American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations
Good Times?: Simulating the Seventies in Nineties Hollywood
Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
American Culture Studies
First Advisor
Cynthia Baron (Committee Chair)
Second Advisor
Cortland Rankin (Committee Member)
Third Advisor
Andrew Schocket (Committee Member)
Fourth Advisor
Melissa Burek (Other)
Abstract
Good Times? is an examination of the American film industry of the 1990s, with a focus on how both the major studios and independent distributors capitalized on cultural recycling of the 1970s. On the side of the major Hollywood studios, intellectual property became increasingly important as established brands could effectively be revived and resold to audiences. In independent cinema, filmmakers sampled the music, stars, and their own personal experiences from the 1970s, in line with larger aesthetic trends of postmodernism. The films studied in this project essentially mark a meeting point between these multiple trends. An appeal to nostalgia, broadly defined, for the 1970s provided a useful strategy for both reviving brands of that time and using them in the new ways afforded by postmodernism (such as parody and sampling) and the diverse perspectives of multiculturalism. My central argument is that, in the 1990s, both Hollywood and independent cinema utilized “the seventies” as a product to be sold and the past as something to be marketed. The primary way studio and independent films achieved this was through marketing tactics that made the seventies into a brand on multiple synergistic channels. Chapter one surveys the industrial landscape impacting the entertainment industry of the time, while chapter two covers the cultural trends of multiculturalism and postmodernism. Chapter three shows how ‘70s-set coming-of-age films from Gen X filmmakers had a rather serious take on growing up while their distributors glossed over these elements to highlight elements associated with nostalgia. Chapter four analyzes the studios’ role in the nostalgia wave through recycling brands via synergy, as Paramount/Viacom did with The Brady Bunch. Chapter five examines independents’ sampling of imagery and stars associated with blaxploitation to promote their films and ancillary products. Employing an industry studies perspective, the project uses a diverse collection of texts in its analysis. While it involves some textual analysis of films, the research also covers marketing materials (trailers, press kits, posters), screenplays, interviews, and reviews. Analyzing these surrounding materials establishes the context for the films under examination and illuminates the industrial conditions that brought the films to their audiences.
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Logan, "Good Times?: Simulating the Seventies in Nineties Hollywood" (2023). American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations. 140.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/acs_diss/140