Re: [Marxism] Jonathan Rosenbaum

["David Quarter" <davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Although I never read Rosembaum's book, I would imagine that the
description below is accurate, as when he discussed the book a
couple years ago at the  Marxist Institute here in Toronto, he must
have put half of the lecture hall to sleep.


Date sent:              Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:05:53 -0500
To:                     marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From:                   Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject:                [Marxism] Jonathan Rosenbaum
Send reply to:          Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
        <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Jonathan Rosenbaum. Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the
Media Limit What
> Films We Can See. London: Wallflower Press, 2002. 192 pp.
Notes, index.
> £12.99 (paper), ISBN 1-903364-60-4.
> Reviewed by Fred Davies, Centre for Continuing Education,
University of Sussex.
> Published by H-USA (December, 2003)
>
> Rosenbaum's Bitch-Fest
>
> Movie Wars was originally published in America by A Cappella
Publishing in
> November 2000 and has been reissued in Britain. The reception
on this side
> of the Atlantic will probably be sympathetic, as we also suffer--if
not
> more so--from the disease of American blockbusters that invade
our shores
> and colonize our screens. In 1997, the then-chairman of
PolyGram Filmed
> Entertainment, Stewart Till, was appointed by the new Labour
government to
> chair a committee on the British film industry. The result was a
report, "A
> Bigger Picture." It pinpointed distribution as the Achilles' heel of
the
> British film industry: many British films (if indeed most of them)
never
> even got a release. British multiplexes are in the main owned by
American
> studios or closely linked to their distributors. Britain's key player
in
> the field, Film Four, has collapsed. In France, Canal Plus
suffered a
> similar fate. PolyGram, the one independent European distributor
(and
> financier)--responsible for backing such British films as
Trainspotting and
> Four Weddings and a Funeral--has also disappeared, liquidated
by an
> American studio. This is the territory covered by Jonathan
Rosenbaum's book.
>
> The book's title is quite misleading, as it would indicate a serious
> engagement with the political economy of Hollywood, at least on
the lines
> of "A Bigger Picture." Instead, it is a funny and informative but
supremely
> arrogant and self-serving meander through Rosenbaum's
memoirs. It "loses
> the plot" soon after the first few chapters and rambles through
what seems
> to be a reheating of old essays rather poorly stitched together.
Clearly
> one would expect to meet concepts like "oligopoly," "synergy,"
"Marxism,"
> or "capitalism," but maybe these have been erased for the
dumbed-down
> reader, just what Rosenbaum accuses his targets--his
colleagues and fellow
> writers on film, or at least their editors--of doing. He coins the
cute
> little phrase "media industry complex," which makes good copy,
but with not
> a reference to C. Wright Mills and with no further expansion into
a
> discussion of the challenge of the media giants--Murdoch,
Berlusconi,
> Lucas, Spielberg, Eisner--and their many-tentacled trans-national
> corporations in our age. Instead, he launches into a personal ad
hominen
> bitch-fest and a celebration of his own writings. So this is not an
> intellectually interesting book, but rather a good read from an
insider
> dishing the dirt and pedantically trashing his colleagues. His
personal
> venom is worse than his intellectual bite. He is in a great tradition
of
> American polemicists. Indeed a long time ago de Tocqueville
wrote a whole
> chapter on "Why American Writers and Speakers are Often
Bombastic."
>
> full: http://www.h-
net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=241881075675488
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
>
>
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