Cinema And The Wealth Of Nations Media, Capital, And The Liberal World System

Product Description

Cinema and the Wealth of Nations explores how media, principally in the form of cinema, was used during the interwar years by elite institutions to establish and sustain forms of liberal political economy beneficial to their interests. It examines the media produced by institutions such as states, corporations, and investment banks, as well as the emergence of a corporate media industry and system supported by state policy and integral to the establishment of a new consumer system. Lee Grieveson shows how media was used to encode liberal political and economic power during the period that saw the United States eclipse Britain as the globally hegemonic nation and the related inauguration of new forms of liberal economic globalization. But this is not a distant history. Cinema and the Wealth of Nations examines a foundational conjuncture in the establishment of media forms and a media system instrumental in, and structural to, the emergence and expansion of a world system that has been—and continues to be—brutally violent, unequal, and destructive.

Review

"Lee Grieveson’s bold historical analysis of the relationship between media and capital is nothing if not timely. . . . [He] deepens the scholarship on cinema’s social role beyond the dominant art and entertainment paradigms." ― Reviews in History

"A monumental achievement, a book that invites scholars to rethink what it means to research and write film history." ― JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies

"Few recent books in film and media studies can match the ambition Lee Grieveson set himself with Cinema and the Wealth of Nations: Media, Capital, and the Liberal World System, and even fewer have delivered in the way Grieveson does. Nothing less than a comprehensive reconceptualisation of the discipline is on the agenda . . . in which political economy replaces aesthetics at the centre of our concerns, and in which questions of corporate ownership, state policy and class hegemony form the core of research in the field. . . . [It's a] rare breed of academic text: one that leaves the reader vivified at the end, as Grieveson’s final chapter whizzes from the techno-futurism of the 1939 World Fair, through the cinema’s insertion into the military-industrial complex in the Cold War and onto the fully automated drone-logic of contemporary capitalist media." ― Senses of Cinema

From the Inside Flap

"Lee Grieveson&;s cultural-materialist tour de force ruthlessly examines the global history of movies and money, detailing the sordid global backstory behind the uncertain and unequal balance between art and commerce. This rigorously researched and deeply felt radical media study evinces a perceptive and thoroughgoing analysis of a medium that has from its outset served an exploitative political economy."&;Jon Lewis, author of Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles

"The interpenetration of the state, finance capitalism, and film is central to this formidable book. I am awed by the volume of scholarship, the force of the analysis, and the style of the narrative. This is a book that will open up a significant subfield in film studies."&;Colin MacCabe, Distinguished Professor of English and Film, University of Pittsburgh

&;By combining perceptive film analyses and extensive archival research with an astonishing command of scholarship in a range of disciplines and an intense passion for politics, Grieveson poses a serious challenge to film and media historians: dig deeper, think bigger, be relevant!&;&;Peter Krämer, author of The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to Star Wars 

"Grieveson presents the definitive account of media&;s primacy to our modern world&;s corporatized and imperiled commons. This is paradigm-shifting work that lays bare for the first time&;with lucidity, breadth of vision, and unparalleled detail&;the logic of liberal capitalism underwriting film&;s and radio&;s infrastructura