FM2003: New Hollywood Cinema
Term 2: 2014-2015
For student completion:
Day
Room/s
Time/s
Module detail
Credits
Module leader
Other teaching staff
Assessment
20
Geoff King, GB167,
geoff.king@brunel.ac.uk
Case-study project, 5,000 words (100%)
Plan due in advance, 500 words max
(deduction from final mark for nonsubmission of plan)
Assessment Dates
Plan, Friday 20 March
Case-study project, Monday 20 April
Access to support material
Support material is provided electronically via the University’s
Blackboard system. You can gain access to the Blackboard
system on the intranet via the following:

https://blackboard.brunel.ac.uk/
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Week-by-week overview
1. New Hollywood Version I: Hollywood Renaissance
[Seminar exercise to do in advance of the following week]
2. New Hollywood Version II: Blockbusters and Corporate
Hollywood
3. From Auteurs to Brats: Authorship in New Hollywood
4. Genre
5. Stardom
6. Refiguring War and History: From Vietnam to Iraq and Beyond
7. Spectacle vs. Narrative in the Contemporary Blockbuster
(seminars this week will focus on the case-study assessment)
8. Race, Gender, Action!
9. Classical to Post-Classical?: Hollywood style in the era of DVD
and the iPod
10.The ‘Quality’ film in contemporary Hollywood
[Case-study plan due Friday 20 March]
11. Feedback on case study plans
[Case-study assessment due Monday 20 April]
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Module Aims and Objectives
 To study the texts and contexts of Hollywood cinema in the
‘post-studio’ era
 To examine changes and continuities in the Hollywood mode of
production, distribution and exhibition since the end of the studio
system in the late 1950s, including the relocation of Hollywood
cinema within large media corporations
 To investigate new formal approaches explored by some filmmakers and the possible creation of a ‘post-classical’ style of
production; also to consider the extent to which much production
remains within or closer to the ‘classical’ paradigm
 To situate New Hollywood cinema within a range of social,
political and cultural contexts
 To explore a number of theoretical approaches to the study of
New Hollywood cinema including issues such as authorship,
genre, stardom, contemporary audiences, relationships between
narrative and spectacle, and the impact of new media
technologies
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
 Demonstrate an understanding of key concepts and vocabulary
used in the analysis of New Hollywood cinema and an ability to
understand and evaluate a range of theories and debates
 Demonstrate an awareness of the connections between the
industrial, formal and historical-social-ideological dimensions of
New Hollywood cinema
 Demonstrate ability to apply theoretical analysis though close
textual analysis of films
 Demonstrate a use of a range of primary and secondary
materials going beyond material used in lectures or on the
reading list
 Show good communication skills in both written form and in the
organisation of seminar assignments
Skills developed:
Critical skills: development of skills involved in the analysis of
primary and secondary textual materials, use of appropriate critical
vocabulary and demonstration of an understanding of key
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concepts, debates and theories in the study of New Hollywood
cinema
Learning skills: skills of independent research and study,
application of theory to relevant film texts, ability to link
developments in one sphere (such as industrial organisation) to
others (such as formal or political factors)
Research skills: effective use of computer and library resources,
including sources outside Brunel
Communication skills: growing competence in essay writing
skills (tested by the substantial 5,000-word case-study project),
growing confidence in participation in seminar discussions (which
students will be required to organise, in pairs, each week)
Personal and Key Skills
These are skills that are valued by employers and will help you in your
personal and career development after graduating from Brunel:
Team working – working with others in seminars or on set tasks to
develop your ideas and create a piece of work like a group
presentation or seminar contribution.
Planning and time management – organizing your study time,
prioritizing your reading and seminar planning, working with your
timetable and preparing to present your work on time.
Independent study and initiative – working on your own and thinking
ahead. Identifying solutions to problems by applying your own initiative,
and being proactive (closely related to research).
Research – reading from the reading list and exploring the world of the
text from appropriate sources e.g. historical texts, interviews, web
searches. Using your initiative to extend your study and preparation
beyond that set down by module information or course tutor.
Live presentation in front of an audience – preparing a presentation in
class if set by tutor/module requirements. Using Powerpoint and
speaking to slides in a confident and precise manner. Developing the
confidence to present your ideas coherently and cogently to other
people verbally.
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Attendance at lectures and seminars is required. You are also
expected to have seen relevant films for each week, which should not
be difficult given the availability of mainstream Hollywood films. You are
expected to attend screenings or make sure you otherwise see the
screened films at the time – they will be an important point of reference
in lectures and in seminar discussions. Other suggestions for viewing
are also given week-by-week. Do not to rely on distant memories of
films seen some time in the past! Copies of these films are available in
the library in most cases, but don’t rely on them being available at the
last moment as this is a large module with many students. Everyone
should try to view, as well as to read, as widely as possible around the
subject.
Reading: The course outline includes reading for each week and you
should read at least one of these before the session. It is important that
you do this so that you can benefit from the lecture and seminar.
Evidence of wide reading and engagement with ideas raised in the
reading are key criteria for assignment grading. Seminars provide
space to air your own views, but these should be related to issues
raised in the reading and/or lecture
Quite a lot of reading is listed for some weeks. Please don’t be
intimidated by this, as it’s mostly to offer a range of alternatives to
increase your chances of finding something in the library. Consult tutors
if you want more guidance on the most appropriate sources for
particular purposes. Some readings will turn up more than once during
the module; these are often particularly worth checking out for the sake
of economy and efficiency in your reading. Many texts are of relevance
to more than one week without necessarily being listed again each time.
There is a large degree of overlap in the issues tackled from one week
to another and you are likely to miss useful material if you restrict
reading just to books and essays listed specifically for any one week
about which you plan to write. Credit will also be given for bringing in
reading of your own, not on the reading list, but you should include
some of the recommended material to ensure you engage in debate at
a sufficiently ‘academic’ level. Again, if in doubt, talk to one of the tutors.
High levels of demand mean you won’t always be able to get hold of all
the material you want at short notice, so you should plan and get some
reading done well in advance of assessment. You should be doing
some reading as you go along, not leaving it all to the last minute. Key
readings are usually particularly useful, but the distinction between
these texts and other on the reading list is not an absolute one.
‘Secondary’ reading is not necessarily listed in any particular order.
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Using academic sources from the reading list is crucial to the
case-study assessment for this module. You might want to use
various other sources for factual background on your chosen film,
but it is essential also to engage with material of the appropriate
academic level. Lack of such engagement is a common feature of
poor case studies.
Seminars
Seminar discussions are designed to create a forum in which you can
explore issues raised in your reading, viewing and from lectures. The
onus is on you to make these work. Seminars provide an opportunity to
try out ideas of your own and hear those of your colleagues. They are
not about impressing tutors or each other, but having a space to raise
issues freely and without being judged. Don’t hold back in seminars if
you are unsure of being ‘right’, because that is not what they are about.
It is just as important, and helpful to others, to ask questions as it is to
have ‘answers’. Active participation in seminars is a good way to
develop your own ideas and understandings – to make connections
between these and the more ‘academic’ material found on the reading
list. Everyone should try to take part, rather than leaving it to the same
few individuals each week. Participation is also a good way to
develop key skills sought by employers, such as an ability to work
in a group, to problem-solve, etc. This is an important part of what
you gain from studying, even where it is not assessed in its own
right.
Attendance registers will be taken at seminars only, not lectures, so
anyone missing the seminar will be listed as absent.
Assessment
Case-study project: 5,000 words, plus plan submitted in advance and
completion of self-assessment form. Constitutes 100% of the
assessment of the module.
Hand in on or before 3pm, Monday 20 April. Plan required in advance
by 3pm, Friday 20 March (the plan should be handed in formally, like a
normal assessment – i.e. with a cover sheet and posted in the relevant
coursework box). You must also complete the self-assessment form
(see below), to be handed in with the case-study (not with the plan).
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Failure to submit a plan or to complete the self-assessment form will
each result in a reduction of your mark by one letter grade (i.e. a B
would become a C, a C+ a D+).
Choose one film to analyze in depth as a product of New
Hollywood. The purpose is to demonstrate your understanding of New
Hollywood more generally through a detailed analysis of aspects of one
particular example. It is essential that you examine the film from all
three of the perspectives around which the module is organized, with an
equal balance between the three. That is, you must consider it at the
levels of its industrial, its formal and its social/cultural/political
contexts:
 Socio-cultural or historical perspective
How can your chosen film be understood in relation to its social
context? In what ways might be it seen as a ‘reflection’ or a
product of its time in this respect? It might be seen as a
response to very particular issues or events of its time
(remember, however, that films usually spend some two years
at least in production, so there is a time lag in relation to very
recent events). But films can also be understood from this
perspective more broadly. You need not identify things that
were happening exactly at the time. You might want to consider
the broader way in which the film can be seen to have sociocultural (or more clearly political) meanings – contributing to
particular ways of understanding the world. This can include
ways in which films participate in the creation or maintenance of
dominant American myths and ideologies. It can also include
broad issues such as representations of class, gender or
race/ethnicity, or any other elements/issues that are social in
nature.
