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Voices of Labor

Creativity, Craft, and Conflict in Global Hollywood

Michael Curtin editor Kevin Sanson editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:2nd Jun '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Voices of Labor cover

Motion pictures are made, not mass produced, requiring a remarkable collection of skills, self-discipline, and sociality-all of which are sources of enormous pride among Hollywood's craft and creative workers. The interviews collected here showcase the ingenuity, enthusiasm, and aesthetic pleasures that attract people to careers in the film and television industries. They also reflect critically on changes in the workplace brought about by corporate conglomeration and globalization. Rather than offer publicity-friendly anecdotes by marquee celebrities, Voices of Labor presents off-screen observations about the everyday realities of Global Hollywood. Ranging across job categories-from showrunner to make-up artist to location manager-this collection features voices of labor from Los Angeles, Atlanta, Prague, and Vancouver. Together they show how seemingly abstract concepts like conglomeration, financialization, and globalization are crucial tools for understanding contemporary Hollywood and for reflecting more generally on changes and challenges in the screen media workplace and our culture at large. Despite such formidable concerns, what nevertheless shines through is a commitment to craftwork and collaboration that provides the means to imagine and instigate future alternatives for screen media labor.

“In this volume, we find the off-screen workers talking with love and excitement about their craft, the skill taken to accomplish a task, and the precarious condition they now confront in Global Hollywood due to diffusion of labour. …The book stands out for being an exercise in method—how extensive and in-depth field interviews can illuminate certain conceptual in­terests of screen studies.” * Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies *

ISBN: 9780520295438

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 15mm

Weight: 408g

284 pages