Gary D Rhodes Movie

Critical Assessment of a Work by Gary D. Rhodes Gary D. Rhodes of Queen’s University Belfast challenges many current conceptions about Hollywood in his work “ ‘Movie’: How a Single Word Shaped Hollywood Cinema.” Specifically, Rhodes argues that the audience has power over the corporation in this industry. He explains how the word “movie” is a major representation if this idea. Rhodes presents this argument because he has seen how common it has become to accuse corporate Hollywood of finessing it’s viewers. However, Rhodes pushes the idea that the audience is responsible for the way that Hollywood cinema works today. The author uses his vast knowledge and research of the film industry to analyze the topic. He thinks about history in a extremely …show more content…
First, he writes about the argument over the word “movie”. He says that the industry wanted a more prestigious word, but the people wanted a word that related to them. In the end, the people won and the word “movie” is obviously still used today. This shows how to audience had more say in the naming of the industry than the actual corporations did. Second, he talks about to confusion over who invented the word. Many people tried to say that it was invented by journalist, but it was actually created by lower class American citizens as a slang word. This was actually a sociological and economic challenge and, again, the people won. His view of this point is a very unique perspective because most people would tend to just automatically agree with what journalists write, but he calls their work into question. Third, the critic talks about formula filmmaking. Essentially, this is the concept of how the movie creators bended to produce whatever movies the people wanted. These usually involved a predictable story line and a happy ending. Fourth, Rhodes says that the Americanization of films points to how the audience has the power in Hollywood. All films began to resemble one another in hope that the average American would enjoy the film. Fifth, he says that the film industry’s geographical deployment to Southern California was to help the industry expand into he middle class and fade class distinctions. He writes that the “attempted ownership of the cinema was no longer the province of Manhattan elites - ‘New York’ itself operating as synecdoche for those persons throughout the country who were promoting, in vain, other terms” (Rhodes 6). Sixth, the author says that the extension of the movie lengths was so the people would enjoy the films even more. American moviegoers called for longer films and it was given to them. Seventh, Rhodes writes about how influential the audience was in the creation of movie