[January 10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming, rebranding, and relaunch of Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconic American film studios. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Columbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to this special weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st century FilmStudiers!]
I couldn’t write a weeklong series on a
Hollywood film studio without paying tribute to the most thoughtful current FilmStudier
and historian of all things Hollywood: the business and industry, the political
and social ramifications, and those fraught and fantastic films themselves. You
can learn a lot more about Vaughn Joy’s work on her website and her prolific Twitter account; here I’ll
just highlight a handful of exemplary examples:
1)
Vaughn
written a couple of excellent
articles (both available at that hyperlink) on the Paramount Decrees,
monopolization, and Hollywood for the University of Chicago Business School’s
Promarket magazine;
2)
She’s
compiled a number of vital Twitter threads on different aspects of the past,
present, and future of Hollywood, with many compiled in this thread of
threads…
3)
…and
a new
addition to the list from December on the proposed and deeply problematic
merger between Warner Brothers and Paramount;
4)
Her article
on Miracle on 34th Street
for a special Christmas
Studies issue of Comparative American
Studies makes clear how she connects her multilayered analyses of films
to those historical, social, and political contexts;
5)
And
for lots more examples of those multilayered analyses, make sure to subscribe
to her weekly Review Roulette
newsletter!
I look
forward to learning a lot more about Hollywood’s histories and future from
Vaughn in 2024! Speaking of, a Spring semester previews series start Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Hollywood histories or historians you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment