Modern Hollywood does not stop striking with its brilliance and luxury. Bright colors of gorgeous mansions and the scarcity of the most exquisite cars, what do all of them hold in their stores? Hundreds of people with their dreams and burning desires to make all of them come true, how far can they go to achieve them? Is this luxury an appropriate symbol of the grandeur of Hollywood with its majestic power to excite the most cherished dreams in humans’ minds or is it a constant reminder of how easily people’s dreams can be crushed as soon as the light goes away?
All these questions are examined in Nathanael West’s novel The Day of the Locus. Being a kind of test of the American dream, this work remains one of the most striking examples of the “Hollywood novel” in American fiction. The novel depicts Hollywood along with its corrupting power with which Hollywood can turn the far-promising American dream into a sun-drenched California nightmare.
The novel shows the destinies of the people who are, on the one hand, are common representatives of American society of 1930’s and, on the other, who are strange and rather different from the other part of America. Taking into account historical context of the novel, we should admit that the 1930’s were Hollywood’s golden age. During this period the American movie industry has flourished both technically and artistically. The years are marked by releases of Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, King Kong and other famous films. West could not neglect the importance of these events being inspired by them when the novel was being created.
A lot of people West depicted in The Day of the Locus get drawn to Los Angeles in the 1930’s, this was the time when Hollywood studios employed people crews of extras, writers, and various technicians, everyone striving for one’s own place in the Hollywood sun. Being “the land of sunshine and oranges” (West, 123) Hollywood can both build people’s dreams and with the same power ruin them. “Once there they discover that sunshine isn’t enough.
They get tired of the oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for pleasure…there boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment…the sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded pallets. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing” (West, 156).
According to West, Hollywood is not so much a place, as it is a destination. Those who seek for fame and fortune in this historical center of movie studios and movie stars, as well as those who yearn to restore their physical, mental and spiritual health find Hollywood as a starting point for their new lives, they expect to change their way of living deeply through but not always manage to do it. Whereas the first group is widely represented in The Day of the Locus, the latter is personified in the character of Homer Simpson. This is an acquaintance of the main character, Tod Hackett, he is a repressed lowan, they both have fallen in love with one and the same woman.
Tod Hackett may be called the main character of the novel. He is an artist and scene designer, his assumption of Los Angeles is revealed in his extracurricular plan to paint a canvas called The Burning of Los Angeles. He is going to depict there people who come to California to die. These people who he sees on the streets are poorly dressed and shock him with the hatred that their eyes are full of. Tod’s painting serves as a metaphor for the novel under consideration, emphasizing that Tod Hackett is a representative of West himself.
Tod’s background, thoughts, and actions are the main concern of the narrator at the beginning of the novel, the Hollywood is described as Tod sees it. In the eighth chapter the focus of the story shifts to Homer mentioned above. Having moved into a new house on Hollywood, this man still cannot forget his past connected with Iowa. His hopes for a new life in California are revealed in the chapters from eight to thirteen. Then, the narrative is again concentrated on Tod’s life.
While the narrator’s voice follows these two characters the reader experiences Hollywood of the 1930s, its bizarre and grotesque manifestations through the characters’ eyes. The Day of the Locus is essentially episodic (the episodes either introduce a character or describe interconnections between the characters) and this helps the author to show Hollywood from various perspectives.
Also, the reader is expected to notice the theme of illusions that forms the basis for much of what happens with the characters of The Day of the Locus. The author claims that it is fantasies and dreams that keep Hollywood functioning. Throughout the novel he includes unreal and illusory images to prove his point.
West compares life in Hollywood with the movie sets that Tod deals with: it is as one-dimensional and flimsy as they are. Hollywood is an artificial place where there is nothing that comes from here. For example, the idea of architecture for Hollywood buildings is borrowed either from Irish cottages or Spanish villas. Characters also lose their identity, often they imagine themselves as someone who they have never been and will never become. Their losing their identity is like losing their dreams that were ruined in Hollywood. In the novel, the latter is a symbol of the monster that does not allow getting some unrealistic dreams, or, in case they appear, they are destined to break against the rocks of reality that never gives another chance to succeed.
Though we have discussed only two literary elements of the novel that helped the author to develop his view of Hollywood, namely, characters and themes, there are also settings, plot and other literary elements that helped the author to present Hollywood in its beauty and ugliness. Though written more than seventy years ago, the novel is still relevant today: as long as Hollywood exists, as long its double nature will both amaze and horrify the observers and the actual participants of the events that “California Holly” life is full of.
Works Cited
West, Nathanael. The Day of the Locust. Signet Classics, 1983.
In his Recount, Carey McWilliams introduces his interpretation of life within the boundaries of Hollywood, the world that radically differs from reality. In particular, the writer refers to it as a place that everything can find a rescue from real-life problems and daily routine, a world where some unexpected events are constantly taking place and everyone witnesses their dreams to come true. At the same time, Hollywood is also represented as a dystopia where nothing can bring in a better future, except for the possibility to forget all negative experiences. Deception, illusion, and veiled dreams are the only things that Hollywood can offer to people. Despite this, people still strive to release their sufferings by falling into the fake world of the movie industry.
Lack of genuineness and authenticity makes the Hollywood world deprived of true values and, as a result, all the events that happened in this realm cannot be perceived with the utmost feelings and emotions. Thus, the author mentions some events with extreme calmness and reason, as if these events should be taken for granted. What is more threatening is that all people involved in the movie industry find it hard to distinguish between the real world and the one that is dictated by Hollywood. The recount under analysis, therefore, reflects accurately the problems and hardships of the Depression period during which people strived to escape from the challenges of life and delve into the ideal framework created in Hollywood. Indeed, the movie industry has managed to take advantage of people’s hopelessness and capture them in their own dreams and wishes. Therefore, it is logical that McWilliams compares Hollywood with the place where people are living in circles.
The entertainment industry exists due to the opportunity to exchange ideas and use a wide range of expressive means in order to control people’s emotional energy. It makes the consumers of media products happier, distracting their attention from concerns and problems. Even though the idea of the entertainment industry is quite clear (to give people emotional release and, if necessary, support), many people related to the industry understand that unique ideas act as an important source of money, and they do their best in order to protect their intellectual property. Speaking about copyright cases, it is necessary to pay attention to Hollywood in the middle of the last century. During that period, Hollywood filmmakers had numerous difficulties when it was necessary to use characters that famous actors of that time had already played. Among the actors who were involved in copyright infringement cases, there were Charlie Chaplin and James M.Cain (Decherney 30). Due to a great number of issues related to the use of plots and characters, the courts of the United States started developing new practices, helping to distinguish between original characters and their look-alikes.
Apart from the cases that encouraged the courts of the United States to invent new explanations and thoroughly examine them to prove copyright infringement, there were others that involved too many similarities between movies. Discussing such cases, it is important to remember famous natural horror movies devoted to sharks. Great White, a movie that appeared more than thirty years ago, was destined to become extremely popular in Italy and the United States. Despite the fact that the box office sales revenue was quite large, the movie under consideration was banned from release after a high-profile copyright infringement scandal. The first attempt to prevent the distribution of the given movie was made by Universal Studios prior to its first public presentation in the United States.
The representatives of the film studio believed that Great White was very similar to Jaws, a movie that had been released almost six years earlier. Nevertheless, the claim of the film studio was not satisfied. Four weeks later, the studio made an additional attempt to redress an injustice and prevent the misuse of the story told in Jaws, the movie that was based on an eponymously named book. Having reviewed the plots of these two movies and the ways that visual expressions were used, one of the courts in California established that there were numerous similarities between these movies. Apart from the use of the same genre, the characters from these movies were quite similar to each other. Due to the efforts of Universal Pictures, film providers were deprived of an opportunity to use the movie in the United States.
It is extremely important to take the case of Great White into account as the latter is often listed among the movies that do not possess any artistic value on their own. Discussing the case of Great White and the inability of its screenplay writers and director to make the movie more unique, many researchers claim that the movie presents a copy of Jaws of questionable quality (Verevis 272). Regarding numerous similarities between movies, the court was paying attention not only to some formal elements that are usually included in the analysis, such as the use of color, plot, specific details, and key themes from movies. Considering that the themes used in these two movies were quite different, it was decided to pay attention to the general impression of common consumers.
Another notable copyright case that needs to be mentioned involves the participation of Art Buchwald (a successful author) and Paramount Pictures Corporation (Greene 131). The case under consideration is listed among the most famous scandals of the 1990s that have helped to establish the most recent rules, regulating the collaboration of scriptwriters and large film studios. Coming to America is a famous comedy film about an African prince who tries to find a bride in the United States. The financial success of the movie was obvious, and many people wanted to watch it due to the cast of characters. Nevertheless, some people were extremely unhappy about the success of the movie. Arthur Buchwald, a famous satirist, journalist, and scriptwriter, filed a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures Corporation in order to redress an injustice. Buchwald claimed that Paramount Pictures Corporation had used his idea to film a movie about an African prince and invite Eddie Murphy to star.
