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Hollywood Movies, Society, and Political Criticism
| Article
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18596 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1991 |
7,502 Words |
| Author
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Stephen P. Powers, David Rothman, and Stanley Rothman
Stephen P. Powers is a research assistant at the Center for
the Study of Social and Political Change. David Rothman is a
Ph.D. candidate in English at New York University. Stanley
Rothman is the director of the Center for the Study of Social
and Political Change and Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of
Government, Smith College. |
This essay has two closely related purposes. The first is to evaluate approaches to understanding the relations between American society and Hollywood movies and to argue in favor of a broadly sociological theory. The second is to examine some of the most significant changes in the representations of society set out in major Hollywood movies since World War II. The particular issues include depictions of sex and marriage, of women and racial minorities, and of traditional authority figures in the society (such as military officers). We also discuss the changing social and political attitudes of the Hollywood elite itself, suggesting some connections to change in film content over this period.
The arguments in which critics dispute political meaning of Hollywood movies are highly tendentious. We could perhaps best phrase the central questions as: What is the relation between Hollywood and its audience? And what are the political implications of that relation? The critical stakes in this debate are quite high. They include not only the definition of what movies mean but also the validation of social paradigms. Many who propose answers to these questions would not even agree, for example, on a definition of politics. In general, however, there have been three approaches to the problems involved. We could call these approaches pragmatic, theoretical, and sociological.
There is by now a long tradition of analyzing the Hollywood film industry and its individual products in terms of market forces. These pragmatic critics argue that the bottom line is the most important factor in Hollywood and determines virtually every aspect of film production and meaning: Movies inevitably reflect the social and political consciousness of the public, because Hollywood is big business and must cater to that public to turn a profit. Movie content thus becomes an extremely precise measure of mass ideology, because the product in this case is entertainment, which is made of symbols.
In line with this set of assumptions, many argue that Hollywood's image of America has turned a conservative corner in the last decade, in order to keep in step with Ronald Reagan's successful political style. The numerous critics who feel this way point out that Hollywood movies now often pander to resurgent conservative or even jingoistic trends in America. For example, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner write in Camera Politica:
Our study focuses on the relationship between Hollywood film and American society from 1967 to the mid-eighties, a period characterized by a major swing in
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