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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005
Paramount
Loew's/MGM
Fox
Warner Bros
RKO and the Minors: Universal, Columbia and United Artists.
The second part goes on to cover ‘The Classic Studio Era 1931-51' when the studios were at their apogee producing hundreds of films every year before the threat of declining audiences (because of urbanisation and competition from TV etc). Although the ranking was virtually the same (except that Gomery couples Disney with its distributor RKO and to the minors, and he adds the B-film factories like Republic and Mongram [noted for churning out westerns and serials etc]), this period also saw the sorry demise of RKO- Radio, destroyed by the mismanagement and regrettable taste of the reclusive Howard Hughes who considered the studio to be his play toy.
The last section covers ‘The Modern Hollywood Studio System' and how the studios were taken over by big business including Rupert Murdoch (Twentieth Century Fox) and huge multi-media conglomerates such as Time Warner AOL (Warner Bros) - these businesses even embracing major TV networks. The ranking now being:
Universal
Paramount
Warners
Twentieth Century Fox
Disney
Columbia and Sony Pictures
There are also sections on the Hays Office and the Academy and unions and agents and a chapter on the rise of Lew Wasserman the Hollywood agent who took Universal into the major league of studios and reinvented the studio system.
This book presents a guide to the resource acquisition, legal, and financial necessities of producing an independent film. Every aspect of the planning and execution of the business side of filmmaking is discussed, including hypothetical situations based on the personal experience of the entertainment lawyers who co-authorized the book. The book introduces the roles of producer and lawyer, then outlines the film development process through deal making, financing, hiring, licensing and distribution.
As is pertains to my project, this book provides valuable insight into the warranted concern that filmmakers have had with the 21st century dispute over Internet distribution rights. In the case of Viacom v. Youtube, the exclusive rights per the 1976 Copyright Act for copyright owners to reproduce their works became the basis for allegations against YouTube for a count of direct copyright infringement. The authors of this book advise filmmakers to negotiate with distributors on the basis that they "cannon distribute on the Net until there is adequate 'border protection' to prevent access outside licensed territories" (132).
Erickson, Gunnar, Harris Tulchin, Mark Halloran, and J. Gunnar Erickson. The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook . New York: Schirmer Trade Books, 2005
Lewis, John. Hollywood V. Hardcore: How the Struggle Over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. New York and London: New York UP, 2000. 135-191.
Chapter 4, titled Hollywood v. Soft Core, examines arguably the most influential year of film censorship to date. In this year, MPAA president Jack Valenti issued a press release to stating that a new production code/ move rating system would be put into place. The same system is still used today to rate films. The chapter does a good job of outlining the events of how this code came into place. The author explains how the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was denied by the PCA but began production anyway, anticipating that change was to come. It talks about the controversy over the language such as "screw" and "hump the hostess" were debated and the issues Valenti faced with content regulation. In the end of the meeting, Warner Brothers appealed the PCA's preliminary ruling to deny Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the film was released. Because of the films amazing success, it marked a point in history where the industry was beginning to understand that the Production Code was a dated system. The film was released with a warning stating "for adults only" and ranked third in the box office list in 1966 behind two other mature-themed pictures. This chapter is very useful and entertaining in its explanation of the pressures and challenges that Valenti faced when negotiating the new rating system. It offers a very in depth perspective and takes the reader on a film by film journey of the controversy.Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1995 .F534
Call#: Annenberg Library Reference Ann Ref PN1993.3 .F533
Chon Noriega’s piece chronicles the depiction and reception of homosexuality in Hollywood using film reviews from major periodicals as source material. As the Production Code demanded that "Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden," the period of the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by films that had few if any allusions to the existence of homosexuality. Instead, as films were adapted from materials that featured homosexuality as a part of the narrative, the issue was substituted for other social problems. Noriega looks at the three such films in which homosexuality is recast, as the evils of gossip, alcoholism, and anti-semitism, respectively. Reviews at the time rarely mentioned the exchange, or if they did, praised the substitution as making the film better. From this “conspiracy of silence” came acknowledgment of homosexual themes and characters in the 1950s. As long as homosexual characters faced a character arc that was sufficiently tragic, and thus didactic, films were acceptable and homosexuality was no longer explicitly criticized in the reviews. Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing to the 1960s the dominant perception of homosexuality was no longer that it was criminal, but that it was a psychiatric disease that individuals could be pitied for being afflicted with, but could be cured of.
