Classical Hollywood, American Modernism
A Literary History of the Studio System

Classical Hollywood, American Modernism charts the entwined trajectories of the Hollywood studio system and literary modernism in the United States.

Jordan Brower (Author)

9781009419154, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 January 2024

262 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'As I write, the emergent rallying cry of 'Stop the Oligarchy' analogizes more to the Gilded Age than to Classical Hollywood. Yet today's anti-oligarchy sentiment is often directed at Silicon Valley tycoons, who have consumed much of Hollywood itself through streaming services, wrought a new kind of culture industry by commodifying our very attention beyond ideological propaganda, and are now trying to deaccession government itself. Brower's account of the studio system provides an important analysis of how such oligarchical sausage once got made at the nexus of entertainment, art, and anti-trust law by charting how literary authors, the publishing industry, and classical studios adapted to each other, in every sense, for better or worse.' H. N. Lukes, Modernism/modernity

Classical Hollywood, American Modernism charts the entwined trajectories of the Hollywood studio system and literary modernism in the United States. By examining the various ways Hollywood's industry practices inflected the imaginations of authors, filmmakers, and studios, Jordan Brower offers a new understanding of twentieth-century American and ultimately world media culture. Synthesizing archival research with innovative theoretical approaches, this book tells the story of the studio system's genesis, international dominance, decline, and continued symbolic relevance during the American postwar era through the literature it influenced. It examines the American film industry's business practices and social conditions, demonstrating how concepts like anticipated adaptation, corporate authorship, systemic development, and global distribution inflected the form of some of the greatest works of prose fiction and nonfiction by modernist writers, such as Anita Loos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Patsy Ruth Miller, Nathanael West, Parker Tyler, Malcolm Lowry, and James Baldwin.

Introduction. Hollywood Signs: 1. Paramount studios and transmedial possibility
2. MGM modernism
3. The motion picture industry's coming of age
4. Global hollywood: parker tyler and malcolm lowry, between myth and system
5. The scenes of an ending: adaptation, originality, and the new authorship of hollywood pictures
Conclusion: read anything good lately?
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]