Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the 1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Part I: The Spectacle Industry
- One. Blockbuster Ballyhoo
- Two. Industrial Regimes of Entertainment
- Part II: The Rise of the Blockbuster
- Three. Delivering Blockbusters
- Four. The Business of Big
- Five. Hollywood's Return
- Six. Cosmopolitan Artlessness
- Part III: The Technological Sublime of Entertainment Everywhere
- Seven. The End of James Cameron's Quiet Years
- Eight. The Technological Heart of Movie Culture
- Epilogue. Exhausted Entertainment
- Notes
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
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