Political Polarization and the New Hollywood Blockbuster

by: Frederick Wasser / Brooklyn College CUNY

The connection between politics and movies is continuous and yet murky. It is not to be found solely in the intentions of the creative team or in overt themes of the plotline. The once popular analysis of the link between politics and cinematic form that argued the jump cut is a blow against capitalism is now as a quaint reminder of the “60s.” Nonetheless the relationship between films and politics is immediate perhaps because both involve large populations and both appropriate more and more cultural resources. The rather dramatic change in the American landscape from the relative consensual mainstream politics of the post war era into the polarized, mutually incomprehensible positions of today are bound to be reflected in films. I think the reflection may even change the way New Hollywood does business.

The “blockbuster” movie was a term associated with the saturated bombing of World War Two and certainly there was mixture of shock and awe at the blockbusters of the past quarter century along with some concern over their excesses. I would like to treat the blockbuster as a genre although there is little unity of content. But there is enough sharing of formal features and marketing strategies to group these films together. Certainly they are all big budget movies attempting to achieve “event” movie status. (At what point did someone come up with the term “event movie?”) The event movie is defined as being that movie that I (and the rest of us) had to go to because everyone else was going to see it. Quite frankly despite being in the film business and now in the academic film biz and despite generally liking anything with sprocket holes and even things with time code, there are many, many event films I resent that I felt obliged to go to. Like Ignatius Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces, I took some minor satisfaction in railing at the minor credits in event movies. But the satisfaction was only minor. It was a bit of circular logic; I went because they were important; they were important because everybody else went.

Thus these films were particular evidence for the social importance of film. The marketing campaigns and the various formulations of new Hollywood suffice to convince a population that this was a “must-see” movie. They were invariably from the major studios except for the annual noble independent low budget film that also achieved event status precisely because it was not from the majors. Think of Sex, lies and videotape (1989), The Crying Game (1992), and The Blair Witch Project (1999) to name a few.

Suddenly this year there are two event films and they have odd relations with the majors, neither one a major studio release and neither very independent. Both are driven by outside the box marketing strategies and both are raising fierce hackles as well as exuberant praise. The dual arrivals of The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 911 inspires thoughts that we are at a sea change regarding the cultural status of movies or, at least, the blockbusters.

They revealed how much the film product of the last twenty, twenty-five years has been pitched at the entire audience, the entire globe. Media historians have asserted that the general movement for media is to go from general audiences to niche ones (Shaw). This statement only reveals how media historians constantly overlook films. The film industry had constructed niche audiences in the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to the loss of the habitual audience to television. But the 1970s new Hollywood blockbuster formula of cross media marketing was premised on attracting everyone everywhere. Statistics show that video and other ancillary markets meant that eventually all age groups were attracted back to the Hollywood product by the end of the 1980s. No niche audiences here as we headed into the apogee of Titanic (1997).

Yet Passion and Fahrenheit both struck like lightning bolts within a few months at the cultural cleavage of America and it is safe to say that only a few went to both movies (I did) and that even fewer liked both (I didn’t). Will new Hollywood be able to paper over this new culture war as well as it did with the old 60s cultural war?

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit has little in common with the blockbuster. It is a documentary that is framed around the central everyman character of Michael Moore in a popularizing tradition that refers both to TV’s 60 Minutes (1968-now) and Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1986). But the recent turn of the documentary genre towards the popular still rarely attracts production funding from a major studio. It was a sign of extraordinary times that Moore was able to find such financing when the Miramax division of The Walt Disney Company gave his project the go ahead. This division occasionally does revert back to the kind of marginal projects it was famous for when it was still an independent company 12 years ago. But the parent Disney showed mainstream timidity when it sold the film rather than release it itself. It was another sign of the extraordinary times that Disney anticipated a political retaliation from the Governor of Florida who is the brother of the sitting president. Is the breakdown of American polity eroding the nominal autonomy of popular culture?

