Functions of Popular Culture

1. Functions of Popular Culture HUM/COMM 4034 spring 2009 Neal King

2. Majors and minors on the edge Tuesday, March 31, 2009

3. Hollywood as Godly • Hollywood studios learned early in the 20th Century that their product would be censored for offending Catholic or Protestant nationalist groups. • Desiring the widest markets and the least regulation, studios agreed to the self-regulation of the Production Code Administration (PCA), run by the major studios. • In 1952, the Supreme Court rewarded this posture by outlawing regional censorship. • The PCA endured through the mid-1960s

4. Hollywood and rebellion • In the mid 1960s, the combination of restless labor forces (urban Blacks and Latinos, middle-class Baby Boomers) and war incited rebellion by young filmmakers against the PCA. • Its dissolution prompted the MPAA cartel to institute a new form of mass marketing/self regulation, The Code and Rating Administration (CARA): G, R, and X. • This allowed for adults-only drama under the restrictive X rating while reassuring crusader groups that G movies were fit for mass audiences. • This business model forestalls censorship while allowing for cartel regulation of access to exhibitors.

5. Majors in the 1970s • But recession-era experiments in porn by urban exhibitors tarnished that rating and thus foiled the MPAA’s attempt to sell “X” movies as serious drama. • This endangered the MPAA’s public image as family-friendly. • Meanwhile, new crusades joined fundamentalist Christians in protests against mass media: NAACP, NOW, GLAAD. • In order to preserve their cartel’s monopoly on regulation, MPAA companies cut all releases to earn R, PG, and G ratings.

6. Indies in the 1970s • The withdrawal of the major studios from exploitation and art-cinema left the field open to independent producers, who could generate publicity with bogus claims to reveal vice. • Such faux exposé dates from early cinema, including exploitation depictions of white slavery and teen drug use (e.g., Reefer Madness). • Whereas majors wish to limit outrage and thus keep their huge markets open and all to themselves, independents gain by shaking the system up and drawing short-term publicity, even when it’s negative.

7. crusader responses • Crusaders take umbrage in public and draw attention to their causes: • conservative family/Christian organizations and child molestation in Happiness and Priest. • Children, as a reserve labor force, are targets of crusades to protect them. • feminists and sexual murder of women in Snuff, I Spit on Your Grave, and Dressed to Kill. • Women, as a reserve labor force in the 1970s, advocated for their civil rights. • That some of the distributors meant the films in jest make no difference. For both indies and crusaders, any publicity is good publicity.

8. Majors and minors on the edge Thursday, April 2, 2009

9. the 1980s and 1990s • More recent skirmishes include: • attempts by filmmakers to defy the MPAA with major releases (Cruising, Dressed to Kill, Scarface) • parental complaints about kids’ movies (e.g., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, marketing of R movies to teens), which lead to new forms of self-regulation (PG-13, more focused marketing) • attempts by the MPAA to revive adults-only drama with the NC-17 rating (e.g., Showgirls, Happiness), which lead them to give up when audiences stayed away and parents’ groups protested.

10. recent crusades • Attempts to distinguish adult-only drama from porn have failed, emboldening crusaders to press cases against major studios and appeal to politicians during election seasons. • Nationalist groups revile uncomplimentary films (Basic Instinct, Year of the Dragon, The Last Temptation of Christ), occasionally suppressing business and always generating publicity and solidarity. • The MPAA studios have been able to preserve their monopoly on regulation. • And the home-video market remains largely unregulated (“unrated director’s cut!”).

11. crusader talk • Unlike independent exploitation producers, crusaders probably believe their claims about disorder among reserve labor forces. • We can interpret some of this as a social-psychological result of economic tensions and group segregation. Compare these beliefs to the theory that patricians had “blue blood” or were destined by God to be rich and to rule the feudal serf class. • But these beliefs also represent a revulsion from new forms of popular culture, which strike terror in the hearts of members of the established professional and owning classes.

12. crusader talk • Crusades describe movies in way that draw boundaries around groups in terms of acceptable behaviors. • They make up stories about filmmakers and reserve labor forces in order to generate solidarity, exaggerate the goodness of their groups, and affirm their authority. Their rituals tend to affirm faith in their claims along with pride in their groups. • Genres of popular culture are thus tools in struggles to define groups as good or evil and negotiate difference in group status. This is a major function of popular culture.

13. Functions of Popular Culture HUM/COMM 4034 spring 2009 Neal King