| > Essay on the movie industry and cultural commodities |
Essay on the movie industry and cultural commodities |
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by Sandra Gavard Graduate Program in Communications
Cultural industries, "those institutions in our society which employ the characteristics modes of production and organization of industrial corporations to produce and disseminate symbols in the form of cultural goods and services, generally, although not exclusively, as commodities," (Garnham,1984) generate huge profits: In 1995 the movie industry reported a record $5.5 billion in tickets sale (Masters, 1996) whereas the music industry is a $12 billion business (Farley, 1996). This paper propose to look at different notions related to the study of the cultural industries such as the concept of stardom, cultural commodities, use and exchange value, random component of the market demand, etc. Moreover, I shall try to demonstrate that Adorno's perception of the cultural industries as "powerful" may be challenged. "To date, the most significant mass medium for the manufacture
of stardom has been film, operating within and across national and international
contexts. The most powerful cinematic institution involved in this,
the 'star system,' is associated especially with Hollywood studio industry
in pre- and post-war years."(O'Sullivan, 1994, emphasis mine). Jib Fowles (1991), professor of media studies at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, studied the birth of the star system in his paper, "Mass Media and the Star System." He argues that the "star system" allowed to bring a degree of orderliness and predictability to the rambunctious film industry. In his words, "since stars were what the movies were selling, stars would have to be cultivated and regulated." In order to meet the production quota, the development of stars was systematized and standardized. Of course, this Fordist style of production offered both advantages and disadvantages to the actors: whereas they could enjoy steady work and longer careers (six to eight times longer than in the silent movie period), they had to deal with standardized images that would steered them into stereotyped molds. This concept of Fordism in the movie industry has been extensively studied by the Frankfurt School and especially by Adorno. For him (1991), cultural commodities "fall completely into the world of commodities, are produced for the market, and are aimed at the market." I think that actors, and especially stars, fall into this cultural commodity category in the way Adorno defines it. Indeed, stars are produced, manufactured, to fit the taste of the mass market. From a capitalistic point of view, stars can be seen as a mean to an end which is the reproduction of capital... And in the case of actors, the product of their labor is sometimes particularly rich in surplus value... However, as it has been discussed during our pro-seminar in communications (1997, February 12), cultural goods have uncertain use value (practical value or utility as a commodity), and the Marxist notion of exchange value (price a commodity can be bought and sold for) seems not to be applicable to cultural commodities since the price is not expressive of the means of production. Indeed, the final ticket price for a movie is the same whatever the investments made for actors' salaries, production and marketing costs have been. For Marx though, exchange value dominates use value because capitalism with its notions of production, marketing and consumption dominates the real needs of people. I would like to argue here with this notion of values that are recurrent when it comes to cultural industries. I may be part of these masses that have become for Adorno, completely powerless confronted with the powerful cultural industries, but I believe that the public has still the will to decide what is the use value a cultural commodity can have. Yet, as Richard Corliss, in his article "Fellini Go Home! Foreign-language Films Have Lost their Once Big U.S. Audience. Perché? (Subtitle: Why?)," deplores it, "even college students now tend to like the same films everyone else likes. If they have niche tastes, it's not for Bergman and Bunuel but for Beavis and Butt-head." Nevertheless, the success of the independent studios seems to contradict Adorno's theory. Since the explosion of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction on the screen in 1994, the independent movie industry free of studio restrictions has been discovered and enjoyed by both critics and audiences. Leading nominee getters for the 1997 Academy Awards, the success of the independent production clearly convey a certain message to the Hollywood community and the quality of its products. However, if it can be agreed upon that the use value of a movie is pretty high on a scale such as Maslow's pyramid, I do not think that it means, as it is the case with exchange value, that every movie are equal when it comes to the spectator. Indeed, each movie responds to a particular need thet spectator-beta wants to fulfill. Moreover, the will we each have to decide what we want to see is totally impredictible for the industry. That is the reason why I do not agree with Adorno when it comes to the capitalist forces of the cultural industries. If it was that easy "Hollywood's economics [would not be] a mess" and several studios would not cut back the pace of production in order to solve their financial problems: Disney for instance has decided to cut its output from 35 movies a year to 18 and other companies such as DreamWorks (the entertainment company founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg) are following the same path. Hollywood inflation was also fueled by the Sony Corp.'s multibillion-dollar incursion into entertainment. When Sony bought Columbia Pictures in 1989, its management went on a spending rampage that exploded prices for talent and executives (Masters, 1996). Yet, I think that it is pertinent to keep in mind that in Hollywood's lexicon "'loss' was sometimes defined as a profit that was not big enough or quick enough." (Walker, 1970, pp. 124). Nevertheless, as Faulkner and Anderson (1987) have stated it, "In all culture-industry systems, and especially in the film business, market demand has a large random component, making it nearly impossible to predict distribution rentals and box-office performance with any precision." Schactman (1995) in his book The Inarticulate Society, confirms that notion saying that "the fact is that Hollywood producers cannot predict with any degree of certainty what will or will not make money. Out of fear of not making money, they resort to the elements that seem most likely to ensure that the product makes money." In fact, the impredictability of the audience factor is the proof that cultural industries are not as powerful as Adorno likes to believe it. Hollywood's canny marketing strategies can still not guarantee that a movie is going to generate profit, especially considering the constantly increasing budgets of production and advertising. In 1996, according to Masters' investigations, marketing costs jumped an estimated 20% compared to the previous year. It seems that it is the price to pay to grab people's attention in an overcrowded market. However, marketing is not the only expansive budget when it comes to
the movie industry: stars are also the cause of this raise. In the summer
of 1995, Jim Carrey got $20 million from Columbia TriStar Pictures (Sony)
to appear in the comedy The Cable Guy, whereas Arnold
Schwarzenegger is said to be paid $25 million to appear as Mr. Freeze,
the villain in the next Batman (Farley, 1996). For the co-chairmen of Warner Bros. the deal with Schwarzenegger makes sense because the actor's presence will (supposedly) boost the film's grosses, particularly overseas. For many it comes to basic economics: "More movies are being made, while the number of stars remains more or less fixed." (Svetkey, 1996). Yet, it seems that this theory based on the basic demand-supply scheme may not be true in a long-term perspective. As it as been stipulated earlier in this paper, "Hollywood's economics are a mess." Nevertheless, the development of video, cable, pay-TV and foreign markets (especially Western Europe with the opening of the broadcast spectrum) have drastically increased the markets for the movie industry. As Warner Bros' chairmen said it, the presence of a star boost a film's grosses. According to actress Jodie Foster, "actors are the only thing that can open a movie." (As cited in Svetkey's article). Foster may be a bit to confident when she says "actors:" I do not think that Jennifer Jason Leigh can attract the same crowd to the opening of a movie in which she stars, than say, Demi Moore (famous actors have their fan base that guarantees a certain number of sold tickets).... But it may change considering Moore's poor results in the highly hyped (and highly failed) Strip Tease. However, the personality, the image of stars (their acting ability to a smaller extent) generates significant value for the movies in which they appear. But, what is a star? Richard de Cordova has suggested that it is only when the popular interest is extended from professional life to personal life that we can speak of stardom as such (Tolson, pp.121). O'Sullivan (1994), in Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, gives the following definition: " [...] Stars are modern, secular icons, public embodiments of ideals and values which result from their fictionalized appearances and performances on -and off- stage and screen. Part of the power or fascination for stars, as Monaco (1977) notes, is the fact that they appear as 'ordinary people...made strangely important'. Conventionally we are encouraged to understand stars as exceptional not just because they are widely circulated images from film and other media. Their position and distinction is usually firmly anchored in definitions of their individual, unique talents and the generic forms they work within. Some critical studies of stardom have suggested that it deserves to endorse individualism and promote the 'cult of the individual' in modern times [...] they operate as powerful signs, images or types within cultural codes, and process. Finally, some attention has more recently been given to the star-audience relationship. Stars are popular because they are regarded with some form of active esteem and invested with cultural value [...]". I think that those cultural values are in great part due to the Hollywood's star-system. Indeed, as we have seen earlier, images ad signs are totally constructed by the system. Of course, it may seem to be to a smaller extent than it used to be during the 1950s, but the persona constructed by agents and the movie industry in general has for sure nothing to do with the "real" person. On top of that the audience interprets the signs and the images in a certain way, then constructing its own vision of the personality of an actor. That is probably the reason why it is so difficult for actors that have been categorized in a certain genre to switch to another one. Stars such as Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger for example had it hard to leave their image of action-movie type of roles to switch to comedy. "The star is found in two places-in the roles s/he plays in films and in the media exposure s/he receives as a consequence of this and which will in turn contribute to the meaning she brings to her next role." (Phillips, 1996). Those meanings carried by actors that are supposed to tend to differentiation and individualization appear in fact to be more a form of standardization. This is particularly striking when we are shown in the media features such as "the next generation of actors" for instance. What makes the success of someone like Keanu Reeves compared to any other young handsome actor wannabe-star? The audience to a great extent. Stars also help differentiate films that are otherwise very standard in format. However, one actor, Johnny Depp, has tried to break this cycle, and succeeded relaying his image of a young cop in 21 Jump Street to old history. However, this change has been attainable only because Depp chose carefully his roles, refusing major blockbusters such as Interview with the vampire, Legends of the Fall or Speed. What happens to actors that try to distantiate themselves from the Hollywood system? They are labeled "incongruous" (Sessums, 1997). Yet, it seems that there is no way to escape the system, Kevin Sessums, in his feature story on Depp in February issue of Vanity Fair, refers to Depp's "market value:" "(Depp) recently crossed the $4-million-per-picture threshold." This type of discourse based on the economic basis, on the monetary value of the actor "Johnny Depp," is typical of the conventional popular interest in movie stars. Stars are definitely "agents and commodities, used to promote films and other merchandise, and to mobilize audiences for cinematic and other forms of profitability." (O'Sullivan, 1994). In other words or in Hollywood lexicon, stars are the industry's (supposed) insurance policies, the studios' attempts to guarantee a spectacular opening by hanging a big enough name above the title. "Certain stars are labeled as 'bankable' because such a star's agreement to play a major role in a movie enables the producer to obtain funding for it. A star's bankability, in turn, derives from the presumed (and unproved) relationship between the degree of success of the star's most recent picture and his or her performance." (Schactman, 1995). However, many examples from the recent past have proved that there is a flaw to this logic: Big stars bomb all the time. There simply is no such thing as a guaranteed box office draw, no matter how much the studios are willing to pay for one. Having a great cast (even if it helps as we have seen) does not make a movie profitable even if the movie has been hyped and highly publicized. Demi Moore for Strip Tease, Jim Carrey for The Cable Guy, Julia Roberts for Mary Reilly, Sylvester Stallone for Judge Dredd, or Sandra Bullock for Two if by Sea, know what I am talking about. According to Schactman (1995), "Marketing considerations, then, are what causes actors and actresses to be frequently cast in roles for which they are unsuited. As in the recent box office failure Robin Hood, starring Kevin Costner, the results are all too often artistically as well as financially disastrous. Memoirs like Robert Evans's The Kid Stays in the Picture are filled with tales of how the marketing mentality overwhelms virtually every other aspect of film-making." However, it is interesting that some stars are still paid a lot even after a flop. According to Svetkey, whereas New Line Cinema recently sniffed at Julia Roberts' asking price of $12 million to play a nurse who falls for young Ernest Hemingway in In Love and War, TriStar agreed to sign her a $12 million deal for My Best Friend's Wedding, which is more than Mary Reilly's entire gross (Svetkey, 1996). One of the reason some stars can still sign big contracts reside in their popularity and their public image, their "likability" factor in some ways. However, a few pricey actors have even been willing to keep budgets low by forgoing huge up front payments in exchange for a piece of the profits (which sometimes turns out to be even more lucrative--it's how Tom Hanks ended up making $60 million for Forrest Gump). Other stars, including Willis, Travolta, and Cage, have agreed to work on lower-budget projects. Stallone, for instance, just signed to do a Miramax movie called Copland for nothing, regarding his standards. "It's Cheap Chic--a cool way of announcing to the world how serious you are about your craft." (Svetkey). It might be "a cool way of announcing to the world how serious
you are about your craft," in Svetkey's words, but it may also
be a very smart move if we consider the success of the independent movie
industry. Before going any further, I would like to define this term
since it is used a lot: "Independent film and video production
includes an incommensurable array of different personnel and practices,
each defined contingently as independent against a specific mainstream.
Thus: Hollywood directors working outside the major studios are independent-e.g.,
Stanley Kubrick. Countries outside the major film production centers
(Los Angeles and Bombay) compete in the international film markets as
independent. Types of independence differ. They are organized around
different mobilizing discourses: community, avant garde, agit-prop (i.e.
agitation and propaganda), art, connoiseurship, free enterprise, etc.
In each case the mobilizing discourse produces specific set of practices.
