts
of the Southern Wild, is a
magical realist drama about a
little girl (played by newcomer
Quvenzhané Wallis) who
lives in a bayou outside
New Orleans and faces a
hurricane, as well as mythical
creatures. Fox Searchlight
acquired distribution rights,
releasing it to great acclaim
and strong limited-release box
office grosses that summer.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 257
The Transformation
of the Studio System
After years of thriving, the Hollywood movie industry began to falter after 1946. Weekly movie
attendance in the United States peaked at ninety million in 1946, then fell to under twenty-five
million by 1963. Critics and observers began talking about the death of Hollywood, claiming that
the Golden Age was over. However, the movie industry adapted and survived, just as it continues
to do today. Among the changing conditions facing the film industry were the communist
witch-hunts in Hollywood, the end of the industry’s vertical integration, suburbanization, the
arrival of television, and the appearance of home entertainment.
The Hollywood Ten
In 1947, in the wake of the unfolding Cold War with the Soviet Union, conservative members of
Congress began investigating Hollywood for alleged subversive and communist ties. That year,
aggressive witch-hunts for political radicals in the film industry by the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) led to the famous Hollywood Ten hearings and subsequent trial.
(HUAC included future president Richard M. Nixon, then a congressman from California.)
During the investigations, HUAC coerced prominent people from the film industry to declare
their patriotism and to give up the names of colleagues suspected of having politically unfriendly tendencies.
Upset over labor union strikes and outspoken writers, many film executives were eager to
testify and provide names. For instance, Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers suggested that whenever
film writers made fun of the wealthy or America’s political system in their work, or if their movies
were sympathetic to “Indians and the colored folks,”11
they were engaging in communist propaganda.
In addition, film producer Sam Wood, who had directed Marx Brothers comedies in the mid-1930s,
testified that communist writers could be spotted because they portrayed bankers and senators as
villainous characters. Other “friendly” HUAC witnesses included actors Gary Cooper and Ronald
Reagan, director Elia Kazan, and producer
Walt Disney. Whether they believed it was
their patriotic duty or they feared losing their
jobs, many prominent actors, directors, and
other film executives also “named names.”
Eventually, HUAC subpoenaed ten
unwilling witnesses who were questioned
about their memberships in various organizations.
The so-called Hollywood Ten—nine
screenwriters and one director—refused to
discuss their memberships or to identify communist
sympathizers. Charged with contempt
of Congress in November 1947, they were
eventually sent to prison. Although jailing the
Hollywood Ten clearly violated their freespeech
rights, in the atmosphere of the Cold
War many people worried that “the American
way” could be sabotaged via unpatriotic
messages planted in films. Upon release from
jail, the Hollywood Ten found themselves
“After the success
of The Blair Witch
Project . . . it
seemed that anyone
with a dream,
a camera and an
Internet account
could get a film
made—or, at least,
market it cheaply
once it was made.”
ABBY ELLIN,
NEW YORK TIMES,
2000
THE HOLLYWOOD TEN
While many studio heads,
producers, and actors
“named names” to HUAC,
others, such as the group
shown below, held protests
to demand the release of the
Hollywood Ten.
258 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
blacklisted, or boycotted, by the major studios, and their careers in the film industry were all but
ruined. The national fervor over communism continued to plague Hollywood well into the 1950s.
The Paramount Decision
Coinciding with the HUAC investigations, the government also increased its scrutiny of the
movie industry’s aggressive business practices. By the mid-1940s, the Justice Department
demanded that the five major film companies—Paramount, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century
Fox, MGM, and RKO—end vertical integration, which involved the simultaneous control over
production, distribution, and exhibition. In 1948, after a series of court appeals, the Supreme
Court ruled against the film industry in what is commonly known as the Paramount decision,
forcing the studios to gradually divest themselves of their theaters.
Although the government had hoped to increase competition, the Paramount case never
really changed the oligopoly structure of the Hollywood film industry because it failed to challenge
the industry’s control over distribution. However, the 1948 decision did create opportunities
in the exhibition part of the industry for those outside of Hollywood. In addition to art
houses showing documentaries or foreign films, thousands of drive-in theaters sprang up in
farmers’ fields, welcoming new suburbanites who embraced the automobile. Although drive-ins
had been around since the 1930s, by the end of the 1950s more than four thousand existed. The
Paramount decision encouraged new indoor theater openings as well, but the major studios
continued to dominate distribution. By producing the most polished and popular films, they
still influenced consumer demand and orchestrated where the movies would play.
Moving to the Suburbs
Common sense might suggest that television alone precipitated the decline in post–World War II
movie attendance, but the most dramatic drop actually occurred in the late 1940s—before most
Americans even owned TV sets.12
MOVIES TAKE ON SOCIAL
ISSUES
Rebel without a Cause
(1955), starring James
Dean and Natalie Wood, was
marketed in movie posters
as “Warner Bros. Challenging
Drama of Today’s Teenage
Violence!” James Dean’s
memorable portrayal of a
troubled youth forever fixed
his place in movie history.
