The idea of artistic independence is then given an urgent political spin: “What’s ultimately at stake—the creative use of freedom in an open society—is far too important to trust to economic or political forces, or to the whims of fashion” (Robert Redford, quoted in Sundance Institute 2007: 5). Shooting to kill: How an independent producer blasts through the barriers to make movies that matter. Here I turn to the most central term in the language of independent filmmaking, “independence.”. The brochure seeks to conjure an audience that is not merely open to the kinds of films these filmmakers will make, but is actually thirsting for them: “The Institute continually explores innovative ways to put the voice of freely expressed ideas before audiences that crave originality, diversity, and authenticity” (ibid. Hegemony and Hollywood HOLLYWOOD Long history of denigrating people of color Films overwhelmingly feature white actors EVERY SINGLE WORD THE OSCARS Only 6.4% of Oscar nominees were non-white Oscar voters are 94% White, 76% Men, and … Karen Moncrieff. Thanks as well to the anonymous Hau readers who also provided very useful comments. The proof is in the data in that Hollywood dominants this … Benefits of hegemonic stability theory. The most common version of this position is that there may have once, briefly, been a moment of real independent filmmaking, perhaps in the 1980s, but it has all by now been absorbed or infected by Hollywood in one way or another. 2005. In order to get to these points about truth and realism, I need to work through the discourse of pleasing or not pleasing the audience. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. “After the indie revolution.” The Age. The situation is very fragmented. He made The Lives of Others [which went on to win many prizes] for $2 million. Must be 18 or older to play Bingo and Live Poker. The “no-budget, DIY [do-it-yourself], down-and-dirty, whatever-it-takes filmmakers” (Adam Fish, personal communication) who manage to put the film together with grit, ingenuity, and their mothers holding the lights are the heroes of independent filmmaking. What then makes independent films different from, and ideally better than, your stereotypical Hollywood movie? (Interview, December 2, 2005). Learn More. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In “The Good Machine No-Budget Commandments,” producer Ted Hope and his business partners set out a list of dos and don’ ts for making independent films. The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. The most important point to end with however is that evidence has been provided to prove the reality of the "Hollywood Hegemony' as the essay set out to do.define hegemony as the process of moral, philosophical, and political leadership that a social group attains only with the active consent of other important social groups. It is not a stretch to transpose this idea to the world of independent film, which often uses many of the same de-familiarizing strategies of anthropology and ethnography to “disrupt common sense and make us reexamine our taken-for-granted assumptions.” Specifically, many independent films embrace a kind of harsh realism, making films that display the dark realities in contemporary life, and that make demands on the viewer to viscerally experience and come to grips with those realities. Despite being hit hard by the Great Recession since about 2007, and despite widespread (but questionable) pronouncements that independent film has collectively sold out to Hollywood, the movement still retains a good deal of artistic and political independence and force. New York: Harper Collins. According to HST scholars like Mearsheimer, Doyle and Fukuyama, it has been argued that hegemony is conducive for diminishing terrorist activities in states which follows the hegemonic rule. After all, Hollywood and the American cultural hegemony of which it is a part, is indeed very powerful; that is the whole point. Crossref reports no articles citing this article. American independent cinema. Making independent films: Advice from the filmakers. But that is another part of the story. The U.S. empire is ugly and creepy. 1986. “Image Problems.” The New Yorker, March 22, 82. Who is watching them? Second, it must be understood that there is a spectrum of what is seen as an independent film, with a more Hollywood-y end of the spectrum and a more radically avant-garde and experimental end. The argument proceeds in six main stages. “If we speak with honesty, will people listen & respond?” Truly Free Film (blog). Two caveats must immediately be entered here. : 5). As against the cynicism of many observers about the survival of “independence” in independent film, I have chosen to take their self-representations seriously, and to read the movement and its films as at least embodying, and sometimes articulating, “cultural critique.”