Passion has many features that are in common with the blockbuster and many that are not. It was a relatively modest budget for a blockbuster but it was based on a well-known story that has been filmed many times before. Thus the production and the marketing needed to claim a unique status to compel a global audience to see this new version. Typically the New Hollywood Blockbuster handles this problem of universal appeal by promising the audience something new within a comfortable and well-known formula. They do this by giving an “A” budget to a “B” script. Thus great efforts are made to assure the audience that they will have to make very little effort to believe in the reality of such impossible things as contemporary dinosaurs, men with super-human powers, or even the end of the world. All the audience has to do in return is to show up in numbers that surpasses the usual clique of dinosaur fans or action hero enthusiasts.

In addition to a realism effect of heightened budgets, the new Hollywood likes to use universal villains such sharks, treacherous lions, serial murderers or creatures from outer space. While The Godfather (1972) angered some Italian-American groups and many action films have upset Middle Eastern groups for their choice of villains, these are viewed as lapses. After all the economics of the blockbuster dictates that it cannot alienate any sizable segment of the global audience. Even those few films that touch on real world controversies are designed to allow a great deal of flexibility of interpretation. Saving Private Ryan (1998) can serve as a recent example since it was interpreted as both a corrective to the jingoism of earlier war movies and as a continuation of the same themes. Dances With Wolves (1990) was an earlier example of correcting earlier Western movie attitudes towards Native Americans without challenging the audience.

Thus we have two measures of the new Hollywood formula: heightened believability and the attempt for universal appeal either through avoidance of cultural specifics or a polyvalent attitude towards cultural divides.

From Mel Gibson\'s The Passion of the Christ

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ

Passion of the Christ follows the former but not the latter.

Gibson placed heavy stress that the audience will believe in his film. Of course belief takes on added meaning when speaking of the gospel of a major religion. But Gibson didn’t just rely on pre-existing faith. He resorted to the tried and true tactics of new Hollywood to compel such faith. He emphasized action and he indulged in the use of a subjective camera. The combination of the two particularly during the flagellation scenes ensured the same kind of visceral roller coaster ride that is the feature of most of new Hollywood’s blockbusters. Many critics have commented on the bloody shots of Jesus, as Gibson portrays the beating in detail. In addition to what is being portrayed we should also know it is being represented with all the hyperrealism of the blockbuster. The sound effects, particularly in the opening fight in the Mount of Olives, follow the exaggerations that were initially popularized in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982). Gibson uses the camera in the blockbuster hyperbolic manner; even going so far as to turn the camera upside down to reproduce Jesus’ point of view of his torturers. This extreme visual along with an extreme overhead at the end of the film and others would not be tolerated in old Hollywood but is relished in contemporary big budget filmmaking.

The blockbuster’s commitment to visceral effects is well known. Jean Pierre-Geuens is convincing in his explanation of the motivation for such visceral effects. He borrows from William James’ psychology to note that there are two preliminary human reactions to stimuli before the human can reflect even emotionally on the stimuli. For example, with a fire, there is the feeling of fire, and the flight from fire, before there is the reflective reaction of the fear of fire. Geuens notes that contemporary filmmakers aim to cause the first two reactions in their audience without concern for the third stage of a reflective emotion. This is precisely my critique of blockbusters in general which give us little time to ponder the wonder of the worlds they create and for Passion in particular which gives us no time to reflect on the universal message of Jesus’ death. The extreme physicality bullies us into crying in reaction to the brutality, not in reflecting on the love of God’s only son undergoing the human pain of death.

So Gibson learned that lesson of the blockbuster but he deviates radically from the universal appeal of the blockbuster in his own marketing and positioning. He certainly took pride from his own radical brand of Catholicism and used it in the marketing of the movie. He did not seek compromise or consensus when scholars warned him that his script reopened old sectarian wounds. This is the only recent event film that purposefully drives a wedge between Christian and Jew, between fervent believers and rational religionists. This is not the formula of new Hollywood, which now goes to some lengths to attract audiences across social divides. Gibson’s deviation from Hollywood’s marketing is reflected in his self-financing, his use of the small independent distributor (Newmarket) and his extensive use of religious groups to give marketing clout to the movie.

Both Fahrenheit and Passion avoided the bland ambiguities and polyvalent plotlines of new Hollywood. They both became “must-see” movies despite major deviations from the blockbuster formula.