In one country's overall cultural production, independent often signals
a production or practice that works more or less self-consciously against
the grain of mainstream entertainment. Such independence may imply: The 1997 Academy Awards's leading nominee getters, The English Patient (12), Fargo (7), and Shine (7), are films made outside the studio system. However, one of the most meaningful nomination was Emily Watson's for the best actress performance in Lars Von Trier' Breaking the Waves. Watson's role was her first one. She may not have gotten the award, but this is very symbolic of a certain change. Another change and a new trend in the movie industry, are films where stars are the costly special effects. Those movies of a new generation boast no major stars, but they generate as much revenue as those packed with expensive talent (Independence Day for instance generates a multimillion-dollar profit.). Many of 1996 summer's hits were driven by special effects. However, if this is a way to reduce costs, the goal is far from avhieved: such pictures routinely cost $100 million or more to make even without major stars. Trying to figure out a way to understand the market demand in order to secure one's investments for a movie provides important area of research and analysis. Robert R. Faulkner and Andy B. Anderson (1987) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, published in the American Journal of Sociology a study, entitled Short-Term Projects and Emergent Careers: Evidence from Hollywood, on the ways in which independent contractors organize and operate to reduce uncertainty and risk in the film industry. Based on the analysis of data from almost 2,500 movies made between 1965 and 1980 this study offers to conceive the cultural industry system as a social system in order to examine the factors that interplay. Entertainment Weekly published a chart, based on grosses and other factors, that indicates how much stars are really worth. (see 1) It is interesting to notice that whereas Hollywood pays way less actresses than what they are worth (see Susan Sarandon who should earn $7.8 million per movie and who makes only $3 million), it tends to overpay male actors. Nevertheless, stars are not the only ones in Hollywood to have extravagant salaries. Sony reportedly paid its former executives Peter Guber, Jon Peters, Frank Price, and Mike Medavoy $100 million in buyouts a few years ago, just to get them off its lot. Plenty of directors have been doing well too: Last fall Alan J. Pakula signed a $5 million deal to film the cop drama Devil's Own. Even screenwriters have been cashing in. Astonishingly, Joe Eszterhas was paid more than $3 million to type Showgirls (Svetkey, 1996). Quality is not proportinal to the amount of received money obviously. As we defined throughout this paper stardom has been generally associated with "twentieth-century, modern historical conditions and with cinema." (O'Sullivan, 1994). Nevertheless some writers have noted some recent developments, where forms of stardom are now widely associated with music, sport, television and other popular cultural fields, "An interesting dimension in this debate concerns recent studies of the 'media personality' as a distinct modern but related phenomenon. The paradigm instance here has been that of the 'television personality,' which is held to signal a post-cinematic shift in modern culture. The requirements of broadcasting and the broadcasters' need to relate, with a human face and persona, to ranges of diverse everyday domestic settings contrast quite sharply with the cultural relations of the film star and cinema in the 1940s and 1950s." (ibid.) This need to relate however does not mean that those new stars make less money than their colleagues from the movie industry. Virgin Records for instance signed Janet Jackson to a new record contract that could be worth as much as $80 million in 1996. The marquee value of a well-known artist's name means a lot... But just as the film industry music megadeals can have a mixed track record. In 1992, for instance RCA signed ZZ Top to a $35 million deal. The band has not had a million-selling record since.Michael Jackson has a $60 million megadeal with Sony that looks too princely in retrospect. His latest CD, HIStory, after a $30 million ad campaign, has sold very poorly, in contrast to his previous CD, Dangerous (Farley, 1996). However, record companies do not necessarily have to pay out those vast sums. Record contracts, like movie deals, are often 80 to 100 pages with clauses and subclauses: many contracts come with performance clauses that prevent the companies to pay the artist if the sales do not meet the expectations. One can wonder if this display of big numbers does not upset the audience who then prefers to go for less-obviously marketed artists. That is probably the reason why, unlike movie stars' salaries (which are published as routinely as box scores) TV paychecks are closely guarded. The reason, according to the industry, is that while film actors are independent contractors, going from project to project, TV stars are salaried employees who must work harmoniously with the same bosses and costars for years. However, small-screen