. Producer Ted Hope, one of the pioneers of the indie movement, talked about his early move toward independent film production: [I was 19, 20, but] was already [thinking], what is this junk that Hollywood is producing?… It was all supposed to be hip and cool, and I was just, this is such saccharine crap, and I remember just being angry at what was supposed to be groundbreaking and wasn’ t. (Interview, March 15, 2006). (Fieldnotes, June 28, 2006). (quoted in Waxman 2006: 155, italics added). OPPORTUNITIES ARE WAITING. Since it is utmost essential that a hegemon must have all the necessary military force and national power to forge new international laws and organizations, it has been noted that hegemonic nations spends a large sum of money for honing and developing their military and para-military skills, that leads to the growth and prosperity of industries those who caterer to such skills. With the phrase “dominant culture” I signal Raymond Williams’ by now classic model of social stasis and change (1977). There is no beginning, middle, or end, and it upsets me when things are tied up so perfectly” (quoted in King 2005: 59, italics added). If you are a local artist, look into our artist sponsorship program. [from a woman who seemed to know she was swimming against the tide of the previous comments] But I think it was too fragmenting, you didn’ t provide enough context, I couldn’ t make sense out of the film. I locate “discourse” in this sense within ordinary talk among the participants in the independent film world, derived from interviews and from attendance at hundreds of panels and Q & As with filmmakers. As one young filmmaker recently blogged about his new film, about to open in a theater, “If it speaks with honesty, people will listen and respond” (Porterfield 2011). 1. Annual Oscar even set the criterion for the judgme… There are of course other traditions of “critique,” beginning with Kant, and including the “critical theory” of the Frankfurt school. 2005. As we were walking out, David was approached by someone with a press badge from Variety. Acknowledging and setting aside many complexities of both Hollywood movies and independent films, for the purposes of this discussion I treat “Hollywood” as part of the dominant culture, and the post-1980s independent film movement as, in Williams’ (1977) terms, an “emergent,” “alternative” formation. Some of most essential benefits of HST which has been noted by these much reputed scholars are. I remember getting into arguments with people who were like, “Oh, you just care about the audience.” (quoted in Horowitz 2006: 107). In this model, at any given moment, certain ideas and institutional formations are dominant or hegemonic in the sense of being deeply embedded in social life and naturalized for social actors as sheer common sense. As Hollywood is famous for controlling directors and the contents of their films, “non-Hollywood financing” is meant to ensure that the filmmaker is truly independent. Similarly, in the interview quoted above independent producer Ted Hope later said: Looking at the crap Hollywood was turning out when I was 20, I was like, nobody is making a movie for me and I am just this normal kid from the suburbs…. But life is not about happy endings. Michael M. J. Fischer 1995. Another major site for the public reiteration of the discourse of independence is at the Sundance Film Festival, which I attended in 2007. Von Donnersmarck seemed passionately sincere at the time he accepted his Academy Award about exhorting filmmakers to stay out of the studios. Q. David Denby. I wouldn’ t call these films “realistic”; nothing on screen is. Down and dirty pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the rise of independent film. For some people it expresses a genuine and deep-seated personal animosity toward Hollywood and its products. 2007. Slacker. Best Pest Control Service in Arizona. It touches on a lot of things that I want to make a movie about…. I found it just brain crushing. Newsweek film critic Ramin Setoodeh complained that between 2005 and 2009 “roughly three fourths of all the films [nominated for Academy Awards] fixated on death” and described many films as “piling on the pain” in what “is starting to feel like Misery Porn.” (2009: 70) David Denby of the New Yorker described a recent indie as “grating, almost punitive” (see Denby 2010 on Margot at the Wedding). Access: Reflections on studying up in Hollywood. (Interview, March 27, 06). 2006. 