1. Film note research workshop in week 6
Indicate what will be covered in the next three weeks: 1990s today, 2000s next week, and film note plan workshop, working with box office data the following week…
this to them…

3. Commercial aesthetic Industry Cycles and Sequels Multiple Logics
Hegemony
Consensus
Symptomatic
Ideology
Incoherence
Film note final selection (assignment due Sunday at midnight)
Production details and cast list (IMDB) and **plot** (ref: Sight and Sound).
Check their understanding of symptomatic readings: Recall Alex’s racial identity in Flashdance [see next slide]
How do they understand the term hegemony?
Also, how will they ensure that they understand their films historically? Superhero films, for example…
Context
Genre
Issues
Metaphor
Globalisation
Contradiction

4. Quick analysis of these two film posters by way of recap:
Nashville, v. Star Wars, 1977; remember the idea of residual and emergent tendencies within the dominant…
Star Wars: there is struggle but there is no dialectic!

5. The power of repetition – once is contingent, three times is ideology!

6. Try to look for patterns… you should be identifying how your chosen film is part of a recurring pattern…

7. Recap on Hollywood in the 1980s and Reaganism; 1984 election…

8. Reagan followed by conservative, George Bush Snr.
In 1991 euphoria over victory in the Persian Gulf war gives way to a wide-scale recession; rise of New Conservativism (more ideological, more libertarian, more partisan and more religious ) which splits Republican party (Bush Snr. is less conservative than these groups). 1988, Bush pledges: ‘Read my lips. No new taxes.’ In 1992 Bush raises taxes…

11. Clinton elected in 1992 (without a strong electoral mandate).
These are his official and unofficial portraits (note the badges and the connection back to the 1960s!).
In relation to Republican turmoil and a troubled economy the Democrats present an image of moderate forces in control. The Democrats (with Clinton as a ‘youthful’ figurehead from ‘Hope’, Arkansas) articulate ‘core values’ coupled to an opportunist raft of policies that promise to cut taxes for the middle class, decrease military spending and reshape in America’s image both Eastern Europe and the (now disintegrating) Soviet Union. Clinton has ‘...the vision thing’
Clinton’s inaugural focuses on the end of the Cold War (America is top dog!), the centrality of markets to democracy, globalisation and technology (all of which are key to understanding what happens in Hollywood).

12. The same, but different
Primacy of economics leading to ‘moderate' or 'third-way' politics
Policy increasingly determined by focus groups (focus groups discover that no-one thinks consistently in party-political 'positions')
Electoral success depends on the ‘floating’ vote: tribes and modular policies, e.g. California’s ‘wine-track liberals’
Single issue politics predominate, e.g. abortion, gun-control, prayer in school, gay rights
The lack of ideological prescriptions for change/improvement/progress (whether from the Left or the Right), especially if those prescriptions run counter to the demands of the market economy, lead to a call for a reimagination of the politics of the centre.
The centre ground is no longer one of compromise, but the space for a new political force – what was labelled by Clinton et al as the active middle or the radical centre.
British political scientist Anthony Giddens, a key New Labour figure, coined the term Third Way politics see
Rise of political tribes/segmentation: e.g. ‘Wine-track liberals’: the liberal core of young voters, urbanites, and college-educated whites…
Clinton and the Democrats find a formula that manages to (just) defeat the Republicans (see next slide).

13. Republicans and Democrats run close in congressional, senatorial and presidential elections throughout the 1990s leading to the ‘tied’ election of Gore/Bush Jr. in 2000.
Note also steady drop in voter participation in the 1990s: apathy, narcissism, Hakuna Matata
This has improved in C21. Note - political fortunes in the contemporary period are determined largely by the economy, with boom and bust cycles of late capitalism in the US, and the world in general, ushering Presidents in and out of office.
Third presidential debate last night: Hilary Clinton & Donald Trump… Last year I predicted Trump couldn’t win the nomination. I’d hesitate to repeat the same for the election.

14. You’ve never had it so good…
Mid-to-late 1990s represent a period of unprecedented economic prosperity: low inflation, low unemployment, declining federal budget deficits, improvements in productivity and rapid ‘globalisation’ of economic life. The period is governed by a massive prosperity (though with greater divide between rich and poor).
You’ve never had it so good…

15. By the late 1990s there is a recession; and Clinton disgraced and humiliated as a result of Monicagate! Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore defeated by George W. Bush in the tied election of 2000! More on that next week…

16. Hollywood in the 1990s
How do these changes manifest themselves as tendencies within Hollywood’s output in the 1990s?
Is Clintonite Entertainment a suitable term to describe 1990s Hollywood? Probably not. The cinema is not so straightforwardly reactionary as that of the 1980s. Political opportunism shapes the larger culture and film culture.
Before discussing the films in ideological terms, some industrial changes are important to map…

17.   : globalisation and technological innovation are seen as the forces forging a 'Global Hollywood'; the high-concept synergistic movie (complete with digital special effects) remains the primary means through which 'virgin territory' (new markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union) might be exploited.