 Industrial perspective
How can your film be understood as a product of the particular
industrial context of New Hollywood? How might the nature of
the film be shaped in this way, by the particular manner in which
New Hollywood operates as a business? Many if not all aspects
of any New Hollywood film can be explained to a greater or
lesser extent in this way (for example, their location within an
existing franchise, the use of genre, the use of stars, etc, etc.)
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Think about the factors that would lead to a film being green-lit
and funded. But try to relate specific elements of the film to how
these work in this period in Hollywood more generally. Much of
this relates to what is seen as selling well in this context, so it
can be useful to look at elements beyond the film itself such as
posters and trailers – they tend to suggest how the distributor
sought to sell the film in the market. Bear in mind that not all
contemporary Hollywood films are blockbusters but that there is
a wider range of possibilities, including some films that blur into
the independent sector or ‘Indiewood’.
 Formal perspective
How does your film use the medium or ‘language’ of film (this
means elements such as narrative and all other aspects of
audio-visual style: shooting style/camerawork, editing,
sound/music, etc). To what extent does it stick to the
conventions of ‘classical’ Hollywood style (and what might be
the significance of this?), or to what extent does it depart from
these. How might either use or departure from ‘classical’
convention be explained? Try to offer a balanced reading,
paying due heed to both uses of and departures from the
classical. Illustrated with specific textual detail from the film.
Some films might display some ‘new’ elements but many are
likely to remain ‘classical’ in many respects.
It is up to you to choose exactly which aspects of the film on which to
focus in order to do this. Please note that you are not expected to cover
every possible aspect of the film at each of these levels, but to select
aspects that enable you to demonstrate an understanding of how
the film can be understood within the broader New Hollywood
context in each of the three dimensions. You might draw on aspects
of the film that relate primarily to one week’s material in the module, or
aspects that cross over between different weeks. Don’t try to cover
too much material. Depth of analysis, focused on certain salient
aspects of the film is much more important than breadth of less focused
detail.
The purpose of the assignment is to demonstrate your understanding of
a) the separate dimensions of New Hollywood around which the module
is organized and b) how these different dimensions are inter-related in
various ways. You should, therefore, seek to integrate your analysis of
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the different aspects of the film considered. Please note that the
seminars in week 8 will be devoted to further discussion of the
requirements for the assessment.
Credit will be given for originality and use of your own analysis of the
chosen film, within the frameworks established in lectures/seminars
and/or on the reading list.
You are required to submit a plan in advance, by the date given
above (submit in usual way, in coursework box, with cover sheet, etc).
This should amount to a maximum of 500 words. It should give a
sketch indicating the film chosen and what aspects of the film are to be
considered in each of the three contexts. The purpose of the plan is to
ensure that you are on the right lines and have understood the brief –
this is especially important given that this is the sole assignment on
which the module is assessed. No marks are given for the plan as such,
but a good initial plan is an important aid to your own work. Tutorials
time will be made available for feedback on plans, of which you are
strongly encouraged to take advantage. Failure to submit a plan will
result in the reduction of your grade by a whole letter’s worth (i.e.
A reduced to B. Longer drafts of case-studies will NOT be read in
advance by tutors – and the plan must not significantly exceed the 500word limit. You can discuss your plan with one of the tutors before
handing it in.
The case-study itself must be accompanied by a completed selfassessment form. You will find this form included as the last page of
this module outline. Copy and submit it with your project (you can
replicate it separately if you prefer). The purpose of this form is to
encourage you to reflect on your own work, to assess its strengths and
weaknesses and identify what you might see yourself as room for
improvement. Good self-assessments will demonstrate an ability to
stand back from your work, to gain some perspective on it, to give a
sense of what you have achieved and where there is room for
improvement. Good self-assessment will demonstrate an understanding
of what is expected in a piece of work and the extent to which you have
met such expectations. Understanding your own work in this way is in
itself a very good way to improve. Ideally, think about what you might
say on the form before you have entirely completed the case-study, and
use those thoughts to improve it.
Case-studies not accompanied by a completed self-assessment
form will have their mark reduced by a letter grade. Your overall
mark will take your comments on the form partly into account, but
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mostly in a positive sense. That is, you stand to gain from this part of
the assessment. Good self-assessment will contribute to your mark.
Less good self-assessment will not greatly harm your mark, provided
that the form is taken seriously and completed fully.
A good case-study assignment will:
 Focus closely on the individual film while also situating it clearly in
the broader New Hollywood context, with equal attention to its
industrial, formal and social/cultural/political terms.
 Demonstrate an understanding of the industrial context, formal
characteristics and potential social-cultural meanings of a given text
– and of the relationships between these different dimensions.
 Provide in-depth analysis of the film, within the perspectives
required, rather than description or just factual detail.
 Demonstrate an understanding of, and a critical engagement with,
key theories and debates relevant to the understanding of New
Hollywood.
 Show evidence of reading, viewing and research beyond material
given in lectures
 Have a well-planned and structured argument that focuses on and
engages critically with the brief.
 Have a good standard of clarity, spelling, punctuation and grammar.
 Not just be a collection of facts about the film
Remember that focus, clarity, depth of analysis and coherence of
argument are primary features of any good assignment.
A key requirement is analysis rather than description. Do not just
describe a film but analyse it, seek to explain it. Lack of analysis is
one of the most common shortcomings in assessed work.
Analysis means not just describing how a sequence is shot, for
example, or how a narrative is structured or how an issue is
handled. It means going beyond that to suggest what the
significance is of that way of shooting/structuring a
narrative/handling an issue: what kinds of meanings are
constructed as a result, how the material being considered can be
explained (how it is similar to or different from other forms, why it
might be done that way, what kinds of contexts might explain it,
etc.).
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Avoid merely reproducing material from lectures or readings
without demonstrating your understanding of the material. One of
the best ways to demonstrate your own understanding is to apply
key concepts to an example of your own – as is required here –
rather than repeating examples given in lectures or reading. If you
use quotations from sources, make sure these are integrated into the
development of your own argument.
Grade Descriptors
Indicative
Mark Band
90 and
above
80-89
73-79
70-72
68-69
63-67
60-62
58-59
53-57
50-52
48-49
43-47
40-42
38-39
33-37
30-32
29 and
below
Degree class
equivalent
1
Grade
Grade Point
A*
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1
1
1
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.2
2.2
2.2
3
3
3
Fail
Fail
Fail
Fail
A+
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
DE+
E
EF
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15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Brunel University
Generic Undergraduate Grade Descriptors
Grade A*
Clearly demonstrates a highly sophisticated, critical and thorough
understanding of the topic. Provides clear evidence of originality and
independence of thought and clearly demonstrates exceptional ability to
develop a highly systematic and logical or insightful argument, solution or
evaluation at the current Level. Demonstrates exceptional ability in the
appropriate use of the relevant literature, theory, methodologies, practices,
tools, etc., to analyse and synthesise at the current Level. Shows an
exceptionally high level of clarity, focus and cogency in communication at the
current Level.
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Grade Band A (A+, A, A-)
Clearly demonstrates a sophisticated, critical and thorough understanding of
the topic. Provides evidence of independence of thought and clearly
demonstrates the ability to develop a highly systematic and logical or
insightful argument, solution or evaluation at the current Level. Demonstrates
excellence in the appropriate use of the relevant literature, theory,
methodologies, practices, tools, etc., to analyse and synthesise at the current
Level. Shows a high level of clarity, focus and cogency in communication at
the current Level.
Grade Band B (B+, B, B-)
Clearly demonstrates a well-developed, critical and comprehensive
understanding of the topic. Provides some evidence of independence of
thought and clearly demonstrates the ability to develop a systematic and
logical or insightful argument, solution or evaluation at the current Level.
Demonstrates a high degree of competence in the appropriate use of the
relevant literature, theory, methodologies, practices, tools, etc., to analyse and
synthesise at the current Level. Shows clarity, focus and cogency in
communication at the current Level.
Grade Band C (C+, C, C-)
Demonstrates a systematic and substantial understanding of the topic.
Demonstrates the ability to develop a systematic argument or solution at the current
Level. Demonstrates a significant degree of competence in the appropriate use of
the relevant literature, theory, methodologies, practices, tools, etc., to analyse and
synthesise at the current Level. Provides evidence of clarity and focus in
communication at the current Level.
Grade Band D (D+, D, D-)
Provides evidence of a systematic understanding of the key aspects of the
topic. Demonstrates the ability to present a sufficiently structured argument or
solution at the current Level. Demonstrates an acceptable degree of
competence in the appropriate use of the relevant literature, theory,
methodologies, practices, tools, etc., to analyse and synthesise at the current
Level. Provides evidence of effective communication at the current Level.
Grade Band E (E+, E, E-)
Provides evidence of some understanding of key aspects of the topic and
some ability to present an appropriate argument or solution at the current
Level. Demonstrates some competence in the appropriate use of the relevant
literature, theory, methodologies, practices, tools, etc at the current Level.
