Table Of ContentEDUCATION, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC LIFE
Series Editors:
Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University
Susan Searls Giroux, McMaster University
Within the last three decades, education as a political, moral, and ideologi-
cal practice has become central to rethinking not only the role of public
and higher education, but also the emergence of pedagogical sites outside
of the schools—which include but are not limited to the Internet, televi-
sion, film, magazines, and the media of print culture. Education as both a
form of schooling and public pedagogy reaches into every aspect of politi-
cal, economic, and social life. What is particularly important in this highly
interdisciplinary and politically nuanced view of education are a number of
issues that now connect learning to social change, the operations of dem-
ocratic public life, and the formation of critically engaged individual and
social agents. At the center of this series will be questions regarding what
young people, adults, academics, artists, and cultural workers need to know
to be able to live in an inclusive and just democracy and what it would mean
to develop institutional capacities to reintroduce politics and public commit-
ment into everyday life. Books in this series aim to play a vital role in rethink-
ing the entire project of the related themes of politics, democratic struggles,
and critical education within the global public sphere.
SERIES EDITORS
HENRY A. GIROUX holds the Global TV Network Chair in English and
Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. He is on the editorial
and advisory boards of numerous national and international scholarly jour-
nals. Professor Giroux was selected as a Kappa Delta Pi Laureate in 1998
and was the recipient of a Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar Award
in 1999. He was the recipient of the Hooker Distinguished Professor Award
for 2001. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Memorial
University of Newfoundland in 2005. His most recent books include Take
Back Higher Education (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006);
America on the Edge (2006); Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006), Stormy
Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (2006), The University in
Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007), and
Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (2008).
SUSAN SEARLS GIROUX is Associate Professor of English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University. Her most recent books include The Theory
Toolbox (co-authored with Jeff Nealon, 2004) and Take Back Higher
Education (co-authored with Henry A. Giroux, 2006). Professor Giroux
is also the Managing Editor of The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and
Cultural Studies.
Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times: Hope and Possibilities
Edited by Sheila L. Macrine
The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy
Kenneth J. Saltman
Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public: Women and
the “Re-Privatization” of Labor
Robin Truth Goodman
Hollywood’s Exploited: Public Pedagogy, Corporate Movies, and
Cultural Crisis
Edited by Benjamin Frymer, Tony Kashani, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and
Rich Van Heertum; with a Foreword by Lawrence Grossberg
Education out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for
a Posthuman Age
Tyson E. Lewis and Richard Kahn
Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era
Edited by Edward J. Carvalho and David B. Downing
Rituals and Student Identity in Education: Ritual Critique for
a New Pedagogy
Richard A. Quantz with Terry O’Connor and
Peter Magolda (forthcoming)
Educating Youth for a World beyond Violence
H. Svi Shapiro (forthcoming)
America According to Colbert: Satire as Public Pedagogy post-9/11
Sophia A. McClennen (forthcoming)
Citizen Youth: Culture, Activism, and Agency in a Neoliberal Era
Jacqueline Joan Kennelly (forthcoming)
Hollywood’s Exploited
P P , C M ,
UBLIC EDAGOGY ORPORATE OVIES
C C
AND ULTURAL RISIS
Edited by
Benjamin Frymer, Tony Kashani,
Anthony J. Nocella II, and
Rich Van Heertum
Foreword by
Lawrence Grossberg
HOLLYWOOD’S EXPLOITED
Copyright © Benjamin Frymer, Tony Kashani, Anthony J. Nocella II, and
Rich Van Heertum, 2010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-0-230-62199-2 ISBN 978-0-230-11742-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230117426
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hollywood’s exploited : public pedagogy, corporate movies, and cultural
crisis / edited by Anthony J. Nocella, II ... [et al.] ; foreword by Lawrence
Grossberg.
p. cm.—(Education, politics, and public life)
ISBN 978–0–230–62199–2
1. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States. I. Nocella,
Anthony J.
PN1995.9.SS6H65 2010
302.23’4—dc22 2010018914
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
For those plants, animals, humans, and elements on
this planet that have been exploited.
