Is the Blockbuster Beneath Serious Consideration or Analysis? By Lea Weller BA

Hollywood’s key for survival was the rise of the blockbuster, an event movie that draws in an audience through extensive advertising and merchandising ploys and the promise of a spectacular event. The elements of the blockbuster are “a large budget, enhanced production values, star presence, large-scale story material, and display of technical virtuosity- not all of which may be present”  (Allen, 2003, page 101). The spectacular Hollywood blockbuster offered a platform for new technical and artistic developments persisting, outlasting and replacing the auteur renaissance. It is said to be the New Hollywood and targets the mass audience. Schatz had previously argued that 

If any single film marked the arrival of the New Hollywood, it was Jaws, the Spielberg-directed thriller that recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well.

(Schatz, 1999, page 17)

Jaws (1975) redefined the blockbuster and introduced marketing ensuring success at the box-office (in most cases). Maltby argued that “wide release facilitated the evolution of the blockbuster into the event movie, a product designed to maximise audience attendance” (Maltby, 1995, page 184). These films drew in the regular audience who were aged 14-25, and the seasonal audience who would attend the cinema in the summer, at Christmas or Thanksgiving. The blockbuster can exploit any genre, yet usually they seem to be action-adventure or science-fiction epics. Maltby argued that Titanic (1997) was

A teenage love story, a heritage movie, a special effects spectacular, a costume drama, a “chick flick”, a disaster movie, a cross-class romance, an intimate historical epic, and the most expensive movie ever made.

(Maltby, 1995, page 11)

This statement shows how the blockbuster or event movie can transcend genres allowing it to reach out to the wider audience. The way in which the blockbuster advertises makes it impossible to ignore the blockbuster genre and the individual chooses to consume these event movies, or chooses to avoid them. Julian Stringer (2003) argued that the consumer shares the knowledge about a blockbuster, whether consumed or avoided, due to the way the blockbuster is presented to an audience. We are all aware of the blockbuster but do not provide much critical analysis. Stringer argued that Hollywood allows for easy consumption of the blockbuster, as they are so often produced. Stringer argued that 

Films labelled as blockbusters are frequently positioned as examples of the culturally retrograde, beneath serious consideration or analysis. Casual accusations are habitually thrown around regarding “lowest common denominator film-making,” or the complaint that such-and-such a title is “a typical blockbuster” or “only a blockbuster”

(Stringer, 2003, page 1)

Blockbusters are seen by some critics as culturally retrograde, and are analysed last against other films even though the blockbuster is the movie we hear about first. This is due to the advertising attached to the blockbuster. The blockbuster should be analysed to the same extent as other films and with greater clarity and deliberation. The blockbuster narrative has important social and cultural issues that need to be critically analysed. Buckland argued that

Blockbusters have either been shunned or dismissed by most academic film scholars as calculated exercises in profit-making. […] However, those who dismiss blockbusters as exercises in profit-making fail to understand the New Hollywood’s mode of production.

(Buckland, 1998, page 166)

The blockbuster should still be critically analysed in the same way as other films as they also have meaning and represent social issues. The meaning that is associated with a blockbuster is determined by the narrative, the director, the writer and so on and the analysis of a blockbuster reveals contradictory beliefs as commentators attached different values to the blockbuster. It is a “multifaceted phenomenon whose meanings are contingent upon the presence of a range of discourses both internal and external to the Hollywood and indeed the non-US film industries” (Stringer, 2003, page 2). Stringer argued that the blockbuster is a method of classification, and a complex notion for categorising and the features vary according to the analyst. This understands the blockbuster in terms of genre. Altman argued that 

Generic practice and terminology are the sites of constant struggle. Instead of conflating the work of producers, exhibitors, viewers and critics, we need to recognize their differing purposes and the resultant differences in generic categories, labels and uses.

(Altman, 1999, page 101)

Even though Altman does not directly address the blockbuster “such observations are borne out in the case of blockbusters” (Stringer, 2003, page 2). The views held by critics, fans and consumers may not be the same as the definition of the industry. The terminology differs due to the time period and cultural context changing. The blockbuster uses titles that suggest an event, taking place on both textual and extra-textual levels, to respond to the variety of circumstances.

