Through extensive research, I have finally found a sound connection between the 1950s and Macbeth. Although this week’s concepts felt separated in context I knew there must be a connection between these two subjects. 

Note Taking 1950s:

After looking back through my notes in the 1950s, I found a pivotal relationship that can be contrasted against the storyline of Macbeth, Hollywood and television. Hollywood and its film studios have always pined for a monopolistic enterprise. To this day, its control of pop culture is momentous. In class, we briefly learned about its struggles with the 1950s movements. Targeted by both the government and the anti-Communist movement, which at the time were one and the same, Hollywood suffered some of the worst losses it had ever faced. To get more insight into this time period I decided to interview my grandparents who happened to be in town. Their knowledge helped me to generate this thesis.  

Evidence:

Here I created a short podcast in which I interviewed two of my grandparents about their childhood in the 1950s. This knowledge helped me generate my overall thesis for this post, and widened my understanding of this historical time period.

Originally, I found the connection between Hollywood and Macbeth, through my notes. I noticed that there were many different references of Hollywood spanning across all of the topics we were learning about. When I started to research this topic, I found that the film and broadcasting industries have shared a “symbiotic relationship” since the 1920s, with the major Hollywood companies attempting to develop and control television as a new distribution outlet. In the 1950s, the film companies produced programming for much of the prime-time TV schedule, and they also experimented with alternatives to broadcast television. 

My Thesis:

By the end of the 1950s, diversification was well underway, and the Hollywood film companies were attempting to become media companies. As Hollywood sought to control and corner the television market it received a fair amount of backlash, mostly because of Hollywood’s tenuous relationship with the government. Even though they were warned many times to back down, as time went on, studios continued to pursue this ambition. Hollywood’s bid to own television outlets mostly failed by this point, hindered largely by forces outside the film industry, especially the U.S. government. The government’s hostility towards the film industry was apparent as early as 1940 when the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, held hearings on technical standards for television, as well as warning a group of Hollywood executives not to count on control or extensive ownership in the developing television business.

In later efforts to thwart Hollywood’s ambition, the FCC froze the licensing of new television stations to prevent new ownership of these stations. But most importantly, many of the studios’ applications (especially Paramount’s) were denied or withdrawn after the government’s successful antitrust suit against them. The FCC’s policy was established in the Communications Act of 1934, which authorized the agency to refuse licenses to individuals or companies convicted of monopolistic activities. 

It has been argued that television was the primary factor affecting the dramatic plunge in ticket sales, box-office receipts, and company profits in Hollywood between 1947 and 1957. Hollywood much like Macbeth, had the character flaw of valuing ambition and over-controlling behaviours. Although today Hollywood has sprung back to the top of the entertainment industry, if they had been patient and waited through the hard times, I could only imagine where they might be today.  

Although I have hinted towards the connections between these historical events and Macbeth, I realize that I need to go into more detail. Like I mentioned above, both Hollywood and Macbeth are overly ambitious and “power-hungry.” Hollywood’s quest for control over the television networks is very similar to Macbeth’s quest for control of the crown. An additional parallel is that these parties’ experienced a similar ultimate downfall. Both Hollywood and Macbeth are trying to control the element that will eventually bring them destruction.

How to turn this into a movie:

Another factor we have to decipher is the Driving Question for this unit: Appearance vs. Reality. I believe you can tie this to the fact that both groups didn’t show their hardships visibly, although it is clear today that they both faced many challenges. In the interview above Adriane and Jim Oliver explained that they didn’t recognize any political hardships or scandals placed on Hollywood at the time. Therefore, Hollywood changes their appearance to hide their reality, as Macbeth constantly does during the play. Hopefully, in the future of the project, our final movie could be based on the same or a similar concept. Below I have created a Story Arc exhibiting a mixture of both historical and Shakespearean storylines.  

Citations: 

Film History of the 1950s, www.filmsite.org/50sintro.html. Accessed Mar 4, 2020.

Blakemore, Erin. “How TV Killed Hollywood’s Golden Age.”  History.com, A&E Television Networks, 3 Jan. 2018, www.history.com/news/how-tv-killed-hollywoods-golden-age. Accessed Mar 4, 2020.

SparkNotes, SparkNotes, www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/antagonist/. Accessed Mar 4, 2020.

“Macbeth by William Shakespeare.” Enotes.com, Enotes.com, www.enotes.com/homework-help/explain-briefly-antagonist-protagonist-macbeth-216167. Accessed Mar 4, 2020.

Vartanian, Hrag, et al. “Film Studios Left Hollywood in the 1950s and Changed the Business Forever.” Hyperallergic, 13 Aug. 2019, hyperallergic.com/513201/runaway-hollywood-ucla-film-television-archive/. Accessed Mar 4, 2020.