Hollywood Left and Right
Hollywood Left and Right

Author: Steven J. Ross

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0195181727

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In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

American Politics in Hollywood Film
American Politics in Hollywood Film

Author: Ian Scott

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2011-05-06

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 0748688366

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In this second edition of American Politics in Hollywood Film, Ian Scott takes up his analysis of political content and ideology through movies and contends that American culture and the institutional process continues to be portrayed, debated and influen

The Politics of Hollywood Cinema
The Politics of Hollywood Cinema

Author: R. Rushton

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1137316160

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The Politics of Hollywood Cinema radically transforms our understanding of cinema's potential to be politically engaging and challenging. Examining several films from Hollywood's classical era, including Marked Woman, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Born Yesterday, On the Waterfront and It Should Happen to You, alongside contemporary theories of democracy advanced by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Claude Lefort, Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière, Richard Rushton argues that popular films can offer complex subtle, relevant and controversial approaches to democracy and politics.

Hollywood and Politics
Hollywood and Politics

Author: Donald T. Critchlow

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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This volume of primary documents seeks to engage readers interested in the multiple meanings of Hollywood and politics by using a topical approach : election politics, public policy, war and patriotism, social movements, cultural values. The time period covered ranges from the 1934 California gubernatorial election through the War in Iraq; sources include transcripts of various Congressional testimonies, public addresses, letters, speeches, and interviews.

Hollywood Goes to Washington
Hollywood Goes to Washington

Author: Michael Coyne

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2008-09-30

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1861895771

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Fantasy and politics are familiar dancing partners that rarely separate, even in the face of post–Election Day realities. But Hollywood has a tradition of punching holes in the fairy tales of electoral promises with films that meditate on what could have been and should have been. With Hollywood Goes to Washington,Michael Coyne investigates how the American political film unravels the labyrinthine entanglements of politics and the psyche of the American electorate in order to reveal brutal truths about the state of our democracy. From conspiracy dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate to satires like Wag the Dog, Hollywood Goes to Washington argues that political films in American cinema have long reflected the issues and tensions roiling within American society. Coyne elucidates the mythology, iconography, and ideology embedded in both classic and lesser-known films—including Gabriel Over the White House, Silver City, Advise and Consent, and The Siege—and examines the cinematic portrayals of presidents in the White House, the everyman American citizen, and the nebulous enemies who threaten American democracy. The author provocatively contends that whether addressing the threat of domestic fascism in Citizen Kane or the disillusionment of Vietnam and paranoia of the post-Watergate era in Executive Action, the American political film stands as an important cultural bellwether and democratic force—one that is more vital than ever in the face of decreasing civil liberties in the present-day United States. Compelling and wholly original, Hollywood Goes to Washington exposes the political power of the silver screen and its ramifications for contemporary American culture.

Hollywood's Last Golden Age
Hollywood's Last Golden Age

Author: Jonathan Kirshner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-11-15

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0801465400

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Between 1967 and 1976 a number of extraordinary factors converged to produce an uncommonly adventurous era in the history of American film. The end of censorship, the decline of the studio system, economic changes in the industry, and demographic shifts among audiences, filmmakers, and critics created an unprecedented opportunity for a new type of Hollywood movie, one that Jonathan Kirshner identifies as the "seventies film." In Hollywood's Last Golden Age, Kirshner shows the ways in which key films from this period—including Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, and Nashville, as well as underappreciated films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Klute, and Night Moves—were important works of art in continuous dialogue with the political, social, personal, and philosophical issues of their times. These "seventies films" reflected the era's social and political upheavals: the civil rights movement, the domestic consequences of the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the end of the long postwar economic boom, the Shakespearean saga of the Nixon Administration and Watergate. Hollywood films, in this brief, exceptional moment, embraced a new aesthetic and a new approach to storytelling, creating self-consciously gritty, character-driven explorations of moral and narrative ambiguity. Although the rise of the blockbuster in the second half of the 1970s largely ended Hollywood’s embrace of more challenging films, Kirshner argues that seventies filmmakers showed that it was possible to combine commercial entertainment with serious explorations of politics, society, and characters’ interior lives.