Provides some evidence of effective communication at the current Level.
However, there is also evidence of deficiencies which mean that the threshold
standard (D-) has not been met.
Grade F
Work that is unacceptable.
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Submitting your work
In order to be marked without penalty for lateness, work must
always be handed in before 3.00 p.m, on the day it is due, hard
copy to Gaskell Building and Electronic copy to Blackboard Learn.
It should be submitted with an official cover sheet (available in the
foyer of the Gaskell Building).
The assignment and the attached cover sheet should be “posted”
in the appropriate coursework collection box in the foyer of the
Gaskell Building.
You must add your student number to the top of every page of
your work.
You must NOT write your name on the pages of your work.
Electronic submission of your work
You are also required to submit an electronic copy of every piece
of work submitted. This electronic version must be submitted by
3.pm on the day of the deadline.
Your work is to be submitted through Blackboard Learn. In order
to submit work, you need to click on Assignments on the left hand
side of the Module page and follow these instructions:1.
Click on the Assignment button on the left hand side of
the page.
2.
then select the correct coursework you want to submit
for; and scroll down to Add Attachment – click into
this.
3.
This will take you into a Browse screen, then double
click on my computer and this will take you into your
computer files then you can select the c/work you want
to attach. Now double click your work and this will
place it underneath the box for attachments, once you
are sure this is the correct piece, then press SUBMIT –
there is no need to add any comments. You will
now have successfully submitted your coursework
on to Blackboard Learn.
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Email submissions direct to the module leader are NOT
acceptable
If work is submitted late, the following penalties will be uniformly
applied, in the absence of accepted relevant mitigating
circumstances:
o Up to 1 working day late
Mark capped at 70%
o Up to 2 working days late
Mark capped at 60%;
o Up to 5 working days late
Mark capped at 50%;
o Up to 10 working days late
Mark capped at 40%;
o Up to 15 working days late
Mark capped at 30%;
o More than 15 working days late Mark capped at 0%.
A working day is defined as Monday to Friday at any time of year,
with the exception of UK national holidays.
Mitigating circumstances are serious factors that explain why you
are unable to meet a deadline. For example, serious illness or
death of a close relative. Please refer to the college handbook for
further details.
Feedback on your work
Academic staff aim to mark work and provide detailed and
constructive feedback, normally within three weeks of the hand-in
date. However, there may be delays. An example Feedback
Sheet is at the back of this Module Booklet.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is passing off ideas words, illustrations, ideas or other
materials created by someone else as being one’s own ideas or
words. The following penalties currently operate:
First offences for
undergraduate
students
a mark of zero is assigned to the piece of work in
question and to the associated module; a
reassessment may be awarded where permitted
under the Regulations, but for the achievement of
credit only; the zero in the module may not be set
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aside, condoned for credit or, in modules above level
1, excluded from any calculation for the classification
of an award.
Repeat offences a mark of zero is assigned to the piece of work in
for undergraduate question and to the associated module; the student
students
shall be expelled from the University and barred
from re-entry; any credits already achieved will be
retained and an intermediate award may be awarded
as appropriate, unless the Panel determines that
there is just cause to deprive the student of any
credits already achieved and any intermediate award
to which they may lead.
Contacting tutors
Geoff King’s office is GB167, email: geoff.king@brunel.ac.uk
I will both have office hours posted each week. Email is also a very
useful way of getting in touch with any questions you might have or to
discuss ideas for the case-study assessment.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to discuss
assessments, seminar assignments, or anything else. The main place
for notices relating to the module will be Blackboard. You should make
sure you check your Brunel email account (or you can set up your
Brunel account to forward mails to another account).
Copies of lecture slides will be available on Blackboard.
Student Support:
Academic Skills Services (ASK)
Study skills support is offered in the Library. This covers a number
of areas including:
Academic Writing; Critical Reading; Maths, Numeracy and
Statistics; Time Management; Presentations and Seminars; Note
Taking; and Critical Thinking.
For further details, please contact the Library or go to
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/library/ask
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Do take advantage of this support – especially If you have had
comments on your work about the quality of your written
English.
Referencing
Correct referencing is crucial if you are to avoid accusations of
plagiarism (see separate section), but it is also a requirement in its
own right for all written work. You will lose marks if you do not
reference properly, so make sure you understand how to do it. If
anything here is not clear, seek clarification from one of your
tutors. It is a basic requirement that you understand the
fundamentals of academic referencing procedure.
The system you must use is called Harvard Referencing.
Harvard is an in-text author-date system so you need to reference
in each of two ways:
 references to texts that you use as you go along during
an essay.
and
 a bibliography that needs to appear at the end, listing
full details of all of the sources used.
Referencing books, chapters from edited collections, journal
articles, etc.
Referencing sources as you go along in a piece of written
coursework:
Whenever you are drawing on an argument or background
information from a source, that source must be referenced. This
applies whether you are quoting directly or paraphrasing. It is not
sufficient just to put sources in a bibliography at the end. You must
indicate in some specific detail where you are drawing on which
sources. Not to do this can be to risk accusations of plagiarism, or
at the least to be marked down for poor referencing.
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The reason for doing this is that you need to provide information
that allows the reader to know who the author is, what the text by
the author is, and what page or pages of the work you are
referencing. You do not need to give every last bit of information
about the source in these kinds of references (for example, the
publisher), as some of these can be put just in the bibliography at
the end. Please note: one very common error occurs in references
to essays in collections of essays. You must cite the actual author
of the essay you are using, as well as the editors of the collection.
Do not just cite the editors of the collection, as they didn’t write the
piece.
Titles of books, like those of films, should be in italics. Titles of
chapters from edited collections or titles of journal articles should
be in quotation marks and not in italics.
When using the Harvard system you place references in brackets
in the main part of the essay text; place the author surname, the
year of publication and page number in brackets at the end of the
relevant sentence. The full details – the title of the work, publisher,
etc, will then be available in the bibliography and not needed in the
bracketed reference.
For example:
Suzanne Buchan argues that ‘in contrast to most puppetmakers,
the Quays have a tendency to intentionally expose what lies
beneath the surface’ (Buchan, 2011, p. 127).
If you use long quotations, of more than three lines or so of text,
these should be presented off-set into the text: indented from the
left. When you do this, you do NOT use quotation marks. An
indented quotation of this kind should then be referenced as
above.
Bibliography
You must provide a bibliography at the end. This is an
alphabetically ordered list of sources cited. If you want to include
films and TV programmes here, do them separately, also
alphabetically, in a filmography. If you do not include a
bibliography you will lose marks.
A book should be cited this way:
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Author surname, author first initial. (date of publication) Title of
Book, Place of Publication: Publisher’s Name.
For example:
Bordwell, D. (2007) Poetics of Cinema. New York: Routledge.
For the whole of an edited collection:
Berry, C. (ed.) (1991) Perspectives on Chinese Cinema. London:
BFI
If you have only cited one essay in a collection, cite that in its own
right only (don’t cite the collection as well), eg:
Kramer, P. (2006) ‘Disney and Family Entertainment’, in Linda
Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds.) Contemporary
American Cinema. London: McGraw-Hill.
A journal article should as follows. Sometimes there will be an
issue number as below, sometimes a volume number and issue
number – if the latter, give both, as in 34(3):
Gallagher, M. (1997) ‘Masculinity in Translation: Jackie Chan’s
Transcultural Star Text’, Velvet Light Trap 39, Spring, pp. 23-41.
When citing internet sources, give the fullest details you can.
Never just give a web address or url. If the piece has an author
and/or title, give those in the same way as you would for any other
text, followed by the name of the website and its web address and
date accessed. The aim is to give the reader as much information
as is available to understand the nature of the source (internet
sources being so variable in kind). If no author’s name is given,
and it is an institutionally authored site give this name, e.g. (BBC,
2013).
Referencing films, TV programmes, etc.
Titles of films or TV programmes should be given in italics; titles of
individual episodes of TV shows should be given in quotation
marks and not italics. On first mention of a film or TV programme,
you must give a date in brackets (or dates for longer running TV
shows, for example, 2000-2004). If you wish, or if it is appropriate,
you might also give the name of a film’s director, studio or
18
nationality (or the equivalent for a TV show), but these are
optional.
Books to buy
You may like to purchase one or more of the following that will be of
recurrent use throughout the module:
 Geoff King’s book New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2002) is based largely on the material covered on the
module – including much of that used in the lectures. It is effectively
the core textbook for the module. The library has a number of
copies but not enough for everyone to always be able to access, so it
is recommended to buy this book.
Also very useful for a number of weeks and generally is the following:
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2010
Three collections of essays include contributions that turn up frequently
on the reading list and are well worth the investment (there are copies
in the library, but demand for them is likely to be very heavy):
 Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema, London/Routledge, 1998
 Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds), The Contemporary
Hollywood Film Industry, WileyBlackwell, 2007
 Jon Lewis (ed.), New American Cinema, Durham/Duke University
Press, 1998
An excellent general introduction to Hollywood, although not just New
Hollywood, is:
 Richard Maltby and Ian Craven, Hollywood Cinema: An
Introduction, Oxford/Blackwell, originally 1995 but updated in
2003.
