Hollywood & History

Many recent films support this stereotype of American culture. Special effects, violence, and actors’ names (despite level of talent) are often major themes that bring Americans to the movies. While most Hollywood films are made purely for entertainment value, many foreign films are entertaining as well as forcing the viewer think and question their surroundings at the same time. This is true of many foreign films I have seen. The first film that comes to mind is Godard’s Masculine-Feminine.

“The Hollywood industry is one of the most powerful and influential enterprises in the world, its visual voice heard around the globe” (Lowson). “The Hollywood entertainment industry has become increasingly influential so that society now looks towards them to develop their standards, teach values, and provide morals” (Kelly). People have begun to “copycat” what they see any celebrity do on national television. Society takes personally the actions of what their idols do. There are plenty of good morally right entertainment in the world but there is also plenty of morally wrong entertainment, people will follow what they here almost precisely to the word.

It is a known fact that sex sells. It is used by advertisers to get us to by there product, and likewise it is used by producers and directors to get us to see their films. During he Depression, no one had enough money to buy dinner much less go see a movie. So, there was a increase in the sex that was on the screen to pull in people. Not that there was any rules or guidelines of the studios to follow.

I believe that the blame for these cookie-cutter patterns can lead directly back to the media in every sense of the word. Media is all around us, and affects our opinions and ability to think for ourselves. Whether it’s the latest box office hit or the headlining news, we are getting assumptions from every point of view, which makes it hard to form our own. But I personally think that the biggest influence of our time are in the cinematic arts. Movies have been a huge part of the American culture since the motion pictures were first invented.

They empower the audience.” It is a fact then that the Media tries to portray and characterize the perfect characters in the society through movie screens. “The movies hit them where they live – in their own state of desperation and doubt. Movies don’t just provide them with escape, as the conventional wisdom would have it. They give teenagers the exhilaration of hope through the illusion of power.” People are being deluded by these so called perfect characters that they have adapted from action figures, super heroes, celebrities and all other glamorous individualities. But are they really so great and perfect after all?

On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic... ... middle of paper ... ... ed (BFI, 1990) we read … “contrary to all trendy journalism about the ‘New Hollywood’ and the imagined rise of artistic freedom in American films, the ‘New Hollywood’ remains as crass and commercial as the old…” Bibliography 1. Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 2. Bordwell, Thompson Film Art, An Introduction ,7th ed (Mcgraw Hill, 2004) 3. Pam Cooke(ed) The Cinema Book,1st ed (BFI, 1990) 4.

[2] Manipulated history used in an inappropriate manner is one of the ways in which the Nazis were able to convince so many people to follow their evil and tyrannical beliefs. This is not something that we as Americans can have happen. History in the cinema should be a carefully monitored area, so as to prevent fictional accounts to be passed as the truth. If we allow our screenwriters and directors to have free reign in the movies, they could theoretically conjure up any scenario that they pleased and pass it off as an actual event. This can not be so.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but the life of a roc... ... middle of paper ... ...a Rae article that, “moviemakers are in the movie business, not the social change business”. Although they talk about film specifically, any medium of entertainment could still apply to this statement. This cycle of production is unhealthy, but if the process works, why fix it? What can we take away from This Is Spinal Tap? Although a comedy, it teaches us much about the ridiculous nature of rock and roll.

Globalization has spread Hollywood movies all over the world, and our American movie stars are also the world’s movie stars. Some think that because of the way Hollywood goes about picking movies to produce, many of the mass public are looking for something fresh and new. Because of the “American style” of filmmaking, Hollywood produces profit-making movies with easy to understand stories. But is it right to flood other cultural and countries with our sometimes-biased movies? Is Hollywood replacing the cultural identity of many groups of people?

When did Hollywood become such a philosophizer? But more importantly, why has Hollywood taken to creating powerful films that manipulate the emotions and beliefs of their viewers as specifically concerns reality and their understanding of it? Surely the foundations of reality have not always been so heavily emphasized in Hollywood in years past. Looking to motion pictures such as Casablanca, The Sound of Music, Clint Eastwood Western’s, Indiana Jones, and James Bond 007 (a handful of famous films), we do find questions posed and important scenarios of life brought to the screen. However, such movies were... ... middle of paper ... ...wood with a nice paycheck.