HUMA 2740

Lecture 5

- The Motion Picture Patents Company – first attempt to create a

monopoly
o Made up of largest companies that held patents for e.g.
projection, screening, CODEC (film stock used), Edison
Company, Biograph
o Used market power and wealth to keep out competition by
charging licensing fees for any company that wanted to use
equipment (lawsuits to exhibitionists and independent
filmmakers who were unable to pay fees)
- a.k.a “The Edison Trust”
- Dissolved in 1915 by the federal courts as it was found in violation of
the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act – act to eliminate power of large
corporations
o US Justice prosecuted large corporations from 1890s to 1970s
o Even before the dissolution, MPPC could not produce enough
films to meet demand
o Independent filmmakers (Paramount, Warner Brothers, etc.)
o Movie industry became concentrated in hands of small
companies around 1908
Labour

- Struggles between film workers and the owners of film companies are
a key feature of the early American film industry
- Attempts to unionize film workers begin as early as 1907
 - Not a widespread distribution so filmmakers sold their film by the foot
(not because of the quality but because of how much film there was
produced)
- Film exchanges – theatre owners rent film from producers for a short
period of time (for as long as film is popular)
- Developing oligopolies
- Movie industry goes from being open to more structured and more
profit oriented
- 1941 – film industry remains as one of the only industry in which most
workers are unionized
Cultural Policy as a Solution to Market Failure

- Also viewed as a state instrument for protecting and preserving

culture from the presumed threat to it posed by the cultural industries
- Cultural goods such as TV shows aren’t just commodities with
utilitarian properties but are important communication vehicles of
cultural meanings that may benefit ppl in non-commercial and non-
utilitarian ways
- May give citizens a sense of belonging to a way of life, improve well-
being or resonate with their desire to produce a cultural heritage for
future generations in Cda
- Cultural value of TV very difficult to quantify in purely monetary terms
- Some cultural policy-makers say the state has the responsibility to
provide citizens with access to a diverse array of Canadian cultural
products
Television Subsidies
 - States directly and indirectly subsidize or financially assist the TV
industry
- Direct subsidy – transfer of public wealth by the govt to culture
industry
- Indirect subsidy – money created when govt encourages production of
cultural goods by establishing an environment that supports business
- American fed govt and state-level govt use subsidies and tax breaks
to economically support the American TV industry

HUMA 2740

Lecture 6

D.W. Griffith

- Directed 500 films between 1908 and 1913 for the Biograph
Company (a member of the MPPC)
- These film were 10 to 20 minutes in length (silent films)
- Developed forms of film editing which are still used today
- Began to make feature films in 1913 (1 hour or longer in length
- Left MPPC because of dispute to make feature films
- Further development of editing
- Was a failed actor so tried filmmaking to make a living and was very
good at it
- The Birth of a Nation – racism and widely controversial film
- He knew who his audience was
A Corner in Wheat (D.W. Griffith for Biograph Company)

- Deals with a financial scandal

 - Shows interconnection between farmer (city poor) and a wealthy
business man who corners wheat market and makes life miserable
- Film was sympathetic to the plight of workers (e.g. farmers)
- Frame composition – trying to use tableau from other visual arts,
deliberately borrowing from compositional art (from paintings)
- Moral film (plight of farmer)
Features of the Movie Business – 1910-1920

- Production organized around the shooting script (planning)

- Production organized around stars and genres (product
differentiation)
- New forms of movie exhibition are developed – the Movie Palace
(replaced Nickelodeons – seating 3000-4000 people, instead of a
single piano player, had whole orchestras)
o Developed as a result of a want/need for feature films
(introduced by Griffiths)
o Developed as a result of increased cost so cost passed onto
the consumers
o Began to look like opera houses (boxes for rich people)
- Just before WW1, feature films became more prominent and many
movie palaces
Short films still exist but feature films more profitable

- National TV broadcasting systems are owned

- Form of ownership is outcome of state policy
- Canada’s broadcasting system emerged between two diametrically
opposed systems: the British public broadcasting system and the
American private broadcasting system
 - In public service model, purpose of TV broadcasting primarily to
serve the public interest by informing, educating, and enlightening
citizens
- TV broadcasting serves the public good not by giving citizens the TV
shows they want but the kinds of the TV shows they need
- Criticized as being an elitist state instrument for the nationalist
integration and homogenization of citizens
- Commercial model treats TV as a for-profit industry
- Communications Act of 1934 – American public airwaves treated as a
capitalist venture
- First priority is to make a profit by keeping production costs low and
maximizing audience share
- Assumes that if an identifiable audience wants a certain type of show,
then the TV industry will provide it
- US private system dominant TV model is most countries
- In US and Cda, find capitalist media corporations and publicly owned
media corps
- Cda’s TV system is a single system because it exhibits a mix of public
and private ownership and fusion of public and private interests in
state policy and regulation