Another useful collection included in some places in the reading list, but
also with numerous shorter pieces and analysis of individual films not
listed is:
19
 Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds), Contemporary
American Cinema, Maidenhead/Open University Press, McGrawHill, 2006
Other books are particularly worth buying if you chose to focus on
certain subjects. It is obviously worth buying a copy of the film you use
for your case study, to permit repeated viewing/close study.
Other sources
It is worth looking in film-related journals and exploring the resources of
the internet, although some parts of the latter should be used with care.
The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) is a handy source of
factual data such as film budgets and box-office figures for the US and
overseas markets. Another similar source is boxofficemojo.com. You
will also be able to find useful material through general internet
searching but beware of the quality and reliability of some material on
the web – and always include any internet sources you use, with full
URL details, in your bibliography (google is also a good source for
detecting internet plagiarism!).
Variety, the film industry bible is taken by the library and can be
searched electronically. This is a really good way to access specific
info about the industrial dimension of films, including things like
release strategies, etc, so it’s use is strongly recommended. To
access: go to library home page, click on ‘E-journals A to Z’, then enter
the journal title and click on one of the links to where it can be
accessed, FIAF International Index (which accesses issues from 1974
to date). On the FIAF page for Variety, click the ‘Search articles from
this journal’ link and you are in business. What you find varies from one
film to another, but can include really useful info about industry strategy.
Websites of other major Hollywood trade papers provide limited access
to their materials, but are worth checking in some cases, for example
The Hollywood Reporter.
Also worth consulting are academic film journals in the library. You can
search these via the library’s ‘Summon’ facility – for a particular film,
search under the title and limit the findings to academic journals. You
will also find a much wider range of material this way, although much of
it might not be academic in focus.
20
Background reading
For those who are not single honours Film & TV Studies students
or those who need to refresh their understanding, the following are
recommended for general background on the formal and sociocultural dimensions of Hollywood studied on this module (along with
industrial contexts). Understanding of these approaches is key to the
assessment in this module.
Form: For basic grounding in the ‘classical Hollywood’ style, and
alternatives, see David Bordwell, Film Art, various editions. Also see
sections relating to form in Robert Kolker, Film Form and Culture, New
York/McGraw-Hill, 1999, and ‘Film Form’ section at the start of Harry M.
Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class,
Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, second edition, Oxford/WileyBlackwell, 2009.
Socio-cultural: For basic grounding in the understanding of films as
products of their contemporary society or culture, see Harry M.
Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class,
Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies, second edition, Oxford/WileyBlackwell, 2009, especially chapter 1, ‘Introduction to the Study of Film
Form and Representation’. Also see Robert Kolker, Film Form and
Culture, New York/McGraw-Hill, 1999, especially chapter 3, ‘Film as
Cultural Practice’. And Douglas Kellner, ‘Hollywood film and society’, in
John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film
Studies, Oxford/Oxford University Press, 1998. If you are writing about
particular social issues (for example, race, gender, particular political
issues, etc.), you will usually be able to find other readings about these
subjects in their own right in the library.
21
Week 1: New Hollywood Version I: Hollywood Renaissance
Screening: Easy Rider (Denis Hopper, 1969)
The term ‘New Hollywood’ was initially used primarily to identify a
new generation of filmmakers and practices that emerged in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. The demise of the vertically-integrated
studio system during the 1950s and an economic crisis in
Hollywood in the late 1960s created space for a number of striking
works by filmmakers such as Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, et al;
films that reflected both some of the social conflicts of the time and
the formal experiments of the European ‘art’ film. This first ‘version’
of New Hollywood provides an illustration of the practice to be
followed throughout this module, combining industrial, formal and
socio-historical approaches.
Viewing suggestions: Taxi Driver (1976), Bonnie and Clyde
(1967), The Graduate (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Mean Streets
(1973), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), The
Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974); Chinatown (Roman Polanski,
1974)
Key Reading
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, London:
I.B. Tauris, 2002, ‘Introduction: Dimensions and Definitions of
New Hollywood’ and Chapter 1, ‘New Hollywood, Version I: The
Hollywood Renaissance’
 Murray Smith, ‘Theses on the philosophy of Hollywood history’,
in Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds.), Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema, London & New York: Routledge, 1998
 Robert Philip Kolker A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Scorsese,
Spielberg, Altman, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988 (also later versions), especially the introduction
 Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The
Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, chapter 1, ‘From
Counterculture to Counterrevolution’
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010, chapters 4, 5 and 6
 Steve Neale, ‘“The Last Good Time We Ever Had?”: Revising the
Hollywood Renaissance’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael
22
Hammond (eds), Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead:
Open University Press, McGraw-Hill, 2006
 Todd Berliner, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies
Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010
 Barbara Klinger, ‘The Road to Dystopia: Landscaping the nation in
Easy Rider, in Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (eds), The Road
Movie Book, London & New York/Routledge, 1997
Reading
 Yvonne Tasker, ‘Approaches to the New Hollywood’, in Curran,
Morley and Walkerdine, Cultural Studies and Communications,
London/Arnold, 1996 (an overview very useful for this week and
week 3)
 Peter Kramer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to
Star Wars, London/Wallflower, 2005
 Peter Kramer, ‘Post-classical Hollywood’, in John Hill and
Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), The Oxford Guide to Film
Studies, Oxford/OUP,1998
 Mark Shiel, ‘American Cinema, 1965-70’ and ‘American Cinema,
1970-1975’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds),
Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead/Open University
Press, McGraw-Hill, 2006
 Robin Wood, ‘The Incoherent Text: Narrative in the 70s’, in
Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, New York/Columbia
University Press, 1986
 David Cook, ‘Movies and Political Trauma’, in Lester Friedman
(ed.), American Cinema of the 1970s, New Brunswick/Rutgers
UP, 2007 (see also introduction and various other essays in this
collection)
 David Cook, Lost Illusions: America in the Shadow of
Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979, New York/Charles
Scribner’s and Sons, 2000, especially pp197-205 on conspiracy
movies
 Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King (eds), The
Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the
1970s, Amsterdam University Press, 2004. A useful collection, see
various essays
 Jim Hillier, The New Hollywood, London: Studio Vista, Chapter 1
‘Forty Years of Change; Hollywood from the 1940s to the
1980s’, London: Studio Vista, 1993
23
 Kristen Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An
Introduction, New York: McGraw Hill, 1994, chapter 25
‘Hollywood’s Fall and Rise: Since the 1960s’
 David Bordwell and Janet Staiger, ‘Since 1960: the persistence
of a mode of film practice’, in Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson,
The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of
Production to 1960, London: Routledge, 1985
 James Russell, ‘Debts, Disasters and Mega-Musicals: The Decline of
the Studio System’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond
(eds), Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead: Open
University Press, McGraw-Hill, 2006
 Jonathan Rosenbaum, ‘New Hollywood and the Sixties Melting
Pot’, in Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath and Noel King
(eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood
Cinema in the 1970s, Amsterdam University Press, 2004
 Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex ‘N’ Drugs
‘N’ Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, London:
Bloomsbury, 1998 (a lively account, although a gossipy and
generally light on analysis)
 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film:
Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies,
second edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 (useful general
overview of study of film form and film in relation to socialcultural context)
24
Week 2: New Hollywood Version II: Blockbusters and Corporate
Hollywood
No screening this week
Seminar: Exercise to prepare in advance of seminar. Choose one
or two Hollywood films currently or recently on release and try to
find out the following (some might be harder to discover than
others):
1. which company (or companies) produced the film
2. who distributed it
3. which larger company or group does the production and/or
distribution company belong to, and what other interests does
that company have
4. how might the nature of the film itself be explained in terms of
these business relationships?
A very different version of New Hollywood has become dominant
today. The ‘old’ studio system has been replaced, not by openness
and freedom, but by a new form of control by major studios that
have become part of larger entertainment conglomerates. This
lecture will examine the impact of this industrial environment on
the blockbuster strategy that dominates contemporary production.
It will consider the extent to which films are shaped by their
location within multimedia empires that seek to design products
that can be exploited both on screen and in other formats. There
is a good deal of overlap between the readings for this week
and week one; many also offer over-views that contain
material of relevance throughout the module.
Viewing suggestions: Any of many blockbuster franchises from
Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) to the Batman and Spiderman
series and more recent examples including the Harry Potter, Lord
of the Rings and various comic-book hero cycles.