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is often cited as one of the first films to depict a homosexual teenager, Plato, played by Sal Mineo. However, the film initially had more daring content. Upon submission to Joseph Breen’s office, the film was found to have latent homosexual themes that had to be re-edited. The article illuminates the attitudes towards homosexuality at the time of Rebel’s release and the perceived necessity of the changes.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 W29 2001
In the chapter “Mr. Movies—Cecil B. Demille and Filmmaking in Hollywood’s Golden Age,” the author chronicles Cecil B. Demille’s professional and personal life in Hollywood from 1913 until his death in 1959. DeMille came to Hollywood in 1913 when he could no longer make money working for stage productions. Early on, DeMille revealed he was a stickler for detail. This proved successful, as the majority of the films he turned out were popular. As his career progressed, DeMille had a clear progression of styles, from sex comedies in the 1920s to overblown epics with seven figure budgets in the 1940s. Following his financial success (he made more in a week than most people made in a year), DeMille stayed true to stereotype—he bought a fancy car, a fancy house as well as a weekend home with a pool and the iron gates from the set of The King of Kongs.
The immediate connection to the film The Day of the Locust in this chapter is the mention of the film The Buccaneer starring Anthony Quinn. This is the film whose premiere immediately preceded the riot at the end of the film. However, as the chapter goes on to describe the productions and life of Cecil B. DeMille, more similarities to The Day of the Locust appear. The big budget epics that DeMille was known for directly coincide with the production that appears in the film. It seems almost arbitrary when Tod is asked, “What do you know about Waterloo?” and this fascination with epic historical recreations coincides with those that brought DeMille success. Even the autocratic style with which the director in the film shouts at the cast of the film matches the reported personality of DeMille. Further, DeMille’s excesses–a large, elaborate house with a pool as well as fancy cars and dress—directly tie to those of Claude Estee in the film. However, the chapter conveys a depth to DeMille’s life that clearly differentiates him from Estee. While Estee is a caricature designed to illustrate the alleged emptiness that pervades even the lives of the successful in Hollywood, DeMille lived a rich life that included interests and successes distinct from the film world.
Call#: Van Pelt Library TR849.A1 S33 1984
In this interview, cinematographer Conrad Hall states The Day of the Locust was the closest he came to flawlessness in visual style. He discusses how the decision to shoot the film with a smooth rather than abrasive style ultimately benefitted the film. The flawlessness of the photography matches the flawlessness of the characters’ dreams and prevents the audience from seeing them as they really were. Also, to visually match the despair would have made the film to depressing and ultimately less successful at the box office. Hall also goes on to discuss the subject matter of the film and briefly compares the lure of Hollywood to the lure of a flame to the moth. Hall talks about the use of golden tones in the movie to match the Hollywood of the time, as well as soft light to gloss over the abrasiveness of reality.
This interview is interesting because Conrad Hall is removed from the textual adaptation of the film but is essential to its successful visual adaptation. Further, Hall belongs to the system that the film criticizes and is one of the lucky few to have made it in Hollywood. It is interesting to hear his insights into Hollywood culture and how even though he has succeeded, he has sympathy for the 90% that don’t make it. The visual metaphor of the moths to the flame serve as an important translation in the film as it contributes to the decision to shoot the film in predominantly golden tones. The discussion of the Day of the Locust is surrounded by a discussion of Fat City, another film Hall shot. Fat City uses a cinematographic style that matches the despair of the story, whereas Day of the Locust’s visual style clashes with its subject matter. However, the slick visual style of the latter meshes with the dreams of its characters, and contributes a layer of visual irony that makes the film more successful.