According to him, the film studio refused to buy his idea, and it resulted in a lawsuit against the organization. Arthur Buchwald had enough evidence to prove that he was the first to forward the idea of the comedy film about a prince from Africa. The legal wrangling was preceded by numerous changes related to the terms of collaboration. Initially, Buchwald encouraged the representatives of Paramount Pictures Corporation to get acquainted with his draft of the movie script, and they agreed to use it to create a new movie. After some period of time, the company informed the author about their unwillingness to use his script, and Buchwald decided to establish collaboration with Warner Brothers Production. After the second refusal, Buchwald found out that Paramount Pictures Corporation was going to use his script illegally (he was not mentioned as an author). The court acknowledged that the movie studio had violated Buchwald’s rights, and Paramount Pictures Corporation was urged to pay a large compensation.
Copyrights cases in the film industry of the United States are numerous, and the creation of Hollywood films is regarded as “the most expensive art” (Bahar 537). Considering a range of risks that can impact the success of movies, moviemakers try to give special consideration to external analysis in order to avoid being accused of copyright infringement. Nevertheless, there are cases when claimants spread wrong information, trying to fulfil their own financial goals. For instance, the case of Alien vs. Predator remains one of the most prominent examples of such tendency (Bahar 537). Eight years ago, a scriptwriter named James Muller accused the creators of the movie using his movie script. Trying to prove his point, the claimant used a few arguments concerning the opulent similarity between the two scripts. Having reviewed the case and the materials provided by the claimant, the court established that the degree of similarity between two scripts was very low. In fact, the only thing that could be used as the evidence was the presence of two fictitious creatures that were fighting. The claimant failed to demonstrate numerous similarities between these scripts, and he was urged to pay compensation to the film studio.
In order to avoid being accused of copyright infringement, American scriptwriters and songwriters can use preliminary permission. The case of Lin Manuel Miranda (the author of Hamilton) indicates that scriptwriters can use the information retrieved from other sources as parts of their work and avoid copyright infringement liability. The creator of Hamilton states that he has used the works by Ron Chernow, Joseph Ellis, and other authors, seeing them as sources of inspiration (Davis 93). Obtaining preliminary permission, the author creates something new with the help of others’ works, and this is why his scripts are still unique. This approach to work, as the absence of lawsuits against this person indicates, should be noted by numerous Hollywood filmmakers. Despite that, the misuse of online content often becomes the cause of copyright infringement cases all over the world (Podlas 1).
In conclusion, copyright infringement cases in the motion picture industry in the United States are extremely different in terms of the goals and intentions of claimants. On the one hand, there are people who feel that their ideas are misused by other producers, scriptwriters, or actors. In this case, the opportunity to sue under the copyright law of the United States acts as an important chance to minimize financial losses and prevent similar cases in the future. On the other hand, accusing people or their projects of copyright infringement, some claimants fulfil their personal goals and get an opportunity to come close to success. In fact, common people who have failed to become famous scriptwriters or film directors can use copyright scandals as a chance to win fame and attract the attention of the global community to their new projects.
Works Cited
Bahar, Rikki. “The Copyright Infringement Test: A New Approach to Literary Misappropriation in Film.” Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum, vol. 2, no. 4, 2014, pp. 529-548.
Davis, Deidre. “Living to See His Glory Days: Why Hamilton’s Lin Manuel Miranda is Not Liable for Copyright Infringement, But Other Writers and Composers Are.” The John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law, vol. 17, no. 1, 2017, pp. 92-108.
Podlas, Kimberlianne. “Linking to Liability: When Linking to Leaked Movies, Scripts, and Television Shows Is Copyright Infringement.” Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law, vol. 6, 2015, p. 1-58.
Decherney, Peter. “One Law to Rule Them All.” Hollywood and the Law, edited by Paul McDonald et al., Palgrave, 2015, pp. 23-42.
Greene, Kevin. “Idea Theft: Frivolous Copyright-Lite Claims, or Hollywood Business Model?” Hastings Science and Technology Law Journal, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 119-142.
In his article, Josh Sides talks about the transformation of Compton. Compton is a suburb in Los Angeles which changes from a budding, middle-class society filled with blue-collar workers to an American connotation of inner-city conflict, gang events, vehemence, and disadvantaged blacks. Josh Sides tackles the misconstructions concerning Compton and exposes an unknown history that controverts the modern conceptions of the suburb. He also explains that the Compton community grew as a basic white suburb in Los Angeles. In this suburb, many of the people were employed in the industrial fields.
Between 1950 and 1970, Compton was largely a black, middle-class society that prospered socially and economically. However, when the suburb of Watts in the neighborhood began going through riots, the situation threatened to extend to Compton. This caused the white community to run away from the town. The effects crippled the town’s economy and started several closures of factories, which left so many black residents unemployed. This article is, therefore, important in this discourse which differentiates Compton, the well to do society with Compton, the epitome for black, gang ferocity that has been developed through the media.
Josh touchingly focuses on the stories of the members of a rap group called NWA to show how they altered the perception of Compton to re-describe themselves. Easy-E and Ice Cube, who were the members of the group came from lower-middle-class families. They developed their symbol of harshness to establish their presence in the entertainment industry as much as they had experiences of gang vehemence and drug activities.
This hard image of Compton has infiltrated the consciousness of the American people. However, Josh Sides starts to reduce the negative perception by linking the suburb to where it came from. By reconstructing Compton, he coerces Americans to evaluate its misconceptions and predetermined ideas about race, the development of mutual memories and the facts, and figurative descriptions of places as well as names.
Donald Bogle‘s article review
Donald Bogle puts in his book, the tale of a place filled with both allegorical and true: black Hollywood. Covering at least sixty years, this creative and entertaining tale exposed the daring manner numerous blacks created a position for themselves in an industrial sector that initially had no chance for them. The blacks’ position in the industry was a hard one to curve, and not so many blacks who attempted to gain access to Hollywood managed.
Using interviews and the personal tales of Hollywood personalities, Bogle puts together an incredible history that stays greatly incomprehensible to date. We find out that black Hollywood was an area separate from Tinseltown, which was studio-system controlled. Hollywood was a different world with special regulations and social stratification. It possessed its talent scouts as well as media. Other things it owned included splendid hotels and exquisite night clubs. This means that it was a reserve for the few, and the blacks who made it there were truly phenomenal and gifted.
During this period, many black artists were discovered. Some became renowned actors and actresses while a few others became wonderful directors. We are told of famous actors such as James Edwards and Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Others include Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne as well as the greatly gifted and accomplished Sammy Davies Junior. Bogle also covers other people in the black society, starting with the white stars’ black workers, who possessed their cash and pride, the gossip writers, hair saloons, and lastly architects. He also writes about the world which developed around them on Central Avenue otherwise known as the Harlem of the western parts.
References
Bogle, D. (2009). Bright boulevards, bold dreams: The story of Black Hollywood. One World.
A good number of inventions noted that a sequence of individual immobile pictures set into movement created the delusion of motion. This concept came to be known as the persistence of vision. A British physician named Peter Mark Roget in the early years of the 1800s first noted the phenomenon.
It was the revolutionary step in the growth of the cinema. Before this, many innovations related to motion and vision had been developed. These were the precursors to the origin of the motion picture industry. This essay outlines the history of the film industry through the centuries. A lot of emphasis will be paid to the era when sound was incorporated in the film industry. The impact of the introduction of sound to the film industry will also be discussed with specific reference to two Hollywood classic movies.
As mentioned above, the infancy of the film industry was preceded by a number of technologies. One of them was the magic lantern. Athanasius Kircher in Rome invented this device in the 17th century. It could project images using a simple light source. In 1824, the Thaumatrope was invented.
It was the most basic adaptation of an optical illusion toy that used the notion of persistence of vision. An English doctor called John Ayrton Paris invented the device. In 1831, Michael Faraday, a British scientist, discovered the law of electromagnetic induction. This principle was deployed in the generation of electricity to power motors and other equipment including film machines.
In the following year, Joseph Blaeau, a Belgian, invented the Fantascope, also referred to as the Phenakistiscope or, simply put, the spindle viewer. The device was used to reproduce sound. A succession of distinct depicting pictures stages of an action was set around the peripheries of a slotted disk. The spectator would view the pictures through slots.
Two years after this discovery, another stroboscopic device called the Daedalum or Zoetrope (as it came to be named in 1967) was invented. This was courtesy of a British inventor called William George Horner. The device was a hollow, rotating cylinder or drum. It had a crank with a strip having a series of pictures, drawings and paintings in progression.
The images were on the interior surface. A spectator would view the pictures in ‘motion’ through slim slits. Five years following this discovery saw of yet another milestone invention in the film industry. This was the invention of still photography.
This was followed by the development of the pioneering commercially viable daguerreotype. The latter was a way of capturing pictures on silvered, copper-metal plates. As the name suggests, the invention was courtesy of Frenchman Louis –Jacqueds-Mande Daguerre. This innovation was followed by that of the British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot.
