Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of the blockbuster, showing how it became a complex economic and cultural machine designed to advance popular support for technological advances.
In Screen Traffic, Charles R. Acland examines how, since the mid-1980s, the U.S. commercial movie business has altered conceptions of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from international audiences and from the ancillary markets of television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an understanding of their commodities as mutating global products. Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other sites of leisure. Integrating film and cultural theory with close analysis of promotional materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through 1998, when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signaled another wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the “felt internationalism” of our global era.
In this book, Charles Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceive
In Screen Traffic, Charles R. Acland examines how, since the mid-1980s, the U.S. commercial movie business has altered conceptions of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from international audiences and from the ancillary markets of television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an understanding of their commodities as mutating global products. Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other sites of leisure. Integrating film and cultural theory with close analysis of promotional materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through 1998, when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signaled another wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the “felt internationalism” of our global era.
In this book, Charles R. Acland examines the culture that has produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what has come to be a perceived crisis of American youth. After examining the dominant paradigms for scholarly research into youth deviance, Acland explores the ideas circulating in the popular media about a sensational crime known as the "preppy murder" and the confession to that crime. Arguing that the meaning of crime is never inherent in the event itself, he evaluates other sites of representation, including newspaper photographs (with a comparison to the Central Park "wilding"), daytime television talk shows (Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue), and Hollywood youth films (in particular River's Edge). Through a cultural studies analysis of historical context, Acland blurs the center of our preconceptions and exposes the complex social forces at work upon this issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Acland asks of the social critic, "How do we know that we are measuring what we say we are measuring, and how do we know what the numbers are saying? Arguments must be made to interpret findings, which suggests that conclusions are provisional and, to various degrees, sites of contestation." He launches into this gratifying book to show that beyond the problematic category of "actual" crime, the United States has seen the construction of a new "spectacle of wasted youth" that will have specific consequences for the daily lives of the next generation.
The book is divided into three sections: "Reflections on Innis" provides a historical reassessment of Innis, "Gaps and Silences" considers the limitations of both Innis's thought and his interpreters, and "Innis and Cultural Theory" offers speculations on his influence on cultural analysis. The interpretations offered reflect the changing landscape of intellectual life as boundaries between traditional disciplines blur and new interdisciplinary fields emerge. Harold Innis in the New Century is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Canadian studies, communication studies, cultural studies, economic history, and political science. Contributors include Charles R. Acland (Calgary), Alison Beale (Simon Fraser), Jody Berland (York), James Bickerton (St Francis Xavier), William J. Buxton (Concordia), James Carey (Columbia), Ray Charron (Concordia), Cheryl Dahl (University College of the Fraser Valley), Michael Dorland (Carleton), Kevin Dowler (York), Donald Fisher (UBC), Sarah Fortin (McGill), Alain-G. Gagnon (McGill), Jane Jenson (Montréal), Heather Menzies (Carleton), Richard Noble (Winnipeg), Daniel Salée (Concordia), Liora Salter (Osgoode Hall), Kim Sawchuk (Concordia), Irene Spry (professor emerita, Ottawa), Judith Stamps (Victoria), and Andrew Werwick (Trent).
Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
Acland looks back at the strange history of subliminal seduction: a theory first propagated in the late 1950s by marketing researcher James Vicary, who claimed that movie audiences bought more refreshments if advertising messages too quick to be noticed were inserted into movies. The study was soon proven false, but that hasnt kept the concept from having a long afterlife in the popular imagination.
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