The Blockbuster

Catalog description

Hollywood filmgoing, especially during the summer, has become synonymous with “the blockbuster,” a category of films defined by big expectations—big budgets, big buzz, big special effects, big stars, big marketing campaigns, and, increasingly, big controversies! This course will examine the place of this ubiquitous mode of contemporary American film production by approaching it as a formal and narrative style, industrial strategy, mode of production, and cultural phenomenon. Through these lenses, we will consider cinema’s roots in spectacle, high concept narratives, special effects, the contemporary preponderance of sequels and remakes, transmedia storytelling, fandom, and staples of the blockbuster form such as action thrillers, superhero films, and outsized epic adventures; we will also consider the term relationally to address phenomena such as the “box office bomb” and “sleeper hits.” We will consider these films alongside a slew of media paratexts such as trailers, print advertisements, merchandising, and viral marketing campaigns that position and surround these products in the marketplace. Finally, we will also focus on how the blockbuster has become a sizzling site of controversy and an visible site for recent efforts to reform Hollywood’s production culture in direct response to greater calls for diversity in cast and crew and the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements. In situating the “blockbuster”—and the industry and business machine that sustains it—this summer course will examine the multivalent qualities that have informed and continue to inform commercial filmmaking on a global scale.