Lecture 7:
The Concept of High Concept
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Directed by Martin Brest
Professor Michael Green
1
This Lesson
•
Hollywood in the
Age of Reagan I:
Industry and
Technology
•
Hollywood in the
Age of Reagan II:
Ideology
•
‘High Concept’
•
The Player
The Player (1992)
Directed by Robert Altman
Hollywood in the Age of Reagan I:
Industry and Technology
Back to the Future (1985)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Lesson 7: Part I
3
The Age of Reagan
• “With a former actor in the White House,
perhaps it was inevitable that the 1980s
would be remembered, in movies as in
politics, as the age of Reagan. It may be just
as valid, however, to designate the decade
as an age of Hollywood for the U.S. National
government.”
– Robert Sklar, “Hollywood and the Age of
Reagan”
4
The Factors that Shaped the Age
• Sklar argues that the relationship between
two factors shaped the “Age of Reagan” for
movies.
– Technology
– Ideology
5
Changes in Technology
• The VCR (first Beta than VHS) became a
ubiquitous appliance for recording
television or playing rented movies.
• Cable television vastly expanded the
number of channels and the availability of
both recent and older films on the screen.
• Interactive video games and CD-ROMs
further expanded delivery of images to the
home.
Resistance is Futile
• The movie industry’s reaction to many of
these new technologies was resistance.
• It soon became clear, however, that these
new technologies expanded rather than
contracted movie viewing and that the
movie studios would realize greater profits.
• VCRs especially opened a vast new market
for sale and rental of movies in video
cassette format.
Synergy
• Synergy is the combined or cooperative
action of two or more elements to enhance an
effect.
• Synergy has always existed in the movie
business in the relationships between movies
and source material.
• But the synergy in the 1980s expanded the
delivery of movies far beyond the theater
screen without significantly altering their
original form.
Synergy (continued)
• Synergy also reshaped movie materials into
new entertainment forms distinct from oldfashioned dramatic and narrative storytelling.
– Video games (arcade, console, personal
computer)
– Toys
– Theme and amusement parks
– Fan conventions
– Publishing
– Home video
New Business Strategies
• 1980s-style acquisition of movie companies
and studios was driven by the goal of
synergistic union between movies and other
media, between software and hardware.
– 20th century Fox/New Corp
– Time/Warner Brothers
– Sony/Columbia
• Movies became more important than ever as
detonating points, out of which flowed stories,
characters and images that could be
transformed into other media.
“Big Commercial Potential”
• Building on the mega-hits of the mid-late
1970s (Jaws, Star Wars, Rocky, Superman,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind), the
movie industry of the 1980s was predicated
on blockbuster filmmaking.
• Much more of a film’s overall budget went to
marketing.
• Many more screens were built and success
began to be defined by how well a film
performed on it’s opening weekend.
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1980s Top-Grossing Films
• Unlike the “Golden Age” of the ‘70s, in which
art and gritty realism was prized in American
cinema, top films of the 1980s tended to be
fantasies for children and adolescents.
• As a group their dominant features included
cardboard adventure heroes, comic book
characters, space travel and breathtaking
special effects.
– The Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and
Back to the Future movies
– Batman, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop
A Different Breed
• Among the notable aspects of these films is
how little they share the characteristics of
previous decades’ hits, which were drawn
from novels, stage musicals and literature.
• In contrast they seemed to draw inspiration
from the commercial popular culture of the
Great Depression and World War II years –
the B movies, Saturday-matinee serials, pulp
magazines and comic books that, for much of
the postwar era, had been disdained and
even suppressed.
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Hollywood in the Age of Reagan II:
Ideology
Commando (1985)
Directed by Mark L. Lester
Lesson 7: Part II
14
Reagan and B Movies
• Reagan had been a ‘B’ movie actor and
there was “a revival of ‘B’ movie culture in
the ‘80s – launched by Star Wars and
expanded through Reagan’s election – that
became a defining aspect of popular rhetoric
in box-office hits and presidential politics.”
• “It’s roots lie in reaction against the present:
the nation’s military defeat and withdrawal
from Vietnam, a perception of contemporary
society characterized by divisiveness,
selfishness and hedonism.”
Embracing a “Better” Era
• “WWII-era pop. culture represented the
values of the “good war”: unity, self-sacrifice
for a higher calling, clarity of purpose against
an evil enemy, implacable will toward victory.”
• “For some, the films of Lucas and Spielberg
[with their fascist and totalitarian villains]
resurrected the WWII ethos in tandem with
the president’s policies against the USSR.”
– “Evil Empire”
– “Morning in America”
– “Shining City on a Hill”
Example
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Other Retro Values
• Unfortunately, in addition to reviving the
WWII-era values of unity, clarity and heroic
self-sacrifice, many of the Reagan-era hits
trafficked in other no-so positive values.
– Racism in relation to non-European peoples.
– A believe in the efficacy of Imperialism (many
1980s films, even many comedies such as
Stripes and Real Genius, depicted the might of
the U.S. military.
– Demeaning attitudes toward women and nonheterosexuals
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Popular Images
• The age of Reagan and the Age of
Hollywood merged not only in policies and
rhetoric but also in popular images.
