Subject Area: Film Studies
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: Americas Studies

'The Hollywood System' Course offers students the opportunity to study the world’s most powerful film industry. It produces an historical and conceptual map of the institution that dominated the global film industry in the twentieth century, and which continues to do so today. In focusing on cinema as a socio-cultural and economic force, both in the United States and across the globe, it examines how Hollywood has historically produced and distributed a powerful cultural imaginary and devised methods to encourage audiences to consume it.
The course considers Hollywood as an early example of a genuinely global industry that initially sustained itself through the implementation of a range of industrial, economic, cultural, legal, quasi-legal, and indeed illegal conventions and practices, i.e., the star system, the production code, the studio system, the genre system, monopolistic practices like vertical integration, and the Classical Hollywood style of filmmaking.
The course also traces the impact of historical events and technological developments on Hollywood's hegemonic drive, highlighting such key moments as the coming of sound, the depression and World War Two, the rise of television as a powerful competitor, the Paramount Case and the demise of the studio system. These issues are all examined in relation to close analysis of Hollywood films, genres and performers.