Hollywood, in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen by Janet Wasko

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 655 tion provides valuable insight into the relation between the ideologi­ cal context in which computing technology is introduced and the actual experiences of computer users. Janet Abbate Dr. Abbate is a postdoctoral fellow at the IEEE/Rutgers Center for the History of Electrical Engineering. She is writing a book on the history of the Internet, to be published by MIT Press. Hollywood, in the Information Age: Beyond the Silver Screen. By Janet Wasko. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1995. Pp. x+308; illustra­ tions, tables, notes, index. $40.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). Hollywood in the Information Age examines contemporary Holly­ wood in the broadest sense of that term, including motion picture and television production, broadcast television, cable television, home video, and future means of video distribution and presenta­ tion.Janet Wasko, an associate professor in the School ofJournalism and Communications at the University of Oregon, seeks to describe how Hollywood corporations have moved from monopolizing film production and distribution to competing for control of (and domi­ nating) new video media, the world of “500 channels.” She also examines Hollywood’s role in the production and sale of video games, toys, trading cards, and a myriad of other cultural products. After two chapters on the state of Hollywood and its means of production, Wasko devotes single chapters to cable TV and other wired technologies for delivery of video products, the innovation and diffusion of home video, changes in theatrical motion picture exhibition, the commercialization of the film industry by Madison Avenue, and the recent successes ofHollywood in the realm of inter­ national distribution. A conclusion, extensive notes, and an index follow. To her credit, Wasko has stuffed her book with nearly two dozen tables and nearly a score of figures. These rich sources of informa­ tion apdy summarize shares of revenues, sales of new products, and patterns of corporate takeover. There are but four photographs in Hollywood in the Information Age, none from a motion picture or televi­ sion production. Instead we see a shuttered drive-in and movie pal­ ace, Ted Turner in repose, satellite dishes at a cable system facility, and a Blockbuster Video store. For a traditional photo-laden movie book, turn elsewhere. For other, more serious reasons, potential readers might also turn to other scholarship. Hollywood in the Information Agepromises a look to the future, but the book is actually a work of contemporary his­ tory. Readers of Technology and Culture will find Wasko’s discussions of the origins, dynamics, and consequences of technical change somewhat naive. For example, her introductory chapter, in which 656 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the structure of the book is laid out, contains not a single endnote. We find the Frankfurt school mentioned on page 4, but no discus­ sion (or citation) of how to use that theory follows. The theoretical basis of Hollywood in the Information Age is defined by what Wasko does not accept; in only four single sentences does she lay out her approach. This is a work of Marxist political economy. We read lament after lament about the skill that Hollywood owners and managers have used to get and maintain corporate power. Some may admire how Hollywood has taken over each new mass entertainment technology. Wasko does not. But she seems frustrated at explaining why. For example, it is only after twenty-eight pages on the major and minor Hollywood corporate operations that we learn, in a mere 200 words, why Wasko thinks “the Big Boys are Big”: they are diversified. Moreover, in an analysis of contemporary Hollywood the reader expects, rightly, a book that is up-to-date. But that is difficult in a world where events are changing so rapidly, and university presses take their time. The cutoff here is early 1993, before Viacom had taken over Paramount and Matsushita sold, at a deep discount, MCA/Universal. Wasko’s conclusion that “MCA was certainly a plum for Matsushita” (p. 63) seems quaint in light of the subsequent near giveaway of MCA by the giantJapanese electrical manufacturer. Matsushita lost billions of dollars in its five-year foray into Holly­ wood. In a world where vast new alliances between Hollywood and...