ABSTRACT
There are a number of thorny theoretical and practical questions involved in creating an empirical data base from movie content, even if the data that the authors have collected are only a tool that must be understood in the context of a particular argument. Few theorists have recognized that the contradictions in the treatment of film along post-Saussurian lines may lie in the nature of the abstractions themselves, and they generally respond to the problems they encounter in their theorizing by refining the methods to which they have already committed themselves. In the largest possible framework, politics, film, and the film industry are different aspects of society, not of discourse, however much they may appear in discourse. In addition to producing images and stories, Hollywood operates both as a powerful business and as a social institution and its movies do not only reflect or constitute politics but also participate in it.
