Shyon Baumann
Hollywood Highbrow

- adapted from dissertation
- film work done outside of film studies; sociology of art
- cursory survey of American film; key turning pts
- trajectory of film as entertainment to film as art
- key term: “opportunity space” (from DiMaggio) understood as contingencies and affordances, limited possibilities; a vacuum has to be created in order for something else to come through i.e. film coming in to a legitimate art space
- finite amount of cultural capital? A finite resource, only so much cultural capital at any given time, and it’s going to be distributed differently
- distinction between high hand low – to move form one to the other, and opening has to be created
- tv liberates film, and cinema can climb up the hierarchy? Shift in capital?
- What did tv open up? As it became a popular form of entertainment and replacing Hollywood film as the main form of audience, difference audience associated with film and with television
- Tv was low quality so film tried to prestige; prestige as a general enhanced quality
- How is quality signaled? Budgets, better know stars, formats, price of admission (tv is free), context of exhibition, locale, socially accepted film - morally right and accepted ideas value; adaptation of acceptable novel for example
- 1930 – adaptation of Shakespeare; link to lit field (as recognizable space where we are signaling some kind of consecrated, ligit culture that is identifiable as the good and the valuable and the socially productive.
- Middlebrow – prestige productions appealing to middle class ideas about what the good is in culture, whereas highbrow might be more avant-garde or something
- 1956 – Around the World in 80 Days – attempt to make a production that is absolutely distinct from TV; hundreds of stars, cast of 1000, indie production (example of new studio), maverick filmmaker, distributed through warner bros, circulated n an exclusive basis (road showing); long movie (3 full hours); no opening credits
- film has its own historicity – beginning of the understanding of the importance of recognizing film’s historicity
- critical discourse: reviews, advertisements (link to general public through testimonials, bridge between a more specialized language and a popular understanding of it)
- directors as artists – craft –
- film studies departments at universities, film societies, academics, books written about film, all of these show increase in production of knowledge of film
- Europe in the 30s, well developed discourse about aesthetics, where life was seen to be as understood through cinema as through philosophy
- Festivals and award shows and awards – development of recognizable systems for acknowledging achievement by people involved in that world
- All these help to identify when a cultural field is becoming a cultural field – complicated networks of recognition
- Legitimation process – “art world” (borrowed from Becker, in Chicago School sociology); networks and cooperation necessary; first level of critique offered is its challenge to the notion of the singular creative mind, activities, institutions and organizations, etc.
- Becker coined “labeling theory” as pertains to youth crime, sub-cult theory – people come to understand the way they are described, and understand themselves in that way. (the outsiders); link between activity and naming; for people being labeled and for those encountering those labels
- Bourdieu’s “field”
- Art world – process of identification, what counts as art in an artist, closeness of this sphere, different recognition,
- Craftworld vs. artworld – use value, craft = use/function/skill; art = beauty
- The idea that art coming from somewhere else
- The class analysis comes from Bourdieu – how is it that new class formations are building from themselves new contexts to consecrate their tastes
- “purification of genres” not enough of a distinction between high and low art films, as compared to music (opera vs. musical theatre); space, audiences, knowledge presumed, etc. films of all kinds are screened in a similar venue – side by side with stupid films
- what is the role of the blockbuster in this? Does it function as a means of purification in reverse

Louis
- Objective of Baumann – to explain cinema’s percetion has evolved and transformed over the 20C.
- Hollywood film has become accepted as art in the US since the 60s.
- Baumann doesn’t talk about film per se but rather networks and systems around it
- 1st WW – Europe, artworld nourished by avant-garde ideas, immigration in US, varied public (less homogenous) how des this effect sophistication of film?
- 2nd WW – tech innovation, creation of new leisure modes, TV, as mass media most consumed, the car which allows transportation and broadens leisure scope, blindspot – urban experience, 50’s baby boom, GI Bill, 60s educated masses of baby booms, access to superior education, this affects how cinema became an art; public’s symbolic enhancement, more cultural capital of public, better equipped to understand more sophisticated films
- new middle class very much informed on what is good taste – images are central to this new group
- after war – emerging artistic cinema, paris to NY, pop art and new forms of avant garde who do not reject mass culture but rather draw from it to produce new works
- status of cinema: diff publics come together based on taste, demarcation between groups, eg. Jazz appropriated by white upper class without risking loosing their status – they were clearly distinguished from the creators of jazz along race and class lines.
- Critique – dated sources in his analysis of the working class, omits Hansen, for example
- Kracauer – cinematic palace; not just a German phenomenon, North America palaces are different but Baumann makes no distinction b/w the 2
- Statistical analysis is OTT
- See varieties rather than differences – limits to sociological approach to culture, one view of things, but not a deep understanding as one would from a humanist perspective (Raymond Williams)
- Concluding arguments – use of reviewers quotations in ads, seem to say that we are in a different period now.. period of the certainty of the artworld has now changed – overabundant of critical comments in ads (more speculative)
- Where quotes used for non art films as well? Seems to be no discernable genre distinctions – likens these to consumer reports; manufactured quotes, no confidence in these quotes anymore
- Where do they come from? Made up publication?
- Links to festival links – the crowns, so as the expert looses credit, the festival increases it
- Autonomy of the cultural field – are there changes? Bourdieu talks about the clear delimitations of the field, those more connected to market from less, appeal to segments of the population – but are the boundaries becoming blurry??
- Convergence argument?