Panther (2018), and Captain Marvel (2019) have been understood by filmmakers and audiences alike as real game changers on that front. And Hollywood has always made a type of film that features female protagonists, the so‐called woman’s film or chick flick (discussed more fully in later chapters), but these stories usually emphasize the female character’s desire for a man, and thus reinforce patriarchy in their own way. It is true that black and Hispanic actors in Hollywood have made gains in the last few decades and now regularly play the hero part in a handful of movies every year. But even then, these are hegemonic negotiations within the dominant white patriarchal ideology and not inversions of it: most African American protagonists are still male, and most female protagonists are still white. The very few homosexual protagonists in recent Hollywood film are usually male and white. While the real world is comprised of people of all different races, genders, classes, sexualities, and physical abilities, the world depicted in Hollywood film usually posits straight white men as central and heroic, and everyone else as peripheral (or even non‐existent).
The drive for simplicity and obviousness in the classical Hollywood style has other implications for Hollywood narrative form. Not only are Hollywood storylines excessively linear, using simplified stock characters engaged in clear‐cut struggles ending in closure, but Hollywood often consciously reuses popular (that is, already understood) storylines and characters. The proliferation of remakes and sequels guarantees that most audiences are already familiar with many main characters and basic narrative situations. The Saw and Paranormal Activity film franchises, for example, rely on audience knowledge not only of the previous films in the series, but also of the specific formal elements that go into making a scary movie. Many Hollywood films are thus identifiable by their genre, a term that this book uses to refer to a specific type of fictional Hollywood film such as the horror film, the Western, the war movie, the musical, or the gangster film. As will be explored in future chapters, racial and ethnic markers are activated within genres in unique and interesting ways. For example, Americans of Italian descent (and more recently Americans of African heritage) have been closely tied to the gangster film, while the representation of Native Americans in Hollywood film is almost exclusively tied to the Western.
A genre can be identified by its surface structure or iconography – what the genre looks and sounds like. (The iconography of the horror film might include monsters and mad scientists, blood and gore, dark woods at night, screams, and so forth.) Genres can also be defined by their deeper ideological concerns, sometimes referred to as their thematic myth. Genres are popular with audiences when these thematic myths in some way relate to current social concerns, and as such, genres function as a sort of feedback loop between filmgoers and filmmakers. Certain genres make money and flourish when their specific thematic myth correlates to something the public is interested in or wants (or needs) to see dramatized. Other genres “die” when their thematic myths are no longer thought valid within the ever‐changing spheres of history and culture. For example, the musical was once a staple of Hollywood filmmaking, but it grew generally unpopular after the 1960s. Today, many audiences reject the classical genre’s convention of characters spontaneously breaking into song and dance, and our cynical age sees their simple thematic messages of love and harmony as outmoded. Contemporary musicals that are successful tend to be either animated films for kids (like Frozen [2013] or Trolls [2016]) or live‐action Broadway adaptations that explore darker thematic material (such as Chicago [2002] or Les Misérables [2012]).
Thus, the popularity (or unpopularity) of certain genres can tell the film historian interesting things about the culture that produced them. Genre films reflect social concerns, but only rarely do they challenge the underlying ideological biases of Hollywood narrative form itself. (Most genre films, being Hollywood films, still feature straight white able‐bodied male protagonists, while women and people of color are relegated to peripheral roles.) Rather, popular Hollywood genres often attempt to shore up the dominant ideology by repeating over and over again certain types of stories that seem to resolve social tensions. For example, the horror film’s emphasis on the threat posed to “normality” by the monstrous reinforces social ideas about what is considered normal. Not surprisingly, in classical Hollywood horror films, “normality” is conventionally represented by middle‐to‐upper‐class, white, heterosexual, and able‐bodied couples and patriarchal institutions. Monsters and villains, on the other hand, are often coded as non‐white, non‐patriarchal, non‐capitalist, and/or differently abled.
The Business of Hollywood
By examining the structure of Hollywood filmmaking, and exploring when and why certain films were popular with American audiences, one can gain insight into the changing ideological currents of twentieth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century America. Yet one must also take into consideration the specific economic and industrial conditions that determine how Hollywood produces its films. Indeed, Hollywood must be understood not just as a set of formal and stylistic structures, but also as an industry that produces certain types of fictional films for profit. As such, Hollywood is an excellent example of capitalism at work. Hollywood companies make and sell films that they think people want to see (that is, films that in some way reflect the dominant ideology), and Hollywood’s business practices use every tool at their disposal to lessen competition, increase buyer demand, and reduce the cost of production. Though Hollywood films are sometimes discussed as “art” by critics and some filmmakers, a Hollywood film’s merit is chiefly judged by its box office revenues. Even when awards are given for artistic achievement, these too are drawn into a film’s economic evaluation – winning a Best Picture Oscar will usually boost a film’s profits. (There are exceptions: Best Picture Winners The Hurt Locker [2008] and Moonlight [2016] are among the least seen Oscar‐winners, ostensibly because of their subject matter.)
Since the earliest days of cinema, film as an industry has been divided into three main components: production, distribution, and exhibition. Production involves the actual making of a film: the financing, writing, shooting, editing, etc. Distribution refers to the shipping of copies (or prints and now digital files) of the finished film to various theaters (or more recently, to digital streaming systems). The theaters where the film is actually projected to audiences make up the third arm, or exhibition. Cable television sales, Blu‐ray purchases, access via Netflix, etc. also comprise film exhibition. Hollywood producers have always been highly dependent upon the distribution and exhibition arms of the business: no matter how many films you make, or how high‐quality they are, if no one ships them or shows them, then they cannot make any money. Hollywood companies have thus consistently worked to maintain close ties with distribution networks and theaters. One method of doing this is called vertical integration, in which one parent company oversees the business of all three branches. This was the strategy adopted by the major studios in the first half of the twentieth century, and it helped to ensure that American theaters were almost exclusively dominated by Hollywood film during that period.
Another strategy that helped Hollywood come to dominate the US film industry was the creation of an oligopoly, a state of business affairs in which a few companies control an entire industry. (An oligopoly is thus very similar to a monopoly, wherein one company controls an entire industry.) In an oligopoly, several large companies agree to work together, keeping potential competitors weak or driving them out of business altogether. In the case of film in America, the Hollywood oligopolies worked throughout the twentieth century, and continue to work, to keep foreign and independent American films marginalized. This has had a specific effect on minority filmmakers. Excluded from the Hollywood studios, independent films made by non‐white, non‐patriarchal, and/or non‐capitalist people often had trouble being distributed and exhibited. Furthermore, Hollywood’s control of production, distribution, and exhibition has not been limited to the United States alone. Motion pictures have been one of America’s leading exports for at least a century, and Hollywood maximizes its profits by distributing its films globally. Since Hollywood films usually make back their
