A Cultural History of Hollywood and Financialization

Catalog description

Recent years have seen financial stakeholders—from private equity firms to asset managers to sovereign wealth funds—increase their ownership stakes in the American entertainment industry. Yet, the presence of the finance sector in Hollywood is not unique to the present, nor is it merely the product of a few greedy capitalists. This course explores the historical and structural co-development of Hollywood and Wall Street, tracing how these two U.S. capitals have collaborated, conflicted, and intertwined from the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s to the era of the “streaming wars.” The course addresses critical questions at the heart of media history and modern culture: How have macro-structural shifts in global capitalism and meso-level finance tactics reshaped Hollywood’s mode of production at different historical moments? How do media texts serve as both sites of financial representation and artifacts of financial logic? How have the financialized business cultures of media executives altered understandings of risk and originality? To take on these questions, students will engage with media industry scholars, business historians, and critical theorists of finance. By placing Hollywood and Wall Street within the history of capitalism, students will understand and analyze the role of financial extraction in cultural production, distribution, and consumption.