hollywood, sci-fi and subversion within

classical hollywood narrative of studio system

  • focuses on human character → character responsible for meeting goal/solution that they develop

  • film has a beginning, middle and end

  • welcome resolution at end

  • cause and effect chain narrative

  • can have 1 dimensional characters

  • time is linear and progressive


1940s challenges: trust busting

  • 1948 united states vs paramount pictures decision

  • ends block booking (where theaters have to buy ‘blocks’ of film for a certain amount of time) as ‘anti-competitive’

  • ends blind buying practice

  • ends majors owning theater chains

  • ends vertical inegration (production, distribution, exhibition)

  • effectively undermines power of the big 5

  • decrease in number of films made by the big 5, focus on increase in production values and budgets of hollywood films (standout movies to secure success)

  • increase freedom for independent filmmakers and smaller studios (and more potential to challenge Hays) independent (arthouse) theaters sprung up around america

  • the little 3 biimed in the wake of the decision


1950s challenges: television as rival to hollywood

  • the postwar home lifestyle

  • exonomic growth and consumer power

  • families moved to the suburbs and television became a social activity for the whole family

  • by the 1950s, 9 out of 10 homes had a tv


how do the studios draw audiences out of the living room?

  • color

  • more than a film (smell-o-vision & scent of mystery, as well as vibrating electrical device)

  • cinerama (curved screens)

  • vistavision/widescreen

  • 3D


a look at hollywood genres

  • classical golden hollywood genres

    • westerns

      • usually set in the desert

      • there will be guns, cowboys, indians

      • there will be trouble in town

      • a genre about social progress = sacrifice of the individual

      • reinforce collective beliefs, values and ideals

      • films like stagecoach elevate the western to the a-list

      • western raches its highpoint in 1940s and 1950s when culture and american west were challenged by modernity: the depression, flight to cities, world wars, atomic power, cold war

      • mythical reality is more “real” than the historical west

      • a frontier community struggling with the savagery of the west

        • civilization → savaergy

        • past → future

        • east → west

        • garden → desert

        • america → europe

        • social order → anarchy

        • individual → community

        • town → wilderness

        • cowboy → indian

        • schoolmarm → dancehall girl

    • musicals

    • screwball comedies

    • gangster films

    • hard boiled detective films

    • family melodrama

      • are more domestic and shows more family life

      • characters are at the mercy of social conventions

      • classical melodrams have women at the center: women are repressed, oppressed usually trapped - by convention

      • community is the middle-class family

      • melodrama is set in the family home

      • even characters undergo a transformation

      • the structures of family traditions explored

      • highpoint in the 1950s

      • the characters are trapped by the family home

      • women are typically shot looking out windows that they never open to indicate their imprisonment by conventions, mores and expectations

      • recurrent stylistic elements in douglas sirk’s melodrama:

        • long shots, overhead shots, canted angles

        • lush, artificial colors

        • use of mirrors and reflections

        • frames within frames

        • non-natural lighting

        • irony

        • blindness

        • the flase happy ending

        • brechtian techniques of distanciation


genre

  • goes back to ancient greek drama

  • becomes popular with invention of printing press

  • books — pulp literature dime novels are printed

  • a strategy tp brind people back for more

  • formulas and conventionalized forms used by hollywood:

    • ensures mass audience returns again (economic)

    • creates new aesthetic developments and experiments — each iteration is unique


a genre film follws a formula

  • familiar, one-dimensional characters

  • in a predictable story

  • familiar setting

  • recognizable props

  • to articulate a given set of values and morals


america in the 1950s

  • dwight d eisenhower: 1953-61

  • economic growth after wwii

  • political conservatism thanks to cold war

  • fear of communism

  • conformity was common, among old and young

  • follow the group norms

  • men and women had been forced into new employment patterns during wwii → now war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed


america in the 1950s

  • not only government and judicial decisions that influenced the shape (and demise) of hollywood studios

  • america had become one of two world powers in the wake of WWII. flushed with success of defeating japan and germany

  • expanding life opportunities: more people went to college, brought homes, bought land and generally had more economic prosperity than they could have imagined


what is america? are films speaking to 1950s america?

  • what is the vision of america? we must consider the relationship to the world outside of the tilm

  • everyone in shane has a story that they can’t get away from — what is that story? how does each character’s story relate to america’s story?

