Popular Movies: How to Study
My study of commercially popular movies takes a different theoretical approach and uses different methodology than other previous researches.
It accepts historian Maltby’s claim that the American cinema “is primarily a commercial institution, engaged in manufacturing and selling a specific product in a capitalistic marketplace.” (1983:10).
But it rejects the notion that the American film “is only incidentally a species of art, a political statement, a sociological document, a cultural product.” (Ibid). Indeed, to claim that Hollywood’s movies are commercial commodities, based on a profit motive, is not to deny that they are also based on narrative and thematic conventions and that they embody social-cultural meanings. What makes American mainstream movies a fascinating topic for the historian and sociologist of art is precisely their complex, muti-faceted nature as commercial products (designed to make maximum profit), art forms (conforming to some stylistic devices), and ideological constructs (embodying specific cultural meanings), three distinct aspects of films (Levy, 1987b) that will be taken into account in this project.
Cinema, like other institutions (science, politics, economy) does not operate in a social or political void. Rather, it is interrelated in many ways with the historical, social, cultural, and political settings in which it operates (Levy, 1987a). The proposed study attempts to understand America’s most popular films in reference to the film industry which has designed and produced them, and the moviegoers who have consumed them. Indeed, unlike other arts, films are made for their immediate consumption by large and varied audiences, which means that they need to embody values meaningful to current audiences. An analysis of American commercial films in terms of their subject matter, dominant themes, narrative structure, and ideological values and myths will therefore reveal important information not only about the film industry and its audiences, but also about the society and culture in which they are produced and viewed.
The Hollywood film has always been tailored to appeal to the largest potential audiences, which means that filmmakers have been engaged in a real and/or imagined relationship with their potential audiences (Gans 1957). To please the largest possible publics, movies have often steered clear of controversial issues, using stories and ideas based on the lowest common cultural denominators (Jarvie 1978). However, because the public’s taste is, to some extent, unpredictable, there have always been unanticipated surprises (modest, small-budget films that proved to be popular) and major disappointments (big-budget, large-scale, all-star formula movies that were fiascoes at the box-office). Obviously, the public’s taste cannot be accurately predicted, for otherwise there would be only commercial successes.
Research Objectives, Methods and Data
The chief goal of this project is to describe and to analyze the defining features of America’s most successful films from l927 to the present, by placing them in two contexts: the film industry and the society at large. More specifically, it addresses itself to six issues:
1. The genre of popular films.
2. Their chief domain.
3. Specific thematic concerns.
4. National origins.
5. Historical locale.
6. Literary source.
1. GENRE
Attempting to see if the American public has preferred specific types of films, all popular films will be classified into eight dominant genres: serious
drama (the problem-message film), comedy, historical epic, musical, action-adventure, war film, suspense-thriller, and Western. The study will also distinguish between biographical and fictional films, that is, films based on real-life events or personalities and films whose source has been fiction. A preliminary study (Levy, l987b) shows that biographical films have been quite popular with the public, but most of them have featured male, not female, protagonists. Furthermore, the subject matter of most female biopictures has been showbusiness, usually actresses or singers (I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Funny Girl, Lady Sings the Blues). By contrast, the male biopictures have celebrated men in a variety of occupations, such as military (Sergeant York, Patton), politics (Gandhi), journalism (All the President’s Men), and sports (The Pride of the Yankees, The Stratton Story). Nonetheless, all biopictures have embodied central values of American culture, such as individual achievement, competition and winning, Monetray success, and the sacredness of the nuclear family.
2. CHIEF DOMAIN
The chief domain of the popular films will be divided into five subcategories:
A. Domestic: films whose primary concern is private life, family, marriage, and love.
B. Public: films mostly dealing with the public arena, such as work, career.
C. Political: films about political problems or political figures.
D. Domestic-public: films dealing with both private and public issues, the interplay between work and family, career and marriage.
E. Domestic-political: films whose chief concern is the relationship between the domestic and political contexts, or the impact of politics (wars) on family life.
3. THEMATIC CONCERN
What have been the specific concerns of popular movies?
What have they told their varied audiences about the appropriate behaviors and lifestyles of men and women?
Have there been historical trends in the relative importance of specific themes? For example, an earlier study (Levy, 1986) shows that romantic love was a dominant theme in the 1930s and 1940s, but sharply declined in the 1970s.
By contrast, one of the dominant themes of popular movies in the 1980s has been coming of age and initiation into sexuality among adolescents.
Popular films have cashed in on social issues concerning the public at large. For example, the most popular films in the l970s were the big-budget, large-scale, all-star cast movies about various disasters and catastrophies, man and nature-made (Airport and its sequels, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Jaws and its sequels). The study will explain the rise and decline of specific themes in the American cinema, in relation to the demographics of film audiences (their age distribution, social class) and in relation to dominant ideology.
4. NATIONAL ORIGINS
Has the American public preferred American-made films with local movie stars? And which foreign-language films have been commercially successful in the American market? All popular films will be classified according to their language and country of production (American, British, French, Japanese, Italian).
5. HISTORICAL LOCALE
Movies are commercial products meant for the immediate consumption of large audiences, but their protagonists and narratives are not necessarily current or contemporary.
The study will classify popular films into three types of locale, based on the time period in which they narratives are set:
A. Contemporary: films whose narratives take place at the present time (Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie).
B. Historical: films whose stories occur in the past, distant or recent (Barry Lyndon, Reds, Gandhi, Out of Africa).
C. Futuristic: films whose narratives are set in the future (Star wars and its sequels; Alien and its sequel).
6. Literary Source:
The screenplay is one of the most important ingredients of motion pictures. Studies (Austin, l983) have shown that the public’s motivation and decision to see a film are often based on its topic or story. The literary source of every popular film will therefore be analyzed and divided into four categories:
A. Original: screenplays written explicitly and directly for the screen (Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid).
B. Books: screenplays based on published novels, many of which have been best-sellers (The Graduate, The Green Berets).
C. Plays: screenplays based on stage plays, for the most part smash hits of the Broadway theater (A Streetcar Named Desire, Picnic, Mister Roberts, Amadeus).
D. Short Stories: screenplays based on stories, published or unpublished (The Killing Fields).
The empirical research is based on a thorough content analysis, quantitative and qualitative, of America’s most popular films over the last 80 years. This category consists of 900 movies: the 10 most widely-seen pictures in every single year, from 1927 to 2017.
The titles of these films will be taken from Variety’s systematic compilations of the year’s top money-making films, based on their domestic rentals in the U.S. and Canada. These rentals represent the amounts of money paid to film distributors, and should not be confused with the number of admissions, the number of people who have seen a particular film, or with their box-office receipts. The Variety figures are considered to be the most accurate measures of films’ commercial appeal and the only available figures that permit comparative analysis of popular films in differing historical eras.
Films have always played a role in the formation of American national culture, though to varying degrees. For three decades, from the l920s to the early l950s, films were the most important form of entertainment in the United States. But even after the advent of television, films have continued to be a major, if not the only, source of entertainment, particularly for adolescents, the most frequent moviegoers in America in the last decade (Gertner, 1980; Jarvie, 1978). Using a social-historical perspective, the study will construct collective portraits of the national taste in film in each of the six decades under consideration. Furthermore, it will demonstrate continuities as well changes in America’s cinematic taste over the last 60 years, relating both continuities and changes to society’s social structure, politics, and ideology.
