Janet Staiger

Bio: Janet Staiger is an academic researcher from University of Texas at Austin. The author has contributed to research in topics: Hollywood & Film studies. The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 61 publications receiving 1952 citations. Previous affiliations of Janet Staiger include Kansas State University & New York University.

Janet Staiger Replies to Dudley Andrew and Gerald Mast

Abstract: If there is any meeting ground between "Romantic" auteur critics (I'll accept the label, for now-I only have 1000 words) and the "scholastic" ideological critics (I can add an adjective too), perhaps it is in an underlying sensitivity of the Staiger essay: that neither of these positions can be adopted without consciousness of the difficulties and limitations of doing so. I'm not sure if that critical self-consciousness is enough to produce either useful film criticism or progressive social consequences, but it seems to be about all that many of us share-the "place" in the middle where we can meet to discuss these problems. If there is no practical alternative to pluralism except a "party line," some of us understandably prefer pluralism.

Matters of Taste, Subtexts of Rank

Abstract: In a discussion of the reception of the primetime television program Dynasty, Jane Feuer recounts that in the fall of 1985 her local network affiliate station covered the fan festivities for the show's season premiere.1 Enthusiasts dressed in costumes and the local reporter did a stand-up commentary about the Moldavian massacre, the previous season's cliffhanger ending. Obviously in jest, all parties involved reveled in these playful confrontations with the idea of taste. Who would take such a highly wrought fiction seriously, especially in a medium of mass consumption? Opening premieres of films by major directors, however, produce a very different attitude in star- and director-struck news gatherers. It is standard practice to roll out the red carpet and marvel at the celebrities floating by the cameras and microphones. As this comparison suggests, Framework's observation is well made. Differences exist between cinephilia and telephilia based on a subtext of rank. Although scholars have discussed the widespread pathologization of fans in general, evidently the objects of one's attraction matter in attributions of approbation.2 If someone is well versed in Shakespeare, praise attends this knowledge; competency in batting averages or episodes of Star Trek receives much less acknowledgement. Throughout the history of fans-and the phenomenon is centuries old-constructions of high versus low objects, and by parallel, worthy versus insignificant behavior, have accumulated. Part of the ranking results from sexism and ageism. Love of cinema did not always imply a strategy for reading the authorship of high art through style. The media represented the first fans of cinema as adolescent females. Georganne Scheiner indicates that the terms were nearly synonymous in the popular imagination from the 1920s to 1950s, and perhaps for a very good reason. As Susan Ohmer notes, around 1940 "nearly 90% of the fan mail studios received came from girls under 21." 3 Fan clubs supported stars and stars supported fans. The Joan Crawford fan club that began in 1931 was one of the oldest associations of all, and developed into a national network of groups with annual conventions in Los Angeles. The Deanna Durbin Devotees eventually numbered 300 chapters, with a mimeographed newsletter (Deanna's Journal) and privileged access to Deanna. However, cinephilia, at least as Framework means it, did not develop until during and after World War II. One account of film audiences near Yale in the late 1940s indicates that young men with scruffy beards and leather jackets were repeating lines of dialogue during retrospective screenings of Michael Curtiz's 1942 Casablanca. I do not need to recount the history of spectatorship as training in authorship and cineculture from this point on. However, I do want to make three observations. First, it is at this point that film fandom begins to imply the study of authorship, above and beyond basic star worship. second, the intellectual male typifies this sort of cinephilia, replacing the young female as the dominant representation of an aficionado. Third, unlike cinema, television is available in homes, where the cultural imagination places young women. Intentionally or not, then, the site of telephilia also evokes the status of the domestic, feminine world. So people treat fandom for film and for television quite distinctly. The cause for this distinction is not simply arbitrary, but must be linked instead to the entire complex of cultural connotations: object (feature-length complete narratives versus half-hour or hour-long serial programs) and site of consumption (the public theater versus the private home). Object and site hierarchies correlate to cultural connotations of masculine versus feminine and maturity versus immaturity. Thus, for telephilia to gain respect a new low must be created. Lessons might be taken from the way in which film culture claimed authority for cinephilia. Not surprisingly, evidence of attempts to alter telephilia's status exists. …

Censura y la configuración del clasicismo cinematográfico

Abstract: Desde practicamente sus origenes y, sobre todo, a partir de su consolidacion como espectaculo de masas, el cine estadounidense tuvo que hacer frente a la censura por parte de distintos organismos a nivel local, estatal y federal. La solucion por parte de la industria a los problemas que esto generaba fue la autoregulacion, materializada en el Codigo de Produccion, popularmente conocido como Codigo Hays. Ademas de su influencia sobre los temas y su tratamiento, estos mecanismos de censura y autoregulacion tuvieron una influencia muy significativa sobre la forma filmica. ?Que papel jugo la censura en el paso de un cine de atracciones a un modelo mas narrativo? ?Fue determinante en la constitucion del Modo de Representacion Institucional? ?Como interacciono el Codigo de Produccion con otros sistemas o formulas propios del cine clasico, como el star-system o los generos cinematograficos? ?Como afecto a la puesta en escena de los films la progresiva relajacion y posterior desaparicion del Codigo? ?De que manera fueron gestionados por parte del cine clasico los elementos problematicos relacionados con la forma filmica surgidos a causa de las restricciones? En el presente texto, seis academicos de reconocido prestigio internacional abordan estas cuestiones y aportan sus puntos de vista al respecto.