What is happening to the major studio blockbuster? Is it no longer an event?

Certainly not if we just look at the figures. Shrek Two (2004) and The Shark Tale (2004) are performing to the high standards of their studios. Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) has been as eventful as Star Wars (1977). Still I detect that the fractured American audience is a glimmer of the down slope of the blockbuster cycle. Peter Bart of Variety also confirms a downward trend when he reports that a certain zest for gamesmanship has gone out of the movie executive suites in light of the 1998 summer release schedule. It stands to reason that media moguls who own the corporations of Viacom, News Corporation, and Sony are tired of their filmed entertainment divisions which rarely contribute more than a fifth of revenue and yet never settle down to be a nice dependable steady flow of revenue. Instead these divisions continue to operate with low profit margins and high stakes. The atmosphere following the success of Titanic seems to be more one of relief than jubilation. In 2002 Disney announced to Merrill Lynch that it would try to discipline the budget levels. Hardly the mantra of blockbuster movie making.

The big movies since the turn of the current century have been full-length animations. Certainly these are the movies that inspire Wall Street to buy stocks and invest money. Animation audiences are typically bimodal with parents or grandparents bringing children to the theaters or buying the DVDs. These audiences are not the universal ones that blockbusters at the height of the cycle a decade ago attracted. The big live action films are also turning towards a youthful audience with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. J. Kapur noticed that Harry Potter represents the big budget movie genre turning towards “Englishness.” Lord of the Rings has the same quality albeit New Zealanders represented its Englishness.

It stands to reason that America’s embrace of unilateralism would limit American film exporting. Perhaps we exaggerated power of our appeal even before the latest Iraq invasion. Early reports, following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, were that a liberated population was storming the cinemas to see Hollywood films. Later reports clarified that they were actually anxious to see the latest imports from “Bollywood,” not Hollywood. Our grip is slipping. I suspect that even a favorable result to the upcoming election will not restore the universal global audience to Hollywood and that the fracture uncovered by Passion and Fahrenheit will lead to more niche audience marketing for American films than before.

Works cited

Geuens, Jean-Pierre. (2000). Film Production Theory. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.

Kapur, Jyostna. (2003, Spring). “Free market, branded imagination — Harry Potter and the commercialization of children’s culture.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media Online: Jump Cut article visited September 5th, 2004.

Shaw, D. (1991, April 4). “Rise and Fall of American Mass Media: Roles of Technology and Leadership” second annual Roy W. Howard lecture presented at Indiana University Bloomington.

Links of Interest:

1. The Passion of the Christ

2. IMDB’s 100 worst films ever


4. Best Movies

Image Credits:

1. Fahrenheit 9/11

2. The Passion of the Christ

Please feel free to comment.



  • Mr. Wasser’s concern for the relationship of film and politics to many other cultural realms is a legitimate concern not just for the status of the film industry and mass media messages, but for our overall economic structure and activity. According to Joseph Pine, we have moved from an agricultural to an industrial to a service and now to an experience economy. Wasser’s comments about the ‘Event Movie’ fit very well into this new catchphrase. If social expectations are now focused on the actual experience of any consumer activity, then the movies are undoubtedly at the top of that list. Any attempt to assuage Mr. Wasser’s concerns about the inability of traditional blockbusters to live up to this expectation can benefit from evaluating the causes of the lack of significant prioritization by the media owners and major studio producers who are producing films that herald and focus too much on entertaining the audience, and then too often end up being apathetic to niche audiences, social values, and the inherent ‘third stage of reflective emotion’. This evaluation would not just benefit the critic, but it might be a persuasive explanation to the moguls about why the film divisions within their empires do not produce higher profit margins for their films.

  • blockbusters, busted blocks

    I found this piece fascinating for its ability to take both social and formal aspects of film and relate them to the current queasy turn in American politics.

    The comment “contemporary filmmakers aim to cause the first two reactions in their audience without concern for the third stage of a reflective emotion. This is precisely my critique of blockbusters in general which give us little time to ponder the wonder of the worlds they create” illuminates the aesthetic of the traditional blockbuster movie; what I find particularly interesting is Wasser’s move into an examination of the increasing acceptance of fragmented audiences on the part of makers of “event movies” . This seems to imply a move into imperial thinking on the part of American culture-makers–positing a fragmented world held together by brute military power.

