Vaudeville to Hollywood: The Growth of the American Film

As per requirement of my animation and art classes here at UMBC, the study of early film, and especially the vast array of optical toys that preceded it, has been covered to death. Most of that had more to do with the tech of it all (most emphasis on “persistence of vision” and the evolution of the machinery to create better quality images) and only touched a little bit on the industrial revolution’s urban sprawl and the booming birth of leisure time. With these readings only a little bit of that data was rehashed and I enjoyed studying more of mass populations role in the transition from film’s niche in vaudevilles and nickelodeons to the heavy industry of entertainment it has become today.

I was a little confused when I read the article “Early Motion Pictures” because during my animation classes in Valencia it was brought to my attention how much of a focus we put on Edison here in the US. This article reminded me of that seeing how much of an after thought the Lumiere Bros achievements in Europe with the development of the cinematographe were when in retrospect, they developed the better-working machinery. But anywho, since we’re back in America now… I found the regulations that cam down on the vaudeville and early theatres very intriguing, especially the psychological reasoning put forth for enforcing it. The comment from Reverend Edwards about the death of “spontaneous play” somewhat jarring. Looking back on my childhood I can say my sisters and I played outside, but sadly we were couch potatoes more of the time. The battle against the “darkness” of the theatre, the fighting of the “impulse” for the passive pleasure that film provided were the first steps in what today we see as loose guidelines for our own free time. Thank goodness for these, since it seems our 1900’s counterparts couldn’t fight the “impulse” no matter how hot, crowded and horrid theatre conditions were.

In “Movies Talk” it was interesting to understand how the industry itself really found its legs to separate itself securely from the dying vaudeville. Through the cooperation of the expensive technology and the immense popularity of synchronized sound, the vaudeville novelty simply couldn’t keep up and ensured the immediate success of the Hollywood studios. This isn’t to say Hollywood wasn’t fantastic as pumping out crap for the masses, that was their specialty, but with the introduction of sound, it allowed for the bigger budget films with the few daring and experimentally artistic directors to break from the commercial hoo-ha for the sake of exploration as film moved forward into the Golden Age. And it is with this flow of money, branching from entertainment empires like the Warner Brothers to non-entertainment companies like Western Electric, we see the beginning of commercial advertisement sphere’s expansion to the clutter-filled ad-fest we have today.

“Mass Media and the Star System” was a fabulous read. To be saying that about a school text is strange, but it was exactly what hadn’t been covered in detail from my past classes. I was aware that the industrial revolution was key in the creation of the leisure time, but not to the extent of how much went into the urban sprawl and the coming of an urban identity. The exploration into the attitude of non-conformity, independence and the role of the “American Dream” as the growing entertainment industry was creating jobs. Before this time, to dream to become an entertainer for a living resigned an individual to the vaudevilles and the outer crust of society. But with this new idea that you could be paid to play baseball, paid to make movies and in general survive without having a trade was phenomenal and contributed to the current state of affairs in regards to our country’s value of entertainment over the classical trade skills. The coming of film and leisure en masse also cemented the idea that in America you can “be what you want to be.”

Along these lines, I look at the US as setting itself up for disaster. We are not only our own entertainer, there is also a gigantic global market that invests in our entertainment and pop culture. So here, with the US sacrificing capital that could be put towards its trade skills and training for these skills (that are being outsourced more and more) for more television, more movies and more entertainment that all essentially exist to make money. I hate to say, but if we are struck with disaster and if the economy keeps going the way it’s going, our society won’t have much use for many of those who are involved in the industry except those who could be kept for mass communications. And this also includes people like myself.