1996. [In favor of this position and against the previous question.] Passion is the opposite of a commercial sensibility; the heat of passion is opposed to the coldness of cash. “Hollywood” as both fantasy and material reality dominated the world of American entertainment for virtually the entire twentieth century. Independent filmmakers hope their films will find an audience—they certainly have to persuade their financial backers that their films will find an audience—but ultimately they are ready to say to hell with the audience if necessary. The notion of discourse has had a long and complex life in the field of linguistics, and also plays a distinctive role in the philosophy of Michel Foucault (see especially Foucault 1986). For behind the negative stance toward the (mainstream) audience are a number of positive values related to the critical function of independent film. I have a script right now that I’ ve written that I want to make. Accessed July 26, 2011, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/14/1073877894564.html. London: Penguin Books. We’ ll find ALL of our people elsewhere and do the film a full 100% against the industry way. According to this theory Hegemonic Stability indicates that the relationship in our international systems is likely to remain more stable when hegemon or a single nation dominates the world power. For the purposes of the present essay, we remain at the level of discourse. Rodrigo García, in the interview discussed earlier, made similar comments about “how a film needs to make demands on you, and throw you off balance” (fieldnotes February 10, 2007). Michel Foucault. Posted Dec 07, 2014 There is one final piece to this reading of independent film as setting itself up against the cultural hegemony embodied in Hollywood movies. Jamison plans to research the benefits of comedy as a coping mechanism during times of natural disasters. (Linklater 1992: 4, italics added). : 11). Cet article se penche sur des entretiens, des conférences et des discussions auxquels ont participé des réalisateurs, ainsi que sur d’ autres contextes dans lesquels les acteurs du monde du cinéma indépendant parlent de ce qu’ ils tentent de réaliser : des « films qui ont de l’ importance », selon la formule d’ un producteur indépendant. Rooted in researches from the field of economics, political science and history it has been ascertained by certain scholars that the fall of an existing hegemon or the state of no hegemon diminishes the stability of the existing international relationship in the socio-political arenas. Please rate this article: on Benefits of hegemonic stability theory. But the kind of listening-for-discourse, and the effort to understand what some repetition of a striking term or phrase is telling us about how indie people see the world, has been an essential part of my overall methodological tool kit. Most independent filmmakers5 would not use a language of “cultural critique.” But they do have very strong ideas about the importance of “independence,” which is to say, independence from Hollywood and all that it stands for. Despite his strong comments, Soderbergh went on to make more Ocean’ s films for the studio, although he is famous for using the money to finance the more challenging indies that he also continued to make. In the larger project noted above, I try to answer these questions, in terms of the dramatically changing class configuration of the United States under neoliberal capitalism.3 I argue that the indie movement that emerged in the 1980s represented a critical cultural movement, an attempt to critique the dominant culture (represented by Hollywood) through film. Editor's Note: The Ridley Scott movie 'Body of Lies,' starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, is based on David Ignatius's latest novel, and is due to be released this fall. I would like to present a compilation of 10 movies that explore the topic either directly in the form of a documentary, or through a subtle hidden meaning. Independent filmmakers see themselves as challenging the hegemony of Hollywood, eschewing entertainment—fantasy, pleasure, happy endings—and offering instead harsh and “edgy” stories about life in contemporary society. Yet I would argue that a purely Bourdieusian reading of these kinds of statements, at least in the world of independent film (and perhaps in general) is simply too thin, too focused on the prestige effects of this positioning, too cynical about the ideals behind this attitude. And there are other examples one could name. Kevin Smith talked about his bad experience with Jersey Girl (2004), which was made by Miramax/Disney; it involved expensive stars (especially Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez), and it earned mostly very bad reviews: I had to actually listen to studio notes [comments]…. Instead, American producers had a competitive advantage in global markets that was later cemented in place by the U.S. post-war economic and military hegemony in the West. Let me ask you about your relationship with studios. New York: Basic Books. Here there is a critique of the stereotypical Hollywood movie not only as informed primarily by the commercial intent, but also by a relatively unquestioning relationship to the dominant or mainstream culture. , subhasish And anyway that’s the way it is, Kabul is really very fragmented. But international films are a significant part of the independent film