Hollywood cinema is, as Maltby foregrounds, first and foremost a business. It is and has been, at least since the classic studio system came into existence by the 1920s, a vertically integrated (production-distribution-exhibition) corporation, whose function it is to make monies by selling dreams, fantasies, and pleasure to willing consumers.
Hollywood, as Maltby notes, sells dreams and fantasies in multiple ways, thanks at least in part to the self-regulation codes Hollywood put in place in the 1920s and early 1930s. As a profit making enterprise Hollywood has wanted to sell its films to the widest audience possible though, at the same time, Hollywood did make B movies, serials, and genre flicks, to more targeted audiences.
The Production Code, put finally in place in the 1930s, limited Hollywood’s ability to do certain things including issues relating to explicit sexuality. Hollywood learned to get around this literalism by making films that were sometimes ambiguous, that could be “read” (Malby does not like this term because film moves while books do not) in different ways depending on the degree of cultural capital audiences had. Maltby distinguishes between “innocent” readers and “sophisticated” readers (one can break down these categories even further since their are variations in the cultural capital those in each category have). “Innocent” “readers” tend to read movies and, I would add television, literally. They are akin to fundamentalists who tend to read certain parts of the Bible literally. “Sophisticated” “readers”, on the other hand, Maltby notes, read movies and television not only between the lines but can also delineate the metaphors, allegories, mythologies, and reflexivities movies and television are playing in and on. They can grasp that a television show like, for example, Buffy the Vampire, plays with metaphors of growing up making that show a bildungsroman. The literalists, as a rule don’t get or grasp this. They tend to concentrate on plot (the order in which events are represented in a movie), story (the reconstruction of plot events in a chronological order and which allows audiences to grasp causation), narration (the process by which is a plot is arranged to permit the telling of a story) and spectacle, particularly the almost orgasmic spectacles of special effects and action.
Hollywood, of course, socialises viewers. By watching movies audiences, particularly ‘innocent” audiences, come to see Hollywood’s style and strategies of story telling as the only way movies should be made, as the way films are. Socialised to see Hollywood style and stories as natural (fetishisation) they no longer even recognise how Hollywood makes or produces its movies. They no longer, if they ever did, see Hollywood’s 180 degree eye level rule. They no longer, if they ever did, recognise that Hollywood centres its characters much like a Renaissance painting. They no longer, if they ever did, recognise the editing strategies Hollywood uses. They no longer, if they ever did, recognise how Hollywood uses music to emotionally manipulate its viewers, its consumers.They no longer, if they ever did, recognise Hollywood’s “invisible’ camera movements. They are not familiar with the fact that Hollywood uses depth of field and optical technologies to give viewer-consumers the illusion of reality in Hollywood films and it does this not to, Maltby argues, because of an ideology of realism, but because Hollywood wants to make money because Hollywood believed and believes that is what its audience wants.
Hollywood, even after the 1948 Supreme Court decision to break up the Hollywood monopoly or cartel, a decision that was undermined by the 1980s and 1990s, was quite flexible in selling product to customers. Since the late 1940s, Hollywood’s audience had become more male and more young and Hollywood eventually began to make movies for this audience (see Star Wars, a serial with state of the art spectacular special effects, action, and romance). Today, if YouTube reaction videos to movies and television are a guide, most viewer-consumers, “innocent” or “sophisticated”, are fully enmeshed in a films and television should be realistic ideology. These reactors, most of whom have lower degrees of cultural capital, complain again and again about “unrealistic” plots, stories, narrative, character motivations, and even that most unrealistic of contemporary Hollywood movies, special effects (digital matte painting) even when films and television shows are genre shows that are inherently unrealistic.
In life we too, of course, are socialised into seeing certain things that are social and cultural constructs, that are cultural norms, customs, and traditions, as just the way things are, as reality. Many Americans, for instance, and Americans are not alone in this, see the American economic system as the one and only natural or god given economic system. Many Americans believe that American democracy (which has, if you define democracy as the rule of the people, never existed; the US has long been an oligarchy) is the one and only natural or god given political system. Many Americans believe that their culture is the one and only natural or god given culture. Many Americans believe that they are nature’s or god’s chosen people and that they are on a mission from nature or god to bring others the "blessings" associated with their chosen nation. In this scenario America, the nation, is a brand as is American nationalism.
William Shakespeare and Erving Goffman, using theatrical performance as a metaphor for how humans “act” in life, recognised long ago that humans develop frontstage and backstage personas that are grounded in socially and culturally constructed conventions, norms, customs, and traditions as well, personas that are characters in their own often little dramas, melodramas, tragedies, and comedies, sometimes even dark comedies, of life. One of the major places many today get their performance techniques (gestures, facial expressions, ways of talking, etc.) from these days, just as they did in the past, is, of course, the mass media.
Today is a bit different from the past since social media allows almost anyone who is tech savvy to become a player and even a star on social media like YouTube if sometimes only for a now proverbial fifteen minutes (and dropping). Social media has also made, in many instances, the backstage the frontstage as many no longer manage their backstages to be separate from their frontstages, something anyone who rides public transit or who has walked through a college campus knows (and which has made it mandatory to engage in safe walking).
Needless to say, YouTube reactors foreground the fact that in the brave new digital world, reactors have become, at least in their own minds, actors in their own plays, and they are paid for being actors in their new digital media plays. So many of the presenters on YouTube have been Hollwoodised or Disneyfied, just like Taylor Swift who, at best, is the simulation of a simulation of a simulation, and they are well aware that one of the ways they can make money, in these curiously incurious days, is to ask viewers to do research for them, research which, of course, varies in cultural capital quality, and post it as comments on their YouTube pages. In some cases these social media personalities remind one of PBS since they sometimes urge viewers to contribute monetarily to their social media pages (YouTube, Patreon). On YouTube, for instance, “fans" can “buy’ the YouTuber a coffee, and“donate” monies to a YouTuber. Welcome to a monetised community where even community itself and conversation have been commodified. "Civilisation" on the march.
No comments:
Post a Comment