Key Reading
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, Chapter
2, ‘New Hollywood, Version II: Blockbusters and Corporate
Hollywood’
 Murray Smith, ‘Theses on the philosophy of Hollywood history’,
in Steve Neale and Murray Smith (eds.), Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema, London & New York: Routledge, 1998
25
 Richard Maltby, ‘Nobody knows everything’: post-classical
historiographies and consolidated entertainment’, in Neale and
Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
 Eileen Meehan, ‘Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!’: The Political
Economy of a Commercial Intertext’, in Roberta Pearson and
William Uricchio (eds.), The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical
Approaches to a Superhero and His Media, London & New
York: Routledge, 1991
 Thomas Schatz, ‘New Hollywood, New Millennium’, in Warren
Buckland (ed.), Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood
Movies, New York & London: Routledge, 2009
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010, chapter 7, ‘Corporate Hollywood’
Reading:
 Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds), The Contemporary
Hollywood Film Industry, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2007,
particularly essays in Part I by Tom Schatz, Janet Wasko, Philip
Drake and Charles Acland
 Thomas Schatz, ‘The New Hollywood’ in Jim Collins, Hilary
Radner, Ava Preacher Collins (eds.), Film Theory Goes to the
Movies, New York & London: Routledge, 1993
 Sheldon Hall, ‘Tall Revenue Features: The Genealogy of the
Modern Blockbuster’, in Steve Neale (ed.) Genre and
Contemporary Hollywood, London: BFI, 2002
 Janet Wasko, How Hollywood Works, London: Sage, 2003
 Kristin Thompson, The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings
and Modern Hollywood, Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007
 Ernest Mathijs (ed.), The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in
Global Context, London: Wallflower, 2006 (especially ‘Section
1: Political Economy and Commercial Contexts’, essays by
Wasko & Shanadi and Biltereyst & Meers)
 Will Brooker, Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-first Century
Batman, London: IB Tauris, 2012
 William Proctor, ‘Regeneration and Rebirth: Anatomy of the
Franchise Reboot’, Scope: An Online Journal of Film and
Television Studies, 22, available at
http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/February_2012/proctor.pdf
26
 Tino Balio, ‘Adjusting to the Global Economy: Hollywood in the
1990s, in Albert Moran (ed.), Film Policy: International, National
and Regional Perspectives, London: Routledge, 1996
 Douglas Gomery, ‘The Hollywood blockbuster: Industrial
analysis and practice’, in Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie
Blockbusters, London: Routledge, 2003
 Jon Lewis, ‘Money Matters: Hollywood in the Corporate Era’, in
Lewis (ed.), New American Cinema, Durham: Duke University
Press, 1998
 Jon Lewis, ‘Following the money in America’s sunniest
company town: Some notes on the political economy of the
Hollywood blockbuster’, in Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie
Blockbusters, London: Routledge, 2003
 Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the
Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, New York: Charles Scribner’s,
2000, chapters 2 and 3
 Keith Negus, ‘The Production of Culture’, in Paul du Gay (ed.),
Production of Culture: Cultures of Production, London: Sage
(1997), especially pp 83-95 (usefully highlights significant
difficulties in the achievement of corporate media synergies)
 Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the
Electronic Rainbow, New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons,
2000
 Janet Wasko, Hollywood in the Information Age, Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1994
 Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria & Richard Maxwell,
Global Hollywood, London: BFI, 2001
 Martin Dale, The Movie Game: The Film Business in Britain,
Europe and America, London: Cassell, 1997, chapters 1-3
 Nicholas Garnham, Capitalism and Communication, London:
Sage, 1990, chapter 11, ‘The Economics of the US Motion
Picture Industry’
 Asu Askoy and Kevin Robins, ‘Hollywood for the 21st century:
global competition for critical mass in image markets’,
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 16, 1992
 John Izod, Hollywood and the Box Office, London: Macmillan,
1988, chapter 13, ‘Conglomerates and Diversification, 1965-86’
 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the
Blockbuster, London: I.B.Tauris, 2000
 Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, London: Routledge,
2003 (various essays, a couple listed separately above)
27
 Peter Bart, The Gross: The Hits, the Flops – The Summer That Ate
Hollywood (lively although non-academically focused account of
summer 1998 season in Hollywood)
28
Week 3: From Auteurs to Brats: Authorship in New Hollywood
Screening: War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
To what extent can New Hollywood films be seen as the products
of individual authors? The Hollywood Renaissance was
understood largely in terms of the work of the artistic auteur, but
what does it mean to refer to products as works ‘by’ directors such
as Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino? Is this just another
marketing ploy, or is there any space left for the expression of
distinctive voices in terms of form or content? To what extent are
the ‘meanings’ of films the product of the filmmaker, industrial
structures, or their broader social context? The main case study
used in the lecture will be Spielberg. This will be the first of several
weeks to examine changes and/or continuities in the New
Hollywood version of frameworks that have been applied to
Hollywood in the past.
Viewing suggestions: Other films by Spielberg, or the work of
‘Hollywood auteurs’ such as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese,
Francis Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, et al
Key Reading
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, Chapter 3, ‘From Auteurs
to Brats: Authorship in New Hollywood’
 David A. Cook, ‘Auteur Cinema and the “Film Generation” in
1970s Hollywood’, in Jon Lewis (ed.), The New American
Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998
 Timothy Corrigan, ‘Auteurs and the New Hollywood’, in Lewis
(ed), The New American Cinema
 Helen Stoddart, ‘Auteurism and film authorship theory’, in
Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich (eds.), Approaches to
Popular Film, Manchester: MUP, 1995
 Warren Buckland, ‘The role of the auteur in the age of the
blockbuster: Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks’, in Julian
Stringer (ed.), Movie Blockbusters, London: Routledge, 2003
Reading
 Jon Lewis, Whom God Wishes to Destroy: Francis Coppola and
the New Hollywood, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997
(contains good general background on New Hollywood and
authorship, as well as a detailed study of Coppola)
29
 Robert Lapsley & Michael Westlake, Film Theory: An Introduction
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988, chapter 4:
‘Authorship’.
 Stephen Crofts, ‘Authorship and Hollywood’, in John Hill and Pamela
Church Gibson, The Oxford Guide To Film Studies, Oxford: OUP,
1998 (a wide-ranging survey)
 Dudley Andrew, ‘The Unauthorized Auteur Today’, in Collins, Radner
and Collins, Film Theory Goes to the Movies, New York: Routledge,
1993 (interesting but not the most accessible account)
Extracts of various contributions to theories of authorship can be found
in John Caughie (ed.), Theories of Authorship, London: Routledge,
1981, including:
 Andrew Sarris, pp 61-67
 Edward Buscombe, ‘Ideas of Authorship’, 22-34
 Michel Foucault ‘What is an Author?’, 282-91
 Roland Barthes, ‘The death of the author’, 138-51
On Steven Spielberg, social-cultural analysis can be found in:
 Robert Philip Kolker A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Scorsese,
Spielberg, Altman, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988, second edition chapter on Spielberg, or third edition
chapter on Spielberg in the 1990s
 Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The
Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, chapter
9, 3, ‘At Home with Steven Spielberg’
 Leighton Grist, ‘Spielberg and Ideology: Nation, class, family
and War of the Worlds’, New Review of Film and Television
Studies, vol.7, no.1, March 2009. Also see other essays in this
special issue on Spielberg
General works on Spielberg:
 Warren Buckland, Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of
the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster, New York:
Continuum, 2006
 Nigel Morris, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of
Light, London: Wallflower, 2007 (useful but with unhelpful
elements of Lacanian theory that can be ignored)
An example of a biographically-based reading is:
 Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography, London:
Faber,1997
30
Week 4: Genre
Screening: Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)
Familiar genres were often targets for deconstruction in the
‘Renaissance’ period. The corporate blockbuster, on the other
hand, has dusted off some B-movie genres – especially science
fiction – and given them big-budget treatment. Many contemporary
productions combine the characteristics of more than one genre, a
tendency sometimes taken to bewildering extremes. This apparent
incoherence will be considered partly in terms of Hollywood’s
strategies in relationship to audiences but will also be viewed in a
longer historical context in which the generic boundaries of
Hollywood have always been more fluid than they sometimes
appear in retrospect. There is much talk about the undermining of
genre boundaries today, yet it remains an important concept for
our understanding of both industry and audience experiences. You
might want to think in advance about the concept of genre as you
use it in your own moving-going decisions: to what extent to you
choose films on the basis of genre?
Viewing suggestions: Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1998),
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), the Scream series (1996-2000). Any other
films that deconstruct ‘classical’ genres (see other products of the
Hollywood Renaissance), mix genres or return to ‘classical’ genre
conventions (the latter including much science fiction, romantic comedy,
etc.)
Key Reading
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, Chapter 4 ‘Genre Benders’
 Rick Altman, Film/Genre, London: BFI, 1999
 Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood, London & New York:
Routledge, 2000, especially chapter 7, ‘Genre and Hollywood’
 Rick Altman, ‘A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre’, in
Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, Austin: Texas University
Press, 1986
Reading
 Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology,
London: Wallflower, 2006
 Richard Maltby and Ian Craven, Hollywood Cinema: An
Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, chapter 3, ‘Genre’
31
 Thomas Elsaesser, ‘James Cameron’s Avatar: access for all’,
New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 9, no. 3,
September 2011 (also relevant to reading of the film in terms of
Cameron as auteur, from previous week)
 Jim Kitses, Horizons West: The Western from John Ford to Clint
Eastwood, London: BFI, 2004 (updated edition of classic work on
thematic oppositions in the western)
 Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 19301980, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, especially pp 5569, ‘The Thematic Paradigm – The Resolution of Incompatible
Values’, and chapter 2, ‘Real and Disguised Westerns: Classical
Hollywood’s Variations of Its Thematic Paradigm’, and chapters 8
and 9 on the more recent period.