Some Hopes of SCMS

Abstract: by Janet Staiger Whenever I recount the history of my choice to study film and television, I always include a passage about film studies being "undisciplined" when I arrived at it in the early 1970s. Only recently having entered the academy in at least as widespread and visible a position as it was starting to have at that point,1 film stud ies was also benefiting from the concurrent explosion of continental theory: structuralism, semiotics, Marxist cultural studies, French femi nisms. I am thus sure that those theories also attracted me, for the 1960s leftist, working-class progressive that I was (and hope still to be) found those discourses revelatory and compatible with my view of the social formation. Of course, I did find having to be nominated for member ship in the Society of Cinema Studies (SCS) by Douglas Gomery in 1978 so that I could present a paper at that year's conference to be a bit elitist, but at least it was not as selective as had I been considering joining in the 1960s when the original organization planned to restrict its membership to one hundred members. Still, other parts of the his tory of SCS have made me proud to be a member, now for thirty-one years. What I would like to share with my colleagues on the occasion of the Society's fiftieth anniversary is a bit of its history that may be littie known: the liberal-leftist tilt that it evinced from its earliest years. Jack Ellis (Northwestern University), one of the four organizers of the Society of Cinematologists (SOC) in 1959, has provided us with a "Personal Recollection of the Early Days."2 Ellis notes that besides himself on the organizing committee were John Driscoll (Pennsylvania State University), Robert Gessner (New York University), and Gerald Noxon (Boston University), with Gessner providing much of the guid ance for the early choices in name and purpose. Ellis also notes the dilemma as to whether SOC should be a learned society or a profes sional academic organization, with it leaning toward the former until Gessner's death in 1968, after which its members changed its name to the Society for Cinema Studies. Ellis mentions neither that membership

The Resource-Based View of the Firm in Two Environments: The Hollywood Film Studios From 1936 to 1965

Abstract: This article continues to operationally define and test the resource-based view of the firm in a study of the major U.S. film studios from 1936 to 1965. We found that property-based resources in th...

Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess

Abstract: Richard Abel, author of two distinguished works on French film and theory, teaches at Drake University. Carolyn Anderson teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Edward D. Castillo is a California Cahuilla Indian and chair of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. Darius Cooper teaches at San Diego Mesa College. David Desser, our Book Review Editor, teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

A Core/Periphery Perspective on Individual Creative Performance: Social Networks and Cinematic Achievements in the Hollywood Film Industry

Abstract: The paper advances a relational perspective to studying creativity at the individual level. Building on social network theory and techniques, we examine the role of social networks in shaping individuals’ ability to generate a creative outcome. More specifically, we argue that individuals who occupy an intermediate position between the core and the periphery of their social system are in a favorable position to achieve creative results. In addition, the benefits accrued through an individual’s intermediate core/periphery position can also be observed at the team level, when the same individual works in a team whose members come from both ends of the core/periphery continuum. We situate the analysis and test our hypotheses within the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry, which we trace over the period 1992–2003. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Industrial Development: Geography and the Creative Field Revisited

Abstract: Creative destruction is a central element of the competitive dynamic of capitalism. This phenomenon assumes concrete form in relation to specific geographical and historical conditions. One such set of conditions is investigated here under the rubric of the creative field, i.e. the locationally-differentiated web of production activities and associated social relationships that shapes patterns of entrepreneurship and innovation in the new economy. The creative field operates at many different levels of scale, but I argue that the urban and regional scale is of special interest and significance. Accordingly, I go on to describe how the creative field functions as a site of (a) entrepreneurial behavior and new firm formation, (b) technical and organizational change, and (c) the symbolic elaboration and re-elaboration of cultural products. All of these activities are deeply structured by relations of spatial-cum-organizational proximity and separation in the system of production. The creative field, however, is far from being a fully self-organizing entity, and it is susceptible to various kinds of breakdowns and distortions. Several policy issues raised by these problems are examined. The paper ends by addressing the question as to whether industrial agglomeration is an effect of producers’ search for creative synergies, or whether such synergies are themselves simply a contingent outcome of agglomeration.

A new map of Hollywood: the production and distribution of American motion pictures.

Abstract: Scott A. J. (2002) A new map of Hollywood: the production and distribution of American motion pictures, Reg. Studies 36, 957–975. In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood. The argument proceeds in six main stages. First, I briefly examine the debate on industrial organization in Hollywood that has gone on in the literature since the mid-1980s, and I conclude that the debate has become unnecessarily polarized. Second, I attempt to show how an approach that invokes both flexible specialization and systems-house forms of production is necessary to any reasonably complete analysis of the organization of production in the new Hollywood. Third, and on this basis, I argue that the Hollywood production system is deeply bifurcated into two segments comprising: (1) the majors and their cohorts of allied firms on the one hand; and (2) the mass of independent production companies on the other. Fourth, I reaffirm the continuing tremendous agglomerative attracti...