| The iconic journalism films appearing over the thirty years covered by this dissertation are prime examples of what cultural historian Robert Sklar has called the "'expanded text' of the moving image media." It is now possible, Sklar proposes, "to argue that what historians have been trained to do---to study institutions, groups, the interrelation of concepts and behaviors; to take large bodies of data and find patterns and meanings through their juxtaposition---is a primary element in the study of texts and of the moving image media generally."; This dissertation studies several journalism films that appeared between 1946 and 1976 in order to track changes in the images of journalists. The majority of the approximately 700 journalism films released during this time did little to challenge the accepted depiction that had formed in the silent movie era and through the Thirties, although some of those traditionalist films are indeed noteworthy, such as Call Northside 777 (1948), Deadline U.S.A. (1952), Park Row (1952), and All the President's Men (1976). But others, beginning in 1951 with Ace in the Hole, dramatized a shift in the nostalgic tradition by exposing the excesses of a roguish character type that had made likable and predictable such traits as cynicism, deviousness, and amorality. This shift downplayed what Matthew Ehrlich calls a "exciting and glamorous" theme, and emphasized "dangerous and distasteful" aspects, an unsettling challenge to audiences' expectations of cinematic journalists---and about filmgoers themselves---at a time when dramatic changes were evolving in society and in particular in Hollywood and the news media. By the time Network appeared just a few months after All the President's Men in 1976, few if any of those journalists in the nostalgic films would be able to recognize the media world. Part of the dissertation includes a "thick description" of one film, Medium Cool (1969), relative to three aspects of the Sixties: an Image Culture, a Film Realism Culture, and a Television News Culture. |