The latter was calotype, a process by which negative photographs would be printed on high-quality paper. In 1861, Philadelphian Coleman Sellers invented the Kinematoscope. This was an enhanced rotating needle paddle machine. It was used for viewing a sequence of stereoscopic immobile pictures on glass plates. After this invention, the film industry experiences six years of silence in terms of new inventions and innovations.
However, John Wesley Hyatt broke this silence in 1869 when he developed the celluloid. This provided a basis for photographic film. In the following year, Henry Renno Heyll, a Philadelphian came up with the first exhibition of the Phansmotrope. The device was used to show a quick series of immobile or posed photographs of dancers, giving the chimaera of movement.
Seven years later, Frenchman Charles Emile Reynaud invented the Praxinoscope. This projector equipment had a mirrored drum, which created the delusion of motion with picture strips hence serving as an improved edition of the Zoetrope. By the onset of the1890s, Reynaud’s Parisian Theatre Optique was making public shows with screenings of 15-minute ’movies’. This precursor era also saw the invention of the incandescent light bulb that was used for film projectors. This occurred in 1879 courtesy of Thomas Alva Edison.
As the 19th century ended, Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneering British photographer and inventor became renowned for his photographic locomotion studies. This is because, in 1870, he had experimented with recordings of a galloping horse at a Californian racetrack. In 1878, he conducted a chronophotography experiment by use of many cameras recording horse’s gallops.
This ascertained that all the horse’s feet were off the ground at the same time. In 1879, Muybridge invented the Zoopraxiscope, also referred to as the wheel of life. This was a primitive motion picture projector machine, which also created the delusion of motion by projecting images onto a screen from photos on a revolving glass disc. All the developments discussed above only succeeded in providing eye-fooling animations.
Genuine motion pictures were a phenomenon only possible with the development of the film. This supple and clear celluloid could record pictures at a very high speed. The pioneer in this field was a Parisian innovator and psychologist called Etienne-Jules Marey in the 1880s. This Parisian came up with a camera capable of taking many photographs at a go. Contrary to Muybridge’s device, this new equipment could many images on the same camera plate. His experiment is also associated with the coined terminology of ‘shooting a video’.
The experiments of Muybridge and Marie laid the base for the development of the motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film hence the cinema was born. In the last years of the 1880s, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison and his British assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson endeavoured to create a device that could record movement on film and another for watching the film.
In 1890, Dickson came up with a primitive, camera able to take photographs of moving in motion. The device was named a Kinetograph. It captured motion with a harmonized shutter and sprocket system able to wind the film through the camera with the aid of an electric motor. This innovation led to the birth of the US cinema. The world’s first film production studio, the Black Maria was also developed from this invention.
Edison and Dickson’s innovations prompted a series of other inventions in the film industry. The most notable were from Charles Francis Jenkins. He endeavoured to show pictures in motion to large groups of people. As such, he invented the first film projector called the Phantoscope.
Concurrently in France, two brothers, the Lumieres, invented the cinematograph. This was a portable camera, printer and projector. One striking characteristic of the films produced during this period was that they were very short. They were usually under a minute long and showed only a single scene.
The scene was drawn from either authentic or staged representing everyday life. The cinematique technique was less applied since there was even no editing. Nevertheless, the progress was enough to catapult the industry to new heights for the century that followed.
Before discussing the introduction of sound in film production, it is important to note that the first years into the 20th century were a silent era for the film industry. Nevertheless, a number of innovations in Cinematique techniques were developed during this silent era.
These include animation, film continuity, cross-cutting between parallel actions, and point-of-view shots. Others included reverse-angle cutting, intertitles and flashback. Nevertheless, none of these developments could be paralleled to the impact that was brought in by the introduction of sound technology in the film industry.
Although there were experiments on sound technology in the silent era, it was difficult to overcome the challenges of accurate synchronization and amplification at that time. The year 1926 saw the introduction of the Vitaphone system in Hollywood studios by Warner Brothers.
This device added sound effects to film recordings. In the following year, Warner Bros released the first film, The Jazz Singer, having a synchronized dialogue and singing. The Jazz Singer is one of the Hollywood classic films that will be used to show the impact brought about by the introduction of sound technology.
Despite been a pioneer in the field, the idea of incorporating sound in film was not a new phenomenon. This is because Charles Taze Russell had attempted it in 1914 in his long film, The Photo-Drama of Creation. The film showed pictures in motion harmonized with sound.
Before embarking on the impact of sound technology, it would be paramount to note what had delayed the introduction of this much-needed innovation. The invention of the introduction of sound technology in film production was stalled by a number of factors. This led to motion pictures and sound recordings parting ways for almost a generation.
As hinted earlier, one of the major problems that delayed the introduction of sound technology was the synchronization challenge. This was occasioned by the fact that pictures and sound were recorded and played back by two distinct devices. This made it difficult to start and sustain in cycle.
Another challenge was the issue of adequate playback volume. This was stalled due to lack of amplification systems. The last barrier to the introduction of sound technology in the film industry was recording reliability. The primitive technologies produced low-quality sound. This imposed boundaries on the kind of films that could be produced with live-recorded sound.
To counter the above challenges, and especially the synchronization huddle, cinematic innovators tried a number of ways. The prime one was the introduction of the sound-on-film technology to replace the sound-on-disc one that existed. The former was superior to the latter in several ways.
This is because sound-on-disc technology has a myriad of limitations. To begin with, due to the unreliability of their interlock system, sound would fall out of synch, a fact occasioned by disc skipping or small alterations in film speed. This, therefore, called for regular supervision and numerous manual adjustments.
Another limitation of the sound-on-disc technology was the fact that discs could not be directly edited. This greatly limited the ability to make changes in the complementary films after the original release cut.
To add on, phonograph discs, increased expenses and complications in film production and, hence, were making the process dear and time-consuming. Lastly, the discs needed replacement after a number of screenings due to tear and wear. Nevertheless, the first years of the introduction of sound technology in films saw the sound-on-disc technology have an edge over its counterpart.
This was because it was relatively cheap to record music onto film. In addition, the central exhibition devices were easy to manufacture and acquire when compared to the sophisticated image-and-audio equipment, which was a prerequisite of the sound-on-film technology era.
After the introduction of the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film technology, the innovation that followed was the fidelity electronic recording and amplification. This was a blend of the two technologies. It was pioneered by AT & T’s Western Electric manufacturing section. By 1925, the company rolled out a new sound system that had microphones and rubber-line recorders.
There is no doubt that the introduction of sound technology had far-reaching implications to the art and production of films as well as to the industry at large. The impact was both short-term and long-term. In the short term, it led an increase in earnings for the movie houses. For instance, The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros released, on 6 October 1927, their premier talkie earning a total of $2.65 million in the US and elsewhere.
This was almost a million dollars higher than what the company had earned fro a preceding film in the silent era. Another film that shows that the sound technology brought good tidings to the industry was Lights of New York. The film, also produced by the same company, earned a gross of $ 1.2 million compared to a $23000 budget they spent in its production. This kind of profits was occasioned by a surge in terms of sales as moviegoers.
The introduction of sound technology in film production also affected other factors and in particular, labour. Those artists that did not have stage voices were dismissed as susceptible to the reception of the film. The contrary was also true. The latter case can be used to explain the success of The Jazz Trailer.
Although the film was not sound synchronized, the few instances where Al Jason, who was already famous as one of the America’s biggest music stars, starred made the film a hit. As such, sound technology meant doom for those actors whose stage experience was not up to the Hollywood standards. This was the case to a number of stars like Norma Talmadge, Emil Jannings and John Gilbert.
In conclusion, though the introduction of sound technology may have seemed inevitable, it was not received warmheartedly from all corners. The innovation was perceived as a destruction of the initial purpose of art. In addition, the technology imposed a limitation on the deaf who felt separated from the rest of the audience.
Despite this criticism, there is more than meets the eye in the film industry today that has its origin in the silent era and the talkie’s era as well. If the number, of movie houses sprouting in every corner of the world is anything to go by, there is no doubt that the world owes much to the cinema innovators and especially those who came up with the incorporation of sound technology than blunt criticism.
Bibliography
Altman, R, Silent Film Sound, Columbia University Press, New York, 2005.
Bordwell, D. “The Introduction of Sound,” chap. in Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin T, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960, Columbia University Press, New York, 1985, pp.298-308.
Braun, M, Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992.
Chapman, J, Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present. Reaktion Book, London, 2003.
Cousins, M, The Story of Film: A Worldwide History, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 2006.
Crafton, D, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926–1931. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997.
Eyman, S The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997.
Finler, JW, The Hollywood Story, (3d ed) Wallflower, London and New York, 2003.
Geduld, HM, The Birth of the Talkies: From Edison to Jolson. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1975.
Gomery, D “The Coming of Sound: Technological Change in the American Film Industry”, in Technology and Culture—The Film Reader (2005), ed. Andrew Utterson, pp. 53–67.: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, Oxford and New York, 1985.
Hirschhorn, C, The Warner Bros. Story. Crown, New York, 1979.
