Identifying Hollywood's Audiences

Cultural Identity and the Movies
Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-85170-738-9
Verlag: British Film Institute

Buch, Englisch, 209 Seiten, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Compiled from significant new research into audience studies, this book examines the methods the American motion picture industry has used to identify and understand its audiences, and the ways in which that understanding has shaped the movies it produced, from the 1920s to the 1990s. The contributors reassess what is known about the social composition of classical Hollywood audiences, the role of opinion leaders in forming viewer choices, and the development of statistical audience research methods, challenging the conventional wisdom that the classical motion picture industry knew little about its audiences. Looking at explanations for the decline in movie attendance in the postwar years and Hollywood's adaptation to the demographics of the baby boom and the postmodern family, these essays detail how Hollywood has repeatedly reinvented and reconstructed the identities of its audiences. The book also examines how such groups as adolescent males and female horror movie fans use film-viewing to display and establish their cultural competence and subcultural identities.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stokes, Melvyn

Maltby, Richard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part One 1. Sticks, Hicks and Flaps: Classical Hollywood's generic conception of its Audiences - Richard Maltby 2. Female Audiences of the 1920s and early 1930s - Melvyn Stokes 3. The Science of Pleasure: George Gallup and audience research in Hollywood - Susan Ohmer 4. 'The Lost Audience': 1950s Spectatorship and historical reception studies - Robert Sklar 5. A Powerful Cinema-going Force? Hollywood and Female Audiences since the 1960s - Peter Krämer 6. Home Alone Together: Hollywood and the 'family film' - Robert C. Allen Part Two 7. 'That day did last me all my life': Cinema Memory and enduring fandom - Annette Kuhn 8. 'Desperate to see it': Straight men watching Basic Instinct - Thomas Austin 9. Bleak Futures by Proxy - Martin Barker and Kate Brooks 10. Risky Business: Film violence as an interactive phenomenon - Annette Hill 11. Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female viewers of the horror film - Brigid Cherry

Über Autor(innen)

Stokes, Melvyn
<b>Melvyn Stokes</b> teaches American and Film History at University College, London. Richard Maltby is Head of Screen Studies at the Flinders University of South Australia.