He was killed in a car crash
a month before the movie
opened.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 259
The transformation from a wartime economy and a surge in consumer production had
a significant impact on moviegoing. With industries turning from armaments to appliances,
Americans started cashing in their wartime savings bonds for household goods and new cars.
Discretionary income that formerly went to buying movie tickets now went to acquiring consumer
products, and the biggest product of all was a new house in the suburbs—far from the
downtown movie theaters. Relying on government help through Veterans Administration loans,
people left the cities in record numbers to buy affordable houses in suburban areas where tax
bases were lower. Home ownership in the United States doubled between 1945 and 1950, while
the moviegoing public decreased just as quickly. According to census data, new home purchases,
which had held steady at about 100,000 a year since the late 1920s, leaped to more than
930,000 in 1946 and peaked at 1,700,000 in 1950.
Additionally, after the war the average age for couples entering marriage dropped from
twenty-four to nineteen. Unlike their parents, many postwar couples had their first child before
they turned twenty-one. The combination of social and economic changes meant there were
significantly fewer couples dating at the movies. Then, when television exploded in the late
1950s, there was even less discretionary income—and less reason to go to the movies.
Television Changes Hollywood
In the late 1940s, radio’s popularity had a strong impact on film. Not only were 1948 and 1949
high points in radio listenership, but with the mass migration to the suburbs, radio offered
Americans an inexpensive entertainment alternative to the movies (as it had during the Great
Depression). As a result, many people stayed home and listened to radio programs until TV displaced
both radio and movies as the medium of national entertainment in the mid-1950s. The
movie industry responded in a variety of ways.
First, with growing legions of people gathering around their living-room TV sets, movie
content slowly shifted toward more serious subjects. At first, this shift was a response to the war
and an acknowledgment of life’s complexity, but later movies focused on subject matter that
television did not encourage. This shift began with film noir in the 1940s but continued into the
1950s, as commercial movies, for the first time, explored larger social problems such as alcoholism
(The Lost Weekend, 1945), anti-Semitism (Gentleman’s Agreement, 1947), mental illness (The
Snake Pit, 1948), racism (Pinky(( , 1949), adult–teen relationships (Rebel without a Cause(( , 1955),
drug abuse (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), and—perhaps most controversial—sexuality
(Peyton Place,(( 1957; Butterfield 8, 1960; and Lolita, 1962).
These and other films challenged the authority of the industry’s own prohibitive Motion
Picture Production Code. Hollywood adopted the Code in the early 1930s to restrict film depictions
of violence, crime, drug use, and sexual behavior and to quiet public and political concerns
that the movie business was lowering the moral standards of America. (For more on the
Code, see Chapter 16.) In 1967, after the Code had been ignored by producers for several years,
the Motion Picture Association of America initiated the current ratings system, which rated
films for age appropriateness rather than censoring all adult content.
Second, just as radio worked to improve sound to maintain an advantage over television in
the 1950s, the film industry introduced a host of technological improvements to lure Americans
away from their TV sets. Technicolor, invented by an MIT scientist in 1917, had improved and
was used in movies more often to draw people away from their black-and-white TVs. In addition,
Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision all arrived in movie theaters, featuring striking
wide-screen images, multiple synchronized projectors, and stereophonic sound. Then 3-D
(three-dimensional) movies appeared, although they wore off quickly as a novelty. Finally, Panavision,
which used special Eastman color film and camera lenses that decreased the fuzziness
of images, became the wide-screen standard throughout the industry. These developments,
however, generally failed to address the movies’ primary problem: the middle-class flight to the
suburbs, away from downtown theaters.
“So TV did not kill
Hollywood. In the
great Hollywood
whodunit there is,
after all, not even
a corpse. The film
industry never
died. Only where
we enjoy its latest
products has
changed, forever.”
DOUGLAS GOMERY,
WILSON QUARTERLY,
1991
260 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
Hollywood Adapts to Home Entertainment
Just as nickelodeons, movie palaces, and drive-ins transformed movie exhibition in earlier times,
the introduction of cable television and the videocassette in the 1970s transformed contemporary
movie exhibition. Despite advances in movie exhibition, most people prefer the convenience
of watching movies at home. In fact, about 30 percent of domestic revenue for Hollywood
studios comes from DVD/Blu-ray rentals and sales as well as Internet downloads and streaming,
leaving domestic box-office receipts accounting for just 20 percent of total film revenue.
Although the video market became a financial bonanza for the movie industry, Hollywood
ironically tried to stall the arrival of the VCR in the 1970s—even filing lawsuits to prohibit customers
from copying movies from television. The 1997 introduction of the DVD helped reinvigorate
the flat sales of the home video market as people began to acquire new movie collections on
DVD. Today, home movie exhibition is again in transition, this time from DVD to Internet video.
As DVD sales began to decline, Hollywood endorsed the high-definition format Blu-ray in 2008
to revive sales, but the format hasn’t grown quickly enough to help the video store business.
