bnarchives | This dissertation combines an interest in
political economy, political theory and cinema to offer an answer about
the pace of the Hollywood film business and its general modes of
behaviour. More specifically, this dissertation seeks to find out how
the largest Hollywood firms attempt to control social creativity such
that the art of filmmaking and its related social relations under
capitalism do not become financial risks in the pursuit of profit.
Controlling the ways people make or watch films, the thesis argues, is
an institutional facet of capitalist power. Capitalist power—the ability
to control, modify and, sometimes, limit social creation through the
rights of ownership—is the foundation of capital accumulation. For the
Hollywood film business, capitalist power is about the ability of
business concerns to set the terms that mould the future of cinema.
The
overall objective of Part I is to outline and rectify some of the
methodological problems that obscure our understanding of how capital is
accumulated from culture. Marxism stands as the theoretical foil for
this argument. Because Marxism defines capital such that only economic
activity can create value, it needs to clearly distinguish between
economics and politics—yet this is a distinction it is ultimately unable
to make. With this backdrop in mind, Part I introduces the
capital-as-power approach and uses it as a foundation to an alternative
political economic theory of capitalism. The capital-as-power approach
views capital not as an economic category, but as a category of power.
Consequently, this approach reframes the accumulation of capital as a
power process.
Part II focuses on the
Hollywood film business. It investigates how and to what extent major
filmed entertainment attempts to accumulate capital by lowering its
risk. The process of lowering risk—and the central role of capitalist
power in this process—has characterized Hollywood’s orientation toward
the social-historical character of cinema and mass culture. This push to
lower risk has been most apparent since the 1980s. In recent decades,
major filmed entertainment has used its oligopolistic control of
distribution to institute an order of cinema based on several key
strategies: saturation booking, blockbuster cinema and high-concept
filmmaking.