‘Violence: The Strong and the Weak’ Devin McKinney Film Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 16-22 Published by: University of California Press Jstor, 9 Apr. 2008
Devin McKinney’s article makes a striking and brave point about the true shock value of violence in cinema, and asks what aspects fully take hold of the viewer’s internal emotional investments, and what methods are only hackneyed formulas used to merely keep what’s left of the viewer’s attention? He divides all scenes of violence into two kinds: the strong and the weak. The strong can leave the viewer physically sick, burdened with dread and plagued with nightmares; the delicacy of the miraculous human form will be reduced to “God’s garbage”. He writes that weak violence has no weight of consequence: a death will result in a moment’s pause before the plot, characters, and viewers all carry on to never think of that person again. Scenes of weak violence can claim no partiality from the viewer toward any side of any equation. They are incapable of keeping the audience from remaining neutral to all characters out of apathy. Momentary reflexes might make a viewer flinch, cringe, or shake his head, but those miniscule sensations are fleeting, only aroused by the garnish of special effects or pleasing cinematography. As McKinney puts it, the violence is used to lure the average movie-goer into the theatre, but bears no promise that there will be anything for him to take out with him.
A film like Natural Born Killers is a play on these two categories. As a satirical commentary of overblown violence in media productions, it makes an absolute mockery of what McKinney would consider weak violence, painting every stroke of his argument into an actual cinematic demonstration. Everything is exaggerated – far beyond the typical exaggerations of Hollywood blockbusters. Blood that can be seeing flying in every silly action film spurts with extra vivacity; grimaces of unadulterated barbarianism are upgraded into hellish, psychedelic snarls reminiscent of cartoons; the victims are just worthless props in the way of full-throttle heroes, rampaging across the country in drug-fuelled elation; the cinematic candy that McKinney describes as “campy” (the occasional lover’s montage, or tête-à-tête at twilight offered as a mixer for the weak violence from the director) turns to punk-rock marriages on highway bridges, and ethereal drunken dances beneath stars, on top of cars in random fields.
But ultimately, director Oliver Stone pulls off the impossible: his caricature of weak violence becomes so aggressive, so over-the-top and shameless in its soulless murders that the violence does become strong. It reminds the viewer that while he sits there watching fake violence on screen, somewhere there is real violence going on, and it is worse than those fake-blood spurts and cliché wooden shouts of pain that make up the average Hollywood production’s depiction of physical cruelty. Stone lets you enjoy the carefree spree of the killers like it’s just another movie, but he brings the reminder back again and again of the cold true world outside, with disturbing scenes of child abuse, attempted rape, fuming psychopathic looks, and mobs and mobs of born-to-kill inmates, destined to jail for the rest of their lives, desperate for a chance to tear the warden apart just one time.
Is TV violence all that bad for kids? The Age (Melbourne, Australia), March 5, 2005 Saturday, INSIGHT; Opinion; Pg. 9, 816 words, HUGH MACKAY LexisNexis Academic 9 Apr. 2008
This article is a response to a report from The Weekend Australian that asserts a child’s witnessing of violence in media will result in higher levels of aggression. Writer Hugh Mackay refers to a 1960’s American child-psychology experiment which consisted of observing the different ways children would play with a particular object after they watched different videos, ones that either showed children playing peacefully with that toy or children punching and kicking it. The findings were that those who watched a violent video would treat the toy violently, and those who watched the peaceful video would treat the toy peacefully. Mackay makes sure to point out that although the children would emulate the behavior, it has been concluded that the effects are only short-term, and that all long-term personalities remain virtually unchanged. Furthermore, he declares that the search for variables which might shed light on a child’s increased or decreased susceptibility toward emulating violence in the media result only in negligible data that cannot give any indication of why a particular child would be acting more or less violent than any other one. Mackay’s overall point is that although these experiments may show children in the act of emulating violence on television, all large-scale national crime statistics show that the introduction of television into the societies of decades past resulted in severe drops in crime, and that the age-group which watches the least amount of television today commits the highest amount of violent crime. In short, what a child views in movies or videogames has far less positive or negative impact on his personality than the benefits of extensive human interaction, or the dangers of lazy, television-filled inactivity.
