John E. Bodnar,
Blue Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy and Working People in American Film.
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2003.
ISBN: 0 801 87149 2
320pp
US$42.95 (hb)
(Review copy supplied by Johns Hopkins University Press)
John Bodnar’s recently published work, Blue Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy and Working People in American Film, may be satisfactorily classified as a social history as opposed to a work of film theory. The book discusses films made by Hollywood, between 1931 and 1991, that its author considers to have provided explicit and definable functions in the historical development of -ordinary men and women- (xv) in the United States. Isolating certain films for their central characters and narrative contexts, Bodnar’s argument presupposes a direct correlation between its selective overview of working class Hollywood realist narratives and the determination of a collective psychology among poorer members of the United States’ civic society. However, contrary to proposing the genesis of this civic census in the form of unified mandates for democratic representation (ie. a voice for welfare improvements), Bodnar acquires the approach of radical French historian Michel Foucault. Individual films, Bodnar argues, function in society as -‘heterotopias’ or sites where many of the most powerful ideas in a culture could be represented at the same time- (xviii). As the book’s full title suggests, the powerful ideas of United States culture in question are those of liberalism and democracy. The historical development of these ideas is presented as a mutual orbit of two distinct ideologies, within which individuals, as representatives of an economic group, experience the fluctuating relationship of liberalism and democracy between alliance and opposition. The films in question are analysed for their representation of this fluctuating relationship and thus serve as secondary evidence on which to justify Bodnar’s primary historical hypothesis.
As stated, the book’s historical analysis begins with the films of the early 1930’s. I will limit my exposition of Bodnar’s argument to this historical period. Central to Bodnar’s treatment of the Depression period is the notion that Hollywood sought to encourage social harmony and working class confidence by projecting narratives concerned with personal dramas, that is, filmic stories of an individual’s relationship to contemporary socio-economic conditions. In the face of a deeply troubled economy, the fault line dividing the ideological bi-products of liberalism and democracy became widened, leaving a troubled distinction between individual liberty and the self-determination of the collective mandate. As a means to reaffirm the harmony between these two pillars of American political society, working class narratives of this period typically presented the trials of an individual in their attempt to find a more satisfying relationship with their society. In a word, Hollywood films projected the collective need for individual autonomy.
The means by which this autonomy was represented varied considerably. For example, in Scarface (US, Hawks, 1932) the hero attempts to achieve a greater degree of empowerment by violently challenging his own socio-economic status. The autonomy he projects is outwardly financial, yet within it is founded on a deep challenge toward the rule of law maintaining a stagnant liberal society. In a very real and violent sense, Scarface challenges his subordination by the singular means of his own will. His means, of course, are condemned, yet the determination resonates: liberal principles no longer represent the needs of the individual. Alternatively, the film Cabin in the Cotton (US, Curtiz, 1932) depicts a character’s autonomy through the means of his representative status of a group. The central character, Marvin Blake, confronts his own economic dispossession by inspiring the mobilisation of the poor rural community of which he is a part. Here, the autonomy of an individual is projected through explicitly democratic means, whereby not only he but also the group he is a representative of achieves a greater degree of socio-economic empowerment.
Despite the disparity between the narratives of these two examples, Bodnar proposes a consistency between the two productions’ social function. That is, through the different means employed by individual characters, both narratives ponder -the fate of liberalism- (2) in an attempt to represent and arouse a broader sense of self-determination within the working communities of the early 1930’s. Democracy is driven upward in these films in an attempt to realign it with liberal principles, not as a means to dismiss liberalism, but to reaffirm both ideologies toward a more harmonious mutuality. This, Bodnar argues, is an exemplification of Hollywood’s capacity to project a political consciousness receptive to the disparate values of American social ideology.
The paradox I find in Blue Collar Hollywood lies in the presentation of its very own heterotopia. Bodnar simultaneously attempts to uphold his marked liberal philosophy within a radical mode of social theory explicitly derived from Foucauldian conceptual historicism. Now, without condemning outright the possibility of trans-Atlantic academic cooperation on the basis of one book, I must confess to my feeling that post-modernism and the American constitution make strange if not sterile bedfellows. However negative the principles of Bodnar’s liberalism might be, they still remain internal to the forum of modernity that is the object of Foucauldian historical analysis. In short, Bodnar’s philosophy is swallowed by his theory, casting his application of the latter into question. Yet, a more problematic element of this book exists, namely in its methodology. Over the course of seventy years of film analysis this book never once delves into questions of film form (ie. the filmic means by which the narratives discussed were constructed). Bodnar does not recognise the concept of diegetic narrative and its function to create an internal narrative. This is surprising because every film that he refers to is an example of diegetic form. I find it hard to believe that any serious conclusive statement on the social function of Hollywood films could be reached without a conscious recognition of the ways in which these filmic stories are told and their narratives constructed. In conclusion, Bodnar’s work is an example, one among many, of the assumption that film analysis can be employed by an academic from a different field to discuss a more general argument. If film students are to be referred to this text I would encourage a high degree of scepticism towards the arguments of an historian with a limited education in the analysis of motion pictures.
Thomas Redwood
Flinders University, Australia.
Created on: Tuesday, 4 May 2004 | Last Updated: 4-May-04