• A widely circulated parody poster of Rambo:
First Blood Part II, attached Reagan’s head
to Stallone’s muscled torso in the act of firing
an automatic weapon.
• This “Ronbo” figure rose above partisanship
to speak parodic truths, above all that politics
and entertainment had become fused.
– Legacy
Rambo and “Ronbo”
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Rocky IV
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Traditional Gender Role Crisis
• In the 1980s, traditional notions of maleness
appeared to be under particularly severe
challenge in the United States. Threats came
not solely from military defeat (in Vietnam).
• In gender relations, they arose from a
powerful movement for women’s equality,
and in the realm of sexuality from the most
open discourse (and display) in the nation’s
history of alternatives to heterosexual norms.
The Hard Body
• Critic Susan Jeffords has defined the “hard
body” image as the Age of Reagan’s answer
to this masculine dilemma.
• “These hard bodies came to stand not only
for a national character – heroic, aggressive
and determined – but for the nation itself.”
• They were often loners locked in mortal
combat with forces, powers and technologies
more brutal, vicious and wily than
themselves.
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Examples
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
– Sylvester Stallone
– Bruce Willis
– Mel Gibson
– Harrison Ford
– Jean-Claude Van Damme
– Steven Segal
– Dolph Lundgren
– Chuck Norris
– Brigitte Nielsen
– Grace Jones
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Hard Body Limitations
• As movie characters, however, the hard
bodies were thin and two-dimensional, and
quickly lost their popularity.
• Narratives, however, forced the hard body
characters to be vulnerable to prevent the
simplicity of unequivocal outcomes.
• The figure also proved unstable as human or
even superhuman, shifting into futuristic
fantasy genres with elements of humanoid or
robotic characteristics.
Example
The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
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High Concept
Grease (1978)
Directed by Randall Kleiser
Lesson 7: Part III
27
What is “High Concept?”
• “A striking, easily reducible narrative which
also offers a high degree of marketability.”
• “The high concept film is designed to
maximize marketability and, consequently,
the economic potential at the box office.”
• “Frequently the term is used as ammunition in
an indictment against the contemporary
industry, suggesting a bankruptcy of creativity
within Hollywood.”
– Justin Wyatt
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High Concept vs. Low Concept
• “While Grease and All that Jazz fit the
musical genre . . . differences in content,
marketing and reception between the two
films illuminate one of the most significant
forms of production in contemporary
Hollywood . . . the contrast between ‘high
concept’ and ‘low concept.’”
Grease as High Concept
• “The mixture of elements within the star
“package” explains the rationale behind
Grease’s marketing formula, which could be
articulated as a focus both on the young,
drawn to Travolta and the subject of teen
romance/music, and on the older audience
segments drawn to the nostalgia.”
• Pop music and tie-ins also play a big roll.
The soundtrack to Grease was one of the
most successful ever.
Selling Grease
• In addition to the stars, the music, and the
merchandising, Grease also had the
marketing advantage of being a pre-sold
property, based on the long running musical,
though the producers chose to discard the
Broadway score to attract young audiences.
• Finally, it was sold through a simple,
identifiable logo:
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Movie Marketing Logos
All That Jazz
• All that Jazz did not have a big name star
such as John Travolta and it aimed at being
an unconventional musical.
• “The movie had no marketing hooks, except
for its high quality credentials which would
place the film commercially into the
marginalized “art house” category . . . Even
classical musical fans could be alienated by
the generic deconstruction, not to mention the
frank language, nudity, and suggestiveness.”
– Wyatt
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Final Point
• “High concept can be considered as perhaps
the central development within post-classical
cinema, a style of filmmaking molded by
economic and institutional forces. Through
high concept, the diverse manner through
which economics and aesthetics are joined
together can be understood.”
• The irony, of course, is that high concept has
often been thought of as low concept by film
critics, scholars and certain movie lovers.
Final Example
The Player
The Player (1992)
Directed by Robert Altman
Lesson 7: Part III
36
Background
• Written by Michael Tolkin and directed by
Robert Altman, one of the seminal American
directors.
• Stars Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Lyle
Lovett, Whoopi Goldberg, Dean Stockwell and
Richard E. Grant.
• Features cameos by a number of prominent
Hollywood stars.
• Routinely thought of as a great film and the
pre-eminent satire of Hollywood.
Lamenting the End of an Era
• Altman had prospered during the 1970s
“Golden Age” of filmmaking, along with such
visionary directors as Martin Scorsese,
Francis Coppola, Hal Ashby, William Friedkin
and Peter Bogdanovich.
• The blockbuster/high concept Hollywood of
the 1980s relegated these directors to the
sidelines and, many felt, destroyed an era of
great art to make room for commerce.
• Pause the lecture and watch clip #1.
Satire
• The Player critiques the shallowness,
hypocrisy, waste, incompetence and money
madness that some believe typifies Hollywood
and Los Angeles – L.A. as a location is
prominently featured in the film.
• The movie is particularly savage in its critique
of the way in which Hollywood treats not only
writers, but writing as an art and profession.
• Pause the lecture and watch clip #2.
End of Lecture 7