 Matthew Carter, Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on
Hollywood’s Frontier Narrative, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2014
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010, chapter 6 (in relation to genre in the Hollywood
Renaissance)
 Todd Berliner, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies
Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010 (especially
chapter 4, on genre deviation in Hollywood Renaissance)
 Edward Buscombe, ‘The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema’, in
Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader
 Robin Wood, ‘Ideology/Genre/Auteur’, in Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film
Genre Reader
 David Cook, Lost Illusions: America in the Shadow of Watergate and
Vietnam, 1970-1979, New York: Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 2000,
chapters 5 and 6
 Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic
Rainbow, 1980-1989, New York: Charles Scribner’s, 2000, chapter 7
 Steve Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, London:
BFI, 2002 (various essays)
 Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres, New York: McGraw Hill,1981(a
classic work of genre theory, especially on the imaginary
reconciliation of differences in genre films)
 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the
Blockbuster, London: IB Tauris, 2000 (lots on imaginary
reconciliation of differences)
32
 Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the
American Action Movie, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press,
1997
 Jim Collins, ‘Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the
New Sincerity’, in Collins et al (eds.), Film Theory Goes to the
Movies, New York & London: Routledge, 1993
 Steve Neale, Genre, London: BFI, 1980
 Pam Cook (ed.), The Cinema Book, London: BFI, 1985, ‘History of
genre criticism’ pp 58-63
 Barry K. Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader (various essays worth
exploring)
33
Week 5: Stardom
Screening: Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
Stardom has always performed a central role in Hollywood, a
tendency that has if anything increased in New Hollywood. The
presence of big star names is considered to be the nearest thing to
the guarantee of success sought by studios seeking to maximize
returns on a relatively small number of expensive films. Stars
have, as a result, gained increased industrial clout, many having
established their own production companies to ensure closer
control over the projects in which they appear. This lecture will also
examine the continued appeal of stars to audiences, including a
focus on the case of Clint Eastwood, and the way the presence of
a star persona affects our reading of Hollywood movies.
Viewing suggestions:. Other films starring Clint Eastwood, from
‘Dollars’ and Dirty Harry series to more recent examples. Other star-led
texts (which means many Hollywood movies!)
Key Reading
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, Chapter 5, ‘Star Power’
 Richard Dyer, Stars, London: BFI, 1979/1999
 Paul McDonald, ‘Reconceptualising Stardom’, supplementary
chapter in 1999 edition of Dyer, Stars
 Paul McDonald, Hollywood Stardom, Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2013
Reading
 Barry King, ‘Articulating Stardom’, in Christine Gledhill (ed.),
Stardom: Industry of Desire, London: Routledge, 1991 (see also
other essays in this collection)
 Barry King, ‘Stardom as Occupation’, in Paul Kerr (ed.), The
Hollywood Film Industry, London: Routledge, 1986
 John O. Thompson, ‘Screen Acting and the Commutation Test’,
in Christine Gledhill, ed., Stardom: Industry of Desire, London:
Routledge, 1991
 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Films Stars and Society,
London: BFI, 1986
 Paul McDonald, ‘Star Studies’, in Joanne Hollows and Mark
Jancovich, Approaches to Popular Film, Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1995
34
 Paul McDonald, The Star System: Hollywood’s Production of
Popular Identities, London: Wallflower Press, 2000
 Paul McDonald, ‘The Star System: Producing Hollywood
Stardom in the Post-Studio Era’, in Paul McDonald and Janet
Wasko (eds), The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry,
Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2007
 Paul Smith, Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993
 Pam Cook, Nicole Kidman, London: BFI, 2012
 Geoff King, ‘Stardom in the Willennium’, in Thomas Austin &
Martin Barker (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Stardom,
London: Arnold, 2003
 Thomas Austin & Martin Barker (eds), Contemporary Hollywood
Stardom, London: Arnold, 2003, various essays and useful
introduction
 Jeremy Butler, ‘The star system and Hollywood’, in John Hill
and Pamela Church Gibson, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies,
Oxford: OUP, 1998
 Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood cinema and female
spectatorship, London: Routledge, 1994 (a study of audiences
in the 40s and 50s, but with ideas applicable elsewhere)
35
Week 6: Refiguring War and History: From Vietnam to Iraq and
Beyond
Screening: Body of Lies (Ridley Scott, 2008)
How does contemporary Hollywood tackle sensitive issues of war
and history? Representations of the Vietnam war provide a good
point of departure from which to consider the portrayal of more
recent conflicts, including the two US-led invasions of Iraq, before
and after 9/11. What kinds of strategies have been used to ‘make
sense’ of these events? What is the relationship between
representations of war and reality, myth or ideology. This lecture
will begin by considering a range of films about Vietnam, from
Apocalypse Now to Platoon and Rambo, before moving on to more
recent Hollywood versions of conflict including Body of Lies, set in
contemporary Iraq.
Viewing suggestions: Platoon (1986), The Green Berets (1968), The
Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rambo: First Blood Part II
(1985), Full Metal Jacket (1987), or any other Vietnam war film;
Courage Under Fire (1996), Black Hawk Down (2001), Behind Enemy
Lines (2001), Three Kings (1999), Jarhead (2005), The Kingdom
(2007), Rendition (2007), Lions for Lambs (2007), Stop Loss (2008),
Traitor (2008), The Hurt Locker (2008), Green Zone (2010)
Reading
On Vietnam:
 Michael Klein, ‘Historical Memory, Film, and the Vietnam Era’,
in Linda Dittmar and Gene Michaud (eds.), From Hanoi to
Hollywood, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990
 Leo Cawley, ‘The War about the war: Vietnam Films and
American Myth’, in Dittmar and Michaud, From Hanoi to
Hollywood
 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the
Blockbuster, chapter 5, ‘Seriously Spectacular: “Authenticity”
and “Art” in the War Epic’
 Clyde Taylor, ‘The colonialist subtext in Platoon’, in Dittmar and
Michaud, From Hanoi to Hollywood
 Dittmar and Michaud, From Hanoi to Hollywood, Part 2 (a series
of essays on individual Vietnam war films)
 Michael Hammond, ‘Some Smouldering Dreams: The Combat
Film in Contemporary Hollywood, in Steve Neale (ed.) Genre
and Contemporary Hollywood, London: BFI, 2002
36
 John Hellman, American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1986
 Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The
Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, chapter 7,
‘Vietnam and the New Militarism’
 Albert Auster and Leonard Quart, How the War was
Remembered, New York: Praeger, 1988
 Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of American: Gender
and the Vietnam War, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989
On the post-Vietnam era, or war more generally:
 Martin Barker, A ‘Toxic Genre’: The Iraq War Films, London:
Pluto, 2011 (the best academic work on films about the 2003
war in Iraq)
 Stephen Prince, Firestorm: American Film in the Age of
Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009 (a bit
thin)
 Geoff King, ‘Reassertions of Hollywood heroic agency in the
Iraq war film’, in Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis (eds),
Routledge Companion to Film and Politics, London: Routledge,
forthcoming 2015 (advance copy available on Blackboard)
 Tom Pollard, Hollywood 9/11: Superheroes, Supervillians, and
Super Disasters, London: Pluto Press, 2011 (some parts of this
are rather weak!)
 Douglas Kellner, Cinema Wars; Hollywood Film and Politics in
the Bush-Cheney Era, Chichester: Wiley-Blackstock, 2010
(somewhat given to rhetorical overstatement)
 Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard, The Hollywood War Machine: US
Militarism and Popular Culture, Paradigm, 2007
 David Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2008, especially chapter 4,
‘Cinema’
 Matthew Alford, Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American
Supremacy, London: Pluto Press, 2010
 Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula and Karen Randell (eds),
Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the ‘War on Terror’,
London: Continuum, 2010 (various essays)
 Geoff King, Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets
Independent Cinema, London: I.B.Tauris, 2008 (chapter 4,
37
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








‘Indiewood inside the studios: American Beauty and Three
Kings)
Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper, American History and
Contemporary Hollywood Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2005 (chapter 7, ‘Hollywood’s post-Cold War history: the
“righteousness” of American interventionism, Three Kings,
Black Hawk Down)
Cynthia Weber, Imagining America at War: Morality, Politics
and Film, London & New York: Routledge, 2005
David Slocum (ed.), Hollywood and War, London & New York:
Routledge, 2006, various contributions
Jean-Michel Valenin, Hollywood, The Pentagon and
Washington, London: Anthem Press, 2005 (useful background
but a bit superficial in places)
David L. Robb, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon
Shapes and Censors the Movies, Amhurst: Prometheus Books,
2004 (useful factual background rather than academic in focus)
Winston Wheeler Dixon (ed.), Film and Television After 9/11,
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004,see
especially chapters by Rebecca Bell-Metereau and Jonathan
Markovitz
Stephen Prince, Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in
Contemporary American Film, New York: Praeger, 1992
Leonard Quart, American Film and Society Since 1945, New
York: Praeger, rev. edition 2002
Philip John Davies and Paul Wells (eds), American Film and
Politics from Reagan to Bush Jr, Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2002
Lina Khatib, Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the
Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World, London: I.B.Tauris,
2006 (introduction and various references to Three Kings and
other Hollywood films – see index)
Jack G. Shaheen, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after
9/11, Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2008 (useful
background although not very analytical in focus)
For more background on the Vietnam war and the 1991 and
subsequent invasions of Iraq (and broader media representations
of these) there are various books in the library that can be found
by using keyword searches.