King, G, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, Columbia University Press, New York, 2002.
Morton, D, Sound Recording, The Life Story of a Technology, Baltimore, 2006.
Robertson, Film Facts, Billboard Books, New York, 2001.
Robinson, D, From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film. Columbia University Press, New York, 1997.
Sponable, EI “Historical Development of Sound Films,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, vol. 48, nos. 4–5, April/May, 1947.
Hollywood Cemetery is a privately owned one and was founded in 1847. It was designed in a different away from the common style of cemeteries then. The Hollywood cemetery started operating officially in 1849. The cemetery was created to match rural cemeteries which were popular during that period. The place was designed to serve several purposes including burial and recreation.
The cemetery gained a lot of prestige when the former President, James Monroe, was buried in the cemetery. Nowadays, Hollywood cemetery is an active cemetery which is visited regularly by tourists; it is considered a home to carefree outings and the local people who pay visits to the ancestral heritage and the grave sites.
The skillful planning, blessings of nature and proper maintenance make the cemetery very beautiful. The place is at the heart of the Virginia people due to the burial of 18, 000 soldiers from all the southern states who were victims of the civil war, hence, solidifying its importance among the Virginians.
Consequently, the Confederates who had been exhumed from their resting place in Gettysburg were buried in the Hollywood Cemetery, and this is how it acquired the name Gettysburg hill later. The place is an active cemetery and a tourist attraction center (Hollywood Cemetery 1).
Prominent Personalities buried in Hollywood Cemetery
The most prominent person to be buried in Hollywood is James Munroe. He is considered to be an esteemed individual since he was the only person in American history who held several offices. He also served as a governor of Virginia before becoming the president of the USA. What made Monroe popular was the Monroe doctrine which shaped the history of the western hemisphere.
His strong opposition to slavery made him be viewed as one of the powerful leaders in the USA. His great legacy left a permanent mark in the history of the USA. He made a place of heritage for most of the Americans out of the Hollywood Cemetery (Hollywood Cemetery 1). The heritage of the Hollywood Cemetery and its importance in American history are flourishing because, besides Monroe, several other prominent people were buried there.
These people are the tenth President of the USA, John Tyler, who was considered a hero in Hollywood due to his stand on various issues, such as his opposition to secession, advocating for the limitedness of federal power and the fact that he brought Florida and Texas into the Union. He died during the public service as a member of the Confederate Congress.
Hollywood Cemetery is home to various individuals, dynasties, prominent artists and American autocrats (Hollywood Cemetery 1). The significance of Hollywood cemetery lies in its old age and its design. The skillful design of the cemetery gives it an appeal. It has several old fashioned headstones with towering mountains which are shaped like rocket ships.
The pretty and calm environment of the cemetery has been used as a background location in Hollywood films for a very long time, and it has enhanced the value of the place since people across the world have been watching Hollywood films. Examples of the movies that feature Hollywood cemetery on its background are the Hot Shots and the L.A. Story.
Several TV shows also were shot against the background of the Hollywood Cemetery, for example, the TV series Charmed. The Hollywood cemetery rekindles the memories of the gone years in Virginia and features the graves of the people whose lives shaped and influenced the lives of other people in one way or another.
What captivates people to fancy Hollywood cemetery is the fact that it overlooks the James River where Christopher Newport planted a wooden cross when he established the James town. The place functions as the final resting home of two American presidents, six Virginia governors, two Supreme Court justices, twenty-two Confederate generals and a great many Confederate soldiers.
Its status to the nation is recognized and acknowledged by the National Register of Historic Places. The architectural beauty of the monuments, statues, buildings, mausoleums, fences, and tombs combine to enhance the setting of the place whereas the skillful design, the faithful stewardship and the blessings of nature are the features that make Hollywood cemetery one of the most interesting and beautiful historic cemeteries in the United States of America.
The most recognizable features of the cemetery serve to uplift the spirits of various visitors to the cemetery (Hollywood Cemetery 1). The Hollywood cemetery also has two big and well-designed mausoleums which are both filled with Hollywood movie stars though aged in practice.
The abbey of Psalms is specifically designed for movie stars including the veteran actor Clifton Webb who was originally referred to as Belvedere in the 1948 movie Sitting Pretty. Prominent businessman Steve Goldstein was considered one of the best Hollywood grave hunters as he spent most of his off work hours in the cemetery. He authored a book titled L.A Graveside Companion: Where the V.I.Ps R.I.P., and he has also created a website (King 1).
James Benjamin Sclater JR
James Benjamin Sclater JR was also buried in the Hollywood cemetery. James Benjamin Sclater served in the army of Richmond. He attended the University of Virginia, but never graduated despite devoting much of his time to medical studies. He is one of the founders of the Pi Kappa Alpha together with his college mate Robertson Howard and friends Julian Wood, Littleton Walter, Roberson Howard, and William Alexander.
After a long period of declining health, he died in the year 1882 and was the first of the founders of Pi Kappa Alpha to die. His body was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery on a hill that faces the James River. His grave is conspicuous in the cemetery because of the ornamental urn marked in it by his longtime girlfriend. His grave is significant to the people of Richmond.
As a founder of the Pi Kappa Alpha, he was considered as an influential person, especially due to his strong Americanism. Pi Kappa Alpha was a powerful international fraternity that was made up of men who shared similar ideals particularly the ideals of friendship, loyalty, and truth.
Sclater influenced the majority of the Richmond population due to his strong moral legacy and the idealism of Pi Kappa Alpha which inspired the population. The Hollywood cemetery is one of the greatest attraction sites in the USA.
Conclusion
The Hollywood cemetery is associated with great memories because of the people who were buried to rest there. The cemetery contains the remains of some of the most popular people that America has ever known. There is the need to preserve this place as it reminds us of our past heritage and helps us to understand how far we have come from. The cemetery is a great attraction in the USA, and many people have a special attachment to the cemetery.
Works Cited
Hollywood Cemetery. HollywoodCemetery.org. Hollywood Cemetery History, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.
King, Susan. “Classic Hollywood: Cemeteries of the stars.” Articles.Latimes.com. Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2010. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.
Opening Ceremony is a specialty store located in West Hollywood. The channel type that I chose is the physical (brick and mortar) specialty store. The West Hollywood store is a shop that deals in fashion, art, and traveling products.
The store has also cleverly rolled out a traditional client interaction strategy as part of its business channel. This element revolves around investing money by offering unique and diverse products to customers who buy in the store. In addition, the Opening Ceremony’s customers have better offers due to consistent and attractive discount.
The store has always aspired to provide quality products and services to customers. The store currently offers direct sales to its consumers within admirable standards of flexibility. Apparently, the success of the physical specialty store channel forms the rationale for this research.
This channel has been customized to ensure that clients are served within the most reliable and efficient methods. The success of the channel could be attributed to its partnerships and quality assurance to its diverse customer segments. I am interested in this type of store because of the unique merchandise categories it carries. Besides, I want to run a store like this in the future.
Background of Opening Ceremony in West Hollywood
The Opening Ceremony store was founded in New York by UC Berkeley graduates Carol Lim and Humberto in the year 2002 as a joint partnership venture. After a trip to Hong Kong, the dynamic duo decided to start the company through the integration of the Olympic Games mission statement, which is to adopt a multinational strategy to their retail business.
The company is renowned for retailing household and emerging fashion designs. The designs range from known brands to small brands that are emerging in the domestic and international market. The Opening Ceremony has branches in New York (headquarters), Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London.
Each year, the store in West Hollywood, Los Angeles has activities that showcase the originality and quality of merchandises form different countries across the world as a result of it strong partnership approach in market expansion. As a result, the specialist store has been able to proactively transform the Los Angeles store into an open and expansive market for international capacity and exotic souvenirs.
Over the years, the company has been consistent in growth within its business mission “of exploration and friendship, working with a family of contributors to forge a creative environment that reaches far beyond the fashion world” (Opening Ceremony par 3). Among the collaborating brands that have made the Opening Ceremony to expand its scope of operations include “Rodarte, Topshop, Pendleton, and Maison Martin Margiela” (Opening Ceremony par 3).
The most renowned projects that are carried out by the Los Angeles store include “Spike Jonze, Terence Koh, and Chloë Sevigny” (Opening Ceremony par 4). As a result of the consistent growth over the years, the store in West Hollywood has become very popular with customers within the age of 15 and 40 years.
Customer Service Philosophy and Programs
The store operates from 8.00 am to 8.00pm every day. The most notable CRM strategy adopted by the Opening Ceremony is the contact management since it provides a decision support system to select the best market access on suitability, distribution structure, and integration of contact channels among the customers.
The contact management system in the store takes the form of Debit card services and a 12-hour call center to connect to their customers (from 8.00am to 8.00pm) (Opening Ceremony par 3). This system is constantly upgraded through value –added services. Keeping these channels restricted has helped the store to boost customer confidence in keeping their particulars safe.
