Film and Media Studies Commons^™

African American Youth-Identity, Invisible Powers & Hypnotic Blaxploitation-Themed Film Tropes: From Superfly & Drug Culture To Black Panther & Wakanda, Daniel Mitchell

Screenwriting and Film Studies Theses (MA/MFA)

This thesis project explores the most influential effect of the blaxploitation era. It is during a time shortly after the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, where black youth are still enduring identity issues. The point of departure for central discussion of this work revolves around the mesmerizing Hollywood blaxploitation film, Superfly. It arrived on the big screen in 1972. The hit movie and its soundtrack seemingly hypnotized countless young African American youth in urban areas to become drug dealers and users. This coincided with Nixon’s War on Drugs collusion with government agencies, and the secret COINTELPRO operation. They …

“Un-American” Hollywood: Politics And Film In The Blacklist Era, Natalie Jarosz

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This is a review of “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, a 2007 volume edited by Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale, Brian Neve, and Peter Stanfield. It argues that the American Left was involved with creating films of true significance in the Hollywood system, in the context of post-war House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) blacklisting. There is also an examination of the Popular Front between liberals and communists before post-war tensions drew them further apart. There is a chapter about the “new” and “old” waves of the left in the context of 1960s and 1970s American cinema. …

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

MSU Graduate Theses

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Introduction To "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women In The Hollywood Studio System", Emily Carman

Film and Media Arts Faculty Books and Book Chapters

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses worked on a freelance basis within the restrictive studio system. In leveraging their stardom to play an active role in shaping their careers, female stars including Irene Dunne, Janet Gaynor, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck challenged Hollywood’s patriarchal structure.

Through extensive, original archival research, Independent Stardom uncovers this …