circuit in the United States, and I occasionally include them in the discussion. , Comment Closed, October 7, 2013 “On neoliberalism.” Anthropology of this Century. Director Brian De Palma started his career as an independent filmmaker, and always remained something of a maverick in Hollywood. “Cultural critique” in indie features is almost always implicit, embedded in the stories and mise-en-scènes of the films. FASHION Attempts to emulate the look of the movie stars, — Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) January 15, 2021 . It’s a movie about absolutely nothing. He describes the art of these films as lying “in their discovery of a mysterious, volatile alloy of documentary and theatrical elements” (2009: 40). One can tell all kinds of truths in nonrealist modes—through fantasy, poetry, abstraction, and so forth. Or we earlier heard Hollywood-oriented producer Ursula Jackson (condescendingly) describe independent films as “almost documentary,…so involved in true life.”. For others it is a kind of posturing: to say something like this is to declare one’s status as an auteur (a unique artistic creator). But other movies [like Brokeback Mountain] about gay cowboys, you sort of would say you’ ll be lucky to make your money back. Rebels on the backlot: Six maverick directors and how they conquered the Hollywood studio system. When he was talking about what he valued in filmmaking, he kept using the word “naked,” trying to look at something as it really is. She then goes to the reality issue: The most dangerous movies Killer [Films] has made are the ones that reflected the real world back with the least amount of artifice: Kids, Happiness, Boys Don’ t Cry. Obviously, Hollywood is drawing support from the strength of the US economics to extend market. Most Americans like happy endings. “Independent.” Brochure in the author’s files. And that is not often the story of alien invasions, but the story of real life problems. “It was the hardest thing I ever did. Before getting to that discussion, I need to say a few words about the approach to the interpretation of discourse I will be using here. The simplest place to start is to say that an independent film is defined—to varying degrees and in varying ways—as the antithesis of a Hollywood studio film. I will not be doing what is called “discourse analysis” in linguistic anthropology, a method that entails a close, and relatively technical, examination of conversational texts. BRITAIN 1926 - 95% of films on British screens were American John Maynard Keynes - 'Death to Hollywood' - Hollywood's invasion of Britain Arbiter of National Identity - 'They talk America, think America, and dream America. (Scott 2009: 40). Or independent filmmaker Harmony Korine (e.g., Kids, Gummo) said, “I can’ t stand plots, because I don’ t feel life has plots. Every day I was hanging on by my fingernails…. Instead I will be doing something we might call cultural ethnography through discourse, listening to the ways in which people spontaneously seem to say or write the same things in many different contexts. Even though there are several great advantages to it, globalization also has a negative impact on people all over the world. If we speak with honesty, will people listen & respond? But that is clearly Hope’s point—that most “normal” people are not beautiful and happy, and certainly not all the time. The NOW is designed to serve as a sanctuary from the bustling city. And I have read these cultural forms as, in the famous Geertzian phrase, the stories indie people tell themselves about themselves (Geertz 1973b: 448).10, The second sense derives from Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge’s development of the concept in the context of naming the journal they founded in the late 1980s, Public Culture. The devil’s candy: The anatomy of a Hollywood fiasco. “Neo-neo realism: A handful of young American directors are making clear-eyed movies for hard times.” New York Times Magazine, March 22:38–43. THE HOLLYWOOD BUG GUYS Pest Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The world of art as a whole sets itself off from the wider social and economic world as what Bourdieu calls “an anti-economy,” which “is so ordered that those who enter it have an interest in disinterestedness” (1993: 40). 7. [In the latter case] you know what your return is going to be, or you think you do, [like] on a movie with Tom Cruise in it…or with certain subject matter. , Comment Closed, November 6, 2014 , Erwin Z, 1 Comment, March 5, 2016 Urbana: University of Illinois Press. For another example, Cherien Dabis (Amrreeka, a young Palestinian-American independent filmmaker, spoke about doing two kinds of filmmaking: My career is such that I have my passion projects that I want to write and direct, and those are really mostly Middle Eastern stories, and then I also have this commercial sensibility, like writing on The L Word [where she is a staff writer], things I feel like I need to do to pay the bills, things I think are fun, that I would like to see made. For a good overall history of the movies, including both Hollywood and extra- or anti-Hollywood, see Mast and Kawin (2011). The key ingredient in any hegemony is consent: hegemony cannot be reduced to domination or manipulation, rather hegemony indicates consensual relationships among groups or … 2010. Today, strict censorship of the arts holds sway in many Islamist states, as well as in communist China. 