The biggest chain, Blockbuster, filed for bankruptcy in 2010, closed hundreds of stores,
and was auctioned to the DISH Network in 2011, while the Movie Gallery/Hollywood Video chain
shuttered all of its stores. The only bright spot in DVD rentals has been at the low end of the
market—automated kiosks like Redbox and Blockbuster Express that rent movies for $1.20 to
$2.00 a day. Online rental company Netflix became a success by delivering DVDs by mail to its
subscribers. But the future of the video rental business is in Internet distribution. Movie fans
can also download or stream movies and television shows from services like Netflix, Amazon,
Hulu, Google, and the iTunes store to their television sets through devices like Roku, AppleTV,
TiVo Premiere, videogame consoles, and Internet-ready TVs. As people invest in wide-screen
TVs (including 3-D televisions) and sophisticated sound systems, home entertainment is getting
bigger and keeping pace with the movie theater experience. Interestingly, home entertainment
is also getting smaller—movies are increasingly available to stream and download on portable
devices like tablets, laptop computers, and smartphones.
“(Blu-ray is) the
last hardware. . . .
There won’t be any
other hardware
now. It’s gonna be
on a digital phone,
it’s gonna be on
a computer or TV
screen.”
OLIVER STONE,
DIRECTOR, 2011
The Economics of
the Movie Business
Despite the development of network and cable television, video-on-demand, DVDs, and Internet
downloads and streaming, the movie business has continued to thrive. In fact, since 1963 Americans
have purchased roughly 1 billion movie tickets each year; in 2011, 1.28 billion tickets were
sold.13
With first-run movie tickets in some areas rising to more than $13 (and 3-D movies costing
even more), gross revenues from domestic box-office sales have climbed to $10.8 billion, up from
$3.8 billion annually in the mid-1980s (see Figure 7.1). In addition, home video, which includes
domestic DVD and Blu-ray disc rentals and sales and digital streaming and downloads, produced
another $18 billion a year, substantially more than box-office receipts. (Digital sales accounted for
$3.4 billion of the home video total in 2011.14
) In order to continually flourish, the movie industry
revamped its production, distribution, and exhibition system and consolidated its ownership.
Production, Distribution, and Exhibition Today
In the 1970s, attendance by young moviegoers at new suburban multiplex theaters made megahits
of The Godfather (1972),r The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Rocky (1976), and Star Wars (1977).
During this period, Jaws and Star Wars became the first movies to gross more than $100 million
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 261
at the U.S. box office in a single year. In trying to copy the success of these blockbuster hits, the
major studios set in place economic strategies for future decades. (See “Media Literacy and the
Critical Process: The Blockbuster Mentality” on page 263.)
Making Money on Movies Today
With 80 to 90 percent of newly released movies failing to make money at the domestic box
office, studios need a couple of major hits each year to offset losses on other films. (See Table 7.1
on page 262 for a list of the highest-grossing films of all time.) The potential losses are great: Over
the past decade, a major studio film, on average, cost about $66 million to produce and about
$37 million for domestic marketing, advertising, and print costs.15
With climbing film costs, creating revenue from a movie is a formidable task. Studios make
money on movies from six major sources: First, the studios get a portion of the theater boxoffice
revenue—about 40 percent of the box-office take (the theaters get the rest). Overall, boxoffice
receipts provide studios with approximately 20 percent of a movie’s domestic revenue.
More recently, studios have found that they often can reel in bigger box-office receipts for 3-D
films and their higher ticket prices. For example, admission to the 2-D version of a film costs $14
at a New York City multiplex, while the 3-D version costs $18 at the same theater. In 2012, nearly
half of all moviegoers—and nearly one-third of the general population—attended a 3-D film. As
Hollywood makes more 3-D films (the latest form of product differentiation), the challenge for
major studios has been to increase the number of digital 3-D screens across the country. By
2013, about 30 percent of theater screens were digital 3-D.
Second, about four months after the theatrical release come the DVD sales and rentals,
and digital downloads and streaming. This “window” accounts for about 30 percent of all
domestic-film income for major studios, and has been declining since 2004 as DVD sales falter.
Discount rental kiosk companies like Redbox must wait twenty-eight days after DVDs go on sale
before they can rent them, and Netflix has entered into a similar agreement with movie studios
in exchange for more video streaming content—a concession to Hollywood’s preference for
the greater profits in selling DVDs rather than renting them. A small percentage of this market
includes “direct-to-DVD” films, which don’t have a theatrical release.
Third are the next “windows” of release for a film: pay-per-view, premium cable (such as
HBO), then network and basic cable, and, finally, the syndicated TV market. The price these
cable and television outlets pay to the studios is negotiated on a film-by-film basis, although
digital services like Netflix and premium channels also negotiate agreements with studios to
gain access to a library of films. The cable window has traditionally begun with the DVD release
window, but DirecTV threatened that system in 2011 by offering Hollywood films on demand
Box-OfficeGross($billions)
2
4
6
8
10
12
0
2010 2011 20122006 2007 200920081988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2003 200520042002
Year
FIGURE 7.1
GROSS REVENUES FROM
BOX-OFFICE SALES,
1988–2012
Source: Motion Picture Association
of America, “Theatrical
Market Statistics, 2012, U.S./
Canada,” http://www.mpaa.org.
