Chapter 2 Reading Response

After reading chapter 2 of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, by Karen Sternheimer, I thought about how big of an influence media and technology have on the population. It amazes me how the invention of the kinescope, the history of the time period with poverty, unemployment, and unskilled workers, and the desire for upward mobility all happened around the same time. This overlap morphed a certain culture and audience that would sit infront of the big screen. One quote from the reading that I found very interesting highlighted the foreshadowing success of the tv and film industry: “The industry would have a significant stake in maintaining this illusion as its corporate power grew – selling the dream to an eager public would be a very profitable enterprise for years to come” (31 Sternheimer). In my opinion this quote sums up how the movie industry works overall. The word “illusion” is really compelling to me because people watch films to be entertained and escape from their reality, but when they watch these films, they are recieving information and being affected by that information. When people were exposed to the idea of the American Dream and upward mobility in films, it gave them hope and influenced the things they bought and how they lived. This still happens today. A new movie can influence people to dress differently or speak differently. The industry could even follow along on a trend in order to strictly make profit. For example, if there was a recent study that said the most common favorite animal for kids are cats then they would be more inclined to make a movie about cats in order to draw in crowds. They give the audience what they want. The way I understand the industry is that they simply care about the profit and not necessarily the quality or content. They seem to often have big name stars in films so that more people would be in clined to watch them even if the big named stars aren’t that good at acting. Then again, it helps the econmy a lot. I feel like the concept of brand loyalty is also true in the movie industry. All of the marvel superhero movies seem to have a crowd that always attends. In all, I think that film is very powerful and can be used for good reasons, but also can be used as a weapon.