What role do audiences play in creating popular culture? Explain how Hollywood both manipulated and reflected the popular culture of the 1950’s and 60’s. The role of the audience is to infuse the fire in the popular culture movement. It appears that Hollywood was caught between the wall and the blade in the 1950’s, on one side you had the dominant culture flexing their muscle to have Hollywood endorse this family ideal and help the containment effort and for no reason ignite any friction that would agitate the already impatient young adolescents. The late fifties teenagers would be a huge section of the consumer market.
Hollywood manage to strike a rather windfall by agreeing to post announcement warning of the misconduct of the characters and at the end of the showing they would have a message for a figure of authority like the police or politician warning about the dangers of inconformity and change. Hollywood in a very financially wise move, bank their choice on the boomers and they did not failed them. The movies of the fifties ignited the fuel of change what was to come in the next decades. There were many movies that gained acclaim because of the topic and the questions it raised on the idea of what conformed to the life of a family unit.
Hollywood managed to bring to the screens what was happening in our daily lives and we needed to own it and learn how to deal with the incredible changes that were coming in the next fifty years. Elizabeth Taylor was the subject of a book written by M. G. Lord , the authors objective was to prove how Ms Taylor helped push the feminist movement with her performances the films that she chose to make. The book goes to site her entire history in a chronological order and show how the statement is true.
It is also said that this events were not direct actions from the star just the message was coming from Hollywood. An article in the New York Times claims that all those feminist messages were lost to the audience that was just too consumed with the actress beauty to get the message. None the less Liz Taylor’s film kept pushing the envelope of socially acceptable topics and in movie Suddenly, Last Summer, the major taboo was ripped wide open on homosexuality and possibly delinquent/criminal behavior because most likely the male escorts were minor poor young boys.
This movie portraits how far will the established social norm will go to keep containment , the clear message that a men was better off dead than be homosexual was not lost in this very turbulent movie. During this research I learned that many of Ms. Taylor films of the 50’s 60’s were clearly trying to send out a message of how the popular mass was eager to hear and in the 60’s people were ready to act in order to bring about change. The new baby boomers were ready to set the world on light speed and change our society at ultra accelerated speed.