Hollywood Shot by Shot
eBook - ePub

Hollywood Shot by Shot

Alcoholism in American Cinema

Norman K. Denzin

Share book
  1. 309 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Hollywood Shot by Shot

Alcoholism in American Cinema

Norman K. Denzin

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

To what extent have Hollywood feature films shaped the meanings that Americans attach to alcoholics, their families, and the alcoholic condition? To what extent has the mass culture of the movie industry itself been conceptually shaped by a broad, external societal discourse? Norman Denzin brings to his life-long study of alcoholism a searching interest in how cultural texts signify and lend themselves to interpretation within a social nexus. Both historical and diachronic in his approach, Denzin identifies five periods in the alcoholism films made between 1932 and the end of the 1980s, and offers a detailed critical reading of thirty-seven films produced during these six decades.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Hollywood Shot by Shot an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Hollywood Shot by Shot by Norman K. Denzin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Médias et arts de la scène & Film et vidéo. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351515344

Part I:
Interpretive Structures

The motion picture is one product which is never completely consumed for the very good reason that it is never entirely forgotten by those who see it. it leaves behind a residue, or deposit, or imagery and association, and this fact makes it a product unique to our tremendous list of export items.
(Mayer, 1947, p. 34, also quoted by Doane 1987, p. 37)
No cultural product works in isolation, but films are particularly interdependent in their meanings; partly because our reading of them relies on our knowledge and memory of generic conventions, and partly because the star system creates a complex pattern of links which also depends on our filmic memory and expectations. We remember the names of stars in mainstream films long after we have forgotten their fictional names, and meanings produced in one film will be carried over into another by the very presence of a particular actor or actress around which certain connotations have accrued.
(Williamson, 1987, p. 23 in a review of The Morning After)

1 Reading the Alcoholism Film

“Hollywood is in a rut. They don’t make movies, they remake them.”
(Billy Wilder, 1944/1970, p. 88)
This is an interpretive study of a particular category of Hollywood cinema—the alcoholism film; that movie in which the inebrity, alcoholism, and excessive drinking of one or more of the major characters is presented as a problem which the character, his or her friends, family, and employers, and other members of society self-consciously struggle to resolve (see Room, 1985, p. 1). Drinking, drunkenness, and alcoholism have played major and minor parts in American cinema since the early 1900s. Between the years 1908 and 1989 Hollywood made at least 600 alcoholism movies.1 This is an analysis of a selected number of these films (see Table 1), chosen because they are considered to be the best representations of Hollywood’s shifting treatment of the alcoholic from the early modern period (1932) to the present (1989).
This investigation differs from earlier studies (Room, 1983a, b, 1985; Herd and Room, 1982; Herd, 1986; Roffman and Purdy, 1981; Cook and Lewington, 1979; McCormack, 1986; Steudler, 1987), which have been guided by purely historical, structural, or semiotic concerns. With few exceptions, this earlier work has not turned back on Hollywood as a meaning-making institution and analyzed in detail the systems of discourse and interpretation that have shaped the creation, definition, and production of alcoholism and the alcoholic subject. Nor have these works followed the evolution and development of the alcoholic subject in American film.

