America on Film

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Sean Griffin. America on Film

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Guide

Pages

AMERICA ON FILM. REPRESENTING RACE, CLASS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY AT THE MOVIES

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

ABOUT THE COMPANION WEBSITE

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FILM FORM AND REPRESENTATION

Film Form

American Ideologies: Discrimination and Resistance

Culture and Cultural Studies

Case Study: Two Lion Kings (1994 and 2019)

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Chapter 2 THE STRUCTURE AND HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKING

Hollywood vs. Independent Film

The Style of Hollywood Cinema

The Business of Hollywood

The History of Hollywood: The Movies Begin

The Classical Hollywood Cinema

World War II and Postwar Film

“New” Hollywood and the Blockbuster Mentality

Box: A Brief History of Television in the United States

21st‐Century Convergence Culture

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Part II. RACE AND ETHNICITY AND AMERICAN FILM. INTRODUCTION TO PART II: What is Race?

Chapter 3 THE CONCEPT OF WHITENESS AND AMERICAN FILM

Seeing White

Bleaching the Green: The Irish in American Cinema

Looking for Respect: Italians in American Cinema

A Special Case: Jews and Hollywood

Case Study: The Jazz Singer (1927)

Veiled and Reviled: Arabs on Film in America

Conclusion: Whiteness and American Film Today

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 4 AFRICAN AMERICANS AND AMERICAN FILM

African Americans in Early Film

Blacks in Classical Hollywood Cinema

World War II and the Postwar Social Problem Film

The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation Filmmaking

Box: Blacks on TV

Hollywood in the 1980s and the Arrival of Spike Lee

Black Independent vs. “Neo‐Blaxploitation” Filmmaking in the 1990s

African Americans and the Oscars

Case Study BlacKkKlansman (2018)

The Twenty‐first Century: Smaller Films, Bigger Profits?

Conclusion

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 5 NATIVE AMERICANS AND AMERICAN FILM

The American “Indian” Before Film

Ethnographic Films and the Rise of the Hollywood Western

The Evolving Western

A Kinder, Gentler America?

Case Study: Smoke Signals (1998)

Conclusion: Twenty‐first Century Indians?

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 6 ASIAN AMERICANS AND AMERICAN FILM

Silent Film and Asian Images

Asians in Classical Hollywood Cinema

World War II and After: War Films, Miscegenation Melodramas, Kung Fu, and the Start of Asian American Independent Filmmaking

Towards a Global Hollywood: Asian American Actors and Filmmakers of the Last Thirty Years

Case Study: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Conclusion

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 7 LATINOS AND AMERICAN FILM

The Greaser and the Latin Lover: Alternating Stereotypes

World War II and After: The Good Neighbor Policy

The 1950s to the 1970s: Back to Business as Usual?

Expanding Opportunities in the 1980s and 1990s

My Family/Mi Familia (1995)

Latino Film in the 21st Century

Conclusion: Which Way Forward?

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Part III. CLASS AND AMERICAN FILM. INTRODUCTION TO PART III: What is Class?

Chapter 8 CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD CINEMA AND CLASS

Setting the Stage: The Industrial Revolution

Early Cinema: The Rise of the Horatio Alger Myth

Hollywood and Unionization

Class in the Classical Hollywood Cinema

Case Study: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Conclusion: Recloaking Class Consciousness

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 9 CINEMATIC CLASS STRUGGLE AFTER THE DEPRESSION

From World War II to the Red Scare

From Opulence to Counterculture

Box: Class on Television

New Hollywood and the Resurrection of the Horatio Alger Myth

Corporate Hollywood and Labor in the 21st Century

Case Study: The Florida Project (2017)

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Part IV. GENDER AND AMERICAN FILM. INTRODUCTION TO PART IV: What is Gender?

Chapter 10 WOMEN IN CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKING

Images of Women in Early Cinema

Early Female Filmmakers

Images of Women in 1930s Classical Hollywood

World War II and After

Case Study: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 11 EXPLORING THE VISUAL PARAMETERS OF WOMEN IN FILM

Ways of Seeing

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

Case Study: Gilda (1946)

Conclusion: Complicating Mulvey’s Arguments

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 12 MASCULINITY IN CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKING

Masculinity and Early Cinema

Masculinity and the Male Movie Star

World War II and Film Noir

Case Study: Dead Reckoning (1947)

Masculinity in 1950s American Film

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 13 GENDER IN AMERICAN FILM SINCE THE 1960s

Second Wave Feminism and Hollywood

Box: Women and American Television

Into the 1980s: A Backlash against Women?

