Hollywood Essay Example

Hollywood Essay Example Hollywood Essay Hollywood Essay Hollywood Avail and Hoc argue that Hollywood develops as a control of industry in specific geographical areas. Hoc doesnt discuss films because she is not a reader of films but her work suggests that we think about films as produced fantasies in specific spaces. The most obvious connection between film and one of those produced spaces is Disneyland. Villas work doesnt talk about whats in Disneyland but I believe it consists of controlled space in which the Disney fantasy has been created. I am going to establish the relationship between fantasy/space using Hoc, Brandy ND Ross, look at the place that most exemplifies this relationship Disneyland, and use the movie Who Framed Rodgers Rabbit that puts these two ideas together and points out that they are linked back to consumerism. Hoc states that merely looking at changes in spatial organization is not enough to explain Just how Hollywood was able to develop itself into the epicenter of film. She suggests we consider the power relations between the merchants and manufacturers; in particular, the shift from a producer driven to merchant dominated industry. Hoc states that Hollywood became Hollywood because its birth incited with the rise of consumerism. Hollywood became linked with consumerism; it became a place where people linked several different aspects of the geographic location to Hollywood. There was the stars that lived around Hollywood, the studio lots that made the films possible, the geography of the land that had attracted the production companies initially. Leo Brandy for example acknowledges that Hollywood came to become Hollywood when cinema finally gained the respect it wanted as a business and art form but Brandy argues that Hollywood really became Hollywood when it merged business tit a place and location. It seems to me that Hollywood consolidated its stars, production and exhibition in order to create a brand, that it otherwise would not have had (Brandy 54). Hollywood became a place associated with a brand created in order to lure those apt to consume in a consumer society. Hollywood began with its advertising of real estate and health that brought early settlers to Southern California as a vision and place for self betterment and health as it was mentioned in lecture. As a movie business Hollywood took these early myths and created an even more enhanced fantasy of personal attainment even though very few movie theaters were actually produced in Hollywood and only a few stars actually lived there. Steven Ross How Hollywood Became Hollywood indicates that Hollywood is a place, an icon, and idea that has established it as a symbol that represented a place of dreams worldwide. It became a symbol that represented a physical place but also a metaphysical life represented false rhetoric of endless opportunities for individuals to become part of the glamorous life that many stars were part of. Studios and exclusive films that mirrored the life of the more leisured and well to do citizenry, that that would accelerate Hollywood new class visions (269 Ross). Walt Disney had his very own class vision, as mentioned in lecture Disney wanted to create a place that would attract well to do white nuclear families that included a father, mother, a son and a daughter. Disneyland debuted in 1955 as the antithesis to Coney Island and its urban counterparts. Avail states that Disneyland was ordered to contrast with the chaos of the modern city and intimate enough to counter, the limitless sprawl of Southern Californians expanding urban region. Disneyland was said to present a compact, reassuring model of order that resembled an updated version of the Progressives better city (Avail). Disney addresses urban problems (Crime, transportation, waste, relationship of work and leisure, transience of populations, hegemony of the simulacrum buts its not an urban environment. Visitors to the park are citizens but not residents, who roam through the park consuming the cartoon utopia and compare it to their homes. Park visitors compared their homes to the park, it must eave something to do with how clean and orderly everything is in the park, theres no crime, no homeless people on the streets, the urban atmosphere is taken away and more of a small town feel to it although its located in one of the busiest cities in the world. It seems to me that the park is a fantasy of controlled space, the park is like a small city which disconnects its visitors from the reality of life outside of the park there is crime and grime in cities in Disneyland this isnt visible because it is being controlled, employees are told to keep the park clean in order for it to be the better itty (Avail). Main Street USA worked to uphold Disneys faith in the virtues of small town America and symbolized a nostalgia retreat from the decadence of a noir city. It seems to me that the Progressives better city model in Disneyland was aimed to control the excess of urban culture through regulation and supervision. Disneyland was a controlled space. Disneyland was unlike Coney Island which highlighted the cultural landscape and paragon of industrial arbitration in turn of the century New