Ideology

1
Ideology

• What do we mean by ideology?
• Its a system of ideas, which functions within a
  given society to make its institutions, customs,
  practices, and beliefs appear normal or
  natural.
• Because they are constantly reinforced within the
  society, members have a great deal of difficulty
  seeing and analyzing their own ideologies, much
  as it must be hard for a fish to see water.

2
Ideology

• What does ideology have to do with Hollywood
  movies?
• They reinforce the dominant ideology in order to
  keep the viewer engaged with the illusion on
  screen.
• In entertaining an audience, the movie may use
  the story, the star or the music to distract
  audiences from real social problems.
• Sullivans Travels
• Singin in the Rain
• Why did Hollywood become so unwilling to take on
  political issues?

3
Ideology

• Even social problem movies, which often
  contained a conflict between the individual and
  the structures of society, staged them within
  the context of a fundamentally just society
  which offered the individual, even under the most
  extreme circumstances, the chance to reestablish
  himself . . .
• Why did Hollywood become so unwilling to take on
  political issues?

4
Why, indeed?

• Federal Regulation
• entertainment (a commodity), not speech
• Hays Office (MPPDA--1932)
• entertainment unadulterated, unsullied by any
  infiltration of propaganda
• The Quigley Amendment (1932)
• No motion picture shall be produced which shall
  advocate or create sympathy for political
  theories alien to, and subversive of American
  institutions.

5
And then there was . . .

• The House Committee on Un-American Activities
  (HUAC)
• Cold War paranoia about Communist messages in
  mass entertainment
• Congress formed House UnAmerican Activities
  Committee (HUAC)
• 1941 and 1947 HUAC hearings were "witch hunts" to
  remove so-called subversives from the industry
  (most famously led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy)

6
Effect of HUAC hearings

• The blacklisting of talented members of the
  Hollywood community
• created a climate of fear and dampened creativity
  within the industry, and
• the controversies over peoples roles in the
  investigation continue even today (1999 Elia
  Kazan Oscar controversy)

7
What got lost in the post-war years?

• When you exclude ideological positions as a
  source of conflict in movie plots, you reduce
  them (as we generally have) to self-interest
  the bad guys act out of greed or ambition and
  the good guys act to stop the bad guys. The
  political/economic system is seen as essentially
  good, with an occasional few bad apples whose
  removal restores the system to health and smooth
  operation.

8
Social Problem Movies

• Why are they so hard to get right?
• Case Study Mississippi Burning
• Both by what it includes and by its exclusions,
  hesitations and absences, the movie remains
  equivocal, not about the rights and wrongs of
  racism, so much as about how a movie can make its
  discourse about racism entertaining, and what an
  entertainment movie can say about racism.
• Case Study Do the Right Thing