In order to guarantee customer satisfaction, the Opening Ceremony’s contact management system is built using standard operating procedures to promote consistency in processing customer orders and all other channels. The more the consistency, the more the information that can be shared amongst various channels creating more business resources to be used in customer service delivery.
For instance, the Opening Ceremony’s call center has been successful in addressing client concerns in a timely and professional way (Best Buy, par. 5). Opening Ceremony has employed the laggard activism strategy to not only capture the global market, but also leapfrog its dominant competitors. The store operates on the Customer-to-Customer (C2C) platform and Business-to-Business (B2B) platforms.
As a result, the Opening Ceremony has penetrated the fashion market due to a balance in factors such as the Western business style, global business approach, and flexible business channel. In order to penetrate the expanding market, Opening Ceremony’s business platform includes services such as premium customer experience, compact support from the local community, and low charges for loyal customer.
For instance, the Customer-to-Customer platform adopted by Opening Ceremony has created and successfully implemented the marketing strategy to ensure customer loyalty and market expansion. The company’s product multi-branding as a positioning strategy has enabled it to survive competition. For instance, the direct shopping is tailed to address the individual customer needs.
Besides, the company has managed to balance the elements of intangibility, inseparability, and heterogeneity in the 4Ps of its market mix due to improved product visibility for each target customer segment (Rai 23). The goal of these CRM strategies at the Opening Ceremony is to concentrate on the local market through use of an open-system business model.
The strategy was meant to take advantage of the challenge of ‘smallness’ as compared to other giant specialty stores offering similar products. The store depends on the closed-system approach in execution of its business strategies. Unlike other stores which developed a fixed entry strategy in the market that was characterized by overconfidence and inertia, the Opening Ceremony was packaged as a humble and flexible fashion products trading platform (Opening Ceremony par 5).
The Opening Ceremony store has made the shopping experience an easy task with its strategy of all-under-one-roof, from renowned designer products to upcoming designer products. A customer is in a position to literally find all types of fashion products within a single location. This saves on time besides allowing a customer to plan for a single shopping activity that covers for all his or her needs.
To support this mission, the store has one of the most attractive reward plans for its loyal customers in the form of shopping points that are redeemable, seasonal discounts, and annual rewards. For instance, the store has special promotions and discounts on holidays such as Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Black Friday, and spring sale.
In addition, the store has special vouchers that target corporate organizations and private customers. The offers are in the form of price, quality, and quantity. The store has a 24 hour return policy for goods sold as long as the product is returned in its previous condition (Opening Ceremony par 7).
In summary, the Opening Ceremony has the best CRM strategies since they are incorporated in the offline customer management systems. For instance, adoption of the hybrid system of customer service management by the Opening Ceremony is meant to ensure direct contact with customers within the shortest time possible. The hybrid system is very successful in contact management and positive attitude reassurance at the store.
Employee Relations, Philosophy and Programs
In the Opening Ceremony store, there is a laid down structure formulated in order to keep its staff in healthy and stable mind in their duty of serving the store’s interest. A stable mind performs optimally with little or no supervision.
In line with this, store always work alongside its staff to promote healthy working habits by recognizing and where necessary supporting staff that make a steady commitment in practicing accepted desirable healthy habits in their work department. At the Opening Ceremony store, programs are periodically designed in line with objectives and goals for sustained happy employee-employer relationship.
The methods used at the Opening Ceremony include direct participation by the employees, who after interaction with each other identify hale and hearty workplace interventions, and promotion of health organization culture through different training programs (Opening Ceremony par 8).
The Opening Ceremony store has attractive employer paid benefits that offer health cover, mileage, work compensation, retirement, and disability among others. The compensation plan for the Opening Ceremony inspires optimal performance through job satisfaction since the total annual compensation and different benefits are relatively attractive.
Besides, the store has a continuous 401k retirement plan for employees. Each year, employees are given the opportunity to buy 1% of the Opening Ceremony stocks at a discount of 10%. The actual hourly salary for the sales associates is $50, besides a comprehensive medical cover and annual salary increment of 5% of the previous year salary (Opening Ceremony par 9).
The corporate governance structure of the Opening Ceremony store has a strong system for promoting the elements such as culture, structure, systems, and strategic alignment among the employees. The compensation plan for the Opening Ceremony store are aligned to a supportive work environment, concrete learning processes, and personal development that reinforce competency.
The company has annual promotion plan and continuous employee training program. The promotion is based on performance and academic qualifications. The training program is in-house and is managed by the HRM department (Opening Ceremony par 6).
Employee selection at the Opening Ceremony is focused to evaluate resumes of applicants for essential requirements which in this case include possession of management and analytical skills in fashion design environment. In this case, the process is systematic, and through aptitude test, elimination of those lacking analytical skills is possible within minimal prejudice or biasness. In the Opening Ceremony store, social and highly skilled employees are allocated the right duties than keeping them in a secluded environment (Opening Ceremony par 4).
Conclusion
Apparently, the store has the strengths of strong brand presence, expansive distribution channel, diverse product multi-branding, and strong customer base within the specialty channel. However, there is strong competition from similar stores such as Satine, Boutique, Madison, and Kitson. Besides, the store operates in a dynamic market where changed customer preference may negatively affect its profitability.
Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood are well-known retailers of lingerie and other products for women, including perfumes. However, in spite of similarities in proposed products, there are also significant differences between these retailers in terms of their messages and marketing strategies. Today, Frederick’s of Hollywood is focused only on e-commerce (Huddleston). Still, it is important to compare stores and websites of Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood in order to conclude about these retailers’ messages to the audience with reference the question of sexuality.
Although both retailers are focused on selling unique lingerie, the companies’ marketing approaches are opposite. Victoria’s Secret stores are decorated in black and pink colors, and their interiors are associated with the ideas of luxury and images of a boudoir or a secret club for women. Posters, light, contrasting colors, and lacquered surfaces contribute to creating the message about the exclusivity of proposed products and services. On the contrary, the presentation of lingerie in those Frederick’s of Hollywood stores which were popular before their closing in 2015 differed significantly from Victoria’s Secret’s approach (Gustafson). Frederick’s of Hollywood stores looked like many other lingerie stores, but red was used as the main color in the decoration. When entering the store, a woman could see many items, including bras, corsets, panties, or underwear, and red accents were easily observed. The most provocative items were separated to attract female consumers.
As a result, Victoria’s Secret and Frederick’s of Hollywood stores are not viewed or perceived the same way because of messages they convey about their products and women’s sexuality. Lingerie proposed by Victoria’s Secret is associated with the message of luxury, uniqueness, and sensitivity (Hughes). It is possible to state that the company promotes the idea of “empowering” females while demonstrating how attractive they can be (“Victoria’s Dirty Little Secret”). Therefore, the message about their sexuality as power is masked under the message about women’s beauty, dignity, and confidence.
In contrast, those products which are sold by Frederick’s of Hollywood seem to be different because of their direct message about sexuality. Those women who buy Victoria’s Secret items can discuss some products or female models’ poses as rather seductive, but they are not perceived negatively because of hidden messages about a powerful role of a woman and her attractiveness (Bennett; Greenberg et al. 722). The problem of females’ objectification is not obviously accentuated in this case. On the contrary, Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie is more provocative, and it is marketed as “racy”. As a result, its message about the emphasized sexuality is rather direct, and it can be perceived by many women negatively.
Differences in decorating stores and using colors can have a certain effect on buyers, and this effect can be as intense as an impact of the market strategy and the nature of products. It is possible to state that the Victoria’s Secret brand has more admirers among women because its message about their sexuality is based on the idea of women’s power and dignity in spite of the fact that their bodies are proclaimed as almost a single source of their impact on other people. However, this message is usually discussed by women as more attractive than the message promoted by Frederick’s of Hollywood because this seductive lingerie can be directly associated with the ideas of objectification and suppression.
Samantha Holland’s article addresses the ‘cyborg’ element in modern contemporary films and the philosophy surrounding cyborgs. Holland’s article focuses on Rene Descartes’ philosophy when analyzing the use of ‘half human-half machine’ characters in films.
Samantha Holland addresses various angles of the mind-body philosophy in this article including personal identity, dualism of beings, gender, and technology.
Throughout the article, the use of cyborgs in films is used as a tool of analysis by the author. This paper provides a précis of Holland’s “Descartes Goes to Hollywood: Mind Body and Gender in Contemporary Cyborg Cinema”.
The article begins by providing examples of how materialism and dualism are manifested in cyborg cinema. The movie “Robocop” is used to show both the materialistic OCP and the dual existence of Robocop (Holland 158).
Holland presents readers with an example of how the mind-body philosophy is the central theme in most cyborg films. According to the article, there are a lot of conflicting philosophies that are contained in most cyborg films. In most cases, the film will be seeking to perpetuate a certain viewpoint but it ends up bringing up a contradiction.
The conflict of the body and the mind is also the main theme in most cyborg films according to Holland. The author cites “The Terminator” and “Robocop” as examples of films with their main characters suffering from mind-body conflict.
