By MICHEL GOULART DA SILVA*
Cinema is an art form that has an industrial base, whose production and distribution development is associated with international economic dynamics and its expansion through capitalist relations.
It is not difficult to observe the presence of audiovisual media in people's daily lives, whether through short home videos made available on social networks or through the permanence of film productions around the world, which encompass economic, political and cultural aspects. Since the beginning of the 20th century, cinema has become a part of people's daily lives, showing both images that were intended to be realistic and symbolic or even fantastic themes.
This massification, which occurred worldwide, is associated with the development of technologies that allow filming and recording and the development of a language specific to this type of production. Created at the end of the 19th century, cinema became a popular spectacle, managing to “attract an undifferentiated, majority audience, eager for illusions”.[I] Other shows, such as theater and opera, at the time, continued to be erudite and expensive artistic forms, therefore, proving to be restricted to the most impoverished sectors of society.
Cinema “was completely new in its technology, in its mode of production and in its way of presenting reality. It was, in fact, the first art that could not have existed except in the industrial society of the twentieth century and that had no parallel or precedent in the previous arts – not even in photography, which could be considered only an alternative to drawing or painting.”[ii]
Initially dealing with small sequences of everyday life, such as the arrival of a train at a station or the departure of workers from a factory, cinema became a form of entertainment for the masses, who were enchanted (or even frightened) by the wonders that shone on the screen in front of them. It was a way of bringing art to the greatest possible number of people simultaneously.
In this sense, based on the experience lived by Russians after the first years of the 1917 revolution, Leon Trotsky stated: “the desire for distraction, entertainment, fun and laughter is a legitimate desire of human nature. We can and must provide it with increasingly artistic satisfaction and, at the same time, we must make entertainment an instrument of collective education, without inappropriate constraint or control”.[iii]
Cinema, in the early decades of the 20th century, developed as an industry, especially in the United States and some European countries. This expansion of cinema is linked to the development of capitalism. Throughout the 20th century, cinema “developed by adopting the forms of a true entertainment industry and began to mass-produce a product capable of satisfying the most varied tastes.”[iv]
However, it took a few decades for cinema to be considered a great art and even an expression of good taste, without losing its character as an entertainment industry. On the other hand, throughout its history, cinema also developed its own language. In cinema, “the movement of the camera, the variability of its focus, the unlimited spectrum of photographic tricks and, above all, the possibility of cutting the strip of cellulose – which records everything – into pieces and assembling or reassembling them at will became immediately evident and were immediately explored by filmmakers”.[v]
This language was not something immutable and static, changing over time, acquiring new elements, metamorphosing, becoming more complex, decade after decade. The development of the language is inextricably linked to the history of cinema itself, being the product of the practice of professionals and artists for over a century, and can be defined as a succession of selections. These selections are choices made with clear ideas and objectives: “the choice is to film the actor from close up or from afar, in motion or not, from this or that angle; in the editing, certain shots are discarded, others are chosen and placed in a certain order”.[vi]
This development process simultaneously articulates science and aesthetics. It is known that in cinema “a new language did not automatically emerge until filmmakers began to cut the film into scenes, until the birth of montage and editing.”[vii] In this process, productions stopped being a simple succession of scenes, and started using more complex shots, sequences designed with details and colors, movements and framing, in short, a “language capable of telling anything”. [viii] This language has become worldwide and its writing can be interpreted anywhere.
The 20th century also saw the rise of Hollywood, a conglomerate of large producers that controlled an entire structure not only of studios and equipment but also of the global market, with names such as Warner, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, among others, being frequently mentioned. These conglomerates dominate both production and distribution, and some even control movie theaters and television channels in several countries. This structure is reminiscent of that described by Lenin to refer to imperialism, especially when he highlights “the so-called combination, that is, the joining together of different sectors of industry into a single enterprise.”[ix]
In recent years, with the development of its own streams, these large conglomerates began to occupy increasingly larger slices of this market, which grew with the manufacture of new display devices and the Internet. Although the largest slice of this market is occupied by other large companies, such as Netflix and Amazon, it is common for these companies to form partnerships with large conglomerates in the production and distribution of films and other audiovisual products. As part of the imperialist economic dynamic, we observe “the formation of vast and complex networks of alliances, which associate, for the first time, large IT groups, consumer electronics groups and the main semiconductor producers”.[X]
However, at the same time that Hollywood began to dominate the world market, other cinematographies also began to develop, initially in imperialist countries, such as France and Germany, and, with the development of political and economic dynamics on an international level, in peripheral countries, whether those with capitalist development, such as Japan, or those that tried to establish themselves as spaces of political alternative, such as the Soviet Union.
In Latin America, countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Cuba have also managed to gain space, albeit small, in terms of the global market. More recently, countries such as South Korea, India and Russia, among others, have tried to occupy some space in this global economic dispute.
The recent growth of some markets, especially Asia, is largely due to the massification of apps streaming, with its variety of films and series and even the creation of some specialized in cinema generically called “alternative”.
However, despite the change in the form of exhibition and the emergence of other cinematographies, cinema has not ceased to be a commodity dominated by large economic conglomerates in the United States, even using commercial mechanisms such as co-productions or exhibition and distribution contracts to co-opt independent producers or even critics.
It is noted that “American entertainment is often produced by European, Japanese and now also Indian multinationals, while local cultures are increasingly co-produced by Hollywood”.[xi]
Therefore, even though they incorporate or even disseminate cultural elements from different regions, most of the films produced and distributed still pass through the economic interests of Hollywood's economic groups. Through their expansion, "by organizing themselves to produce increasingly standardized goods, in the form of soap operas, new generation Hollywood films, videos, records and music tapes, and to distribute them on a global scale, exploiting the new telecommunications technologies by satellite and cable, these industries have, at the same time, played an important role in reinforcing the leveling of culture and, with this, the homogenization of the demand to be met on a global level."[xii]
Therefore, cinema is an art form that has an industrial base and whose development of production and distribution is associated with international economic dynamics and its expansion through capitalist relations. In this sense, on the one hand, cinema is an important artistic expression and a way of disseminating ideas and cultural elements, while at the same time constituting a marketable product for large economic conglomerates.
Understanding these contradictions throughout history and considering their productions as artistic manifestations is a way of investigating their particularities and valuing their contributions to the culture of the last century.
*Michel Goulart da Silva He holds a PhD in history from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a technical-administrative degree from the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFC).
Notes
[I] ALEA, Thomas Gutierrez. Diaethics of the Spectator: Six Essays by Cuba’s Most Award-Winning Filmmaker. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p.
[ii] HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Empires (1875-1914). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2014, p. 366.
[iii] TROTSKY, Leon. Way of life issues. Their morals and ours. New York: Routledge, p. 35-6.
[iv] ALEA, Thomas Gutierrez. The spectator's dialectic: six essays by the most awarded Cuban filmmaker. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p.
[v] HOBSBAWM, Eric. The Age of Empires (1875-1914). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2014, p. 366-7.
[vi] BERNARDET, Jean-Claude. what is cinema. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1991, p. 37.
[vii] CARRIÈRE, Jean-Claude. The secret language of cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1995, p. 14.
[viii] CARRIÈRE, Jean-Claude. The secret language of cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1995, p. 27.
[ix] LENIN, Vladimir. Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2021, p. 37.
[X] CHESNAIS, François. The Globalization of Capital. São Paulo: Xamã, 1996, p. 207.
[xi] MARTEL, Frederic. Mainstream: the global war of media and cultures. Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Civilization, 2012, p. 447.
[xii] CHESNAIS, François. The Globalization of Capital. São Paulo: Xamã, 1996, p. 40-1.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
