while his black butler brings him a mint julep. A viewer might be interested in learning the butler’s reaction to the tycoon’s statement. However, if the camera does not keep the butler in focus, or never cuts to show the butler’s reaction, then it becomes impossible to see what his reaction might be. In helping to keep things understandable, Hollywood’s invisible style subtly eliminates complexity, and in this example, implicitly makes the white tycoon more important than his butler.
All of the formal aspects of cinema under the classical Hollywood style work to keep the story clear and characters simple and understandable. Lighting, color, camera position, and other aspects of mise‐en‐scène consistently help the audience remain engaged with the story. The most important details are the ones most prominently lit, kept in focus, and framed in close‐up shots. Hollywood films also employ various rules of continuity editing, a system of editing in which each shot follows easily and logically from the one before. If a person looks over at something, the next shot is of that something; if a person walks out of a room through a door, the next shot is of that same person coming through the door into a new room. Sound design in Hollywood films also keeps audiences aware of the story’s key points, often by making the main characters’ dialog louder than the noise of the crowd around them. And the Hollywood film score is there to tell an audience exactly how they are supposed to feel about any given scene.
Style is thus subordinated to story in classical Hollywood style. The way Hollywood films structure their stories is referred to as (classical) Hollywood narrative form. Hollywood stories usually have a linear narrative – they have a beginning, middle, and an end, and story events follow one another chronologically. (Flashbacks are an exception to this format, but they are always clearly marked – often with a shimmering dissolve – so as not to confuse the viewer.) Hollywood narrative form usually centers on a singular character or protagonist, commonly referred to as the hero. Sometimes the protagonist might be a family or a small group of people. The narrative is driven by carefully and clearly laying out the goals and desires of the protagonist – the desire to get home in The Wizard of Oz (1939) or to kill the shark in Jaws (1975). Obstacles to this desire are created, usually by a villainous force or person, called the antagonist (the wicked witch, the shark). Hollywood narrative also usually pairs the protagonist with a love interest, who either accompanies the main character in reaching the goal, or functions as the protagonist’s goal.
The differences between heroes and villains in Hollywood film are obvious and simplified. Sometimes, as in old‐fashioned Westerns, the good guys even wear white hats while the villains wear black. Even when dealing with complex social issues, Hollywood usually reduces them to matters of personal character: in Hollywood films there are rarely corrupt institutions, merely corrupt people. In seeking to make conflicts as basic and uncomplicated as possible, the antagonist is often “pure evil” and not the bearer of his or her own legitimate world view. Protagonists and antagonists are not the only ones simplified in a Hollywood film, as other roles are also represented by quickly understood stock characters such as the love interest, the best friend, or the comic relief. Such “instant characterization” often draws upon pre‐existing social and cultural stereotypes. Some may seem benign, like villains wearing black. Others, like repeatedly casting Asians as mysterious mobsters, or Hispanics as gang members, can have vast effects on how those identified as Asian or Hispanic are treated outside the movie house.
In the linear design of Hollywood narrative form, each complication in the attempt to reach the protagonist’s goal leads to yet another complication. These twists and turns escalate toward the climax, the most intense point of conflict, wherein the antagonist is defeated by the protagonist. In the final moments of the film, all the complications are resolved, and all questions that had been posed during the film are answered. This is known as closure. Hollywood’s use of the happy ending, a specific form of closure, ties up all of the story’s loose ends and frequently includes the protagonist and the love interest uniting as a romantic/sexual couple. Even when the couple is not together at the end of the film (as in Titanic [1997]), the narrative is designed to make that separation acceptable to the audience. In Titanic, the ending may be sad, but the mystery of the diamond necklace has been resolved, and the film suggests that Jack and Rose will reunite in heaven. Closure is a potent narrative tool in managing ideological conflict, because closure makes it seem as if all problems have been solved. Any actual ideological issues or social strife that may have been raised by a film are allegedly resolved by narrative closure, and thus there is no longer any need for spectators to think about them. Closure in Hollywood film tends to reaffirm the status quo of American society.
Since the ideological status quo of American society is white patriarchal capitalism, it should come as no surprise that most Hollywood films (throughout its history and still today) encode white patriarchal capitalism as central and desirable via both Hollywood narrative form and the invisible style. First, the protagonist of most Hollywood films is constructed as a straight white male seeking wealth or power. He emerges victorious at the end of the film, proving his inherent superiority over those who challenged him. In consistently drawing audience attention to and celebrating his acts, the invisible style reinforces his “natural” abilities while not allowing the audience to think about the often far‐fetched qualities of those heroics. Since the white male commands the most narrative attention, the (usually white) female love interest is relegated to a minor or supporting part. Whereas the male is defined by his actions, job, and/or principles, the heroine is defined chiefly by her beauty and/or sex appeal. Their romance affirms patriarchal heterosexuality as well as the desirability of same‐race coupling. If homosexuals or people of color appear in the film at all, they might be associated with the villains or relegated to smaller supporting parts, in effect supporting the dominance of the white male hero and his female love interest.
Imagine any of the “Indiana Jones” movies as typical of this formula. Our hero or protagonist, Professor Jones, is a straight white man of charm, wit, intelligence, and social standing. He is opposed by evil male super‐criminals or antagonists who are out to destroy or dominate the world. Frequently the villain is from another country or is non‐white: in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Professor Jones must first battle double‐crossing Asian gangsters and then face off against a corrupt cult of Indians who enslave children and practice human sacrifice. Good and evil are thus reduced to simplified and racialized stereotypes: white male hero versus villains of color. In this particular film, Professor Jones is accompanied on his adventures by a small Asian boy who idolizes him, and a dizzy blonde heroine whose screaming distress is meant to be a running gag throughout the film. The film proceeds in a linear manner through a series of exciting twists and turns (action‐filled set pieces) until the climax, when Jones saves the woman and the child, destroys the Indian temple, and restores harmony to the land. The closure of the film sets up a symbolic nuclear family, with white man as heroic patriarch, woman as helpmate and romantic/sexual object, and the Third World quite literally represented as a child under their protection. Among the film’s basic ideological messages are that straight white men can do anything, that women are hysterical nuisances, and that non‐white people are either evil or childlike.
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the white male hero protects both his white love interest and Third World children from the villainy of an evil Asian cult. In this still, he is figured as a symbolic father of all the other characters.Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,
copyright © 1984, Paramount.
But haven’t Hollywood representations of women and minorities changed over the years? Haven’t the formulas been adapted to be less sexist and racist? Yes and no. There are now Hollywood films made in which the hero is not white, not male, or