  • what is america’s story in filmes like Them! and Invasion of the Body Snatchers? how is the near-future of america represented

  • contradictory elements in genre films: in the melodrama: the woman’s rise to the top is the success of a nation. but, the woman must be kept in place for fear of upsetting status quo


hollywood studios under attack: the red scare

  • tensions between US and USSR escalated in the late 1940s after WWII → lasted until late 1950s

  • cold war: communist soviet union vs democratic united states: a political and economic war

  • fear of communism in the US, but it was also a fear of rise in immigration. cloaked in rhetoric about freedom of speech and american independence

  • labor unions, strikes, protests by left wing radicals, all of which gained increasing press voverage

  • russian spies infiltrated US and compromized american sexurity and power


HUAC

  • march 1947, president harry truman issued the loyalty order

  • House Un-American Activities Commitee (HUAC) to run testing of all government employees for loyalty (set up in 1938 but rose in popularity in the late 1940s/50s)

  • congressional commitee investigated allegations fo subersive elements in the government and the hollywood film industry

  • hollywood was thought to be the propaganda arms of the communist infiltration

  • overblown paranoia was built on the basis of a few films, that presented an anti-nazi argument through pro-soviet narrative


the blacklist

  • under pressure from the negative publicity aimed at the studios, many studios started making extremely extensive blacklists, publicly firing and ruining people’s careers

  • communist sympathizers were determined on the basis of membership of the communist party, and the refusal to cooperate with the HUAC hearings in washington

  • there were people who did testify and proceed to inform on others working in hollywood

  • protests led included humphrey bogart, lucille ball, frank sinatra, gene kelly, and judy garland


deep suspicion in the undustry

  • beginning with the hollywood 10

    • alvah bessie (screenwriter)

    • herbert biberman (director and screenwriter)

    • lester cole (screenwriter)

    • edward dmytrk (director)

    • ring lardner jr (screenwriter)

    • john howard lawson (screenwriter)

    • albert maltz (screenwriter)

    • samuel ornitz (screenwriter)

    • adriaan scott (producer and screenwriter)

    • dalton trumbo (screenwriter)

  • approximately 300 people associated with the industry were fired; actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians and others

  • all based on rumors

  • they went underground, tried to get back into the industry through using fake names

  • some moved to england

  • 90% of them had no career after the blacklisting


the B movie

  • from the mid-1930s, studios sold films as double features. the first feature (warm up act) was usually very different from the A film — variety = more tickets sold

  • typically, the first film was short (60 mins), cheap, often tacky, part of a series, same characters appear across a number of films. westerns and hardboiled detective films were popular

  • if they were successful, sequels would be made

  • the “lesser” quality film has genres all its own: science fiction, horror, film noir infected urban crimes, monster movies

  • by the late 1930s, the double feature was the dominant US exhibition model, and the majors started making more B movies

  • a number of studios on poverty row specialized in making B movies


B movie benefits

  • often very well made (stylistically and aesthetically)

  • an opportunity for ambiguity and creativity

  • an opportunity for harsh political and social criticism because they weren’t considered serious films

  • a way for people to get a start in movies

  • thrived in the post 1948 climate


a look at hollywood genres: science fiction

  • american sci-fi comes of age in the 1950s

  • always set in the future: enables its critical view of the present

  • american sci-fi was rarely predictive

  • colonization of space — either through travel to another planet or creatures coming to earth (typically ends up in apocalypse)


science fiction

  • typically addresses issues that are not and cannot be embraced by mainstream science

  • they also address issues that are not represented in mainstream film

  • represent utpoias and dystopias, and encounters with alien beings

  • couldn’t happen in the world as we know it — therefore there is alwasy an element of fantasy

  • typically features a breakdown in institutions as the threat (conflict) enters the film. threat cannot be contained by the police, law, government, press etc

  • the hero who saves the day is typically an ordinary individual

  • the conflicts are carried by the hero’s negotiation of the problem. they don’t follow the crowd, but is there to rescue the crowd


themes and conflicts

  • themes are derived from conflict between civilization and aliens in the struggle for humanity, shown through a variety of oppositions:

    • human vs alien

    • small town america vs outer space

    • inside vs outside

    • social order vs anarchy

    • individual vs community

    • science vs common sense


themes of sci fi films

  • fear of loss of identity

  • who am i? through the alien/monster/thing from outer space, sci fi films typically question what it means to be human

  • commonly, visible characteristics no longer work as a mode of identification

  • fear of the other + the enemy within

  • the dysfunction of american families

  • collapse of all social order and the breakdown of society