Annotation
Course Description and Purpose
Distinctions between a supposedly American Hollywood and a supposedly separate "European cinema" represent something of a founding myth of Film Studies and myriad film cultures around the world. However, such a distinction masks the degree to which transatlantic flows of capital, people, ideas, and products have generated myriad interconnections between the two. Accordingly, this course offers insights into the relations between Hollywood and Europe, by seeking to complicate three discourses underpinning discussions of this topic. First, that Hollywood is an American institution, and as such is separate from Europe. Second, that Hollywood cinema and European cinema are fundamentally different - even binarily opposed - entities. Third, that the dissemination of Hollywood cinema in Europe represents an effort both to impose a "foreign" culture onto an overseas territory. Students will therefore consider the extent to which Europeans have been a part of the structures of Hollywood, the stylistic exchanges linking "Hollywood" and "European" films, and the ways Hollywood has geared images of Europe and Europeans to targeted audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. In so doing, students are invited to develop their critical understandings of issues pertaining to cultural imperialism, Americanization, globalization, and the national.