Hollywood Aesthetic

Abstract

Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The American film industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among large populations, translate into box office success. More than any other historical mode of art, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a mass scale. If the Hollywood film industry succeeds in delivering aesthetic pleasure both routinely and, at times, in an outstanding way, then we should ultimately regard Hollywood cinema as an artistic achievement, not merely a commercial success. Hollywood Aesthetic accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book addresses four fundamental components of Hollywood’s aesthetic design: narrative, style, ideology, and genre. Grounded in film history and in the psychological and philosophical literature in aesthetics, the book explains: (1) the intrinsic properties characteristic of Hollywood cinema that induce aesthetic pleasure; (2) the cognitive and affective processes, sparked by Hollywood movies, that become engaged during aesthetic pleasure; and (3) the exhilarated aesthetic experiences afforded by an array of persistently entertaining Hollywood movies. Offering a comprehensive appraisal of the capacity of Hollywood cinema to provide aesthetic pleasure, the book sets out to explain how Hollywood creates, for masses of people, some of their most exhilarating experiences of art.