ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the history of American cinema and the political philosophy of art, complements the quantitative research. It provides a conceptual analysis of high-concept cinema, and it shows how, over the past three decades, the growing hegemony of high-concept cinema went hand in hand with the ability of Major Filmed Entertainment to significantly reduce its risk. The chapter explores how the aesthetic form of high-concept cinema complements major filmed entertainment’s need to strategically sabotage the industrial art of filmmaking. As Wyatt observes, the elements of high-concept cinema come together such that they weaken our identification with character and narrative. Instead of building a complicated relationship between subject and object, the viewer [of a high-concept film] becomes sewn into the “surface” of the film, contemplating the style of the narrative and the production. The wide social acceptance of high-concept cinema is assisted by other characteristics of the Hollywood film business.