The article addresses the gender element in cyborg cinema. According to the author, although cyborg creators insist on the authenticity of the cyborg’s body, they also enhance the cyborg’s gender-look. The article cites the muscled Terminator and the feminine Cherry as examples of the emphasized gender-look in cyborgs.
The article points out that the reason for gender emphasis in cyborg cinema is to maintain the body-essence and exploit gender roles. In addition, the article faults the notion that cyborgs are meant to go beyond gender boundaries and that they do not emphasize the common gender stereotypes.
The author points out how the titles of cyborg films such as “Robocop”, “Cherry”, and “Eve of Destruction” are gender specific (Holland 165).
The article continues by covering the feminist myth in most cyborg films. According to the author, most producers only try to portray strong female characters but they do not succeed. The portrayal of Sarah Connor in “Terminator” is used as an example of how feminism is usually misused in cyborg cinema.
It is argued that feminism is portrayed in both narrative and visual levels in cyborg films. The masculine male body possessed by most cyborgs is an example of the visual portrayal of the ‘strong male-gender’. The article also addresses the issue of how cyborg cinema portrays reproduction.
According to the author, the ability to reproduce without using the female element can be interpreted as chauvinistic. The role of the cyborg cinema in the modern world is also addressed. Holland believes that cyborg cinema not only addresses future events but also present events. In addition, they serve as a critique of the human views on mind-body relations.
The article concludes by noting that the cyborg cinema represents only the more acceptable notions of the body-mind theories. In addition, most cyborg films highlight the dualism of human beings and other forms. However, no film has been able to portray Descartes’ body-mind philosophy on an advanced level.
The author also notes that most cyborg technology focuses on the machine-human interface as opposed to the human-machine interface. Therefore, most cyborg films are a manifestation of the growing anxiety over the increasing use of technology.
Works Cited
Holland, Samantha. “Descartes Goes to Hollywood.” Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. Ed. Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows. New York, NY: Sage, 1996. 157-174. Print.
Hollywood is, as Murray Smith suggests, ‘a multi – facetted creature’ and cannot be reduced to a single essence, ‘Old’ or ‘New’. Changes at one level; are related to changes at another, but there is no guarantee that they match up tidily. Much has changed in Hollywood since the ‘classical’ or ‘studio’ era, a period that is itself subject to conflicts of definition.
But a good deal has remained the same. In some cases different strategies have been used to secure more familiar ends. Sweeping definitions of ‘New’ Hollywood as something entirely different overlook important continuities and are often based on simplified generalizations about the earlier period. How do we find a way around these confusions?
We need to establish precisely what is and is not new about ‘New’ Hollywood, to identify its distinctive characteristics – sometimes contradictory – and its points of similarity with the Hollywood of the past. As a multi – faceted creature, Hollywood is shaped by a combination of forces ranging from the most local and industry – specific detail to the scale of national or global social and economic movements.
The stylistic and industrial levels of New Hollywood cinema obey their own distinctive logics, but they are far from autonomous. The industrial level sets particularly important horizons of possibility, as should be expected in a form of cultural production so strongly governed by commercial imperatives.
Hollywood remains, above all, a business. Hollywood cinema, ‘Old or New’, is regularly subjected to critical interrogation for what it tells us about the society in which it is produced and consumed. It is often taken to ‘reflect’ or ‘express’ something about its time and place. These kinds of reading can be based both on the subject matter of Hollywood films and the stylistic devices employed.
But analysis of this kind that ignores the industrial dimension can be misleading or, at least, incomplete. Do the features of a particular blockbuster reflect and or tackle issues of social concern? Or are they merely the components of a particular strategy designed to attract audiences.
The answer is probably: both, but in a manner that requires a distinct awareness of the part played by each element in the process. If New Hollywood is to be understood in terms of stylistic, industrial and socio – historical contexts – and interrelations between them – there is still no single definition available for any one of these perspectives.
The term gained widespread use initially to describe a wave of films and filmmakers that came to critical attention from the mid to late 1960s to the mid to late 1970s, a phenomenon also labeled as the Hollywood ‘Renaissance’. Some insist that the term Hollywood should still be reserved for this period, little more than a decade.
Subsequently, there has been applied in two additional ways. ‘New Hollywood has been used since the 1980s to define a brand of filmmaking almost entirely opposite to that of the Hollywood Renaissance: the Hollywood of giant media conglomerates and expensive blockbuster attractions. Alternatively, the term can be used to encompass both, and a broader context dating back to the 1950s, the Hollywood renaissance being viewed as one specific phase.
Film style: ‘post – classical’
Does New Hollywood cinema represent a significant shift in film style? New Hollywood style has been defined in a number of different ways, as might be expected given the existence of contradictory versions of ‘New Hollywood.’ One proposition is the New Hollywood has seen a move away from what is defined as the ‘classical’ Hollywood style.
Some have argued for the establishment of a distinctly ‘pots classical’ style. In style – oriented accounts, the term ‘pots classical Hollywood’ is often used instead of New Hollywood. The classical style forms the main point of departure of inclined definitions of New Hollywood. What, then, is ‘classical’ Hollywood style?
A brief definition will be sufficient for now, focusing on two principal aspects of the classical style. One concerns short arrangement and editing style, the other focuses on the centrality of a particular form of narrative organization. The films of classical Hollywood are in general shot and put together according to the conventions of continuity edition.
A range of different camera positions and movements are used to present the viewer with a selection of different viewpoints on the action, an approach often described as offering something close to an ‘ideal’ perspective on the key events of a scene or sequence. The conventions of continuity editing are designed to ensure a smooth and continuous flow across and between these various perspectives.
Close up shots of detail, for example, are preceded by longer ‘establishing shots’ designed to provide general orientation. The 180 degree ‘rule’, according to which the cameral should stay on the same side of an imaginary line drawn through the action in any one set – up, serves to ensure a consistency of space and direction.
Techniques such as the eye line match (cutting from the look of a character to the object of the gaze) and match – on – action (cutting in such a way as to continue a particular action across the cut) are used to link one image to that which follows. The aim is to render the editing itself largely ‘invisible’, to lead the viewer seamlessly into the sound and images but on the narrative events.
The narratives of classical Hollywood are usually characterized as quite tightly organized sequences governed by rules of cause – and – effect. Each development in the story is meant to be given careful motivation and explanation.
A post – classical style in New Hollywood has been described in terms of departure of both levels, some films of the Hollywood renaissance are characterized at both levels. Some films of the Hollywood renaissance are characterized partly by breaches of the continuity editing regime of classical Hollywood, inspired largely by thee films of the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, some also undermined aspects of classical narratives such as the clear motivation f the actions of the hero.
A different set of departures from classical style has been identified more recently as a result of developments such as the contemporary corporate blockbuster format and the growing importance of video and broadcast media to the Hollywood economic equation. Traditional editing regimes are said by some to have been undermined by the importation into feature films of the rapid cutting and ‘shallow’ imagery advertising or MTV.
The concern of the contemporary blockbuster to offer a spectacular big – screen experience and to generate profitable spin – offs in other media, ranging from computer games to theme parks, has lead others to heralds the demise of the narrative coherence said to characterize classical Hollywood.
The Hollywood Renaissance
A giant pair of red lips fills the screen. The face turns away and we see the reflection in a mirror. The distinctive arched features of Faye Dunaway half a smile as she peers into the glass before turning away. Cut to amid – shot in which Dunaway continues to turn and rises. But the match between shots is not quite right.
An instant of transition is missing. The cut is abrupt, disarming, Dunaway pouts, naked to the waist but framed above the line of breasts. She looks around her, moves to lie down on a bed. Cut to the final movement from a lower angle and a different position. Again she is not quite what we expect. Jumpy. As if a number of frames have been omitted.
Dunaway’s character grabs at a passing insect. Thumps the bedstead in frustration. She pulls herself up, head framed through the horizontal bars. A sultry pose. The camera lurches awkwardly into a big close – up on her eyes and nose, focus is lost momentarily in the process.
Thus begins Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and with it, arguably, the version of New Hollywood that became known and widely celebrated as the Hollywood ‘Renaissance’. The jump cuts and other disorienting effects are direct borrowings from the fuels of the French New wave, but used here to potent and specific effect. The impression created is one of restlessness, edginess and a palpable sense of sexual hunger and longing.
These are expressions of the state of the fictionalized character played by Dunawat, the depression era bank robber to be Bonnie Parker, but also perhaps of the moment in which the film appeared.
Parker is presented, in a few bold stylistic strokes, as a figure as barely contained by her humdrum surroundings as the opening off the film is constrained by the ‘rules’ of classical Hollywood style. She is bursting with desire to escape. So it seems, were some of the filmmakers coming to the fore in the late 1960s, along with a whole stratum of American culture and society.
The same year saw the release of The Graduate. Dustin Hofman is Bejamin Braddock, a brilliant student and track star, newly home from college and also imprisoned, if in a wealthier suburban milieu. His parents buy him a diving suit to celebrate, in which he lurks at the bottom of their swimming pool.
