Changes of Hollywood as a Sign of Culture Changes

Introduction

Since the early 20 century, Hollywood has undergone significant changes under the push of commercialism. This essay analyse how Hollywood effect modern American culture, mostly in the aspects of commercialism and the content of film-making.

Commercialism market: the fall-down of Hollywood

As film producer Robert Evans said in an interview (2003): ‘Filmmakers are no longer shooting those unexpected movies, they are too worried that they will pay the high price.’ Evans thought films like ‘The Godfather’ (1972) would not appeared again which was a vitriol metaphor to capitalism in American government. The former CEO of Paramount Pictures, David Kirkpatrick held the same opinion:’ Audiences only need to watch light-heated movies. Need not be complicated, need not be profound.’ What causes the situation? It is because the changes happened in how Hollywood producing process.

Today’s Hollywood faces commercial production – places advertisement in movies (Medved, 1992) and the conversion of goods that point clothing, props and music into agreement, which are attractive to producers as even if the film is not successful, losses are still up to the manufactures. It is estimated that the total amount of product advertisements placed in films reaches $ 1.2 billion each year. For instance, the movie ‘Day another day’ (2002) increased revenues of $ 120 million to 160 million due to the insertion of more than 20 advertisements. The movie industry is, above all, an industry. It changes to preserve or increase profitability, not to produce better entertainment or art. (Hillier, 1993)

It is kind of boring we talk about the big companies of Hollywood instead of film or movies, but it is the most essential part for a better understanding of Hollywood. From 1994 to 1995, there were quite a few significant merging of the “studio system” in Hollywood: The Seagram buyout of MCA-Universal, Time Warner’s purchase of the massive Turner Broadcasting System, and Disney’s $19 billion deal of merger of ABC and its parent conglomerate, Capital Cities. All of those confirmed “a fundamental shift in the balance of power in Hollywood”, and “a third revolution in the relationship between industry forces” (Schatz, 2008:13).

Let us look at a brief history of the evolution of the “studio system”. The “studio system” in the classical era (1920s – 1940s) referred to a factory-based model of film production as well as the vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition. The classical Hollywood studio system evolved into a “mature oligopoly” which was controlled by a cartel of companies by 1930s. The Big Five was MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO. They not only produced and distributed films, but also operated their own theatre chains. By mid-1950s, Desilu purchased RKO and created “telefilm” production — a new profitable model. Since the late 1960s, the studio-controlled mode of production was challenged by a “director-driven, youth-oriented, art-cinema” movement that openly resisted the classical Hollywood narrative or its genre traditions (Schatz, 2008:14-19). From 1980 to 1990, the cost of filmmaking and marketing was doubled or even tripled, and the domestic revenues of those studios were also doubled. In this period, the emerging oversea market began to show its importance, and top filmmaking talent and leading agencies kept a significant challenge to studio hegemony. In the 1990s we saw the big merging as mentioned above, and an effort to reconcile “Two Hollywood” – the independents and the big companies. In the new millennium there came into a new equilibrium that, the overall media operations generated record profits, and the media giants enjoyed collective domination over the entertainment market. Billion-dollar returns became routine and financial institutions began to play a role in Hollywood. However, the media giants began to face the challenge from new digital powers such as Google, in terms of media distribution and digital delivery (Schatz, 2008:19-37).

If looking at Hollywood in terms of financing and production, distribution and marketing, we can find Hollywood is no more than an industry, composed by a few large or medium companies. Wasco (2008:43-61) analyses the whole process of financing and production of a “typical film” in Hollywood, telling a story of how a Hollywood film commodity is created. Drake (2008:63-82) analysed the process of distribution and marketing of the contemporary Hollywood film industry. Both describe Hollywood as a whole film industry, or a “creative industry”. The whole process of the industrialization of American movies in the twentieth century, is also a process of American economy goes in a way into a complete commercialism and commoditism, in which Hollywood is definitely a sign of the change into the culture of commercialism. In turn, the pattern of Hollywood production, as well as the huge profit Hollywood has made and then transferred into new capital, the entertainment way Hollywood has created by home video, cable, home digital movies has promoted the cultural changes in personal life in every aspect.

‘Attraction’ versus ‘narration’

After commercialization, it can hardly for Hollywood to balance attraction and good content. Maltby (2003:6) neither takes Hollywood cinema as a regular form of art. Instead, he thinks it is more accurately to call moviemaking as a marriage between art and business (Maltby, 2003:7). Even the film aesthetics of Hollywood is turning “commercial”. Taking Titanic (1997) as an example. The director James Cameron proved his ability to provoke emotions of different groups of audience and made a commercial success record with a gross of more than $1 billion. Although Titanic gained the huge success in film history, Hollywood movies are determined by their existence as commercial commodities. (Maltby 2003:15)

King (2013:114-127) describes Hollywood movies “spectacular”, especially blockbuster. Spectacular movie blockbuster is implemented thorough visual strategies, and issue of narrative. The role of narrative structure in Hollywood style is defined by King (2013:115) as “precipitate”. Rather than a death or a fading of narrative, it still matters to make a commercial success of a Hollywood blockbuster. In my understanding, it is like to embed “creativity” into the whole production of a “spectacular” to make as much as possible profit. Producers choose genre, styles, episodic, but carefully buy in factors of creative art to secure the financial success of Hollywood big movies.