York ad reflected the growing class diversity of the modern industrial city as well as encompassing the its tremendous growing class diversity (Avail). Disney felt that values were lost in the chaos of Coney Islands urban modernity. Im not arguing that he made Disneyland out of Jealousy but instead he created it because he was so obsessed with controlling whether people were holding onto their values and making sure there wasnt a mixing of classes like in the example of Coney Island where Victorian respectability wasnt important. He created a fantasy world inside of Disneyland where he was able to control who was able to come to the park, its located in a action where you need a vehicle in order to get to and if you couldnt afford a vehicle or the price for a ticket you werent able to enter the park. It was controlled in the sense that only those that could afford making the trip to Disneyland, afford a car and park expenses was able to obtain the experience of the fantasy land unlike Coney Island which was available to all classes of people. This created the sense of a see this spectacle or fantastical as I think of it. Michael Sirloins See you in Disneyland was discussed in another one of Professor Morons classes that outlines how Disneyland was on the inside something Avail doesnt talk much about in her piece in A Rage for Order. Corking mentions that Disneyland was a highly regulated and sterilized experience that stands in for the undisciplined complexities of normal life. Security and surveillance were said to be all housed underground as an apparatus for keeping every urban problem out of sight (Corking). Disney seems unreal, no wonder visitors to the park compared it to their homes, and if a person from a very urban environment visits Disneyland of rouser they be intrigue d I know I would. If everything around me is neat and orderly Id want to live in such an area but is it possible. Personally I dont think its possible, Disneyland creates this fantasy that its possible for a city to be so orderly but in reality, it wouldnt be possible to watch and keep order in order to make sure nothing messes up the utopia city. Avail begins by talking about Coney Island the complete opposite of Disneyland. Its located in New York in a very urban environment; it highlighted the cultural landscape and paragon of industrial arbitration (Avail). She doesnt really go into detail about specific examples of what Disneyland enforced for example Sirloins piece discussed the reasoning behind everyone having to circulate on foot around the park. He says the car although it was the generator of LA it was also the problem it repressed pedestrians and its happy random encounters which is why Disney created an auto-free zone. Although Disney removed automobiles from the park itself, it was the automobile and the making of the freeway that attracted visitors to the park. Disneyland was centered around consumerism if it werent for consumerism it wasnt Seibel for it to be so successful. The freeway was vital to the success of Disneyland that it even earned a spot inside the park. In the parks 1955 opening a Utopia in Tomorrows was a real model freeway that had everything to do with Disneyland. In order to get to Disneyland a freeway had to be constructed, because there was a freeway made people were able to drive their cars from their suburban homes into the city and then to Disneyland where they were able to consume all the things made available to them inside the park. I havent been to Disneyland but have heard a lot bout it and often people say that their isnt a chance that you can get past the first attraction of the park which is Main Street USA a copy of what a small town America should look like (clean, organized, and a better version of a city). Who Framed Roger Rabbit the movie becomes a land in Disneyland called Ton Town which is about the culmination of the control of space, the Disney fantasy, and consumerism. Disney was able to control space by creating a utopia American town, with its own rules and regulations. Ton town was the complete opposite; it was Hattie, immoral and not right Just, as Coney Island didnt seem right in the eyes of Walt. Ton Town was a product of consumerism, people wanted to watch movies that included the tons because they were funny, they were oblivious to the idea that they talked about the plan to create a freeway right through Ton Town and how many automobiles would use it and how people could get from one place to another. Disneyland needed the freeway, because there was no other way people could get to the park if it werent for automobiles and the freeway. This links back to mesmerism, Disneyland used Who Framed Roger Rabbit as a way to introduce the freeway and the important of having this pathway for cars to drive upon in order to reach certain destinations. It all links back to consumerism, the controlled space, and the fantasy of living in a clean American town. Consumerism included visiting Disneyland, driving on a freeway that would take you to the park that exemplified itself as the utopia city that highlighted the fantasy of Disney, and visiting the place, which was the epicenter of the film industry along with having an amazing landscape.