A New Generation of Female Filmmakers

Gender at the Turn of the Century

Gender Politics after 9/11

Case Study: Wonder Woman (2017)

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Part V. SEXUALITY AND AMERICAN FILM. INTRODUCTION TO PART V: What is Sexuality?

Chapter 14 HETEROSEXUALITY, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD

(Hetero)Sexuality on Screen

(Homo)Sexuality in Early Film

Censoring Sexuality during the Classical Hollywood Era

Postwar Sexualities and the Weakening of the Production Code

Camp and the Underground Cinema

Case Study: The Celluloid Closet (1995)

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Chapter 15 SEXUALITIES ON FILM SINCE THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

Hollywood and the Sexual Revolution

Film and Gay Culture from Stonewall to AIDS

The AIDS Crisis

Queer Theory and New Queer Cinema

Box: Queer TV

Hollywood Responds to New Queer Cinema

Case Study: Love, Simon (2018)

(Hetero)Sexualities in Contemporary American Cinema

Conclusion: The Power Dynamics of Sexuality

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

Part VI. ABILITY AND AMERICAN FILM. INTRODUCTION TO PART VI: What is Ability?

Chapter 16 CINEMATIC IMAGES OF (DIS)ABILITY

Disabled People in Early American Film: Curiosities and Freaks

Romanticizing Disability in Classical Hollywood Melodramas

Disability in War Movies and Social Problem Films

Disability and the Counterculture

Case Study: Children of a Lesser God (1986)

After the 1980s: A More Enlightened Hollywood?

Far From Hollywood: Documentary, Activism, and New Modes of Television

Questions for Discussion

Further Reading

Further Screening

GLOSSARY

INDEX

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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THIRD EDITION

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For the working purposes of this introduction, capitalism as an ideology can be defined as the belief that success and worth are measured by one’s material wealth. This fundamental aspect of capitalism has been so ingrained in the social imagination that visions of the American Dream almost always invoke financial success: a big house, big car, yacht, closets full of clothes, etc. Capitalism (both as an economic system and as an ideology) works to naturalize the concept of an open market economy, that the competition of various businesses and industries in the marketplace should be unhindered by governmental intrusion. (The US film industry, a strong example of capitalist enterprise, has spent much of its history trying to prevent governmental oversight.) One of the ideological strategies for promoting capitalism within the United States has been in labeling this system a “free” market, thus equating unchecked capitalism with the philosophies of democracy. Capitalism often stands in opposition to the ideology and practice of communism, an economic system wherein the government controls all wealth and industry in order to redistribute that income to the population in an equitable fashion. (The history of the twentieth century showed that human greed usually turns the best communist intentions into crude dictatorships.) Socialism, an economic and ideological system mediating capitalism and communism, seeks to structure a society’s economic system around governmental regulation of industries and the equitable sharing of wealth for certain basic necessities, while still maintaining democratic values and a free market for most consumer goods. Since the United States was founded under capitalism, American culture has largely demonized socialism and communism as evil and unnatural, even though many US government programs can be considered socialist in both intent and practice.

The ideology of white patriarchal capitalism works not only to naturalize the idea that wealthy white men deserve greater social privilege, but to protect those privileges by naturalizing various beliefs that degrade other groups – thus making it seem obvious that those groups should not be afforded the same privileges. Some argue that capitalism can help minority groups gain power. If a group is able to move up the economic ladder through capitalist means, then that group can claim for itself as much power, access, and opportunity as do the most privileged Americans. As persuasive as this argument is (as can be seen by its widespread use), capitalism has often worked against various minority groups throughout US history. The wealthy have used their position to consolidate and insure their power over multiple generations, often at the expense of the rest of the population. Since this wealthy group has almost exclusively been comprised of white men and their families, the dissemination of racist and sexist stereotypes has helped keep people of color and women from moving ahead economically. To use an early example, arguing that individuals of African descent were not fully human allowed slavery to continue to thrive as an economic arrangement that benefited whites. Today, attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism work to create in corporate culture a glass ceiling, a metaphoric term that describes how everyone but white heterosexual males tend to be excluded from the highest executive levels of American industries.

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