“Google, Inc. says
searches for a
film’s title two
weeks ahead
of opening can
predict box office
with 92 percent
accuracy.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS,
2013
262 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
just thirty to sixty days after their theatrical release. This shortening of the box-office window
upset movie theater owners and many film directors.
Fourth, studios earn revenue from distributing films in foreign markets. In fact, at
$23.9 billion in 2012, international box-office gross revenues are more than double the U.S. and
Canadian box-office receipts, and they continue to climb annually, even as other countries produce
more of their own films.
Fifth, studios make money by distributing the work of independent producers and filmmakers,
who hire the studios to gain wider circulation. Independents pay the studios between
30 and 50 percent of the box-office and video rental money they make from movies.
Sixth, revenue is earned from merchandise licensing and product placements in movies.
In the early days of television and film, characters generally used generic products, or product
labels weren’t highlighted in shots. For example, Bette Davis’s and Humphrey Bogart’s cigarette
packs were rarely seen in their movies. But with soaring film production costs, product
placements are adding extra revenues while lending an element of authenticity to the staging.
Famous product placements in movies include Reese’s Pieces in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982),
Pepsi-Cola in Back to the Future II (1989), and Warby Parker eyeglasses inI Man of Steel (2013).
Theater Chains Consolidate
Exhibition
Film exhibition is now controlled
by a handful of theater chains; the
leading seven companies operate
more than 50 percent of U.S.
screens. The major chains—Regal
Cinemas, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark
USA, Carmike Cinemas, Cineplex
Entertainment, Rave Motion
Pictures, and Marcus Theatres—own
thousands of screens each in suburban
malls and at highway crossroads,
and most have expanded
into international markets as well.
Because distributors require access
to movie screens, they do business
BLOCKBUSTERS like The
Avengers (2012) are sought
after despite large budgets—
because they can potentially
bring in twice their cost in
box office sales, DVD and
Blu-ray discs, merchandising,
and, studios hope, sequels
that generate more of the
same. The Avengers, an
all-star teaming of Marvel
superheroes who had
previously starred in their
own blockbusters, set a new
opening weekend record
($207.4 million) before going
on to gross over $620 million
in the United States and over
$1.5 billion worldwide.
1 Avatar (2009) $760.5
2 Titanic (1997, 2012 3-D) 658.6
3 The Avengers (2012) 623.4
4 The Dark Knight (2008) 533
5 Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace (1999, 2012 3-D) 474.5
6 Star Wars (1977, 1997) 461
7 The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 447.8
8 Shrek 2 (2004) 437.7
9 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, 2002) 435
10 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) 423.3
Rank Title/Date Domestic Gross** ($ millions)TABLE 7.1
THE TOP 10 ALL-TIME
BOX-OFFICE CHAMPIONS*
Source: “All-Time Domestic Blockbusters,”
November 12, 2013,
http://www.boxofficeguru.com/
blockbusters.htm.
*Most rankings of the Top 10
most popular films are based on
American box-office receipts.
If these were adjusted for
inflation, Gone with the Wind
(1939) would become No. 2 in
U.S. theater revenue.
**Gross is shown in absolute dollars
based on box-office sales in
the United States and Canada.
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 263
with chains that control the most screens. In a multiplex, an exhibitor can project a potential hit
on two or three screens at the same time; films that do not debut well are relegated to the smallest
theaters or bumped quickly for a new release.
The strategy of the leading theater chains during the 1990s was to build more megaplexes
(facilities with fourteen or more screens), but with upscale concession services and luxurious
screening rooms with stadium-style seating and digital sound to make moviegoing a special
event. Even with record box-office revenues, the major movie theater chains entered the 2000s
in miserable financial shape. After several years of fast-paced building and renovations, the
major chains had built an excess of screens and had accrued enormous debt. But to further combat
the home theater market, movie theater chains added IMAX screens and digital projectors
so that they could exhibit specially mastered and (with a nod to the 1950s) 3-D blockbusters.16
By
2011, the movie exhibition business had grown to a record number (39,580) of indoor screens.
Still, theater chains sought to be less reliant on Hollywood’s product, and with new digital
projectors they began to screen nonmovie events, including live sporting events, rock concerts,
and classic TV show marathons. One of the most successful theater events is the live HD simulcast
of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s performances, which began in 2007 and during its 2013–14
season screened ten operas in more than 1,900 locations in sixty-four countries worldwide.
The Blockbuster Mentality
In the beginning of this chapter, we noted Hollywood’s
shift toward a blockbuster mentality after the success of
films like Star Wars. How pervasive is this blockbuster mentality,
which targets an audience of young adults, releases
action-packed big-budget films featuring heavy merchandising
tie-ins, and produces sequels?
