Sociology of Hollywood - Gerardo Marti - Davidson College - 2011

March 7 The Studio Era: Early Hill and Gibson, Chapter 5.
Organizational Issues.
Gerald Horne. 2001. Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls,
Mobsters, Stars, Reds and Trade Unionists. Univ. Texas Press.
March
14
The “New”
Hollywood and High
Concept Movies.
Dr. Marti, Soc 380 Seminar
Gerardo Marti. 2008. Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a
Los Angeles Church. Rutgers. Chapter 3 (skim).
Recommended: Nancy Lynn Schwartz. 1982. The Hollywood Writers’ Wars.
Knopf.
Recommended: David F. Prindle. 1988. The Politics of Glamour: Ideology and
Democracy in the Screen Actors Guild. University of Wisconsin Press.
Recommended: Robert H. Stanley. 1978. The Celluloid Empire: A History of
the American Movie Industry. Hastings House.
Book Report (option 1): Margaret Thorp. 1946. America at the Movies.
London: Faber.
Book Report (option 2): Leo Rosten. 1941. Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the
Movie Makers. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Book Report (option 3): Hortense Powdermaker. 1950. Hollywood the Dream
Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers. Boston: Little, Brown.
Book Report (option 4): Douglas Gomery. 1986. The Hollywood Studio
System. Palgrave-Macmillan.
Book Report (option 5): John Izod. 1988. Hollywood and the Box Office, 1895-
1986. London: Macmillan.
Hill and Gibson, Chapter 6 & 8.
Richard Maltby. 2003. Hollywood Cinema. Second Edition. Blackwell.
Chapter 6, “Industry 2: 1948-1980” and Chapter 7, “Industry 3: Since 1980.”
From: Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds.). 1998. Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema.
-- Chap. 1, Smith, “Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History.” (Focus on
main themes and trends) (R)
Justin Wyatt. 1994. High Concept: Moves and Marketing in Hollywood.
University of Texas Press. Pp. 15-22. (be sure to define “high concept”) (R)
Shyon Baumann. 2007. Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art.
Princeton University Press. Chapter 1 “Introduction: Drawing the Boundaries
of Art.”
Recommended: From: Kevin Heffernan. 2004. Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold:
Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953-1968. Duke.
-- Introduction (R)
-- Chap. 3, “’Look into the Hypnotic Eye!’: Exhibitor Financing and Distributor
Hype in Fifties Horror Cinema.” (R)
-- Conclusion, “The Horror Film in the New Hollywood.” (R)
Recommended: From: Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds). 1998.
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema.
-- Chap. 18, Grant, “Rich and Strange: The Yuppie Horror Film”. (R)
Recommended: Todd Berliner. 2010. Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in
Seventies Cinema. University of Texas Press.
Book Report: Thomas Doherty. 2002. Teenagers and Teenpics: The
Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s, Revised and Expanded.
Temple University Press.
Pre-Discussion
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Pre-Discussion
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