'Un-American' Hollywood
'Un-American' Hollywood

Author: Peter Stanfield

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2007-12-27

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0813543975

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The concept of “un-Americanism,” so vital to the HUAC crusade of the 1940s and 1950s, was resoundingly revived in the emotional rhetoric that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks. Today’s political and cultural climate makes it more crucial than ever to come to terms with the consequences of this earlier period of repression and with the contested claims of Americanism that it generated. “Un-American” Hollywood reopens the intense critical debate on the blacklist era and on the aesthetic and political work of the Hollywood Left. In a series of fresh case studies focusing on contexts of production and reception, the contributors offer exciting and original perspectives on the role of progressive politics within a capitalist media industry. Original essays scrutinize the work of individual practitioners, such as Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, and Edward Dmytryk, and examine key films, including The Robe, Christ in Concrete, The House I Live In, The Lawless, The Naked City, The Prowler, Body and Soul, and FTA.

Showbiz Politics
Showbiz Politics

Author: Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-11-24

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1469617927

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Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But, as Kathryn Cramer Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations, institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process. Brownell explores how similarities developed between the operation of a studio, planning a successful electoral campaign, and ultimately running an administration. Using their business and public relations know-how, figures such as Louis B. Mayer, Bette Davis, Jack Warner, Harry Belafonte, Ronald Reagan, and members of the Rat Pack made Hollywood connections an asset in a political world being quickly transformed by the media. Brownell takes readers behind the camera to explore the negotiations and relationships that developed between key Hollywood insiders and presidential candidates from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, analyzing how entertainment replaced party spectacle as a strategy to raise money, win votes, and secure success for all those involved. She demonstrates how Hollywood contributed to the rise of mass-mediated politics, making the twentieth century not just the age of the political consultant but also the age of showbiz politics.

Hollywood and the Great Depression
Hollywood and the Great Depression

Author: Iwan Morgan

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2016-10-31

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1474414028

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Examines how Hollywood responded to and reflected the political and social changes that America experienced during the 1930sIn the popular imagination, 1930s Hollywood was a dream factory producing escapist movies to distract the American people from the greatest economic crisis in their nations history. But while many films of the period conform to this stereotype, there were a significant number that promoted a message, either explicitly or implicitly, in support of the political, social and economic change broadly associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal programme. At the same time, Hollywood was in the forefront of challenging traditional gender roles, both in terms of movie representations of women and the role of women within the studio system. With case studies of actors like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, as well as a selection of films that reflect politics and society in the Depression decade, this fascinating book examines how the challenges of the Great Depression impacted on Hollywood and how it responded to them.Topics covered include:How Hollywood offered positive representations of working womenCongressional investigations of big-studio monopolization over movie distributionHow three different types of musical genres related in different ways to the Great Depression the Warner Bros Great Depression Musicals of 1933, the Astaire/Rogers movies, and the MGM akids musicals of the late 1930sThe problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidors Our Daily BreadCary Grants success in developing a debonair screen persona amid Depression conditionsContributors Harvey G. Cohen, King's College LondonPhilip John Davies, British LibraryDavid Eldridge, University of HullPeter William Evans, Queen Mary, University of LondonMark Glancy, Queen Mary University of LondonIna Rae Hark, University of South CarolinaIwan Morgan, University College LondonBrian Neve, University of BathIan Scott, University of ManchesterAnna Siomopoulos, Bentley UniversityJ. E. Smyth, University of WarwickMelvyn Stokes, University College LondonMark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University

The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Hollywood Film
The Cultural Politics of Contemporary Hollywood Film

Author: Chris Beasley

Publisher:

Published: 2019-01-12

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 9780719082986

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Using an innovative syncretic 'cultural politics' approach drawing on political theory, film studies and sociology, this book unpacks how political myths about states, citizens, community, intimate life and social criticism operate in Hollywood narratives.