America on Film. Sean Griffin

films – they can be funded and filmed by a collective, for example, or by one individual working on his or her own project over a number of years. Unlike Hollywood filmmaking, sometimes these types of films are even made without the intention of turning a profit. Avant‐garde and experimental films usually only play at museums, or in film classes at universities. Documentaries might play on television or at film festivals, or occasionally be screened at independent or art‐house theaters, theaters usually located in urban areas that specialize in off‐beat, non‐Hollywood film fare. Currently, specialized streaming services or websites are good resources for finding such work online.

Experimental films, documentaries, and independent fictional films are an important part of American film history and culture, even though they are quite frequently a lesser‐known part. As might be expected, these types of films often differ from Hollywood films in the ways that they depict issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability (as well as a host of other topics that are often considered taboo by Hollywood filmmakers). However, while one may in practice contrast fictional Hollywood film with fictional independent film, the distinction between these two terms is not always so clear cut. Frequently there are similarities and connections between independent films and Hollywood. Sometimes successful independent filmmakers go on to sign deals with the major Hollywood companies, and many Hollywood employees dabble in independent filmmaking. A popular independent film such as Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1991) may seem somewhat different from most Hollywood films, but it is much closer to a Hollywood film (in both subject matter and style) than most experimental films. By the start of the twenty‐first century, the line between independent and Hollywood film became even more blurred, with most of the major Hollywood film companies also releasing smaller “independent” films under labels like Focus Features (a division of Universal) or Fox Searchlight.

      For the purposes of this book, Hollywood and independent film practice might best be understood as the end points of a continuum of American fictional film production, and not as an either/or binary. One of the best ways to distinguish between independent and Hollywood films is to see where the film is playing. If it is playing on 3,000 screens in America at once, at every multiplex across the nation, it is probably a Hollywood film. If it is playing at one theater in selected large cities, it is probably an independent film. Because Hollywood films reach far wider audiences than do most independent films (much less avant‐garde films or documentaries), it might be said that they have a greater ideological impact on American culture (and arguably, the world). And although Hollywood film is not as popular a medium as it once was (having been surpassed by television and even now competing with video games and the Internet), Hollywood film remains a very powerful global influence. Indeed, most of the stylistic choices developed by the Hollywood studios during the first half of the twentieth century have strongly influenced the “rules” of how TV shows and computer games make meaning. As we hope to show, many of Hollywood’s representational traditions have also carried over from its classical period to the present. The rest of this chapter examines how the style, business, and history of Hollywood have structured and continue to structure cinematic meaning, specifically the various meanings of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.

The Style of Hollywood Cinema

      Over the first few decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood filmmakers developed a set of formal and stylistic conventions that came to be known as the classical Hollywood style. (Recall that film form refers to specific cinematic elements such as mise‐en‐scène and editing; the term style refers to a specific way in which those formal elements are arranged.) Classical Hollywood style is not rigid and absolute – slight variations can be found in countless Hollywood films – but this way of cinematically telling stories is basically the same today as it was in the 1930s. And because Hollywood’s business practices have dominated both American and global cinema, classical Hollywood style is often considered the standard or “correct” way to make fictional films.

The main objective of classical Hollywood style is to “spoon feed” story information to the spectator, thus keeping everything clearly understood by the audience. Hollywood filmmakers believe that that if some plot point or stylistic maneuver is too different or challenging, the audience will become disoriented, dislike the movie, tell their friends not to see it, or even demand their money back. Classical Hollywood style is sometimes referred to as the invisible style, because it does not call attention to itself as even being a style. It permits the viewer to stay emotionally enmeshed in a film’s story and characters, instead of being distracted by obvious formal devices (or thinking too much about the ideological meanings of the text). Indeed, when classical Hollywood style is working at its best, audiences are barely aware that any formal choices are being made at all: most untrained spectators don’t consciously notice the lighting of the sets or the edits between shots. Obscuring the formal decisions not only keeps the viewer centered rather unthinkingly on following the story, but also limits the viewer’s choice in what she or he is meant to find important. Say, for example, a film shows a white business tycoon praising American capitalism while his black butler brings him a mint julep. A viewer might be interested in learning the butler’s reaction to the tycoon’s statement. However, if the camera does not keep the butler in focus, or never cuts to show the butler’s reaction, then it becomes impossible to see what his reaction might be. In helping to keep things understandable, Hollywood’s invisible style subtly eliminates complexity, and in this example, implicitly makes the white tycoon more important than his butler.

      All of the formal aspects of cinema under the classical Hollywood style work to keep the story clear and characters simple and understandable. Lighting, color, camera position, and other aspects of mise‐en‐scène consistently help the audience remain engaged with the story. The most important details are the ones most prominently lit, kept in focus, and framed in close‐up shots. Hollywood films also employ various rules of continuity editing, a system of editing in which each shot follows easily and logically from the one before. If a person looks over at something, the next shot is of that something; if a person walks out of a room through a door, the next shot is of that same person coming through the door into a new room. Sound design in Hollywood films also keeps audiences aware of the story’s key points, often by making the main characters’ dialog louder than the noise of the crowd around them. And the Hollywood film score is there to tell an audience exactly how they are supposed to feel about any given scene.

      Style is thus subordinated to story in classical Hollywood style. The way Hollywood films structure their stories is referred to as (classical) Hollywood narrative form. Hollywood stories usually have a linear narrative – they have a beginning, middle, and an end, and story events follow one another chronologically. (Flashbacks are an exception to this format, but they are always clearly marked – often with a shimmering dissolve – so as not to confuse the viewer.) Hollywood narrative form usually centers on a singular character or protagonist, commonly referred to as the hero. Sometimes the protagonist might be a family or a small group of people. The narrative is driven by carefully and clearly laying out the goals and desires of the protagonist – the desire to get home in The Wizard of Oz (1939) or to kill the shark in Jaws (1975). Obstacles to this desire are created, usually by a villainous force or person, called the antagonist (the wicked witch, the shark). Hollywood narrative also usually pairs the protagonist with a love interest, who either accompanies the main character in reaching the goal, or functions as the protagonist’s goal.

The differences between heroes and villains in Hollywood film are obvious and simplified. Sometimes, as in old‐fashioned Westerns, the good guys even wear white hats while the villains wear black. Even when dealing with complex social issues, Hollywood usually reduces them to matters of personal character: in Hollywood films there are rarely corrupt institutions, merely corrupt people. In seeking to make conflicts as basic and uncomplicated as possible, the antagonist is often “pure evil” and not the bearer of his or her own legitimate world view. Protagonists and antagonists are not the only ones simplified in a Hollywood film, as other roles are also represented by quickly understood stock characters such as the