HL90DL: Global Hollywood

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2018

Instructor: Jordan Brower
Meeting time: Monday, 3:00 - 5:00

Global HollywoodThis course charts the development of the American film industry in the context of and in response to the pressures of world capitalism and the shaping forces of geopolitics. "Global Hollywood" begins with the "universal language" hypothesis, the belief among theorists and makers of early cinema that the silent movie functioned as a twentieth-century Esperanto; it proceeds to the problem of sound cinema and the shooting of multiple language versions of movies in the early 30s, and then addresses World War II (Three Amigos; Why We Fight), the European influence on what would become known as film noir (Sunset Boulevard), science fiction allegories of the Cold War and nuclear anxiety (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and so on up to our current regime of international coproduction (Mad Max: Fury Road; Arrival). Along the way, American films will be supplemented by international responses to Hollywood, both in film (e.g. Godard's Contempt; Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) and literature (e.g. Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spiderwoman).