Another expressive image of youthful alienations and incipient rebellion. Both films were box office hits, although Bonnie and Clyde was not initially given a very wide release, two years later, in 1969, two unkempt figures high on drugs and laid back on motorcycles dispelled any doubts about whether these films were part of what was becoming significant shift within the Hollywood landscape.
The period from the late 1960s until the mid or late 1970s has gained almost mythical status in the annals of Hollywood, its advent marked usually by thee appearance and success of Bonnie and Clyde. It is remembered as an era in which Hollywood produced a relatively high number of innovative films that seemed to go beyond the confines of conventional studio fare in terms of their content and style and their existence as products of a purely commercial or corporate system.
For some, this period represented the birth (or rebirth) of the Hollywood ‘art’ film, or something very like it. For others, it was a time when Hollywood made a gesture towards the more liberal or radical forces in American society. The period if often taken as a benchmark for measuring the state of Hollywood in subsequent decades. The products of the 1980s, 1990 and early 2000s are generally found wanting by comparison. Occasional signs of intelligent life in Hollywood today are often referred back to this earlier period.
But what exactly happened in the Hollywood of the late 1960s and the 1970s, and why has it gained such resonance? A distinctive group of films did appear in this period, although exactly how far they stray from more familiar Hollywood themes and forms remains subject to debate. It was, quite clearly to some extent a product of a particular social and historical context: form the fervid of 1960s radicalism and counterculture to the icy paranoia of the pots – Watergate period.
The ability of this context to become translated into the cinema was conditioned to a large extent by developments in the industrial structure and strategies of Hollywood from the 1950s onwards. The distinctive nature of the Hollywood Renaissance also needs to be considered at the level of film style, this us related in part to the social dimension.
To question dominant myths and ideologies entails at least some departure from the formal conventions that play a significant part in their maintenance. The stylistic innovations from the Renaissance also have their own dynamic, however, traceable to sources such as the European ‘art’ film.
Characteristics of the New Hollywood films
There are several aspects which made the new filmmakers to have a major characteristic. In this era, most of them were school educated. Furthermore, they were young and counterculture – bred. This team of new filmmakers who were known as the New Hollywood brought to the fore a new perspective of filmmaking. This included energy, sexuality, and an obsession for passion for films as a medium which was artistic in nature.
The emphasis of this as it is depicted in the movie Bonnie and Clyde was an emphasis on what many scholars called realism. This realism was based on character, the infusion of rock music and sexuality when it came to shooting of the films. It is worth noting that the Hollywood Renaissance films reflected what was happening at that’s particular point in time in terms of social changes which were taking place. The social context
The civil rights movement, race riots : ‘black power’. The counterculture, hippies, drug trafficking: ‘flower power’. Youth, popular music and fashion. Protests against the war in Vietnam. Student radicalization and the ‘New Left’. A new wave of feminism and demands for gay rights.
Political hopes, dreams and nightmares. Kennedy, the Kennedy assassination. My Lai, Cambodia and shooting of students at Kent state. Battles on the streets of Chicago. Nixon. Watergate. Humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam. The oil crisis and a reduced scale of global American economic power. Making connections between Hollywood movies and the times in which they appear is not as straightforward business as it might often appear.
Sometimes, however the case seems more clear cut; the times are such that they appear to be impose themselves forcefully on our consciousness, unmistakably invading the terrain of popular entertainment such as Hollywood cinema. The late 1960s and early 1970s appears to be such a time.
These were years of quite extraordinary upheaval and drama in American society. Far for everyone in America was directly involved in the events sketched above. Many probably continued to live their lives more or less unchanged. But these events had an undoubted impact on American culture, if only through their pervasive courage in the media. Single issues such as Vietnam and Watergate were potent enough in themselves.
What is most striking about the period, however, is the sheer number of crises and upheavals. Their cumulative impact in a relatively short period of time is what gives grounds for assuming a further – reaching challenge to some American values and assumptions. Images of America as a place of freedom and democracy were dented, if not more seriously damaged.
How, though, were these events reflected in the films of the Hollywood Renaissance? A major ingredient of many f these films are a foregrounding of youthful alienation and or rebellion. Bonnie and Clyde is essentially, the story of two handsome, if rather mixed up, people who seek escape from the limitations of small town life.
Their chosen pursuit, bank robbery, appears to be a means to this end, rather than an end in itself. Neither seems to be in it for the money, little of which appear to be accumulated. They do it for the hell of it, for the freedom, celebrity and sheer style offered by a life of crime. Nods are made in the direction of a ‘robin Hood’ agenda.
The point is made that Bonnie and Clyde rob the banks that are foreclosing against poor farmers. They become popular heroes but more for the fantasy of escape they enact than for any very specific action. Relevance to the youth rebellions of the 1960s is implicit rather than explicit, thee upheavals of the 1930s and the depression a loose surrogate for these of the later decade.
It is possible, at the risk of some simplification, to divide the social context of the Hollywood renaissance into two main currents. One celebrates aspects of 1960s rebellion. The other explores or manifests elements of a darker mood in which alienation leads towards fear and disillusion.
If the counterculture, ‘flower power’ and 1967’s proclaimed ‘summer of love’ represents one side of the equation, Vietnam and Watergate are pervasive reference points for the other. The two are not entirely separate, of course, ether in the history of the period or in its reflection in Hollywood.
Vietnam, especially, was a major catalyst for a host of oppositional currents, a key factor in whatever coherence is found in the various strains of 1960s alienation and radicalism in America landmark films such as Bonnie and Clyde contain elements of each, appearing almost on the cusp between one mood and the other.
The analysis
The foregoing analysis should suggest some of Bonnie and Clyde’s intricate architecture. To watch this movie three decades after its premier is to be stuck by the film’s emotional generosity towards its character, its unflagging sense of the gangster’s existential absurdity, and equally, its visual panache.
Reviewers noted from the outset how the film continually throws the spectator off guard – and not just because of the sporadic outbursts of violence that confound its conception of Bonnie and Clyde as engaging, glamorous, overgrown children. The film’s fusion of American can d European “art” filmmaking was another source of spectator disorientation, albeit one Arthur Penn had previously explored in Mickey One (1964).
Although critics and devotees of the film have acknowledged Bonnie and Clyde’s complex, hybrid visual style from its premiere until the present day, it has never been documented with the benefit of a close analysis. Arthur Penn’s earlier comments suggest, the film’s visual style is closely linked to Bonnie and Clyde’s personal traits, their quirks of personality. Visual style is also, as always, a vehicle for the film’s narration.
Before considering visual style proper (editing and camerawork), it is worth pausing over the gang members’ characterizations and the way the film conveys information to the audience. Bonnie and Clyde’ varied film style is related to the contradictory traits of the gang members in the script. The script opposes Bonnie and Clyde against unusually comical representatives of convectional morality.
Essentially, this movie’s combination of amorality and childlike innocence is the major paradox of the film, and the one most closely keyed to the film’s visual style; but they also display other traits worth noting. Clyde has acute insight into people’s circumstances, but he is utterly oblivious to their thoughts.
He cannot, for example, understand why a butcher would want to kill a robber, or why Bonnie is upset with his regret over the gang’s impractical bank robbing routine rather than over their outlaw life, as they recuperate in the Moss home. Bonnie’s style consciousness (and repeated mirror checks) makes her a fashion plate (with or without a cigar in her mouth), yet she remains rooted in her poor southern milieu and is perfectly comfortable with the earthy, burping.
Like the opening sequence, this remarkable shot combines various motifs that have informed the entire film: the prevalence of rural landscapes that connote both dreariness of impoverished lives and the potential for freedom; the constricted visions and viewpoints of characters who live on the run and on the road, who contend with the advantages and limitations of mobile domesticity (the car as a dining room when they eat hamburgers with Velma and Eugene; the car as recovery room after the ambush in which Buck is fatally shot).
When the gang captured Homer, we saw him, his nose pressed to the rear window of a car, from the back seat. Now, at the conclusion of this elaborate shot, we see him from a reverse angle, looking down at his former tormentors. For all of Bonnie and Clyde’s stylistic variety, however, the film’s editing and pacing are its distinguishing features.
The building up of scenes out of quickly edited shots begins with the credit sequence; the ambush sequences in Joplin, Platte City, and Dexter pick up and extend the intense fragmentation of space and time that marked the film’s opening scene in Bonnie’s room, increasing the pace of cuts with each attack.
In the current learning dispensation, it is worth noting that teachers and students are used to thinking of letters, diaries, and newspaper editorials as primary sources, but any product of popular culture – music, magazines, television shows, commercials, websites – is potentially a primary source for the historical and social moment in which it was created. Each is a historical artifact of that particular context, influenced by and influencing the braider public consciousness and popular culture at the time.
It is no mistake that Bonnie and Clyde could have been made in 1967 but not 1947 – the film emerges from the confluence of conflicting attitudes about sexuality, violence and civic authority in 1960s America that were not part of the public consciousness in the 1940s. Hence, Bonnie and Clyde is a primary source reflecting a particular perspective on the cultural conflicts and social changes in the society and time in which it was created.
