From Al Jolson in blackface to Song of the South, there is a long history of racism in Hollywood film. Yet as early as the 1930s, movie studios carefully vetted their releases, removing racially ...offensive language like the "N-word." This censorship did not stem from purely humanitarian concerns, but rather from worries about boycotts from civil rights groups and loss of revenue from African American filmgoers.
Cinema Civil Rightspresents the untold history of how Black audiences, activists, and lobbyists influenced the representation of race in Hollywood in the decades before the 1960s civil rights era. Employing a nuanced analysis of power, Ellen C. Scott reveals how these representations were shaped by a complex set of negotiations between various individuals and organizations. Rather than simply recounting the perspective of film studios, she calls our attention to a variety of other influential institutions, from protest groups to state censorship boards.
Scott demonstrates not only how civil rights debates helped shaped the movies, but also how the movies themselves provided a vital public forum for addressing taboo subjects like interracial sexuality, segregation, and lynching. Emotionally gripping, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched,Cinema Civil Rightspresents us with an in-depth look at the film industry's role in both articulating and censoring the national conversation on race.
In this provocative analysis of screen industries in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, Michael Curtin delineates the globalizing pressures and opportunities that since the 1980s have ...dramatically transformed the terrain of Chinese film and television, including the end of the cold war, the rise of the World Trade Organization, the escalation of democracy movements, and the emergence of an East Asian youth culture. Reaching beyond national frameworks, Curtin examines the prospect of a global Chinese audience that will include more viewers than in the United States and Europe combined. He draws on in-depth interviews with a diverse array of media executives plus a wealth of historical material to argue that this vast and increasingly wealthy market is likely to shake the very foundations of Hollywood's century-long hegemony.
Hollywood moviemaking is one of the constants of American life, but how much has it changed since the glory days of the big studios? David Bordwell argues that the principles of visual storytelling ...created in the studio era are alive and well, even in today's bloated blockbusters. American filmmakers have created a durable tradition-one that we should not be ashamed to call artistic, and one that survives in both mainstream entertainment and niche-marketed indie cinema. Bordwell traces the continuity of this tradition in a wide array of films made since 1960, from romantic comedies likeJerry MaguireandLove Actuallyto more imposing efforts likeA Beautiful Mind. He also draws upon testimony from writers, directors, and editors who are acutely conscious of employing proven principles of plot and visual style. Within the limits of the "classical" approach, innovation can flourish. Bordwell examines how imaginative filmmakers have pushed the premises of the system in films such asJFK, Memento,andMagnolia. He discusses generational, technological, and economic factors leading to stability and change in Hollywood cinema and includes close analyses of selected shots and sequences. As it ranges across four decades, examining classics likeAmerican GraffitiandThe Godfatheras well as recent success likeThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, this book provides a vivid and engaging interpretation of how Hollywood moviemakers have created a vigorous, resourceful tradition of cinematic storytelling that continues to engage audiences around the world.
In a film career that spanned five decades, John Wayne became a U.S. icon of heroic individualism and rugged masculinity. His widespread popularity, however, was not limited to the United States: he ...was beloved among moviegoers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. InJohn Wayne's World, Russell Meeuf considers the actor's global popularity and makes the case that Wayne's depictions of masculinity in his most popular films of the 1950s reflected the turbulent social disruptions of global capitalism and modernization taking place in that decade.
John Wayne's Worldplaces Wayne at the center of gender- and nation-based ideologies, opening a dialogue between film history, gender studies, political and economic history, and popular culture. Moving chronologically, Meeuf provides new readings ofFort Apache,Red River,Hondo,The Searchers,Rio Bravo, andThe Alamoand connects Wayne's characters with a modern, transnational masculinity being reimagined after World War II. Considering Wayne's international productions, such asLegend of the LostandThe Barbarian and the Geisha, Meeuf shows how they resonated with U.S. ideological positions about Africa and Asia. Meeuf concludes that, in his later films, Wayne's star text shifted to one of grandfatherly nostalgia for the past, as his earlier brand of heroic masculinity became incompatible with the changing world of the 1960s and 1970s. The first academic book-length study of John Wayne in more than twenty years,John Wayne's Worldreveals a frequently overlooked history behind one of Hollywood's most iconic stars.
Reel Inequality Yuen, Nancy Wang
2016, 20161212, 2016-12-12
eBook
When the 2016 Oscar acting nominations all went to whites for the second consecutive year, #OscarsSoWhite became a trending topic. Yet these enduring racial biases afflict not only the Academy ...Awards, but also Hollywood as a whole. Why do actors of color, despite exhibiting talent and bankability, continue to lag behind white actors in presence and prominence?
