Identifying Hollywood's Audiences

Book excerpt: Examines what Hoolywood knew about its audiences between the 1920s and 1990s. This book looks at the methods the American motion picture industry has used to identify and understand its customers, and the ways in which that understanding has shaped the movies it produced. The authors reassess what is known about the social composition of classical Hollywood audiences, the role of opinion leaders in forming viewer choices and the development of statistical audience research methods. It challengs the conventional wisdom that the classical motion picture industry knew little about its audiences. Looking at Hollywoods adaptation to demographics, the book details how Hollywood has repeatedly reinvented and reconstructed the identities of its audiences. It also examines how such groups as adolescent males and female horror movie fans use film-viewing to display and establish their cultural competence and subcultural identities. The book demonstrates the range of demands that audiences make in the movies they watch, and the complex ways in which viewers negotiate their own self-images and the meanings of the texts they consume.