Hollywood – Global reach and production. Has a dominant position in popular culture and popular cinema.
Popular Culture: Culture that seeks to be liked and bought.
Group Presentation (week 5) Analysis of a popular film not studied within the course.
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- Essay – 50% 23rd of October
- Presentation – 35%
- Seminar Summaries – 15%
We broke up into groups and had discussions with people from different majors about what we should know before our commencement of this semester.
We also discussed other genres than Popular Cinema such as Experimental Cinema and Art-house Cinema. The idea of cult films was also brought to our attention with the example of The Rocky Horror Picture Show which was very underground when it was released, but became popular later on.
We then discussed what we understand to be ‘Popular Cinema’ or ‘Hollywood Cinema’. We understood Hollywood Cinema to be typically west-coast, high production and high-budget American films.
High Culture – Complexity and depth. Made for people who are well educated and there is an overwhelming sense of tradition intertwined. High Culture is timeless.
Folk Culture – Small amount of people consuming culture. No qualification to create or consume.
Popular Culture – Made to please people. Produced for mass audiences.
There are many examples of popular cinema that did not appeal to people and became ‘unpopular’ cinema. It is the attempt made to make people buy it, and attempts to deal with popular culture that classifies it as ‘popular culture’.
Before the end of this class we were debriefed on the films we would be watching and were told we would follow some semi-chronological timeline of Hollywood cinema. This unit seems fairly interesting so far, and I’m pretty keen to see how it all goes.