This article is worth factoring into the discussion of Natural Born Killer’s potential effect on inspiring three young couples to committing separate violent murders in Europe and America, all after their viewing (and in one case, repeated viewing) of the 1994 film. Although accusations were made that the filmmakers and producers were responsible, hardly evidence has been found to support them. Mackay also says that at the time of his writing the article in 2005, the violent crime rate in America had been in steady decline for the last 10 years – which would mean the trend began in 1995, one year after Natural Born Killers was released. If violence in the media could truly influence people to emulate the brutality on screen, Natural Born Killers would surely qualify for those results, considering the rare intensity of bloodshed that is present throughout the whole movie. And considering it grossed 11 million dollars in the first weekend, and over 50 million dollars to date, enough people have seen the movie that we can say if there was a slight rise in a person’s aggressive tendencies after watching the movie, no matter how slight, the accumulation across the country would certainly be noticeable.
The relevance of this article has to do with the controversy surrounding Natural Born Killers, over what impacts a film of such incredible violence (coupled with its themes of glorifying such acts) can – and has – and will – have on the societies of its viewers. Boyle draws on three specific cases of murderous love-duos that occured after the films release. Edmonson-Darras, Rey-Maupin, and Herbert-Paindavoine were all young couples tried for committing horrendous murders as pairs, and all three couples admitted to having been influenced by Natural Born Killers, further adding to the intense question of how acts of brutality we see in the media are linked to real-world violence.
“What’s Natural about Killing? Gender, Copycat Violence and Natural Born Killers” By: Boyle, Karen. Journal of Gender Studies, Nov2001, Vol. 10 Issue 3, p311-321, 11p; DOI: 10.1080/09589230120086511; EBESCO, 9 Apr. 2008
Karen Boyle argues that Natural Born Killers leaves a dangerous impression on society, which places male violence as something more natural than female violence, and perhaps even something to be expected, while female violence is somehow a reversal of a girl’s original nature, to be drawn from or manipulated upon that female’s innately more submissive personality. She compares Mickey, the male half of the murderous love-duo, to Mallory, the female half, and concludes that the different treatment given to the characters has a drastic on the viewer, even if the viewer doesn’t realize. She points to Mickey’s depiction as an emblem of pure, glorified brutality, a hero for fellow convicts, a star on primetime television. Mickey’s calm exterior and understated personal background leaves the viewer with the understanding he’s been a man of sheer violence his whole life; and that for man, violence is somehow hereditary, and that for man, violence is ultimately nothing more or less than normal.
Boyle contrasts Natural Born Killer’s depiction of Mickey with that of Mallory: as a sex-object, a young girl who carries out violence on others only as revenge for the abuse she received from her father during her upbringing, and is brought “into” this world by its original inhabitant, the male, citing the image of Mickey riding to her house on horseback, after having escaped from jail, to rescue her and take her away – but not before showing her how to kill her parents in cold blood. She also points to interviews given by director Oliver Stone and actor Woody Harrelson, in which the two men emphasis Harrelson’s own family history, specifically his father’s murderous past, which she says is proof of the intentional perpetuation of the film’s prejudiced ideas, (or at least a complete admission of having those sentiments themselves, even if they didn’t recognize it).
The article furthermore proposes that other critics’ lack of commentary on this aspect of the film is an indication of just how easily its viewers are willing to accept it as true, and therefore the contrasting depictions of Mickey and Mallory are consequently that much more dangerous. Boyle argues that to paint the female-murderer as a more intriguing, fragile, or more special specimen than the male-murderer can only cast confusion and blindness on society’s ability to sentence its criminals with adequately balanced judgment, and these imposed attitudes will hamper the cause of studying the true motives behind the mass-murderer, which shouldn’t be thought of as automatically in every male psyche, or inherently lacking and foreign to the female psyche, but rather an equally potential outcome for any human mind.