Interpretive Framework

I seek to delineate a complex, multidimensional theme. There is no single agreed on thing called alcoholism, or alcoholic. The meanings of these terms are shaped by social, historical, medical, legal, literary, cultural, ideological, and interactional processes. Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward alcohol and the alcoholic, and this has been reflected in the films Hollywood has made about these topics. Americans want to drink and they do not want alcoholics. This has led to the alcoholism alibi. This alibi blames the problem drinker for his or her problems with alcohol. It argues that only a particular class of drinkers become alcoholic (e.g., those from alcoholic homes, or from drinking cultures that abuse alcohol). It offers an interpretive theory stressing moral (will power) and nonmoral (disease) explanations of the alcohol problem (see Beauchamp, 1980, p. 27).
Hollywood, as a meaning-producing, meaning-making social structure, like the social structure that it reflects, has, since its inception, been preoccupied with alcohol, drinking, the drunkard, the problem drinker, and the alcoholic. Since their inception the movies (and now television) have been the “most popular and influential medium of culture in the United States” (Sklar, 1975, p. 1). For nearly a century the alcoholism movies (along with other cultural texts) have defined the alcoholic and alcoholism for American society.
Hollywood’s definitions of alcoholism and who an alcoholic is have shifted and changed, as broader, historical, cultural, medical, and ideological meanings changed. For example, films produced during the early silent era 1908–1920 (The Cure, What Drink Did) reflected the dry values of the temperance movement. They explained alcoholism as a failure of self will, stressed the evils of drink, punished the sinful drinker (heroes and heroines did not drink), and equated happiness with abstinence (Silverman, 1979, p. 295). Films during prohibition, contrary to the law, were wet, showing drinking in a favorable light (e.g., Our Dancing Daughters), although in 1931 two of the greatest figures of the silent film era, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith, produced antidrinking films in the older temperance tradition (The Struggle and City Lights).
More specifically, Hollywood’s treatment of the alcoholic has been shaped by the following: the temperance movement and its legacies (1800–1919); prohibition (1920–1933), and repeal (1933); the development and elaboration of a film Production Code (1922–1934, 1968, 1972, Cook, 1981, pp. 214–15, 266–67, 426–27, 442–44) restricting what could be shown on screen; the emergence of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) as a national and then international social movement in 1935, coupled with the soon to follow National Council on Problems of Alcoholism in 1937, and the National Council on Alcoholism in 1944; the production of literary works (e.g., The Lost Weekend, I’ll Cry Tomorrow) and theatre plays (e.g., The Country Girl, Come Back, Little Sheba) telling stories about the alcoholic that could be adapted to the screen, and fitted to one or more film genres (e.g., comedy, family melodrama, western, women’s film); a shift in national concern about alcoholism as a social problem that required treatment; the emergence of the social realist, social consciousness film within Hollywood (1944—1962, Ray, 1985), coupled with an understanding that successful box office films about alcoholics could be made. A brief discussion of each of these dimensions is required.
In 1922 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association created the Hays Commission, a self-censoring body and a forerunner to the Production Code of 1934, which set in place a series of edicts defining the moral value system represented in Hollywood films. Individuals could not be shown breaking the law. Violence and sexual intimacy could not be presented. The code was quite explicit on drinking. The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot, or for purpose of characterization, will not be shown.” The Production Code restricted the actual showing of drinking on screen. It was challenged in the late 1940s, and throughout the 1950s (Cook, 1981, pp. 443–44), with the rise of social consciousness, social problems films.
Alcoholics Anonymous was formed in 1935. In 1937 the National Council on Problems of Alcoholism was created. The purpose of this Council, which contained early A.A. leaders, was to “stimulate inquiry into the problems of alcoholism, rather than to inflame moral and emotional passions.” In 1944 the National Committee for the Education on Alcoholism, an offshoot of the National Council, emerged and began advocating three simple principles: alcoholism is a disease; the alcoholic is treatable and deserves help; and alcoholism is a public health problem. The National Council immediately began to lobby Hollywood to produce films that embodied these three ideas (Johnson, 1973). In 1945 the first modern alcoholism film, The Lost Weekend, was released. It was based on Charles Jackson’s novel of the same name, which was an immediate national best seller when it appeared in 1944. Billy Wilder, the director, consulted with A.A. when he made his film version of Jackson’s novel. The Lost Weekend located alcoholism solidly in the upper-middle classes. Prior to this film (1932–1945) Hollywood had focused its attention primarily on the entertainment industry, and the production of alcoholism films focused on problems of alcoholic stars within the Hollywood System (e.g., What Price Hollywood? 1932, A Star Is Born, 1937). The Lost Weekend was quickly followed by at least 28 films (1945–1962) that took the alcoholic and his or her drinking as their sole, or primary focus (see Room, 1985).
Between the years 1932 and 1945 the above factors came together and produced the conditions necessary for the emergence of the modern, anti-temperance alcoholism movie. Table 1 presents an historical overview of Hollywood’s treatment of the alcoholic in the twentieth century. It delineates the key temporal divisions of my study, and lists the films I will be examining.
Table 1 Hollywood’s Treatment of the Alcoholic in the Twentieth Century
Images
The five temporal divisions of my study require brief discussion. Because the temperance and Prohibition phases have already been discussed (see also Herd and Room, 1982; Silverman, 1979), only the preclassic, the classic, the interregnum, and the present require discussion. The preclassic period references films like A Star Is Born (1937) where excessive drunkenness is represented, treatment is offered, but there is no consideration of a disease concept of the condition, nor is the word alcoholism used. In the classic (modern) period, the condition is named, alcoholism is presented as a disease, a medical vocabulary describing it is presented, and Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) becomes an option for treatment. Males, females, and families get this condition in the classic period, which ends with Days of Wine and Roses (1962). The interregnum corresponds to the fall in popularity of social realist films, the rise in importance of television as the carrier of cultural messages about alcoholism, and the movie-of-the-week treatment of a variety of social problems, including teenage alcoholism (e.g., Sarah T.Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, 1975) incest, sexual violence, and drug addiction (see Gabbard and Gabbard, 1987, pp. 112–14). It extends from 1960 to 1980 and falls into three phases. From 1960 to 1966 an alcoholic drinker is presented, but his or her problems are not connected to alcoholism (e.g., The Graduate). Between 1966 and 1976 excessive alcohol and drug use are presented as non problematic recreational activities (e.g., M*A*S*H). The classic illness model reappears in 1976 (e.g., A Star Is Born) and continues to 1980. The present, or contemporary (postmodern) period continues the themes started at the end of the interregnum, only now alcoholism becomes a clear-cut family disease, which also involves drug abuse (e.g., cocaine addiction).
My investigation charts the transformations of alcoholism and the alcoholic’s situation through these five time periods. I give greatest emphasis to the classic and present moments, with equal attention to films that focus, in turn, on the comic alcoholic, or funny drunk, the alcoholic hero, heroine, and the alcoholic family. I use the comic, or funny drunk (e.g., Harvey, Arthur) as my initial point of reference, because, as Silverman (1979, p. 288) observes, “Americans through the years have loved to laugh at the boozer.” The alcoholism comedies are contrasted to the more serious, and usually melodramatic treatment of the alcoholic’s situation. The “happy drunk” comedies keep this safe version of problem drinking alive in the viewing culture.

