Oh Great

“According to a recent report, overseas film earnings are growing at twice the annual rate of the domestic market; Hollywood accounts for about half the movie market in Japan and two-thirds of all movie tickets sold in Germany, France and Italy. Generally about 70 percent of films shown around the world are U.S. productions” (William …

Black and Tan

“Rock was a derivative of two other popular music traditions in the rural South that existed alongside the Anglo-American one: the country or ‘hillbilly’ music of rural southern whites (country blues and gospel, honky-tonk and bluegrass) and the African-American tradition (blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and gospel music).” (William Romanowski, Pop Culture Wars, p. 209).

When the Seers Are Blind

“In a series of cases beginning in 1957, the Court judged that obscenity and the representation of sexuality were not the same thing and that ‘material dealing with sex in a manner that advocates ideas . . . or has literary or scientific or artistic value or any other forms of social importance may not …

What Huxley Called “The Feelies”

“[T]he court delineated between the transmission of culture and the provision of entertainment, and relegate movies to the fulfillment of the latter. This is most ironic, because the film that led to this case, Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, had demonstrated the power and potential of film as an intellectual and artistic medium. Now, …