The History of Hollywood Movies - Case Study Example

History of Hollywood The Pawn Shop In The Pawn Shop Charlie Chaplin is portrayed as a pawn shop attendant and in this comedy, Charlie Chaplin has to attend to some chores in the pawn shop and this brings a lot of controversy on the way he is handling various situations in the shop. This can be seen as a way of reacting towards the Protestants work ethics. While the protestants are seriously looking for work efficiency in the work place, Charlie Chaplin is seen as messing around the shop and this have brought a lot of losses to the pawn shop owner. A good instance is when he is attempting to look at the clock of a customer and he ends up spoiling the clock and the pawn shop owner has to cater for the losses. All this he does as he tries in order to compete with the fellow work mate. This leads to his firing and when he is fired he comes back and helps in capturing a burglar. This leads to his rehiring. This movie can be seen as a reaction to the work ethics of the Protestants and how the workers could not handle the straining work ethics that the Protestants emphasized on. It shows how people at that time would have like to operate in a more traditional way than what the Protestants had imposed on them. Wild and Wooly In this Movie Douglas Fairbanks is portrayed as a young wealthy Easterner who had a dream of living in the Wild West and in he plans to go to a Western town. However, he did not have the knowledge that the old days of violence in the town have been long gone and in its place is a civilized town and which is also an orderly town. However, his father being a rich man arranges that his boy will find the town as it was before and so he arranges that the country will be full of mock violence. This leads to everybody packing a pistol to have it loaded with blank bullets. Everything is going on line until some Indians tired of their lot hear the racket and attacks the town with real bullets. This movie shows how Fairbanks would like to enjoy the uncivilized country but the ethics brought about by the Protestants have brought about a controversy and this leads to chaos when the Indians attack the town. This means that people would have preferred the traditional way of dealing with life rather than what the Protestants had imposed on them. Gangster films Gangster films are films which involve crime and violence to some extent and they have been very successful than other films. The history of gangster films can be attributed to various factors which included the technological advancement, economical development, social structure and consumerist development. This genre of films initiated their popularity in the years before 1940 and this can be attributed to the fact that many countries at that time were focused on the industrialization and consumerist. In the technological aspect, the films were influenced by the rising technology and this included the technological advancement that was being used in the manufacturing of guns and this was being used by various criminals and also the law enforcement agencies to curb the increasing crime rates in the United States. Economically the influence towards the popularity of the gangster films can be rooted to the fact that many people were fighting nail and tooth to prosper and this led to the crime rise that was evident in the United States of America. This led to the fact that the country had a lot of economical activities and this also led to the rise of crime with various criminals and criminal organizations trying all they could to stop the poverty from affecting their families. At also around the same time the country was going through economical hardships and was still trying to recover from the effects of the Great Depression that had plunged the country in the 1920s. Socially, the gangster films were reacting to the escalated crime rates that were evident in the country at that time. In those times the era of the mafia was very evident with a number of organized crime being evident in various towns and states around the United States. This means that the gangster films were reacting towards the increased crime rates and this was very evident in the fact that a number of bank robberies were recorded every year around the country. This means that the country had a lot of criminal activities and this led to the popularity of the gangster films. Apart from that the country’s population was also very fond of the gangster films because some of them portrayed the criminals as heroes and some of the population were supporting the criminals and were opposed to the government way of doing things. This led to the fact that many of the films recorded success and this means that the country’s people were opposed to the government and the way it was doing things. Of notable influence was the fact that the country had just gone through the prohibition period and this had give rise to the organized crime and they were supported vehemently by the people because they afforded the people with the most needed alcohol. Fascism Fascism can be referred to as the nationalist, authoritarian and radical political ideology that makes its objective to create a state without many parties and it is aimed at creating national unity by the requirement that individuals should disregard their self interests in favor of the interest of the majority or the collective interest of nation and or the state. One aspect of this ideology is that it promotes violence between states and between different political factions or even between different races. It also aims at conquering, dominating and finally finishing off the weaker entity and this is because it believes in perpetual conflict and that conflict is a normal way of evolution and that violence is an acceptable way of furthering the interest of various entities. During the 1930s many societies were at conflict and these conflicts ranged from states to different political entities and also different races. In the United States, there was the feeling that various races were not equal and the people of the United States were focused on eliminating these races from the scene as they believed that the other races were sharing the country’s resources and this meant that they had to be eliminated so that they could pave way for the people who were deemed as superiors. The dominant group at this time was the whites while the Blacks and the Native Americans were deemed to be the inferior race. In Gabriel in White House, the movie portrays a president who is reluctant to take an active part in reducing the country’s problems at a time when the country was plagued by The Great Depression and instead spent his time playing with his son and sleeping with his secretary. However, one day he is a victim of a motor vehicle crash and he misses death narrowly and spends some time in a coma. He is revived by Angel Gabriel and when he comes to he organizes military action against the army that had been formed by the unemployed people. This results in the vice president and the cabinet plotting against him and this forces Hammond the president to request them to resign from their posts. As the movie goes on Hammond turns his attention to the organized crime. This means that the president is willing to eliminate the minors who are the unemployed and also the organized crime lords. This is an ideology of fascism and is very destructive to a country where the ideology of democracy has been the founding platform of the country’s entire sovereignty. The Foreign Correspondent and Casablanca The Foreign Correspondent is about a journalist who is sent to inspect the situation in Europe by his paper’s editor on grounds that he is the toughest and best crime reporter in the paper. He is faced with the task of talking with Britain’s leading government officials. His efforts to track one government official by the name of Mr. Fisher, Jones the foreign correspondent meets him in a party but while he is at the party under the invitation of Fisher, Fisher is declared that he cannot give his speech as this time because he has attended another important political meeting and this is very baffling for Jones because he has been in the Party with him under his invitation. He decides to investigate and this leads to meeting where Fisher is supposedly assassinated but on following the assassin’s car he finds out that the real Fisher is kidnapped and that the assassinated man was just an imposter. However, Mr. Fisher is very drugged and cannot convey a coherent message and this prompts Jones to leave him there. In the end Jones with the help of another reporter rescues Fisher and they escape using an airplane which is shot down by German missiles. They survive miraculously by hanging on to some rail boards but when the weight of the people cannot be held by the boards, Fisher sacrifices himself and he confesses that he had not been kidnapped in the least but was under a secret mission. This movie depicts that many of the American citizens believed that the war was initiated by the European countries that would later become the allies of the United States. This means that the American people did not support the country being involved in the war in the least. Casablanca portray Rick Blaine as an American expatriate living in the Moroccan town of Casablanca and although he confesses to be neutral in all affairs, he is believed to have given the Ethiopians support in their effort to fight off the Italians and also helped other countries in their efforts to fight off the European countries from dominating them. A petty criminal arrives at a hotel owned and ran by Blaine and claims that he is in possession of some letters of transit and this was a very valued commodity at that time to the people who were stranded in Egypt and Ugert the petty criminals tells Blaine that he intends to sell to them to the highest bidder. At that time Lisa, Blaine’s ex-girlfriend arrives and she is accompanied by her present boyfriend Laszlo and this is very upsetting to Blaine. The need the transit papers to get out Casablanca. In the end violence erupts and Blaine though still distressed about the affair helps Lisa and Laszlo get the transit paper and board the plane to Lisbon. This movie also shows how the people of the United States did not want the country to enter to war especially to support the European countries. This shows that the country entrance into the war was not supported from many quarters especially from the country’s citizens. They saw this is helping the European countries to further their interests and especially in continuing their colonization across the world. Works Cited Christopher Ames, Movies about the movies : Hollywood reflected, University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Read More