38
Week 7: Spectacle vs. Narrative in the Contemporary Blockbuster
Screening: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Michael Bay, 2009)
Seminar this week will focus on the case-study assessment
rather than the lecture topic
Contemporary blockbusters are often accused of surrendering any
interest in narrative, story or character to an emphasis on the
provision of ever-more lavish or noisy spectacular entertainment.
This week’s lecture will examine the context and characteristics of
New Hollywood spectacle as a big-screen attraction. But it will also
suggest that narrative – at various levels – has been far from
abandoned, even in the most spectacular or critically mauled
blockbusters or blockbuster sequels. These issues will be relevant
to the formal dimensions of many contemporary Hollywood films.
Viewing suggestions: Independence Day (1996), Titanic (1997),
Armageddon (1998), Deep Impact (1998); King Kong (2005), Avatar
(2009), others in the Transformers series; Battleship (2012); any other
spectacular Hollywood blockbuster (plenty to choose from, including
various recent superhero/comic-book franchises)
Key Reading
 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the
Blockbuster
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, Chapter 6 ‘Narrative vs.
Spectacle in the Contemporary Blockbuster’
 Fred Pfeil, ‘From Pillar to Postmodern: Race, Class, and
Gender in the Male Rampage Film’, in Jon Lewis (ed.), The
New American Cinema
 David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in
Modern Movies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006
(‘Part I: A Real Story’)
 Kristen Whissel, Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and
Contemporary Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014
 Lisa Purse, Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2013, especially chapter 1,
‘Interpretation and the Digital’
 Lisa Purse, Contemporary Action Cinema, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2011, chapter 1, ‘Narrative and the
action film’
39
 Stephen Prince, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction
of the Real, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010,
especially introduction and chapter 1
 David Bordwell, ‘Anatomy of the Action Picture’, ‘David
Bordwell’s Website on Cinema’, January 2007, available online
at www.david.bordwell.net/essays/anatomy/php
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010, chapter 9, p245-254
 Stephen Keane, CineTech: Film, Convergence and New Media,
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007, chapter 3 ‘Digital special effects’
Reading
On narrative, primarily
 Thomas Elsaesser & Warren Buckland (eds), ‘Studying
Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis’,
London: Arnold, 2002, chapter 2, ‘Classical/post-classical
narrative (Die Hard)’
 Patrick Keating, ‘Emotional Curves and Linear Narratives’,
Velvet Light Trap, 58, Fall 2006
 Warren Buckland, ‘A close encounter with Raiders of the Lost
Ark: notes on narrative aspects of the New Hollywood
blockbuster’, in Neale and Smith, Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema
 Elizabeth Cowie, ‘Storytelling: classical Hollywood cinema and
classical narrative’, in Neale and Smith, Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema
 Kristen Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999
 Shilo T. McClean, Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of
Visual Effects in Storytelling, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007
 Geoff King, ‘Unraveling the Puzzle of Inception’, in Warren
Buckland (ed.), Hollywood Puzzle Films, London: Routledge,
2014.
 Geoff King, Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in
Contemporary Studio Film, London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming
2015, chapter 3, ‘Inception and the Quality Blockbuster’,
advance copy available on Blackboard (this is a longer version
of the above chapter)
On spectacle, primarily
40
 Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions’, in Thomas
Elsaesser (ed.), Early Cinema: Space/Frame/Narrative, London:
BFI, 1990
 Mark Crispin Miller, ‘Advertising: End of Story’, in Miller (ed.),
Seeing Through Movies, New York: Pantheon, 1990
 Patricia Mellencamp, ‘Spectacle and Spectator: Looking
Through the American Musical Comedy, in Ron Burnett (ed.),
Explorations in Film Theory: Selected Essays from Cine-Tracts,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991
 Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture
After Vietnam, London: Routledge, 1991, chapter 6,
‘Interminable Tales of Heaven and Hell’
 Jose Arroyo (ed.), Action/Spectacle Cinema, London: BFI, 2000
 Angela Ndalianis, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary
Entertainment, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004 (interesting but
often simplistically overstated)
 Angela Ndalianis, ‘Special Effects, Morphing Magic, and the
1990s Cinema of Attractions’, in Vivien Sobchack (ed.), MetaMorphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of QuickChange, Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press,
2000
 Wanda Strauven (ed.), The Cinema of Attraction Reloaded,
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006 (various
essays, especially that by Scott Bukatman, ‘Spectacle,
Attractions and Visual Pleasure’)
On both or more background reading
 David Bordwell, ‘The classical Hollywood style, 1917-60’, in
Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960,
London: Routledge, 1985
 Eric Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the
American Action Movie, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press,
2997
 Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1995, ‘The Spectacle of Movement’, in chapter 6,
and chapter 8, ‘Narrative’
 Geoff King, ‘Spectacle and Narrative in the Contemporary
Blockbuster’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond (eds),
Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead: Open University
Press, McGraw-Hill, 2006
41
 Geoff King, ‘Spectacle, Narrative, and the spectacular
Hollywood blockbuster’, in Julian Stringer (ed.), Movie
Blockbusters, London: Routledge, 2003
 Geoff King, ‘Ride-Films and Films as Rides in the
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema of Attractions’, CineAction,
51, February 2000 (a version of Chapter 7 of Spectacular
Narratives)
 Geoff King, ‘Spectacular Narratives: Twister, Independence
Day, and Frontier Mythology in Contemporary Hollywood’,
Journal of American Culture Spring 1999 (an earlier version of
Chapter 1 of Spectacular Narratives)
42
Week 8: Race, Gender, Action!
Screening: Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner, 1987)
What exactly is offered by the Hollywood ‘action’ movie? This
week we will explore some of the central thematic issues underling
the Hollywood action cinema, especially discourses around gender
and race. We will also examine the formal characteristics of the
action film. Some of the reading for this week will also be useful for
anyone planning to write about gender issues more generally
when tackling the socio-cultural dimension of the case study.
Viewing suggestions: Any other Hollywood action movie, including the
Die Hard series and other Lethal Weapon films, including films with
women stars, such as Aliens (1986), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996),
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Salt (2012). Also other examples
featuring black stars such as Man on Fire (2004), Hancock (2008), or
anything featuring the likes of Denzel Washington, Will Smith.
Key Reading
 Lisa Purse, Contemporary Action Cinema, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2011
 Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the
Blockbuster, Chapter 4, ‘Maximum Impact: Action Films’
 Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular
Cinema, London & New York: Routledge, 1998, chapter 3,
‘Action Women: Muscles, mothers and others’
 Erich Lichtenfeld, Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle,
and the American Action Movie, Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 2007
