The Power of Cinema and Cinema Obscura
The Power of Cinema and Cinema Obscura
Cinema has been used ruthlessly for their own ends since its creation, by politicians, entrepreneurs, generals, zealots, bishops, mass murderers, pedants, pedagogues, and snake oil salesmen.
The early establishment of major studios, along with the creation of Hollywood and its subsequent emergence as the world centre of cinematic production, resulted in the “studio system”, which concentrated power over the medium in the hands of a few studio heads, who even owned the cinemas themselves.
Consequently, the philosophies underpinning the message of most films became those of a few conservative men like Louis B.Mayer and Jack Warner.
In 1934, all the major Hollywood studios signed a “treaty” that merely rubber-stamped what had been common practice – widespread adherence to “moral” guidelines in cinematic productions.
The document was known as the Hollywood Production Code and was administered by the Hays Office, headed by the Catholic League of Decency’s nominee, Joe Breen.
This entity eventually gave way to the formalised Government censorship that exists to this day, but the industry retained a culture born of those days that perpetuated the cinematic viewpoint of white Christian male dominance of society.
Consequently, the medium of cinema has been used to brainwash generations of us to accept, for the advancement of their own ends, a semiotic dogma consisting of the following premises
White people and the Christian God are superior, and others are inferior
Men are superior, women are inferior
The white, male-dominated, Christian family unit is superior, other relationships and people are inferior
As a member of this majority, it is morally superior to share the preferences of your peers in politics, morals, looks and adornment, sexuality and personal conduct , lifestyles, and products, as expressed to you in films and filmed advertisements.
Everyone who is not part of a traditional white male-dominated Christian family unit can become less inferior by imitating these preferences.
Cinema has also been used by persons of broader views, but an imbalance existed, and the more sinister forces prevailed for most of the century.
Social consciousness in films gradually forced its way to a more prominent position, partly as a reaction by Hollywood’s creative artists to the persecution of their peers in the early 1950s by Senator Joseph McCarthy who accused the industry of fostering Communists, and received the studio heads’ fawning assurances that they would eradicate such people from the industy.
Proponents of a more open and unblinkered medium hoped it would better protect the...