tailieunhanh - A Propaganda Model for Hollywood

The studios adapted and survived, and since the 1970s, they have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence and have reasserted their collective control of the so-called New Hollywood. Now the studios’ film divisions produce far more than simply feature films, however, and the studios themselves are all subsidiaries of massive, transnational multimedia conglomerates such as Sony, Viacom, News Corp, and TimeWarner. But even as subsidiaries, the studios represent the “core assets” of these media conglomerates due to the enormous popu- larity of Hollywood movies in the global entertainment marketplace | A Propaganda Model for Hollywood Matthew Alford University of Bath Keywords USA Chomsky foreign policy Hollywood power Propaganda Model Abstract This article proposes a Hollywood Propaganda Model based on Herman and Chomsky s original theory for news media to explain the ideological output of mainstream Hollywood. The five filters are concentrated ownership the importance of merchandising dependence on establishment sources the disproportionate ability of the powerful to create flak and a dominant ideology of us versus the Other . The article acknowledges the limits of such a model but makes the case that the filters are important overarching concerns in determining the bounds of the expressible and that countervailing forces such as the supposed left-wing beliefs of grassroots Hollywood are of limited significance. A Propaganda Model for Hollywood Given the enduring applicability of Herman and Chomsky s approach to a range of public institutions Herring and Robinson 2003 Jensen 2007 Phelan 2006 it is somewhat surprising that the Propaganda Model has not been applied to Hollywood. Chomsky himself concedes that the avoidance of serious media critique right across the board for example in motion pictures is one respect in which the work that Ed Herman and I have done is really defective adding that such aspects of social life are major part s . of the whole indoctrination and propaganda system 2003 100 . One reason for avoiding Hollywood he later clarified is that he simply does not know enough about movies 2004 . Alison Edgley observes that Chomsky also prefers easily verifiable quantifiable empirical evidence and so is reluctant to engage in picture content which is to a greater extent dependent on connotation rather than denotation 2000 161 2 - although notably he is on record comparing On the Waterfront 1954 unfavourably with Salt of the Earth 1954 2002 . For his part Herman explains that there is no logical reason why films and other popular media should not be