The globalization of Hollywood

‘Going Hollywood’ no longer means packing up and moving to Los Angeles, nor does it mean adopting a certain disaffected personal department, the glasses and espadrilles and deconstructed jacks that serves as mock signifiers for a high status with the production industry (Olson,2000). The cake of distribution of videos has been taken a large part by new digital giants such as Google. Even though the power relationship can be re-assigned, the structure of Hollywood which was controlled by a few giants since the early twentieth century cannot be easily changed. Moreover, similarities between new technologies and old technologies are easy to find. “Early digital movies shared the same limitations of storage as nineteenth-century pre-cinema devices (Manovich, 2001:316)”. The video software, such as Flash or QuickTime, shares a number of features with the earliest animated pictures. For example, they both reduce the image sizes, both with a shorter duration, and they are both shown in a loop (Dulac and Gaudreault, 2006:242). It is interesting to see history is repeating itself as well as keeps changing itself.

Also, today Hollywood is undergoing further changes with the process of globalization. The globalization of Hollywood movies is selling American ideologies into the worldwide, and at the same time making much more profits for the producers (Cowen, 2014:366). For example, the high-grossing films of super-hero series, such as ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (2019), earned much more international releases of $1.939 billion than its domestic releases of $0.858 billion. The increased importance of the international marketplace is also affecting casting. In the recent years, more Chinese, Korean or Australian actors are coming to Hollywood films, all because the markets are important. This change in turn influences the topic and discourse of Hollywood movies and sequentially influences the culture. However, in the process of globalization, the essence of Hollywood cinema as an industry has not been changed, and it is just expanding and expanding itself which is promoted by the dynamic of capitalism (Cowen, 2014:373).

Racism in Hollywood

Racism in America can be demonstrated as the distribution of political views, especially reflected as Chinese factors in any Hollywood movie.

On the one hand, Hollywood treats Chinese elements as the existence of dirty and ugly, Chinatown is the most typical one which is always recognised as a ‘slum’, harsh and disgusting. Hollywood forms China as a country that never can stand on the world stage.

On the other hand, with the expansion of Chinese market occurred in American, film makers are not willing to give up those profits. They have to make a compromise to hire Chinese actors. However, those characters are either counting for litter or playing like a joke.

Through American movies, it brings American main stream political views into other countries by stepping down other countries’ culture to demonstrate it stands at the top of the world.

Conclusion

If the changes of Hollywood can be taken as a sign of cultural change, then the major role Hollywood has played, is its commodity nature that promotes commercialism both in America and globally. We have gone through the conflicts of Hollywood movies in its role as an “attraction” and the role of “narrative” in Hollywood movies, its role and the challenges in a digital and globalization era as well as racism in contents. All the points have explained its nature of commodity and we can see Hollywood is essentially an industry, and creativity is merely like spice added on dishes, nothing more significant.

References:

1. Cowen, Tyler. (2014). “Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care”. In Ross, Steven Joseph (Ed.) Movies and American society. Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons. 366-381.
2. Drake, Philip. (2008) “Distribution and Marketing in Contemporary Hollywood”. In McDonald, Paul and Wasko, Janet. The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Blackwell Pub. 63-82
3. Dulac, N., and Gaudreault, A. (2006). Circularity and Repetition at the Heart of the Attraction: Optical Toys and the Emergence of a New Cultural Series. In Strauven W. (Ed.), The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (pp. 227-244). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt46n09s.17
4. King, Geoff. (2013). “Spectacle, narrative, and the spectacular Hollywood blockbuster”, from Movie blockbusters Chapter 6 by Stringer, Julian. Taylor and Francis. pp.114-127.
5. Maltby, Richard. (2003). Chapter 1 “Taking Hollywood seriously”. Hollywood cinema. 2nd ed. Blackwell Pub. 0-631-21614-6. pp.5-32.
6. Manovich, Lev (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT
7. McDonald, Paul and Wasko, Janet, (2008). The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Blackwell Pub
8. McDonald, Paul. (2013). Hollywood stardom. Wiley-Blackwell
9. Ross, Steven Joseph Ed. (2014). Movies and American society. Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons
10. Schatz, Tom. (2008) “The Studio System and Conglomerate Hollywood”. In McDonald, Paul and Wasko, Janet. The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Blackwell Pub. 13-42
11. Strauven, W., (2006). The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
12. Wasco, Janet. (2008) “Financing and Production: Creating the Hollywood Film Commodity”. In McDonald, Paul and Wasko, Janet. The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Blackwell Pub. 43-62