Hollywood vs. Independent Film
Hollywood film refers to movies made and released by a handful of filmmaking companies located in and around Hollywood, California. The names of most of these companies – Universal, MGM, 20th Century‐Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, etc. – have been recognized as cinematic brand names around the world since the 1920s. These companies have produced and distributed tens of thousands of films, films that have found long‐term success at the box office, and often make it seem (especially in other countries) that Hollywood film is American film. Hollywood’s global predominance obscures its historical development, and in effect works to naturalize the structure and style of its films. This is itself another example of ideology working to erase the socially constructed nature of a specific cultural institution: Hollywood gains strength and power by making its form and practice seem to be basic common sense. This tends to hide the fact that Hollywood form and practice developed over time in response to specific socio‐political factors, and it also works to erase awareness that there are other ways of making (and understanding) film as a cultural artifact.
Hollywood films so dominate American theaters (as well as cable programming schedules and streaming services) that US citizens have relatively little access to other types of films – films often made by minority filmmakers that tell stories and express viewpoints and that are ignored or underexplored in Hollywood movies. These non‐Hollywood films are sometimes broadly referred to as independent films. For example, avant‐garde or experimental films explore the multiple formal possibilities of cinema (not just storytelling), and they are often tied to specific movements in the other arts, such as Surrealism. Documentaries are films that use actual events as their raw material – they are usually made without actors or fictional stories, and attempt to convey these events as realistically as possible. (For many of the groups discussed in this book, documentary films were one of the first ways that minority filmmakers could and did challenge Hollywood stereotypes and misrepresentations.) Americans classify films made outside the United States as foreign films. They can be fictional films that look more or less like Hollywood films, or they can be avant‐garde or documentary films. Finally, the term “independent film” also describes fictional feature films that are made in America, but outside the usual Hollywood channels. Broadly speaking, independent, foreign, avant‐garde, and documentary films tend to represent a broader spectrum of humanity than do Hollywood films, which tend to be made and sold as merely “entertainment.”
Sometimes, to audiences weaned solely on Hollywood films, these other types of films can seem weird, boring, or badly made. If avant‐garde films (for example) were trying to play by the rules of Hollywood film, such judgments might have merit, but these films have consciously decided to use other rules. These types of films make formal choices (in mise‐en‐scène, montage, sound, and narrative design) that often differ vastly from those used in Hollywood films. Most of these films are also produced in different ways than are Hollywood films – they can be funded and filmed by a collective, for example, or by one individual working on his or her own project over a number of years. Unlike Hollywood filmmaking, sometimes these types of films are even made without the intention of turning a profit. Avant‐garde and experimental films usually only play at museums, or in film classes at universities. Documentaries might play on television or at film festivals, or occasionally be screened at independent or art‐house theaters, theaters usually located in urban areas that specialize in off‐beat, non‐Hollywood film fare. Currently, specialized streaming services or websites are good resources for finding such work online.
Experimental films, documentaries, and independent fictional films are an important part of American film history and culture, even though they are quite frequently a lesser‐known part. As might be expected, these types of films often differ from Hollywood films in the ways that they depict issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability (as well as a host of other topics that are often considered taboo by Hollywood filmmakers). However, while one may in practice contrast fictional Hollywood film with fictional independent film, the distinction between these two terms is not always so clear cut. Frequently there are similarities and connections between independent films and Hollywood. Sometimes successful independent filmmakers go on to sign deals with the major Hollywood companies, and many Hollywood employees dabble in independent filmmaking. A popular independent film such as Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1991) may seem somewhat different from most Hollywood films, but it is much closer to a Hollywood film (in both subject matter and style) than most experimental films. By the start of the twenty‐first century, the line between independent and Hollywood film became even more blurred, with most of the major Hollywood film companies also releasing smaller “independent” films under labels like Focus Features (a division of Universal) or Fox Searchlight.
For the purposes of this book, Hollywood and independent film practice might best be understood as the end points of a continuum of American fictional film production, and not as an either/or binary. One of the best ways to distinguish between independent and Hollywood films is to see where the film is playing. If it is playing on 3,000 screens in America at once, at every multiplex across the nation, it is probably a Hollywood film. If it is playing at one theater in selected large cities, it is probably an independent film. Because Hollywood films reach far wider audiences than do most independent films (much less avant‐garde films or documentaries), it might be said that they have a greater ideological impact on American culture (and arguably, the world). And although Hollywood film is not as popular a medium as it once was (having been surpassed by television and even now competing with video games and the Internet), Hollywood film remains a very powerful global influence. Indeed, most of the stylistic choices developed by the Hollywood studios during the first half of the twentieth century have strongly influenced the “rules” of how TV shows and computer games make meaning. As we hope to show, many of Hollywood’s representational traditions have also carried over from its classical period to the present. The rest of this chapter examines how the style, business, and history of Hollywood have structured and continue to structure cinematic meaning, specifically the various meanings of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.
The Style of Hollywood Cinema
Over the first few decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood filmmakers developed a set of formal and stylistic conventions that came to be known as the classical Hollywood style. (Recall that film form refers to specific cinematic elements such as mise‐en‐scène and editing; the term style refers to a specific way in which those formal elements are arranged.) Classical Hollywood style is not rigid and absolute – slight variations can be found in countless Hollywood films – but this way of cinematically telling stories is basically the same today as it was in the 1930s. And because Hollywood’s business practices have dominated both American and global cinema, classical Hollywood style is often considered the standard or “correct” way to make fictional films.
The main objective of classical Hollywood style is to “spoon feed” story information to the spectator, thus keeping everything clearly understood by the audience. Hollywood filmmakers believe that that if some plot point or stylistic maneuver is too different or challenging, the audience will become disoriented, dislike the movie, tell their friends not to see it, or even demand their money back. Classical Hollywood style is sometimes referred to as the invisible style, because it does not call attention to itself as even being a style. It permits the viewer to stay emotionally enmeshed in a film’s story and characters, instead of being distracted by obvious formal devices (or thinking too much about the ideological meanings of the text). Indeed, when classical Hollywood style is working at its best, audiences are barely aware that any formal choices are being made at all: most untrained spectators don’t consciously notice the lighting of the sets or the edits between shots. Obscuring the formal decisions not only keeps the viewer centered rather unthinkingly on following the story, but also limits the viewer’s choice in what she or he is meant to find important. Say,