Marita Sturken History and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 4, Theme Issue 36: Producing the Past: Making Histories Inside and Outside the Academy (Dec., 1997), pp. 64-79
In this article, Marita Sturken discusses Oliver Stone’s popularity and bad name as a filmmaker, but defends Oliver Stone against his critics who lividly denounce the director’s credibility as an American cinematic historian, and maker of the legitimate docudrama. Stone’s 1986 Platoon was greeted with total acclaim. Sturken attributes this to the fact that Stone personally served in Vietnam, and therefore the public perceived his portrayal of his experiences as not only credible but deserved. Sturken implies that the American public felt better about themselves after seeing his movie because of his cinematic storytelling skills, which were so convincing that the viewers felt they themselves were present in the war, and somehow vindicated from any guilt of being lucky enough to stay out of it. However, Stone’s 1991 JFK, along with his1995 Nixon, garnered unbelievable amounts of anger and resentment, first for their unpatriotic messages, and secondly for what was, by many, perceived as a total distortion of truthful American history.
The article discusses the relationship between memory vs. history, and how the camera can affect both sides of the equation. The camera is a mechanism of recording truth, and yet at the same time it is a way of expressing one’s own perception of truth before passing it on. In this way, one’s memory of history can become history itself. Sturken believes Stone has earned the privilege of narrating the truth of 20th Century America for its future generations in any way he wants, calling him the country’s “cultural messenger,” one which his people deserve, because of the incredible aestheticism of his films, his artistic audacity and determination to voice his own opinions. This article should be considered when thinking about Natural Born Killers for many reasons. Firstly, Natural Born Killers is a piece about violence, and it should be remembered that the director was himself engulfed in an environment of devastating war, where horrific images (real ones) were around him at all times. That vastly important part of the director’s identity should not be forgotten.
Secondly, Sturken points out that Stone considers himself both a “cinematic-historian” and “just a storyteller.” The fact that Stone can see himself in such different ways at the same time sheds light on how he can create a very direct commentary about violence in the media without having to state specific opinions, or provide worthy morals to his story, or suggest solutions to society’s problems, or cite direct scientific or sociological sources to backup whatever he’s saying. The article focuses on Stone’s ability to manipulate images in order to retell things his own way. About JFK, Oliver Stone said, “I defend what I’m doing as something between entertainment and fact.” Natural Born Killers is just that, a cinematic masterpiece between commentary and entertainment. But, also, the subject of the commentary is that as well: the viewer finds himself focused on American primetime news, the sensationalized accounts written for the blood-thirsty news-watcher that lie somewhere between entertainment and fact.
Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment" Harry G. West Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 4, Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa, Part 2 (Oct., 2000), pp. 180-194 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
West’s article about Female Detachments fighting for Mozambique’s independence from Portuguese colonialism (a war that lasted from the late-70’s to the mid-90’s) sheds light on differing psychological states of those who lead lives of violence in situations as extreme as risking one’s own life to kill others.
West himself admits he had expected to hear or observe that the women and children who lived through these ages of dramatic social changes (which were results from the consequences of colonial conquest, anti-colonial insurgency and post independent governance) would be permanently scarred from the trauma of war. This was not the case. The Female Detachments he met were proud of their service, never claiming to have ever felt scarred or vulnerable. Among the male militias, the women were not quite equal to the male soldiers, but they reported feeling empowered by the men when they were given space to carry out their own attacks. The women also claimed it felt important to participate in the war rather than having to stay trapped in their homes carrying out agricultural work.