HUMA 2740

Lecture 7

Thomas Ince
 - Pioneered the use of the shooting script as the blueprint for the
production of a film
o Becomes of way of organizing labour (producer to writer to
filmmaker to e.g. costume designer, set designer, slowly
becomes contractual and steady employment)
- Script sets out the division of labour to be used in completing the film
- Begins in 1911
Stars by Richard Dyer

- Analysis of the Star Image: (stars create other institutions) – star

system
o Promotion – stars going on tours, coming to opening nights
o Publicity – e.g. newspaper articles about the stars
o Films – stars in recurring roles (e.g. Charlie Chaplin)
o Criticism and Commentary
- Film producers begin to realize some performers were more popular
than others
- At first, credits were very short, no director or actors mentioned
- Broadway stars first came to films to build a career
- Way to differentiate the product (films)
- There was already a star system in place though before (e.g.
Broadway actors and sports industry)

Exhibition

- Old forms of exhibition disappear (amusement parks, Nickelodeons,

others listed above)
- More elaborate stand-alone theatres are built
 - Some of these are Movie Places with 3000 seats and full orchestra
providing musical accompaniment
Ownership: Public, Private and Mixed

Television Regulators

- TV industries regulated by the state

- Regulators are state agencies monitoring the actions and
interactions of public and private TV broadcasters to make sure they
are operating in accordance with the established broadcasting
policies
- If a TV network violates a broadcasting policy, may be fined by the
regulator
- Regulatory agency may develop new regulations for TV broadcasting
or enforce old ones
Television Ratings

- A rating is info abt the number of people who watch a particular TV

show at a specific point in time
- Ratings firms emerged in response to need of TV networks and TV
advertisers for a supposedly neutral research mechanism that could
generate objective info abt the TV audience they exchanged
- Advertising firms use ratings to determine when and where to place
their adsTelevision and the Nation-State: Cultural Policy
- TV is a cultural good
- Culture is governed and cultural policy represents the state
administrative means and techniques for doing so
States have played a central role in facilitating and legitimizing the HUMA 2740
Lecture 8
The Immigrant (by Charlie Chaplin 1917)

- Charlie Chaplin grew up in poverty in England in a performing family

- Came to America with his brother and became popular and able to
negotiate with companies and eventually created his own company –
multimillionaire in five years
- The little tramp – replayed the same type of character
o Character popular to Victorian audiences in England
o By 19th century England was full of factories so English theatre
developed image of a worker who hated everyone in charge of
society, is the underdog, hated his boss, anyone who made his
life miserable, fighting against authority and succeeds
- This film deals with the immigrant experience and turns into comedy
Case Study 1

- The Spanish-American War (1898)

- Ended with the US acquiring control over Cuba, The Philippines,
Guam, and Puerto Ricco from a defeated Spain – Spanish colonies
become American colonies
- War was one sided in favour of US
- Cuba wanted to become independent from Spain and US supported
(*check)
- US sent ships to Cuba to protect American citizens
- One ship blew up in Havana Harbour – not clear if Spain bombed it or
some other mistake
- America blamed Spain for this and declared war on Spain a few
weeks later through newspaper industry
- Filmmakers went to Cuba to take film (war films)
 - The first “media war”
- The first war to appear in the movies
- People began making pro-war films (in some cases re-enacting
scenes using models and actors to make it appear real)
- Edison Company one of the first to send a filmmaker
- Political economy contextualizes the objects and practices under
study within the larger industrial systems that originate them
- Political economy helps understand how media conglomerates,
media companies and media buying corps work, how they produce
the menu of media artifacts, and how we get what get from the media
From Audience to Commodity Audience

- Dallas Smythe essay – TV networks used programming to attract

viewers to sell them to advertisers that ran their commercials during
the programs – watching TV instructed viewers, teaching them what
to want and what brands to buy
o Viewing was a form of work because viewers produced
revenues for the watched network and after viewers purchased
advertised goods, for the advertiser
o Made viewing economically productive and thus a form of
labour
- Smythe ignored the fact that most audiences neither experience nor
analyses of such a market