Hollywood Aesthetic Pleasure in American Cinema

Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among huge populations, translate into box office success. With that goal in mind, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a massive scale.

In Hollywood Aesthetic, Todd Berliner accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book examines films such as City Lights and Goodfellas that have earned aesthetic appreciation from both fans and critics. But it also studies some curious outliers, cult films, and celebrated Hollywood experiments, such as The Killing and Starship Troopers. And it demonstrates that even ordinary popular films, from Tarzan and His Mate to Rocky III, as well as action blockbusters, like Die Hard and The Dark Knight, offer aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Hollywood Aesthetic explains how Hollywood engages viewers by satisfying their aesthetic desires.

Visit the companion website at www.oup.com/us/hollywoodaesthetic

Todd Berliner, Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, teaches film aesthetics, narration, and style and American film history. Author of Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (2010), Professor Berliner has received two Fulbright Scholar awards, including the Laszlo Orszagh Distinguished Chair in American Studies. Professor Berliner was the founding chairman of UNCW's Film Studies Department. He holds a master's degree and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface: The Test of Time
Introduction

Part I. Hollywood Classicism and Deviation
1. The Hollywood Aesthetic
2. Classicism and Deviation in His Girl Friday and Double Indemnity

Part II. Narrative
3. Hollywood Storytelling
4. Finding the Fit: Shifting Story Logic in Red River

Part III. Style
5. Hollywood Style
6. Raging Bull's Stylistic Dissonance

Part IV. Ideology
7. Ideology, Emotion, and Aesthetic Pleasure
8. Crime Films during the Period of the Production Code Administration
9. Genre and Ideology in Starship Troopers

Part V. Genre
10. The Hollywood Genre System
11. Bursting into Song in the Hollywood Musical
12. Complexity and Experimentation in the Western

Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index