  • Blockbusters of the future

    With economic growth in Asia, and the unstoppable march of increased processing power of computers, perhaps some place other than Hollywood will be able to generate computer animated epics that can provide the “realistic spectacle” that Hollywood has had a monopoly on for so long, without the cultural discount of a foreign product. If this happens, the niche markets will be of greater importance, and maybe Hollywood will stop trying to please everyone all the time. Also, I’ve always wondered why big studios don’t make more low-budget films just to reduce risk. It seems like Fahrenheit 911 is the ideal to be followed in the future – cheap to produce, controversial enough to make a lot of money with a little advertising.

  • Bruises, Shock and Blockbusters

    I concur with the author that realism is definitely a concern and a goal in the creation of blockbusters. I remember watching “The Passion” and being shaken by the departure of the antiseptic crucifixion story I was exposed to in Catholic school. Likewise, many of my Protestant friends were deeply moved by the film, but came to few theological conclusions. I agree with Elliot that Hollywood’s obsession with pleasing and mollifying everyone factors in to the successes of movies such as “The Passion” and “Fahrenheit 911”. In addition to the social obligation to see these films Wasser identified, I propose that many are also going to see these films precisely for their shock and agitation value. Especially in the case of “Farhenheit 911”, I believe the open text, which many scholars identify as a place of struggle, lets people renegotiate and reaffirm their beliefs, especially when exposed to counterarguments. To me, it is like a liberal seeking out Fox on election night and then arguing with the TV set or a conservative watching “Fahrenheit 911” and then critiquing it in like-minded company. It is much easier to argue with a TV set than engage in critical discourse with an actual, living, breathing, mentally eqipped human being.

  • How do we know the intent of the directors?

    The controversy between The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 beingblockbusters was a little convoluted in the grand scheme of things. I believethey were merely films that were made because the directors, Mel Gibson andMichael Moore respectively, felt like making a film with a specific topic inmind.In looking at The Passion of the Christ, it was a very controversial film,undoubtedly, but I believe that the reports that followed the opening of thefilm saying that it was anti-Semitic and a terrible film to show to the publicbecause of the diverse religious systems were degrading to Gibson. It was amovie that he wanted to do, and had a strong passion for it. He even paid themajority of the budget out of his own pocket. He would not have made such a big gamble if he was in it just for the money. However, we do not know his intent. This plays in the “we don”t know the authors intent” lecture that was discussed in RTF316M. Despite the fact that Gibson made a film that touched on sensitive religious views, we do not know if he actually meant to cause an uproar with how he treated the Jews in the film or even the persecution of Jesus Christ. He was very humble about it later in interviews just saying that he wanted to make a film for him and to firm his belief structure. Now he is seen as an “other” because he does not fit the WASP stereotype. However, President George W. Bush is flaunting his religious views by passing the law against gay marriages. Continuing on President Bush, Michael Moore on the other hand for his film Fahrenheit 9/11 tends to live in his own political bubble and has the ability and resources to make and produce what he wants, and he has done so successfully. I don’t see why he should bechastised either because he is making films that are meaningful to him. While yes, he does this to inform the public about what is going on in thegovernment, but I don’t think that his films should have caused so much mediacontroversy. It is a film and that’s how it should be viewed, and I think thatis how it should be taken. Again, in this case, we do not know what exactly he meant to do. Did he actually think that his film would cast President Bush out of office? The main reason for just unrest in conjunction with the film is that the conservative nation saw it as a propaganda film. The conservative nation has a tendency to overrule anything that may occur in our nation as a whole just because there is a Republican president in office. In class we discussed that everything is subject to a stereotype. These films helped the breaking of the mold in films which coincides with putting other stereotypes on the screen, but I hope that any future films that seem controversial are regarded as art instead of media propaganda.

  • Now its easy to watch all movies, TV shows for free on Android devices using Cinema apk. all movies are available for free on this app.

  • This kind of movie I love to watch, and I have watched many of them.

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