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Hollywood And Its Commercial Aesthetic

Decent Essays

Hollywood cinema is primarily subjected to telling stories. The inclination of Hollywood narratives comes not just from good chronicles but from good story telling. The following essay will discuss Hollywood’s commercial aesthetic as applied to storytelling, expand on the characteristics of the “principles of classical film narration” and evaluate alternative modes of narration and other deviations from the classical mode. a) Hollywood’s commercial aesthetic as applied to storytelling: According to Richard Maltby (2003) commercial aesthetic is used to describe Hollywood’s aesthetics system, driven as it is by the existence of entertainment as a commercial commodity. From this perspective, Hollywood’s most profound significance lies in its ability to turn pleasure into a product we can buy. An understanding of Hollywood’s commercial aesthetic requires a consideration of both the formal conventions of Hollywood movies and the external social and cultural pressures that regulate movies as products of a system of mass production and distribution (pp. 580-581). Each Hollywood movie is best implicated as an 'opportunist ' congregation of unalike 'elements ' as reasoned out by Maltby. In order to best mollify the (perceived) market-place at a particular point in time these rudiments are transported together by producers and production companies. Furthermore, Maltby debates that this may result in movies which are dogged by competing (and perhaps contradictory) impulses and it

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