18. Synergy
The aggregation of different elements into a productive mix whose outcomes transcend anything achievable in isolation; more specifically, the fusing of hardware/software of different media to allow simultaneous exploitation

19. High concept
Justin Wyatt talks about ‘the hook, the look and the book’.
Hook: revolving around a simple easily summarised narrative: Jaws with Paws; a lion cub is framed for murder by his uncle, set to the music of Elton John!
Look: which in turn affords striking icons, images and snappy plot descriptions as marketing 'hooks’.
Book: risk can be minimised via pre-sold pictures, and today the most effective pre-selling involves previous movie-hits or other familiar media products (TV series, bestselling books, pop songs, comic books); sequels are the obvious example of this - the summer of 1990 saw Robocop 2, Back to the Future 3, Die Hard 2, and Gremlins 2
the apparent simplicity of the high concept film allows a communicative relationship to be easily established with different (globally dispersed) audience constituencies;…

20. Family & faith
In relation to ideology, ‘core values’ is a useful term. It cues us to expect many of the tendencies found in the Reaganite cinema of the 1980s to persist (albeit with some liberalisation of their extremes). For example, in relation to the ‘family’ (rephrased now to include its non-nuclear forms); ironic treatment of the status quo leaves the status quo intact.

21. Core values – in relation to religion…
A deep-seated religosity (perhaps too vague for card-carrying denominational Christians) shapes films of the contemporary period from Michael to Magnolia, and from Field of Dreams to Deep Impact. Faith remains central to films of the contemporary period.

22. e. g. the fetishising of belief e. g. Kevin Costner, Tom Hanks
e.g. the fetishising of belief e.g. Kevin Costner, Tom Hanks. As distinct from 1980s action movie heroes… Note also shifting models of masculinity tied to this… ‘If you build it, he will come.’
Yet, religion is also divisive and indicative of the fracturing of the New Right. For example, the so-called ‘Christian Coalition’ led by Pat Robertson (replacing Jerry Faldwell’s ‘Moral Majority’) maintain a more fundamentalist line than either political party and are still a significant electoral force. The religious right characterise Hollywood, along with gangsta rap and video games, as a permissive and corrupting influence.
Rise of evangelical Christian filmmaking in the 2000s: see editorial on mapping contemporary cinema.

23. All experience is mediated, untrustworthy, corrupt and untrue - Clinton talks the talk about honesty, liberalism, new starts and all that but he is a serial adulterer, with connections to a number of financial scandals (most notably the Whitewater affair). This coupled to a lack of distinction between political parties leads to loss of faith in politics and the rise of a cynical spectator.
Cynicism about politics and other government agencies defines the 1990s, with culture reflecting this cynicism; an interest in alienation
1993, Waco; 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
Ikea opening sequence of Fight Club…

24. Solipsism: postmodernism, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, irony – the dominant modes
Postmodernism: give ODFS handout

25. The Matrix calls to break out of the hyperreal zombie state into which we have been induced…

26. ‘Smart cinema’
Signs of a new territory being staked out, namely the semi-independent sector and its ‘maverick’ sensibility…
See Contemporary American Cinema, pp Connecting back to the formal adventurousness and clever play with form found in 1970s Hollywood (but emptied out of its political dimension perhaps?), cf. Sofia Coppola?
Play with narrative and time and space, cf. Donnie Darko etc..
…Terence Malick starts making films again: a sign that something has changed, surely?

27. Other films might be said to endeavour to undo this cynicism: for example, the president cycle including Air Force One, Independence Day, The American President and leading ultimately to the success of The West Wing. Virtual presidents are much truer, braver and overwhelmingly decent than the real ones.
House of Cards is an interesting extension of this narrative, with a more cynical view now likely to predominate.
+++
'The US elections in Hollywood's movies commonly contain elements showing avarice, greed, unsavoury links between monied interests and politicians, the damaging and undemocratic effects of unfettered individual political ambition. Elections regularly provide a context in which unscrupulous forces seek to ignore the national interest, and to bend national resources to serve their narrow interests. While this sceptical and often cynical vision of the electoral process is common, most of the films do offer a redemptive process. Individuals heroically save the day and return the system to its democratic path.' Davis, p.56 'There is a battle to maintain electoral democracy in these visions of America.' Davis, p.57

28. Fear and panic
Things come to a head as the decade draws to a close. We can perhaps talk more on this next week though The Lion King has something of this…
During a time of unprecedented prosperity a Times Mirror survey in 1998 shows that 73% of people were dissatisfied and fearful with ‘...the way things are going.’
Africanised killer bees, Ebola, GM food, terrorism, cancer (breast, skin, prostrate), heart disease, depression (Prozac the most popular prescribed drug), obesity, etc. [arguably all this has subsequently been mainstreamed and amplified]

31. The disaster movie is a symptomatic text, riffing on all these themes and anxieties… Move to worksheet (see following slide)

32. Show clip used in textual analysis and talk through handout…