 Martin Barker and Kate Brooks, Knowing Audiences: Judge
Dredd, Its Friends, Fans and Foes, Luton: University of Luton
Press, 1998
Reading
 Yvonne Tasker (ed.), The Action and Adventure Cinema,
Oxford & New York: Routledge, 2004, various contributions
 G. Marchetti, ‘Action-Adventure as Ideology’, in I. Angus and S.
Jhally (eds.), Cultural Politics in Contemporary America, New
York: Routledge, 1989
 Steve Neale, ‘Action-Adventure’, in Genre and Hollywood,
London: Routledge, 2000, pp 52-60
43
 Sergei Eisenstein, ‘The Montage of Attractions’ and ‘The
Montage of Film Attractions’, in Selected Works, London: BFI,
1988
 Richard Dyer, ‘Entertainment and Utopia’, in Only
Entertainment, London: Routledge, 1992
On race
 Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks,
New York: Continuum, 1993, especially chapter 9, ‘The 1980s:
Black Superstars and the Era of Tan’
 Mark Reid, Redefining Black Film, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993
 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image
in Film, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993
 S. Craig Watkins, ‘Ghetto Reelness: Hollywood Film Production,
Black Popular Culture and the Ghetto Action Film Cycle’, in
Steve Neale (ed.) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood,
London: BFI, 2002
 Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture, London:
Routledge, 1997
On gender
 Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the
Action Cinema, London: Routledge, 1993
 Yvonne Tasker, ‘Dumb Movies for Dumb People: Masculinity,
the body, and the voice in contemporary action cinema’, in
Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, Screening the Male: Exploring
Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, London & New York, 1993
On gender more generally in contemporary Hollywood
 Hilary Radner, Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Film, Chick Flicks
and Consumer Culture, London: Routledge, 2010
 Joel Gwynne and Nadine Muller, Postfeminism and
Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013
 Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young (eds), Chick Flicks:
Contemporary Women at the Movies, London: Routledge, 2008
(various essays, some focused on Hollywood films)
 Hilary Radner and Rebecca Stringer (eds), Feminism at the
Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular
Cinema, London: Routledge, 2011 (again, various essays,
some focused on Hollywood examples)
44
 Stella Bruzzi, Men’s Cinema: Masculinity and Mise en Scéne in
Hollywood, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013 (very
useful/interesting reading of male-oriented issues at the level of
film style)
 Susanne Kord and Elizabeth Krimmer (eds), Contemporary
Hollywood Masculinities: Gender, Genre and Politics,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 (various essays)
On both race and gender
 Fred Pfeil, ‘From Pillar to Postmodern: Race, Class, and
Gender in the Male Rampage Film’, in Jon Lewis (ed.), The
New American Cinema
 S. Willis, High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary
Hollywood Film, Durham: Duke University Press, 1997
 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film:
Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the
Movies, second edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, Part II,
Race and Ethnicity and American Film and Part IV, Gender and
American Film (for general background on these issues)
 Fred Pfeil, White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and
Difference, New York: Verso, 1995
45
Week 9: From Classical to Post-Classical?: Hollywood style in the era
of DVD and the iPod
Screening: The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007)
Do mainstream Hollywood films of today display a ‘post-classical’
style, or do they still conform to the norms of established ‘classical’
conventions? This week’s topic will be crucial to the case
study of anyone who choose a film from the present or the
past two or three decades. A number of claims about the postclassical will be considered, alongside arguments that any change
that might be identified is balanced by substantial degrees of
continuity with the past. This session will also explore some
explanations for elements of change, including the importance
gained by small-screen media in the Hollywood commercial
equation, from the first sales to TV to the contemporary role played
by DVD, download and screenings on portable devices.
Viewing suggestions: Natural Born Killers (1994), Gladiator (2000),
Romeo + Juliet (1996), Fight Club (1999), other films in the Bourne
series
Key Reading
 David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in
Modern Movies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006
(‘Part 2: A Stylish Style’). Originally published as ‘Intensified
Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film’, Film
Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 3, Spring 2002
 Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style
and Ideology Since 1945, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2010, chapter 9, ‘Post-Classical Style?’
 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, Chapter 7, ‘From Big
Screen to Small’
 Eleftheria Thanouli, Post-Classical Cinema: An International
Poetics of Film Narration, London: Wallflower Press, 2009
(includes some Hollywood examples among others from
overseas)
 Stephen Prince, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction
of the Real, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010
 Lisa Purse, Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2013
46
 Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in
Hollywood, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994, chapter 2,
‘Construction of the Image and the High Concept Style’
Reading
 Todd Berliner, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies
Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010
 Barry Salt, ‘The shape of 1999: The stylistics of American
movies at the end of the century’, in Warren Buckland (ed.),
Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, New York &
London: Routledge, 2009
 Stella Bruzzi, Men’s Cinema: Masculinity and Mise en Scéne in
Hollywood, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013 (some
very useful reading of contemporary style as an expression of a
male sensibility)
 Steve Neale, ‘Widescreen composition in the age of television’,
in Neale and Murray Smith, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema,
London & New York: Routledge, 1998
 Robert Allen, ‘Home Alone Together: Hollywood and the “family
film”’, in Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds.), Identifying
Hollywood’s Audiences, London: BFI, 1999
 Barbara Klinger, ‘What is Cinema Today? Home Viewing, New
Technologies and DVD’, in Linda Ruth Williams and Michael
Hammond (eds), Contemporary American Cinema, Maidenhead:
Open University Press, McGraw-Hill, 2006
 Jeffrey C. Ulin, The Business of Media Distribution: Monetizing Film,
TV and Video Content in an Online World, Burlington: Focal Press,
2010, chapters 5 to 8 (on home video, TV, internet and ancillary
markets)
 Eileen Meehan, ‘Ancillary Markets – Television: From Challenge to
Safe Haven’, in Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds), The
Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, Oxford: WileyBlackwell,
2007
 Frederick Wasser, ‘Ancillary Markets – Video and DVD: Hollywood
Retools’, in Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds), The
Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry, Oxford: WileyBlackwell,
2007
 Paul McDonald Video and DVD Industries, London: BFI, 2007, esp.
chapters 4 & 5
 Peter Kramer, ‘The Lure of the Big Picture: Film, Television and
Hollywood’, in John Hill and Martin McLoone (eds.), Big
47


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
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
Picture, Small Screen: The Relations between Film and
Television, Luton: University of Luton Press, 1997
Tino Balio, Hollywood in the Age of Television, Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1990, Balio introductions to Parts I and II
Janet Wasko, Hollywood in the Information Age, Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1994
Janet Wasko, How Hollywood Works, London: Sage, 2003,
chapter 3
John Ellis, Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video, London:
Routledge, 1982/1992
Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema Without Walls, London: Routledge,
1991, introduction, chapter 1
E. Anne Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television,
Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture, New York & London:
Methuen. 1987
Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the
Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, New York: Charles Scribner’s,
2000, chapter 3, ‘The Brave New Ancillary World’
Mark Crispin Miller, ‘Advertising: End of Story’, in Miller (ed.),
Seeing Through Movies, New York: Pantheon, 1990
Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Cinema Futures: Convergence,
Divergence, Difference’, in Elsaesser and Kay Hoffman (eds.),
Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable?, Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 1998. See also essays in this collection by
John Ellis and Vito Zagarrio.
48
Week 10: The ‘Quality’ film in contemporary Hollywood
Screening: The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
Contemporary Hollywood is dominated by big blockbuster
franchise movies, around which revolve the fortunes of the studios.
But this is not all that the studios produce. They also turn out
smaller films, such as more ‘ordinary’ star vehicles or genre films.
Among these relatively less expensive films are some that are
positioned as of higher ‘quality’ than the mainstream norm, in
various ways. This week’s session will examine the basis on which
some of these distinctions are made, exploring the grounds on
which quality is based. It will also consider why Hollywood should
persist in the production of films of this kind, both directly and
through the ‘Indiewood’ speciality divisions owned by some of the
studios.
Viewing suggestions: The Insider (1999), American Beauty (1999),
Erin Brockovich (2000), Mystic River (2003), Blood Diamond
(2006),The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford (2007), Moneyball (2011), Life of Pi (2012)
Reading (academic sources on this subject are limited in number)
 Geoff King, Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in
Contemporary Studio Production, forthcoming, London: I.B.
Tauris, 2015 (pre-publication chapters available on
Blackboard: includes case studies of Inception, The Social
Network, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward
Robert Ford, Mystic River, Blood Diamond and A.I. Artificial
Intelligence)
 Geoff King, Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets
Independent Cinema, London: I.B. Tauris, 2008
 Warren Buckland, ed., Hollywood Puzzle Films, London:
Routledge, 2014 (various chapters, including one on
Inception by GK)
 Chris Cagle, ‘Two modes of prestige film’, Screen, vol. 84,
no. 3, Autumn 2007
 Justin Wyatt, ‘The Formation of the ‘major independent’:
Miramax, New Line and the New Hollywood’, in Neale and
Smith (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, London &
New York/Routledge, 1998
49
 Yannis Tzioumakis, Hollywood’s Indies: Classics Divisions,
Speciality Labels and the American Film Market, Edinburgh
University Press, 2012
Week 11: Feedback on case-study plans
No screening, lecture or seminars this week. Instead, tutorials will
be available to discuss your case-study plans.
50
BRUNEL UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ARTS
ASSIGNMENT FEEDBACK FORM
Student Number:
Module Title:
Assignment:
Unacceptable Unsatisfactory
F
E
Satisfactory Good
D
C
Very Good
B
Addresses
Question
Depth of
Analysis
Structure
Written
English
Presentation
Referencing
Comments:
Provisional Grade:
For an explanation of the meaning of this grade, please refer to the Module Booklet
(Please note that all marks are provisional until ratified by the Board of Examiners)
Name of Marker:
(please print clearly)
Date:
Note to student: If there is any aspect of this feedback that requires further clarification,
please contact the marker.
51
Excellent
A
Self-Assessment Form for Case-Study Project
Please answer the following questions. Completion of this form is a
requirement of the assessment. You may use additional sheets if
required, or reproduce the form yourself to complete on computer
or in any other fashion
What do you think are the strongest aspects of the case-study
you have completed?
What do you think are its weakest aspects?
52
What would you most like to have had time or resources to
improve in the case-study?
What kind of mark would you award yourself?
What do you think is the value of this particular assignment in
contributing to your learning about New Hollywood?
53