            The blockbuster is frequently associated with the size factor and has been present throughout the history of Hollywood distinguishing the blockbuster from other consumed films. Size also refers to the profits made at the box office and from merchandising. Either of these factors are advanced. For example, James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) needed a large set to build the 90% to scale ship for the movie. The word Titanic refers to the word “titan.  [O]f enormous size, strength, power, etc.; gigantic” (Dictionary.com, 2011). The blockbuster is the most public type of cinema and flaunts its ability to be ‘big’, creating audience awareness providing the spectator with assurances that they will enjoy the new event movie. A blockbuster is seen as a spectacle, as a public display of common issues. 
It has been argued that the blockbuster is just a remake of a movie that has been done before, for example Titanic had been done before in 1953 directed by Jean Negulesco. Internet Movie Database (IMDB) stated that “this version of Titanic […] can definitely hold its own. In fact it got an Oscar itself in 1953 for Best Story and Screenplay” (IMDB, 2011, Online).

Jerry Jameson’s Raise the Titanic (1980) was unsuccessful as a film and did not make much money at the box-office. One of Hollywood’s most successful productions is Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) initiating the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, 
 

Jaws was everywhere: on billboards, bath towels, sweaters, jeans, socks, T-shirts, tumblers. Even underwear. A media phenomenon. […] Jaws was a symbolic reflection of [the] post-Watergate cover-up. The mayor (Murray Hamilton) didn’t want to frighten the tourists away during the 4th of July celebrations.

(Tanitch, 2000, page 106)

Earning more than $100 million in six months, Jaws introduced the marketing that is now key for blockbusters and this strategy became normal practice in the film industry. Gomery (2003) argued that film “could precipitate a national pop cultural ‘event’, and make millions upon millions of dollars for a single studio with but a single film” (Gomery, 2003, page 73). Universal used television to show promotional ads for Jaws and television advertising became so popular it convinced Hollywood that television should be central to the launch of blockbusters and this is now standard procedure. The film and television studios now work together in the reach out to the audience. Jaws inspired toys, posters, clothing, false sightings, jewellery, and so on. Television advertising helped Jaws break box-office records and generated millions; “movies became special ‘pop culture’ attractions” (Gomery, 2003, page 74).  Critics dismissed Jaws as an utterly mechanical exercise in viewer manipulation.  It can also be argued that several factors redeem Jaws. Schatz argued that “Jaws was a social, industrial, and economic phenomenon of the first order, a cinematic idea and cultural commodity” (Schatz, 1999, page 19). Jaws created the ‘summer hit’, which in turn created a seasonal release tactic. 

          A film’s theatrical release creates a cultural commodity with exposure in the media. This in itself is worth consideration and analysis. Schatz argued that the merger-and-acquisitions wave brought the film studios into contact with television and cable production companies, recording companies, newspapers, magazines, book, games, toys and theme parks. “Diversification and conglomeration remain key factors in the entertainment industry” (Schatz, 1999, page 29). Schatz explained that

Jaws became a veritable sub-industry unto itself via commercial tie-ins and merchandising ploys. But hype and promotion aside, Jaws’ success ultimately centred on the appeal of the film itself; one enduring verity in the movie business is that, whatever the marketing efforts, only positive audience response and favourable word of mouth can propel a film to genuine hit status.

(Schatz, 1999, page 18)

These new business practices transformed Hollywood. Universal’s Boss Lew Wasserman had argued that something new must be done in order for the feature films to make enough profit.  “George Lucas and Steven Spielberg may have [received] credit as filmmakers, but it was Lew Wasserman who reinvented the system which enabled their films to become blockbusters” (Gomery, 2003, page 74). Thomson (1996) remarked in Lewis (2003) that “Lucas and Spielberg […] have changed everything” (Lewis, 2003, page 62). Thomson continued to argue that movies are in a very bad state, suggesting that we are left with a race of dreamers. King disagreed with this and argued that

If one aspect of this ‘New Hollywood’ was represented by […] the films of Robert Altman, the dominant version was marked by the appearance of ‘blockbuster’ attractions such as Jaws, […] films that offered a combination of spectacle, driving narrative and mythic or ideological recuperation.

