Looking at film as a literature text, able to be studied. Understanding that only through study of the culture and worldview of the artists will film be truly understood.
If every picture is worth a thousand words, then twenty four thousand words pass into existence every second a movie rolls on. After one enjoys the flicks of celluloid; after every image, sound, and credit have passed; after the theatre empties; after the drive home and for weeks following, the viewers will talk about the film. Each person, for a time, becomes a scholar, taking on an academic role, purposefully or subconsciously, to discuss the “text” of the film. The literacy of these scholars moves past simply reading the film, its plot and setting, and dives into the perceptions and meanings or the author's experience hidden in the “texts”. Understanding the content beyond the film creates a truly literate film goer. During this time of interpretation there are many factors coming into play, personal experience, the history of the genre, previous movies, and other “texts” such as common sense or sexuality. This will focus specifically on one of these “texts” that help shape interpretation, the culture of the communicators, and in the case of most films, Hollywood. It is only when the foundation of culture is laid that the knowledge of individuals moves closer to the ideal literate person.
The idea that Hollywood is a different culture than that of the rest of America is an idea that must be agreed upon before one continues reading. Though most of the filmmakers in Hollywood are indeed American, several factors shove it further away from the mainstream culture. The most prominent is that Hollywood is an industry rather than a geographical location with citizens and a local economy (though this area does exist, it is not being discussed in this piece). The context of culture within an industry, then, is different than the culture of a country in many aspects. One difference is that the industry is young. It does not have the history or timeless quality of many nations. Also, the industry is faceless, as opposed to nation who has many faces, women and children. When something is faceless and removed from human experience it is much easier to become the victim of prejudices and ridicule, making it perhaps more sensitive than a country. This is represented in the many times Hollywood has been attacked over the years for being too liberal, too sexual, or too violent. Another aspect to consider when thinking of Hollywood's culture is that, like it or not, Hollywood communicates to the world, even more effectively than any other speaker for the United States.
Hollywood also looks at money differently than the rest of America. America is Hollywood's target audience. The need to cater to America's culture, thoughts, and feelings is all about survival. In his book Hollywood Genres, Thomas Schatz points to the real ruler of Hollywood, the audience that pays to see the film: “We are considering a form of artistic expression which involves the audience more directly than any traditional art form had ever done before.” With an estimated average cost of sixty million dollars per film, the producers need to be tied to the audience and create works that they will pay the money to see. Schatz goes on to say “The American cinema has been able, in an extraordinarily competent way, to show American society just as it wanted to see itself.” Because the industry caters to the audience in what they create, one could think that Hollywood then mirrored American culture. But Schatz' last quote elucidates us to the fact that Hollywood is something different, though it supplies society with what it wants it does so through the lens of its own different culture.
Suggestive of many studies into literacy it is imperative to learn the culture of the communicators. If the worldview is different, than the literacy of the community is different. In the article “Literacy and Individual Conciousness,” F. Niyi Akkinaso expounds upon this idea of “individual consciousness” and worldview affecting literacy.
“In this view (recognizing literacy as not simply being able to understand marks on a page), literacy is given an extended definition to include ways of perceiving, thinking, speaking, evaluating, and interacting that characterizes a group of individuals and sets them apart from others. The implication here is that “literate thinking” involves ways of perceiving the world and talking about it, a perception that may result from interacting with either text or text users”.
If Hollywood has a different culture or world view, than the art they produce will obviously be different (for how could art be produced that was not different when the culture of the producers thinks, perceives, speaks, and evaluates differently?). It is then a great error to assume Hollywood operates under the same cultural stipulations as you or I, especially while taking our worldview and applying it to the art Hollywood creates, assuming all the while that this is a literate choice.
