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Film and the communication of values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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Extract

Viewing a movie can often be a powerful experience, leaving a deep impression. Particularly when that experience is worrying or upsetting, it may challenge people's values. This leads one to question what values movies have, where they acquire them, and whether they are (e.g. inadvertently) making propaganda for violence.

Type
Myths and Mass Media
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1969

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References

(1) See Fox, William's story of how he was deposed in Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox (Los Angeles, the author, 1933).Google Scholar

(2) The tale is best told in Ramsaye, Terry, A Million and One Nights (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1927).Google Scholar

(3) Thomas, Bob, King Cohn (New York, Putnam, 1967).Google Scholar

(4) See that mine of information by Rosten, Leo, Hollywood (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1941), chapter xivGoogle Scholar

(5) For their story see Kahn, G., Hollywood on Trial (New York, Boni and Gaer, 1948).Google Scholar

(6) This fact about M.G.M., the lightweight character of its product, perhaps the most important fact about the studio, isn't even mentioned in Crowther, Bosley's hagiographical The Lion's Share. The story of an Entertainment Empire (New York, Dutton, 1957)Google Scholar. If not the book itself, then this ommission should have jeopardized Crowther's authority as a critic (for the New York Times) much more than it did. When one remembers Ross, Lillian was banned forever from M.G.M. because of Picture (New York, Rinehart, 1952)Google Scholar, one can guess how independent Crowther was able to be. See by contrast pp. 149 sq. of Mayersberg, Paul, Hollywood The Haunted House (London, Allen Lane, 1967).Google Scholar

(7) E. g. they did try and were awful at it, see Reisz, Karel, Hollywood's anti-red Boomerang, Sight and Sound, XXII (1953), pp. 132's 1950s some critical films appeared.Google Scholar

(8) Studies of propaganda connect its success with the primary reference group. If that buttresses the values under attack the propaganda is relatively ineffective so long as the primary group structure remains intact. See J. W. Riley and M. W. Riley, Mass Communication and the Social System in Merton, R., Broom, L., and Cottrell, L., Sociology Today (New York, Basic Books, 1959), pp. 537578.Google Scholar See also Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Free Press, 1957), pp. 509528.Google Scholar

(9) See the useful table in Cahiers du cinéma, XXIV (19631964), at pp. 236240.Google ScholarThe Sound of Music has taken in much more money that Gone with the Wind, but since its production costs were greater its profit ratio is not as high.

(10) There is a most important article on this by America's master-critic Kael, Pauline, Movies on TV, New Yorker, 06 3, 1967.Google Scholar

(11) I am grateful to Michael Burrage of the London School of Economics for the suggestion that series are also relied on because there is no previous criticism of upcoming programmes, far fewer trailers, and no street or newspaper advertisements. All of these are done, but on such a small scale as not to make any difference overall.

(12) For another attempt to get at them, also sympathetic to McLuhan, see Day, Barry, Too Hot Not to Cool Down, Sight and Sound, XXXVII (1967–1968), pp. 2832.Google Scholar

* Revised version of a lecture given to the Centre for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, March 1968. I have benefited from the comments of Joseph Agassi, John O'Neill and the members of the Centre.

(13) McLuhan, H. M., Understanding Media (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 294.Google Scholar