1 
DESCRIPTION. Consider
a list of the Top 25 all-time
highest-grossing movies in the United
States, such as the one on Box Office
Guru, http://boxofficeguru.com/block
busters.htm
2 
ANALYSIS. Note patterns in the
list. For example, of these twentyfive
top-grossing films, twenty-four target
young audiences (The Passion of the Christ
is the only exception). Nearly all of these
top-grossing films feature animated or
digitally composited characters (e.g., The
Lion King; Shrek; Jurassic Park) or extensive
special effects (Transformers; The
Avengers). Nearly all of the films also either
spawned or are a part of a series, like
The Lord of the Rings, Transformers, The
Dark Knight, and Harry Potter. More than
half of the films fit into the action movie
genre. Nearly all of the Top 25 had intense
merchandising campaigns that featured
action figures, fast-food tie-ins, and an incredible
variety of products for sale; that
is, nearly all weren’t “surprise” hits.
Media Literacy and
the Critical Process
3 
INTERPRETATION. What do
the patterns mean? It’s clear,
economically, why Hollywood likes to have
successful blockbuster movie franchises.
But what kinds of films get left out of the
mix? Hits like Forrest Gump (now bumped
out of the Top 25), which may have had
big-budget releases but lack some of the
other attributes of blockbusters, are clearly
anomalies of the blockbuster mentality,
although they illustrate that strong characters
and compelling stories can carry a
film to great commercial success.
4 
EVALUATION. It is likely
that we will continue to see an
increase in youth-oriented, animated/
action movie franchises that are heavily
merchandised and intended for wide
international distribution. Indeed, Hollywood
does not have a lot of motivation to
put out other kinds of movies that don’t
fit these categories. Is this a good thing?
Can you think of a film that you thought
was excellent and that would have likely
been a bigger hit with better promotion
and wider distribution?
5 
ENGAGEMENT. Watch independent
and foreign films and see
what you’re missing. Visit foreignfilms
.com, the independent film section at
imdb.com, or the Sundance Film Festival
site and browse through the many films
listed. Find these films on Netflix, Amazon,
Google, or iTunes (and let them know
if they don’t list them). Write your cable
company and request to have the Sundance
Channel and the Independent Film
Channel on your cable lineup. Organize
an independent film night on your college
campus and bring these films to a crowd.
264 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
The Major Studio Players
The current Hollywood commercial film business is ruled primarily
by six companies: Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century
Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures, and Disney—the Big Six. Except
for Disney, all these companies are owned by large parent conglomerates
(see Figure 7.2). The six major studios account for more than
90 percent of the revenue generated by commercial films. They also
control more than half the movie market in Europe and Asia. One
independent studio, DreamWorks SKG—created in 1994 by Steven
Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and sound
recording tycoon David Geffen—began to rival the production capabilities
of the majors with films like Shrek 2 (2004),2 Anchorman (2004),
and Madagascar (2005). Nevertheless, even DreamWorks could notr
sustain the high costs of an independent studio, and in 2009 it struck
a six-year distribution deal with Disney. In the United States, three
independent studios—sometimes called mini-majors—have maintained
modest market share for a number of years: Lionsgate (The Hunger
Games; the Twilight series), which purchased indie Summit Entertain-t
ment in 2012; the Weinstein Company (Django Unchained(( and Silver
Linings Playbook); and Relativity (Safe Haven).
In the 1980s, to offset losses resulting from box-office failures, the
movie industry began to diversify, expanding into other product lines
and other mass media. This expansion included television programming,
print media, sound recordings, and home videos/DVDs, as well
as cable and computers, electronic hardware and software, retail
stores, and theme parks such as Universal Studios. To maintain the industry’s economic stability,
management strategies today rely on both heavy advance promotion (which can double the
cost of a commercial film) and synergy—the promotion and sale of a product throughout the
various subsidiaries of the media conglomerate. Companies promote not only the new movie
itself but also its book form, soundtrack, calendars, T-shirts, Web site, and toy action figures, as
well as “the-making-of” story on television, home video, and the Internet. The Disney studio, in
particular, has been successful with its multiple repackaging of youth-targeted movies, including
FIGURE 7.2
MARKET SHARE OF
U.S. FILM STUDIOS AND
DISTRIBUTORS, 2012
(IN $MILLIONS)
Note: Based on gross boxoffice
revenue, January 1,
2012–December 31, 2012.
Overall gross for period:
$10.822 billion.
Source: Box Office Mojo.
Studio Market Share, http://www
.boxofficemojo.com/studio/.
$1,143.2
News Corp.
(Twentieth Century Fox,
Fox Searchlight)
10.6%
$1,551.4
Disney (Buena Vista,
DreamWorks, Pixar)
14.3%
$1,842.2
Sony (Columbia, Sony Pictures
Classics)
17.1%
$1,255.3
Lionsgate (independent)
11.5%
$1,468.5
NBC/Universal
(Universal, Focus)
13.5%
$1,665.4
Time Warner (Warner Bros.)