These observations have a lot of resemblances to Mallory’s character from Natural Born Killers. West attributes the Female Detachments’ mental strength in terms of rising above trauma and suffering to their ideology and beliefs, which relates to Mallory’s ability to carry out her actions under the shade of Mickey’s philosophical indifference to death and murder. Following that relationship, the organization which the Female Detachments fought for, FRELIMO, was a forceful and dangerous group which might have been viewed as the stronger counterpart of the two genders’ militias (if they were closer aligned). As West writes of the Female Detachments, “Respect for and fear of FRELIMO were inseparable … they had no option but to comply with their ‘requests.” And after completing training, their loyalty would always be tested by FRELIMO, who would compel them to certain dangerous missions. Although Mallory is happy to carry out her side of the murders, perhaps she is much more inclined to do when she sees how much it pleases Mickey. Another similarity between Mallory and the Female Detachments is drawn from West’s account of interviewing one of the soldiers with a tape recorder: he never needed to ask a second question, the interviewee was so relieved to be telling her whole story that she never stopped. The idea of telling one’s story, and to have one’s own life of danger and violence be the focus of an interview, is one of the central themes we see in Natural Born Killers.
ONE MAN'S FAVOURITE FILM IS ANOTHER’S MOVIE OUTRAGE
The Scotsman, December 29, 1999, Wednesday, Pg. 3, 478 words, Phil Miller
In this article Phil Miller gives a light overview of the differing climates of censorship across time and around the world, and refers to some of the more famous individual films that were censored, banned, cut or delayed in their time. In terms of religion, he notes how Britain outlawed the showing of the face of Christ in any film until 1940, and how Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, a religious comedy, was denounced and picketed by religious groups around the world when it first came out. Similarly, the lighthearted Dogma was condemned by the US Catholic Church as recently as 1999. He briefly mentions the Nazi and Soviet propaganda of the 1930’s, and banned horror films such as The Exorcist – noting how what was once a terrifying scene has, with time, become somewhat laughable.
In terms of violence, Miller mention Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saving Private Ryan, Natural Born Killers, Cronenberg’s Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. He compares western culture to that of the Gulf states, where sex is censored far more harshly than violence. It’s interesting to see the pattern in which almost everything that is censored at one time eventually, and sometimes immediately, becomes socially acceptable. Take Saving Private Ryan, for example. The dramatic opening sequence of the American troops landing on Omaha Beach is regarded by many as the greatest ever tribute to that significant day – but it potentially could have been censored for being too true to the actual events in its depiction of deaths and casualties.
It’s also not just the strictness of the censorship boards that change over time, but also the mentality of the filmmakers. Miller writes of Kubrick’s promptness at withdrawing A Clockwork Orange from circulation when rumors of a copycat-murderer came about. A few decades later, Oliver Stone did no such thing in similar circumstances, even after the news of a third young couple mutually participating in cold-blooded murder after watching Natural Born Killers.
Review of Oliver Stone’s USA: Film, History and Controversy by Robert Brent Toplin Paul Buhle, The Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 2, (Sep., 2001), pp. 747-748 Published by: Organization of American Historians Jstor 9 Apr., 2008
Paul Buhle reviews a collection of essays which cover various subjects to do with Stone’s vision and works, ranging from the charge that the nature of film will inevitably result in the over-simplifying, and therefore skewing, of large historical topics, such as the legacy of Nixon and the assassination of JFK. An exceedingly favorable review of Stone’s Vietnam trilogy comes alongside two dreadful reviews of two of his culture-oriented works, The Doors, and Natural Born Killers. His two presidential films JFK and Nixon are slammed by prominent authors as ridiculously inaccurate, and even quite juvenile. Buhle insinuates the essays go beyond discussing the works on their own and carry the focus over to Stone himself, to question and contemplate the quality, legitimacy and sanity of Oliver Stone’s directorial career canon.
Buhle merely comments on the nature of historical debate itself, sighing over cinema’s ability to out-persuade his meager, old-fashioned written texts, borne from a medium utterly unable to compete with the overwhelming portrayals of awing blockbusters like JFK and Platoon. He ends the review by graciously tipping his hat to Stone for his sturdy refusal to automatically accept common conceptions of recent American history simply because one might pressure him to do so. Buhle’s final point is more than valid: if there’s nothing to hide, why is such a huge chunk of government documentation completely lost?
