Working-Class Hollywood (eBook)

Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America

Steven J. Ross (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2020
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-21464-1 (ISBN)

Infos

This path-breaking book reveals how Hollywood became "e;Hollywood"e; and what that meant for the politics of America and American film. Working-Class Hollywood tells the story of filmmaking in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a time when going to the movies could transform lives and when the cinema was a battleground for control of American consciousness. Steven Ross documents the rise of a working-class film movement that challenged the dominant political ideas of the day. Between 1907 and 1930, worker filmmakers repeatedly clashed with censors, movie industry leaders, and federal agencies over the kinds of images and subjects audiences would be allowed to see. The outcome of these battles was critical to our own times, for the victors got to shape the meaning of class in twentieth- century America. Surveying several hundred movies made by or about working men and women, Ross shows how filmmakers were far more concerned with class conflict during the silent era than at any subsequent time. Directors like Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and William de Mille made movies that defended working people and chastised their enemies. Worker filmmakers went a step further and produced movies from A Martyr to His Cause (1911) to The Gastonia Textile Strike (1929) that depicted a unified working class using strikes, unions, and socialism to transform a nation. J. Edgar Hoover considered these class-conscious productions so dangerous that he assigned secret agents to spy on worker filmmakers. Liberal and radical films declined in the 1920s as an emerging Hollywood studio system, pressured by censors and Wall Street investors, pushed American film in increasingly conservative directions. Appealing to people's dreams of luxury and upward mobility, studios produced lavish fantasy films that shifted popular attention away from the problems of the workplace and toward the pleasures of the new consumer society. While worker filmmakers were trying to heighten class consciousness, Hollywood producers were suggesting that class no longer mattered. Working-Class Hollywood shows how silent films helped shape the modern belief that we are a classless nation.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.6.2020
• Zusatzinfo: 38 halftones
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Journalistik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Schlagworte: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences • activism • Addams, Jane • Adolph Zukor • American Federation of Labor • americans • Appeal to Reason • Appeal to Reason (newspaper) • Audiences • Big Business • Biograph Film Company • block booking • blue-collar worker • bolsheviks • Box office • Capitalism • Capra, Frank • Career • Carl Laemmle • Censorship • Charlie Chaplin • Chicago New Majority • Cinema of the United States • class conflict • class consciousness • Cohen, Lizabeth • Committee on Public Information • communism • comrade • Consumerism • david horsley • Davis, Harry • documentaries • Douglas Fairbanks • D. W. Griffith • Economic Digest • Ellsworth, Ted • Employment • Entertainment • Eugene V. Debs • Famous Players-Lasky • feature film • Film • Film History • film industry • filmmaking • Film Studies • film studio • Footage • Fox, William • Frankfurt School • Gompers, Samuel • government agency • Grauman’s Theaters • Hart, William S. • Hoffa (1992) • Ideology • Independent Film • Industrial Workers of the World • Intercontinental Films • International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees • Intertitle • intertitles • Jacobs, Lewis • Kevin Brownlow • King Vidor • Knights of Labor • labor-capital films • laborer • labor spies • labor unrest • Labour movement • left-wing politics • Library of Congress • Loew, Marcus • lois weber • Major film studio • Marcus Loew • Mary Pickford • mass movement • May, Lary • Melodrama • middle class • Movie palace • movie theater • Moving Picture World • National Association of Manufacturers • Nestor Film Company • New Generation (Malayalam film movement) • newspaper • newsreel • Open Shop Review • Photoplay • Pickford, Mary • Playwright • Politician • Politics • popular culture • Populism • production company • Publicity • Radicalism (historical) • red squad • salary • Samuel Gompers • Screen Actor • screenwriter • Silent Film • Slavery • Social Class • Social Realism • sound film • Strikebreaker • Struggle (TV series) • Studio executive • Studio System • Sweatshop • Theatre • The Birth of A Nation • The Moving Picture World • Trade Union • UCLA Film and Television Archive • union organizer • United Artists • Upton Sinclair • Vaudeville • Wealth • Western Federation of Miners • What Happened • Working Class • workplace
• ISBN-10: 0-691-21464-6 / 0691214646
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-21464-1 / 9780691214641