Critical Discourse and the Cultural Consecration of American Films

Abstract

This research examines the effects of contemporaneous critical, professional, and popular recognition, as wellas the effects of the extent of subsequent critical discourse aboutfilms and theirdirectors, on the retrospective cultural consecration ofAmerican films. Specifically, it examines a sample of 1,277 films released from 1929 to 1991 that received three or more major Academy Award nominations or were selected among the ten bestfilms of the year by either the New York Times or the National Board ofReview or wereamong the top ten films in terms of box-office revenues in a given year.

Insiders, Outsiders, and the Struggle for Consecration in Cultural Fields

“…This approach seems particularly appropriate given that consecration, by its very nature, imposes discrete (rather than continuous) distinctions between candidates who deserve recognition and those who do not (Allen and Lincoln 2004). In our context, a decision consists of a choice by a particular organization, in a particular year, to award an accolade (award or nomination) to a particular professional for performance in a particular role.…”

“…Following prior research (e.g., Allen and Lincoln 2004), we adopted a large-sample research design to go beyond the "accumulation of finite case studies to capture general subprocesses at work" (Lamont 2012, p. 206)-thus identifying more precise social-structural conditions that might affect the likelihood of consecration.…”

“…Our strategy is to focus on two types of audiences that reward cultural producers -peers and critics. These audiences correspond to two distinct selection systems, each emphasizing different criteria to assign cultural legitimacy (Allen and Lincoln 2004;Kersten and Bielby 2012).…”

Creative Leadership: A Multi-Context Conceptualization

“…Film directors can contribute more to the creative product than other professionals (Allen & Lincoln, 2004), but at the same time, the realization and success of their films depends on their ability to inspire and elicit high-magnitude creative contributions from other professionals, such as writers, actors, and so forth (Faulkner & Anderson, 1987;. Simonton (2002 analyzed over 1,000 US films and found that filmmaking is a truly collaborative process, where various professionals make distinct creative contributions, but the latter are not equal: Directors exert the greatest creative influence on films.…”

“…Some sectors do in fact favor specific manifestations of creative leadership, but they do not fully determine them. For example, the prestige that film directors enjoy today as the 'principal artists of filmmaking' (Simonton, 2002 is not an inevitable reality of filmmaking, but rather, the historical product of a collective bargaining which took place in Hollywood in the late 1960s and succeeded in securing for the directors more creative freedom and power (Allen & Lincoln, 2004;. This implies that individuals (leader and/or followers) may take action to alter the distribution of the opportunities for creative contributions in any give sector or work context (Glynn, 2000).…”