1977. He understood that one reason people went to the theater and movies was for the chance to experience the kind of satisfying endings they rarely found in life…[but] such moments seemed elusive to him, and false…. Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences. 2007. Some people like the way the film is made and some people get frustrated. Bier: Happy endings are not truthful. But other ideas and formations are also always in play, representing alternatives to the dominant culture with the potential for change if not radical transformation. A brief history of neoliberalism. The devil’s candy: The anatomy of a Hollywood fiasco. S cott A. J. Christine Vachon, David Edelstein. LifeStyle Concierge Services is a Scottsdale-based boutique concierge and personal assistant service offering a wide and flexible range of highly personalized service focused on maximizing your free time and allowing you to live life to the fullest. New York: New York University Press. Point eight is, “Write for a very limited audience—your closest friends. 2011. 2000. Brochure kept in author’s files; copy available on request. But these movies have always been in the minority within the total Hollywood output, whereas they tend to constitute the majority of independent films. United Artists: The company built by the stars. It got me to a point where I was like, “I don’ t want to fucking work with a lot of money, because that means that the studio is going to make you do whatever you can to make it more palatable to the masses.” (Horowitz 2006: 279). Pierre Bourdieu. Naomi Klein. It has been observed by the historians that when a hegemon exercises leadership, either through coercion, diplomacy or persuasion, it actually deploys its “preponderance of power’ which proves beneficial for the states which accepts its hegemony. Les réalisateurs indépendants résistaient à l’ hégémonie d’ Hollywood et s’ opposaient au « spectacle de divertissement » : le fantastique, le plaisir, le « happy-end ». Clifford Geertz. Posted in Country, Miscellaneous, Politics. 2010. Accessed July 27, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/independents-dayppage-full. So there were changes made to the movie…. I like to be invited to feel and think” (Moncrieff n.d., circa 2006). I just need to wash this out of my system.” (quoted in Biskind 2004: 416). The darkness of so much of independent film raises many questions: Who is making these films? One has to do with the idea of telling the truth about the world around us, showing it “as it really is.” The other has to do with disturbing or shaking up the complacent or passive audience so that people will become aware of these realities. Hegemony, Hegemony, the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and ideas. For example, many people in the independent film world will say things like “I hate Hollywood” or “Hollywood is crap,” or “you have to stay out of the studios or they will destroy your film.” After the fourth or fifth repetition of these sorts of statements by different people in different contexts it seems reasonable to conclude that there is something like an established discourse of contempt for Hollywood prevalent in the indie world. And everything that wins that is so much a passion piece, almost a documentary, the films are so involved in true life and all that. Studies 36, 957–975.In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood. The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. It turned into a cockroach movie. 1988. 1993. Available online: www.aotcpress.com/articles/neoliberalism. 1973a. From the point of view of the indie world, independent films are made from passion, from the filmmaker’s intense personal commitment (personal is another keyword here) to tell a particular story in a particular way. The present article draws on interviews, panel discussions, filmmaker Q & As, and other contexts in which independent film people talk about what they are trying to do: to make what one indie producer called “movies that matter.”. 2004. Everybody does this for the love of the movie; that’s the only reason you’ re doing it. The two lists also give some sense of the range of variation just referred to, as Sundance leans more toward the strictly independent end of the spectrum and the Independent Spirit Awards lean more toward the Hollywood end of the spectrum.
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