Film, Everyday Life, and the Cultural Study of Alcoholism

Sociologists have been slow to use film in their studies of alcoholism (see Herd, 1986; Steudler, 1987, p. 46; Room, 1985; McCormack, 1986), yet how a society cinematically represents itself to its members warrants serious sociological study. In the main sociologists have confined their studies of the alcoholic to those methods that generate sociologically defined information on the incidence and correlates of alcoholism, including the following: (1) numbers, tables, graphs, charts and figures, and complex accounts of social trends, and social indicators; (2) data archives and coded categories of the glossed drinking practices of native and primitive peoples; (3) thick descriptions of everyday alcoholic life including ethnographies and life histories; (4) subject quotes from interviews; and (5) attitude reports from surveys (see Cahalan, 1987; Gomberg, 1982; but for exceptions Gusfield, 1963; Herd, 1986; Levine, 1978; room, 1983a).

The Patriarchal Bias

This sociological work has often reflected a patriarchal, male, interpretive bias (Herd, 1986; McCormack, 1986; Steudler 1987; Lerner, 1986; Mitchell, 1984; Richardson, 1981). It has relegated women’s perspectives to the margins of the social. In the process it has sustained the traditional belief that “objective” accounts of the social can be given (Barthes, 1957/1972, p. 12), but this belief has equated masculinity with objectivity, and femininity with subjectivity. It has served to obscure the patriarchal bias at the core of the scientific study of alcoholism (Gomberg, 1982, p. 344). Like myth, these documents have reproduced the gender stratification systems of postmodern society. Their depictions and stories of the social, “natural” relations between (alcoholic) men and women have typically been told, seen, and written about through the masculine gaze and voice (see Clough, 1988a, b). My intentions are to reverse these patterns.

Enter Film

Steudler (1987), following Barthes’ (1957/1972, pp. 11, 26–28, 56–57, 1981) more general studies of cinema, have challenged those sociologists of everyday life who study alcoholism and deviance to develop a sociology of film. Here I accept this challenge, arguing that the interpretive study of alcoholism must deal with the cultural, filmic representations of intimate, emotional, alcoholic relationships as these social forms are contained within the “alcoholism” film.
Alcoholism films are simultaneously visual records of, and a part of, everyday life (Steudler, 1987, p. 46).2 These records and representations structure lived experience: they set fashion (going to A.A.), keep tradition and new, emerging cultural understandings alive (e.g., alcoholism is a disease), record tabooed acts (incest, the violent insanity of alcoholics, etc.), and ceremonialize the sacred (recovery). These films are interactional productions. They do not simply assert their truths, “rather we interact with them in order to arrive at conclusions” (Becker, 1986, p. 279). Alcoholism films express particular versions of the social imagination, including the understandings in the 1940s and 1950s that alcoholism was a treatable disease. Such films represent what is “immediately apparent in a given society” (Steudler, 1987, p. 46; e.g., alcoholism is a social problem,). They also allow “the needs, desires and dreams of a period to be projected” into the realms of the social (Steudler, 1987, p. 46; e.g., sobriety for middle-class alcoholics). Films, in this regard, are the perfect site for the Durkheimian analysis of society, culture, drinking, and alcoholism. They encapsulate “the sensitivity, aspirations and dreams of societies in particular historical and sociological situations” (Morin, 1984, p. 402). They have become the repositories of the collective consciousness and subconsciousness of postmodern culture.

Ideology and Film

A basic thesis, already suggested, structures my argument. All representations of cultural experience are ideological and hence must be read for the multiple meanings that are contained within their texts (see Clough, 1988a; Balsamo, 1988, 1989).3 Alcoholism films do not faithfully reproduce reality. A film “screens” and frames reality to fit particular ideological, or distorted images of “real” social relationships (Steudler, 1987, p. 46). Any film will be a site for the play of multiple ideological versions of r...

Table of contents