| Since the late 1970s, the distinction between Hollywood motion pictures and television programming has faded. Technologies such as cable TV and video cassette recorders have cemented the "theatrical" film's status as a television programming form, and television's combined release windows now account for approximately half of the average feature's total revenue. Hollywood has become economically reliant on television exhibition to make filmmaking a profitable venture, and aesthetic practices have been adapted to accommodate the film's dual status as theatrical and television form.;The steady rise in average film budgets today reflects an attempt by Hollywood filmmakers to maintain some veneer of product differentiation from television programming. Yet the strategies employed to offset the increasing financial risk have, contradictorily, often served to make film even more television-like. These include: the use of the television series as motion picture premise; the conversion of film to an advertising medium through "product placement"; and an increased emphasis on narrative repetition through sequels and series.;All of these trends have substantial historical precedence; yet their present-day manifestations have a distinct quality, urgency, and rationale that reflects television's contemporary cultural prevalence in combination with the economic demands of blockbuster-scale filmmaking. These trends are examined here from a combined institutional-aesthetic perspective: the focus is placed on aesthetic issues rather than on filmmaking institutions; but the aesthetic trends are discussed largely in terms of the economic motivations that have spurred them. To illuminate these issues, this dissertation draws on such publications as Variety, Advertising Age, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other news, business, and trade periodicals, as well as academic sources where the emphasis is primarily institutional in nature.;The blurring of the boundaries between television and film problematizes many contemporary approaches to media studies. The tendency to privilege cinematic over television works as worthy objects of textual analysis is called into question as meaningful distinction between the two media has lessened. And psychoanalytically based film theory is called into question when its anchoring principle, the theatrical spectatorial experience of film, is rapidly being displaced by a televisual spectatorial experience. |