15.4%
$918.8
Viacom (Paramount,
Paramount Vantage)
8.4%
$977.2
All Other Independents
9.2%
in feature films is not limited
to big-ticket events like
entries in the James Bond
or Transformers franchises.
Many smaller-scale movies,
like the 2011 romantic
comedy What’sYour Number?,
feature prominent use of
real-life products like Apple
laptops. Of course, most
movies released by Columbia
Pictures (a subsidiary of Sony)
will feature Sony electronics
instead.
comic books, toys, television specials, fast-food tie-ins, and theme-park attractions. Since the
1950s, this synergy has been a key characteristic in the film industry and an important element
in the flood of corporate mergers that have made today’s Big Six even bigger.
The biggest corporate mergers have involved the internationalization of the American film
business. Investment in American popular culture by the international electronics industry
is particularly significant. This business strategy represents a new, high-tech kind of vertical
integration—an attempt to control both the production of electronic equipment that consumers
buy for their homes and the production/distribution of the content that runs on that equipment.
This began in 1985 when Australia’s News Corp. bought Twentieth Century Fox. Sony bought
Columbia in 1989 for $4 billion. Vivendi, a French utility, acquired Universal in 2000 but sold it to
General Electric, the parent of NBC, in 2003. Comcast bought a controlling stake in NBC Universal
in 2009 and government agencies approved the merger in 2011. In 2006, Disney bought its
animation partner, Pixar. It also bought Marvel in 2009, which gave Disney the rights to a host of
characters, including Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, the X-Men, and Fantastic Four. In 2012, Disney
bought Lucasfilm, gaining control of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises, plus the innovative
technologies of George Lucas’s famed Industrial Light & Magic special effects company. (See
“What Disney Owns.”)
Convergence: Movies Adjust to the Digital Turn
The biggest challenge the movie industry faces today is the Internet. As broadband Internet service
connects more households, movie fans are increasingly getting movies from the Web. After
witnessing the difficulties that illegal file-sharing brought on the music labels (some of which
share the same corporate parent as film studios), the movie industry has more quickly embraced
the Internet for movie distribution. Apple’s iTunes store began selling digital downloads of a limited
selection of movies in 2006, and in 2008 iTunes began renting new movies from all of the
major studios for just $3.99. In the same year, online DVD rental service Netflix began streaming
some movies and television shows to customers’ computer screens and televisions.
The popularity of Netflix’s streaming service opened the door to other similar services. Hulu,
a joint venture by NBC Universal (Universal Studios), News Corp. (Twentieth Century Fox), and
Disney, was created as the studios’ attempt to divert attention from YouTube and get viewers to
watch free, ad-supported streaming movies and television shows online or subscribe to Hulu Plus,
Hulu’s premium service. Comcast operates a similar Web site, called Xfinity. Google’s YouTube,
the most popular online video service, moved to offer commercial films in 2010 by redesigning
its interface to be more film-friendly and offering online rentals. Amazon.com, Vudu (owned by
Walmart), and CinemaNow (owned by retailer Best Buy) also operate digital movie stores.
Movies are also increasingly available to stream or download on mobile phones and tablets.
Several companies, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google, Apple, Redbox and Blockbuster,
have developed distribution to mobile devices. Small screens don’t offer an optimal
viewing experience, but if customers watch movies on their mobile devices, they will likely
use the same company’s service to continue viewing on the larger screens of computers and
televisions.
The year 2012 marked a turning point: for the first time, movie fans accessed more movies
through digital online media than physical copies, like DVD and Blu-ray.17
For the movie industry,
this shift to Internet distribution has mixed consequences. On one hand, the industry needs
to offer movies where people want to access them, and digital distribution is a growing market.
“We’re agnostic about where the money comes from,” says Eammon Bowles, president of the
independent distributor Magnolia Pictures. “We don’t care. Basically, our philosophy is we want
to make the film available for however the customer wants to purchase it.”18
On the other hand,
although streaming is less expensive than producing physical DVDs, the revenue is still much
lower compared to DVD sales. Hollywood is responding by offering UltraViolet, a digital rights
WHAT
DISNEY
OWNS
Consider how Disney
connects to your life;
then turn the page for
the bigger picture.
MOVIES
• Walt Disney Pictures
– Walt Disney Animation
Studios
– Pixar Animation Studios
– Touchstone Pictures
– Marvel Studios
– Disney Nature
– Lucasfilm
• Walt Disney Studios Motion
Pictures International
• Walt Disney Studios Home
Entertainment
MUSIC
• Disney Music Group
– Walt Disney Records
– Hollywood Records
– Disney Music Publishing
PUBLISHING
• Disney Publishing
Worldwide
• ESPN The Magazine
• Marvel Entertainment
• Wondertime magazine
• FamilyFun magazine
TELEVISION/RADIO
• Disney-ABC Television
Group
– ABC Entertainment
Group
– ABC News
– ABC Family
– Disney Channel
Worldwide
– Hyperion
– A&E/Lifetime
• ESPN, Inc. (80 percent)
• ABC-owned television
stations (10)
INTERNET/MOBILE
CONTENT
• Disney Interactive
– Disney.com
– ESPN360.com
– Mobile ESPN
– Club Penguin
DISNEY PARKS AND
RESORTS
• Disneyland Resorts and
Parks (10 locations)
• Disney Cruise Line
• Adventures by Disney
– Walt Disney Imagineering
Turn page for more
service that enables buyers of movies on DVD/Blu-ray to enter a code and stream or download
those same movies from their cloud library to multiple devices.
