America's Corporate Art The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures [Hardcover]

Contrary to theories of single person authorship,America's Corporate Artargues that the corporate studio is the author of Hollywood motion pictures, both during the classical era of the studio system and beyond, when studios became players in global dramas staged by massive entertainment conglomerates. Hollywood movies are examples of a commodity that, until the digital age, was rare: a self-advertising artifact that markets the studio's brand in the very act of consumption.The book covers the history of corporate authorship through the antithetical visions of two of the most dominant Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and MGM. During the classical era, these studios promoted their brands as competing social visions in strategically significant pictures such as MGM'sSingin' in the Rainand Warner'sThe Fountainhead. Christensen follows the studios' divergent fates as MGM declined into a valuable and portable logo, while Warner Bros. employedBatman,JFK, andYou've Got Mailto seal deals that made it the biggest entertainment corporation in the world. The book concludes with an analysis of the Disney-Pixar merger and the first twoToy Storymovies in light of the recent judicial extension of constitutional rights of the corporate person.Jerome Christensen is Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine. His most recent book isRomanticism at the End of History(2000). This highly original and engaging study makes a significant contribution to American film history and to film and media theory, particularly media industry studies. No other author has analyzed studio authorship with the depth, care, and complexity that Christensen exhibits here, nor has such an argument been supported with close readings of individual films. In theorizing and historicizing the richly suggestive concept of 'studio authorship,' Jerome Christensen offers a model of film history and film interpretation to supplement purely instl“!