Reel Inequalityexamines the structural barriers minority actors face in Hollywood, while shedding light on how they survive in a racist industry. The book charts how white male gatekeepers dominate Hollywood, breeding a culture of ethnocentric storytelling and casting. Nancy Wang Yuen interviewed nearly a hundred working actors and drew on published interviews with celebrities, such as Viola Davis, Chris Rock, Gina Rodriguez, Oscar Isaac, Lucy Liu, and Ken Jeong, to explore how racial stereotypes categorize and constrain actors. Their stories reveal the day-to-day racism actors of color experience in talent agents' offices, at auditions, and on sets. Yuen also exposes sexist hiring and programming practices, highlighting the structural inequalities that actors of color, particularly women, continue to face in Hollywood.
This book not only conveys the harsh realities of racial inequality in Hollywood, but also provides vital insights from actors who have succeeded on their own terms, whether by sidestepping the system or subverting it from within. Considering how their struggles impact real-world attitudes about race and diversity,Reel Inequalityfollows actors of color as they suffer, strive, and thrive in Hollywood.
During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a ...long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses worked on a freelance basis within the restrictive studio system. In leveraging their stardom to play an active role in shaping their careers, female stars including Irene Dunne, Janet Gaynor, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck challenged Hollywood’s patriarchal structure. Through extensive, original archival research, Independent Stardom uncovers this hidden history of women’s labor and celebrity in studio-era Hollywood. Carman weaves a compelling narrative that reveals the risks these women took in deciding to work autonomously. Additionally, she looks at actresses of color, such as Anna May Wong and Lupe Vélez, whose careers suffered from the enforced independence that resulted from being denied long-term studio contracts. Tracing the freelance phenomenon among American motion picture talent in the 1930s, Independent Stardom rethinks standard histories of Hollywood to recognize female stars as creative artists, sophisticated businesswomen, and active players in the then (as now) male-dominated film industry.
Like thehaggadah, the traditional "telling" of the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt that is read at the Passover seder, cinema offers a valuable text from which to gain an understanding of ...the social, political, and cultural realities of Jews in America. In an industry strongly influenced by Jewish filmmakers who made and continue to make the decisions as to which films are produced, the complex and evolving nature of the American Jewish condition has had considerable impact on American cinema and, in particular, on how Jews are reflected on the screen. This groundbreaking study analyzes select mainstream films from the beginning of the sound era to today to provide an understanding of the American Jewish experience over the last century.
In the first half of the twentieth century, Hollywood's movie moguls, most of whom were Jewish, shied away from asserting a Jewish image on the screen for fear that they might be too closely identified with that representation. Over the next two decades, Jewish moviemakers became more comfortable with the concept of a Jewish hero and with an overpowered, yet heroic, Israel. In time, the Holocaust assumed center stage as the single event with the greatest effect on American Jewish identity. Recently, as American Jewish screenwriters, directors, and producers have become increasingly comfortable with their heritage, we are seeing an unprecedented number of movies that spotlight Jewish protagonists, experiences, and challenges.
On Hollywood Scott, Allen John
2018., 20180605, 2018, 2004, 2018-06-05, 20050101
eBook
Why is the U.S. motion picture industry concentrated in Hollywood and why does it remain there in the age of globalization? Allen Scott uses the tools of economic geography to explore these questions ...and to provide a number of highly original answers. The conceptual roots of his analysis go back to Alfred Marshall's theory of industrial districts and pick up on modern ideas about business clusters as sites of efficient and innovative production. On Hollywood builds on this work by adding major new empirical elements. By examining the history of motion-picture production from the early twentieth century to the present through this analytic lens, Scott is able to show why the industry (which was initially focused on New York) had shifted the majority of its production to Southern California by 1919. He also addresses in detail the bases of Hollywood's long-standing creative energies and competitive advantages. At the same time, the book explores the steady globalization of Hollywood's market reach as well as the cultural and political dilemmas posed by this phenomenon. On Hollywood will appeal not only to general readers with an interest in the motion-picture industry, but also to economic geographers, business professionals, regional development practitioners, and cultural theorists as well.
In the early part of the twentieth century, migrants made their way from rural homes to cities in record numbers and many traveled west. Los Angeles became a destination. Women flocked to the growing ...town to join the film industry as workers and spectators, creating a "New Woman." Their efforts transformed filmmaking from a marginal business to a cosmopolitan, glamorous, and bohemian one. By 1920, Los Angeles had become the only western city where women outnumbered men. In Go West, Young Women, Hilary A. Hallett explores these relatively unknown new western women and their role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. From Mary Pickford's rise to become perhaps the most powerful woman of her age, to the racist moral panics of the post–World War I years that culminated in Hollywood's first sex scandal, Hallett describes how the path through early Hollywood presaged the struggles over modern gender roles that animated the century to come.
This volume features new work on cinema in early twentieth-century Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China. Looking beyond relatively well-studied cities like Shanghai, these essays foreground ...cinema's relationship with imperialism and colonialism and emphasize the rapid development of cinema as a sociocultural institution. These essays examine where films were screened; how cinema-going as a social activity adapted from and integrated with existing social norms and practices; the extent to which Cantonese opera and other regional performance traditions were models for the development of cinematic conventions; the role foreign films played in the development of cinema as an industry in the Republican era; and much more.
