Danae Clark’s 1995 book Negotiating Hollywood: The Cultural Politics of Actors’ Labor provides a detailed account of labor struggles in Hollywood during the Great Depression. In her book, she examines how the National Recovery Act affected existing labor struggles, and how its implementation exacerbated tensions between the studios and the actors. There is no stated or implicit thesis in the book. Rather, the author states that the entirety of the work is a thought experiment she had wanted to pursue since she was an undergraduate. However, Clark is attempting to shift the “star studies” narrative away from a theoretical analysis toward a historicized analysis based on her reinterpretation of this era through a marxist lens. Danae Clark is currently an assistant
…show more content…
The second portion of her book is undoubtedly the most interesting. Clark details how the 1933 National Recovery Act caused a great deal of unrest in Hollywood. While the NRA actively encouraged the Screen Actors Guild and provided actors with the power to bargain with producers, it was also the sole arbitration unit for the actors. Meaning it only gave nominal power of labor to the actors. Furthermore, Clark argues that the actors attempts to unionize actually reinforced hierarchical struggles between actors of different “classes.” However, unless one is interested in film studies, the first and last portions of the book are useless. They are filled with film studies jargon that may confuse or put off a casual reader. What Clark had set out to do, reinterpret Hollywood labor history through a marxist lens, was accomplished in three chapters. The rest appears irrelevant, and should be relegated to the introduction of the
The second portion of her book is undoubtedly the most interesting. Clark details how the 1933 National Recovery Act caused a great deal of unrest in Hollywood. While the NRA actively encouraged the Screen Actors Guild and provided actors with the power to bargain with producers, it was also the sole arbitration unit for the actors. Meaning it only gave nominal power of labor to the actors. Furthermore, Clark argues that the actors attempts to unionize actually reinforced hierarchical struggles between actors of different “classes.” However, unless one is interested in film studies, the first and last portions of the book are useless. They are filled with film studies jargon that may confuse or put off a casual reader. What Clark had set out to do, reinterpret Hollywood labor history through a marxist lens, was accomplished in three chapters. The rest appears irrelevant, and should be relegated to the introduction of the