List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii CHAPTER 1: Introduction: Drawing the Boundaries of Art 1 The Central Argument 3 How Do We Know What Art Is? 4 American Film History 7 The Social Construction of Art 12 The Creation of Artistic Status: Opportunity, Institutions, and Ideology 14 Outline of the Chapters 18 CHAPTER 2: The Changing Opportunity Space: Developments in the Wider Social Context 21 The First World War and Urban-American Life: Two Disparate Influences on Film Attendance in Europe and the United States 23 Post-World War II Changes in the Size and Composition of American Film Audiences 32 Summary 51 CHAPTER 3: Change from Within: New Production and Consumption Practices 53 Film Festivals 54 Self-Promotion of Directors 59 Ties to Academia 66 United States, England, Germany, Italy, and France: Changes in the Industrial and Social History of Film 76 Purification through Venue: From Nickelodeons to Art Houses 88 Prestige Productions 92 The Ebb of Censorship and the Coming of Art 97 The Crisis of the 1960s Forced Hollywood down New Paths 105 Summary 108 CHAPTER 4: The Intellectualization of Film 111 Early U.S. Film Discourse 113 The Intellectualization of Film Reviews: 1925-1985 117 Film Reviews Approach Book Reviews: A Comparison with Literature 133 1960s Advertisements Incorporate Film Review 137 Foreign Film: A Pathway to High Art for Hollywood 148 Cultural Hierarchy, the Relevance of Critics, and the Status of Film as Art 155 Summary 159 CHAPTER 5: Mechanisms for Cultural Valuation 161 Why a Middlebrow Art? 163 Film Consumption as Cultural Capital 169 An Emphasis on Intellectualizing Discourse 171 Integration of Factors 173 The Study of Cultural Hierarchy 174 Notes 179 References 203 Index 217
Hollywood Highbrow is a fine account of the process by which Americans came to view film as an art form. The book will be of great interest both to historians of film and to sociologists interested in how certain cultural products become respected and prestigious. Shyon Baumann is the first to address these issues broadly for the case of American film. He writes engagingly and the book is a good read. -- Paul J. DiMaggio, Princeton University
Shyon Baumann is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.
"Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art is an important contribution to many disciplines: sociology of art and cinema, political economy of culture, American studies, cultural studies, even marketing, and, of course, film studies."--Yves LaBerge, Canadian Journal of Sociology "What is perhaps most remarkable about Hollywood Highbrow is how it successfully synthesizes various causal explanations for how and why objects become culturally valorized. Here, Baumann presents an in-depth examination of how cultural hierarchies change, conceptualizing cultural hierarchies as mulitcausal 'processes'."--International Review of Modern Sociology "In sum, I strongly encourage scholars of cultural phenomena to read this fine text. It is a clear and through presentation of an extremely complicated process, and so it should satisfy the interest of both experts and their students and colleagues. The book establishes a high place for Baumann among the new generation of scholars of culture, and I highly recommend it."--Jennifer C. Lena, American Journal of Sociology
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