What is Hollywood Realism?

Exploring how Hollywood subsumes all resistance into its profit-making machine

What I am calling Hollywood realism comes from Mark Fisher’s term capitalist realism explored in the book by the same name. Fisher defines the term as: “the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible to even imagine a coherent alternative to it,” (Fisher 2009 pp. 2). Any notion of life without capitalism is now so impossible because it just is. Fisher examines how this idea crops up in politics, culture, art, and everyday life.

Not only does capital own everything, it is “capable of metabolizing, and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact,” (Fisher 2009 pp. 6). We’ve seen this most recently with corporate response to the police murder of George Floyd and the ensuing upspring–how quickly corporations absorbed the mass uproar, changing brand identities to fit the moment. Even resistance to capital is subsumed by capital and spit back to the consumer-worker. 

Hollywood realism: the widespread belief that films can only be made in one way and with a certain set of aesthetics, especially affecting filmmakers who deem themselves as outside the system, that there cannot be radical alternatives to the mode of Hollywood filmmaking and thus capitalist production. In a word, the commodification of art, the maximization of profit as being the only viable way to produce films. 

As a way into Hollywood realism, Fisher’s analysis of Disney/Pixar’s 2008 film Wall-E is useful.  “Time after time” Fisher writes, “the villain in Hollywood films will turn out to be the ‘evil corporation’” (Fisher 2009 pp. 12). Wall-E is a self-reflexive film showing the destruction of human society (on Earth) by the film’s monopolistic corporation Buy n Large. Instead of postulating an alternative to capitalism and consumerism Wall-E has its human characters “interacting via screen interfaces, carried around in large motorized chairs, and supping indeterminate slop from cups,” (Fisher 2009 pp. 12). They have become the ultimate consumer since their role as a worker is no longer necessary. It shows the end game of capital as freeing humans from labor in order to subjugate them purely as a consumer. The film functions as cinematic irony where “it seems that the cinema audience is itself the object of this satire” going on to say that “this kind of irony feeds rather than challenges capitalist realism,” (Fisher 2009 pp. 12). 

Wall-E's cleverness is that it scapegoats the film spectator as the rampant consumer while relying on the same consumer to watch the movie and buy merchandise.The capitalist realism of it all is that it is seemingly inescapable. And when taken in conjunction with the saturation booking strategy of Hollywood, and Hollywood’s strategic sabotage that James McMahon describes in The Political Economy of Hollywood, there is no alternative. The film spectator must consume Wall-E in the movie theater (and at home) because the only viable option in their mind consists of other Hollywood films. Hollywood realism is merely an extension of capitalist realism specific to Hollywood. There is no alternative to Hollywood because it is thought that Hollywood is the only realistic and viable way to make films. In a similar timespan, the rise of what we now call neoliberalism, Hollywood has conglomerated political and economic power. 

Not only does Hollywood get to choose what the global film spectator gets to see (both directly through its productions and indirectly through strategic sabotage) but it also structures audience expectations of what a film should be narratively, formally, and aesthetically. It forces a film to be one thing, not a medium of art that contains many different styles, stories, and forms. Hollywood films, like any commodity, are structured in such a way to maximize profits. By creating mass appeal, any “realist” in the film industry must structure their films in a similar way. Anyone in the film industry will say “it’s just how it is” and anyone else has lost the ability to dream about the future radically. This kind of dreaming is the most important step in realizing a new future for the art of film and for humanity. 

Hollywood is not a place so much as an ideological apparatus with political economic hegemony over the industrial art of filmmaking. Let us not forget Baudry: “The cinema can thus appear as a sort of psychic apparatus of substitution, corresponding to the model defined by the dominant ideology,” (Baudry 43). The important part for Baudry is that the cinema apparatus (camera) can reflect any ideology, however, the sees in his time that, “the system of repression (primarily economic) has as its goal the prevention of deviations of the actual exposure of this ‘model,” (Baudry 43). An examination of economics only goes so far, as McMahon argues in The Political Economy of Hollywood in that we also need to examine not only capital in the traditional sense, but capitalist power as well. 

