Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to ArtToday's moviegoers and critics generally consider some Hollywood products--even some blockbusters--to be legitimate works of art. But during the first half century of motion pictures very few Americans would have thought to call an American movie "art." Up through the 1950s, American movies were regarded as a form of popular, even lower-class, entertainment. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, viewers were regularly judging Hollywood films by artistic criteria previously applied only to high art forms. In Hollywood Highbrow, Shyon Baumann for the first time tells how social and cultural forces radically changed the public's perceptions of American movies just as those forces were radically changing the movies themselves. |
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Contents
Introduction Drawing the Boundaries of Art | 1 |
The Central Argument | 3 |
How Do We Know What Art Is? | 4 |
American Film History | 7 |
The Social Construction of Art | 12 |
Opportunity Institutions and Ideology | 14 |
Outline of the Chapters | 18 |
The Changing Opportunity Space Developments in the Wider Social Context | 21 |
Summary | 108 |
The Intellectualization of Film | 111 |
Early US Film Discourse | 113 |
19251985 | 117 |
A Comparison with Literature | 133 |
1960s Advertisements Incorporate Film Review | 137 |
A Pathway to High Art for Hollywood | 148 |
Cultural Hierarchy the Relevance of Critics and the Status of Film as Art | 155 |
Two Disparate Influences on Film Attendance in Europe and the United States | 23 |
PostWorld War II Changes in the Size and Composition of American Film Audiences | 32 |
Summary | 51 |
Change from Within New Production and Consumption Practices | 53 |
Film Festivals | 54 |
SelfPromotion of Directors | 59 |
Ties to Academia | 66 |
Changes in the Industrial and Social History of Film | 76 |
From Nickelodeons to Art Houses | 88 |
Prestige Productions | 92 |
The Ebb of Censorship and the Coming of Art | 97 |
The Crisis of the 1960s Forced Hollywood down New Paths | 105 |