On the subject of Hollywood vs the Good World, consider these remarks by Stanley
Cavell

"Everything I wrote in *The World Viewed* about Hollywood films is perfectly
compatible with a claim that most of them are childish or worthless. (Though I am
still willing to bet that this is true of no greater a proportion of them than of,
say, French or Russian films, a part of whose prestige comes from our knowing so
few of them, I assume the best.) My problem was rather to understand, if the
accidents and stringencies of Hollywood production were the wholly baneful things
that devotees of non-Hollywood films suggest, how so many of them could have been
so good. (I am not prepared to argue with someone who is prepared to say that all
are worthless.) People sometimes say, when their experience of some of these films
cannot be denied, that they are good in spite of Hollywood's bosses and agents.
But what reason is there to believe this? Does it make any sense at all to think
of figures like John Ford or Howard Hawks or Frank Capra or Preston Sturges as
*limited* by Hollywood? (Perhaps others could have made better Hollywood movies.
No; theirs are perfect of their kind. Then other people could have made better
movies of different kinds and were kept out by Hollywood commercialism. I do not
doubt it, but this is not a problem peculiar to America and its Hollywood.) [ - -
- ] Of course it is arguable that the genres and conventions of Hollywood films
are themselves the essential limitation. But to argue that, you have to show
either that there are no comparable limitations in other traditions or else that
their limitations (say a Russian tendency toward the monumental and operatic, or a
French tendency toward the private and provincial, or a German tendency toward the
theatrical and claustrophobic) are less limiting. Hollywood films are not
everything; neither is American fiction at its greatest. But it is not clear to me
that American films occupy a less honorable place among the films of the world
than American fiction does in world literature."
(*The World Viewed* (enl.ed, 1979) p. 173-4.)

Note that Cavell's point is not a relativistic one, but simply a reminder not to
fall for a temptation, viz., to unabashedly *idealize* the film production of rest
of the world in contrast to the Holywood system.

It seems to be the fashion of the century to categorize films, genres, conventions
as either reactionary or progressive, according to whatever theory you subscribe
to. Such undertakings, it seems to me, must always be speculative (although seldom
useless, many interesting things may be said along the way - I'm thinking for
instance of Slavoj Zizek). Some people will respond to any given film by
perceiving it as reactionary, others will respond to them the opposite way, and
both perceptions may be defended by your rationaliziations of choice. In the final
analysis, we are not (could not be) able to measure whether this or that film or
system actually helps create a healthier society with happier citizens or not.

My guess is that the grounds for bashing Hollywood films might be aesthetic rather
than ideological. We (as 'cineasts') have fallen in love with certain kinds of
film, because they are important to us, as art - as they are rewarding 'on more
than an immediate level of entertainment', as they awaken our senses and stimulate
renewed perceptions of the world. (Think of how a good comic can make us realize
the humor inherent in many of our predicaments, etc. (Good) art is in this way
always 'personally progressive'.) Obviously, nobody to whom film has this
significance wants a system like Hollywood's, which has such a low priority for
these values. Luckily enough, however, no frames or strict conventions, however
commercially or otherwise philistinistically (?) motivated, can stifle a creative
mind, there's always room to express yourself (think e.g. of the 'Hollywood
mavericks'), and, as Cavell notes, there is always a set of 'restrictions' in and
by which artists work. There can be art in Hollywood films, there often is, but it
may take an effort, an opening of eyes, to find it. And besides, the best
intentions do not guarantee successful results - and a film may be unintentionally
profound.

(This account might explain why ideological criticism in film studies so often is
at pains to show why one form of film is favorable to another, rather than argue
along Marshall McLuhan's lines, according to which the medium is what is socially
threatening, 'is the message', which I think would at least be worth considering
in that context.)

or?

best,
Ludvig Hertzberg
        - Dept of Cinema Studies - Stockholm University, Sweden -



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