This all-consuming power of Hollywood realism as an ideology has the same effect of capitalist realism in that “Capital follows you when you dream,” (Fisher 2009 pp. 34) in the same way Hollywood does. This leads to the “dream factory’s” seepage into societal consciousness. Capital’s power to affect your dreams seems like science fiction but is a very effective way of saying that it is hard for your brain to even dream about alternatives to capitalism and Hollywood. It functions as publicity not only for capitalism, but for Hollywood itself. “Publicity” Jon Berger writes in Ways of Seeing, “situated in a future continually deferred, excludes the present and so eliminates all becoming, all development,” (Berger 153). In order to sell its product, Hollywood must convince the masses of filmgoers that their product is the only one worth paying money to see, but also, that it is the only viable film product. Hollywood marketing budgets have been skyrocketing since the creation of blockbuster cinema. But publicity functions not only as a way of selling the particular product for Hollywood, but also as the continual domination and legitimization of the Hollywood film industry. 

This intensifies Hollywood realism because “[publicity] recognizes nothing except the power to acquire. All other human faculties or needs are made subsidiary to this power…no other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capitalism,” (Berger 153). The dream of Hollywood and thus capital is that of publicity. Berger’s examination of the function of images and of publicity gives a waking life to how widespread what I call Hollywood realism and what McMahon examines as one part of capitalist power is and how it continually reproduces itself through massive amounts of marketing. Everywhere you look Hollywood has occupied the space, and “We only see what we look at,” (Berger 8). This effect creates the illusion that there is no alternative or future outside of the Hollywood film industry. 

Communist filmmaking is an antidote to Hollywood realism. Realizing and analyzing how the dominant ideology functions in the mainstream is a key part in searching for radical alternatives to the current mode of film production. Communist filmmaking is a recognition of class consciousness between independent artists, that in fact, our best way for autonomy over our own creations is to band together as a class of filmmakers. Allow yourself, for a moment, to dream of an ideal way of making films whether you are a director, a grip, a writer, an editor, a sound mixer etc. This is the most important step in countering Hollywood realism and capitalist realism: dreaming of a future that doesn’t yet exist. What do you need in this ideal world of filmmaking? A film needs material resources such as cameras, lights, costumes, props, and so on and labor, both creative and physical and we make no distinction here in importance. Without a director, a shitty movie is made, without gaffers the film looks like shit, without a sound design the film sounds like shit and so on with every position. 

Imagine if you had access to these resources and the most important resource: time. Imagine if you could have an 8-hour workday (workers spent over a hundred fighting for this), yet still have enough shooting days to craft the film as it should be? Imagine if everyone working on the film got not only a stipend to live while in production, but also collectively owned what they produced? Imagine if there was a system in place and opportunities for equal distribution of films and that every film no matter genre, style, or actors was treated with respect in distribution? Imagine if film marketing was about bringing attention to radical politics, style, aesthetic differences, experimentation, and complicated characters, not about what shitty plot is being shoved down your throat with a different backdrop? Imagine a world of film criticism that works to critically engage with the art of cinema, pushing it further, instead of industry papers selling Hollywood’s wares? Imagine a lively theatrical film experience where you could see the most sentimental romance and wildest piece of slow cinema in the same space? These are some things that could exist in a decommodified zone of filmmaking. 

Producers (in this case everyone who worked on the film not “film producer”) own what they produced, and spectators actually have control over what they watch. Instead of functioning as independent artists, we must function as a collective. We must fight capital to create an alternative that can fight for space in the mainstream. In the ideal world, filmmaking would be a decommodified zone, however, searching for present alternatives to producing sustainable art under capitalism is the current fixation. 

In the next post, I will further examine the current “alternative” and “independent” zones of filmmaking and how these labels lead to further commodification. Think, why is “indie film” and “independent film” its own genre rather than being an alternative to Hollywood filmmaking? How blurred is the line between the independent filmmaker and the Hollywood filmmaker? See you next time. Please share this post if you know anyone who would enjoy!

Works Cited

Baudry, Jean-Louis. Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus. edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj, Critical Visions in Film Theory, 2010, p. 43.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin, 1972, pp. 8-153.

Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism. Zero Books, 2009, pp. 2-34.

McMahon, James. The Political Economy of Hollywood, 2022