The digital turn creates two long-term paths for Hollywood. One path is that studios and
theaters will lean even more heavily toward making and showing big-budget blockbuster film
franchises with a lot of special effects, since people will want to watch those on the big screen
(especially IMAX and 3-D) for the full effect—and they are easy to export for international audiences.
The other path features inexpensive digital distribution for lower-budget documentaries
and independent films, which likely wouldn’t get wide theatrical distribution anyway but could
find an audience in those who watch from home.
The Internet has also become an essential tool for movie marketing, and one that studios are
finding less expensive than traditional methods like television ads or billboards. Films regularly
have Web pages, but many studios also now use a full menu of social media to promote films
in advance of their release. For example, Lionsgate’s 2012 movie The Hunger Games employed
“near-constant use of Facebook and Twitter, a YouTube channel, a Tumblr blog, iPhone games
and live Yahoo streaming from the premiere” to build interest that made it a hit film.19
Alternative Voices
With the major studios exerting such a profound influence on the worldwide production, distribution,
and exhibition of movies, new alternatives have helped open and redefine the movie
industry. The digital revolution in movie production is the most recent opportunity to wrest
some power away from the Hollywood studios. Substantially cheaper and more accessible than
standard film equipment, digital video is a shift from celluloid film; it allows filmmakers to
replace expensive and bulky 16-mm and 35-mm film cameras with less expensive, lightweight
digital video cameras. For moviemakers, digital video also means seeing camera work instantly
instead of waiting for film to be developed and being able to capture additional footage without
concern for the high cost of film stock and processing.
By 2002, a number of major directors—including Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Francis Ford
Coppola, George Lucas, and Gus Van Sant—began testing the digital video format. British director
Mike Figgis achieved the milestone of producing the first fully digital release from a major studio
with his film Time Code (2000). But the greatest impact of digital technology is on independent
filmmakers. Low-cost digital video opens up the creative process to countless new artists. With
digital video camera equipment and computer-based desktop editors, movies can now be made
WHAT DOES
THIS MEAN?
Disney’s reach touches
people of every age all
around the world.
• Revenue and Employees. In
2012, Disney had revenues
of about $42.3 billion and
employed 166,000 people.1
• Movies. As of October
2012, Disney has released
domestically 980 full-length
live-action features, 90 fulllength
animated features,
and hundreds of shorts.
• Television. Disney operates
the ABC Television
Network, which reaches
99 percent of all U.S.
television households.
• Sports. For users seeking
sports content on mobile
devices, 75 percent rely
on ESPN.
• Disneyland. More than
500 million visitors have
passed through the gates
of Disneyland in Anaheim,
California, since it opened
in 1955. Disneyland Paris
welcomes more visitors
annually than the EiffelTower
and the Louvre combined.
• Consumer Products.
Disney Consumer Products
is the world’s largest
licensor, putting Disney
characters on everything
from children’s laptops to
maternity wear.
• Publishing. Disney is the
world’s largest publisher
of children’s books and
magazines, reaching
families in 85 countries
and 75 languages.
• Radio. The ESPN Radio
Network is carried on more
than 350 stations, making
it the largest sports radio
network in the United States.
• Global. Disney operates
more than 100 worldwide
channels, up from 19 a
decade ago.
FIGURE 7.3
ONLINE MOVIE MARKET SHARE RANKING IN 2011
Source: IHS Screen Digest June 2012.
Netflix MicrosoftApple
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
2009 2010 2011
CHAPTER 7 ○ MOVIES AND THE IMPACT OF IMAGES 267
for just a few thousand dollars, a fraction of what the cost
would be on film. For example, Paranormal Activity (2007)y
was made for about $15,000 with digital equipment and went
on to be a top box-office feature. Digital cameras are now
the norm for independent filmmakers, and many directors
at venues like the Sundance Film Festival have upgraded to
high-definition digital cameras, which rival film’s visual quality.
Ironically, both independent and Hollywood filmmakers
have to contend with issues of preserving digital content:
Celluloid film stock can last a hundred years, whereas digital
formats can be lost as storage formats fail and devices become
obsolete.20
Because digital production puts movies in the same
format as DVDs and the Internet, independent filmmakers
have new distribution venues beyond film festivals or the major studios. For example, Vimeo,
YouTube, and Netflix have grown into leading Internet sites for the screening and distribution of
short films and film festivals, providing filmmakers with their most valuable asset—an audience.
Others have used the Web to sell DVDs directly, sell merchandise, or accept contributions for
free movie downloads.