The different opinions of Oliver Stone’s work apparently found in this book indicate the vast subject matter the director inevitably takes on at any given time. His movies are never about only a few characters, even when the cast is only a few people strong, such as in Talk Radio. The themes and dialogues always spill over the immediate mimetic confinements of the set and begin to address our culture as a whole, or our society as a whole, or our government as a whole. What’s particularly interesting is that Natural Born Killers received a terrible review in this book, which on the whole seems to give Stone credit where it’s due and assaults him where it’s not: Platoon is revered by all as a powerful, historically accurate, raw portrayal of a real war, while Nixon and JFK cause so much ire to those who oppose the conspiracies theories put forth in them especially because of how compelling the quality of the films are, as exciting, enticing feature-length blockbusters. But regardless of the looseness of the latter films’ historical accuracy, no one can argue that the one thing Stone understands better than pretty much everyone is cinema. And Natural Born Killers, despite being about all of media in America, and elsewhere, is a fundamentally a film about the roots, history and development of film, where all the evidence is available for anyone to see.
Foster, Harold M. “Film in the Classroom: Coping with ‘Teenpics.’” The English Journal, Vol. 76, No. 3. 1987, National Council of Teachers of
English. Pages 86-88. April 2008
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The author thinks “teenpics” have ultimate control over a teenager’s mind. Many of them simplify teen stereotypes, such as in The Breakfast Club. The most important lesson Animal House left behind for the 1980s was “the grosser the better” (86). Foster has four goals for teachers to appropriately educate students about “teenpics.” He wants students to become “discriminating viewers,” to understand how films “influence and manipulate them,” to critique these films on an aesthetic level, and to altogether avoid the worst ones (86). However, even if films like Risky Business encourage immoral behavior, they have values and can stimulate the audience.
Foster seems to dislike teenpics with the most likely situations. He claims that The Breakfast Club oversimplifies real characters, when in fact it reflects a realistic situation. He despises the thought of teen audiences identifying with the characters in this film. However, he could be going in the wrong direction because teen audiences probably identify with more than one, sometimes with all of the characters. This is rather a good value. Animal House similarly oversimplifies its characters: the horny misogynist, sidekick, prudish nerd, mature girlfriend, hippie professor, preppy egotist, and the disgusting freak. However, college does not divide so easily. Stereotypes create amusing caricatures, but are spawned from eclectic personalities. Foster seems to feel superior to the young generations and negligent of the narrative art form. These stories do come from reality, (Animal House specifically from one of the writer’s experiences at Dartmouth, which would be even more shocking if accurately depicted). Foster oversimplifies the purpose of films. Animal House happens to have a great valuable lesson: do as much as you can in college; Foster is only critical of films that offer no lesson of the sort or an incredibly negative one. Yet, even pursuing his four goals, some of these films, including Animal House, are still good all around.
Thomson introduces Melvin Van Peebles and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song as the answer to that problem. After detailing the production and financial troubles encountered by Van Peebles, he goes into the distribution of the film. However, because only two theaters played it on the opening weekend and nobody would advertise or review it, it was ignored by the media. Additionally, there was no publicity money left over from production, so Van Peebles had to use the "dynamite" soundtrack (recorded by then-unknown Earth Wind & Fire) in order to create awareness for his film. This was the first time that a soundtrack was used to market a film – something that is quite common now. The blaxploitation films that came after would follow suit, each with its own funky soundtrack – Shaft had Isaac Hayes, Superfly had Curtis Mayfield. The essay then describes summarizes the plot of several blaxploitation movies (since it is, after all, in a book about music).
This is relevant because it transformed the way many films are advertised. Instead of going through the traditional avenues of trailers and critical reviews, Van Peebles used funk, the music of the streets at that time, to get the message out that a corresponding movie that was just as funky was playing. With the success of the album, more distributors decided to show the film and eventually, it became the highest grossing independent film ever (at that point). Thus, the distribution and advertisement of this film serves as a reminder to the mainstream of culture's power to create an underground success based solely on word of mouth and music.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.W6 F448 2000