INTRODUCTORY DESCRIPTION:
This core module will build on what students have learned about Hollywood cinema in their first-year modules. Its aim is to support students to interrogate the historical contexts and industrial factors that informed the visual style and ideological strategies of classical and post-classical Hollywood cinema. Its primary aim is to equip students with the industrial knowledge and analytical skills required to interrogate the connections between Hollywood as industry and the socio-political influence of its forms and aesthetics.
Spanning both its ‘classical’ and ‘post-classical’ periods (roughly the 1930s-1990s), the module does not aim to provide students with an exhaustive overview of every genre, director, star or film studio of these periods. Instead, and taking a broadly chronological approach, each week will focus on key historical developments and industrial changes that impacted the aesthetic output and political function of mainstream Hollywood products and their more marginal counterparts, through a focus on key textual and contextual key concepts and relevant case studies.
The module is split into two halves. Part I, Classical Hollywood: Style, Representation, and The Hollywood Studio System, focuses on the practices of film production that defined the Hollywood industrial model in its ‘classical’ era. Covering important historical, technological and industrial transformations, including McCarthyism and the advent of colour technology, the mainstream case studies focused on in this half of the module will support consideration of Hollywood’s ideological influence and the ways Hollywood cinema has promoted American values and traditions through specific ideologies, such as class, gender race and ethnicity. A simultaneous emphasis on filmmaking at the ‘margins’ of classical Hollywood will facilitate engagement with the ways these ideologies and representational strategies have been reframed and resisted in the work of marginal filmmakers working within and adjacent to the ‘Big 5’ film studios.
The module’s second half, Post-Classical Hollywood: from the Mainstream to the Margins will continue to emphasise issues of politics and representation in Hollywood’s ‘post-classical’ era, taking a broad view of ‘Hollywood’ that places even greater emphasis on independent, marginal producers working in the shadow of the major studios during this period. First examining the various shifts that led to the ‘post-classical’ era in Hollywood, this part of the module will trace key moments of industrial and aesthetic change that facilitated the emergence of predominantly white, masculine cinemas of ‘New Hollywood’ and their overlooked Black and female counterparts. Continuing the emphasis on textual and contextual key concepts from the first half of the module, the selected case-studies will also enable students to appreciate the political and aesthetic contributions of the African American and Women filmmakers excluded from the legacies of ‘New Hollywood’ and consider the legacies of their aesthetic and political contributions to US cinematic histories.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
- To explain how important historical, political, industrial and technological developments informed the form and content of films made within and adjacent to major film studios in Hollywood’s ‘classical’ and ‘post-classical’ periods, through a close focus on key case studies.
- To analyze the textual properties of marginal (studio-adjacent) and mainstream Hollywood films made between the 1930s and 1990s in light of these key contexts.
- To evaluate representational strategies and ideological meanings generated by films made in these eras, with a particular emphasis on class, race and gender.
- To interrogate the mutually enforcing nature of the mainstream and the margin in US cinematic history, challenging mainstream film histories.
- To apply knowledge and skills developed through independent research and close analysis of American films beyond those screened on the module.
LEARNING AND TEACHING STRATEGY AND METHODS:
The module will be divided into two parts:
-Part I Classical Hollywood:
Style, Representation, and
The Hollywood Studio System (Weeks 1-5)
-Part II Post-Classical Hollywood:
‘New Hollywood’: from
Mainstream to Margin (Weeks 6-10)
Each week there will be an in-person lecture, an in-person screening and in-person seminars. The screenings take place on Wednesdays. The lectures and seminars take place on Thursdays. The week’s materials (including seminar worksheets) will be available on Moodle at least 48 hours before your seminar.
Lectures will position the filmic case studies in their relevant historical, political and/or technological contexts and set out the relevance of the key concept under discussion, as well as providing a primer on the important points made in the required reading and the relevance of its ideas to the film screened on that week. Lectures will model the kinds of close analysis students are required to undertake in seminars.
Seminars will be structured around the week’s key concept, explored through the reading, lecture and the questions on the seminar worksheet. Seminar worksheet questions will help to deepen understanding of the link between the key textual or contextual concept under discussion and the film viewed. Seminars will emphasise close-analysis of key films, supporting students to develop the analytical skills necessary to succeed in the assessments.
Please come prepared: having watched the pre-recorded film introduction, attended the screening, read and annotated assigned texts and noted down detailed responses on the seminar worksheet. This will allow you to contribute fully to seminar discussion and reach the intended learning outcomes by the end of the module.