Popular Movies
and Democracy
At the cultural level, movies function as consensus narratives, a term that describes cultural
products that become popular and provide shared cultural experiences. These consensus
narratives operate across different times and cultures. In this sense, movies are part of a long
narrative tradition, encompassing “the oral formulaic of Homer’s day, the theater of Sophocles,
the Elizabethan theater, the English novel from Defoe to Dickens, . . . the silent film, the sound
film, and television during the Network Era.”21
Consensus narratives—whether they are dramas,
romances, westerns, or mysteries—speak to central myths and values in an accessible language
that often bridges global boundaries.
At the international level, countries continue to struggle with questions about the influence
of American films on local customs and culture. Like other American mass media industries,
the long reach of Hollywood movies is one of the key contradictions of contemporary life: Do
such films contribute to a global village in which people throughout the world share a universal
culture that breaks down barriers? Or does an American-based common culture stifle the development
of local cultures worldwide and diversity in moviemaking? Clearly, the steady production
of profitable action/adventure movies—whether they originate in the United States, Africa,
France, or China—continues, not only because these movies appeal to mass audiences, but also
because they translate easily into other languages.
With the rise of international media conglomerates, it has become more difficult to awaken
public debate over issues of movie diversity and America’s domination of the film business.
Consequently, issues concerning greater competition and a better variety of movies sometimes
fall by the wayside. As critical consumers, those of us who enjoy movies and recognize their
cultural significance must raise these broader issues in public forums as well as in our personal
conversations.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
(2007), the horror film made
by first-time director Oren
Peli for a mere $15,000 with
digital equipment, proves
that you don’t always need
a big budget to make a
successful film. Peli asked
fans to “demand” the film be
shown in their area via the
Web site www.eventful.com,
and Paramount agreed to a
nationwide release if the film
received 1 million “demands.”
Paranormal Activity was
released nationwide on
October 16, 2009, and went
on to gross close to $200
million worldwide, spawning
several sequels.
VideoCentral
Mass Communication
bedfordstmartins.com
/mediaculture
More Than a Movie:
Social Issues and Film
Independent filmmakers are
using social media to get
moviegoers involved.
Discussion: Do you think
digital media converging with
social-issue movies helps
those films make a larger
impact? Why or why not?
268 PART 2 ○ SOUNDS AND IMAGES
MOVIES
celluloid, 242
kinetograph, 242
kinetoscope, 242
vitascope, 243
narrative films, 243
nickelodeons, 244
vertical integration, 245
oligopoly, 245
studio system, 245
block booking, 246
movie palaces, 247
multiplexes, 247
Big Five, 247
Little Three, 247
blockbuster, 248
talkies, 248
newsreels, 249
genre, 249
documentary, 254
cinema verité, 254
indies, 256
Hollywood Ten, 257
Paramount decision, 258
megaplexes, 263
Big Six, 264
synergy, 264
digital video, 266
consensus narratives, 267
CHAPTER
REVIEW
COMMON THREADS
One of the Common Threads discussed in Chapter 1 is about mass media, cultural expression, and storytelling.
The movie industry is a particularly potent example of this, as Hollywood movies dominate international screens.
But Hollywood dominates our domestic screens as well. Does this limit our exposure to other kinds of stories?
KEYTERMS
The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book.
The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.
Since the 1920s, after the burgeoning film industries in
Europe lay in ruins from World War I, Hollywood gained an
international dominance it has never relinquished. Critics
have long cited America’s cultural imperialism, flooding
the world with our movies, music, television shows,
fashion, and products. The strength of American cultural
and economic power is evident when you witness a Thai
man in a Tommy Hilfiger shirt watching Transformers at a
Bangkok bar while eating a hamburger and drinking a Coke.
Critics feel that American-produced culture overwhelms
indigenous cultural industries, which will never be able to
compete at the same level.
But other cultures are good at bending and blending
our content. Hip-hop has been remade into regional
music in places like Senegal, Portugal, Taiwan, and the
Philippines. McDonald’s is global, but in India you can get
a McAlooTikki sandwich—a spicy fried potato and pea
vegetarian patty. In Turkey, you can get a McTurco, a kebab
with lamb or chicken. Or in France you can order a beer with
your meal.
While some may be proud of the success of America’s
cultural exports, we might also ask ourselves this: What
is the impact of our cultural dominance on our own media
environment? Foreign films, for example, account for less
than 2 percent of all releases in the United States. Is this
because we find subtitles or other languages too challenging?
At points in the twentieth century, American moviegoers
were much more likely to see foreign films. Did our
taste in movies change on our own accord, or did we simply
forget how to appreciate different narratives and styles?
Of course, international content does make it to our
shores. We exported rock and roll, and the British sent it
back to us, with long hair. They also gave us The Office and
House of Cards. Japan gave us anime, Pokémon, Iron Chef,
and Hello Kitty.
But in a world where globalization is a key phenomenon,
Hollywood rarely shows us the world through another’s
eyes. The burden falls to us to search out and watch those
movies until Hollywood finally gets the message.