stars (by virtue of coming into a viewer's home) have a more intimate relationship with their audience and thus run the risk of alienating their fans if those find out about their outrageous salaries (Watson, 1996). Based on recent deals, the TV business is looking a lot more like the movies, more and more star-driven, even if a few TV personality have the charisma to draw huge audiences day after day. This charisma is supposed to justify the reported generous contracts of Oprah Winfrey ($74 million in 1995), Barbara Walters ($10 million), and David Letterman ($14 million a year, followed closely by Jay Leno). In addition to charisma, the wealthiest TV series stars are those who have created or produced a piece of a hit show such as Jerry Seinfeld or Roseanne, who just can not be replaced. I think that the topic of star's astonishing earnings are worth to be examined in an ethical perspective. As many magazines like to entitle their feature stories on those extravagant salaries, we can wonder "Are they worth it?" To me, the entertainment business is particularly insane when it comes to money. It it simply absurd to spend so much especially when the result is not even qualitatively good. However, the it is the media conglomerate's best interest to create stars and dazzle the audience. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Film and Media Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, has written extensively on the media and the increasing concentration of ownership of media companies in the United States. Miller has created four charts that trace the holdings of four major conglomerates: Time Warner, Disney/Cap Cities, General Electric, and Westinghouse. (see 2.) Each of these conglomerates owns a news network, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS, respectively. And not only do they own news networks, but also radio stations, magazines, cableTV, motion pictures, music, and newspapers. Moreover, expanding the concept of the stars to all the media is apparently the major strategy for those conglomerates. Stars' salaries are only a drop in the cultural industries, and nothing better has been invented yet to make people consume. The horizontal spreading of the conglomerates makes it virtually impossible to get away from it. Works citedAdorno, Theodor. (1991) The culture Industry. London: Routledge. pp. 34. Corliss, Richard. (1997, January 13). Fellini Go Home! Foreign-language films Have Lost their Once Big U.S. Audience. Perche? (Subtitle: Why?) Time, Vol. 149 No. 2. Farley, Christopher John. (1996, December 16) Waiting for the Next Big Thing: CD Sales are Slow. MTV Is Changing Its Format. Alternative Rock Isn't Dead, But It's in Crisis. Time, vol. 149, no. 1. Farley, Christopher John. (1996, January 29). Are they Worth all that Cash? Janet Jackson's Record-Breaking $80 Million Contract Could Set Off A New Wave Of Pop-Music Megadeals. Time, Vol. 147 No. 5. Faulkner, Robert R. and Anderson, Andy B. (1987) Short-term Projects and Emergent Careers: Evidence from Hollywood. American Journal of Sociology, 92 (4), pp. 879-909. pp. 884 Fiske, John. (1994) Independence. In Tim O'Sullivan, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery, John Fiske (Eds.), Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies (2nd ed.; pp. 147-8). London: Routledge. Foote, John. Movies Reviews: Oscar Predictions. Fowles, Jib. (1995) Mass Media and the Star System. In David Crowley and Paul Heyer (Eds.), Communications in History (2nd ed.; pp.207-214). White Plains, NY: Longman. pp. 207. Garnham, Nicholas. (1984) Public Policy and the Cultural Industries. London: Greater London Council. Masters, Kim. (1996, August 5) Hollywood Fades to Red: Despite Several Big Hits, the Film Industry's Bottom Line is a Turkey. The New Script Calls for Fewer, Better Films. Time, vol. 148, no. 7. Miller, Mark Crispin. Miller's Guide to the Media Conglomerate. http://www.voyagerco.com/media.demo/miller.html Monaco, J. (1977) How to Read a Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, as cited in Tim O'Sullivan, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery, John Fiske (Eds.), Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. O'Sullivan, Tim. (1994) Star/Stardom. In Tim O'Sullivan, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery, John Fiske (Eds.), Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies (2nd ed.; pp. 296-8). London: Routledge. Phillips, Patrick. (1996) Genre, Star and Auteur: An Approach to Hollywood Cinema. In An Introduction to Film Studies, Jill Nelmes (ed.) London: Routledge. pp. 140 Schactman, Tom. (1995) The Inarticulate Society. NY, New York: The Free Press. pp.105. Sessums, Kevin. (1997, February) Johnny be Good. Vanity Fair, pp. 92-97. Svetkey, Benjamin. (1996, April 12) Are they Worth It? Entertainment Weekly. Tolson, Andrew. (1996) Mediations, Text and Discourse in Media Studies. London: Arnold. Walker, Alexander. (1970) Stardom. New York: Stein and Day. pp. 13. Watson, Bret. (1996, April 12) Are they Worth It? Entertainment Weekly.
Notes2. Miller's Guide to the Media Conglomerate. http://www.voyagerco.com/media.demo/miller.html |
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