FILM 3166 What's Popular about Popular Movies?

What makes a film popular? How does it reflect and represent its cultural moment? What kinds of pleasures do we get out of popular films? This course is on the history and philosophy of popular cinema. We will study the socio-political context of popular films as well as the economic and industrial causes that shape and determine popular taste, from film promotion strategies to algorithmic models on streaming sites. Core aesthetic and philosophical questions will be raised about the nature and power of film as a mass art as we examine ideas of entertainment, escapism, distraction and explore the appeals of genre, stardom and spectacles of sexuality and violence. Case studies will be taken from the history of international popular cinema, such as the first Hollywood summer blockbuster, an Indian musical that has run continuously in theaters for almost thirty years, a Japanese horror film that has spawned numerous remakes and adaptations, and the 21st century network of movies forming a superhero universe. We will also engage with how broader moving image media like video games and tiktok continue and transform issues of spectacle, absorption and virality.