(King, 2000, page 76)

King stated that blockbusters offer more than just a profit making machine. Television advertising was key for the promotion of the blockbuster, stopping the rivalry between film and television. Stringer argued that being a best-seller does not make it culturally valuable, but Jaws has become one of the great classic blockbusters. Television advertising is carefully scheduled to ensure the studio targets the mass audience. Even though blockbusters have received poor reception from critics, the twenty-first century shows an increased interest in watching movies. It is only the technology used to produce these films that change. For example, 3D has now increased the viewing pleasure at the multiplex cinema. 
 

Roberts (2003) argued that the Oscar’s are reluctant to award an action genre blockbuster. Titanic had great success at the Oscar’s showing Hollywood’s legitimacy and further representing the blockbusters’ integral position in Hollywood. She argued that Titanic had an excessive budget, special effects, large scale sets, excessive profits and a long run time. Yet Titanic relied on technological features which aligned it with the big-budget action vehicles of recent decades. Titanic had an original release date of summer 1997, but it had been delayed until before Christmas. This winter release put Titanic in the Oscar category as summer releases were for blockbusters. Oscar hopefuls were released around the Christmas period, which primed Titanic for attention. Critics tend to focus on Titanic’s flawed melodrama plot and Roberts argued that 

 

Titanic’s cultural elevation through the Oscar’s must be examined in further depth in terms of middlebrow cultures gestures toward artistic legitimacy […] There are elements of Titanic that correspond more directly with lowbrow culture than with middlebrow culture.

(Roberts, 2003, page 160)

Cameron’s script is criticised and said to be vulgar which distances the film as the “middlebrow culture is resolutely against vulgarity” (Bourdieu, 1984, page 326). Robert’s argued that melodrama and action genres are low culture and this allows “Titanic to operate alongside elements that operate against a film’s “vulgarity”, allowing it ultimately to coincide with a middlebrow aesthetic” (Roberts, 2003, page 160). Tanitch argued that 

To call the film Titanic and then turn a great disaster, one of the most memorable tragedies of the 20th century […] into a banal women’s magazine love story was a gross insult to the real passengers who died.

(Tanitch, 2000, page 154)

It can also be argued that Titanic is a period piece that carries a similar status to literary adaptation, which was faithful to their source and demonstrated this by bringing the language of the text to the screen. It has been described as the most historically accurate film that has ever been made. In this sense the ship has been historically adapted in which the fidelity of the film is criticised. “Titanic’s authenticity therefore lends it a cultural credibility that critics have found lacking in screen play” (Roberts, 2003, page 161).  Rose collects works of art that she believes will be significant in the future; her collection includes Picasso and Monet who have become canonised and as art history demonstrates she was right. Roberts argued that “the inclusion of such scenes corresponds directly to Bourdieu’s identification of ‘the references to legitimate culture it [middlebrow] contains’” (Roberts, 2003, page 161). She concluded that Jack’s drawing of Rose was actually drawn by Cameron, aligning Titanic with high art showing the important cultural inclusions in the blockbuster. Cameron uses the major historical event of the Titanic sinking in 1912 to reinforce the magnitude of the blockbuster, solidifying the conventions of the “Blockbuster Historical Paradigm” (Keller, 1999, page 146). These elements allowed the film to transcend the blockbuster status. 

The studios suffered major losses until the success of the auteur renaissance in the early 1970s, but this was temporary as the release of Jaws had created the era of the blockbuster promising unthinkable profits. This film not only changed the way a film is promoted but also the way it is distributed and exhibited to audiences. The media participating in marketing blockbusters focuses on the box-office ranks such as magazines, newspapers, websites, and television programmes such as Film 2011 with Claudia Winkleman and channel E! As far as the media are concerned keeping track of the box-office rankings, DVD sales and merchandise profits is where the discussion of the blockbuster ends. “This fetishization of financial data limits the ways in which films enter any sort of intellectual, critical, or historical dialog” (Lewis, 2003, page 63). Studios have discovered that whether a blockbuster has playability or not is irrelevant as the key is marketing. In order to promote the blockbuster as an ‘event film’ the studio owners prefer to see the blockbuster as a product to be consumed. For example, Lewis argued that 

The teaser tells audiences that a certain film is so big they need to know about it half a year in advance. The story trailer is designed by the studios market researchers to tell audiences what the film is about and specifically why they should and need to see it.

(Lewis, 2003, page 67)

Allen argued that “the publicity and media hype surrounding the film people were made to want to see it for the ground breaking special effects as much as they were the films other, more traditional attractions” (Allen, 2003, page 107). Allen continued to argue that the real focus of the blockbuster is to show the new innovative technological processes that are on display. He argued that those systems became more apparent as the spectator is distracted by the effects so the star presence and/or performances are overlooked.