Contents
Praise for Hollywood’s Exploited ix
Foreword xiii
Lawrence Grossberg
Preface xv
Toby Miller
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction 1
Benjamin Frymer, Tony Kashani,
Anthony J. Nocella II, and Richard Van Heertum
Part 1 Hollywood & Ideology
1 The Imperial System in Media Culture 13
Carl Boggs
2 Hollywood and the Working-Class Hero:
Diamonds in the Mean Streets of Boston 29
Richard Van Heertum
3 Hollywood’s Missionary Agenda:
Christonormativity and Audience Baptism 45
Shirley R. Steinberg
4 Hollywood Incarcerated and on Death Row: Bjork,
Schwarzenegger, and the Pedagogy of Retribution 65
Richard Van Heertum
Part 2 Hollywood Represents the Other
5 From Ms. J. to Ms. G.: Analyzing Racial Microaggressions
in Hollywood’s Urban School Genre 85
Tara J. Yosso and David Gumaro García
viii Contents
6 Hollywood’s Cinema of Ableism: A Disability
Studies Perspective on the Hollywood
Industrial Complex 105
Tony Kashani and Anthony J. Nocella II
7 International Citizenry in the Age of the Spectacle 115
Shoba Sharad Rajgopal
8 LGBT-Themed Hollywood Cinema
after Brokeback Mountain: Renegotiating
Hegemonic Representations of Gay Men 131
Michael A. Raffanti
Part 3 Hollywood Ages
9 Modes of Youth Exploitation in the
Cinema of Larry Clark 153
Douglas Kellner
10 S ixteen and Pregnant: Media Mommy Tracking and
Hollywood’s Exploitation of Teen Pregnancy 171
Caroline K. Kaltefleiter
11 About Schmidt and About the Hollywood
Image of an Aging Actor 189
Karen E. Riggs
Part 4 Hollywood Beyond the Human
12 E cological Connections and Contradictions:
Penguins, Robots, and Humans in
Hollywood’s “Nature” Films 203
Salma Monani and Andrew Hageman
13 H ollywood and Nonhuman Animals:
Problematic Ethics of Corporate Cinema 219
Tony Kashani
List of Contributors 235
Index 243
Praise for Hollywood’s Exploited
“Hollywood’s Exploited is a much needed text in today’s media saturated
society. The editors have included a collection of top contributors to
comment on the representations that emerge from Hollywood. This
book is timely and is definitely appropriate for any course that needs
a critical evaluation of popular media representations.” —Abraham P.
DeLeon, University of Texas at San Antonio
———————————————
“This compendium on Hollywood film and how it constructs and
manipulates the prisms through which we see Others under the bour-
geois order is a superb springboard for scholars across the planet,
and especially in the Global South, to forge ahead with similar stud-
ies of film and its representations in their own cultures, Bollywood,
Nollywood and much much beyond. The sharp in-depth focus solely
on Hollywood here invites analysts to build a comparative critical cin-
ematology that looks at film industries, their political economy and
ideologies in contexts as diverse as the old ‘socialist’ bloc, the PRC,
Cuba, Indonesia, Palestine and elsewhere. Doors are opened to envi-
sioning what a non-capitalist, non-exploitative and radically egalitar-
ian people’s cinema might aspire to be, while learning to read films
from American Leviathan against their very grain.” —Bill Templer,
University of Malaya, Malaysia
———————————————
“Hollywood’s Exploited is a book that every consumer of media and
entertainment needs to read. The contributors to this volume leave
no area unexamined as they provide readers with the tools we need
to engage with products of the entertainment industry appropriately:
with a critical perspective oriented toward uncovering oppression, dis-
crimination, and the exercise of power. Bravo!” —Matthew Walton,
composer of Sundance, an opera about Native American political
prisoner Leonard Peltier
———————————————
x Praise for Hollywood’s Exploited
“Hollywood has tremendous power in our society. For anyone chip-
ping away at conventional thought or behavior, a critical analysis of
Hollywood would seem essential.” —Dr. Lisa Kemmerer, author of
In Search of Consistency: Ethics and Animals
———————————————
“This book not only helps us understand the hidden assumptions
and the constricted world view contained in Hollywood movies, but
also helps us show how those very movies can be used in the class-
room for a critical understanding of society.” —Dr. Ali Zaidi, SUNY
Canton
———————————————
“This collection of provocative essays provides ample fuel to fire
heated public conversation on role of Hollywood and the media at-
large in shaping the social imagination regarding the identity we
assign others. The authors explore Hollywood’s role in shaping the
social imagination on race, class, gender, animals, disability, youth,
religion and other matters is bound to renew tensions in the culture
wars.” —Dr. David Gabbard, East Carolina University
———————————————
“An outstanding critical analysis of the Hollywood Industrial
Complex. A book that shows what Hollywood is all about, exploita-
tion and propaganda. A must read for anyone interested in under-
standing the value of media as a form of public pedagogy.” —Nick
Cooney, The Humane League of Philadelphia
———————————————
“We live in a society where public worldviews are shaped significantly
by visual media, and decreasingly by traditional forms of print and
news media. In this context, it becomes necessary to critically examine
and unpackage the hegemonic (and potentially counter-hegemonic)
effects of mainstream film. This book is a first step in deconstructing
the more oppressive aspects of popular visual media, while recogniz-
ing its revolutionary potentials.” —Dr. William T. Armaline, Justice
Studies Department, San José State University
———————————————
“We challenge future educators to change the world, but rarely offer
them the tools to make it happen; this book is a ‘power tool’ for
transformative pedagogy.” —Dr. Judy K. C. Bentley, Editor-in-Chief,
Social Advocacy and Systems Change
———————————————
“An outstanding book to unchain the many violent constructed
images by the media of those that are oppressed and marginalized.