Recognizing that Bonnie and Clyde is a specific, if partial, perspective is essential to its educative value. It is not a neutral detached commentary about American society. The film sympathizes with its gangster protagonist against the establishment figures who hunt them down.
They are rebels against an exploitative American social order, in which banks and conservative elements hold all the power. Perhaps only through violence can humble people hope to claim any power and control. Early in the film, Bonnie and Clyde come across an impoverished Dust Bowl farmer whose home is being reposed by the bank that owns his mortgage. They lend him one of their guns to shoot up the house, as it is no longer his home and is instead now bank property.
When the Barrow gang is finally caught at the end of the film, the death of Bonnie and Clyde is not depicted as the triumph of justice or law over criminal recklessness: it is an ambush led by resentful authority figure, a brutal assassination of two young renegades who resisted the establishment forces of their society.
From this point of view, Bonnie and Clyde is a historical fantasy using events and characters of the 1930s to comment on the 1960s. Much like most letters or diaries, the film expresses just one perspective on its time, the perspective embraced by the film creators. Hence, the film includes only personal details about the protagonists that advance their roles as rebels against authority but not historical details that would interfere with expressing the filmmakers’ social critique.
Briely’s careful guided instructional use of film positions his students to recognize historical themes reflected by a film such as Bonnie and Clyde. He took care to mentally equip his students to watch the film in a particular way observing its distinctive perspective and not blindly accepting it as an accurate or authoritative account of Barrow gang.
This was possible only through Briely’s thoughtful planning, reinforcement through multiple sources, and scaffolding of student activities. In the Rebel without a Cause, we find a wholly different feeling associated with onscreen violence. Underlying the confrontation and the fight, called the “blade game,” which occurs after the visit to the planetarium, is atonal music, marked by odd time signatures and dissonant blaring brass.
The use if the timpani and horns, along twith the timing, give the music a Stravinsky – like flavor, as well, the music is sometimes recorded low, and, then abruptly, the recording level is raised. The dissonance imparts a brooding feeling to the scene, a sense of latent, almost muscular violence that flashes out when the brass blares or the recording level shoots up. The uneasy, unstable quality of the music serves to characterize the psychological turmoil – the play of repression and explosive release – with which the scene is concerned.
In 1956 Rebel Without a Cause had been among the most popular films at the box office, while many critics choose it as one of the best movies of the year. This had much to do with the Dean cult, which in Europe might have been less spectacular than in the United States of America, but whose long term influence on youth culture cannot be underestimated.
It remains difficult to speculate about the influence of one single cultural; product or a star, certainly upon the influence of one single cultural product or a star, certainly upon the audience. But it is astounding how the movie had been successfully released in the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, while Dean’s mood and attributes were largely taken up – as well as commercially exploited. Rebel without a casus takes place in a Los Angeles suburb.
The director, Nicholas Ray, and the scriptwriter, Stewart Stern, set off to portray the life of a contemporary American teenager. The story is organized around Jim Stark, recently arrived with his parents in the hope that their son will conform and lose his rebellious streak and take “a right step in the right direction.”
But Jim manages to get into trouble quickly. After being challenged by Buzz, the popular kid in town, to a “chickie run” (two drivers of stolen vehicles drive toward a cliff; the one that jumps out first is considered to be a chicken, that is, a coward or not a man), Jim finds himself surviving while Buzz plunges off the cliff and dies. Against his parents’ advice, Jim goes to the police to report the event, but, not finding Ray, the sympathetic officer, he knows, he leaves.
At the same time, Buzz’s friends fear that Jim has reported the event to the police and pursue him. Jim hides in a deserted mansion with Julie – who had been Buzz’s girl but couples with Jim after the chickie run – and Plato, a younger marginalized teen. Running towards the safe haven turns out badly. When Buzz’s friends and the police discover the three, Plato shoots and injures one of Buzz’s friends before running to the planetarium to hide, fearing that the police will shoot him.
Jim and Judy run after Him, and the police surround the planetarium. An alternative approach in locating the movie’s influence is to put it into a wider flow of cultural products. If we look at the European cultural debate of the 1950s, and even later, it is astonishing how important the trope of America has been. Dean’s attributes – as portrayed in its purest form in Rebel without a Cause – were often identified as another clear example of the further Americanization of Europe.
In the 20th century, America played a key role in European cultural criticism and in its theoretical mapping of art, popular culture, and modernity. Exemplifying the wider American cultural industry, Hollywood embodied ever since the 1920s the “America – as – threat” paradigm.
In many European countries, intellectuals, politicians, and cultural critics from different ideological origins were unanimous in their negative consensus around the influence of American mass culture. This debate was intensified after the Second World War and into the 1950s, when the reconstruction of Europe was accompanied by an increasing flow of U. S movies and other cultural symbols.
However, in the postwar cultural debate on Americanization, some dissenting voices were raised. The latter strongly denounced the pejorative and ideologically inflected character of the traditional elitist views upon the American popular culture, while for many young working class people and critics, American culture represented a “force of liberation against the grey critics of (British) cultural life.”
Writing about the postwar cultural development of Italy, David Forgacs argued that “from the mid – 1950s rock ‘n’ roll music……..and films like rebel Without a cause…helped give shape to a new model of youth autonomy and rebellion.” Among young people cultural symbols of Americanism were increasingly associated with modernity and a loosening of traditional authority, hence underlining its potential for models of resistance.
From this perspective, it remains interesting that throughout Western Europe, this type of controversial material from the U.S was able to whip up a vivid debate. Not only on American social and moral issues, but also on local forms – in this case – delinquency, juvenile rebellion, and so on.
Although official censors, religious classifiers and conservative parts of the press tried to resolve the ambiguity or to flatten out the critical engagement in ray’s movie, one is struck by the persistence of counter voices in the public debate – defending Rebel Without a Cause in its mood and analysis of youth’s essential rebellion and identity crisis.
It also remains astonishing how mainly European filmmakers later claimed to be influenced by this type of American movie, Rebel Without a Cause in particular. Especially in France where anti – American feelings have been so high on the cultural and political agenda – sadly, up till today – it is hard to underestimate the importance of Ray’s movie. Dean’s performance in this case can still be admired through French performance such as Johnny Halliday.
Teen films
Teen films were nothing new when they enjoyed a renaissance in the 1980s. During the 1930s, Hollywood had promoted teenage stars like Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney. Aware of the Americans’ concern with juvenile delinquency during the 1950s, Hollywood produced a number of youth films, all of which had sexual under – or overtones. At one end of the spectrum was Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
Starring Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo as discontented middle – class suburban teenagers, the film clearly implicated the youths’ repressed sexuality in their rebelliousness. At other end the youths’ repressed sexuality in their rebelliousness. At the other end of the spectrum were pseudo exposes.
By the early 1980s, sexuality intimacy had become a convectional narrative for viewers that two characters had cemented their relationship. Either they were a couple and they were in love, or they were intensely attracted to one another physically, which could lead to either love or disaster, depending on the story.
The correlation of nudity and sex with frankness and cinematic realism that had once been associated with European films and independent American films in the 1950s and 1960s had become a Hollywood convention in PG 13 or R rated films by the end of the 1980s.
Throughout the 1980s, films consistently revealed a plurality of sexual attitudes and quite a bit of naked (especially female) flesh. Nudity or non marital sex featured in films ranging from comedies to the other genres. The substantial Americans who saw these films revealed that a lot of Americans had or were comfortable with a liberal attitude toward representations of nudity and sex, even the sexual antics of teens.
While Hollywood films could arguably be said to reflect the liberalization of attitudes towards sex in clear when a specific form of non normative sex – adultery – is an element of a film’s narrative. While majorities Americans have never expressed approval for adultery, they have not shied away from films with adulterous main characters. In conclusion, the time between 1967 and 1982 a generation of filmmakers came to the fore in America.
This generation gained prominence in this town as it was regarded as the new generation in the American film industry. The classic example was the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. The introduction of this move led to a new way of producing and marketing the Hollywood movies.
Historically speaking, the advent of television and the court decisions which led to the end of studios’ which were near monopoly control, Hollywood studios had to find a new way of producing films and maintain the kind of profits that they had been used to.
Some of the new advances which were made during this time included technical advances such as Cinemascope and the famous stereo sound among others. This was done with the intention of ensuring that the audiences did not dwindle from their productions. Essentially, the 1950s and 1960s film production had a major characteristic which was musicals, historical epics among others.
Reference List
Friedman, LD 2000, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, illustrated edn, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
King, G 2002, New Hollywood cinema:an introduction, illustrated edn, I.B.Tauris, New York.
Marcus, AS 2010, Teaching history with film:strategies for secondary social studies, illustrated edn, Taylor & Francis, New York.
Monaco, P 2010, A history of American movies:a film-by-film look at the art, craft, and business of cinema, illustrated edn, Scarecrow Press, New York.
Pennington, JW 2007, The history of sex in American film, illustrated edn, Greenwood Publishing Group, London.