The blockbuster is sold as an event that is dissimilar to the ordinary cinematic routine. There is a substantial appeal concerning the audio-visual experience of the blockbuster and the spectacle tends to be relative. Extreme long shots of the ship in Titanic offered a large-scale spectacle. Contemporary blockbusters are lumped together with spin-off forms such as toys, books, games and so on. Jaws had its sequels allowing the expansion of the blockbuster into serial, events reoccurring. King explained that

Spectacular Hollywood blockbusters […] continue to invest strongly in narrative dynamics, and at more than one level. They tell carefully organised, more or less linear cause/effect stories organised around central characters. They also manifest what a structuralist analysis would term “underlying” narrative structural patterns.

(King, 2003, page 120)

Blockbusters are characteristic of New Hollywood Cinema since Jaws, and show new technological advances in sound and vision. Schatz argued that “these blockbuster hits are, for better or worse, what the New Hollywood is about, and thus are the necessary starting point for any analysis of contemporary American cinema” (Schatz, 1999, page 10f). Since the mid-1970s Dolby and Digital stereo had been used to transform the audio quality whilst Computer Generated Imagery and 3D has enabled studios to make more complex movies. The Blockbuster has not been considered enough in the past and a critical analysis of the blockbuster is just as important as with any other mainstream cinema release. The different complexities of the blockbuster and the way the media is used to encourage an audience into wanting to attend a spectacular event at the cinema and revel in the technological masterpiece that is unravelled on-screen.

Bibliography

Allen, M., (2003) Contemporary US Cinema. London: Pearson Education Limited.

Altman, R., (1999) Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute.

Bourdieu, P., (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice London: Routledge.

Buckland, W., ‘A Close Encounter with Raiders of the Lost Ark: Notes on Narrative Aspects of the New Hollywood Blockbuster’ in Neale, S., and Murray, S., (1998) Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. (Eds) London: Routledge.

Random House, Inc. (2011) ‘Titanic’ Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/titanic  (Accessed 11/04/2011).

Gomery, D., ‘The Hollywood Blockbuster: Industrial Analysis and Practice’ in Julian Stringer (2003) Movie Blockbusters. (Ed) London: Routledge.

Internet Movie Database (2011) Titanic (1953) User Reviews. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046435/  (Accessed 11/04/2011).

Keller, A., ‘”Size Does Matter”: Notes on Titanic and James Cameron as Blockbuster Auteur’ in  Sandler, K. S., and  Studlar, G., (1999) Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. (Eds). London: Rutgers University Press.

King, G., (2000) Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers.

King, G., ‘Spectacle, Narrative, and the Spectacular Hollywood Blockbuster’ in Julian Stringer (2003) Movie Blockbusters. (Ed).London: Routledge.

Lewis, J., ‘Following the Money in America’s Sunniest Company Town: Some Notes on the Political Economy of the Hollywood Blockbuster’ in Julian Stringer (2003) Movie Blockbusters. (Ed). London: Routledge.

Maltby, R., (1995) Hollywood Cinema. London: Blackwell publishing.

Roberts, G., ‘Circulations of taste: Titanic, the Oscars, and the Middlebrow’ in Julian Stringer (2003) Movie Blockbusters. (Ed). London: Routledge.

Schatz, T., ‘The New Hollywood’ in Jim Collins, Ava Preacher Collins and Hilary Radner (1999) Film Theory Goes to the Movies. (Eds).

Stringer, J., ‘Introduction’ in Julian Stringer (2003) Movie Blockbusters. (Ed). London: Routledge.

Tanitch, R., (2000) Blockbusters!: 70 Years of Best-Selling Movies. London: B. T. Batsford.

Thomson, D., (1996) ‘Who Killed the Movies?’. Esquire. December Issue: Pages 56-63.

Filmography

Film 2011 with Claudia Winkleman (2011) Liz Hartford. UK: BBC.

Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg. USA: Universal Pictures.

Raise the Titanic (1980) Jerry Jameson. USA: Incorporated Television Company.

Titanic (1953) Jean Negulesco. USA: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

Titanic (1997) James Cameron. USA: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

 By Lea Weller BA